particular trick pony hard during his Esch-sur-Alzette border crossing, and while Hansen and his team would have no choice but to investigate should he use the IDs or cards again, Fisher doubted they would fall for such a ruse so completely again.
Before leaving the parking lot he got his iPhone, called up the maps application, and punched in an address in Bavigne, a quaint village of 125 souls, sitting along a channel of the Sauer River about sixty kilometers northwest of the city of Luxembourg. He took his time with the drive, exploring and enjoying the Luxembourgian countryside before finally pulling into Bavigne shortly before one. He found a restaurant, the Auberge, and ordered what turned out to be one of the best meals of his life: lobster soup with langoustine tails, Ardennes salad, game terrine on a bed of salad, confit of red plums, and a lemon
He lingered over coffee for another hour, then paid the bill and drove out of town, following the iPhone’s on- screen directions: first heading northeast, then south again along the Sauer, between farmers’ fields and the tree- lined banks of the river, until he crossed over a covered wooden bridge and found himself in a clearing dominated by a log cabin. He got out, mounted the porch, and knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked a second time and waited a full minute before circling the cabin and checking windows and satisfying himself that no one was home.
He walked back to the rear and down six steps to a wooden root cellar door. The padlock hanging from the hasp was relatively new, an all-weather Viro marine model; at the turn of Fisher’s key it snapped open smoothly.
The root cellar was dark and cool, the temperature hovering in the mid-sixties. Fisher clicked on his flashlight and entered. Momentarily caught in his beam, a rat skittered across the dirt floor and disappeared. Fisher stopped in the center of the cellar, took a moment to orient himself, then walked to the southeast corner, shoved some empty fruit crates out of the way, and set his flashlight on one of them. He knelt down and began brushing at the dirt with both hands until a four-by-three-foot rectangular outline appeared. He felt along the edges until he found a thumb hole and lifted the hatch, revealing a shallow dug-out. At its center sat a black plastic case the size of a large suitcase. It was in fact a DARPA-modified model 1650 Pelican case complete with an encrypted-keypad lock and an antitampering system that consisted of a C-4-shaped charge designed to destroy the case’s contents.
Fisher lifted the case out of its hole and laid it flat on the ground with the keypad facing him. He pulled out his iPhone, called up the calculator application, then punched in the cabin’s latitude coordinates, subtracted the longitude, and divided the resulting number by the current algorithm, a random four-digit number spit out by the mainframes at Fort Meade every month. Fisher took a deep breath, tapped the code into the keypad, and pressed ENTER. A series of six red lights across the front of the pad began flashing, and then slowly, one by one, began turning green. There was a soft beep followed by a triple mechanical
Fisher flipped open the latches along the perimeter of the Pelican’s lid, then lifted it. He smiled. “Hello, old friends.”
Fisher was back in Luxembourg by five. He and Hytonen met at yet another park, this one was across town. As he sat down, Vesa dropped a tiny object to the ground between them; Fisher glanced at it. A key. He covered it with his foot.
“A storage locker at Findel airport,” Hytonen said.
“All the information you requested.”
“Thanks.”
“I have a special message from our mutual friend. She says there’s a mole.”
“Say that again.”
“There’s a mole. Someone inside the group following you.”
“She’s sure?”
“Reasonably so, I expect, or she wouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“Good point.”
“How or to whom the information is going, she doesn’t know.”
“But it involves me,” Fisher said.
“Yes. She is working on the problem, but she suggests, and these are her words, ‘Don’t hold your breath.’ ”
Fisher smiled. “That sounds like her.”
“Will you be needing me again?”
“Probably. I’ll keep you posted via the Lycos account. Check the drafts folder every morning. If it’s more urgent, I’ll leave a message for Heinrich.”
“I will. Good luck to you.”
And then Hytonen was gone, walking down the path with his birdlike steps.
9
The next morning Fisher pulled to a stop in a parking lot overlooking the Our River and shut off the Range Rover’s engine. Vianden had just jumped onto Fisher’s retirement list above even Bavigne. Situated in a shallow valley along the Our River, Vianden and its fifteen hundred residents lived in what looked to Fisher like a Grimms’ fairy tale come to life, with gingerbread-style homes in muted pastel shades, cobbled river walkways, and arched stone bridges. He could see castles rising from the mist atop several nearby hills, their lower reaches shrouded in trees. Fisher shook himself from his reverie and got out.
The night before, after picking up the cache outside Bavigne and meeting with Hytonen, Fisher had first stopped at the airport to retrieve the USB flash drive Vesa had left for him, then checked into the Hilton Luxembourg on rue Jean Engling. He spent an hour going over Vesa’s information. Everything he requested was there: the encrypted frequencies for the Hansen team’s OPSATs; the makes and models of their cell phones; and the team’s rules of engagement—
Next Fisher had turned his attention to the cache and found no surprises. A standard equipment loadout: subvocal transceiver; OPSAT; Trident goggles equipped with night-vision, infrared, and electromagnetic settings; SC pistol; SC-20K AR MAWS (Modular Assault Weapon System) with all the goodies, including ring airfoil grenades, Sticky Shockers and Cameras, and gas grenades; Mark V Tactical Operations RhinoPlate suit; and six grenades (three XM84 flashbang, two M67 fragmentation, and one AN-M8 HC White Smoke). He checked each piece for damage; field stripped, cleaned, and reassembled the weapons; then ran internal diagnostics on the OPSAT and Tridents. Everything was operational; everything felt familiar. It felt good to be back in the saddle, as it were.
The scooter shop was two blocks away, beside a restaurant whose patio jutted over the river’s slowly churning waters. Having called ahead, Fisher found the proprietress, a matronly gray-haired woman named Vima, ready for him. She spoke Luxembourgish and a little stilted German, so their conversation was limited, but she beamed and nodded as Fisher inspected the sky blue Vespa scooter, then paid cash for a day’s rental. Within minutes he was puttering down Vianden’s main street, which took him northwest out of town along a series of switchback roads. Twenty minutes later he was descending again, the trees alongside the road giving way to farmers’ fields; the dirt was coal black.
Ernsdorff’s estate sat on the western side of a kidney-bean-shaped lake a few miles out of town along with four other mansions, each one occupying a section of the southwest and southeast shorelines. Fisher tooled around the lake’s perimeter, occasionally stopping to take pictures, taking care to get plenty of shots of Ernsdorff’s acreage. Even from the opposite shore, almost two miles away, Fisher could see glimpses of the Challenge Discovery Park: labyrinthine rope courses, wooden bridges, vertical climbing walls, and, jutting from the treetops like multicolored circus tents, rainbow-striped tree-house roofs.
