by Tom Clancy
Within twenty minutes, he was off the ferry and walking along the icy pavement toward the bustling train station, where he would meet Sergei Luchenko. Unsurprisingly, a knot had already formed in his stomach. Part of him wanted to apologize for being selected as a Splinter Cell; the other part wanted to tell Sergei, “Too bad, buddy, but you didn’t cut it, and I did.” Hansen didn’t want to feel sorry for his own success.
But hell, Hansen did. Sergei’s reflexes and mental agility had been good enough for the CIA, but substandard for Third Echelon. He could’ve returned to his old three-letter agency (or another, like UPS, they liked to joke), but Hansen figured Sergei might be too embarrassed to return. Besides, his fellow operatives would wonder exactly why he hadn’t lasted in his new position with the NSA (which was all they’d been told).
Hansen reached the train station, a pale yellow and alabaster-white affair with ornate glass-block windows and thick columns and spires suggesting that its architects had once worked for Disney. The word “Vladivostok,” in bright red Cyrillic letters, hung high above the main entrance, and out front lay a bus terminal and a parking lot jammed with private cars and taxis whose drivers stood by and chain-smoked, waiting for their next fares. A pair of footbridges over the tracks gained passengers access to the buses and lots, and Hansen already noted how someone could lie low behind the railings and observe the comings and goings of those passengers. It was there that he spotted Sergei.
Before Hansen veered off the sidewalk, he chanced a quick glance over his shoulder. Then he hustled forward and slipped down behind the railings, where Sergei came to greet him.
Hansen was taken aback by the weight his old friend had lost — at least twenty, perhaps thirty pounds, his face thin and unshaven. Sergei took a long drag on his cigarette, dropped it, stamped it out, then proffered his hand. “I see you found me, Ben. I thought I was being more discreet. Guess that’s why they flunked me, huh?” Sergei spoke in perfect Russian, but that was one of the many languages he had learned — or relearned as he liked to say. He’d been born and raised in Sacramento, California, the son of Russian immigrants.
Tensing, Hansen took the man’s hand, shook firmly, and answered in Russian: “Sergei, thanks for being here.”
“Just doing my job. Equipment transporter. Taxicab driver. All in a day’s work.”
“Look, I wish things had worked out differently.”
“You? Hell… me, too!” He shuddered against the cold and pulled the collar of his woolen coat tighter to his neck. “Come on, I have the car parked over there.”
“No tails?”
“None that I can tell. But are you trusting me, the flunky?”
“Come on, enough of that.”
“I’m just busting your chops. I knew this would be awkward for you, and you know what a wiseass I am.”
Hansen sighed and curled his lips in a weak grin.
They started across the street, toward the parking lot, and Sergei led him to a late-model Toyota Mark X sedan with right-hand drive. The lock chirped, and Hansen crossed to the left side, stored his bags in the backseat, then climbed in.
“Murdoch still hasn’t checked in to the hotel, so I’m getting a little worried,” Sergei reported, switching to English.
“We headed there now?”
“Yeah, I’ve been there for a couple of days.”
“And the meeting is still on for tonight, 8:00 P.M., in Korfovka.”
Sergei shrugged. “No one’s told me otherwise.”
“How far is it from the hotel?”
“About ninety minutes, give or take.”
“Give or take what?”
“Give or take a snowstorm, an ice storm, a nuclear event.”
Hansen looked at him. “Always the wiseass.”
“Always.”
Despite his not being accepted into Third Echelon’s Splinter Cell program, Sergei, like Hansen, had received some of the best training in the world, compliments of the CIA. The average citizen had no idea of the length, the breadth, the sheer scope and magnitude of such schooling and the areas it encompassed. Both men had been given courses on advanced military technology; military strategy and tactics; computer security; countersurveillance; the art of disguise; etiquette and arts in foreign cultures; languages; explosives; fake IDs and secret banking; field medicine; forensics; guerrilla warfare; hand-to-hand knife combat; incendiary devices; international and local law; lock-bypassing techniques; photography and videography; poisons; psychology; drugs; sniper techniques; and, finally, surveillance.
Third Echelon’s training had taken those areas to the next level by incorporating more unconventional warfare techniques borrowed from American special forces as well as hand-to-hand combat techniques like krav maga, borrowed from the Israelis. The French-born art of parkour was also studied as a technique for deftly navigating around obstacles while fleeing. And then, of course, was the newer, more controversial training conducted by a pair of world-famous Chinese acrobats seeking political asylum in the United States. Those lithe men taught Hansen to hook his arms and legs around pipes and other objects in ways he had never considered. That they were contortionists helped, if not frustrated, the rest of the recruits.
“I still think about Somalia, even after all this time,” Sergei said out of nowhere.
Hansen took a deep breath, wishing he could forget about his short time in that country. “All we did was light their fires. And now look: We have even more pirates.”
“You didn’t believe me.”
“I know. But it’s the hits that count, not the misses, and I still love this. I still think it’s important.”
“Still a rush, huh?”
“I won’t lie. But listen to us. We sound like a couple of vets when we haven’t put the time in, not really.”
“I don’t know, buddy. Took me a long time to wind up here. And I just turned thirty. You never trust anyone over thirty.”
Hansen chuckled. “My old man used to say that. Some mantra from the 1960s.”
“I thought it was a quote from the Planet of the Apes movie,” Sergei said with a frown.
Hansen shrugged and leaned back on his seat to take in the sights for just another two minutes before they reached the Gavan Hotel at 3 Krygina Street. According to a travel brochure Hansen found on the seat beside him, there were fifty-seven guest rooms “where customers can find a maximum comfort. Following the home-away-from-home style, the Gavan hotel shows a unique combination of homelike atmosphere and modern comfort.”
They parked, and Sergei led him up to a room on the seventh floor. When they entered, a young woman was standing near the bed, wearing only a bra and panties.
Hansen’s jaw fell open as Sergei rushed into the room, grabbed the woman by the wrist, and backhanded her across the face. Then he screamed at her in Russian, “What the hell are you still doing here! I told you to leave! Get your clothes and get out!”
“I was talking to my sister.” The woman groaned, clutching her face.
“Get out!”
The woman quickly wriggled into a cheap dress, grabbed her purse, and rushed past Hansen, who remained in the doorway, dumbfounded. “Sergei, what the hell are you doing here?”
Hansen’s old friend dismissed him with a wave and turned to the desk, where he wrenched open a laptop, took a seat, and began typing furiously. “I’ve hacked into the hotel’s registration system. We’ll see if our boy has checked in yet.”
“She was a hooker, wasn’t she?”
“Whatever. Just shut up.”
“Did she see you do this? You left her alone with your computer? She could compromise this entire mission! How the hell do you know her? How long has she been here? Maybe she works for them. Maybe we’re being set up.”
“Jesus Christ, dude, sit down before you have a heart attack. She’s just a whore I picked up.”
“You can’t do that!”
“I’m here to give you your gear and get you to the location. Where the hell does i
t say I can’t screw a hooker?”
Hansen threw his duffel and garment bags onto the bed and began to activate his OPSAT. “This is ridiculous. Insane. Beyond unprofessional.”
“What’re you doing now? Calling Mommy to tell on me?”
Two empty bottles of vodka sat on the desk beside Sergei’s computer, along with two glasses and several packs of cigarettes. Sergei lifted one of the bottles, sipped the remaining few drops, then shook his head in disgust, while Hansen stood there, deciding what to do.
Hansen took a deep breath. “You’re not all right, are you?”
“I’m perfect. And you know why? Because I’m helping you, my old friend. It could be a lot worse, right? Look, I’m sorry about the… Just forget about it. She’s not working for them.” He rapped a knuckle on his computer screen. “And right here… this shows our boy just checked in, about fifteen minutes ago.”
“What room is he in?”
“Eighty-four. Eighty-three is empty.”
“Then let’s get to work — if you’re still a part of this operation.”
“I never left.”
Hansen took a deep breath. “Sergei, you’ve put me in a terrible position. When this is over, I will have to say something.”
“I understand where you’re coming from, but you forget that you still owe me.”
Hansen’s brows knitted. “Owe you what?”
“When they were getting ready to send us over to the ’Stan, who got you through Dari? Or should I say, who helped you cheat your way through Dari? And if they really sent us there, you wouldn’t be talking jack to anyone because you couldn’t hack the language. But it was okay to cheat then, huh?”
“That wasn’t a live operation. And I passed the oral. That was just a multiple-choice exam.”
“And you wanted to go so bad that you’d do anything to get there, even cheat, and so you did — and you still didn’t get to go. Now here we are.”
“So you want to trade a hooker for a multiple-choice test?”
Sergei grabbed a cigarette, stuffed it between his lips. “Now you’re talking.” He reached below the desk and grabbed a backpack. “You ready?”
6
GAVAN HOTEL VLADIVOSTOK, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Hansen and Sergei had drilled small holes in the wall and set up a pair of flexicams with views of Murdoch’s room from the empty one next door, where they sat in darkness. The angles from the flexicams were low, the light dim, but between those snakelike spy cameras and a pair of tiny microphones they had introduced through the electrical outlets, they had established a rudimentary but effective surveillance of the man’s room. They had gained access to the other suite via a sophisticated key card with microprocessor, which not only bypassed the electronic encoding system but also remained hidden from the hotel’s staff. Pretty standard equipment as Third Echelon toys went.
For most of the day, Murdoch remained there, sleeping off his jet lag. Hansen and Sergei spent long hours just listening to the man snore and taking turns napping themselves. At one point, around two in the afternoon, Sergei began whispering to himself, and Hansen interrupted him. “Who are you talking to?”
“Anna ‘the bitch’ Grimsdóttir.”
“Sergei—”
“I’m telling her what I should’ve told her.”
“If you hate it that much—”
“I’ll be all right. I just thought it would be easier. But seeing you here, knowing you got it… and I…”
Hansen reached out and put a consoling hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’m your friend.”
* * *
Around five, Murdoch rose and took a shower. On the other side of the wall, Hansen and Sergei continued watching their four-inch monitors. Meanwhile, Sergei had been running a program to keep tabs on the hotel’s registration system. The program would alert him should the suite they were occupying be booked.
Mr. Michael Murdoch was in good shape for a man who’d spent half a lifetime dining in only the finest restaurants. He obviously made time for the gym, the tennis court, or long weekends of golf, and Hansen immediately hated him, not only for being rich, but for having the abs of a college athlete. Murdoch dressed, picked up his cell phone, and dialed a number. He spoke quickly in Russian: “I’m here. Going to have dinner. I’ll be on time this evening. See you then.”
Now it was Hansen’s turn to verify some data. He’d already pressed his thumb to his OPSAT’s touch screen, activated the device, and established an encrypted link with Third Echelon. After a pause, the screen displayed data on Murdoch’s outgoing call number and location: KORFOVKA — LATITUDE 43.8833 / LONGITUDE 131.3000 / ALTITUDE (FEET) 728. The phone, however, was registered to Beijing High Mountain Exports. No discernable owner, just the company name, a company Hansen suspected would turn out to be a shell. So Murdoch had just spoken in Russian to a man using a Chinese company’s phone.
“Bratus and Zhao are already up there,” Hansen told Sergei.
“But we don’t know exactly where, because they don’t meet in the same place twice. Same town, yes, but different locations every time. That, we’ve already confirmed,” Sergei explained.
“Well, it’s not a very big town. What’s Murdoch using to get up there?”
“If he hasn’t changed his routine, it’ll be a rental car with a driver.”
“We’ll tag it,” said Hansen.
“That’s your job.”
“So we’re done here. Why don’t you get cleaned up yourself? I’ll keep an eye on our buddy from Texas.”
“Whatever you say, Boss.”
Hansen rose quietly to his feet.
* * *
Allen Ames sat in the Gavan Hotel’s main lobby. He had not shaved in a week and was wearing thick nonprescription glasses and a latex stomach apparatus that added fifty pounds to his girth. He had also donned a woolen cap and heavy coat, and to any observer was simply another fat tourist or business traveler engrossed in his smart phone. Were you standing over his shoulder, though, you’d frown at the images displayed on his phone’s screen, images from the hotel restaurant, hallways, and main lobby, courtesy of Ames’s expertly planted microcameras.
He saw that Murdoch had just entered the restaurant, and then he perked up even more when he spotted Hansen doing likewise. But where was Luchenko? Still upstairs? He thumbed back to the image from the hallway outside Murdoch’s room and spotted Luchenko walking forward.
Ames had a question to answer… and that question was when. When should he make his move? He could not allow Hansen to follow Murdoch out to Korfovka. The meeting must take place without Third Echelon’s prying eyes and ears. Moreover, any hint of mistrust on the Americans’ part would ruin the entire deal. Those orders had come down to Ames directly from his true superior, NSA Deputy Director Nicholas Andrew Kovac. Ames was a Splinter Cell, all right, but in the end he did not answer to Grim, and his true mission was to provide constant surveillance of Third Echelon’s operations for the deputy director himself. That Kovac did not trust one of his own subagencies was unremarkable; that he had gone to the extent of planting a mole within Third Echelon itself was a bold move, one that Ames fully appreciated, especially since he had the honor of being that man.
Grim thought Ames was on a weeklong vacation, and Kovac had even borrowed a low-level analyst to pose as Ames and take that very vacation down on the island of St. Barts in the French West Indies. So while some computer schmuck got to frolic on the topless beaches, Ames got the glory job of going to the miserably cold and depressing Russian Federation.
But this was how you made a name for yourself. When Ames was a cop, he’d nearly been recruited for internal affairs. He’d seen so much corruption that he was losing track of right and wrong, but he couldn’t bring himself to become “one of the rats,” even though he’d wanted to take down the men who tarnished the badge. Now he was getting his chance to help keep Third Echelon on the straight and narrow, especially after what had happened with Fisher. Who could blame the depu
ty director? Grim’s more aggressive management style, coupled with a group of eager new recruits, was, in the deputy director’s words, “a serious threat to the stability and credibility of this institution.”
Now, the trick was to ruin Hansen’s operation without ever revealing that Ames had been there. That was the key. Hansen could never know that Ames was behind his failure. The cocky young punk thought he was on his first mission alone, thought he was going to really prove himself to the Grim Reaper. Not on Ames’s watch. No, sir.
But when to strike? Ames had an anesthetic dart pistol in his hip pocket, ready for use. He didn’t want to kill Hansen, only incapacitate him, but Kovac had made it clear: Ben Hansen was expendable, as was Sergei Luchenko. The meeting’s security took precedence over all other concerns.
Ames waited another thirty minutes in the lobby. Hansen sat alone in the restaurant, eating a meal. Murdoch, too, sat alone, finishing up dinner. Murdoch paid his bill and stood. Hansen summoned his own waiter. Ames took a deep breath.
“Excuse me, sir?” said a voice at his shoulder.
With a start, Ames shoved his smart phone into his pocket and whirled back to face a skinny man, about forty, with a birdlike face and narrow eyes. “Yes?” Ames answered in Russian.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve been watching you now for a while. Are you a guest here at the hotel?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. Who are you?”
“I am Boris Svetlanoff, hotel security.” The man offered his hand, and Ames tentatively took it. “Would you mind coming with me?”
Ames hustled to his feet and spotted Murdoch coming into the lobby. Ames’s attention was now riveted on the man.
“Sir, I said: Would you mind coming with me?”
“What?”
The security man shifted in front of Ames, blocking his view of Murdoch — just as Hansen came shifting up behind the businessman.