Games of State o-3

by Tom Clancy

  "Hello?" Hood leaned on his forearm, against the wall…"Hi," he said.

  "Paul? Is that you?" Nancy sounded genuinely surprised, and pleased.

  "Yes, Nancy. I'm in the lobby. Can we talk?" "Of course! Come up." He said, "It might be better if you came down." "Why? Are you afraid I'll attack you the way I used to?" "No," Hood said, uncomfortable with his thoughts. He wasn't afraid at all, damn him.

  "Then come on up and help me pack," she insisted.

  "Fifth floor, turn right, last door on the left." She hung up and Hood stood there for a moment, listening to the dial tone. At least it drowned out his heart.

  What are you doing, asshole? he asked himself. After a moment of self-pity, he answered, You're going to find out information about Gerard Dominique. About hate games.

  About what might be going on in Toulouse. And then you're going to go back to Hausen's office to report on what you've found.

  Replacing the phone in its cradle, Hood turned toward the elevators and rode to the fifth floor.

  Nancy answered the door wearing tight jeans and a pink polo shirt. The shirt was tucked in, emphasizing her delicate shoulders. The raised collar showed off her long neck. She had pulled her hair into a ponytail like the one she'd used to wear when they went bike riding.

  She smiled her perfect smile, then turned and walked back to the bed. There was an open suitcase on the cover.

  As she packed the last of her toiletries, Hood walked over.

  "I'm pretty surprised to see you," Nancy said. "I thought when we said good-bye, that was it." "Which time?" Hood asked.

  Nancy looked up. Hood stood at the foot of the bed and watched her.

  "Touch‚," Nancy said with a little smile. She finished packing, closed the suitcase, and set it on the floor. Then she sat down slowly, gracefully, like a lady riding sidesaddle.

  "So what is it, Paul?" she asked, the smile fading, softening.

  "Why did you come?" Hood said, "Truthfully? To ask you a couple of questions about your work." Nancy stared at him. "Are you serious?" He shut his eyes and nodded.

  "I think I'd rather have heard something untruthful," she said. She rose and turned away. "You haven't changed, have you Paul? Romantic as Scaramouche in the bedroom, celibate as St. Francis on the job." "That's not true," he said. "This is a bedroom, and I'm being celibate." Nancy looked at Paul and he smiled. She started to laugh. "That's two for you, St. Paul," she said.

  "It's Pope Paul now," he corrected her. "At least, that's what they call me in Washington." "I'm not surprised," Nancy said. She walked toward him. "Coined, I'm willing to bet, by a frustrated female admirer." "As a matter of fact, it was," Hood said. He blushed.

  Nancy walked up to him, and he began to turn away from her. She put her hands on his waist, hooked fingers into his belt loops, and stopped him. She looked up into his eyes.

  "All right, Pope Paul," she said. "What did you want to ask me about my work?" Hood looked down at her. He didn't know what to do with his arms and put them behind him, his left forearm in his right hand. One of her knees was beside his, inside his leg.

  Well what the hell did you think was going to happen?

  he asked himself. You knew this wasn't going to be easy.

  What bothered him more, though, was that this was exactly what a big part of him had wanted. God help him; but it did.

  "This is silly," he said. "How am I supposed to talk to you like this?" "You just did," she pointed out softly. "Now do it again." Hood's forehead was hot, his heart was on overdrive, and blood was racing everywhere. He smelled the apricot shampoo in her hair, felt her warmth, saw those eyes he had looked down into so often in the dark— "Nancy, no," he said firmly. He took her wrists and held them as he stepped back. "We can't do this. We can't." She looked down as her magnificent, sensual posture deflated.

  "Your work," Hood said, breathing deeply. "I need you to tell me— I mean," he said, calming, "I'd like you to rtell me what you're working on." She shot him a disgusted look. "You're out of your mind, you know that?" she asked. She crossed her arms and half-turned.

  "Nancy—" "You reject me and you still want me to help you. I've got a teensy-weensy problem with that, Paul." "Like I said before," Hood told her, "I didn't reject you.

  I didn't reject you at all." "Then why am I here and you over there?" Hood reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew his wallet. "Because you rejected me." He took out the two movie tickets and let them flutter to the bed. Nancy looked at them.

  "You rejected me," he said, "and I made myself another life. I won't jeopardize that. I can't." Nancy picked up the tickets, ran them gently between her thumb and forefinger, then suddenly tore them in half.

  She gave one set of stubs to Hood and put the other in her jeans pocket.

  "I didn't reject you," she said quietly. "Not a day has crept by that I didn't wish I'd grabbed you and taken you with me. Because I saw this in you as well, the conviction of a goddamn knight. You were the only person I ever knew who didn't need New Year's Eve to make resolutions. You always did what you thought was right and then stuck to your decisions." Hood put the stubs in his wallet. "If it's any consolation, I wish to hell you had grabbed me and taken me with you." He grinned. "Though I'm not sure how I would've taken to being Paul and Nancy, the jet-setting Bonnie and Clyde." "Shittily," she said. "You'd probably have made me turn myself in." Hood embraced her, pulled her head to his chest. She held onto him tightly, then tighter still. But it was innocent this time. And a part of him was very, very sad.

  "Nance?" he said.

  "I know," she replied, still snuggled in his arms. "You want to know about my work." "Something rotten's happening on-line," he said.

  "But something nice is happening here," she said. "I feel safe. Can't I enjoy it a little bit longer?" Hood stood there listening to his watch tick, looking at the sky darkening outside the window, concentrating on anything but the dream that was in his arms and in his memory. He stood there thinking, checkout is in the early afternoon. She stayed to see me, hasn't checked out because she's anticipating more.

  But that wasn't why he was here. An end had to be made.

  "Nancy," he said into her ear, "I have to ask you a question." "Yes?" she said expectantly.

  "Have you ever heard of a man named Gerard Dominique?" Nancy stiffened in his arms, then pushed off against his chest. "Could you possibly be more romantic?" His face turned as if he'd been slapped by the rebuke.

  "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "You know—" he started, stopped, looked into her eyes. "You know I can be. You should know that I want to be. But I didn't come here for romance, Nancy." Her own eyes pained, she looked at her watch. "There's a plane I can still catch and I think I'll go catch it." She looked from her watch to the bed to her suitcase. "I don't need a ride, thanks. You can go." Hood didn't move. It was as if two decades had evaporated and he was standing in her apartment, caught in one of those arguments that had started as a flake and had suddenly become a blizzard. It was funny how memory diminished those, but there had been a lot of them.

  "Nancy," Hood said, "we think that Gerard Dominique may be behind the hate video games which have begun showing up in America. A game like that just showed up on Hausen's computer, with Hausen in it." "Video games are easy to make," Nancy said. She went to the closet, got her stylish off-white jacket, and pulled it over her shoulders. "Scanning someone's picture in is also easy. Any well-equipped teenager could do it." "But earlier today, Dominique phoned and threatened Hausen." "Government officials are threatened all the time," Nancy said. "And maybe he deserved it. Hausen gets on a lot of people's nerves." "Does his thirteen-year-old daughter get on people's nerves too?" Nancy's lips came together slowly. "I'm sorry," she said.

  "Of course you are," Hood said. "The question is, can you help me? Do you work for this man?" Nancy turned away. "You think that because I betrayed an employer years ago I'll do it again." "This isn't the same thing, is it?" Hood asked.

  Nancy sighed. Her shoulders
rolled forward. Hood could feel the storm die aborning.

  "Actually," she said, "it's exactly the same thing. Paul Hood needs something and once again I'm ready to flush my life down the toilet so he can have it." "You're wrong," he said. "I didn't ask for the first one.

  That was your doing." "Let me bask in the waves of compassion," she said.

  "I'm sorry. I feel bad for that headstrong girl, but what you did affected a lot of lives. Yours, mine, my wife's, whoever you were with, whoever we might have touched together—" "Your kids," she said bitterly, "our kids. The kids we never had." Nancy stepped forward and put her arms around Hood.

  She began to cry. Paul held her closer, felt her shoulder blades heaving against his open hands. What a waste, he thought. What a tragic goddamned waste this all was.

  "You don't know how many nights I lay in bed alone," Nancy said, "cursing myself for what I did. I wanted you so bad I was going to go back and turn myself in. But when I called Jessica to see how you were, she told me you had a new girlfriend. So what was the point?" "I wish you had come back," he said. "And I wish I'd known all of this then." Nancy nodded. "I was stupid. Insecure. Scared. Angry at you for filling my place. I was a lot of things. I guess I still am. In many ways, time stopped for me twenty years ago and started up again this afternoon." She stepped back and pulled a tissue from the nightstand. She blew her nose and wiped her eyes. "So here we are, full of regrets and one of us at least feeling that you can't go back. And that one isn't me." "I'm sorry," Hood said.

  "Me too," she said back. "Me too." Nancy, took a deep breath, stood tall, and looked into his eyes. "Yes," she said, "I work for Gerard Dominique. But I'm not privy to his politics or personal life, so I don't think I can help you there." "Is there anything you can tell me? What are you working on?" "Maps," she said. "Of American cities." "You mean like regular road maps?" Hood asked.

  She shook her head. "They're what we call point-ofview maps. A traveler inputs the street coordinates and what appears on the computer screen is exactly what you're looking at. Then you input where you want to go, or ask what's around the next corner, or where the nearest subway or bus stop is, and the computer shows you. Again, from your point of view. You can also get a printout of an overhead map if you want. It helps people plan what they're going to see and how they're going to get around in a particular city." "Has Dominique ever done travel guides before?" "Not to my knowledge," Nancy said. "This'll be a first." Hood thought for a moment. "Have you seen any marketing plans?" "No," Nancy said, "but that doesn't surprise me. That's not my area. Though one thing which did surprise me is that we haven't done any press releases on these programs.

  Usually, the publicists come and ask me questions like what's unique about this program or why do people have to have it. That actually happens pretty early in the process so the sales people can solicit orders at the consumer electronics shows. But on this, nada." Hood said, "Nancy— I have to ask this, and I'm sorry.

  It won't go any farther than myself and my closest associates." "You can take out an ad in Newsweek," she said. "I can't resist you when you're so damn doing-your-job earnest." "Nancy, there may be lives at risk." "You don't have to explain," she said. "It's one of the things I loved about you, Sir Knight." Hood flushed. "Thank you," he said, and tried to concentrate on what he was doing. "Just tell me, is Demain working on any kind of new technology? Something that ordinary video-gamers would find compelling?" "Constantly," she said. "But the one we're closest to marketing is a silicon chip which stimulates nerve cells. It was developed for amputees to be able to operate prosthetic limbs or for the augmentation of diminished spinal cord function." She grinned. "I'm not sure whether we actually developed that one, or if it came to Demain the same way my old chip did. In any case, we've changed it quite a bit.

  When it's placed inside a joystick, the chip generates gentle pulses to make a player feel a kind of subtle contentment or harsher pulses to suggest danger. I've tried it. It's all pretty subliminal, something you might not even be aware of. Like nicotine." Hood was feeling slightly overwhelmed. A feel-good, feel-bad chip marketed by a bigot. Hate games on-line in the U.S. It seemed like it should be science fiction, but he knew that the technology was out there. Along with the venom to use it.

  "Could the two of them be combined?" he asked. "Hate games and a chip that affects emotions." "Sure," Nancy said. "Why not?" "Do you think Dominique would?" "Like I said," Nancy told him, "I'm not part of his inner circle. I just don't know. I didn't even realize he could be churning out hate games." "You say that as though it would surprise you," Hood observed.

  "It would," Nancy said. "You work with someone and you form certain ideas about them. Dominique is a patriot, but a radical?" Hood had given Hausen his word that he wouldn't say anything about Dominique's past. He doubted that Nancy would believe him in any case.

  "Did you ever do anything with images from Toulouse?" Hood asked.

  Nancy said, "Sure. We used our delicious little fortress as the background for some kind of promotional download." "Did you ever see the finished product?" Nancy shook her head.

  "I think I did," Hood said. "It was in the game in Hausen's computer. Nancy, one more thing. Is it possible that those maps you created could be used in games?" "Of course," she said.

  "With figures superimposed?" Hood asked.

  "Yes. You could integrate photographs or computergenerated images. Just like in motion pictures." Hood was beginning to get a picture he didn't like. He walked slowly toward the phone, sat down on the bed, and picked up the receiver.

  "I'm going to call my office," he said. "There's something happening that I'm starting to get real worried about." Nancy nodded. "Since the world's hanging in the balance, you don't have to reverse the charges." Hood looked at Nancy. She was smiling. God bless her, he thought. She was as prone to psychotic mood swings as ever.

  "Actually," Hood said as he punched in Mike Rodgers's number, "the world, or a good part of it, may very well be hanging in the balance. And you may be the only one who can save it."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Thursday, 12:02 P.M., Washington, D.C.

  After noting the information Hood needed, Rodgers farmed it out to Ann, Liz, and Darrell. Ordinarily, information requests went directly to the divisions responsible for surveillance, personal dossiers, code-breaking, and the like.

  But Hood needed a lot of different information, and asking Rodgers for it was both convenient and an expedient way of bringing his number two up to date.

  Rodgers told Hood he'd get back to him as soon as possible.

  Moments later, Alberto phoned to tell Mike Rodgers what Bob Herbert was up to. Rodgers thanked him and told him that he didn't want to bother Herbert with a return call.

  Even if the ringer were off, the vibration might distract him.

  Besides, the intelligence chief knew that his colleague would be behind him. As the only battle-tested warriors among the Op-Center elite, they enjoyed a very special bond.

  Rodgers hung up, feeling an equal measure of pride and concern for Herbert. His instinct was to call for an extraction team to be flown in from one of the American bases in Germany. But during Chaos Days a stand down order had been issued to all American troops stationed in Germany, and all leaves cancelled. The last thing the governments of Germany and America wanted was an incident involving the military that might galvanize the neo- Nazis. It was best, under the circumstances, to let Herbert go in alone.

  Rodgers was reflecting on Herbert's chances for success when Darrell McCaskey arrived. He was wearing one of his pained looks and carrying a short stack of distinctive white FBI folders with the Bureau's seal on front and "Eyes Only" stamped beneath.

  "That was quick," Rodgers said.

  McCaskey sat heavily in an armchair. "That's because we've got what Larry Rachlin would call bupkis on this Dominique character. Man, has he lived a careful life. I've got some other stuff for you too, but that was the big nothing." "Let's have it anyway," Rod
gers said.

  McCaskey opened the top file. "His name was originally Gerard Dupre. His father ran a successful Airbus spare parts manufacturing plant in Toulouse. When the French economy imploded in the 1980s, Gerard had already moved the family business into video games and computers. His company, Demain, is privately held and worth an estimated $1 billion." "That kind of money is not— what'd you call it?" "Bupkis, " McCaskey said, "and no, it isn't. But he looks clean as Lady Godiva's horse. The only blot seems to be some money-laundering scheme he worked through the Nauru Phosphate Investment Trust Fund, and he got wristslapped for that." "Tell me about it," Rodgers said. Nauru sounded familiar, though he couldn't figure out why.

  McCaskey looked at the file. "In 1992, Dominique and some other French businessmen reportedly gave money to a nonexistent bank there, while the money actually went through a series of banks to Switzerland." "And then where?" McCaskey said, "It was disbursed to fifty-nine different accounts throughout Europe." "So funds could have gone from any of those fifty-nine accounts to anywhere else." "Exactly," said McCaskey. "Dominique was fined for not paying French taxes on the money, but he paid up and that was that. Since a couple of the intermediary banks were in the U.S., the FBI started keeping a file on him." Rodgers said, "Nauru's in the Pacific, isn't it?" McCaskey read from the file. "It's north of the Solomon Islands, about eight square miles big. It's got a president, no taxes, the highest per capita income in the world, and one business. Phosphate mining. Used for fertilizer." That was where he'd heard of it, Rodgers thought. He'd slumped down while thinking about Herbert, but was now sitting tall. "Yes, Nauru," Rodgers said. "The Japanese occupied it during World War II and enslaved the natives.

  And the Germans had it for sometime before that." "I'll have to take your word for it," McCaskey said.