Zippo lighter through his fingers, a nervous habit Hansen had seem him indulge on more than one occasion. He was such a control freak that being forced to sit in a plane and not pilot it was already driving him crazy. The more Hansen thought about it, the more he realized that Ames’s presence was actually a good thing. Finding new ways to despise him was a pleasant diversion from the half-truths of the mission.
The airport just outside Errouville was little more than a dirt tract four miles southwest of Villerupt. As they landed, they left a long plume of dust in their wake. Their friendly pilot, who’d been silent, cursed as the plane bounced over ruts like a monster truck in the Arizona desert.
Gillespie announced that she was going to throw up. She didn’t, but Valentina told her to aim at you know who. Ames smirked.
The billowing dust from their landing partially clouded the three outbuildings, but Hansen thought he saw the two SUVs that Moreau had mentioned. He’d rented them yet another pair of transports: Renault Koleoses — one black, the other silver. The SUVs were strikingly similar to the Nissan Murano, and Valentina called dibs on the silver one as they taxied up to the end of the strip, turned, and neared the buildings.
In the distance, Hansen spotted a lone car traveling down the narrow road, but it was too far off to see clearly. The pilot helped them unload their gear; then Hansen went inside the door marked BUREAU and caught the attention of a heavyset woman with red hair.
Hansen told her in French that he needed the keys to the rental cars that had been left there by the agency. She handed over the keys and said, “You just missed your friend.”
“Excuse me?”
“There was a man here who said he was expecting five friends.”
Hansen frowned deeply. “Was he a tall black man?”
Moreau had
The woman shook her head. “He was a white man. He was clean shaven, crew cut, tall. Dressed like tourist: red polo shirt and green trousers.”
And Hansen was already reaching for the photo of Sam Fisher he kept in his breast pocket. “Him?”
“That’s him. Are you the police?”
“No…”
“But your friend is in trouble.”
Hansen raised his chin. “Thanks for your help.” He ran outside, shouting, “You’re not going to believe this! Fisher was just here!”
Moreau was talking to Grim via the Trinity System. They floated over the airport in Errouville, watching as Hansen and his team rushed off toward Villerupt.
“The tail I placed on Stingray just reported in,” said Moreau. “Guess where Stingray’s headed?”
“Villerupt,” said Grim. “And since I haven’t issued my next report to Kovac yet, we have confirmation.”
“Let me say it out loud so we’re both clear on this: Stingray is a cutout for someone on our team. Someone on Delta Sly is a mole working for Kovac.” Moreau took a deep breath. “That’s the only way Kovac would’ve known I’m in France and the only way Stingray would know where the team is headed. Someone on the team is feeding the information back to him.”
“So all our efforts to bypass him — meeting here, everything — have been for nothing.”
“Don’t pop the Prozac yet,” sang Moreau. “This just makes the game more fun. First question: Do we notify the team?”
“No, we don’t. That’ll heighten the paranoia, interfere with the mission, and tip off Kovac that we’re on to him. We’ve already got Noboru’s mercs to deal with. We need to handle the mole problem from our end.”
“All right. How about this: If we can identify the mole, then we feed that information to Fisher. He’ll need to remove the problem and the team can be left out of it.”
“Excellent. I could pass this on to Fisher’s cutout, though I’m not sure when they’ll be able to link up again. I’ll have to risk contacting him to see.”
“Any thoughts on who the mole might be?”
“I’d love to rule out Hansen, but there’s no ruling out anyone at this point. He could’ve been working for Kovac before I recruited him. And I confided in him, even picked him for the mission to Russia. That could’ve been a grave error.”
“What about Ames? I hate that little bastard.”
“Who doesn’t? That’s why I like him. He’s a thorn in everyone’s side — including our enemies. And you’ve read his fitness report. He’s scored higher than anyone else on the team, across the board. Fisher told me he doesn’t have the temperament for this line of work, and I agree, but temperament isn’t everything. I think he’s too loud, too noisy, too obvious to be our mole.”
“Or he’s overplaying it so he becomes too obvious.”
“Maybe.”
Moreau squinted into a thought. “What about one of the women?”
“I don’t know. I’ll do some more probing. Noboru could be our man. Maybe Kovac promised him something we couldn’t.”
“Maybe I’m the mole,” said Moreau.
“Don’t even go there, Marty.”
“You know if I am the mole, the entire NSA had better watch out, because I’m so wired into the intelligence community that it wouldn’t take long to bring the walls tumbling down.”
“But instead we got Kovac, who wants to line his pockets and arm our enemies.”
“I’m sure he thinks he’s saving America. As long as our enemies are armed and dangerous, we’re all gainfully employed. No war on terror, no threats, and the NSA downsizes us onto the streets. They’ll say,
Grim smirked. “Our enemies don’t need
21
Valentina drove while Noboru rode shotgun, and it took the team a good forty minutes to get from the airstrip at Errouville to the Sixt rental-car office on place Jeanne d’Arc in Villerupt. Valentina ran inside and cried out breathlessly to the man at the counter, “My father was here earlier and rented a car.” She showed him a picture of Fisher. “He had on a red shirt.”
“Yes, that man was here. Is something wrong?”
“He told me he was going to pick me up, but I can’t find him. He was telling me what color the car was, but the signal dropped on the phone, and now he’s not picking up.”
“I think he took one of our Aveos. A yellow one.”
“Really? Thank you! I’ll go see if he’s waiting for me!” She ran back outside, where Hansen confirmed that the car he’d seen leaving the airport was light colored, probably yellow, though it had been pretty far off.
“I don’t get it. Why would he rent a car, and then come back to the airport just before we arrived?” asked Valentina.
Hansen’s tone darkened. “The target has gone asymmetrical on us, and so have our superiors.”
“Now what?”
Hansen flipped on his OPSAT, pulled up the map, and scrolled around. Valentina read the map over his shoulder.
“He could be anywhere now. He could’ve gone west to Sainte-Claire or south down to Cantebonne. Or maybe he just went straight out to Audun-le-Tiche, right here.” Hansen tapped his finger on the screen. “I’ll be surprised if
