Conviction (2009)

by Tom - Splinter Cell 05 Clancy

  "No, not mad. It just put our relationship in a different light."

  "I'm sorry about that. I am. I had these guys after me--"

  "I know. You can make it up to me, though."

  "Stop pointing that gun at me."

  "Are you going to behave?"

  "Yes, of course."

  Fisher lowered the gun but didn't put it away. He extended his left hand to Ivanov and helped him up. "What do you want?" the Russian said.

  "You're going to get some visitors in a little bit. I need you to do a little acting."

  "What kind of visitors?"

  "The kind that hurt bad actors."

  "Ah, Sam, don't--"

  "Just play it like I tell you and nothing will happen to you."

  "Can't I do something else? I have a sister in Karkiv--"

  "Shut up, Adrik, and listen. . . ." When Fisher finished explaining what he wanted, he had Ivanov repeat it several times until he was satisfied. "One last thing," Fisher said. "Friends or not, if you burn me I'll shoot you dead. Do you believe me?"

  "I believe you."

  30

  WHILE Ivanov sat in his office and sulked, Fisher found his perch, the second tier of the central rack shelf. He climbed up and rearranged boxes and crates until he had a blind from which he could see the whole warehouse. Aside from a blind spot to the right of the office, and one around the main door, he had clear fields of fire.

  He settled down to wait.

  NOT bad, the logical part of Fisher's brain thought twenty minutes later as the warehouse door swung open silently and Ben Hansen stepped through and to the right, SC pistol extended. They'd picked the lock without a sound. Right behind Hansen appeared Gillespie, then Valentina, Noboru, and finally Ames. On flat feet, Ames and Valentina rushed the office and swarmed Ivanov, who was on the floor with a gun to his head before he had a chance to open his mouth. Using hand signals, Hansen ordered Gillespie and the other three to search the warehouse. Once done, they gestured back, all clear, and Hansen called, "Clear. Okay, bring him out."

  Ames frog-marched Ivanov from the office and gave him a too-rough shove, sending him, belly first, to the concrete before Hansen. Ivanov tried to raise himself to the push-up position, but Ames stepped forward and rammed his heel into Ivanov's butt, shoving him down again. Gillespie and Noboru each shot Ames an irritated glance.

  "Enough, Ames," Hansen ordered. "Leave him be." Ames offered a smarmy grin. "Just trying to soften him up a bit, boss."

  Hansen ignored the sarcasm. He knelt before Ivanov and helped him to his knees. "Are you Adrik Ivanov?"

  "Yes, I'm Ivanov. Who are you? What do you want?"

  "We're looking for a man," Hansen said. "An old friend of yours named Sam."

  "I don't know any Sam."

  "Yes, you do. He's been here."

  "No one's been here. I work alone. I came on at six o'clock and haven't seen anyone since--"

  Hansen cut him off: "You owe some people money." "Hey, no! I paid them two months ago."

  "Maybe so, but the people we're talking about don't keep paper records. They prefer computers. Computers can be hacked, records changed. Are you understanding me?"

  "No. What are you saying? Computers . . . what computers?"

  "Tell us what we want to know or we're going to make it so you owe a lot of people a lot of money."

  "You can't do that."

  "We can. And we will. You got a visit tonight from an old friend," Hansen repeated. "Tell us what he wanted."

  Fisher knew Hansen was bluffing; he knew nothing. Still, the authority in his voice left little room for doubt.

  Ivanov shrugged and spread his arms in bewilderment.

  Hansen pointed at Valentina and said, "Make the call. Let's start him out at three hundred thousand rubles. What is that, about ten thousand dollars?" He looked at his companions for confirmation.

  Noboru nodded and said, "Yeah, ten thousand, more or less."

  Valentina got out her cell phone and started punching numbers.

  Ivanov cried, "Yes, okay, fine. He was here." "When?" Hansen asked.

  "About an hour ago."

  "What did he want?"

  "He was hurt. Something wrong with his ribs. He said he needed someplace to sleep. . . ." Ivanov's voice trailed off. He sighed with just the right amount of solemnity.

  Attaboy, Fisher thought.

  "Go on," Hansen said.

  "I gave him the keys to my apartment."

  Hansen spent the next five minutes firing questions at Ivanov--was Fisher armed, did he have a car, was he alone?--until seemingly satisfied that he'd wrung the Russian dry of information.

  "You can forget about this visit," Hansen told him.

  "Believe me, I will. What about--"

  "If you cross us, I'll make the call. You'll have every Russian mobster in Odessa looking for you. Understand?"

  "I understand."

  Hansen nodded to the others, and they began heading toward the door. Hansen went last, taking a moment to help Ivanov to his feet. "Stay off the phone, too."

  "Yes . . . yes . . ."

  Hansen headed for the door.

  Come on, Adrik.

  "Hey, you're Hansen, aren't you?"

  Hansen turned back. At the door, the others did as well.

  "What?" Hansen said with some edge in his voice. "What did you say?"

  "He told me to give you a message."

  "What?"

  Ivanov glanced toward the others. "In private."

  Ames barked, "That's crap! What the hell is this? Hansen--"

  "Quiet." Then to Ivanov: "Tell me."

  Ivanov shook his head. "He told me, only you. Listen, I've known Sam a long time, and, to be honest, he scares me a lot more than you scare me."

  Ames chuckled. "Well, dummy, in about fifteen minutes good old Sam is going to be dead or tied up in our trunk. If you got an ounce of brains, you'll--"

  Hansen interrupted. "Everyone outside." Ames started to protest, but Hansen shot him a glance. Fisher couldn't see his face, but clearly it worked. Ames snapped his mouth shut and filed out with the others. The door banged shut.

  "What's the message?" Hansen asked.

  From the rack, Fisher fired once, sticking a dart in the side of Ivanov's neck. Even as he fell, Fisher adjusted his aim to Hansen. To his credit, Hansen exercised the better part of valor, discreetly raising his hands above his head.

  Without looking around Hansen said evenly, "Hey, Fisher."

  "HI, Ben," Fisher replied.

  "I guess this is what you'd call a rookie mistake."

  "Mistakes are mistakes. They happen. How you handle them is what counts."

  "I'll keep that in mind. What are we doing? What's this about?"

  "Carefully, pull out your SC and lay it on the floor."

  Hansen did so and was about to slide it away with his foot when Fisher stopped him. "Too noisy, Ben. Nice try, though. Interlace your fingers and place them on your head. Take ten steps forward."

  Hansen didn't move.

  "I won't ask again. I'll just dart you and this will turn ugly before it's started." Hansen paced forward the ordered number of steps. "Now turn and face the office." Hansen complied. "On your knees, ankles crossed."

  Once Hansen was in position, Fisher climbed down the rack ladder and came up behind Hansen, stopping ten feet away. Hansen turned his head and said over his shoulder, "You've been a pain in my ass, you know."

  "Sorry about that. It was necessary."

  "Is that what you want to talk about? That there are extenuating circumstances? That you didn't really kill Lambert?"

  "No, I killed Lambert. He asked me to."

  "Bull. You've been jerking us around for weeks--you, Grimsdottir, and Moreau--but as far as I'm concerned, you're a run-of-the-mill murderer."

  "You sound angry, Ben."

  "Damn right I'm angry. You've run us ragged. Five of us, and we never even came close."

  "You came close. More times than you know. Yo
u almost had me in Hammerstein."

  "No, I didn't. You pushed me into a split-second, no-win scenario, and you knew I'd hesitate." He chuckled. "You know what gets me? I don't even know how you . . ." Hansen turned his head back forward and his voice trailed off.

  Even as Fisher was doing it, taking that natural step forward to catch the tail end of Hansen's words, alarms went off in his head. Mistake. Hansen had started the conversation, built some animosity, then injected some amiability and piqued Fisher's curiosity with the trailing sentence.

  A well-laid trap, Fisher thought, as Hansen levered himself upright and spun on his heel, instantly cutting the distance between them by seven feet. Fisher brought the SC pistol up, but the motion of Hansen's lead arm, coming toward him in a flat, backhanded arc, told Fisher it was too late. The shot would go wide. The knife Hansen surely had concealed in his fist, its blade tucked against his inner forearm, was a half second from his throat. Fisher resisted the impulse to backpedal or duck. It would be what Hansen expected, and Fisher couldn't afford to find himself in a protracted, noisy wrestling match with the young Splinter Cell. It was a fight he couldn't win, especially when the rest of the team rushed back in to investigate the commotion.

  Instead, Fisher took a quick sliding step forward, his right hand coming up to block Hansen's knife arm, while his left hand, formed into a fist with his thumb extended, shot forward and plunged into the nerve bundle in Hansen's armpit. Hansen's eyes went wide with pain. His momentum faltered. Fisher clamped down on Hansen's knife wrist, then spun on his heel, around Hansen's back, using the momentum to pull Hansen around and off balance. He slid his left hand down, joined it with his right on Hansen's wrist, then pulled it toward him, torquing the wrist joint at the same time. Fisher could feel the bones and ligaments beneath Hansen's skin twisting, stretching. . . . Hansen gasped in pain. The knife clattered to the floor. Fisher kept moving, however, using his own momentum to keep Hansen stumbling forward until he spun once more, this time changing direction, swinging Hansen's arm back over his head, while side kicking his feet out from under him. He landed with a thud, back flat on the concrete. Fisher dropped his weight, jamming his knee into Hansen's solar plexus. All the air exploded from Hansen's mouth. His face went red as he tried to suck air.

  Fisher reached behind him and grabbed Hansen's knife. Even before seeing it, he knew the feel of its haft, its balance. . . . It was Fisher's own Fairbairn Sykes World War II-era commando dagger. A gift from an old family friend, the FS had for years been Fisher's lucky charm. After Lambert, he'd been forced to leave it behind.

  Now Fisher laid the FS's blade across Hansen's throat. "This is my knife, Ben. Why do you have my knife?"

  Hansen was still gasping for air. Fisher waited until finally Hansen wheezed out, "Grimsdottir."

  "Grim gave you this?"

  "Thought it . . . thought it would bring . . . luck." Fisher smiled at this. "How's it working for you so far?"

  Hansen took a deep breath. "Keep it."

  "I'm going to get off you. Lie there. Don't move.

  Once you've got your breath back, I want you to do me a favor. After that, we call 'time in.' Deal?"

  Hansen nodded.

  "Your word on it," Fisher pushed.

  Hansen nodded again. It took another thirty seconds before he fully recovered. "Jesus, what the hell did you do to me?"

  "I'll take that as a rhetorical question. Are you ready to hear the favor?"

  "Yeah."

  "Call Grimsdottir. Ask her about Karlheinz van der Putten."

  "The guy that gave us the Vianden tip? Ames's contact?"

  "That's him. Make the call."

  Hansen fished his cell phone from his pocket and hit speed dial. A few moments later he said, "It's Hansen. Yeah, I'm with him. . . . I'm supposed to ask you about van der Putten." Hansen was silent for a full minute as Grim spoke. Finally he said, "This is on the level? No more games? Okay, got it. I'll hear him out." Hansen disconnected and looked at Fisher. "She's says you're going to answer all my questions."

  "As best I can."

  "She also said to tell you, 'Sorry about the Fairbairn Sykes.' "

  Fisher laughed. "Sure she is. First things first. Call your team. Tell them everything's okay and that you'll get back to them shortly."

  Hansen made the call on his SVT, then disconnected.

  "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 Grimsdottir, puts his own man on the team dispatched to hunt down Sam Fisher. Grimsdottir's inept handling of the situation allows Fisher to escape multiple times, until finally Kovac's agent saves the day. Same scenario at Hammerstein. Kovac called in a favor at the BND."

  Hansen absorbed this for a few moments. "What's the worst-case scenario?"

  "Kovac's a traitor and he's working for whoever hired Yannick Ernsdorff. 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--and in Yannick Ernsdorff 's general direction--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 to ground. 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."

  "They're secret Chinese factories dedicated to cloning and improving on Western military technology. The Guoanbu steals schematics, diagrams, material samples--whatever it can get its hands on--then feeds them to doppelganger factories for production."

  "Sounds like an urban legend."

  "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. Here's the important part: Yannick Ernsdorff is playing banker for a black-market weapons auction starring the world's worst terrorist groups. Grim and I call it the 738 Arsenal--named after the doppelganger factory it was stolen from."

  "And you know this how?"

  "I found the crew that did the job--a bunch of bored former SAS boys led by Charles 'Chucky Zee' Zahm."

  "The writer?"

  "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."

  "What kind of stuff?"

  "I'll show you the list later, but suffice it to say we can't let the 738 Arsenal get away from us. Ben, you might have even seen pieces from the arsenal."

  "Come again?"

  "The doppelganger factory that Zahm hit was in eastern China, near the Russian border. In Jilin-Heilongjiang, about a hundred miles northwest of Vladivostok and about sixty miles from a Russian town called Korfovka."

  At the mention of Korfovka, Hansen's eyes narrowed. "I was there. A while ago."

  "That's where Zahm claims he delivered the
arsenal."

  "When was this?"

  "About five months ago."

  "I was there before that. The mission went . . . bad."

  "That happens," Fisher said carefully. "It seems you got out okay."

  Hansen was nodding vaguely. He stopped and studied Fisher's face. "I got out because somebody helped me. Stepped in at just the right moment."

  "Lucky break."

  "Yeah . . . lucky." Hansen shook himself from his reverie. "This is a tall tale, Sam. Doppelganger factories, Chinese replica weapons, this auction, Kovac . . ."

  "Truth is stranger than fiction."

  "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 and his team had already realized their strings were being pulled, but not why.

  "Correct," Fisher said. "He forced her to put a team in the field. If she refused, she'd be out, and all the work we'd done since Lambert's death would be gone. I had to make it look good--keep you guys close, but not so close I couldn't work. Without some minor victories and near misses, Kovac could have called Grimsdottir's plan a failure, and she'd be out."

  "This explains why she's been jerking us around. She's been juggling a lot of balls," Hansen said. "Back to Kovac. If he's not just an asshole but an asshole and a traitor, and he's working for Ernsdorff 's boss, then . . ."

  "We couldn't afford to have him know I was on to Ernsdorff or the auction."

  "But Kovac knew you were there. Wouldn't he have already pushed the panic button?"

  "Probably. And the first thing Ernsdorff and his boss would have done is check security. I didn't leave any fingerprints when I hacked Ernsdorff 's server; none of the auction attendees have disappeared. . . . As far as they can tell, all is well. We suspect the auction is days away; they're at the point of no return."

  "Yeah, you don't invite the world's worst tangos to one location, then tell them at the last minute to turn around and go home."

  "No, not with these kinds of stakes. And this is where you come in, Ben."

  "You mean we get to stop playing straight man in your comedy road show?"

  "Exactly. Yesterday I tagged one of the auction attendees. A Chechen named Aariz Qaderi."