his left hand, formed into a fist with his thumb extended, shot forward and plunged into the nerve bundle in Hansen’s armpit. Hansen’s eyes went wide with pain. His momentum faltered. Fisher clamped down on Hansen’s knife wrist, then spun on his heel, around Hansen’s back, using the momentum to pull Hansen around and off balance. He slid his left hand down, joined it with his right on Hansen’s wrist, then pulled it toward him, torquing the wrist joint at the same time. Fisher could feel the bones and ligaments beneath Hansen’s skin twisting, stretching… Hansen gasped in pain. The knife clattered to the floor. Fisher kept moving, however, using his own momentum to keep Hansen stumbling forward until he spun once more, this time changing direction, swinging Hansen’s arm back over his head, while side kicking his feet out from under him. He landed with a thud, back flat on the concrete. Fisher dropped his weight, jamming his knee into Hansen’s solar plexus. All the air exploded from Hansen’s mouth. His face went red as he tried to suck air.
Fisher reached behind him and grabbed Hansen’s knife. Even before seeing it, he knew the feel of its haft, its balance… It was Fisher’s own Fairbairn Sykes World War II-era commando dagger. A gift from an old family friend, the FS had for years been Fisher’s lucky charm. After Lambert, he’d been forced to leave it behind.
Now Fisher laid the FS’s blade across Hansen’s throat. “This is my knife, Ben. Why do you have my knife?”
Hansen was still gasping for air. Fisher waited until finally Hansen wheezed out, “Grimsdottir.”
“Grim gave you this?”
“Thought it… thought it would bring… luck.” Fisher smiled at this. “How’s it working for you so far?”
Hansen took a deep breath. “Keep it.”
“I’m going to get off you. Lie there. Don’t move.
Once you’ve got your breath back, I want you to do me a favor. After that, we call ‘time in.’ Deal?”
Hansen nodded.
“Your word on it,” Fisher pushed.
Hansen nodded again. It took another thirty seconds before he fully recovered. “Jesus, what the hell did you do to me?”
“I’ll take that as a rhetorical question. Are you ready to hear the favor?”
“Yeah.”
“Call Grimsdottir. Ask her about Karlheinz van der Putten.”
“The guy that gave us the Vianden tip? Ames’s contact?”
“That’s him. Make the call.”
Hansen fished his cell phone from his pocket and hit speed dial. A few moments later he said, “It’s Hansen. Yeah, I’m with him… I’m supposed to ask you about van der Putten.” Hansen was silent for a full minute as Grim spoke. Finally he said, “This is on the level? No more games? Okay, got it. I’ll hear him out.” Hansen disconnected and looked at Fisher. “She’s says you’re going to answer all my questions.”
“As best I can.”
“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 Grimsdottir, puts his own man on the team dispatched to hunt down Sam Fisher. Grimsdottir’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 doppelganger 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 doppelganger 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 doppelganger 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 doppelganger 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. Doppelganger factories, Chinese replica weapons, this auction, Kovac…”
“Truth is stranger than fiction.”
