Games Of State (1996)

by Tom - Op Center 03 Clancy

  "No," she said, "there aren't two Nancy Jo Bosworths. That was me."

  "It's okay," Hood said to him. "I knew all about it."

  Stoll nodded slowly. He regarded Nancy. "Forgive me," he said, "but as a software designer m'self, I just have to say that that's very uncool."

  "I know," Nancy replied.

  "That's enough, Matt," Hood said sternly.

  "Sure," Stoll said. He sat back, tightened the seatbelt which he'd never unbuckled, and turned around so he could look out the window.

  And then Hood thought, Damn everything. Here he was rebuking Stoll when what he should have been doing was wondering about Nancy showing up in the park the way she did. And when he happened to be with Richard Hausen. Was it a coincidence, or could it be that all of them were in this thing with Dominique? He suddenly felt very unsure and very stupid. In the rush of events, in his eagerness to stop Dominique from getting his message and his games to America, Hood had utterly ignored security and caution. What's more, he'd allowed his group to be split. His security expert, Bob Herbert, was roaming around the German countryside.

  It could be that he was making more of this than there was. His gut told him he was. But his brain told him to try and find out. Before they got to Demain, if possible.

  Hood remained beside Stoll while Nancy had returned to her side of the aircraft. She was unhappy and not attempting to hide it. Stoll was disgusted and not trying to hide it either. Only Hood had to keep his feelings to himself, though not for long.

  As Elisabeth came on the intercom to announce the final descent into Toulouse, Hood casually borrowed the laptop from Stoll.

  "Want me to boot up Solitaire?" Stoll asked, referring to Hood's favorite computer game.

  "No," Hood said as he switched the machine back on. "I feel like Tetris." As he spoke, Hood typed a message onto the screen. "Matt," he wrote, "I don't want you to say anything. Just put me on-line with Darrell."

  Stoll casually touched his nose, leaned over, and entered his password and Op-Center's number. The disk drive hummed as the prompt said, "Processing. "

  Stoll sat back when the prompt said, "Ready." He turned his head toward the window, but kept his eyes on the screen.

  Hood typed his personal transmission code in quickly, then wrote:

  "Darrell: I need every detail you can get on the life of German Deputy Foreign Minister Richard Hausen. Check tax records from 1970s. Looking for employment by Airbus Industrie or by a man named Dupre or Dominique of Toulouse. Also want details of postwar life and activities of Maximillian Hausen of the Luftwaffe. Call me when you have anything. Shoot for 1600 hours EST today at the latest."

  Hood sat back. "1 suck at this game. What do I do now?"

  Stoll reached over. He transmitted the E-mail message. "You want to save any of these games?"

  "No," Hood said.

  Stoll typed in :-) then erased the screen.

  "In fact," Hood said, shutting off the computer, "I want you to take this machine and throw it out the window."

  "You should never play video games when you're tense," Nancy said. She looked across the cabin at Hood. "It's like sports or sex. You've got to be loose."

  Hood handed Stoll the computer. Then he walked over to Nancy and buckled himself in beside her.

  "I'm sorry I got you into this," he said.

  "Which 'this' do you mean?" she asked. "This little raid or this whole stinking, lousy business?"

  "The raid," he said. "I shouldn't have imposed on our ..." He stopped to search for the right word, settled reluctantly on "friendship."

  "It's all right," Nancy said. "Really it is, Paul. A big part of me is tired of running and of depending on Demain and on the whole expatriate life that you have to be drawn to to enjoy. What was it that Sydney Carton said on the way to the scaffold in A Tale of Two Cities? 'It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done.' This is far, far better than the things I've done till now."

  Hood smiled warmly. He wanted to tell her not to worry about the scaffold. But he couldn't guarantee her fate any more than he could swear to her allegiance. As the plane landed gently on the soil of France, he only hoped that the worry on her face was for her future and not his.

  FORTY-NINE

  Thursday, 2:59 P.M., Washington, D.C.

  Hood's wireless transmission was received by Darrell McCaskey's executive assistant Sharri Jurmain. The FBI Academy graduate E-mailed it to McCaskey's personal computer and to Dr. John Benn of Op-Center's Rapid Information Search Center.

  The RI-Search Center was little more than two small, interconnected offices with twenty-two computers run by two full-time operators and overseen by Dr. Benn. A former librarian with the Library of Congress, the British-born bachelor had been an embassy researcher in Qatar for two years when the Arab state declared its independence from Britain in 1971. Benn remained there for seven years before moving to Washington to stay with his sister when her diplomat-husband died. Charmed by Washington and by Americans, Benn remained behind after his sister returned to England. He became an American citizen in 1988.

  Benn's proud, singular skill, acquired during his otherwise uneventful years in Qatar, was quoting obscure lines of dialogue from English literature. Even with the help of Usenet groups, no one at Op-Center had ever correctly identified a single one of Benn's characterizations.

  Benn was taking an early tea and pretending to be Mr. Boffin from Dickens's Our Mutual Friend when Hood's E-mail request came through. It was heralded by a synthesized electronic voice calling out, "I will arise and go now" from Yeats's The Lake Isle of Innisfree, followed by the identification number of the person making the request.

  "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," Benn said with a flourish as they swung to the number one screen. He and his assistants Sylvester Neuman and Alfred Smythe immediately recognized Stoll's "greeting," the :-), his "smiley face" lying on its side. In one of his more paranoid moments, Stoll had arranged with them that if he were ever being forced to transmit data, he would input :-(, a frowning face.

  The team went to work efficiently gathering the information.

  For a biography of Deputy Foreign Minister Richard Hausen and any information on his father, Smythe went on-line and executed FTPs--File Transfer Protocols--to acquire data from ECRC Munich, Deutsche Elektronen Synchotron, German Electro-Synchotron, DKFZ Heidelberg, Gesellschaft fur Wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung GmbH, Konrad Zuse Zentrum fur Informationstechnik Konrad Zuse Center, and Comprehensive TeX Archive Network Heidelberg. Neuman used three computers to enter gopherspace on the Internet and accessed information from Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum Hamburg, EUnet Germany, the German Network Information Center, and ZIB, Berlin auf Ufer. With the help of an aide to Matt Stoll, Deputy Assistant Director of Operations Grady Reynolds, they hacked into tax, employment, and education records of the former Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. The records of many Germans, especially the former East Germans, existed as hard copy only. However, the educational and financial history of politicial figures would have to have been put on disk for filing with various government commissions. Moreover, many large corporations had scanned their books onto computer. Those, at least, might also be available.

  Darrell McCaskey's office, which had dominion over contact with other agencies, put them on-line with the FBI, Interpol, and various German law enforcement agencies: the Bundeskriminalamt or BKA, the German equivalent of the FBI; the Landespolizei; the Bundeszollpolizei or Federal Customs Police; and the Bundespostpolizei, the Federal Postal Police. The Bundeszollpolizei and the Bundespostpolizei often caught up with felons who had managed to slip past the others.

  As the two assistants word-searched data and retrieved blocks of information about Hausen, Dr. Benn wrote it up in essential, digestible chunks. Since Hood had requested a phone call, Benn would read it to him. However, the data would also be stored for downloading or hard-copy printout.

  Reading the information which
came in, and rereading the original request, he wondered if Hood had got things quite right. There seemed to be some confusion about which Hausen had done what during his career.

  Nonetheless, Benn continued to work quickly in order to meet the deadline Hood had imposed.

  FIFTY

  Thursday, 3:01 P.M., Washington, D.C.

  All requests for information from the RI-Search division were automatically given a job number and time-coded by computer. Job numbers were always prefixed by one, two, or three digits which identified the individual making the request. Since requests were frequently made by someone in a dangerous situation, other individuals were automatically notified when those requests came in. If anything happened to the person in the field, their backup would be required to step in and finish the operation.

  When Hood asked for data from RI-Search, Mike Rodgers was alerted by a beep from his computer. Had he not been present, the signal would have sounded once every minute.

  But he was there, eating a late lunch at his desk. Between bites of microwaved hamburger from the commissary, he examined the request. And he began to worry.

  Rodgers and Hood were unalike in many ways. Chief among the differences was their worldview. Hood believed in the goodness of people while Rodgers believed that humankind was basically self-absorbed, a collection of territorial carnivores. Rodgers felt that the evidence was on his side. If it were not, then he and millions of soldiers like him wouldn't have jobs.

  Rodgers also felt that if Paul Hood had doubts about the Hausen clan, there must really be cause for concern.

  "He's going into France to search for a terrorist group with Matt Stoll as backup," the General said to his empty office. He looked at his computer. He wished he could input ROC and have the Regional Op-Center, fully staffed and with Striker personnel on hand, on site in Toulouse. Instead, he typed in MAPEURO.

  A full-color map of Europe appeared. He overlaid a grid and studied it for a moment.

  "Five hundred and forty miles," he said as his eyes went from Northern Italy to the South of France.

  Rodgers hit ESC and typed NATOITALY.

  Within five seconds a two-column menu was onscreen, offering selections from Troop deployment to Transportation resources, from Armaments to Wargame simulation programs.

  He moved the cursor to Transportation and a second menu appeared. He selected Air transport. A third menu offered a listing of aircraft types and airfields. The Sikorsky CH-53E was free. The three-engined chopper had a range of over twelve hundred miles, and it had room enough for what he was planning. But at 196 miles an hour, it wasn't fast enough. He moved down the list. And stopped.

  The V-22 Osprey. A Bell and Boeing vertical takeoff and landing vehicle. Its range was nearly 1,400 miles at a cruising speed of 345 miles an hour. Perhaps best of all was the fact that one of the prototypes had been turned over to the Sixth Fleet for testing in Naples.

  Rodgers smiled, then escaped from the menu and called up his phone directory on-screen. He moved the cursor to NATO Direct Lines and selected the Senior NATO military commander in Europe, General Vincenzo DiFate.

  Within three minutes, Rodgers had pulled the General away from a dinner party at the Spanish Embassy in London and was explaining why he needed to borrow the chopper and ten French soldiers.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Thursday, 9:02 P.M., Wunstorf, Germany

  "Stupid cripple!"

  Herbert had heard some strong epithets in his day. He'd heard them being thrown at blacks in Mississippi, at Jews in the former Soviet Union, and at Americans in Beirut. But what the young sentry shouted as he stalked toward Jody was one of the dumbest invectives he'd ever heard. Weak as it was, though, it still pissed him off.

  Herbert snatched the flashlight from his chair and took a moment to glance into the driver's side of the car he'd followed here. Then he scooted to the side lest someone shoot at his light. He watched from the darkness as the sentry reached Jody and she finally stopped walking. Then Herbert pulled the Skorpion from under his leg.

  Jody and the sentry were about ten yards from Herbert and twenty-five yards from the line of neo-Nazis. Beyond them, the rally continued undisrupted.

  Jody was standing directly between Herbert and the sentry.

  The boy asked something in German. Jody said she didn't understand. He shouted to someone behind him for instructions about what to do. As he did, he stepped slightly to the left. Herbert aimed the Skorpion at the boy's right shin and fired.

  The brawny youth went down with a shriek.

  "Now we're both crippled," Herbert muttered as he stashed the gun in a worn leather pocket on the side of the chair. He rolled quickly toward the passenger's side of the car.

  The crowd fell silent and the line of neo-Nazis hit the dirt well behind the wounded man. The rise in the terrain made it impossible for them to fire from where they were--though Herbert knew they wouldn't stay there for long.

  As Herbert rounded the car he yelled to Jody, "Do your thing and then let's go!"

  The girl looked at him, then looked across the field of white faces. "You didn't beat me," she yelled in a strong voice. "And you won't."

  Herbert opened the passenger's side. "Jody!"

  The girl looked down at the wounded boy, then ran back.

  "Get in the driver's side," Herbert told her as he started to pull himself in. "The keys are still in the ignition."

  Some of the ralliers had begun to shout. One of the neo-Nazis in the line had gotten up. She was holding a gun. She aimed at Jody.

  "Shit," Herbert said and fired through the window. Jody screamed and clutched at her ears. Hebert's shot struck the German in the thigh and she was thrown backward behind a splash of blood.

  Herbert got back out of the car and into his wheelchair and covered her retreat from behind the open door. Jody got into the car, started the engine, and gunned it. The young woman was no longer composed. She was shaking and breathing heavily, exhibiting a classic post-stress breakdown.

  Herbert couldn't afford to lose her. "Jody," he said, "I want you to listen to me."

  She began to cry.

  "Jody!"

  "What!" she screamed. "What, what, what?"

  "I want you to back the car away slowly."

  She was gripping the wheel and looking down. The mob was roiling like ants behind the prostrate front line. In the distance, Herbert could see the speaker talking with a woman. It was only a matter of time, maybe just seconds, before they were attacked.

  "Jody," Herbert said patiently, "I need you to put the car in reverse and back away very slowly."

  Herbert knew that he wouldn't be able to get in the car without lowering the gun. And lowering the gun, they'd be attacked. He took a quick look back. As far as he could tell in the dark, the terrain behind him was clear for several hundred yards. His plan was to let the open car door move him and the chair backwards, allowing him to keep the gun trained ahead as they retreated. When they were a safe distance away, he'd pull himself in and they could drive off.

  That was the plan, anyway.

  "Jody, are you listening?"

  She nodded, sniffled, and stopped crying.

  "Can you drive us back slowly?"

  With painful slowness and uncertainty Jody put her hand on the gearshift. She started to cry again.

  "Jody," Herbert said calmly, "we've really got to go."

  She moved the lever just as the front tires exploded.

  The car left the ground as they blew up, chewed apart by a burst of gunfire from somewhere ahead. The open door flopped back, slapping Herbert toward the rear of the car. A moment later gunfire from a semi-automatic began eating into the open door. The crowd had parted to make a path and a woman was holding the weapon under her arm. As Lang had said--was it only that morning?--"This can only be Karin Doring."

  Herbert rolled back. He opened the rear door, got behind it, and fired a burst from around the side. That kept the front line pinned down though it didn't stop the woman.
She was coming as inexorably as winter.

  Jody was crying. Herbert saw the guns in the backseat. He also saw something else there, something he could use.

  He fired another few rounds at the mob, then said, "Jody. I need you to cover me."

  She shook her head. He knew she had no idea what he was saying.

  Bullets slammed into the front door. A couple more bursts and they're goin' right through, he thought. Then they'd penetrate his door and after that they'd penetrate him.

  "Jody!" Herbert screamed. "You've got to reach through the partition, take the guns from the backseat, and shoot. Shoot, Jody, or we're dead!"

  The young woman was squeezing the wheel.

  "Jody!"

  She continued to cry.

  Desperate, Herbert turned toward her and put a round into the seat beside her thigh. She screamed and jumped as feather-light padding flew up, then drifted down.

  "Jody," he repeated. "Take the guns and shoot Karin Doring or she will goddamn own you!"

  The student turned to him, wide-eyed. Apparently that she understood. Turning determinedly toward the back, Jody stretched through the open partition and grabbed the two guns.

  "Release the safeties," Herbert said, "the little latches on the--"

  "Got them," Jody said.

  He looked at her as she sniffed back tears. Then he watched as she fired a burst at the windshield, leaned back against the seat, and kicked out the shattered expanse of glass with a yell.

  "Amazing," he said under his breath. "Gauge your fire!" he cautioned as he leaned into the car. "Conserve ammo!"

  He kept an eye on the front line of neo-Nazis as he picked up the six sparkling water bottles and put them in the leather pouch of his chair. As Karin Doring neared, the line grew bolder and one of the men rose.

  "Bastard!" Jody screamed and shot at him.

  The shot went wide, but the German dropped.

  Herbert shook his head. I've bred myself a little killer here, he thought as he twisted the bottle caps from two of them and spilled the contents onto the ground. When they were empty, he rolled back a few feet and used his Urban Skinner to cut a section of gray tubing from the left wheel of his chair. Even Karin Doring wouldn't be able to walk through a wall of fire.