Rules of Re-engagement

She stared at him with a look so intense it drilled right to the very marrow of his bones. He met her gaze, held it. Her grandfather clock ticked loudly. He moistened his lips. A full minute passed.

“I want to know, Jack,” she said suddenly. “Everything. I want to know who you’re working for, where you’ve been. What happened all those years ago…on the beach…everything.”

He nodded his head slowly, then seated himself on the sofa opposite her, the glass-topped coffee table between them. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, cradling his drink in both hands. He rolled the glass slowly between his palms, watched the liquid refract the light as it swirled around the faceted crystal for a few moments, then he looked up.

“When I left New York, I made my way through Canada to Alaska,” he said. “I thought I’d be okay, living alone in the wilderness, but it began to wear heavily on me. I didn’t want to exist like that, alone and on the run. I wanted a life. I wanted to find some place I could hold my head up high.” He stared into his whiskey, his mind going back where he seldom allowed it to tread. “Then I came across a copy of a newspaper, and I saw that my mother had died.” He looked up slowly, met her eyes. “The paper was three weeks old.”

Olivia leaned forward. “They said it was shock, Jack.” She spoke softly. “They said her heart couldn’t take the news of…of how you managed to flee just minutes before they came to arrest you.”

His chest tightened. His scar pulled at his mouth. He inhaled deeply, killing his feelings. “I used the grizzly incident to disappear,” he said, his voice studiously emotionless. “I got myself to the coast, got a fishing boat to take me across the Bering Strait to Russia. Made my way down to France from there. Joined the French Foreign Legion, fulfilled my contract, got a new identity and French citizenship in exchange.”

She remained silent. He could practically see her heart beating under the soft white cashmere.

He sucked back another sharp swig of scotch, felt the comforting burn in his chest. He set his glass on the table, pushed it away, remembering how many nights he’d used the stuff to numb himself. How he’d done it again in that small Parisian bar sixteen years ago, the night before Jack Sauer disappeared forever, the gates of Fort de Nogent clanging shut behind him. No more memories. No more past. No more Olivia.

Until now.

He lifted his eyes slowly. “They call it the Legion of the Damned,” he said.

“I know.” She had a strange expression on her face, as if she was beginning to understand something about him. “It’s one of the greatest mercenary armies of all time. One of the harshest.” She paused. “I’ve read the literature, Jack. The Legion was created by King Louis Phillipe in the 1800s in the conquest of Algeria, and it’s been a last resort for society’s misfits ever since. It accepts refugees, revolutionaries, poets, princes, paupers, criminals—no questions asked.”

“Not exactly—”

“You serve a minimum five-year contract. And if you survive, you have the option to be rectified—get a new name, usually the same initials, and a French passport. A cloak of official anonymity.”

She studied him carefully, as if reevaluating him in light of this new information. “I had a client once. He’d been in the Legion. He told me the bond that forms between men with no allegiance to family or country or a past of any kind is formidable, close to mystical.”

“It has to be,” he said. “You die for each other, not a country.”

“That’s why you have the accent. And you’ve been rectified.”

He nodded. “I did my five years. Jack Sauer became Jacques Sauvage—French citizen, perfectly legal.”

“So that’s how you got back into the country without tipping off the FBI, using the Sauvage alias?”

“No. I used a fake identity.” He met her eyes. “And Sauvage is my name, not an alias.”

“What happened after the five years?”

“I left the Legion with a couple of the guys I’d served with—Rafiq Zayed and Hunter McBride. Good guys—guys I’d kill for, and they for me.”

“I don’t doubt it,” she whispered.

“We went to Africa where we were joined by a Zulu from South Africa, December Ngomo. He was ex-Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress established to fight the apartheid regime. We banded together to form a private military company.” He sat back. “That was ten years ago. We call ourselves the Force du Sable.”

“So you’re shadow soldiers,” she said softly. “Global cops for hire.”

“Military advisors,” he corrected. “Part of a growing multibillion-dollar industry. Wherever the next global hot spot flares into action, we’re ready to step into the fray. For a fee. It’s a legitimate business.”

A haunted look sifted into her features. She dropped her face into her hands and sat like that for what seemed like ages. Then a silent sob racked her frame and he saw that her fingers were wet.

“Olivia?”

She jerked her head up, raw anguish in her eyes. “I know about the FDS, Jack!” Her voice was thick with hurt. “Your PMC is based on São Diogo Island off the coast of Angola. You were recently involved in a number of high-profile African coups, the protection of UN aid columns.” She lurched to her feet, swayed slightly, steadied herself by holding onto the back of the sofa. “FDS troops helped end the civil war in Sierra Leone. They ousted a tyrannical dictator on the Ivory Coast, they’ve been instrumental in bringing an end to human genocide in a small Eastern European dictatorship. I know this, Jack.” She jabbed her fingers into her chest. “I know it because I’ve dealt with clients from those areas. The FDS is lobbying for a United Nations sanction, forcing world leaders to rethink the role and legitimacy of mercenaries in a new world order. You want an international code of ethics.”

“Yes,” he said carefully. “We want to sift out the rogue operations. We want to make hiring a PMC a bankable option for small countries with limited military capability that might come under attack by a bigger hostile power.”

She clutched her arms over her stomach, eyes burning with wet emotion. “I…I know all about your quest for legitimacy,” she whispered. “I…I just didn’t know it was you. All this time. You were alive and people were talking about you right there under my nose…my ex-fiancé…my dead fiancé…and I…you never… How could you do that to me, Jack? How could you not let me know you were all right?” She started to shake. “Damn you, Jack Sauer,” she hissed, her eyes bright and wild. “Damn you all to hell.”

“I’ve been there, Olivia.”

“You should’ve stayed there.” She swiped at the moisture on her face. “And now you’re telling me President Elliot has hired the FDS? He’s hired mercenaries to operate on U.S. soil, to come after my father and Grayson and some mysterious Cabal?”

“That’s correct.”

“But how did he hire you if he’s supposed to be a virtual prisoner like you say he is?”

He studied her, his heart twisting, aching to comfort her. But he held his distance. This was good. She was asking the right questions. She was taking small steps to acceptance.

“It’s a good question, Olivia,” he said. “The only man President Elliot has been able to confide in is his private physician, Dr. Sebastian Ruger, an old and trusted military friend.” Jacques wasn’t going to go into the president’s illness. Not yet. She wasn’t ready for that.

“They’ve been communicating in writing, in the White House medical suite. The president asked Ruger to try to enlist us on his behalf. We’ve done work for him before, through a covert arm of the CIA, well before the Cabal managed to fully infiltrate the organization. He trusts us. Ruger managed to meet with me at a United Nations conference in Brussels just over three weeks ago. I was there to push my lobby for an international standardized code of conduct for private military companies.” He paused. “It’s a close-to-impossible mission, Olivia. But we took the job. Someone had to.”

“You mean someone had to come after my father. And Grayson?”

“We’re the last resort, Olivia, the last bid to save democracy. Because if your father and Forbes get their way, there won’t be an election next month. Or for the foreseeable future. They’ll immediately launch the country into a full-scale war with what they claim are terrorists and rogue states. This in turn will give Forbes unprecedented power, and he will use it. He will delay the election indefinitely and war will become his excuse to spark an era of aggressive imperialism expressly designed to feed corporate coffers—like those of your fathers. And this, Olivia, will change the world as we know it.”

He let it sink over her.

She shook her head slowly. “You cannot,” she said, “expect me to believe any of this. And even if some of it is remotely true, you cannot expect me to believe that my father is involved in anything like this.”

“That’s my job, then—to make you believe.”

Defiance flashed in her eyes. “And if you can’t?”

He looked pointedly at the cuff.

“Oh, right,” she said bitterly. “You’ll hold me hostage and threaten my father with my life?”

“Or you can choose to help us.”

She glared at him. “My father is a good man, Jack. He…he may have some questionable ethics as far as business goes, but he is not involved in this. He can’t be.” But Jacques could see the nervousness, the edgy flickering questions in her eyes. Olivia knew just how connected and powerful her father was. She knew just how much Samuel Killinger craved power, how ruthless some of his business practices could be.

“It’s not possible,” she whispered, as if to convince herself. “He’s a good man,” she said again, quietly. “He could not do anything like this.”

Jacques got to his feet, strode over to her floor-to-ceiling windows and flung back her drapes dramatically. He turned to face her, standing squarely in front of the black window…in full view of whoever was down in the street.

“What are you doing?”