Conviction

39

Ames, having read Fisher’s expression, was nodding. “Yep. That’s him.”

Hansen said, “Who?”

“Zahm,” Fisher replied.

“You’re kidding me.”

Fisher shook his head.

It made a certain sense. Though he’d had no overt clues at the time, Fisher could now see his psychological assessment of Zahm made him an obvious candidate for the man behind the curtain. A born envelope pusher, he joins the SAS but finds the adrenaline rush of covert soldiering only temporarily satisfies his addiction, so he leaves and decides, on a whim, to become a bestselling novelist, but this, too, isn’t enough. He rounds up some former comrades and goes into the business of high-end thievery only to find himself still restless, so he raises the bar. He breaks into a secret Chinese laboratory, steals five tons of weaponry, and invites the world’s most dangerous terrorists to an auction at an abandoned Soviet complex in the middle of Siberia.

To the average person, insanity. To Zahm, just another day.

What Fisher didn’t know, and might never know, was Zahm’s purpose at the Korfovka rendezvous with Zhao and Murdoch. He’d probably been laying the groundwork for the Laboratory 738 heist and the auction.

“Where is he?” Fisher now asked.

“Around.”

“You can still do the right thing,” Hansen said.

“I could,” Ames conceded.

He lifted his opposite hand in a fateful gesture. Even as Fisher’s eyes instinctively flicked to the hand, he thought, Distraction.

“But I won’t,” Ames finished.

He dropped the grenade, turned, and sprinted up the ramp.