When he came back into the house, Jack found René and Hugo seated across from each other in the solarium. Smiling, the marshal waved Jack over to the table and poured him coffee.
Jack asked René, “When did you last talk to Effrem?”
“Not for a few days. I’ve left messages, but he hasn’t responded. I hope that simply means he’s busy digging Rostock’s grave, and it’s not the other thing.”
“Other thing?” said the marshal.
“Möller,” Jack replied.
Back on the dam’s parapet, Jack had been expecting Effrem to swerve or brake at the last moment, but he’d done neither. Möller had died instantly, just as Eric Schrader had outside the Supermercado in Alexandria. For reasons he hadn’t quite fathomed, Jack was finding it hard to enjoy the irony behind the two men’s deaths. Jack suspected that whatever satisfaction Effrem had gotten from killing Stephan Möller had been fleeting and bittersweet. While Möller had tortured Effrem and ordered him burned alive in a hole in the ground, Jack believed Effrem was strong enough to get past that. But could he get past what he himself had done in retaliation?
On the positive side, whatever moral struggles Effrem might be facing, he wasn’t doing it alone. At Marie Likkel’s urging, Effrem had moved back home to the Likkel estate, where he and Belinda Hahn were, according to Marie, “getting to know one another.” Jack was glad for them both.
René, too, had a long, tough road ahead of him. Coming to grips with the damage done to him by Rostock may have already cost René his relationship with Madeline. The wedding was on hold, as was René’s future with the Army. Everything seemed tainted, he’d told Jack.
“Where do things stand with Alexander Bossard?” Jack asked.
Hugo Allemand answered. “One of my attorneys is in Zurich deposing him as we speak. Whatever you said to him, Jack, was more than enough to secure his cooperation. Once we have his deposition, we will make sure it reaches the proper authorities. It will be more than enough to tip the first domino. Jürgen Rostock, I suspect, is about to face a dramatic reversal of fortune.”
Jack had little trouble believing this. Like Bossard, Gerhard Klugmann, now recovering from his gunshot wound and certain Rostock was hunting for him, had been debriefed by Marshal Allemand’s legal team. The hacker was savvy enough to have realized that his former employer was no longer the winning team and that the best way to stay out of both Rostock’s crosshairs and prison was to cooperate. According to Allemand’s lawyer, Klugmann was a disturbingly immaculate record-keeper.
Jack checked his watch. It was three o’clock. Nine a.m. back home.
“Will you excuse me?” Jack said, and stood up.
He walked out the solarium’s side door and onto the lawn. He sat down in the grass. He pulled out his phone and hit speed dial.
The line clicked open, and the voice at the other end said, “Gerry Hendley.”
“Gerry, it’s Jack. I think it’s time we talk.”