Fisher explained that he'd hacked into Ernsdorff 's server and learned more information about the planned auction, which was now only days away and at the point of no return. Hansen and the team would no longer be straight men in Fisher's comedy road show, which was, of course, fantastic news.

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

"CMR, right?" Hansen asked, the name familiar to him. "Chechen Martyrs Regiment?"

"That's the guy. I tagged him. He's headed east into Russia--on his way to the auction, we hope."

"Hold on. All the attendees will be scrubbed before they reach the auction site. Any kind of beacon or tracker will be found."

"Not the kind we used."

Fisher said they didn't have time to go into an in-depth discussion of the nanobot trackers he'd used but that they needed to start moving east until the trackers phoned home.

"What about Ames?" Hansen asked.

"We'll deal with him later. For now, he's part of the team. We include him in everything."

"What about his cell phone? And his OPSAT? He'll try to contact Kovac."

"Let him. Grimsdottir's made modifications to his phone and OPSAT. Every communication he makes beyond our tactical channels will go straight to her. She'll be playing Kovac and anyone else Ames has been talking to. He'll get voice mail, but Grim will respond to texts. Your phones aren't Internet capable, right?"

Hansen was already grinning. "Right. I like it. I like the plan."

"I thought you might. One thing, though: One of us has to stick to Ames like glue. If he slips away and gets a message out another way, we're done."

"Understood."

"How do you want to handle your people? I'd prefer to not get shot in the confusion."

Hansen beamed. "I'll see what I can do." Hansen then suggested that Fisher grab a seat along the back wall in the dark office. He wanted a moment to speak to the team before dropping the bomb on them, and he worried about Ames's reaction if Fisher were to suddenly appear.

Fisher did so, after putting another dart in Ivanov to be sure they would have their "privacy," as he'd put it.

Hansen called in the rest of the team members and, out in the main storage area, told them about Fisher's mission to locate the auction site and prevent the Laboratory 738 Arsenal from winding up in the hands of terrorists. When Hansen got to the part where Kovac might be involved, he turned his gaze to Ames, who was already shaking his head.

"If you're going to stand there and try to convince us that the deputy director of the goddamned NSA is involved in some ridiculous scam to sell Chinese weapons knockoffs to terrorists, then I'm going to turn around and walk out of here because it's pretty goddamned clear that you, boss man, have gone insane."

"This whole thing is linked to my first mission in Russia. Lambert, Grim, and Fisher were working on this well before we ever became Splinter Cells. Lambert sacrificed himself for this--and it's not some ridiculous scam. That's why Fisher's taking this to the limit. No one can stop him. And I don't blame him. The blood's been drawn. He will end this."

"How do you know, Ben?" asked Gillespie.

"Because I do."

"What about Kovac? If we were putting on a show for him--" began Valentina.

"He won't have time to do anything. The clock's already ticking. The auction will happen."

"So where's Ivanov?" asked Noboru.

Hansen ignored the question and quickly said, "One last thing. We're taking on a new member. He's going to be our team leader from this point on."

"Who the hell--" Valentina began.

"Why would Grimsdottir make a change at this point?" asked Gillespie, who abruptly turned toward the office doorway, where stood Fisher.

As she reached for her gun, Hansen called, "Stand down, Kim. Everybody, hands at your sides."

"You gotta be kidding me. Look who it is," said Ames, wearing his blackest grin.

"Ben, what's going on?"

Hansen steeled his voice. "I think I'll let Mr. Fisher explain that. . . ."

37

" Idon't buy it. Not a word of it," said Ames, wondering how the hell he was going to navigate around this unforeseen complication. Fisher linking up with the team was not part of the plan and would make terminating him all the more difficult. "This is just another circle jerk," he told the others.

Fisher tried to argue. Ames cut him off, told the others they were fools and that Fisher was probably setting them up to take his fall.

No one spoke for a moment; then Gillespie, that dumb-ass redhead, said she believed Fisher (of course she would; she'd screwed him); then she looked at him, all glassy eyed and puppy-dog-l ike, and said, "That night at the foundry . . . I almost shot you. You know that?"

He nodded.

Thankfully, Noboru went off on Fisher, saying that the team should have been notified up front of Grim's plan. Fisher said they couldn't have risked that, but the time had come now to drop the ruse, for two reasons:

"One, to stop this auction I'm going to need your help. There are too many variables, too many unknowns. We won't know until we get there, but my gut tells me this won't be a one-person job. And two, when I went off the bridge at Hammerstein I bought myself some time, but I knew they'd find the car. Kovac would get suspicious and accuse Grim of anything. Any excuse to get her out. If I resurface, you guys get deployed and Kovac has to back off for a while."

Gillespie, her voice cracking, questioned Fisher about how he'd survived the plunge into the Rhine, and he described his use of an OmegaO unit that had allowed him to breathe underwater. He'd waited until the car hit the bottom of the lake before getting out.

Noboru and Fisher spoke once more of their encounter at the Siegfried bunkers, and Noboru thanked Fisher for taking out Horatio and Gothwhiler, the mercs on his tail.

All this happy talk made Ames nauseous. He wanted to step outside and call Stingray, but then he remembered that Grim had issued them new phones and OPSATs before they'd flown out to Odessa. He stared down at the OPSAT on his wrist as though it were a piece of alien technology. Did they know about him? Had they given him a "special" phone and OPSAT so he could be traced? He'd been careful about that in the past. Interesting . . .At least now he'd be able to give Kovac more definitive information regarding Fisher. And he'd have to make contact himself, since his cutout Stingray couldn't get to the area in time. Ames could resort to texting, if he must. . . .

"Now that we're in on the con," Valentina said, "we'll need to be real careful about what gets back to Kovac. If he's involved with this auction stuff, he can't get a hint of what we're doing. If he's not involved but wants Grim out, we can't give him any reason."

"Agreed," said Fisher, glancing around. "Are we good?"

Everyone nodded, but perhaps Ames made his disdain a little too obvious.

"In or out, Ames?" asked Hansen. "Either you're with us or I'll kick your ass back to Fort Meade."

Ames stepped up to him and stiffened. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

Hansen cracked a grin.

Ames answered with a sarcastic smile of his own. "Yeah, okay. I'm on board. We don't have to hug or anything, right? I ain't doing that."