“Yes. And the man in the white Nissan is named Peter Hahn. Both he and Schrader are dead now.”
“How?”
“Schrader walked into traffic and was hit by a truck. Hahn was killed by Möller at the preserve about ten minutes before he tried to kill you. I was following Hahn.”
“Go back, start from the beginning. Leave nothing out.”
Jack did this, starting with the incident at the Supermercado and ending with his and Effrem’s encounter with Möller at the preserve. He added Doug Butler’s revelation about the murder of Mark Macloon.
“So many questions,” Effrem muttered.
“That makes two of us.”
“Why were they trying to kill you? Why didn’t this Peter Hahn finish the job? Why—”
Jack held up his hand. “To answer your first question: I have no idea. I’ve looked at this from all angles. I had a hunch, but that’s looking less likely all the time. In all your digging you never came across my name?”
“Never. What about Hahn? What’s his story?”
“Hard to say. He could have killed me twice and didn’t. My guess is he was acting under duress. I also think he went to the preserve knowing he might not be coming back out.”
“Pardon me?”
“I think he wanted me there as a witness. I’ve got some data from his computer. Once I sift through it we might have a better sense of things.”
We. He had to admit feeling a certain relief having a . . . what? Partner? Ally? It wasn’t the same as having Dom or Chavez watching his back, but Effrem Likkel was sharp and, unless Jack’s character radar was flawed, trustworthy. And crafty. Effrem had been swimming with sharks for quite a while and was still alive. He could have worse allies.
“I have to say, Jack, you seem very resourceful for a financial adviser. That’s what you do, yes?”
“More or less.”
“You’re good at saying a lot but imparting nothing.”
Jack shrugged. “How am I supposed to answer the question?”
“You’re not. It was an observation. I’m curious by nature; too much so, if you ask my friends. Jack, we’re going to have secrets from each other, I think. It’s inevitable. As long as they don’t impact our mutual goal, so be it.”
“Agreed. Let’s get back on track: You were following Schrader—is that his real name, by the way?” When Effrem nodded, Jack asked, “How did you come in contact with him?”
“Through René Allemand—or at least I’m fairly certain it was him. He and Schrader met in Lyon, France, in the first week of January.”
Jack thought: Lyon . . . January. “Wait. Are you—”
Effrem was nodding. “I believe Eric Schrader and René Allemand met in secret, a week before the Lyon terrorist attacks.”
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
Jack had already separated from The Campus by the time the attacks occurred, so his only information had come from the media, which had swarmed on not just the similarities to the Paris attacks but also the timing; Lyon had taken place almost exactly two months after Paris. The scale and casualties of the Lyon attacks had been smaller than those in Paris, but both had involved closely timed bomb detonations and mass shootings at restaurants and in the Metro. While no group had claimed credit and French authorities had named no suspects, there was no mistaking the modus operandi, which had uniformly been seen as an attempt to rub France’s nose in it: Despite all your preparations, we can attack you in the same way, in any place, at any time. In many ways the Lyon attacks had had a greater impact on the psyche of the French populace and government alike.
Jack asked, “And you don’t think this was a coincidence?”
“No,” said Effrem. “How exactly, I’m not sure, but I think Allemand was involved in the attacks, but perhaps not of his own volition.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I think he was false-flagged. That’s the right word for it, yes? When you’re recruited by an enemy posing as an ally?”
“More or less. You think Schrader was ultimately pulling his strings?”
“My guess is no. I think he was simply acting as a handler. For whom, I don’t know. Maybe for this Möller fellow. He sounds like a big question mark for both of us. By the way, do you know where he is?”
“No, but with any luck we will soon. I’m tracking his credit card. I’ve got his passport, so he may be desperate for options. Back to Eric Schrader: What can you tell me about him?”
“German national, age forty-one, former Feldwebel—first sergeant, I think you would call him—with the Heer.”
Jack could guess the rest. “He belonged to Kommando Spezialkräfte—Special Forces Command.”
“Yes. KSK. How did you know?”
Jack told him about the Eickhorn Solingen knife he’d taken from Schrader—or, more accurately, after Schrader smashed his head into a chunk of concrete and dropped the knife.
Effrem whistled softly. “Have you considered, Jack, that you may be part cat?”
“Cats land on their feet. So far I haven’t been that graceful. Just lucky. What else do you have?”
“Two apartments Schrader had visited in the past few months, one in Zurich and one in Munich. The former seemed like a . . . temporary arrangement, I think, but the one in Munich might be his home base.”
“Munich,” Jack repeated. “That’s where Hahn’s daughter lives.”
“No kidding.”
“What makes you think Zurich was temporary?” asked Jack.
“I tracked him there after his first meeting with Allemand in Lyon. The place was luxurious, and in a well-to-do neighborhood. Schrader’s place in Munich is a far cry from that. Unless he is slumming, the Zurich apartment belongs to someone else.”
“Was Schrader in Munich when he left to come here?” Effrem nodded and Jack said, “At some point I’ll want to see a detailed timeline of all this.”
“I have one. Great minds think alike.”
“And I’ll want to know how you got from Allemand going missing in Ivory Coast to him and Schrader meeting in Lyon.”
“Of course. We can meet again after you’ve had a look at Hahn’s e-mails.”
Still quid pro quo. While Jack didn’t blame Effrem for it, he hoped the parrying wouldn’t last much longer. The sooner they put their respective puzzle pieces together on a table, the better.
However, Jack wasn’t confident he could make full use of Hahn’s data. Even the simplest of e-mails was an alphanumeric stew that made Jack’s brain hurt. He could parse only a fraction of the available information, and his go-to expert, Gavin Biery, wasn’t an option. He’d have to come up with something else.
A thought occurred to Jack. “You said you’re working the story freelance. Have you got anyone looking at this?”
“An editor, you mean? No one’s seen any of it—with the exception of you now. This is my story. I’m going to deliver it whole.”
“Who’s footing the bill?”
“I am. Through credit cards.”
Jack decided to twist the knife a bit, see if he could rattle Effrem. “You’re practically Belgian Fourth Estate royalty. No gratuitous allowance? No trust fund?”
“Not until I’m thirty. By then, I expect to have my Pulitzer,” Effrem said with a grin. “Jack, when I graduated from university my mother gave me a box of red pencils and a card that said ‘Edit in good health.’ So the answer to your question is no. No allowance. Just three nearly maxed-out credit cards and a box of red pencils.”
Jack laughed. He couldn’t help liking Effrem. Clearly Marie Likkel and Jack’s parents had gone to the same parenting school—the University of Stand on Your Own Two Feet. For Jack that had meant joining The Campus; for Effrem Likkel, chasing down a story most journalists wait a lifetime to find. The guy had balls, no doubt about it.
Jack had to wond
er if his getting involved in all this would help or hurt the Belgian. At least three people were dead so far and Jack had come damned close to being the fourth. If he included the casualties from the Lyon attacks the tally skyrocketed. The players involved seemed snatched from a grab bag: a missing and possibly traitorous French soldier, a German Special Forces operator posing as a crackhead, a widowed and lonely man from Rose Hill, and a terrorist group who, despite striking the second-deadliest blow on French soil in history, had disappeared from the world terrorism stage. Then there’s me, Jack thought. He was the outlier. Why?
“What about you, Jack?” asked Effrem. “Aren’t you supposed to have bodyguards or something? Oh, wait, is there a helicopter on the roof as we speak?”
Jack laughed again. “If there is, it’s not for me.”
Effrem finished his coffee, tossed the empty cup into the garbage can beside the dresser. “So what now? Do we keep going together, or separately?”
Jack considered this for a few seconds. “I hope I don’t live to regret this, but I vote for the former.”
Effrem nodded. “Seconded.”
—
Jack left Effrem with two chores: One, inspect his rental SUV for any trace of the second round Möller had fired. It was beyond a long shot and would almost certainly turn out to be worthless, but Stephan Möller had in front of witnesses committed murder and attempted murder on a government nature preserve. Jack had an unspent, custom-made bullet from the murder weapon, and if one of Möller’s frangibles had embedded itself in Effrem’s SUV they also had a spent round for comparison. The chances of Stephan Möller seeing the inside of any courtroom were virtually nonexistent, but it was an avenue Jack wasn’t going to ignore.
The second chore he gave Effrem was to pack his bags and be ready to move within five minutes of Jack’s call. If he got a ping on Möller’s credit card they’d have to scramble to catch up.
—
When Jack got home he switched on the TV and surfed the local channels. When he reached WJLA, the Washington-area ABC affiliate, a news ticker crawling at the bottom of the screen read “. . . the man’s name has not been released pending notification of family . . .” Jack waited, watching for the story to reappear. “A Rose Hill man was found dead at a local nature preserve. The police, who were called to the scene this morning by a hiker, have said only that the circumstances are suspicious. The man’s name has not . . .”
They’d found Hahn. Jack hoped it wouldn’t take them long to notify Belinda. It was going to be gut-wrenching for her, but better than waiting and wondering why her father wasn’t answering his phone or returning e-mails.
Unbidden, an image popped into his head: Hahn falling back against the bridge railing, sliding down onto his butt, then staring up as Möller lifted the pistol to his eye . . .
Should he have anonymously tipped off the police? Hahn had sat dead overnight in the rain before being found. It was irrational, Jack knew, but the thought of it set his belly churning.
Now the waiting began. Waiting for Stephan Möller to pop his head up.
Waiting for the knock on his door that would answer the question of whether a witness had spotted him at the preserve.
—
At four-fifteen Jack’s phone chimed. It was a text from Effrem:
The police were here.
Jack felt his heart thud against his chest wall. He forced himself to slow down and think. Could they still be there, looking over Effrem’s shoulder? he wondered. Effrem was a decent guy, of that Jack was certain, but having the police show up on your doorstep asking hard questions about a murder could rattle anyone into submission. Or was this ingrained overcautiousness flavored with strains of paranoia?
Jack texted back: And?
Effrem answered: They had an anonymous tip that my vehicle had been seen in the preserve.
Jack had to step carefully. Go on.
Anonymous tip, came Effrem’s reply. No one else there. What’s that sound like to you?
It sounded like Möller was trying to slow down his pursuers. This was actually good news. If Möller had already left the country, he wouldn’t have bothered with the ruse.
Effrem added, I told them I drove past the preserve but turned around when I realized I was lost. They seemed okay with it.
Glad to hear it, Jack wrote. Want to grab a cup of coffee?
—
Jack gave Effrem a twenty-minute head start, then left the condo, headed west on Wythe Street, and spent ten minutes driving around the area, watching for signs of surveillance before heading to Washington Street, where he turned left. Out his driver’s-side window he scanned the Starbucks parking lot for Effrem’s SUV. It was there, hood pointed toward the street. Jack kept going, looking for a phone booth, a rare beast these days, it seemed. He spotted one on a corner outside a liquor store and pulled to the curb. He dropped some change into the slot and dialed Effrem’s phone.
“Do you have anything you want to tell me?” Jack said when he answered.
“What? Huh?”
“Think it through.”
“Oh . . . I see. I’m alone, Jack. They talked to me for about ten minutes, then left. You’re a source, Jack—well, more than that, but you get the point. I don’t betray sources.”
“Wait two minutes, then go back to your hotel.”
Jack hung up and made his way back to the Starbucks. Right on time, Effrem’s SUV pulled out of the parking lot onto Washington and headed north. Jack hung back, let a couple cars get between them, then followed Effrem back to the Embassy Suites. As far as Jack could tell, neither of them was being followed.
Ten minutes later he was knocking on Effrem’s door. Effrem answered, let Jack in, and shut the door behind him. “Was that all really necessary?” Effrem asked.
“Yes,” replied Jack. “Don’t take it personally. You’re sure you weren’t seen leaving the preserve?”
“There was no one. When I got to Cardinal, I turned left and headed straight to 495. I didn’t see another car until I got on it.”
“Did the cops mention Hahn’s body?”
“No, but I asked. It seemed the natural thing to do. I’d seen it on the news and had been near a preserve recently, and now they were questioning me.”
Jack asked, “How did they react?”
“They didn’t. Aren’t cops the same everywhere? Stone-faced. I showed them my professional website, made up some story I was working on about McLean’s rapid de-gentrification, showed them some notes, then asked if I could interview someone about the death. They told me to call the Public Information Office, then left. They seemed annoyed.”
Effrem had handled himself well. He was quick on his feet and not easily shaken. Jack asked, “Is that true, about McLean’s de-gentrification?”
“I have no idea. Is that even a word?”
“Smartass.”
—
Jack hadn’t taken two steps back into his condo when his cell phone chimed again, this time with an Enquestor alert. Möller’s credit card had been used to buy thirteen dollars’ worth of gas and five dollars’s worth of “grocery items” at a Mike’s Mini Mart in West Haven, Connecticut. As Möller hadn’t immediately boarded an airplane, it now seemed unlikely he had a second passport, but perhaps he’d stashed a second vehicle.
“West Haven?” Jack murmured. “What the hell’s in West Haven?”
Nothing. But due north through Vermont it was only five or so hours from the Canadian border. Possible, Jack thought. Vermont shared about ninety miles of border with Canada, much of it rugged and isolated.
Jack checked the route from Alexandria to New Haven on his phone’s map application: three hundred fifty miles; a six-hour drive. Too long. He got on his laptop and went to a travel website, selected Washington Dulles as the departure point, and chose Hartford as the destination. No. The earliest flight w
as tomorrow morning. He repeated the search, this time with New York JFK as the destination.
There was one flight remaining today, a JetBlue shuttle leaving in three hours.
NEW YORK CITY
By ten-fifteen they were leaving the airport in their rental car, a Hyundai Sonata, and getting on the Van Wyck Expressway into Queens. With Effrem navigating from his cell phone screen, Jack took them across the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge and picked up Interstate 91, which they would take north.
Thirty minutes outside New Haven, Jack got another Enquestor alert. “Read it,” he told Effrem.
“Uh . . . something about a motel in Hartford, the Best Western. A room charge, I think.”
“How long ago?”
“Sixty minutes. Where is Hartford?”
“About forty-five minutes north of New Haven. And that much closer to the Canadian border.”
“Why stop in Hartford?” asked Effrem. “Why not find a rest stop and pull in for a nap? Why advertise your location?”
“Maybe he thinks he’s free and clear. I left his credit card as I’d found it. If he’d been suspicious he wouldn’t have used it at all.”
“I guess. What do you want to do?”
Jack thought about it. If Möller had stopped for the night, they had plenty of time to set up on the hotel before morning; if, on the other hand, Möller paid for a room and then just kept heading north, they’d already lost him. They’d never catch up.
“Let’s do the legwork,” Jack replied.
—
Shortly before midnight they pulled into Mike’s Mini Mart, which was on Saw Mill Road not far from 95. Jack was relieved to see the interior lights on and a glowing neon sign that read OPEN 24/7. He pulled into a spot in front of the propane tank cage and shut off the engine. A couple teenage boys sat on the curb before the store’s doors, drinking slushies and balancing their skateboards on their laps.
“They should be in bed,” Effrem said. “Isn’t this a school night?”
“Go have a chat with them. I’ll go inside.”
Jack opened his door and Effrem went to do the same. Jack turned back. “I was kidding. Stay in the car or you might end up wearing a slushy.”
Tom Clancy Duty and Honor (A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel) Page 9