Tom Clancy Duty and Honor (27 page)

In turn Jack checked each of the villa’s first-floor mullioned windows; all seemed to be bedrooms except for the corner room, which looked to be a study/library. A computer monitor sat atop the walnut desk.

Jack pulled a roll of masking tape and a glass punch from his rucksack, then taped an asterisk over the window’s lower-left pane and pressed the punch into the glass until it shattered with a muffled tinkling. Carefully he peeled away the sections of taped glass, then reached inside and unlocked the window and climbed through.

He went still and scanned the room for blinking lights or the telltale soft clicking of a triggered motion detector.
There was neither.
Too easy,
Jack thought, a bit worried. In the United States, a luxury home of this caliber would be bristling with surveillance cameras and alarm systems.

Count your good luck and keep moving.

He pulled the window curtains closed, then sat down at the desk and powered up the computer. When the desktop appeared, a username/password dialogue box popped up.

Jack switched his headset plug from the portable radio to his cell phone and dialed Mitch, whom he’d asked to stand by, should Jack run into this very problem. When Mitch answered, Jack explained the situation.

“Well, there’s no sense trying to brute-force the thing,” Mitch said. “Permutations are in the billions. You got the flash drive I gave Effrem?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s try this first. Restart the computer, but hold down the command and R buttons as you do it.”

“Recovery mode?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, you know what it looks like, then? Let’s try the easy way first.”

Once the computer’s recovery-mode dialogue box appeared, Mitch had Jack navigate to the Utilities drop-down menu. “You’re looking for ‘Terminal,’” Mitch explained.

“It’s there, but it’s ghosted out. I can’t select it.”

“Worth a shot. Okay, insert that flash drive and do a force restart.” Jack did this, and a black screen with a blinking
orange cursor appeared. Mitch said, “Type ‘run’ into the command line, then sit back and wait.”

“How long?”

“Depends on the size of the hard drive and whether the owner’s running any third-party password or encryption protocols. Ten minutes, give or take. You should see a progress bar. The words ‘run stop’ will appear below the command line.”

On Jack’s belt the portable radio flashed. He told Mitch, “I’ll call you back,” then switched the headset over, turned up the radio’s volume, and said, “Effrem, what—”

“—over the wall.”

“What? Say again.”

“Whoever was in that van just hopped over the wall! They’re coming your way! Should I—”

“No, keep circling, but stay close to the yacht club parking lot. Just one, you’re sure?”

“I only saw one.”

“Stay off the radio unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’ll be in touch. Same thing applies: Two hours and you run.”

Jack turned the computer’s monitor so its light was shining away from the window, then peeked through the curtains in time to see a figure sprinting across the lawn and around to the villa’s lake side. Jack checked the computer’s progress bar: ninety percent to go.

Did he sit tight or go hunting? If this new player was responding to Jack’s tampering with the computer, the chances were good he’d come straight to this study. Then again, why hop the wall rather than use the gate? Why post yourself outside the property rather than inside the villa itself? Those were questions for later. Right now he needed to be proactive.

Go hunting
. He didn’t want to be trapped in this room with only the window for an escape route.

He eased open the study door and poked his head out. To his left was a long hallway of dark tumbled stone tile. Beyond the hallway, he could see what looked like a living room decorated in robin’s-egg-blue-and-white shabby chic. To his right, through an open arch, a winding stairway led to the second floor.

Jack heard what sounded like a burst from a dental drill followed by a soft double snick. He recognized the noise: an electric lock-pick tool known as a snap gun. Whoever was coming, they weren’t wasting any time.

Jack raised the HK and crept down the hallway to the living room, where he paused to listen. He heard another sound, this one a door clicking shut. Somewhere to his right. He looked around the corner. Through an archway was the villa’s kitchen.

As Jack watched, the back door swung open an inch, then went still.

Jack took aim.

The door moved again, just a few more inches, then clicked shut again.

Wind,
Jack thought.
Probably.
Jack kept his gun trained on the door but let his eyes glide to either side of it, watching for movement. If the intruder had come through this door, what options did he have? Take cover behind the kitchen counter, or slip into the nook, or come through the living room arch toward Jack. Or . . . To the right of the back door was another set of stairs leading to the second floor.

As if on cue, Jack heard a floorboard creak above his head. If the intruder was familiar with the villa he might be crossing the second floor to the stairway behind Jack. Jack pivoted slowly on his heel, aimed the HK down the hall and waited for a five count, then pivoted back toward the living room.

From the second floor came a soft crash, as though someone had bumped a piece of furniture.

Move now.

With the HK raised and tracking, Jack paced through the arch and into the kitchen. A quick glance left told him the nook was clear. He circled behind the kitchen counter, saw no one hiding there, and continued toward the stairway door.

As he approached it, a semiautomatic pistol poked through the opening, almost crossing Jack’s own weapon.
Startled, he stepped back. His heel rapped against the baseboard. A figure rushed through the door, gun coming around to bear on Jack. The man’s stance was straight-armed and overextended. Jack took advantage of this, batting aside the man’s gun, stepping in close, and snapping the point of his elbow into the man’s head. The man grunted but went along with the blow, using its momentum to coil his body for a counterpunch. Jack lifted his knee, slowing the strike, but not enough. The man’s fist landed just below Jack’s bottom rib. He gasped and bent sideways and felt his left leg buckle.

Strong and fast son of a bitch
.

Jack drove his still-raised knee downward. His boot heel slammed into the tile, clipping the inner edge of the man’s foot. The man yelped in pain. Jack repeated the maneuver, this time raking his boot’s knurled edge down the length of the man’s shin before stomping the man’s foot a second time. Now the man collapsed sideways. Jack helped him, palming the side of his head and banging it against the doorjamb. The man dropped his gun. Jack kicked it, sending it twirling across the tile floor, then took a rapid step back and leveled the HK with the man’s head.

“Are you done?” Jack asked, panting.

The man tried to get up, pressing himself off the floor with his left hand. Jack stepped forward and kicked it out from under him. He collapsed and his head banged against the tile.

“I said, Are . . . you . . . done?” Jack said.

“J’ai fini,”
the man replied. And then he added in lightly accented English, “I am done.”

Jack clicked on his penlight. “Let me see your face.”

“Why?”

“Show me your face,” Jack growled.

Slowly the man lifted his head.

It was René Allemand.

WÄDENSWIL, SWITZERLAND

W
e’ve been looking for you,” Jack said.

“Many people have been looking for me,” Allemand replied. He sat upright and began massaging his shin and foot. “Can you stop shining that light in my eyes?”

Jack lowered the beam slightly. He keyed his radio and said, “What’s happening out there? Do we have any more company?”

Effrem replied, “No. What’s happening in there?”

“Everything’s fine. Stand by.”

Allemand asked Jack, “Who are you? Who are you talking to?”

Jack paused to consider his answers. While he tended to agree with Effrem that René Allemand was a victim in all
this, there was a chance they were both wrong. “I can tell you who I’m not,” he replied. “I’m not one of Jürgen Rostock’s people.”

This got Allemand’s attention. He looked up at Jack with narrowed eyes. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re not the only one who’s pissed off Herr General. Do you know a man named Eric Schrader? Very tall, German . . .”

“Perhaps.”

“You met with him in Lyon.”

Allemand didn’t reply. Jack decided to go all in. “After you two parted company he flew to the United States and tried to slit my throat.”

Allemand offered a Gallic shrug. “Well. It appears he didn’t succeed.”

“No, but it was close. He’s dead now.”

“You killed him?”

“Not exactly, but the result was the same. Captain Allemand, in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re still alive, and you’re not zip-tied in the trunk of a car. If I was with RSG we wouldn’t be talking.”

“What you say makes some sense, but it doesn’t explain why you’re here and why you’ve been looking for me.”

Jack was getting annoyed with their uneven information exchange. Then he reminded himself what René Allemand
had been through. In fact, something told Jack he and Effrem probably knew only a fraction of the story.

“I know about Abidjan,” Jack said. “At least part of it. I don’t think you had anything to do with the attacks in Lyon. And I’d bet money there was a lot more to your kidnapping than anyone knows.”

Allemand smiled. “And now this is the part where I unburden myself and we become fast friends, yes?”

“That’s your call. As soon as I get done cloning the hard drive on the computer in that study—the one I believe belongs to Alexander Bossard—I’m leaving. You can either come with me and look at the data or go to ground again and pray you find a way to clear your name and get your life back. You decide.”

—

J
ack was reasonably confident he’d gained a sliver of trust from Allemand, but not so confident he would risk turning his back on the man. After collecting Allemand’s weapon, a Walther P22, Jack returned to the study to find Mitch’s flash drive had nearly finished its task. Jack sat down before the computer and watched the progress bar inch closer to one hundred percent.

Allemand appeared in the study’s doorway. “Can I have my gun back?”

“I’ll leave it beside the wall by the front gate,” Jack replied. “Or you can join us for coffee and I’ll give it back to you then.”

“‘Us’? It’s not just you?”

“No. We come as a package deal, though. If you’re going to trust me, you’ll have to trust him.”

“I do not think we’re quite at trust yet, do you?”

Jack offered Allemand what he hoped was his best “couldn’t care less” shrug. They desperately needed Allemand’s cooperation, but Jack’s gut told him playing hard-to-get was the smart move. “There’s an all-night coffeehouse in Wädenswil, right off the Zugerstrasse and across from the police station. We’ll be there for the next hour.”

Jack removed the flash drive, powered down the computer, and stood up. “And you might want to retrace your steps before you leave.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re not wearing gloves. If you don’t want your fingerprints found here, I’d wipe down everything you touched.”

—

J
ack and Effrem hadn’t gotten through their first cups of coffee when they saw, through their booth’s window, Allemand’s van pull into the parking lot. The electrician’s placard was gone. Jack said to Effrem, “Good call about that, by the way.”

Effrem smiled. “I’m a learner.”

Allemand walked inside and the hostess approached him. He gestured toward Jack and Effrem, then walked over. He grabbed a chair from a nearby table, plopped it down at the end of their booth, and sat.

To Jack he said, “This is your partner?”

“Yes.”

“Do I get my gun back now?”

Jack nodded at the folded newspaper on the table. “In there. It’s not loaded. Leave it that way until you’re back in the van.”

Allemand made no move to touch the newspaper. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

Jack made the introductions, first names only. Allemand shook their hands and said, “René. Jack, you said Eric Schrader is dead. Is that true?”

“Google it. Alexandria, Virginia. Unidentified man walks into oncoming traffic and is killed instantly.”

“That’s unfortunate. I was hoping to catch up to him. We were overdue for a chat.”

Allemand smiled when he said this, but there was none of it in his eyes. Jack suspected that if Schrader hadn’t died in Alexandria, he wouldn’t have survived his run-in with Allemand. Jack assumed their “chat” would have involved power tools and electricity. If so, Jack wondered, had Allemand already had that kind of brutality in him, or had his experiences since Ivory Coast taken him to that dark place?

The waitress appeared and asked if Allemand wanted anything. He waved her off. Once she was out of earshot he said, “So, how do we proceed, the three of us?”