“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 Grim, puts his own man on the team dispatched to hunt me down. Grim’s inept handling of the situation allows me to escape multiple times until finally Kovac’s agent saves the day. Same scenario at Hammerstein. Kovac called in a favor from the BND.”
Hansen was having trouble fitting all the pieces together, not because they didn’t fit but because he didn’t want them to fit. “What’s the worst-case scenario?”
“Kovac’s a traitor and he’s working for whoever hired Yannick Ernsdorff.”
Hansen didn’t know that name, but he figured Fisher would explain further. The man went on:
“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 — to Yannick Ernsdorff — 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 underground. 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.”
Fisher explained that these secret Chinese manufacturing facilities were dedicated to cloning and improving on Western military technology, not unlike the way other Chinese manufacturers stole and produced knockoffs of other American and European patented products, but on a much grander and more sophisticated scale. Fisher said the Guoanbu, or China’s Ministry of State Security, stole schematics, diagrams, material samples, basically anything it could acquire to feed to the doppelganger factories’ production.
“Sounds like an urban legend,” said Hansen.
“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.”
Fisher said that Yannick Ernsdorff was playing banker for a black- market weapons auction starring the world’s worst terrorist groups. He and Grim called the collection the Laboratory 738 Arsenal after the doppelganger factory it was stolen from. Fisher said he’d found the crew that completed the job: They were former SAS boys led by Charles “Chucky Zee” Zahm, who had, in fact, become a famous novelist.
“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, Fisher added.
“What kind of stuff?”
Fisher said he’d show Hansen an inventory list later, but, more important, they couldn’t let the 738 Arsenal get away from them. “Ben, you might have seen a piece from the arsenal.”
“Come again?”
“The doppelganger factory that Zahm hit was in eastern China, near the Russian border. The Jilin- Heilongjiang region, about a hundred miles northwest of Vladivostok, and about sixty miles from a Russian town called Korfovka.”
Hansen frowned at the mention of that town, and suddenly his thoughts swept back to that mission, that very first mission as a Splinter Cell, and Rugar drawing back his fist…
“I was there,” Hansen finally said. “A while ago.”
Fisher said Korfovka was the town where Zahm delivered the arsenal about five months before. Hansen explained that he was there much earlier than that.
“I got out because somebody helped me. Stepped in at just the right moment.”
Fisher did not flinch. “Lucky break.”
“Yeah… lucky.” Hansen narrowed his gaze even more. Was Fisher just being coy? If he hadn’t saved Hansen, how would he know about Hansen catching a glimpse of a piece of the arsenal? Had Grim told him? “This is a tall tale, Sam. Doppelganger factories, Chinese replica weapons, this auction, Kovac…”
“Truth is stranger than fiction.”
Hansen took a long breath and decided to confirm with Fisher what he already knew: “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 agreed that he and the others had already realized their strings were being pulled.
But now Hansen had confirmation of why Grim had been forced to put a team in the field to hunt down Fisher. If she refused, she’d be out, and all the work they’d done since Lambert’s death would be lost. Fisher’s mission was, indeed, more important than Hansen could have imagined, and while he still loathed being used, he understood, and that provided a small measure of reassurance.
Fisher explained that he’d hacked into Ernsdorff ’s server and learned more information about the planned auction, which was now only days away and at the point of no return. Hansen and the team would no longer be straight men in Fisher’s comedy road show, which was, of course, fantastic news.
“Exactly. Yesterday I tagged one of the auction attendees. A Chechen named Aariz Qaderi.”
“CMR, right?” Hansen asked, the name familiar to him. “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.”
Fisher said they didn’t have time to go into an in-depth discussion of the nanobot trackers he’d used but that they needed to start moving east until the trackers phoned home.
“What about Ames?” Hansen asked.
“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. Grimsdottir’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?”
Hansen was already grinning. “Right. 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 beamed. “I’ll see what I can do.” Hansen then suggested that Fisher grab a seat along the back wall in the dark office. He wanted a moment to speak to the team before dropping the bomb on them, and he worried about Ames’s reaction if Fisher were to suddenly appear.
Fisher did so, after putting another dart in Ivanov to be sure they would have their “privacy,” as he’d put it.
Hansen called in the rest of the team members and, out in the main storage area, told them about Fisher’s
