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space waiting for word on his missing son.  Devastated by his
predicament and the barren investigation, as the weeks dragged on, it became
apparent that he could not perform his duties.  The firm’s seven partners,
Sam’s colleagues, secretaries and clients alike, had all tried in vain to lull
him back to existence but his torment was just too great to overcome. 
Eventually any pending cases were assigned to other attorneys and Sam’s contribution
was reduced to meager assistance of the attorneys assigned his cases. 
Finally, almost a year after the tragedy, when Detective Black Jack had formed
his federal task force for locating missing children, Sam took all vacation
days owed him, then resigned from the firm and dedicated his life to locating
his son and other children with similar fates .  
    By the time Sam had offered to
join Black Jack’s task force, the investigation into Sammy’s disappearance had
taken a slight turn for the better.  Agents got a break when Interpol
discovered an Algerian ring assisting divorced Muslim fathers snatch children
away to Northern Africa from their estranged Western European wives, mostly
from France and Belgium where mixed marriages were quite common.  The most
prevalent way of abducting these children away from their mothers was a
seemingly innocent vacation to the father’s homeland from which child and
father would never return.  The more suspicious mothers would not allow
such a vacation and end up getting a divorce and custody of the kids before
letting the child out of their sight.  It was these divorced fathers who
used the Algerian ring’s services.  They would trap the child at school or
at a playground then smuggle him or her out of the country by cargo boat .
    A French newspaper reporter
investigating complaints on behalf of a group of victimized mothers whose
children had been kidnapped, but whose resident Governments were too
constrained by international treaties and political considerations to deal with
the matter, stumbled upon the ring and alerted Interpol and the French
police.  After further investigation and verification of corroborating
evidence, a suspicious merchant ship hauling grain for Algiers was put under
surveillance in Marseilles and the offense was eventually observed. The
conspirators were caught red-handed with twin boys they had snatched from a
playground in Paris .
    A photo of a child resembling
Sammy Jr. was found in possession of the ring after the French police raided
their hideout in Nice, confiscating incriminating materials which included
lists of names, addresses and photographs of children.
    Sam and Black Jack flew to
France to look at the photos and list of names.  The resemblance to Sammy
was not conclusive and his name was not found in any of the lists.  Still,
it was more to go on than they had ever had. It turned out the names on the
list were all aliases, not the children’s real names.  The mother of the
kidnapped twins and another, who clearly identified her daughter from the
photos, soon discovered their marked children were cataloged with false
names.  The captured kidnappers, working on orders from a larger
organization assumed to be based in Libya, were not aware the children’s names
were false .
    It gave Sam and Black Jack
some more hope.  The name assigned to the child resembling Sammy was
Jacques Piccard, his address in an apartment building in La Defense, Paris. Sam
and Black Jack joined the French police inspecting the apartment but found it
had been vacated by a family with two children, a boy and a girl, only a few
months before.  The current male resident had never met the family but
neighbors and the building’s superintendent recalled the boy was about Sammy’s
age. A copy of the lease and information from the landlord’s office revealed
the family name was Trevor, not Piccard, and the boy’s name was Jon. 
Further investigation revealed the family had moved to a small village in the
French Alps