“Our paths crossed briefly.”
“How?”
“I don’t want to answer that,” Jack replied. “Not yet. You’re a journalist, Effrem. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but the hunt for a story makes journalists do strange things—especially young journalists looking to earn a name for themselves. No offense.”
“I understand. But consider this: I know things you don’t know, and you know things I don’t know. If we share information, we can get further. Besides, something tells me you are not the headline to my story.”
“Instinct from years of hard-won experience?” Jack said with a grin.
“Not that, for sure. Genetics, maybe.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Look into me. You’ll have no trouble finding plenty of information. If after that you want to talk, you know where to find me. If not . . .” Effrem shrugged. “Well, I’ve gotten this far on my own. I can keep going on my own.”
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
Effrem had piqued his interest, but looking into the journalist’s pedigree would have to wait a while longer. He had one more stop to make. One that he should have made earlier.
He drove back to Rose Hill and circled Peter Hahn’s neighborhood, looking for signs of police activity. If someone had found the body at the preserve and called 911, the responding Homicide detective would immediately dispatch uniformed police officers to Peter Hahn’s home, either looking for further victims or hoping to notify next of kin.
Seeing no police cars or anything extraordinary in the neighborhood, Jack turned onto Climbhill Road. When he reached Hahn’s home he turned off his headlights and pulled to the curb. It was fully dark now and the rain had slowed to a drizzle that sparkled in the light of the streetlamps lining the block. A few houses away a dog started yipping in the backyard. A woman’s voice snapped, “Snickers, get in here,” and the barking stopped.
What he was about to do would be damned hard to explain if the police showed up. He hoped it would be worth the risk.
After making sure his car’s dome light was off, Jack opened the door and climbed out. He didn’t look around but strode up the driveway with purpose, a friend coming to visit his old friend Pete. At least that was the demeanor Jack hoped he was exuding.
Jack reached the back door and pulled open the screen, which swung back with only a slight squeal. Jack clicked on his penlight, shoved the end into his mouth, and leaned over to inspect the lock. It wasn’t in much better shape than the knob to Hahn’s garage had been. Maybe he’d get lucky again.
He got out his multi-tool, pried the flathead screwdriver open, then slipped it into the keyhole, wiggling and twisting as he went until finally the tool was haft-deep in the lock. Jack started twisting the knob and tool in opposite directions. The first three times he had to back off, afraid his multi-tool was going to snap, but on the fourth attempt the lock thunked open.
Jack poked his head inside and called, “Pete, you here? Hey, man, I thought we were supposed to meet up.”
Hahn wasn’t home, of course, and two more shout-outs suggested no one else was in the house. Jack drew his Glock, stepped into the kitchen, and shut the door behind him. He stood in the darkness for thirty seconds, getting a feel for the home. It felt cramped, slapped together in the late forties, Jack guessed, with narrow hallways and probably a chopped-up interior. When this house was built the concept of open, flowing floor plans was still decades away.
Jack didn’t know what exactly he was looking for and didn’t want to spend more than ten minutes inside. It seemed clear to him that Peter Hahn had been a reluctant participant in first the murder of Mark Macloon, and then in the attempted murder of Jack himself. There had to be a reason he’d participated at all. Jack recalled Hahn’s words from the night before: As it is, I don’t know if I’ve done enough to save her.
Who was “her”? His daughter? It seemed clear she was linked—perhaps unwillingly—to whoever was behind all this. How?
Jack walked through the kitchen and stepped into a TV room/nook. Sitting on a rectangular, linoleum-topped dining table was a desktop computer. The screen saver was running, tracing colorful expanding lines across the monitor’s black face. On the table were disheveled stacks of newspapers, magazines, and sudoku puzzle books, the kind you find near the register at grocery stores. Lying next to the keyboard was a Windows for Dummies book. It was open to the chapter about e-mailing and Skype.
For safety’s sake, Jack walked through the house to confirm he was alone, then returned to the nook and sat down before the computer. He tapped the mouse button. The screen saver disappeared to reveal an open e-mail window and Web browser. Jack clicked through the browser’s tabs and found a few online crossword and word-search sites, the local cable company’s TV listing grid, and a page with movie times at the Regal Cinemas Kingstowne a couple miles away. Jack opened the browser history and scanned backward. A site title: “Impeach President Ryan Now!” Jack clicked on the link, which took him to a rant blog dedicated to his father. Jack clicked backward, returning to the history list, and soon found more sites, all dedicated to anti–Jack Ryan ramblings, from complaints about the economy and foreign affairs to conspiracy posts about his father having murdered a woman in Kentucky when he was twelve years old and his being a secret Chinese sleeper agent.
Jack checked the “last visited” dates and times for each site. All had been visited over the course of six days shortly before the attempt on his life at the Supermercado.
Fallback cover, Jack thought. Eric Schrader/Weber had come at him as a junkie mugger and he’d gone to some trouble to lay groundwork for the role by panhandling outside the Supermercado. If there had been witnesses to Jack’s murder, the police would have been looking for a knife-wielding crackhead. If that fell through and Schrader/Weber was somehow tracked back to Peter Hahn, the authorities would find a political nut job with a motive—albeit a clumsily assembled one—to see the President’s son killed.
Peter Hahn wasn’t crazy, that much Jack felt certain about. Nor did Hahn, who needed a book to work his e-mail, seem like the kind of man to check his browser history. If either Möller or Schrader/Weber had planted this Web history, Hahn would have been unlikely to discover the ruse. Either that or Hahn himself had visited the sites for the same reason he’d helped Schrader/Weber—under orders and to protect someone.
Jack turned his attention to Hahn’s e-mail. There were only a few dozen in the inbox, all of them junk mail or advertisements; he clicked on the trash folders and found more of the same. In the window’s sidebar was a folder labeled “BB.” Jack opened this and found hundreds of e-mails dating back six months. Jack chose one at random and opened it.
Hi, Dad. I got the book you sent me. It’s hilarious. My cat does so many of those things it kinda freaked me out . . .
It was signed Bee Bee. Jack clicked on sender to expand the name: [email protected].
BB. Peter Hahn’s daughter.
Securing his little girl’s welfare would be leverage enough for any father.
Jack clicked on the most recent e-mail, from earlier that morning:
Sorry you had to cancel our Skype session today. I was looking forward to it. Before you know it, you’re going to be a computer whiz. Anyway, call when you get a chance. Just want to make sure you’re taking your meds and all that. I’m also sending you a new sudoku book. Maybe this one will take a little longer to finish. LOL.
Damn. Father and daughter were in close touch. Until Hahn’s body was found and Belinda was notified, her e-mails would go unanswered. Jack felt for her.
Jack selected the last e-mail, clicked through until he reached the Properties/Details tab, then checked the message’s full header, a dense block of text several hundred characters long. Too much to absorb now. Jack inserted his own USB drive, copied and pasted the header into a text document, and repeated the process another ten time
s, choosing messages that spanned the duration of Hahn’s correspondence with Belinda.
Jack was about to close out the e-mail program when a thought occurred to him: If in fact Peter Hahn hadn’t visited these anti-Ryan websites, then someone else had done it for him, either in person or remotely.
Jack grouped all the messages in the Belinda folder by file size and scanned down the list. All messages ranged in size from 40 kilobytes to 70 kilobytes—save one, which read as 1.2 megabytes and displayed a paper-clip attachment icon. Peter had received it six weeks earlier.
Jack double-clicked on the e-mail. Beside a thumbnail image of a woman with short, bobbed brown hair—Belinda, he assumed—was the message
Hey, Dad, can you check out my webpage and see if it loads for you?
Below this was a hyperlink.
This e-mail had all the earmarks of a phishing scam. There was no way the attached thumbnail image was 1.2 megabytes in size. Something else was occupying that space. Jack navigated to the e-mail’s Properties window, copied the contents to his USB drive, then did the same with the link.
Jack called up the browser’s history, pasted the link into the search box, and hit enter. There. Hahn had clicked on the link the same day he’d received it from Belinda.
Malware, Jack thought. But to do what? Monitor Hahn or to create a false website trail? Or both? And what about Belinda? Was she an unwitting or witting participant?
—
Jack was back at his condo thirty minutes later. He heated up a bowl of slow-cooker chili, grabbed a Heineken from the fridge, and sat down on the couch with his laptop. Two minutes into his research into Effrem Likkel he realized the young Belgian hadn’t been exaggerating. Jack kicked himself for having not immediately recognized the name.
In Europe, Effrem Likkel was as close to journalistic royalty as you got, save his mother, who was, it seemed, the undisputed queen of journalism. Marie Likkel, now sixty-four, retired, and divorced, had been covering international politics, war, corruption, and legal abuse the world over for almost twenty years longer than Jack had been alive, and had done so across a spectrum of media from radio to television to print.
Effrem, having chosen to follow in her footsteps at an early age, was, as he’d told Jack, trying to make a name for himself, and had apparently been doing so without the largesse of his mother—and by mutual choice, most articles agreed. Both mother and son wanted the heir to the Likkel legacy to stand or fall on his own merits.
Unsurprisingly, this struck a chord with Jack. He knew what it felt like to live in a big shadow, and to be anxious to find a way into your own sun. No doubt Effrem Likkel was desperate for the same, while also being keenly and constantly aware he needed to do it better and cleaner than the next guy. Whether that meant Jack could trust him only time would tell. But did Jack want or need a partner? As had Effrem, he’d so far made decent inroads on his own.
Then again, Effrem had been working on his story, whatever it entailed, for a long damned time. Who knew how much information he’d collected?
—
Jack grabbed his cell phone, scrolled through his address book, and speed-dialed a number. “Alicia Dixon,” the voice on the other end said.
“Alicia, Jack Ryan. I didn’t know if you’d still be in the office.”
Alicia was a reporter for The Washington Post. They’d dated briefly, but it hadn’t worked out. Their schedules never meshed enough for them to form a bond, but they’d remained friends, occasionally having dinner or a drink.
“Jack Ryan . . .” She laughed. “If it’s before ten, I’m usually here. Are you calling to apologize for standing me up?”
“I didn’t stand you up, Alicia. I was just very, very late. And didn’t I already apologize?”
“Yeah, you did, but I never did see that movie.”
“I’ll buy you the DVD. Listen, I need your expertise.”
“Shoot.”
“What do you know about Effrem Likkel?”
“The last name I know. Marie Likkel—that’s her son, right?”
“Right. Give me the scoop.”
“Well, Marie’s a legend in Europe. She’s won just about every journalism award out there—the Pulitzer, SPJ, Bayeux-Calvados, Bastiat . . . The woman’s got schools named after her, for God’s sake.”
“No skeletons in her closet?” asked Jack.
“None,” Alicia replied. “And believe me, some powerful people have dug into her, especially the bigger fish she’s gone after. She’s above reproach. When I was at Northwestern I kept a picture of her taped next to my computer screen. Everyone thought it was Madeleine Albright.”
“So you’re a fan,” Jack said, deadpan.
“If she had a club, I’d be president.”
“And what about her son?”
“I’ve never met him, but rumor is he’s just like her—tenacious, righteous, all that,” Alicia said. “He’s a little green and maybe a little too eager, but that’s more the rule than the exception with cubs.”
“Has he cracked anything big?”
“Not really, but I’ve read some of his pieces. He’s solid, got a feel for it. Jack, why are you asking? Has Likkel contacted you for something?”
Though he hadn’t been prepared to answer this question, the lie came easily: “Not me, a buddy of mine. He just wanted to know if Likkel’s a straight shooter.”
When had that happened? While he wasn’t so squeaky clean he’d never told a lie, he could remember a time when doing so gave him pause, even a tinge of regret. Lying was a necessity of the job, that he knew, and he had to wonder if Clark and Chavez ever ruminated over it. You’re thinking too much, Jack.
Alicia replied, “It’s a safe bet. Given his family name, one step out of line and the journalism world would know about it—including Mommy. And he knows that, I’m sure. But remember, Jack: ‘Off the record’ only means as much as a journalist’s integrity weighs. Tell your friend to assume everything he says is going to end up in the papers.”
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
Jack was up early again the next morning. Having made his choice about Effrem Likkel, he didn’t want to waste any more time. After making a stop at Starbucks, he drove to the Embassy Suites and was knocking on Effrem’s door shortly before seven. The Belgian answered the door in flannel pajamas. He rubbed his eyes and blinked at Jack. Effrem was sporting a severe case of bed head, his shaggy blond hair flattened on one side.
“I told you not to open the door,” Jack said.
“I saw you through the peephole.”
“You drink coffee?”
“Copious amounts.”
He stepped into the room, handed Effrem one of the cups, then took one of the seats beneath the window. He parted the draperies slightly to let in some morning sun. The rain had stopped falling the night before and temperatures were going to reach the mid-seventies. Outside, the pavement was already steaming.
Yawning, Effrem shuffled to the table and sat down across from Jack, who said, “I checked into you. You’ve got some big shoes to fill.”
Effrem smiled. “At least she didn’t wear high heels. Of course, you’re living in a shadow of your own, aren’t you? I checked into you as well. I thought you looked familiar. You don’t look much like you do in the official family portrait.”
“You’re a journalist, and pretty good, from what I gather. If you’re after a juicy story, you’ve already got one. If you run with what happened yesterday—”
“I’m not,” Effrem said, taking a sip of coffee.
“Why?”
“Will you be offended if I say I’m after bigger fish?”
“If it’s true, no,” said Jack.
“Plus, cliché as it is, you did save my life. What kind of man would I be if I repaid that by feeding you to the wolves?”
“There are a lot of your colleagues
who wouldn’t give it a second thought.”
“I’m not them, Jack. You have a saying here, yes? It’s not who wins or loses, but how you play the game. My mother believed that, and so do I.”
In theory Jack agreed, but in his business you didn’t always have the luxury of being a good sport. In journalism you certainly had that choice, though it probably tended to make the job much harder.
“So, what game are you playing?” asked Jack.
“Are we still quid pro quo?”
“Yes.”
Effrem took a sip of coffee, then stared into space for a few seconds as though assembling his thoughts. “Have you heard the name René Allemand?”
“It’s familiar. French soldier, right?”
“Correct, though he’s far from typical. I’ll get to that later. Last year Allemand disappeared from his post, Port-Bouët, in Ivory Coast. He was there as part of Operation Unicorn—a peacekeeping mission after the civil war began. Initially there were rumors he’d deserted, but they were discounted. The consensus is that he was captured by one faction or another and then executed.”
“No ransom or video?” Jack asked. “No one claiming credit?”
“Not that I’ve found. And no unidentified bodies in the area that might match him. I’ve got a couple more leads I’m checking.”
“You said ‘disappeared.’ Does that mean he wasn’t on patrol at the time? He was on the base?”
“That’s another point of fuzziness,” Effrem replied. “I’ll come back to that. Anyway, I have reason to believe that not only is René Allemand alive, but his disappearance was staged.”
“For what reason?”
“Quid pro quo, Jack,” Effrem replied.
Though Jack had already decided to join forces with the journalist, the absurdity of the situation wasn’t lost on him. Nor were the pitfalls. But nothing was certain in life, was it?
“A few nights ago the man you know as Eric Schrader tried to kill me.”
Effrem leaned forward. “You’re serious.”
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