Duty and Honor

31

As for the deeper answer to Effrem’s question, Jack had no idea, but a few minutes on Google offered a possible superficial answer: Namibia was home to almost thirty thousand German speakers, a holdover from Germany’s almost two-hundred-year history with the country, which had even been called German South-West Africa from 1884 until the middle of World War I.

Rostock’s possible presence in Namibia was no coincidence, Jack felt. Rostock had shown a preference for German employees. If Klugmann was there as part of RSG’s operation, Namibia’s German population would offer a deep pool of resources.

However, before he picked up his group and left Europe, Jack needed to satisfy his curiosity about the true reason for René’s kidnapping. To do this, Jack left Zurich a few hours after Mitch’s call and landed in Paris shortly after noon. In his absence, Effrem would do his best to keep René occupied and even-keeled.

Marshal Hugo Allemand, though many years into retirement, was a fixture on Paris’s social and political scene. As had Jürgen Rostock, Marshal Allemand had parlayed a celebrated military career into a civilian life of luxury and influence. Subsequently Jack had little trouble finding the Allemand estate, a working horse farm an hour north of the city near Montmorency Forest.

Jack pulled his rental car up to an iron gate festooned with stylized fleurs-de-lis and pushed the intercom. “Oui?” a male voice replied.

“Parlez-vous anglais?” Jack asked. His grasp of basic French was serviceable, but he’d found that outside the country’s tourist hubs the locals preferred visitors either speak proper French or not try at all.

“Yes, I speak English,” came the reply.

“I’m here to see Marshal Allemand.”

“The marshal has no appointments scheduled for today. Please contact his secretary and she will—”

“I’m here about the marshal’s son, René.”

“The marshal has said all he cares to about his son’s disappearance. All press inquiries should be directed to—”

“His secretary, I know.” Jack placed his cell phone up to the intercom box and tapped the play button. After ten seconds Jack hit stop and said, “I made that recording less than eight hours ago. I’ll wait.”

The intercom was silent for a bit, then: “One moment, please.”

It took five minutes. When the voice returned, Jack was directed to follow the driveway to the main house, where he would be met. Once through the gate, Jack did as instructed until he pulled to a stop before a ten-thousand-square-foot French-Georgian-style mansion. The colonnaded front steps were bracketed by a pair of bronze stallions rearing back on their hind legs.

A fit-looking man in a black suit was waiting on the walkway. By the time Jack climbed out of the driver’s seat, the man was standing at his door. “I am Claude. Please raise your arms to shoulder level.”

Jack did so. Claude ran a magnetic wand up and down Jack’s body, then expertly frisked him before asking, “What is your name, please?”

“Jack.”

“Your surname?”

“Smith.”

Claude frowned at him. “Follow me, Monsieur Smith.”

He led Jack through the front doors, across a white marble foyer, then through a set of French doors to a solarium filled with hanging plant baskets. Marshal Allemand was seated at a white wicker table. He gestured for Jack to sit, then nodded at Claude, who took up his post beside the doors.

“Do you know how many people have come to me with proof my son is alive? How many conspiracy theories there are out there?”

“No.”

“Too many to count. If I find that you are playing that same game, I will do everything in my power to see you prosecuted. Do you understand?”

Jack had no doubt the marshal would carry through with his threat, regardless of whether Jack had broken any laws. “I understand,” he said.

“You are free to leave if you so choose.”

Jack turned in his seat so Claude would have a clear view as he took out his cell phone and held it up for inspection before placing it on the table before Allemand. “The recording is cued up. Just tap the play button.”

Allemand neither looked at the phone nor reached for it but rather kept his eyes fixed on Jack. “You told Claude this recording is from eight hours ago? Where were you at the time?”

“In a motel outside Zurich. Marshal Allemand, your son is alive. And he’s in trouble. I’m trying to help him. Watch the video. If you’re satisfied that’s René, we’ll talk. If not…” Jack shrugged. “I’ll sit here until the police arrive.”

Allemand placed his index finger on Jack’s cell phone, pulled it toward him, then leaned over the screen and tapped play.

For the next two minutes the marshal watched as Jack and René chatted over their pizza the night before. René hadn’t been aware of the recording. Marshal Allemand played the video twice more, then sat back in his chair. His eyes were moist.

“That’s my son,” he said, his voice cracking.

Jack nodded but said nothing.

“He looks different. Older.”

Jack replied, “He’s been through a lot, and he’s going to need a lot of help.”

“Explain, please.”

Worried about overwhelming the already shell-shocked Allemand, Jack gave him a condensed version of the story René had told them at the Wädenswil coffeehouse. He added his theory that René had been brainwashed. He left out any mention of the Lyon attacks and Jürgen Rostock until the end. At the mention of the German’s name, Allemand leaned forward, his face hard.

“Jürgen Rostock — René told you this himself?”

“He did.”

Allemand paused for a moment. Then, in a voice heavy with conviction, he said, “This much I know: René did not have anything to do with the Lyon attacks. That’s not in him, and I know my son.”

“I agree with you. I don’t think the kidnapping was about René at all. I think it’s about you. Is that possible?”

Allemand didn’t reply, instead asking, “Why hasn’t René contacted me?”

“He thinks you gave up on him. Rostock insinuated your business dealings led to René’s kidnapping.”

“That’s nonsense! You believe Rostock did this to gain leverage over me? If so, why hasn’t he approached me?”

“René went on the run. Rostock doesn’t have control of him. There’s a part of your son’s mind that knows it’s not seeing reality. He’s been trying to work it out for himself and I think the shock of being involved with anyone remotely connected to the Lyon attacks pushed him over the edge. You didn’t answer my question: Would Rostock have anything to gain over you by kidnapping René?”

“Possibly. What do you know about Rostock?”

“Just what I’ve read in the papers. He’s powerful, that much seems clear.”

Allemand half smiled. “Power is influence, and Rostock has that — far beyond German borders, and in wide circles. Do you know what happened to Rostock in Afghanistan?”

“No.”

“I’m not surprised,” Allemand replied. “Rostock has worked very hard to keep it out of the spotlight. In the spring of 2005, Rostock and his wife were visiting a reserve Heer battalion in Kabul. A suicide bomber rammed into their vehicle, killing Rostock’s wife and two of his aides. In fact, everyone in the vehicle except for Rostock died. He lost his left leg below the knee and most of the mobility in his right arm. It crippled him and cost him his career.”

“How so?” asked Jack. “He wasn’t a ground soldier. Those kinds of injuries wouldn’t disqualify him from service.”

“It’s what the attack did to his mind. He became erratic, politically belligerent, insubordinate. The Bundeswehr put up with it for almost a year and then quietly ushered him out the door.”

“Politically belligerent,” Jack repeated. “What does that mean?”

“Rabidly and publicly anti-Muslim. Not simply anti — Islamic terrorism, mind you, but a more all-encompassing, less discriminating mind-set, if you understand my meaning.”

Jack did. The anti-Islamic rhetoric René had used back in Zurich was similar to the political timbre of what Marshal Allemand was describing — essentially a kill-them-all-and-let-God-sort-them-out approach.

Allemand continued: “Rostock wasn’t without his supporters, of course, but to have someone of his stature and influence speaking out as he did wasn’t something the German government could tolerate.

“So he was forced out. Shortly after that, he formed RSG and backed away from the spotlight. When he was interviewed or asked about military affairs he was circumspect. Not a trace of his earlier belligerence.”

“A night-to-day change,” Jack replied.

“A remarkable transformation,” agreed Allemand. “But it was superficial. About five years ago Rostock began a campaign, a very quiet one, mind you, but a campaign nevertheless. I was, I believe, his first visit.”

“What did he want?”

“To wage war. Privately. His way. Of course, at the start he was more subtle about it, but that was the essence of his proposal.”

“Why come to you?”

“It was his belief that Western governments don’t have the stomach to deal with terrorism, at least not in a definitive way. I didn’t necessarily disagree with his assessment, but democracy is what it is, and for all its faults there’s no better form of government. If you’re going to claim to be a democracy, either you accept it warts and all or you don’t. What Rostock was proposing was antithetical to democracy.”

“You said, wage war ‘his way.’ Did he define that?”

“Private armies answerable to no government,” replied Allemand. “No laws, no rules of engagement, and a simple mandate: Root out terrorism and all its support structures by any means necessary.”

On its surface the concept had its appeal, Jack had to admit, but it was only practical if the laws you were willing to break were those at the very foundation of Western society. Without the checks and balances built into democracy, the dictate of “by any means necessary” was ripe for all manner of sins. It was a slope that would likely be slippery with blood in no time.

Jack suddenly realized what Rostock had proposed to Marshal Allemand was in broad terms not unlike The Campus’s own mission. The difference lay in scope and intention. To fight terrorism you sometimes had to get into the gutter. That was ugly reality. At its most basic, it was a matter of target discretion. Terrorists kill indiscriminately. Once the good guys started down that road with purpose and intention, the war was lost.

“What did he want from you?”

“To ‘sign on,’ as it were, to start softly ringing the warning bell and recruiting allies. For his plan to work he needed advocates in Europe and the United States, both civilian and martial. And money, of course. With those two things he believed he could prove his theory, starting small at first, making headway where governments had failed, establishing and running networks that would provide actionable intelligence, destroying cells and training camps. Don’t misunderstand me: I never had any intention of going along, but his presentation was impressive, right down to five-, ten-, and twenty-year plans and public relations strategies. Rostock was in it for the long haul, and I could see the fire in his eyes. He’s a true believer, Jack, and the most dangerous kind — someone with means and motivation.”

“I assume he didn’t quit his campaign after you said no?”

“Of course not. Since then he’s approached me a number of times, along with dozens of others across the EU and in the United States. I don’t know if he’s managed to gain any supporters, and if so how many.”

“Why is all this a secret?”

“Rostock is very careful about whom he approaches and how. Nothing is recorded and nothing is written down. If you’re going to accuse someone like Rostock of campaigning to be a private warlord, you’d better be ready for a fight, not just a legal one but a public relations one as well. Or worse. So far no one’s been willing to take him on.”

“Including you?”

“Sadly, yes. I assumed Rostock would eventually give up. Alone, the funds required for what he was proposing would be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Jack said, “We think it’s possible Rostock was behind the Lyon attacks. What do you say?”

“Of course it’s possible. It’s an old trick, Jack, manufacturing the will to wage war. It happens more than people know. At its most benign, an organic, violent event is capitalized upon and used to massage national policy. At its most malignant, the event itself is fabricated. The fact that Lyon took place on my home soil, not long after the Paris attacks, is”—Allemand paused, considering his words—“disturbing.”

“Had René not run, Rostock would have him under his thumb.”

“Yes, I see that now. And don’t ask me whether that leverage would have been enough to change my mind about Rostock’s plan. I don’t know the answer, and I’d prefer to not think too much about it. Jack, can I ask you: Why are you involved in this?”

“You can ask,” he replied with a smile.

Allemand nodded. “I see. Where is René right now? Still in Zurich?”

“Yes. I have someone with him.”

“I will send a plane for him.”

“He won’t get on it — not willingly, at least. And if you try to force him it’ll make things worse. For him and for you.”

“So I do nothing?”

“For now. Marshal Allemand, what would it take for you to come forward and speak out against Rostock?”

“Jack, I’m not worried about the repercussions I would face, but we would need more than my voice.”

“What if I can bring you proof?”

“You bring me that, even the smallest thread I can tug on, and I’ll start calling every name in my address book, from here to Washington, D.C.”