"Not funny," Herbert said.
"Sorry," Alberto said. "Searching."
Herbert could hear the tap of the computer keys.
"Yes," Alberto said. "For the past two years, many conventioneers have kicked off events with a six P.M. toast at the Beer-Hall in Hanover."
"Why am I not surprised," Herbert said. Munich's infamous Beer-Hall Putsch of 1923 was when Hitler had made his first, failed attempt at seizing power in Germany. Only where Hitler failed, these men obviously intended to succeed.
The second half of Herbert's time on the telephone was spent tracking down an automobile with hand-operated gas and brake pedals. Several companies hired handicapped-accessible cars with drivers, but Herbert didn't want that. He intended to look for intelligence in the heart of the Chaos Days celebration, and didn't want to put a driver at risk.
He finally found a rental company which had a car, and even though it didn't have bulletproof glass and an ejection seat--he was just joking, he assured the humorless rental agent--they brought it to his hotel. Deciding to dress down, he took off his white shirt and tie and pulled on the My Name is Herbert... Bob Herbert sweatshirt his sister had given him. Then he donned his blazer and headed downstairs. With the help of the doorman, he put his wheelchair fully open in a special well in the seatless back. Then, with a map open on the passenger's seat, his detachable wheelchair phone beside it, and Matt Stoll's electronic translator beside that, Herbert took his new Mercedes on the road.
It was ironic, he thought--sad and ironic--that a man with restricted mobility represented the sum total of American HUMINT in Germany. On the other hand, he was a man with experience, desire, and a solid organization behind him. People had gone into the field with less than that. Much less. And though he didn't exactly expect to be inconspicuous, he subscribed to the intelligence dictum "Never underestimate what somebody might know; and never underestimate what someone might say if he's careless, stupid, or drunk." At the Beer-Hall he was likely to find a healthy dose of all of the above.
More than savoring the independence, he was thrilled to be back in action. Now he knew just how Mike Rodgers must have felt getting back in the saddle in Korea.
The drive from the hotel took under two hours. It was a straight ride down the north-south-running A1 Autobahn, where there was only a recommended speed limit, 100 to 130 km/h, though anyone going under 130 was considered a grafin, a countess--slow, stately, and matronly.
Herbert clipped along at nearly ninety miles an hour. He rolled down the front windows and felt the refreshing fury of the wind. Even at that speed, however, he missed none of the beautiful, green countryside of Lower Saxony. It was depressing to think that the intoxicating forests and centuries-old villages were the home of one of the most virulent hate movements in the history of civilization.
But that's Paradise for you, he knew. Always a snake or two in every tree.
He had felt differently about people and beauty when he first arrived in Lebanon with his wife. A gorgeous blue sky, ancient buildings ranging from the humble to the magnificent, devout Christians and Moslems. The French had withdrawn in 1946, and the religious "brothers" waged vicious war against one another. U.S. Marines helped put out the fire in 1958, but it erupted anew in 1970. Eventually, the U.S. returned. The skies were still blue and the buildings still awe-inspiring when a Moslem suicide-bomber attacked the American Embassy in Beirut in 1983. Fifty people died, and many more were injured. Since that time, beauty had never looked innocent or even especially appealing to Herbert. Even life itself, once so rich and full of promise, was more like marking time until he and his wife could be reunited.
Hanover was a remarkable contrast to the countryside--and to itself. Like Hamburg, it had been heavily damaged by bombing during World War II. Plunked between the modern buildings and wide thoroughfares were pockets of sixteenth-century architecture, timbered homes beside narrow roads and old, Baroque gardens. It wasn't Herbert's cup of cocoa: he preferred the pure country in which he'd grown up. Ponds, gnats, frogs, and corner drugstores. But as he drove through the streets, he was surprised by these two strikingly different faces of Hanover.
Which is fitting, Herbert thought as he made his way to Rathenauplatz. This city is a place with two very different human faces as well.
Ironically, the quaint section of the city was where most of the cafes and restaurants were located. The charm hid the vipers. He got there simply by noticing and following three skinheads on motorcycles. He didn't for a moment imagine that they were going to the Sprengel Museum of modem art.
The drive took ten minutes. When he arrived, there was no mistaking the Beer-Hall. It was located in the middle of a row of coffeehouses and bars, most of which were closed. The tavern had a white brick facade and a simple sign with its name. The block letters were black and the background was red.
"Of course they are," Herbert muttered as he drove by. Those were the colors of Nazi Germany. Though displaying swastikas was illegal in Germany, these people had invoked the likeness without breaking the law. Indeed, as Hausen had mentioned during lunch, while neo-Nazism itself was illegal, these groups got around the ban by calling themselves every euphemism they could think of, from the Sons of the Wolf to the 21 st Century National Socialists.
But if the Beer-Hall wasn't a surprise, the people gathered in front of it were.
The ten round picnic-style tables in front failed to contain the group, whose numbers grew even as Herbert watched. Nearly three hundred mostly young men were standing or sitting on the sidewalk, curb, or street, or were leaning against cars whose owners had failed to get them out in time and wouldn't be able to retrieve them until after these three days were over. The few pedestrians who were out moved quickly through the crowd. Ahead, four police officers were directing traffic. Cars maneuvered carefully around the crowds milling and drinking on the curb outside the Beer-Hall.
Herbert had expected an army of skinheads and brownshirts--shaved heads and tattoos, or crisply pressed pseudo-Nazi uniforms with armbands. There was a smattering of punks in pockets of ten here and half a dozen there. But most of the men and the few women he saw were dressed in casual designer clothes with fashionable if slightly conservative hairstyles. They were laughing and at ease, looking very much like young stockbrokers or attorneys who had come to Hanover for a convention. The scene was frightening in its ordinariness. This could be Herbert's beloved hometown.
With his trained eye, Herbert divided the tapestry into manageable fragments and then swallowed each image whole, rather than examining individuals. Later, if need be, he could pick out important details from memory.
As he inched by, Herbert also listened through the open window. He wasn't fluent in German, but he picked up enough to understand. These people were talking about politicians, computers, and cooking, for Chrissakes. It wasn't the way he'd imagined it would be, young men singing old German drinking songs. No wonder the authorities kept their distance from Chaos Days. If they cracked down here, they might have to lock up some of the nation's leading doctors, attorneys, stockbrokers, journalists, diplomats, or God knows who else. And God help them all if these people were ever motivated to move against the government. They weren't strong enough or united enough yet. But if they were, German rule could quickly unravel and be re-woven into a tapestry which the world would have every reason to fear.
His bowels tightened. Part of him screamed inside, They have no right, the young bastards. But another part of him knew that they had every right. Ironically, the defeat of Hitler had given them the right to say or do a great deal, as long as there was no racial or religious incitement or public denial of the Holocaust.
Toward the end of the street, there was a registration table with a half-dozen men and women behind it. The crowd waiting at the table was swelling, no one pushing, no one complaining, nothing to disrupt the general air of fellowship. Herbert slowed and watched as the organizers took money and passed out itineraries and sold black-and-red bumper stick
ers and lapel pins.
They've got a goddamn cottage industry going here, Herbert thought, amazed. All of it subtle, venomous, and legal. That was the problem, of course. Unlike the skinheads, who were considered low-caste neo-Nazis and spurned by people like these, the men and the few women here were smart enough to stay within the law. And when there was enough of them to field candidates and vote, Herbert had every confidence that they would change the law. Just as they'd done in March of 1933, when the Enabling Act gave Hitler dictatorial authority over the nation.
One of the hosts, a tall young man with sandy blond hair, stood stiffly behind the table. He shook the hand of each newcomer. He seemed less comfortable with the few grubbier skinheads than he did with the clean-cut men.
Even among the vermin there are castes, Herbert noted. He was intrigued as one of the scruffier new arrivals followed the handshake by throwing his arm in a traditional Nazi salute. It was an isolated, nostalgic gesture. The other men seemed uncomfortable with it. It was as though a drunk had come to the cash bar at a social function. They tolerated the salute but did not acknowledge it. Obviously there were schisms in the new Reich just as there had been in the old. Rifts which could be manipulated by outside forces.
Cars were piling up behind Herbert. Releasing the hand brake, he pressed his palm hard on the gas pedal and ripped down the street. He was angry: angry at these slick monsters, heirs to war and genocide, and angry at the system which allowed them to exist.
As Herbert rounded the corner, he saw that the side streets were closed for parking. He was glad there was no one here with a baton to direct traffic. That would have been too much, like a goddamn country fair.
Turning down one of the streets, he found a place to park. Then he pressed a button beside the radio. The left back door opened and the well in which the wheelchair sat slid to that side. The entire bucket emerged from the car and deposited the wheelchair on the ground. Herbert reached back and pulled it over. He also resolved to make a deal with these people to get cars like this into the U.S. They really made life a whole lot simpler.
Sliding into the wheelchair, he snuggled himself in like a top-gunner. Then he pressed a button in the car door to retract the bucket. When it was back inside, he shut the car door and began rolling down the street, toward the Beer-Hall.
TWENTY-TWO
Thursday, 3:28 P.M., Toulouse, France
Dominique could feel victory. It had weight, it had presence, and it was near. Very near.
He felt it more strongly now that his New York attorney had phoned to say the NYPD and the FBI had taken the bait. They had arrested the Pure Nation team which Dominique had underwritten for these many, many months. Gurney and his people would bear their arrest and trial like true Nazis: proudly and unafraid. At the same time, they would send the FBI to arms caches and literature and would hand over the man who had raped the lesbians in Chicago. And the FBI would crow about its victories.
Its victories. Dominique grinned. Their scavenger hunt. A hunt which would eat up time and personnel and lead the crack law officers in the wrong direction.
It was astonishing to Dominique how easy it had been to dupe the FBI. They had sent an infiltrator. They always did. He was let in with other members. But because the agency infiltrator, John Wooley, was in his late twenties with no prior organization membership, two Pure Nation members had gone to California to visit the "mother" to whom he was writing. Although the FBI had rented a home for her and provided her with a cover, she made two or three calls a day from pay phones inside the local grocery store. Hidden video camera coverage of the phone numbers showed that the calls were made to the Phoenix bureau of the FBI. Pure Nation leader Ric Myers suspected that Mrs. Wooley was probably a veteran agent herself. The Pure Nationals let Wooley remain in the group so they could feed the FBI false information.
At this same time, Dominique had been looking for American neo-Nazis to carry out his work. Jean-Michel had found Pure Nation, and Wooley's presence fit in perfectly with Dominique's plans.
Mrs. Wooley and her "son" will be dealt with in time, Dominque reflected. In just a few weeks, when the United States was thrown into chaos, the Wooleys would become the first victims. The elderly woman would be raped and blinded in her rented home, and the infiltrator would be castrated and left alive, a deterrent to other would-be heroes.
Dominique stood looking through the one-way mirror in a conference room which adjoined his office, a room which looked down into his underground factory. Below him, in a facility which had been used to manufacture armor and weapons during the thirteenth-century Albigensian Crusade, workers were assembling video-game cartridges and pressing CD-ROM games. In a separate area, toward the well-insulated river side of the cellar, technicians were downloading samples of the games to outlets the world over. Consumers would be able to order the game in any format.
Most of the games he manufactured at Demain were mainstream entertainment. The graphics, sound, and gameplay were of such a high caliber that since 1980, when he made his first game, A Knight to Remember, Demain had become one of the most successful software companies in the world.
The other games, however, were much, much closer to Dominique's heart. And they were the real future of his organization. Indeed, they were one of the keys to the future of the world.
My world, he thought. A world he would rule from the shadows.
Stripsy the Gypsy was the first of his important new games. It had been released nine months before and it was about a Gypsy woman of low morals. The object of gameplay was to beat information from villagers, locate the slut, then find articles of clothing she had scattered around the countryside. Demain had sold ten thousand copies worldwide. All of those sales came through mail order, from a Mexican address where authorities had been bribed and wouldn't touch his operation regardless of what kind of games he sold. It had been posted on the web and advertised in white supremacist magazines.
Stripsy the Gypsy was followed by the Ghetto Blasters, set in World War II Warsaw; Cripple Creek, a place to which the handicapped had to be led and drowned; Reorientation, a graphics game in which Asian faces had to be made Occidental; and Fruit Shoot, in which players were required to gun down gay men as they marched in a parade.
But his favorites were the newest ones. Concentration Camp and Hangin' with the Crowd were more sophisticated than the others. Concentration Camp was devilishly educational, and Hangin' with the Crowd allowed players to insert their own faces on the men and women who were hunting down blacks. Hangin' with the Crowd had already been previewed on-line in the United States, and record numbers of orders were being received for the game itself. Concentration Camp was about to be previewed in France, Poland, and Germany--at one very special place in Germany.
These games would help to spread the message of intolerance, but they were just the beginning. Four weeks after the release of these games, Dominique would undertake his most ambitious game project. It would be the culmination of his life's work and it would begin with a game sent free to on-line users. It would be called R.I.O.T.S.--Revenge Is Only The Start--and it would help to precipitate a crisis the likes of which America had anticipated only in its worst nightmares. And while America was distracted, and Germany wrestled with its own surging neo-Nazis, Dominique and his partners would expand their business empires.
Expand? he thought. No. Seize what should always have been ours.
In the 1980s, when President Mitterand needed to generate income for the government, many French businesses had been socialized. During the 1990s, those businesses began to collapse due to the costly burdens of health care, retirement packages, and catering to French citizens who were accustomed to being cared for from cradle to grave. The failing companies dragged numerous banks with them, all of which had helped to raise unemployment in France to a staggering 11.5 percent in 1995 and 15 percent now--twice that among well-educated professionals. And while that happened, the National Assembly did nothing. Nothing except to put its ru
bber stamp on whatever the President and his elite advisors wished.
Dominique would begin to change things by purchasing many of those companies and privatizing them. Some employee benefits would be phased out, but the unemployed would have jobs and the employed would have security. He also planned to gain controlling interest in a French bank. Demain money would help prop the bank up, and its international offices would enable him to invest in countless operations abroad. Funds could be moved around, taxes avoided, and currencies traded favorably. He already had acquisition deals pending with a British movie studio, a Chinese cigarette maker, a Canadian pharmaceuticals firm, and a German insurance company. In foreign countries, having control of important businesses was tantamount to having your foot on the throat of the government.
Individuals and small corporations couldn't maneuver like that, but international conglomerates could. As his father once told him, "Turning one hundred thousand francs into a million francs isn't easy. But turning a hundred million francs into two hundred million francs is inevitable. "
What Japan had tried and failed to accomplish in the 1980s, to become the dominant world economy, France would achieve in the twenty-first century. And Dominique would be the regent behind the throne.
"Germany," he muttered with contempt. They'd started out in history as a conquered people, beaten by Julius Caesar in 55 B.C. They'd had to be rescued by Charlemagne, a Frank.
Dominique had already signed a French singer to record something he had written just a few weeks before, "The Hitla Rap." With a goose-stepping tarantella beat, it exposed the German people to be just what they were, a nation of humorless boors. When he had achieved his goals for France, Dominique had every intention of putting the Huns in their place--though he couldn't resist the little head start he planned for Hausen.
Henri had phoned to report on his successful mission. The fire was all over the news there. Half an historic block had burned in St. Pauli before firefighters got it under control. That was good, though Dominique was curious what the lofty Herr Richter might do in response. Would he kill Jean-Michel en route to tonight's rally? Attack a Demain products distributor in Germany? He doubted it. That would raise the stakes to a dangerous height, nor would either act hurt Dominique very much at all. Would Richter capitulate and toe the line? He doubted that too. Richter was too proud to bend entirely. Might he tell the press about Dominique's secret activities ? That was unlikely. Richter didn't know enough about them, and who would believe Richter in any event? He was a neo-Nazi purveyor of sex. In any case, nothing could be traced to Dominique.
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