“Which is what?” asked Jack.
“Communes are sort of like boroughs in New York City. Koumassi is one of three on Little Bassam Island in the middle of Abidjan Harbor. It’s about two miles from Port-Bouët Airport.”
“Got it.”
“Eventually I found one local, a café owner in Koumassi named Fabrice, who claimed to have seen René kidnapped off the street by men in balaclavas.”
“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.”
18
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.”