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: "Grimsdottir."

"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 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.