Although Fisher’s pistol was raised, Hansen’s lead arm was coming toward him in a backhanded arc.
Even Fisher’s expression said he knew what would happen. His shot would go wide.
Now his glance flicked down to the dagger Hansen had simultaneously drawn from the sheath concealed by his coat. Hansen held the blade in a reverse grip, keeping it tucked against his inner forearm, and within the better part of a second, he would have that blade pressed firmly against Mr. Sam Fisher’s throat.
36
“I’m going back inside,” said Ames.
“No, you’re not,” Valentina said, crossing in front of him. She was a couple of breaths away from punching him squarely in the jaw. In her mind’s eye, she watched him drop to the oily pavement, hand going to the blood trickling down from his mouth.
Ames cursed loudly and added, “Games, games, and more games! I’m over this! Aren’t you all?”
“Look, whatever the message is, I’m sure Ben will share it with us,” said Gillespie.
“But why was the message only for him?” asked Noboru.
“Yeah, you see what I’m talking about?” Ames cried. “Now Hansen is one of them, and the four of us are being used. You can’t trust anyone here. I’m telling you. You can’t trust anyone.”
“Give him another minute and we’ll find out,” said Valentina. “But I’m sure Ben is not, quote, ‘one of them… ’ ”
Hansen expected Fisher to duck, but instead he took a sliding step forward, lifting his right hand to block Hansen’s knife arm. Then, with his free hand balled into a fis t, Fisher struck a solid jab into the nerves and soft tissue of Hansen’s armpit. It was a strange and unpredictable counterattack, which sent pain shooting up and down Hansen’s arm. He sensed his momentum faltering as Fisher clamped down on the wrist of his knife hand, then spun around his back, forcing him to shift likewise and lose his balance.
Fisher tightened his grip, and Hansen felt the twisting, stretching, and tearing in his hand a second before he could do no more than release the knife, which clattered to the concrete. He tried to repress a gasp but couldn’t with the fire blazing in his hand.
Before Hansen knew what was happening, his feet were kicked out from under him and he was on his back, with Fisher’s knee jammed into his chest and the air escaping from his lungs. Hansen’s cheeks began to warm, and when he tried to breathe, no air would come.
The dagger swept down across Hansen’s throat, and in one ego-shattering moment, Hansen knew he was defeated.
“This is my knife, Ben. Why do you have my knife?”
Hansen tried to answer, but he couldn’t. Fisher released some of the pressure from his knee. Hansen stole a breath and eventually got out one word: “Grimsdóttir.”
“Grim gave you this?”
“Thought it… thought it would bring… luck.”
At that, Fisher’s lips curled into a broad grin. “How’s it working for you so far?”
Hansen sucked down air. “Keep it.”
Fisher said he would and warned Hansen that he was climbing off and not to move. Hansen had no problem with that and asked Fisher what the hell he’d just done to him.
“I’ll take that as a rhetorical question,” Fisher answered, his grin turning crooked.
He then told Hansen to call Grim and ask about Karlheinz van der Putten.
“The guy that gave us the Vianden tip? Ames’s contact?”
“That’s him. Make the call.”
Hansen did, and what Grim told him left his jaw hanging open. Hansen finally looked up at Fisher and said, “She says you’ll answer all my questions.”
“As best I can.”
Hansen added that Grim was sorry about the knife. Fisher laughed, then told him to contact the team and tell them he’d be finished shortly. That done, Fisher went on to confirm that he and Grim now believed that Ames was a mole.
“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 doppelgänger 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 doppelgänger 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 doppelgänger 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 résumé,” 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?”