“Did he report it?”
“He claimed to have, but I couldn’t corroborate it. I believed him, though.”
“Why?” asked Jack.
“One, I did a little digging into the man; and two, instinct. I assume you did something similar after we met.”
Jack had indeed. He nodded. “So Fabrice gives you this story. What did you do with it?”
“Not much. Shortly after I interviewed Fabrice, I had to go back to France. When I started investigating the story, one of the first things I did was contact his fiancée, Madeline. Of everyone involved she seemed the most frustrated over René’s disappearance—or, more accurately, the lack of outcry. We hit it off, I suppose you could say. Anyway, Madeline claimed to have heard from René.”
“How?”
“Text message. It wasn’t from his phone, of course, but she was certain it was him. His phrasing, his punctuation, a few words here and there convinced her it was René.”
“What did he say?”
Effrem pulled a small brown leather notebook from his jacket pocket, opened it, then flipped to a page. “His first message was, ‘Am alive. Tell no one. Trouble. YIA, R.’”
“What’s that mean, ‘YIA’?”
“Yours in all. Yours in body, mind, and spirit. It was their shorthand for ‘I love you.’”
This was a credible detail. Not proof of life exactly, but it certainly had the ring of truth to it. “She got other messages, I assume?”
“Three others. One a message he wanted passed to his father, the other a time and place Madeline and he were to meet. Before you ask, she refused to tell what the message was. She did give me the details of the meeting, though.”
“Why trust you with that but not the message to Marshal Allemand?”
“I don’t know,” replied Effrem. “At any rate, I went ahead of her to the meeting place—Parc de la Feyssine in Lyon. I kept my distance and took pictures. Here.” Effrem slid his phone across to Jack. “The first two pictures are of René before his deployment to Ivory Coast, then during. The last three are of him meeting with Madeline.”
Jack scrolled through the album. Each picture showed a young man in his late twenties with a lantern jaw and thin lips. In the first two images his black hair was buzz-cut; in the last three, longer, almost to his shoulders. Effrem was right: If these most recent images were not of René Allemand, then they were of his clone.
“I’m convinced,” Jack said.
“Good. René and Madeline met for about ten minutes before parting. I followed him to a brasserie near Claude Bernard University. That’s where I first saw Eric Schrader. I figured I already had a strong enough link to René through Madeline, so I decided to follow Schrader.”
“Which is how you eventually got here,” Jack finished.
“Correct. After Zurich and Munich.”
“Where Schrader did what?”
“In Zurich, he went to an office building in the business district. I don’t know which office specifically, however. I have a list. And he also stayed at that apartment I mentioned—”
“The one you don’t think belongs to him.”
“Yes. As far as Munich goes, aside from his apartment, Schrader went to the gym, a couple nightclubs, and a restaurant and market near his place.”
“Have you and Madeline talked since you left Lyon?”
“A few times, but she’s cooled off on me. Evasive. I think whatever René said to her scared her badly. And believe me, she’s no mouse. You have to be tough to get accepted by the Allemand clan—especially the marshal.”
Jack was nodding, but his mind was elsewhere, assembling a tentative plan of action. Once they’d taken the Möller pursuit as far as it could go, Jack would want to reinterview everyone Effrem had talked to, starting with Fabrice the café owner in Abidjan and Madeline in Lyon before scouting the locations in Zurich and Munich. So all he’d been doing was walking in the dark, grasping at whatever came into reach and hoping it would lead him to a light switch.
Jack realized he’d become so engrossed in the saga of René Allemand that he’d momentarily lost sight of his overriding objective: discovering who was trying to kill him and why. The truth was, the only direct connection between himself and René Allemand was Eric Schrader. Beyond that, were the attempt on Jack’s life and the disappearance of Allemand interwoven, or were they simply a coincidence? If the former, how, exactly?
Jack had already asked Effrem this very question, and now he put it to him again. Effrem replied, “If there’s a deeper connection, I haven’t found it. As I said, you can study my notes. Maybe I’ve missed something.”
“You told me you thought Allemand might have been false-flagged. What makes you think that?”
“Madeline let slip something the last time we talked. She said René had told her, ‘He isn’t who he claims to be.’”
Jack’s cell phone beeped. He checked the screen, then said, “Möller’s on the move.”
WOLCOTT, CONNECTICUT
Once in the car, Jack watched his phone’s screen as the red blip that represented Möller’s car—or what he hoped was Möller inside Eunice Miller’s car—left Willow Drive and slowly made its way to Highway 15, where it headed north. Jack let Möller get a mile’s head start, then followed.
Möller headed almost due north, making his way first to 84 before picking up I-91 at Hartford. An hour later they crossed the border into Massachusetts. An hour after that they were into Vermont, following 91 along the Connecticut River, which separated Vermont and New Hampshire. Soon swaths of snow began to appear in the ditches along the highway and in crescents around the bases of pine trees. City-limits signs for distinctly colonial-sounding towns passed outside the Sonata’s windows—Putney, Walpole, Charleston—and with each passing mile the terrain grew more rural until each side of the highway was hemmed in by thick forest.
“Where the hell is he going?” Effrem asked. “Canada?”
“I don’t know, but I’m thinking about ending this,” Jack replied.
“What’s that mean?”
“Deserted rural road in the middle of the night,” Jack said. “Force him off the road and—”
“And what?” Effrem blurted, clearly alarmed. “Drag him into the forest and tie him to a tree? You’re kidding, right?”
“More or less.”
—
At five a.m. Jack’s phone trilled. Effrem checked it. “Google news alert?”
Jack felt his heart drop. “I set one for the Waterbury train station and the Metro-North. Read it.”
Effrem scanned the story. “It’s from WTNH. Let’s see . . . Oh, God, Jack.”
“What?”
“Unidentified woman found in bathroom of an out-of-service Metro-North train. Badly beaten, airlifted to Hartford. Police investigating.”
Jack clenched his hands on the steering wheel. “Bastard.”
—
Twenty minutes later Effrem said, “He’s slowing down. Getting off the highway. He’s stopped. Turning east.”
Jack pressed down on the accelerator and soon the Sonata’s headlights panned over a sign: EXIT 8 / VT-131 / ASCUTNEY-WINDSOR. “That’s it,” said Effrem.
“Where is he?”
“Half-mile ahead, turning left onto . . . I don’t see a label. I’ll let you know when.”
Jack took the exit, then turned east. Another couple hundred yards brought them to a north-south intersection.
“Turn left.”
Jack did so. A sign beside the road reading CONNECTICUT RIVER BYWAY was followed shortly after by one reading ASCUTNEY—POPULATION 540.
Now they were paralleling the river, heading north along Ascutney’s main thoroughfare. Where they’d seen little traffic on Highway 91, here there was none. Ahead, what few traffic lights existed all glowed green. At each intersection Jack look
ed left and right and saw only darkened roads and the occasional lighted window or porch light.
“Slow down,” Effrem said. “He’s only a few hundred yards ahead.”
Jack took his foot off the gas pedal and let the car coast until the speedometer fell below fifteen miles per hour.
“He’s turning left onto . . . Black Mountain Road. There’s a campground up here; the turn is just after that. Okay, you can pick up speed a bit.”
Jack did so, and soon his headlights flashed over another sign. To the right, STAFFORD CONSTRUCTION; to the left, BLACK MOUNTAIN ROAD. “Effrem, do a search for Stafford Construction.”
“Checking on it. He’s going very slow, Jack. You think he’s lost?”
Jack doubted this. Men like Stephan Möller rarely got lost. Jack flicked off his headlights, turned onto Black Mountain Road, and again dropped his speed. The moon was partially obscured by clouds, and the trees crowding the road left Jack almost blind. He concentrated on the yellow center line and kept going.
They drove in silence for two minutes.
Effrem said, “My data connection is getting spotty. I think he’s turning again. Right this time, about a hundred yards ahead. Looks like a quarry, maybe? What’s he want with a quarry?”
“Hell if I know.”
To their right, the shoulder sloped away into a shallow draw choked with knee-high weeds. At the bottom Jack could make out what looked like a curving road, its dun-colored gravel bright in the moonlight.
“Not this one,” Effrem said. “The turn-in is just ahead.”
“I know.”
Jack stopped the car, then put it into reverse and backed up until only the hood was exposed beyond the ridgeline. They watched the road.
A few moments later, headlights panned over the gravel, and then, as Möller’s white Subaru came into view from the left, the headlights went dark. The car disappeared from view behind the trees.
Jack asked, “Are you on map view or satellite?”
“Map. It’s all my phone’s connection can do to keep up. It looks like the bottom of this draw is the entrance to the quarry.”
“Switch to satellite view and tell me what you see.”
“It’s going to take a minute.”
Jack put the car in drive again, then turned onto the shoulder and down into the draw, carefully picking his way between the scrub bushes. He put the transmission in neutral and shut off the engine, letting momentum carry the car forward. Jack steered right until they were almost brushing the draw’s slope, then braked to a stop and put the car in park. He rolled down both their windows and listened for a few moments. He heard nothing but the croaking of frogs. He asked Effrem, “You still have him?”
“Hold on, the satellite view is resolving . . . I’m seeing what looks like construction equipment; bulldozers, excavators, trucks . . . You think he’s meeting someone?”
“Either that or he’s picking up another vehicle.”
“I don’t see anything but heavy equipment down there.”
“That overhead view could be months old,” Jack replied. “Come on, let’s go have a look.”
Jack grabbed his binoculars from his rucksack, opened his door, climbed out, then headed left toward the slope. Effrem followed a few steps behind. When they reached the edge of the gravel road, Jack stopped, knelt down. Across the road was a mound of dirt as tall as a two-story house.
Jack whispered to Effrem, “Step where I step, stop when I stop.” Effrem nodded firmly, but Jack could see the barest glint of fear in his eyes. “You’ll do fine.”
Jack crept toward the edge of the road, then peeked right into the quarry. The entrance road they were standing beside opened into a tiered pit divided into navigable tracts by mounds of gravel and sand. Here and there dirt berms covered in stubby trees were backlit by the night sky.
Jack saw no sign of the Subaru. He checked again through the binoculars—nothing.
Hunched over, he crossed the road to the dirt mound and made his way around its back side, where he again stopped. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned. Effrem mouthed something to Jack, then handed him the phone. Jack took it and studied the screen. In Jack’s ear Effrem whispered, “Stafford Construction. It’s just over that hill. Do you see what I see?”
Jack zoomed in on the image. The compound of Stafford Construction was sandwiched between Black Mountain Road and the Connecticut River on a swath of land about a quarter-mile wide and a mile long. Along the western edge nearest this quarry sat a collection of outbuildings. To the east beside the river, the compound was bisected by a long paved road bordered by what looked like construction trailers and elongated storage containers.
Something was off about the image, Jack realized, trying to pin it down.
From the darkness came the slamming of a car door.
Startled, Effrem looked over his shoulder. “Was that Möller? Is he moving?”
Jack ignored him. He zoomed in on the Stafford compound and began scrolling the image. Then he saw it.
Painted onto the pavement at each end of the compound road was a white X.
Jack knew the symbol: Permanently Closed Runway.
Möller was here for the next leg of his E&E plan, but it didn’t involve a vehicle.
In the distance Jack heard the faint whine of an aircraft engine.
Jack said, “Stay close.”
ASCUTNEY, VERMONT
They continued forward, following the base of the mound until they reached the next track. Here Jack paused, then sprinted left, eyes scanning for the Subaru’s white paint or for movement. Möller would be moving east, Jack guessed, toward the sloped tree line bordering the compound, but where exactly? The cell phone’s satellite image wasn’t fine enough to show footpaths, only roads.
From somewhere ahead Jack heard the scuff of a shoe on gravel, then the trickling of loose sand. Jack froze, crouched. Effrem bumped into him, whispered “Sorry.”
Jack closed his eyes, trying to latch on to the memory of the sound. Which direction? Left, he decided, around the mound of sand before them. Jack stood up and kept going until he reached the mound, which he skirted to the right.
The sound of the aircraft engine was increasing now in both pitch and volume. Jack looked up, but his view of the compound was obscured by the mound. Effrem tapped him on the shoulder, then pointed right. The trunk of Möller’s Subaru jutted out from behind the next gravel pile.
Think it through, Jack commanded himself. Don’t rush. If Möller was aware of their pursuit, this quarry would be the perfect ambush point; the terrain was ideal, as was the timing. When better to tie up loose ends? If Möller was lying in wait, he would be either on forested high ground along the quarry’s east edge or behind them, waiting for them to make their way toward the compound.
It wasn’t lost on Jack what kind of man he was dealing with. Möller was ruthless and cool, that was a given, but Jack had a hunch that Möller and Eric Schrader shared similar backgrounds: German Special Forces. This knowledge didn’t make him feel any better about the task before him.
Doesn’t matter, he thought. Ambush or not, they had to reach the airstrip, and their time was dwindling. Monitoring GPS beacons and credit cards was one thing; actively tracking an aircraft was beyond Jack’s resources. It was time to grab Möller and figure out the sticky logistics later.
He leaned back and whispered to Effrem, “Keep your eyes on our six until I tell you otherwise. Stay close. We’re going for Möller.”
“What’s our six?”
“Behind us.”
“Got it.”
Jack drew his Glock, raised it to ready-low, stepped out from behind the mound, and headed east. He used what little cover they had the best he could, moving from gravel pile to dirt berm in hopes they would shield the two of them from any watching eyes. If Möller lay behind them, Jack could only hop
e Effrem’s eyes were faster than the German’s trigger.
Ahead lay the last gravel pile; past it, fifty feet of open ground to the eastern edge of the quarry.
“It’s coming closer,” Effrem whispered.
Jack heard it, too: the plane’s engine, somewhere to the north. Making its final approach. Jack glanced that way but saw nothing moving in the sky. “Eyes on our six,” Jack warned.
Jack reached the mound, circled left, stopped, scanned ahead. Nothing was moving. The trees on the slope were so thick they appeared as a solid mass, only their serrated crowns identifying them as having individual trunks.
Jack spotted an anomaly at the base of the slope, a thumb of dirt disappearing into the trees. It was a trail. And a perfect bottleneck. Moving from the relative light of the quarry into the darkness of the forest they would be temporarily blind. Easy targets.
Stop. He was, as John Clark would say, spiraling into paralysis by analysis.
“Effrem, directly ahead, you see that trail that leads to the trees?”
“I see it.”
“We’re going for it. Stay directly behind me. If shooting starts, run back, find cover, and stay out of sight. I’ll come for you.”
Jack didn’t wait for an answer, but rather stood up and headed for the trees at a fast walking pace. He kept his eyes scanning the tree line, never settling in one place, letting his peripheral vision do the work; movement was easiest to spot on oblique angles. Something about the cones and rods in your eyes, Jack thought absently.
Jack spotted movement out of the corner of his, but far to the left and above. He glanced that way and saw a single-engine plane skimming over the trees to the north, bleeding altitude as it lined up with the runway. It disappeared behind the roof of the northernmost outbuilding.
Jack started trotting now. Heart pounding. He raised the Glock to shoulder height, making sure he still had a ready lock on his sight picture, then lowered it slightly.
Behind him, Effrem stumbled. “I’m okay, I’m still here,” he said, panting.
Tom Clancy Duty and Honor (A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel) Page 12