Hansen would grill her, want to know if she'd had the opportunity and failed. She would tell the truth and hope they believed her.
After a deep breath, she fled the roof, picking her way down the stairs, the ladders, the tunnel, until she emerged outside to find that she was the last one left at the foundry. Hansen ordered her to get in the remaining SUV. Noboru had already taken off in the other.
VALENTINA had crossed rue Barbourg well ahead of everyone else and had the lead. She'd be the one to nab Fisher now, and as she ran, she thought how excellent that would be and how much that would prove to not only Grim, Moreau, and the others, but to herself. She was not a Barbie with an SC-20K. She was an operator, through and through.
The cheering of fans grew louder, and she spotted the banks of lights outlining the main entrance to the stadium and began racing through the parking lot, her gaze reaching out toward anything red, any shade of red, from pink to deep crimson, but most of the Jeunesse Esch fans leaving early were wearing the home team's black shirt with black and yellow logo.
All right, if Fisher had gone inside the stadium, he would've had to buy a ticket. She could not ask every attendant if he or she had seen a man in a red shirt. There were seven ticket booths and certainly other folks dressed in red. She quickly handed over her credit card to the young man behind the nearest booth, and he told her that the game was almost over. She told him she didn't care and double-timed it inside, resisting the temptation to run so as not to draw too much attention to herself.
"All right, I'm in the stadium," she reported.
Now, what would Fisher do?
What would she do?
She glanced up and down the large hallway below the bleachers. Souvenir shops and food vendors lined the left side. And there it was: the men's room.
"What would I do?" she muttered aloud. "I'd change."
She charged toward the men's room and brushed by a pair of young men in their twenties, who did a double take as she pushed through the door and hurried inside.
The place reeked. Men were pigs with bad aim. Three such swine stood at the urinals, and one, a portly middle-aged man with white sideburns, turned his head and suddenly frowned at her as his neighbor, an equally old man, turned and said, "Hey, sweetheart, are you looking for me?"
She ignored the perv and went straight for the white steel trash bin near the bank of sinks. She knocked it down to the tile floor. The lid crashed off and out came Fisher's clothes, along with piles of crumpled-up towels.
She cursed and reported her findings. She snatched up the clothes and ran out of the room, leaving the old gawkers behind.
Valentina then ventured up to the stadium proper and stood there at the foot of the bleachers, her face panning the sea of faces, some five thousand in all. He'd changed and probably bought himself a hat. Hundreds of identical caps seemed to bob as though floating on waves across the stands.
"Maya, report," ordered Hansen.
"I don't think he planned any of this." She gasped. "I just think he's one lucky guy."
Her shoulders slumped. They would never find him now.
But part of her said don't give up, and she kept probing the faces, probing . . . and then came a thought that she voiced to the others: "He might try to leave on the east side."
HANSEN sent Noboru back to the train station in Esch-sur-Alzette. He ordered Gillespie to take her SUV up rue Jean-Pierre Bausch, north of the stadium, and remain there. He, Ames, and Valentina eventually met up on the east side of the stadium, and Hansen realized that a densely wooded area lay before them.
Fisher could have easily left the stadium via the east exit and vanished into that perfect cover. Beyond the forest to the northeast lay the town of Schifflange with its mushroomlike water tower. Fisher could reach Highway 31 and simply hitchhike or walk farther east to the towns of Rumelange, Kayl, and Tetange. At any rate, he was pushing farther into Luxembourg, a country slightly smaller than Rhode Island and bordering France, Germany, and Belgium. Was he just running through here? Or did he have a clear purpose in mind?
After five minutes of surveying the tree line with their binoculars, Hansen ordered Gillespie to come back down and pick them up. They would head out to Highway 4.
"I've got all our resources online," said Moreau. "He tries to rent car, we got him. He buys a train ticket, we got him."
"If he's not using cash," said Hansen. "Don't humor me, Moreau. We've already lost him. We're just going through the motions now."
Abruptly, Noboru's breathless voice cut over the channel: "It's Nathan. I'm at the train station. I think I have him."
NOBORU was running along the platform, weaving through the few other people and chasing after the man in the red shirt and white ball cap.
After first spotting the man, Noboru widened his eyes. They made eye contact from afar, the man's face half in shadow--but his shirt said enough. Noboru had started for him, and he charged off.
"What's he wearing?" Valentina demanded.
"Back to the red shirt. White cap."
"No, he's changed," she cried. "And if he hasn't, the team caps are black."
"Or maybe he wants us to think he's changed but hasn't."
"No, he has," she insisted. "You got the wrong guy."
"Then why's this guy running?"
Noboru launched himself into the air and came down from the platform with a heavy thump on the soft earth, as the guy started across the train tracks toward a long row of maintenance buildings on the other side.
That he might be the one to capture Sam Fisher didn't register much with Noboru. He felt badly about what had happened to the man, but he wouldn't think twice about killing him. In truth, Noboru knew exactly what it felt like to be on the run, and in one respect killing Fisher would be ending the man's suffering. It was a difficult thing to live your life always looking over your shoulder; it wore down your spirit even as the nightmares drained you of sleep.
Horatio and Gothwhiler were there. Always there.
Noboru caught up with the man, dropped to the ground, and threw his leg out, in an expert maneuver, to trip his prey.
The guy dropped hard as Noboru rolled upright, stood, and aimed his SC pistol. He finally saw the man's face.
"It's all right, you got me now. They're in the top right pocket. I don't care. Tell Pierre it's all over. I'm not doing this for him anymore. I quit."
Noboru fought for breath and released a string of curses in Japanese; then he said, in English, "Maya, you were right. Wrong guy."
"Who are you?" asked the man, who was in his twenties, clean shaven but built exactly like Sam Fisher. "What's that tape you got on your neck?"
"What's in your pocket?" asked Noboru.
The guy frowned. "The drugs."
Noboru continued to catch his breath and shook his head. "Don't wear red ever again."
"Why not?"
Noboru leaned down and, still panting, put his gun in the man's face. "Because I'll come back and kill you."
MOREAU agreed with Valentina that the team should focus its search efforts east of the stadium, and Hansen could only assume that the man knew more than he was sharing, as usual. They drove the ten minutes out to the small village of Kayl, where they waited for Noboru to join them. Then Hansen sent him and Valentina down to Rumelange, while Gillespie and Ames would check out Tetange. They, too, were small, rural villages nestled into the countryside. Hansen would remain in Kayl and maintain a constant surveillance of the main road from an embankment cordoned off by clusters of tall pines.
If Moreau didn't pick up Fisher soon, it'd be all over for now. And as Hansen settled down with his binoculars, he couldn't get the image of a Coke and French fries off his mind. He remembered the McDonald's, remembered Moreau's comment, and now the advertising demons were playing product placement with his mind. In point of fact, he'd barely eaten all day, barely slept in the past few days, and if he somehow managed to remain in position and not fall asleep, well, that would be an accomplishment
. Some of the others had packed granola and other kinds of energy bars in their packs; he'd opted for a pack of gum, and, boy, wasn't that a mistake.
The air grew still, and the night seemed to wrap more tightly around him, like a warm blanket against the cold. The night-vision binoculars picked up headlights in the distance. He watched as the car approached and realized it was actually a pair of scooters. They raced on by, their small engines issuing a rather irritating buzz.
"Kim, how 'bout a sitrep?"
"Ames here. She's busy right now."
"Doing what?" Hansen said.
"You don't want to know."
"Shut up, fool," said Gillespie. "We're almost in town. No sign of anyone. Place looks dead."
"Same here," said Valentina.
"All right, team, we have a couple of minutes to kill while you're en route," Hansen began. "What's Fisher doing in Luxembourg?"
"Getting drunk," said Ames.
"If you don't shut up," warned Valentina.
"No, I'm serious," Ames snapped. "Luxembourg is in Guinness World Records for most alcohol consumption."
"A fact you know how?" asked Gillespie.
"Everyone knows that," he argued. "And besides, I just pulled it up on my phone."
"Using Google while on the job?" asked Gillespie.
"What's wrong with that?"
"Moreau? You still with us, Moreau?"
Hansen frowned. It wasn't like the man to sign off unannounced.
26
GRAND HOTEL TEMPLIERS REIMS, FRANCE
MOREAU was so fully immersed in the Trinity System that he failed to notice the man who had bypassed the door lock, entered the hotel room, and now stood behind him, pressing a noise-suppressed pistol to the back of his head.
"Hello, Mr. Moreau."
He tried to read the voice, the pitch, the tenor, and already decided that the man was a smoker. This was not Stingray, the mole's cutout to Kovac. He was someone else; someone probably hired by Kovac to come and take care of the problem--because the team was getting closer to Luxembourg. Without Moreau, the team would be forced to communicate directly with Grim or through cutouts, all of whom Kovac had already tapped.
Moreau snorted. "I love this country. I order room service and they send me an asshole with a gun."
"Funny man . . . and a dead one--unless you tell me what I want to know."
Moreau swiveled his head a fraction of an inch.
"Ah, don't do that," warned the man.
This was not an American. He was doing his best to adopt an American accent, northeastern to be precise, but he was failing miserably. This guy was probably a Frenchman. Or a German. Undoubtedly a fool. You don't threaten a man and then tell him you need information. That tells your victim you'll hesitate because you need something.
"Listen to me," Moreau began; then he used a word that rhymes with "trucker" to describe his assailant. "You got 3.5 seconds to get that goddamned gun off my head."
"Such bravado, Mr. Moreau. Is this where you say what you'll do to me? Break my nose? Throw me out the window?"
"One . . . "
"We know Grim is communicating with Fisher. We want the encryption codes, the name of the cutout. We want them all. Right now."
"Two . . . "
"If you don't talk, I have orders to kill you."
"Three." Moreau took a deep breath, held it.
The man snickered. "What's the half second for?"
"This!"
Moreau tipped his head, then pushed back with all his might, driving his chair directly into the man's abdomen.
Of course the guy didn't fire. He wouldn't. He had orders to get the information. Anything else was BS. Killing Moreau without getting the data would result in his own death. Now that that fact was established, Moreau would begin teaching this fool a lesson.
As soon as his legs cleared the desk, Moreau spun around. The man staggered back.
And, wouldn't you know, the idiot made the impetuous decision to fire.
The shot thumped no more loudly than a hand clap and kicked into Moreau's shoulder. He jerked back across the desk, even as he drew his own sidearm and fired at the man's crotch.
Sensory overload: pain and images and a trace of gunpowder all coming at him.
Who was his attacker? So far, he was a guy dressed in casual business clothes and wearing a long leather jacket. He was no more than thirty and most definitely European, with a simple conservative haircut, no earrings, and nothing to distinguish him save his twisted grin. He leaned forward, groaned, then fell back onto his rump.
With a fire now burning in his shoulder, Moreau charged forward from the desk, and fired again, his suppressed round hitting the man's arm point-blank and causing him to drop his weapon.
Moreau dove for the gun and came up with it just as the man began to sit up, shivering and groaning.
"This would've been the part where I ask you questions. But I'm not doing that."
"You're not?"
Moreau shook his head, took both pistols, and placed them on the floor beside him. Then, remembering Noboru's words and imagining himself as Jules Winnfield, Moreau crawled forward and began choking the man with one hand.
Now, with a grimace of pain, Moreau wound up and punched the guy so hard in the mouth that several teeth loosened. The thug tried to reach up to stop him, but Moreau delivered another blow that sent both of them falling forward onto the rug. Teeth flew from the man's mouth as Moreau loosened his grip.
"I'll tell you what you want to know," the guy lisped through a gurgle of blood.
Moreau straddled him and widened his eyes as blood rolled down his arm. "You want to talk to me? You don't know jack. All you know is that a man named Stingray hired you. You don't even know who Grim and Fisher are. And I bet when you go to the beach, you wear a little Speedo like all those other European fools trying to show off."
The man shook his head. "I know about Stingray. Let me tell you something about him. Please don't hit me anymore. I'm just doing a job."
Moreau cursed, winced over the pain, then struck the man in the temple so hard that the thug passed out.
Beginning to shudder with the throbbing in his shoulder, Moreau stood, breathing heavily, and rushed to the bathroom to check the wound. He slowly sloughed off his shirt. Damn, off to the hospital he'd go, but the wound didn't look too bad--clean entry and exit. He'd have time to pack up and get down to the hospital.
Moreau got back on the Trinity System and told Grim what had happened. She ordered him to get treatment.
"What happened to our tail on Stingray? He should've let me know about this guy. They must have met," he said, growling more than speaking.
"I know. They either took him out or bought him off. I've had no contact from him."
"Damn it. Fisher needs to flush out that mole."
"He will. Now, Marty, go get help. Let me worry about the mess in your room."
TETANGE, LUXEMBOURG
AMES and Gillespie arrived on the outskirts of Tetange and parked near the train station, which, according to the map, was on Line 60 connecting the city of Luxembourg to the Red Lands in the south. Tetange was the second stop on the branch line that split from the main line at Noertzange and led to Rumelange. Of the three cities to the east, Tetange seemed, at least to Ames, the best choice for Fisher. He could catch a train up to the city of Luxembourg, if that was his destination.
Moreau spoke evenly over the team channel and said he'd be off-line for a few hours. Hansen was understandably pissed, more so since Moreau offered no reasonable explanation for his absence. Ames told Gillespie to hold her position at the car while he reconnoitered the train station.
If there were six people at the station, that was a lot, and Ames did his best to keep close to the wall, near a vending machine, while he scrutinized those waiting near the taxicab ramp. His hand went unconsciously into his coat pocket, and he began to roll his Zippo through his fingers.
For just a few seconds, he imagined Sam Fi
sher strapped to a table while he poured gasoline over his entire body.
Fisher wanted to talk, though he never once let down his tough-guy demeanor. "We're both going to hell. I'll get there first. And you'll be in second place, as always."
"Maybe you're right. But first I want to see you cry. I want to see you beg for mercy."
Fisher cursed; he would die before doing that.
Ames's Zippo clicked open and came to life--the thin, perfect flame glowing as he touched it to the table. The whoosh of flames nearly sent him toppling backward.
Fisher screamed and writhed in agony, tearing at his bonds as the flames swallowed him whole.
Shaking off the thought, Ames let go of the Zippo and reached for the satellite phone Stingray had given him. He dialed the number, heard the man's key code, then returned his own code, the tones communicating that they were both free to talk.
"We've split up," Ames said abruptly.
"I know where you are now."
"Moreau's off-line."
"How long ago did you hear from him?"
"A minute."
Stingray swore and said, "All right. I'll let them know."
"You do that."
After he hung up, it occurred to Ames to check the train schedule. He consulted his watch, then said, in French, to the wizened man behind the glass partition, "Did a train just leave?"
The old man frowned. "If you want to speak French, okay. . . ."
Ames had forgotten that he was not in France anymore, and in Luxembourg they spoke Luxembourgish, a high dialect of German, as well as some French and German.
"The train?"
"You missed it. Five minutes ago."
"And that was the last train for the night?"
The old man nodded.
"You see a guy come here and buy a ticket?"
The man made a face. "I see a lot of them."
"Guy in a red shirt? No, wait, uh . . . " Ames reached into his pocket and pulled out a picture of Fisher. "This guy."
The man frowned at the photograph. "I don't really look at people when I sell tickets."