Standoff.

19.

PARKING GARAGE REIMS, FRANCE.

WHILE Hansen was meeting with Moreau, n.o.boru was already three blocks down the street and heading toward the garage where the Range Rover was parked. The others thought he'd gone down to a little all-night cafe on the corner to bring back some fresh-brewed decaf. Hansen was meeting with Moreau, n.o.boru was already three blocks down the street and heading toward the garage where the Range Rover was parked. The others thought he'd gone down to a little all-night cafe on the corner to bring back some fresh-brewed decaf.

With a woolen cap pulled tightly over his head and the collar of his trench coat turned up, n.o.boru entered the five- level parking garage and kept low behind the first row of cars. The attendant booth was empty, tickets and payment being issued by an automatic system.

n.o.boru stole his way up to the first level, eyes probing with an almost mechanical precision. He dashed from car to car and ventured up to the second level, squinting once more at every dark vehicle he spotted.

By the time he reached the third level, he was growing frustrated and breathless. There were plenty of open parking s.p.a.ces within the garage, yet the Range Rover was not there.

Again, no luck on the fourth level. In fact, there were even fewer cars parked this high up.

He took himself all the way to the edge of a wall beside which stood the rooftop parking area. If the Rover had been parked there, Moreau would have picked it up via satellite. n.o.boru checked the lot anyway. No Range Rover.

He began to panic. Wrong garage? Had the car pulled out while he'd been on his way there?

Sweating profusely now, he sprinted all the way down to the first level and once more took up a position behind a small sedan.

And then he saw it, a bank of garage doors located along the rear wall of the garage. A sign indicated that these were secured garages for rent.

Fool! He'd missed that the first time around. He'd missed that the first time around.

The bad news: There were six garage doors, and the Range Rover could be behind any one of them.

n.o.boru had tools but not much time.

He reached the first door, then opened his coat, removed his lock-picking set, and used one of the handles to open up a small gap in the first door, where the rubber base met the concrete floor. Through that gap he inserted the end of a flexicam, activated the base unit, set it for night vision, and slid the probe up to examine the car. No car. Empty garage.

On to the next one.

A Renault. And the next one. Empty. And as he was about to check the next one, headlights flashed behind him. He dove for cover beside the nearest car and waited there.

What the h.e.l.l? It was the black Range Rover.

No. He blinked hard. It was a black SUV but not a Range Rover.

n.o.boru swallowed. Tried to calm himself. The SUV pulled into a spot near the exit, and a young couple exited, giggling. The man grabbed his partner's a.s.s as they ventured across the street, toward a row of small hotels.

Back to work.

And as fate, luck, and a cruel and merciless universe would have it, n.o.boru had to check all six garages before finding the Range Rover parked inside the last one.

The doors were opened by remote control, with rolling codes, and n.o.boru waited while his CBT Code-Scan, a Third Echelon-engineered magic box, got to work. It took another five minutes for the CBT to cast its spell, and the door finally cycled open. n.o.boru entered, then shut the door behind him.

He flicked on his penlight and took a deep breath. Picking the lock on the Range Rover still wouldn't disable the vehicle's alarm system, but if you had a key fob--or a device that could precisely mimic one, like the CBT--then you could simply press a b.u.t.ton, resynchronize the forty-bit random codes, and gain access. n.o.boru understood that the device would reprogram the car to allow him entrance, and then, quite remarkably, return the car to its original codes so its owner would be none the wiser.

After a few seconds, the CBT's LED screen flashed, the car chirped, and the locks opened. n.o.boru immediately searched the glove box for a rental-car agreement and found it. The name on the papers was an alias breathtakingly familiar to him.

Horatio and Gothwhiler were in France. After him. No doubts.

n.o.boru activated his OPSAT and opened a channel directly to Grim, who answered after a few moments. "Uh, what is it, Nathan?"

"My old friends are here."

A few seconds of nothing, then, "I understand."

"You made a promise."

"I know."

"How'd they find me?"

"I don't know. We can't talk about it now."

"I need to do something."

"Leave that to me."

He paused. "I'm sorry, but I don't trust you anymore."

"You have to. If you do something, you could compromise your mission."

"I'll plant a V-TRAC and route the signal to you. If you don't take care of this soon, I'll have to do it--even if it costs me my job."

"I understand. But you need to trust me. Okay?"

n.o.boru shook his head. "Take care of the problem. Good-bye, Grim."

After planting the V-TRAC device well up inside the Range Rover's body, n.o.boru left the parking garage, hustled back to the coffee shop, and returned to the room with five tall cups of decaf.

"Where the h.e.l.l were you?" asked Valentina.

"One of the coffee machines broke, and I helped the lady fix it. She gave me the decaf for free." He forced a grin, and he thought his cheeks would crack off.

Hansen accepted his coffee and said, "Was the Range Rover there?"

"Uh, what do you mean?"

Hansen's tone grew harder. "Yes? Or no?"

n.o.boru opened his mouth, thought better of lying, and then suddenly said, "We'll be tracking it."

"Any idea who they are?"

n.o.boru braced himself. This time he would have to lie. "Not sure who they are."

"Kovac's people, no doubt. All right." Hansen faced the others. "Moreau's a tough nut to crack, but here's what I got out of him. For all intents and purposes, Kovac wants Fisher dead. And he's pressing Grim hard to make it happen. Grim, of course, would like to talk to Sam before we put a bullet in his head. You don't shoot your best friend for no reason. So if we ever catch up to him, my plan is to capture first. Moreau swears to me that they're not lying about this, but to suggest that Fisher is just on the run in France with no agenda is ridiculous. He's up to something, and we're going to find out what."

Ames snorted. "You're d.a.m.ned right we are. And you all need to listen to me: You don't capture Sam Fisher. And you don't talk to him. You take him out. Those were our orders."

Gillespie shifted over to Ames and deliberately spilled her coffee across his shirt. He cursed as she said, "Oh, I'm so sorry. Did I burn you?"

While the others tried to stifle their laughter, Hansen cleared his throat. "If we can take Fisher alive, that's the way we do it. If it comes down to it, though, then we'll have to kill him."

HANSEN spent most of the night tossing and turning. In fact, he'd barely slept in the past two days, so when the courtesy wake-up call came, Hansen was ready to smash the phone against the wall. He rose, showered, shaved, dressed quickly, then gave up the bathroom to Ames, who was complaining about "pretty boy taking too much time." spent most of the night tossing and turning. In fact, he'd barely slept in the past two days, so when the courtesy wake-up call came, Hansen was ready to smash the phone against the wall. He rose, showered, shaved, dressed quickly, then gave up the bathroom to Ames, who was complaining about "pretty boy taking too much time."

n.o.boru remained dead to the world, and Hansen took a moment just to stare at the man who'd been a little too eager to check out their tail. Hansen mulled that over for a moment before heading down to the restaurant for some coffee.

Moreau had rented them another pair of cars, two Renaults--one burgundy, the other blue--and they loaded the gear and left by 8:00 A.M. for the sixty-mile drive east on A-4 to Emmanuel Chenevier's apartment in Verdun, near the quai de Londres--and its many shops, restaurants, and discotheques--along the Meuse River. They were wary of tails, especially from those men in the black Range Rover, but Moreau reported that the Rover was tailing one of the decoy vehicles within which Valentina had planted the tracker. Moreau warned them that the ploy wouldn't last long, and when they discovered what had happened, they would search their own vehicle for a tracker and/or abandon it. By that time Hansen and the others should be long gone.

They drove though the French countryside, the farmlands reminding Hansen of some of the Sunday drives he'd taken with his parents through Texas, although none of that terrain appeared even remotely as fertile as these grounds. However, the same sense of loneliness and utter quiet was still there.

Thankfully, Ames kept his mouth shut for most of the ride, and Gillespie sat quietly herself. n.o.boru and Valentina followed closely behind in their car, with Moreau still back at the hotel, monitoring the team's progress. He planned to catch up with them later in the day.

Hansen had already decided that he'd be the one to speak with the forger. He reviewed the intel Moreau had given him.

Emmanuel Chenevier was a thirty-year veteran of the Directorate-General for External Security, a rather important-sounding synonym for France's foreign intelligence agency. While the data did not indicate that Fisher and Chenevier had a prior relationship, Hansen had a strong feeling that they had known each other for years. At the very least, Fisher would be aware of the agent and his impressive record that indicated he was fiercely loyal to his country. That Chenevier would help an American on the run might prove surprising to some--unless of course Hansen's initial premise was correct: The two were old friends. Fisher's record indicated that there had been a time, back in the early 1990s, when he would've had the opportunity to meet and perhaps work with Chenevier; however, that was speculation on Hansen's part.

When they were about ten minutes away from Chenevier's place, Moreau told them he'd tried to call the man's home phone. No answer. Chenevier did not have a cell-phone number that Moreau could find, so there was a chance he had stepped out. The geeks back home studying the satellite feeds had reported that they had not seen Chenevier leave his building, so perhaps he was home but not answering the phone.

Valentina, Gillespie, and n.o.boru kept close to the river, taking pictures of one another like goofy tourists. Ames established an overwatch position near the courtyard beside the entrance to the first-floor apartment.

Hansen walked by a redwood lounger, on which sat a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo The Count of Monte Cristo. He grinned over the t.i.tle (written by a Frenchman, of course), then went up and knocked on the old man's door.

He waited. He knocked again, waited some more. "I don't think he's home." He groaned into his SVT.

"And so we set up. And we wait," said Moreau.

"Let me go inside and take a look around."

"Don't do that."

"Why not?"

"If we play a gentleman's game, he'll be far more likely to talk. If you violate his privacy like a rookie, he'll shut down. Trust me."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know men like Chenevier."

"What if you're wrong? What if he's left the country?"

"He hasn't. We'd know about it."

"Then where is he?"

"He's probably watching you right now. Give him some time. He'll come around. He wants to feel you out first, see what he's dealing with. When he realizes that Fisher's got a bunch of young bucks after him, he'll talk to you."

"Why?"

"Because it'll amuse him."

"So you already think this is a dead end?"

"No, I don't. If Fisher was here, and he knows this guy, then what can you do to get him talking?"

Hansen considered the question. His first thought was to shove a gun in the man's head or threaten to chop off his fingers, as he'd done with Boutin.

But if this were a gentleman's game, as Moreau had suggested, then Hansen needed something far more sophisticated and tactful.

"If they're friends," Hansen thought aloud, "then Chenevier wants what's best for Fisher."

"Now, that sounds like a good place to start."

"But, then again, if they're friends, he won't give us anything."

"You never know."

As Hansen stepped away from the man's door, he checked his watch: 9:17 A.M.

How long were they supposed to wait?

CHENEVIER'S APARTMENT VERDUN, FRANCE.

HANSEN and the others waited most of the day for the old man to come home. During that time, they shifted positions, rotated in and out of locations, even changed jackets and maintained their surveillance as deftly and discreetly as possible. They might as well get some on-the-job training and practice, Hansen had told them. and the others waited most of the day for the old man to come home. During that time, they shifted positions, rotated in and out of locations, even changed jackets and maintained their surveillance as deftly and discreetly as possible. They might as well get some on-the-job training and practice, Hansen had told them.

They'd gone off in pairs for lunch, while the others kept watch. When Hansen and Valentina had been sharing a sandwich and some tea, Moreau had called to say the two men in the Range Rover had fin ally grown wise to the team's misdirection and had abandoned the Rover. Trouble was, Moreau lost them since they returned to another parking garage, and with many cars coming in and out, he couldn't be sure which vehicle they might have used or if they'd even left in the first place. He and the geeks back home would attempt to pick them up again.

Hansen was sitting on a bench across the street from Chenevier's apartment when he spotted the man's approach. It was about three fifteen. Imposing at more than six feet tall, and with a thick shock of white hair, Chenevier was the epitome of a distinguished gentleman and as leonine as they came. Of course, he was impeccably groomed and dressed in an expensive suit and overcoat. He carried an ornate cane that he used more for show or for security than to help him walk. His gait seemed true, if not a little slow.

"Monsieur Chenevier?" Hansen called.

Chenevier turned back and paused near the redwood lounger as Hansen hurried toward him. "May I have a word?"