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Seeing it now with fresh eyes, Jack recognized René Allemand’s odyssey for what it was: an elaborately choreographed brainwashing program. But to what end? To answer that question, Jack had to first determine whether René understood the true nature of what’d happened to him. There was a larger worry as welclass="underline" How reliable was he at all? He’d been kidnapped, that much was fact, but they had only his account of what happened after he was thrown into that van in Abidjan.

“What happened next?” asked Jack.

René replied with a proud grin, “Rostock offered me a job.”

Effrem leaned forward. “What? What do you mean?”

“A job in his company. He offered me a position as a field officer. I’d heard of RSG and knew of its reputation, but I’d always assumed my career would be in the French Army. What happened in Abidjan and then what Jürgen and I talked about made me reconsider. I took the job.”

“And you never thought to contact your father or the Army to let them know you were alive? Why, for God’s sake?”

“At first, it was at Rostock’s suggestion. I was going to be doing undercover work, he said, and the training and transition were going to be intense. Once I was past that, Rostock was going to help me get my old life back. Later, well, I’m not sure why.”

Effrem’s mouth was hanging open. He said, “Are you suggesting you participated in faking your own death to join RSG? That you were going to be part of some secret… what, exactly? What was Rostock asking you to do?”

Allemand stared vacantly at Effrem, his face a mask of frustration and confusion. Clearly he wanted to, and should have been able to, answer Effrem’s question, but there was a disconnect somewhere in Allemand’s brain, related either to his addiction or to his treatment at the hands of Rostock, or a combination of the two.

Effrem said to Jack, “Christ Almighty, this guy is out there—”

Jack cut him off. “We’re just having trouble following this, René.”

“Yes. Of course. These are not simple issues we’re dealing with. The world, I mean. We’re on the brink of a precipice.” Again Allemand’s words trailed off, as though he’d lost his place in a script.

Jack felt a wave of sympathy for René, but it was tainted by a gut punch of fear. He’d already felt he and Effrem had dropped into the rabbit hole. Sitting across from René, Jack now felt like he’d met the Mad Hatter. Or the White Rabbit. None of this was René’s fault, of course, but Jack now realized they’d joined forces with a highly trained soldier who not only had lost touch with reality, but was probably suffering from a narcotics addiction and PTSD as well.

Abruptly, René stood up. “I need the restroom.”

“Down that hall and left,” Jack replied.

Allemand walked away.

Effrem leaned across the table at Jack and rasped, “The man is insane, Jack.”

“Hold on—”

“No! I’ve spent a long time on this story, maxed out my credit cards, and almost gotten myself killed chasing a lunatic. We’ve got to get out of here. I’m done, Jack. Let’s go.” Effrem moved to stand up.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Jack snapped. “Sit down. You’re not seeing it, are you?”

“What?”

“René was kidnapped and he was held and he was rescued, but it’s all Rostock.” Jack spent the next two minutes explaining his theory until slowly Effrem’s expression softened.

“Jack, brainwashing? That’s Manchurian Candidate stuff. Science fiction.”

“You’d be surprised. I think what happened to René is an extreme form of operant conditioning combined with drug therapy. Negative reinforcement, isolation, threat of extinction, desocialization, a skewed version of Stockholm syndrome — it’s all there. It’s what he went through, from the time he was kidnapped until Rostock offered him a job.”

“If that’s the case, why is he on the run from Rostock?”

“I think he knows something’s not right about all this, but he can’t pin it down. It’s like trying to grab a fistful of water. One minute he’s suspicious of Rostock, the next praising him. Allemand either saw or heard something that spooked him — something that contradicted his conditioning — so he bolted.”

“Let’s just assume you’re right. Why him? Aside from his famous name, right now he’s just another soldier. Why would Rostock go to all this trouble?”

“I don’t think it’s got anything to do with René. This is about his father, Marshal Allemand.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t know yet. But as a coercion technique, what Rostock’s done is brilliant. If you kidnap a child your leverage lasts only as long as you have control of that child. Same with threatening the child’s life. But what happens when you take the child’s mind and turn it against the parent?”

“A puppet,” Effrem replied.

“A puppet whose narrative and fate you control,” Jack added. “René is either a heroic French soldier who survived a horrendous experience, or he’s a traitor to his country. To someone like Marshal Allemand, that’s a powerful lever.”

The question was, a lever to accomplish what?

Effrem’s eyes had glazed over. “Kidnapping,” he murmured.

“What?”

Effrem held up his finger for Jack to wait. He got out his cell phone, browsed for a minute, then said, “Son of a bitch! I knew I’d read something about this. René wasn’t Rostock’s first victim. Five years ago Alexander Bossard’s daughter, Suzette, was kidnapped in Brazil. RSG rescued her.”

“Save a man’s child and you could own him for life.”

“It’s a hell of a debt to repay,” Effrem said. “So what do we do with René?”

“In the long term, that’s a question for a psychologist. In the short term, René’s going to keep going until he assembles the puzzle in his head or Rostock kills him. If we keep him close we can at least steer him a bit.”

Allemand returned to the booth and sat down. He drummed his fingers on the table and looked at each of them in turn. “You have more questions, yes?”

“You said you and Rostock talked,” Jack replied. “About what?”

“What else? Islamic terrorism. It has to be stopped.”

Jack didn’t disagree, but René’s tone had been condescending, as though Jack had asked what should be done with a lawn that needed to be mowed. You mow it, idiot.

“How?”

“Not the way we’ve been doing it here, or in the United States, for that matter. It’s time to remove the gloves, as you might say. We root them out, wherever they are, and kill them all. If you help a terrorist, you are yourself a terrorist. If you sympathize with a terrorist, you are yourself a terrorist. We’ve been treating this like a conventional war. That’s ludicrous. We need to go nuclear.” As he’d been speaking, René’s tone had become increasingly strident, and now he punctuated this last statement by jabbing the table with his index finger.

“You mean literally or figuratively?” asked Effrem.

“Whatever it takes. Nation-state armies are worthless in this kind of fight. Too many laws, regulations, rules of engagement. Governments come and go, as does political will. Terrorists don’t bother with those things; we can’t afford to, either. It has to stop, don’t you see that? We have to stop them before it’s too late. Rostock’s approach is the only one that can work.”

Jack thought: The looming threat, the ticking clock, and the savior. Three more operant-conditioning techniques.