Overview
In this Guide i will show you the Background of the Characters.
Characters : Sam Fisher
Lieutenant Commander (SEAL) Samuel Fisher, USN (Ret.), is a former member of Third Echelon, a top-secret sub-branch within the National Security Agency (NSA) and currently the commander of Fourth Echelon, a newly created covert special operations & counter-terrorism unit answerable only to the President of the United States. Fisher was born in 1957 in the Baltimore suburb of Towson, Maryland. While not much is known of his childhood, it is known that Sam attended a Military Boarding School after the death of his Parents when he was a Child until being accepted into the United States Naval Academy, where he graduated from in 1977 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and commissioned as an Ensign in the U.S. Navy. Soon after, his personnel File was flagged for recruitment by the Navy SEALS, which he joined after passing their grueling selection process and training program. In the mid-1980s, while Fisher was attached to the CIA (though still on active duty with the Navy) and working under an official Diplomatic cover in Georgia (at the time part of the USSR), he met an NSA cryptanalyst named Regan Burns and they married in 1984/85 at a small ceremony at Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt, Germany, after learning that Regan was pregnant. On 31 May 1985, Regan gave birth to their only child whom was named Sarah. Fisher and Regan divorced after three years of Marriage, and after gaining custody of Sarah, Regan reverted to her maiden name and changed Sarah’s as well. When Regan died from ovarian cancer sometime in 2000, Fisher gained guardianship of Sarah, moved back to the U.S. and took a bureaucratc Job with the CIA, where he worked in weapons development as well as studied experimental Weaponry and Information Warfare, in order to spend more time with her and focus on her upbringing.
Third Echelon Conspiracy/D.C. EMP Event
While Fisher was on a mission in Iceland, he was informed that his daughter, Sarah, was allegedly killed by a drunk driver in late 2007 or early 2008; however, three years later, he heard a rumor that the death of his Daughter was no accident and went to Malta to investigate. After being captured by Third Echelon in Malta, Grim revealed that Sarah is alive but if Sam wanted to see his Daughter again he had to help her investigate Reed. At Third Echelon HQ, Grim played a recording that Lambert made before his death in New York explaining that Sarah’s death was faked to prevent her from being used as leverage by a mole inside Third Echelon to compromise Sam and the Agency.
Characters: Isaac Briggs
Isaac Briggs was born by the son of a Ghanaian professor and grew up in suburban Washington, D.C. He was raised around children of ambassadors, politians and military officers. After graduating high school, Isaac Briggs attended the United States Military Academy in Westpoint, New York. He graduated West Point and was then commissioned as an officer in the United States Army before shifting into intelligence work with the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Clandestine Service group for some time. Briggs was one of the few CIA operatives called in to support the investigation about the Blacklist Zero.
2013: Blacklist Attacks
Isaac Briggs, under Anna Grímsdóttir’s recommendation, joined Fourth Echelon following the first Blacklist Attack as a field officer and support. Briggs’ first assignment in the field was to provide overwatch for Sam Fisher to capture an informant, Andriy Kobin, in Benghazi, Libya. Briggs was able to provide Sam with some cover using a sniper rifle and Sam was eventually able to find Kobin. Briggs then drove a safe van infront of the safehouse and successfully extracted Kobin and left the scene with Fisher. In Mirawa, eastern Iraq, Briggs provided sniper support once again for Sam, allowing him to infilitrate the insurgent camp to find Jadid.
Briggs sided with Grim, Sam and Charlie about defying President Caldwell’s direct orders to not fly to Site F – the President feared a reprisal from The Engineers after the events of American Fuel. Briggs covertly sneaked into the Site F base, but was caught by Majid Sadiq and his men. They questioned him on Sam’s location, but Briggs played coy to their questions. Sadiq attempted to force the Secretary of Defense, Lester Gollancz, to reveal U.S. military secrets for leverage over the United States. Sadiq was able to eventually break Gollancz and he was able to tell him the codes, however Briggs grabbed Gollancz and broke his neck before he could talk – killing him instantly. This essentially made Sadiq’s mission to Site F a failure; frustrated, Sadiq and his guards used Briggs and several other hostages as human shields. Sam Fisher revealed himself to be one of the hostages, where both Briggs and Fisher were able to kill all of Sadiq’s men. With Briggs injured, he tells Fisher to continue on and go after Sadiq before he escapes.
Aftermath
After the team’s secret capture of Sadiq, Briggs goes back to work as a field officer and support on the team as Fourth Echelon hunts down the remaining members of The Engineers.
Characters : Anna Grímsdóttir
Anna Grímsdóttir was born in 1974 in Boston, Massachusetts . Being a second generation American, her mother immigrated to the U.S. alone from Akureyri, in northern Iceland. She had once mentioned to Fisher that while he was fighting overseas in 1989, she was in the tenth grade.
Grim dropped out of St. John’s College in the mid-1990s and worked as a programmer in different private communications firms contracted by the U.S. Navy. She was recruited into the NSA in the late-1990s, and rose quickly in rank as the Internet became more and more important to national security. Grímsdóttir then moved on to Third Echelon, where she was put in charge of a small team of programmers responsible for providing technological, cryptographic and data support as part of the Splinter Cell program and assist field agents via their interface with the high-tech components of their missions. Grímsdóttir has helped Third Echelon with her work as a civilian computer/SIGINT (SIGnals INTelligence) technician throughout several different missions including the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia in 1999 , the Checkmate incident in 2003, the Georgian Information Crisis in 2004, the Indonesian Crisis in 2006, and the Cyber Attacks/East Asian Crisis of 2007. She was also one of few people able to communicate with Fisher during missions. She was an extremely useful asset for the agency during the information warfare attacks that took place in 2007.
Third Echelon
Late 1990s: Recruitment
Grímsdóttir is a second-generation American and a college dropout. She had been studying computer science at St. John’s College in the nineties, but decided she could program rings around her instructors. She worked for several different communications firms contracted by the U.S. Navy. She had been recruited at the ground floor of Third Echelon in the mid-1990’s by Lambert himself, and had worked as a programmer and eventually became the technical director. She was one of Third Echelon’s original employees, and he has known her for a long time.
Characters : Charlie Cole
Charlie Cole was an adopted child, at least since the age of twelve. Due in part to how he usually doesn’t plan things out, it was pretty often how often he got into trouble. He became interested in computer hacking in hopes of finding his real biological father.
2013: Blacklist Attacks
Cole makes his first appearance in Blacklist Zero at Anderson Airforce Base , where he provides Fisher and Coste with a satellite phone. Sam and Vic’s helicopter crashes just outside of the Airforce Base; after the crash, they both communicate with Charlie using the satellite phone. After the base was secured and Vic was injured, Sam recruits Charlie into Fourth Echelon as a hacker and tech specialist.
Charlie continued to aid both Sam and Isaac Briggs in several of their missions, providing intel and walking them through tech information. Before the Blacklist Attack American Consumption, Charlie figured out that the location of the attack was going to be at Chicago, Illinois even though intel pointed to Dallas, Texas . This won him the respect of his superiors, and prevented the water source from being contaminated by The Engineers.
Late on, however, Cole accidentally revealed the location of the Paladin, leading to a brief firefight between Fourth Echelon operatives and a Mexican Cartel in an airstrip in the Yucatan Province, Mexico also allow The Engineers to briefly hack into Paladin’s system. Afterward, Charlie tried to confess his mistake to Sam, but was stopped by Anna Grímsdóttir – letting Sam know could get Charlie kicked out of Fourth Echelon.
Charlie designs and provides Sam and Briggs with gadgets, prototype weapons and his hacking skills during missions. He also gives advice on the loadout, going by intel on the mission beforehand to aid the player in their missions. During the third Blacklist Attack, American Freedom, Charlie assists Briggs in defusing the bombs. He is the designer of SC-1S series of weapons.
Post-Blacklist
He continues to work with the team, and developed a micro-Tri-Rotor. He helped Fisher and Grim out in the field when investigating Nadia Kasperov, and received the phone number of a Swiss barista, who never called him back. The team successfully retrieved Igor Kasperov.
Characters: Andriy Kobin
2011: Third Echelon Conspiracy
Two months prior to the Third Echelon Conspiracy in 2011, Andriy Kobin worked with Splinter Cell agent Archer and Voron operative Kestrel in a joint-operation mission to secure three EMP devices. After their final mission, Archer and Kestrel both evacuated on Kobin’s cargo plane. Archer and Kestrel both received orders to kill each other; Kestrel managed to kill Archer, but Kobin appeared behind Kestrel and shot him from behind.
Kobin was first mentioned to Sam Fisher by Dmitri Gramkos; Gramkos reveals to Fisher that it was Kobin who killed Sarah Fisher. By this time, Andriy Kobin found out that Sam Fisher is alive and coming to find him, so Kobin barricaded himself inside his mansion waiting for him. Fisher was able to infiltrate his way into the mansion and interrogate Kobin about Sarah’s death. Kobin tells Sam that this is “bigger than his daughter” before Third Echelon Splinter Cells breached the skylight. Fisher is forced to give up, and as he is drugged by a tranquilizer dart, Kobin kicks Fisher as he goes unconscious.
Kobin later appears at Third Echelon Headquarters, where he tells Sam under interrogation that Director Tom Reed is working with Megiddo to smuggle Russian EMP technology into the United States. They planned to use that technology to facilitate President Patricia Caldwell’s assassination and have Vice President Calvin Samson take over the position since he was in Megiddo’s pocket. He also reveals that Lambert asked him to find a body that could stand in for Sarah’s so that Sam would think she was dead. After brutally interrogating Kobin, Sam then leaves him lying on the floor – still alive.
2013: Blacklist Attacks
Kobin returns in Splinter Cell: Blacklist after surviving the destruction of Third Echelon’s Headquarters. He was able to leave the U.S. and head to Libya where he went underground. He gave himself to the CIA, but after the police station was attacked by rebels, he was interrogated by three rebels. After Sam rescues him, he explains to Fourth Echelon that he supplied weapons for Blacklist Zero, and that he believed that his life was in danger because their leader didn’t like loose ends.
Over the course of the events of the game, he aids Fourth Echelon by providing information about the Blacklist, and also gives him information about other groups who are presumably affiliated with the Engineers (who also happen to be his competitors). He also provides them with Black Market weapons in return for improving his accommodations in his holding cell on board the C-147B Paladin, about 14 more weapons can be purchased if upgraded to the level 2. His missions are quite similar to the Hunter mode in Deniable Ops of Conviction. These missions tends to have VIPs to capture, and there are 21 enemies minimum (41 if both Sam triggers alarm at both segments). He also assists with flying the Paladin on several occasions. By the end of the Engineer plot, his status is somewhat indefinite. While he is not part of the Fourth Echelon team per se (and still dwells in the holding cell), he is considered a useful asset to the team.
Post-Blacklist
Fisher continued to use Kobin’s contacts during the hunt for Igor Kasperov. After they stopped the plot in Saudi Arabia, he was forced to vacate his cell when the team captured the “Snow Maiden.”
Characters: Jadid Haidos
Before 2013, Jadid Haidos worked as a MI6 agent for an undisclosed period of time. He became disillusioned when his superiors passed him over for promotion, thus this pushed him into becoming a full member of The Engineers. He was later burned and went rogue.
2013: Blacklist Attacks
Jadid purchased weapons from Andriy Kobin to be used for Blacklist Zero, however, Kobin turned himself in to the CIA for protection against The Engineers. Fourth Echelon agent Sam Fisher was able to track the deal to Mirawa, Iraq, where Fisher was able to locate and confront Jadid. Fisher interrogated Jadid for information, to which Jadid attempted to fool Fisher by claiming to be MI6 working deep undercover. Fisher held him still and scanned his face, but Anna Grímsdóttir confirms that he was burned and has gone rogue.
Death
Fisher then has the choice to spare or kill Haidos, but even if he is spared he will proclaim that he is already dead and uses Fisher’s gun to commit suicide.
Characters : Majid Sadiq
Early life
Born in London, England, into the third generation of a family of Pakistani origin, he was recruited into MI6 right out of university. They had deemed him the perfect agent, as he was Middle Eastern but not very political or religious. During a deep cover mission in Iraq, however, he was flipped when a U.S. drone strike bombed an insurgent training camp near the Iranian border and a large portion of the vilage he was stationed at was blasted. MI6 burned him and attempted to apprehend him, but he escaped. They listed him as dead, but he is secretly the fifth most wanted man in Britain.
Since then, he has become the leader of The Engineers, a terrorist organization dedicated to removing American influence from other countries and bring down the United States’s ranking position as a superpower.
Later on, Sadiq makes an appearance in London at the Lansdowne Mill, one of the Engineers’ bases. He captures and attempts to interrogate a poisoned Fisher, however before going further, he is interrupted by Isaac Briggs who much to Fisher’s dismay, refuses to go after Sadiq and instead uses atropine to stabilize Sam. Upon discovering that Fourth Echelon has foiled another of the Blacklist attacks, Sadiq not only pushes the timetable to the attacks, but also attempts to take down the whole squad by planting a computer virus within Paladin. Although his plan once again fails, he does manage to stall them long enough for The Engineers to successfully attack the Liquid Natural Gas facility in Louisiana and therefore accomplish American Fuel.
Following the tragic events, the continuity of government is issued. All high-ranking government officials back up in to a bunker based in Denver called “Site F”. Sadiq raids the bunker, killing most of the resistance and attempts to gain access into the account of the Secretary of Defense. Just as he is about to force the Secretary to comply and give him access, Briggs, who had intentionally turned himself in to give leverage to Sam, grabs the SecDef and snaps his neck, exercising the Fifth Freedom. As a result, an outraged Sadiq makes a last ditch effort to escape via the Paladin using the hostages as cover, however his plan is once again foiled by Sam Fisher.
Even upon defeat, Sadiq claims that he has already “won”, threatening Sam that if he kills him, the twelve nations behind The Engineers will rise or if he puts him in trial, he will “spill every secret [he] knows”. Leaving him with no choice, Sam employs the Fifth Freedom and unofficially imprisons Majid.
To protect the public welfare, Sadiq is announced as dead by President Caldwell. He is last seen talking with a near-fully recovered Victor Coste, before Sam comes in the room to begin interrogating Sadiq to bring down the rest of the Engineers.