understood that the device would reprogram the car to allow him entrance, and then, quite remarkably, return the car to its original codes so its owner would be none the wiser.
After a few seconds, the CBT’s LED screen flashed, the car chirped, and the locks opened. Noboru immediately searched the glove box for a rental-car agreement and found it. The name on the papers was an alias breathtakingly familiar to him.
Horatio and Gothwhiler were in France. After him. No doubts.
Noboru activated his OPSAT and opened a channel directly to Grim, who answered after a few moments. “Uh, what is it, Nathan?”
“My old friends are here.”
A few seconds of nothing, then, “I understand.”
“You made a promise.”
“I know.”
“How’d they find me?”
“I don’t know. We can’t talk about it now.”
“I need to do something.”
“Leave that to me.”
He paused. “I’m sorry, but I don’t trust you anymore.”
“You have to. If you do something, you could compromise your mission.”
“I’ll plant a V-TRAC and route the signal to you. If you don’t take care of this soon, I’ll have to do it — even if it costs me my job.”
“I understand. But you need to trust me. Okay?”
Noboru shook his head. “Take care of the problem. Good-bye, Grim.”
After planting the V-TRAC device well up inside the Range Rover’s body, Noboru left the parking garage, hustled back to the coffee shop, and returned to the room with five tall cups of decaf.
“Where the hell were you?” asked Valentina.
“One of the coffee machines broke, and I helped the lady fix it. She gave me the decaf for free.” He forced a grin, and he thought his cheeks would crack off.
Hansen accepted his coffee and said, “Was the Range Rover there?”
“Uh, what do you mean?”
Hansen’s tone grew harder. “Yes? Or no?”
Noboru opened his mouth, thought better of lying, and then suddenly said, “We’ll be tracking it.”
“Any idea who they are?”
Noboru braced himself. This time he would have to lie. “Not sure who they are.”
“Kovac’s people, no doubt. All right.” Hansen faced the others. “Moreau’s a tough nut to crack, but here’s what I got out of him. For all intents and purposes, Kovac wants Fisher dead. And he’s pressing Grim hard to make it happen. Grim, of course, would like to talk to Sam before we put a bullet in his head. You don’t shoot your best friend for no reason. So if we ever catch up to him, my plan is to capture first. Moreau swears to me that they’re not lying about this, but to suggest that Fisher is just on the run in France with no agenda is ridiculous. He’s up to something, and we’re going to find out what.”
Ames snorted. “You’re damned right we are. And you all need to listen to me: You don’t capture Sam Fisher. And you don’t talk to him. You take him out. Those were our orders.”
Gillespie shifted over to Ames and deliberately spilled her coffee across his shirt. He cursed as she said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. Did I burn you?”
While the others tried to stifle their laughter, Hansen cleared his throat. “If we can take Fisher alive, that’s the way we do it. If it comes down to it, though, then we’ll have to kill him.”
Hansen spent most of the night tossing and turning. In fact, he’d barely slept in the past two days, so when the courtesy wake-up call came, Hansen was ready to smash the phone against the wall. He rose, showered, shaved, dressed quickly, then gave up the bathroom to Ames, who was complaining about “pretty boy taking too much time.”
Noboru remained dead to the world, and Hansen took a moment just to stare at the man who’d been a little too eager to check out their tail. Hansen mulled that over for a moment before heading down to the restaurant for some coffee.
Moreau had rented them another pair of cars, two Renaults — one burgundy, the other blue — and they loaded the gear and left by 8:00 A.M. for the sixty-mile drive east on A-4 to Emmanuel Chenevier’s apartment in Verdun, near the quai de Londres — and its many shops, restaurants, and discotheques — along the Meuse River. They were wary of tails, especially from those men in the black Range Rover, but Moreau reported that the Rover was tailing one of the decoy vehicles within which Valentina had planted the tracker. Moreau warned them that the ploy wouldn’t last long, and when they discovered what had happened, they would search their own vehicle for a tracker and/or abandon it. By that time Hansen and the others should be long gone.
They drove though the French countryside, the farmlands reminding Hansen of some of the Sunday drives he’d taken with his parents through Texas, although none of that terrain appeared even remotely as fertile as these grounds. However, the same sense of loneliness and utter quiet was still there.
Thankfully, Ames kept his mouth shut for most of the ride, and Gillespie sat quietly herself. Noboru and Valentina followed closely behind in their car, with Moreau still back at the hotel, monitoring the team’s progress. He planned to catch up with them later in the day.
Hansen had already decided that he’d be the one to speak with the forger. He reviewed the intel Moreau had given him.
Emmanuel Chenevier was a thirty-year veteran of the Directorate-General for External Security, a rather important-sounding synonym for France’s foreign intelligence agency. While the data did not indicate that Fisher and Chenevier had a prior relationship, Hansen had a strong feeling that they had known each other for years. At the very least, Fisher would be aware of the agent and his impressive record that indicated he was fiercely loyal to his country. That Chenevier would help an American on the run might prove surprising to some — unless of course Hansen’s initial premise was correct: The two were old friends. Fisher’s record indicated that there had been a time, back in the early 1990s, when he would’ve had the opportunity to meet and perhaps work with Chenevier; however, that was speculation on Hansen’s part.
When they were about ten minutes away from Chenevier’s place, Moreau told them he’d tried to call the man’s home phone. No answer. Chenevier did not have a cell-phone number that Moreau could find, so there was a chance he had stepped out. The geeks back home studying the satellite feeds had reported that they had not seen Chenevier leave his building, so perhaps he was home but not answering the phone.
Valentina, Gillespie, and Noboru kept close to the river, taking pictures of one another like goofy tourists. Ames established an overwatch position near the courtyard beside the entrance to the first-floor apartment.
Hansen walked by a redwood lounger, on which sat a copy of
He waited. He knocked again, waited some more. “I don’t think he’s home.” He groaned into his SVT.
“And so we set up. And we wait,” said Moreau.
“Let me go inside and take a look around.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“If we play a gentleman’s game, he’ll be far more likely to talk. If you violate his privacy like a rookie, he’ll shut down. Trust me.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know men like Chenevier.”
“What if you’re wrong? What if he’s left the country?”
“He hasn’t. We’d know about it.”
“Then where is he?”
“He’s probably watching you right now. Give him some time. He’ll come around. He wants to feel you out first, see what he’s dealing with. When he realizes that Fisher’s got a bunch of young bucks after him, he’ll talk to
