Conviction (2009)

"How's the ankle?"

"Getting there. How's Kovac?"

Two hours after his arrest for treason, Kovac had tried to hang himself in his cell but was saved by an alert guard. As it turned out, Ames's insurance cache had been more than enough to break the deputy director.

"Pliable," Grimsdottir replied. "Officially, he retired after discovering he had colorectal cancer. Unofficially, he spends in his days in an FBI safe house answering questions and naming names."

"Is it going to do any good?"

Hansen answered, "Eventually. Lambert was right. This goes very deep. The good news is, the Laboratory 738 Arsenal is sitting at the bottom of a sinkhole near Lake Baikal. It's out of circulation. Permanently. Turns out Zahm leased the complex from one of the men I saw in Korfovka--Mikhail Bratus, former GRU. As for the other two, Yuan Zhao and Michael Murdoch, we're working on it. The auction guests didn't fare very well. Only six made it out of the complex, and all of them were scooped up by the FSB."

"Ernsdorff?"

"About a week after Baikal he disappeared, and he took a few hundred million in investors' money with him. Ten days ago they found in him a St. John hotel with his throat cut. Someone didn't appreciate his accounting methods."

"What about our old friend Ames?"

"No sign of him. If he's dead, somewhere in the sinkhole, we'll never know."

"And if he's alive?" Fisher finished. "He's not the kind of guy to hide forever. You and the others watch your backs."

"You, too."

"How are they, by the way--Nathan, Maya, and Kimberly?"

"All good. They send their regards."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the ocean, before Grimsdottir said, "Sam, if you want to come back, I can arrange it."

Fisher shook his head.

"Is that a no?"

Fisher looked around the deck for a few moments, then turned his face into the sun and took a deep breath. "That's an 'ask me again when my lease is up.' "

Turn the page for a sneak peek at the other side of the story . . . Coming December 2009! TOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL ENDGAME Follow Ben Hansen's team in their desperate race to corner Sam Fisher.

PROLOGUE

KORFOVKA, RUSSIAN FEDERATION NEAR THE CHINESE BORDER EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO

THEfirst blow loosened one of Ben Hansen's molars and sent his head wrenching to one side.

Captured . . . killed . . .

He never saw the second blow, only felt Rugar's pointed knuckles drive into his left eye.

Captured . . . killed . . .

Hansen's head whipped back, then lolled forward as warm blood spilled down his chin.

Now Rugar's screams grew incomprehensible, like panes of glass shattering across the hangar's concrete floor.

Make no mistake. If you're captured, you will be killed.

Hansen tugged at the plastic flex-cuffs cutting into his wrists and binding him to the chair. He finally mustered the energy to face Rugar, who loomed there, a neckless, four-hundred-pound, vodka-soaked beast crowned by an old Red Army ushankatwo sizes too small for his broad head. He was about fifty, twice Hansen's age, and hardly agile, but at the moment that hardly mattered.

The fat man opened his mouth, exposing a jagged fence of yellowed teeth. He shouted again, and more glass shattered, accompanied by the rattling of two enormous steel doors that had been rolled shut against the wind.

Hansen shivered. It was below freezing now, and their breaths hung heavy in the air. At least the dizziness from the anesthetic was begi

And then--a flash from Rugar's hand.

Captured . . . killed . . .

The fat man had confiscated Hansen's knife.

BUTthis wasn't just any knife--it was a Fairbairn Sykes World War II-era commando dagger that had once belonged to the elusive Sam Fisher, a Splinter Cell few people knew but whose exploits were legendary among them.

Rugar leaned over and held the blade before Hansen's face. He spoke more slowly, and the words, though still Russian, finally made sense: "We know why you've come. Now, if you tell me what I need to know, you will live."

Hansen took a deep breath. "You won't break me."

For a moment Rugar just stood there, his cheeks swelling like melons as he labored for his next breath. Suddenly he smiled, his rank breath coming hard in Hansen's face. "It's going to be a long night for both of us."

Rugar's left ear was pierced, and the gold hoop hanging there caught the overhead lights at such an angle that for a moment all Hansen noticed were those flashes of gold. He realized only after the blood spattered onto his face that Rugar had been shot in the head, the round coming from a suppressed weapon somewhere behind them.

All four hundred pounds of the fat man collapsed onto Hansen, snapping off the chair's back legs as the knife went skittering across the floor. Hansen now bore the Russian's full weight across his chest, and he wasn't sure which would kill him first: suffocation or the sickly sweet stench emanating from Rugar's armpits.

With a groan, he shoved himself against the fat man's body and began worming his way out, gasping, grimacing, and a heartbeat away from retching.

He rolled onto his side and squinted across the hangar, toward the pair of helicopters and the shadows along the perimeter wall and mechanics' stations.

And then he appeared, Sergei Luchenko, Hansen's ru

Hansen sighed deeply. "What happened? Why didn't you answer my calls?" He groaned over the question. "Strike that. I'm just glad you're here."

Sergei walked up to Hansen, withdrew a lighter from his breast pocket, and lit his cigarette.

"How about some help?" Hansen struggled against the flex-cuffs.

"I'm sorry, my friend. They sent me to kill you."

"Bad joke."

"It's no joke."

Hansen stiffened. "Not you, Sergei."

"I don't have a choice."

Hansen closed his good eye, then spoke through his teeth. "Then why did you save me?"

"I didn't. The kill must be mine. And . . . I didn't want you to suffer."

"This is not who you are."

"I'm sorry." Sergei withdrew a compact digital video camera from his pocket and hit the RECORD button. He held it close to Hansen. "You see, he is alive. And now . . ." Sergei raised his pistol.

Hansen cursed at the man.

There would be no life story flashing before Hansen's eyes; no images of his youth growing up in Fort Stock-ton, Texas; no scenes from his days at MIT, which he had attended on a full scholarship; no moments from that bar with the director, A

The gun thumped. Hansen flinched.

And then . . . Sergei collapsed sideways onto the concrete, a gaping hole now revealed in the back of his head.