Tracks by Niv Kaplan Page A

member
who snitched was later found slain with his tongue cut out of his mouth .
    Mai-Li became Black Jack’s
secret collaborator in Lower Manhattan on matters involving missing
children.  She later joined Sam’s operation as a full-time member when her
crippled brother relocated, accepting an invitation to perform jazz with his
band at various clubs in New Orleans .
    Christine Patrese was the
final member of the team, the French newspaper reporter whose activities led to
the discovery of the Algerian ring assisting divorced Muslim fathers snatch
children away to Northern Africa from their estranged Western European
wives.  She had also assisted Sam and Black Jack in locating the family
whose child’s photograph resembled little Sammy.  Sam had kept in touch
with her as a sector head at LMC and later offered her a position at the Center .
    Christine was a
twenty-nine-year-old Parisian, born and raised.  Both her parents were
journalists and much of her childhood was spent traveling with her mother, her
father, or both, to troubled corners of the world.  Having been introduced
to a world of hardship and danger in places of conflict at an early age
predetermined much of what she would become, but it was not until her father
was accidentally killed in a skirmish on the Turkish border that she took up
reporting full time, wishing to fill the void left by her father.  
    She was eighteen at the time,
just completing her first year in Communication and Media at The Sorbonne when
word came from her mother.  Details were initially sketchy.  Her
mother was on her way to Ankara via Istanbul. They later learned that her
father, accompanying a troop of Kurdish rebels on a raid against Turkish
forces, was hit in the stomach by a stray bullet.  He made it alive back
to camp but without proper medical care, bled to death in the Back of a truck
carrying him to a field
hospital.                                                  
                            
    He paid with his life telling
the Kurd side of the conflict.
    As she mourned her father, a
devastated Christine knew he needed to be authentic and would not have it any
other way, so she did the only thing that seemed logical at the time, she quit
school and joined her mother’s reporting enterprise, picking up where her
father left off.      
    Sam’s personal tragedy both
troubled and intrigued her and she deliberately became
more involved, investigating missing children cases, exposing the unsettling
issues in a monthly column, attaining something of a celebrity status in
France, while troubled parents could turn to her for help.    
    Christine and her mother,
Anna, shared an apartment in the Paris Latin section just off Boulevard San
Germain.  The third floor apartment was both home and office for generations
of Patrese family reporters: a three bedroom flat, with two bathrooms, a large
living room, kitchen and den, the large living room windows facing Odeon .
    She never admitted to it, but
her father’s death caused her to keep her social life to a minimum, male
company a pursuit almost never considered. She was of medium height,
athletically built with wavy blonde hair down to her shoulders and a
beautifully structured face with large brown eyes, a small pointy nose and full
lips. Her appearance would often turn heads in the street though she never
bothered grooming it. She wore simple clothes, mostly jeans and t-shirts with
dark sweaters and long overcoats in the winter, wanting to be unnoticeable .
    She felt a sense of
responsibility toward her mother, wanting to fill the gap for her dead father,
and never let her down.  She worked long and hard building a name for
herself as a reliable and exciting reporter .
    Christine was the last to
join. Sam went to recruit her in Paris once the operation was in place, managing
to secure her cooperation on a partial basis.  Christine would not