“She also said to tell you, ‘Sorry about the Fairbairn Sykes.’ ”
Fisher laughed. “Sure she is. First things first. Call your team. Tell them everything’s okay and that you’ll get back to them shortly.”
Hansen made the call on his SVT, then disconnected.
“The Vianden ambush tip came from Ames, who claims he got it from van der Putten. You know that’s bogus, correct?”
“I’m taking it on faith for the time being.”
“Fair enough. I found van der Putten dead, his ears cut off. That was Ames covering his tracks.”
“If not van der Putten, where’d he get the tip?”
“Kovac, we believe.”
“Kovac? That’s nuts. Ames is working for Kovac? No way. I mean, the guy’s a weasel, but—”
“Best-case scenario is that Kovac simply hates Grim and he wants her out. What better way to undermine her than to catch me without her? Here’s how it’d be played for the powers that be: Kovac, suspicious of Grimsdóttir, puts his own man on the team dispatched to hunt down Sam Fisher. Grimsdóttir’s inept handling of the situation allows Fisher to escape multiple times, until finally Kovac’s agent saves the day. Same scenario at Hammerstein. Kovac called in a favor at the BND.”
Hansen absorbed this for a few moments. “What’s the worst-case scenario?”
“Kovac’s a traitor and he’s working for whoever hired Yannick Ernsdorff. Up until I went off the bridge into the Rhine, Kovac had been getting regular updates from Grim. The moment it became clear to him that I was heading to Vianden—and in Yannick Ernsdorff ’s general direction—he got nervous and Ames’s tip miraculously appeared. Think about it: After I lost you at the foundry in Esch-sur-Alzette, did you have any leads? Any trail to follow?”
“No.”
“That’s because I didn’t leave one.”
“Okay, some of what you’re saying makes sense, but Kovac a traitor? Grim suggested that a while ago, but that’s a big leap.”
“Not too big a leap for Lambert. It’s why he asked me to kill him. It’s why I went to ground. He was convinced the U.S. intelligence community, including the NSA, was infected to the highest levels. Have you ever heard of doppelgänger factories?”
“No.”
“They’re secret Chinese factories dedicated to cloning and improving on Western military technology. The Guoanbu steals schematics, diagrams, material samples—whatever it can get its hands on—then feeds them to doppelgänger factories for production.”
“Sounds like an urban legend.”
“Lambert didn’t think so. He thought they were real, and the Guoanbu was getting help from the inside: politicians, the Pentagon, CIA, NSA. . . . No one’s willing to admit it, but when it comes to industrial espionage, the Guoanbu has no peer. You don’t get that lucky without help.”
“So, Kovac—”
“That, we don’t know yet. Here’s the important part: Yannick Ernsdorff is playing banker for a black-market weapons auction starring the world’s worst terrorist groups. Grim and I call it the 738 Arsenal—named after the doppelgänger factory it was stolen from.”
“And you know this how?”
“I found the crew that did the job—a bunch of bored former SAS boys led by Charles ‘Chucky Zee’ Zahm.”
“The writer?”
“You can add professional thief to his resume,” Fisher said, then explained about Zahm and his Little Red Robbers. “Zahm had proof of the job, including a complete inventory of the arsenal.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“I’ll show you the list later, but suffice it to say we can’t let the 738 Arsenal get away from us. Ben, you might have even seen pieces from the arsenal.”
“Come again?”
“The doppelgänger factory that Zahm hit was in eastern China, near the Russian border. In Jilin-Heilongjiang, about a hundred miles northwest of Vladivostok and about sixty miles from a Russian town called Korfovka.”
At the mention of Korfovka, Hansen’s eyes narrowed. “I was there. A while ago.”
“That’s where Zahm claims he delivered the arsenal.”
“When was this?”
“About five months ago.”
“I was there before that. The mission went . . . bad.”
“That happens,” Fisher said carefully. “It seems you got out okay.”
Hansen was nodding vaguely. He stopped and studied Fisher’s face. “I got out because somebody helped me. Stepped in at just the right moment.”
“Lucky break.”
“Yeah . . . lucky.” Hansen shook himself from his reverie. “This is a tall tale, Sam. Doppelgänger factories, Chinese replica weapons, this auction, Kovac . . .”
“Truth is stranger than fiction.”
“This cat-and-mouse game we’ve been playing has been for Kovac’s benefit.”
Fisher noted that this was a statement, not a question. Hansen and his team had already realized their strings were being pulled, but not why.
“Correct,” Fisher said. “He forced her to put a team in the field. If she refused, she’d be out, and all the work we’d done since Lambert’s death would be gone. I had to make it look good—keep you guys close, but not so close I couldn’t work. Without some minor victories and near misses, Kovac could have called Grimsdóttir’s plan a failure, and she’d be out.”
“This explains why she’s been jerking us around. She’s been juggling a lot of balls,” Hansen said. “Back to Kovac. If he’s not just an asshole but an asshole and a traitor, and he’s working for Ernsdorff ’s boss, then . . .”
“We couldn’t afford to have him know I was on to Ernsdorff or the auction.”
“But Kovac knew you were there. Wouldn’t he have already pushed the panic button?”
“Probably. And the first thing Ernsdorff and his boss would have done is check security. I didn’t leave any fingerprints when I hacked Ernsdorff ’s server; none of the auction attendees have disappeared. . . . As far as they can tell, all is well. We suspect the auction is days away; they’re at the point of no return.”
“Yeah, you don’t invite the world’s worst tangos to one location, then tell them at the last minute to turn around and go home.”
“No, not with these kinds of stakes. And this is where you come in, Ben.”
“You mean we get to stop playing straight man in your comedy road show?”
“Exactly. Yesterday I tagged one of the auction attendees. A Chechen named Aariz Qaderi.”
“CMR, right?” Hansen asked. “Chechen Martyrs Regiment?”
“That’s the guy. I tagged him. He’s headed east into Russia—on his way to the auction, we hope.”
“Hold on. All the attendees will be scrubbed before they reach the auction site. Any kind of beacon or tracker will be found.”
“Not the kind we used.” Hansen opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, but Fisher cut him off. “Another time. Trust me: You can scrub all you want and these trackers won’t come off.”
Hansen shrugged. “What’s our plan?”
“You get your team in here and brief them. Once they’re on board, we start moving east and wait for our trackers to phone home.”
“What about Ames?”
“We’ll deal with him later. For now he’s part of the team. We include him in everything.”
“What about his cell phone? And his OPSAT? He’ll try to contact Kovac.”
“Let him. Grimsdóttir’s made modifications to his phone and OPSAT. Every communication he makes beyond our tactical channels will go straight to her. She’ll be playing Kovac and anyone else Ames has been talking to. He’ll get voice mail, but Grim will respond to texts. Your phones aren’t Internet-capable, right?”
“Right.” Hansen smiled. “I like it. I like the plan.”
“I thought you might. One thing, though: One of us has to stick to Ames like glue. If he slips away and gets a message out another way, we’re done.”
“Understood.”
/>
“How do you want to handle your people? I’d prefer to not get shot in the confusion.”
Hansen chuckled. “I’ll see what I can do.”
FISHER sat along the office’s back wall, the lights off. Ivanov, with a second dart in his thigh for good measure, lay on the floor before him. Hansen dialed his cell phone and recalled the team. Once they were inside he told them Grimsdóttir had come clean, then gave them the Reader’s Digest version of the story Fisher had laid out a few minutes earlier, save any mention of Fisher, his mission, Ernsdorff, Zahm, Qaderi, or how they were tracking him. These last two items Fisher had decided to hold in reserve.
Hansen fielded twenty minutes of questions and gripes before, finally, the team cooled off and seemed to accept its new mission. “One last thing,” Hansen said. “We’re taking on a new member. He’s going to be our team leader from this point on.”
The griping started again.
“Who the hell . . . ?”
“Why would Grimsdóttir make a change at this point . . . ?”
Fisher took his cue and walked out of the office. Gillespie saw him first, did a double take, then reached for her gun. Hansen called, “Stand down, Kim. Everybody—hands at your sides.”
“You gotta be kidding me,” Ames said with his greasy smile. “Look who it is.”
Noboru said, “Ben, what’s going on?”
“I think I’ll let Mr. Fisher explain that.”
31
FISHER’S overt reentry into the Third Echelon/ Splinter Cell community took place not at the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, amid back slapping and handshakes, but in a warehouse in Odessa amid the suspicious stares from a group of twentysomethings who, up until thirty minutes before, had been bent on taking Fisher dead or alive. And judging from the glares aimed in his direction, it appeared most of Hansen’s people had been leaning toward the former choice. Predictably, once Fisher finished talking, Ames was the first to express his misgivings:
“I don’t buy it. Not a bit of it. This is just another circle jerk.”
“To what end?” Fisher asked.
“What? What’s that mean?”
“For what purpose?”
“Who the hell knows? You people are nuts.” Ames turned to Noboru, Valentina, and Gillespie. “Don’t tell me any of you are buying this.”
No one spoke immediately. Then Kimberly said, “I do.” Then, to Fisher: “That night at the foundry . . . I almost shot you. You know that, don’t you?”
Fisher nodded.
“You and Grim could have told us,” Noboru said.
“We would have held up our end and made it look good. Screw Kovac.”
“We couldn’t risk it,” Fisher said. “If he got even a hint that you guys were holding back, he would’ve canned all of you—including Grim. It had to be done this way.”
Valentina said, “Why tell us now, Mr. Fisher—”
“Sam.”
“Sam,” she repeated. “Why tell us now? Seems to me you didn’t have much trouble keeping us at bay. Why not keep up the ruse?”
“Two reasons. One, to stop this auction I’m going to need your help. There are too many variables, too many unknowns. We won’t know until we get there, but my gut tells me this isn’t going to be a one-person job. And two, when I went off the bridge at Hammerstein I bought myself some time, but I knew they’d find the car but no body. Kovac would get suspicious and accuse Grimsdóttir of . . . anything. Any excuse to get her out. If I resurface, you guys get deployed and Kovac has to back off for a while.”
“How did you survive the bridge?” Gillespie asked.
“Dumb luck and an OmegaO unit. I kept the windows shut and the car floated downriver. On the bottom, I waited to the last minute, then put on the OmegaO and got out.”
Ames said, “Well, I’ll give you this much: You’ve got brass ones, Fisher.”
“Since we’re reminiscing,” Noboru said. “That was you at the Siegfried bunkers, right? You took out those two guys?”
“Yes.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. . . . One less person chasing you.”
Fisher shook his head. “High price for that.”
Noboru considered this, then said, “Well, thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Now that we’re in on the con,” Valentina said, “we’re going to have to be real careful about what gets back to Kovac. If he’s involved with this auction stuff, he can’t get even a hint of what we’re doing. If he’s not involved but wants Grim out, we can’t give him any reason.”
“Agreed,” Fisher said. He looked around. “Are we good?”
There were nods all around, except for Ames. Hansen saw this and said, “In or out, Ames? Either you’re with us, or I’ll kick your ass back to Fort Meade.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Hansen didn’t answer but offered a half grin.
“Yeah, okay. I’m on board. We don’t have to hug or anything, right? I ain’t doing that.”
“Idiot,” Gillespie muttered.
Fisher said, “Any questions?”
“I have one,” Valentina said. “You said the guy you’re tracking looks to be heading into Russia, right?”
“Right.”
“If the auction’s taking place on Russian soil, we have to consider that the government might be involved. If that’s the case, we could find ourselves up against the Russian army.”
“Anything’s possible,” Fisher agreed. “Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.”
“Or die on that bridge when we get to it,” Ames shot back.
THEY waited until Ivanov regained consciousness; then Hansen and the others left, while Fisher made sure his old friend/not friend had suffered no ill effects. He gave Ivanov fifteen hundred rubles—about five hundred U.S. dollars—for his trouble, called them even for the trouble Ivanov had caused him in Minsk, and left with the Russian’s assurance that he was only too happy to forget the last two hours of his life.
Outside they split into two groups of three and checked into hotels near the passenger port terminal. Fisher, Gillespie, and Ames took the Mozart Hotel; Hansen, Noboru, and Valentina, the Londonskaya Hotel a couple blocks away.
Once in his room, Fisher texted Grimsdóttir:Mission accomplished. Call for details.
His phone trilled ten minutes later. Fisher answered and said, “Another pay phone?”
“Outside a 7-Eleven,” Grim muttered.
“Oh, the degradation,” Fisher replied.
“Smart ass. How’d it go?”
“Complicated. Hansen took a little hands-on convincing, but he came around.”
“Was that before or after he called me?”
“Before. The rest of the team’s on board, too, including Ames. He grumbled, but I imagine he’s thrilled at the idea of being able to give Kovac a blow-by-blow.”
“If he tries Kovac, he’ll get voice mail, and vice versa. He’ll turn to texting soon enough; then he’s ours. What we still don’t know is how deeply Ames is involved. If Kovac’s linked to the auction, that doesn’t necessarily mean Ames is.”
“We’ll know. When the time is right, I’m going to have a heart-to-heart with him.”
“Why doesn’t that sound as friendly as it should?” In the background Fisher heard a double bing. Grimsdóttir said, “My other phone. Wait.” The line clicked into silence. She returned half a minute later. “Qaderi just left Moscow, heading east to Irkutsk.”
“How do you know that?”
“The bots are into five devices in Qaderi’s group: a laptop, three cell phones, and one satellite phone. They’re all pinging, so the GPS coordinates are triangulated down to an eight-foot circle. They had him placed at the gate assigned to an Irkutsk flight.”
“Score one for Terzo Lucchesi. Flight time?”
“Six hours, fifty minutes.”
Fisher checked his wat
ch and did the time-zone conversion. Irkutsk was six hours ahead of Odessa. With flight time that would put Qaderi there in thirteen hours, or at one in the afternoon Irkutsk time.
“How fast can you get us there?” Fisher asked.
“I’m on my way back to the office right now. I’ll text you.”
Grimsdóttir disconnected and Fisher called Hansen with an update. “Thanks,” said Hansen.
“How’s the mood over there?”
“Still a little stunned, I’m guessing, but I gotta be honest: None of us is gonna miss chasing you around. You taught us some tough lessons.”
“We had a saying on the Teams: The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.”
“I’m a believer. Listen, Sam, I’m at the ice machine. I think I may have solved one of our problems.”
“How’s that?”
“I’m bunking with Ames. He left his phone sitting on the bathroom sink. I knocked it into the toilet. He didn’t notice it for ten minutes. It’s dead.”
Fisher chuckled. “How’d he take that?”
“As you’d expect. I feel better knowing his only option is the OPSAT now.”
“Agreed. I’ll call you when I hear back from Grim.”
SHE called fifteen minutes later. “Best I can do is a Czech Airlines flight leaving at 4:00 A.M. your time, with connections in Prague and Moscow. You’ll touch down in Irkutsk eight hours behind Qaderi.”
“Unless the auction’s in Irkutsk, he’ll be traveling from there. I’m guessing car or train.”
“Gut feeling?”
“Partially. Irkutsk is a big city, but it’s still Siberia. It’s about as remote as you get, and if I were holding this kind of auction . . .”
“Where better,” Grim finished.
“As long as our bots keep phoning home, we’ll be able to find him. Book the flights. I’ll gather the troops.”
32
RUSSIAN AIRSPACE
“YOU tried to wash me out, didn’t you?”
The words penetrated Fisher’s dozing mind and he opened his eyelids. He turned his head and looked at Ames in the aisle seat. The rest of the team was spread throughout the cabin. “What’s that?” Fisher asked.