VALENTINAhad crossed rue Barbourg well ahead of everyone else and had the lead. She'd be the one to nab Fisher now, and as she ran, she thought how excellent that would be and how much that would prove to not only Grim, Moreau, and the others, but to herself. She was not a Barbie with an SC-20K. She was an operator, through and through.
The cheering of fans grew louder, and she spotted the banks of lights outlining the main entrance to the stadium and began racing through the parking lot, her gaze reaching out toward anything red, any shade of red, from pink to deep crimson, but most of the Jeunesse Esch fans leaving early were wearing the home team's black shirt with black and yellow logo.
All right, if Fisher had gone inside the stadium, he would've had to buy a ticket. She could not ask every attendant if he or she had seen a man in a red shirt. There were seven ticket booths and certainly other folks dressed in red. She quickly handed over her credit card to the young man behind the nearest booth, and he told her that the game was almost over. She told him she didn't care and double-timed it inside, resisting the temptation to run so as not to draw too much attention to herself.
"All right, I'm in the stadium," she reported.
Now, what would Fisher do?
What would she do?
She glanced up and down the large hallway below the bleachers. Souvenir shops and food vendors lined the left side. And there it was: the men's room.
"What would I do?" she muttered aloud. "I'd change."
She charged toward the men's room and brushed by a pair of young men in their twenties, who did a double take as she pushed through the door and hurried inside.
The place reeked. Men were pigs with bad aim. Three such swine stood at the urinals, and one, a portly middle-aged man with white sideburns, turned his head and suddenly frowned at her as his neighbor, an equally old man, turned and said, "Hey, sweetheart, are you looking for me?"
She ignored the perv and went straight for the white steel trash bin near the bank of sinks. She knocked it down to the tile floor. The lid crashed off and out came Fisher's clothes, along with piles of crumpled-up towels.
She cursed and reported her findings. She snatched up the clothes and ran out of the room, leaving the old gawkers behind.
Valentina then ventured up to the stadium proper and stood there at the foot of the bleachers, her face panning the sea of faces, some five thousand in all. He'd changed and probably bought himself a hat. Hundreds of identical caps seemed to bob as though floating on waves across the stands.
"Maya, report," ordered Hansen.
"I don't think he planned any of this." She gasped. "I just think he's one lucky guy."
Her shoulders slumped. They would never find him now.
But part of her said don't give up, and she kept probing the faces, probing . . . and then came a thought that she voiced to the others: "He might try to leave on the east side."
HANSENsent Noboru back to the train station in Esch-sur-Alzette. He ordered Gillespie to take her SUV up rue Jean-Pierre Bausch, north of the stadium, and remain there. He, Ames, and Valentina eventually met up on the east side of the stadium, and Hansen realized that a densely wooded area lay before them.
Fisher could have easily left the stadium via the east exit and vanished into that perfect cover. Beyond the forest to the northeast lay the town of Schifflange with its mushroomlike water tower. Fisher could reach Highway 31 and simply hitchhike or walk farther east to the towns of Rumelange, Kayl, and Tetange. At any rate, he was pushing farther into Luxembourg, a country slightly smaller than Rhode Island and bordering France, Germany, and Belgium. Was he just running through here? Or did he have a clear purpose in mind?
After five minutes of surveying the tree line with their binoculars, Hansen ordered Gillespie to come back down and pick them up. They would head out to Highway 4.
"I've got all our resources online," said Moreau. "He tries to rent car, we got him. He buys a train ticket, we got him."
"If he's not using cash," said Hansen. "Don't humor me, Moreau. We've already lost him. We're just going through the motions now."
Abruptly, Noboru's breathless voice cut over the channeclass="underline" "It's Nathan. I'm at the train station. I think I have him."
NOBORUwas running along the platform, weaving through the few other people and chasing after the man in the red shirt and white ball cap.
After first spotting the man, Noboru widened his eyes. They made eye contact from afar, the man's face half in shadow--but his shirt said enough. Noboru had started for him, and he charged off.
"What's he wearing?" Valentina demanded.
"Back to the red shirt. White cap."
"No, he's changed," she cried. "And if he hasn't, the team caps are black."
"Or maybe he wants us to think he's changed but hasn't."
"No, he has," she insisted. "You got the wrong guy."
"Then why's this guy running?"
Noboru launched himself into the air and came down from the platform with a heavy thump on the soft earth, as the guy started across the train tracks toward a long row of maintenance buildings on the other side.
That he might be the one to capture Sam Fisher didn't register much with Noboru. He felt badly about what had happened to the man, but he wouldn't think twice about killing him. In truth, Noboru knew exactly what it felt like to be on the run, and in one respect killing Fisher would be ending the man's suffering. It was a difficult thing to live your life always looking over your shoulder; it wore down your spirit even as the nightmares drained you of sleep.
Horatio and Gothwhiler were there. Always there.
Noboru caught up with the man, dropped to the ground, and threw his leg out, in an expert maneuver, to trip his prey.
The guy dropped hard as Noboru rolled upright, stood, and aimed his SC pistol. He finally saw the man's face.
"It's all right, you got me now. They're in the top right pocket. I don't care. Tell Pierre it's all over. I'm not doing this for him anymore. I quit."
Noboru fought for breath and released a string of curses in Japanese; then he said, in English, "Maya, you were right. Wrong guy."
"Who are you?" asked the man, who was in his twenties, clean shaven but built exactly like Sam Fisher. "What's that tape you got on your neck?"
"What's in your pocket?" asked Noboru.
The guy frowned. "The drugs."
Noboru continued to catch his breath and shook his head. "Don't wear red ever again."
"Why not?"
Noboru leaned down and, still panting, put his gun in the man's face. "Because I'll come back and kill you."
MOREAUagreed with Valentina that the team should focus its search efforts east of the stadium, and Hansen could only assume that the man knew more than he was sharing, as usual. They drove the ten minutes out to the small village of Kayl, where they waited for Noboru to join them. Then Hansen sent him and Valentina down to Rumelange, while Gillespie and Ames would check out Tetange. They, too, were small, rural villages nestled into the countryside. Hansen would remain in Kayl and maintain a constant surveillance of the main road from an embankment cordoned off by clusters of tall pines.