FIFTY-FOUR
Thursday, 9:33 P.M., Wunstorf, Germany
When the car died, Jody had lifted her foot from the gas pedal, lay back on the headrest, and shut her eyes.
"I can't move," she panted.
Herbert turned on the overhead light and leaned toward her. "Sweetheart," he said softly, "you have to."
"No."
He began pulling wads of cotton-soft padding from the car seat. "Our car's dead. We will be too if we don't get out."
"I can't," she repeated.
Herbert moved the collar of her blouse aside and gently dabbed at the blood on her wound. The hole wasn't large. He wouldn't be surprised if the bullet was a .22 fired from some homemade piece of crap by one of the kids in the crowd.
Stupid punks, he thought. They'd puke at the sight of their own damn blood.
"I'm afraid," Jody said suddenly. She started to whimper. "I was wrong. I'm still afraid!"
"It's okay," Herbert said. "You're asking too much of yourself."
Herbert felt bad for the kid, but he couldn't afford to lose her. Not now. He didn't doubt for a moment that Karin would be coming after him, alone or in force. The caduceus of Nazism had to be coated with the blood of the conquered to serve as an emblem of power.
"Listen, Jody," Herbert said. "We're close to where we started, about a mile from the main road. If we can get there we'll be okay."
Herbert turned to the glove compartment and opened it. He found a bottle of acetaminophen inside and gave two to Jody. Then he reached into the backseat, retrieved one of the water bottles, and gave her a drink. When she was finished, he let his hands drop behind the seat. He was feeling for something.
"Jody," he said, "we need to get out of here."
He found what he was looking for. "Sweetie," he said, "I've got to fix the wound."
She opened her eyes. "How?" she asked, wincing as she shifted her shoulder.
"I've got to take the bullet out. But there's no tape for a bandage or thread for a suture. When I'm done I'm going to have to cauterize it."
She was suddenly more alert. "You're going to burn me?"
"I've done it before," Herbert said. "We have to get out of here and I haven't got the horsepower to do that." He said, "What I'm going to do will hurt, but you're hurting now. We've got to fix that."
She lay her head back.
"Hon? We don't have time to waste."
"All right," she rasped. "Do it."
Holding his hands low where she couldn't see, he lit a match and held it to the tip of his Urban Skinner to sterilize it. After a few seconds he blew out the flame and used his fingers to gently open the wound. The back of the shell glinted in the yellow light of the car. Taking a deep breath, Herbert placed his left hand over her mouth. "Bite me if you have to," he said as he raised the knife.
Jody groaned.
The trick to treating a bullet wound was not to cause more damage removing the shell than it caused going in. But it had to be removed lest it work its way around the tissue, ripping it or even fragmenting itself as they fled.
Ideally, the surgeon would have forceps or tweezers to remove the shell. Herbert had only the knife. That meant he had to get under the bullet and pop it out fast, lest her writhing drive the blade this way and that.
He studied the wound for a moment, then put the tip to the opening. The bullet had entered at a slight left-to-right angle. He would have to go in the same way. He held his breath, steadied the knife, then pushed it in slowly.
Jody screamed into his hand. She struggled hard against Herbert, but he pinned her with his left forearm. There was nothing like pushing around a wheelchair to build the upper body.
Herbert pushed the blade along the bullet. He felt its end, angled the tip of the knife beneath it, and used the Skinner like a lever to ease the shell out. It emerged slowly, then tumbled down her body.
Herbert tucked the knife into his belt and released her. He grabbed the matches.
"I need four or five seconds to seal the wound," he said. "Will you give me that?"
Her lips and eyes pressed shut, she nodded briskly.
Herbert struck a match and used it to set the rest of the matchbook on fire. The matches would be hotter and faster than if he heated the knife and used it to close the wound. And seconds mattered now.
Once again pressing his hand to her mouth, Herbert pressed the heads of the matches to the bloody wound.
Jody tensed and bit his hand. He knew this pain and knew it would grow worse as the moisture in her skin evaporated. As she dug her teeth into him, he fought his own pain and bent toward her ear.
"Did you ever see Kenneth Branagh in Henry V?"
One second. The blood boiled off. Jody's hands shot toward Herbert's wrist.
"Remember what he told his soldiers?"
Two seconds. The flesh began to sear. Jody's teeth sliced through the meat of his palm.
"Henry said that one day they'd point to their scars and tell their kids that they were tough cookies."
Three seconds. The wound sizzled. Jody's strength seemed to evaporate. Her eyes rolled up.
"That's you," Herbert said. "Except you'll probably have plastic surgery."
Four seconds. The edges of the wound knit together under the heat. Jody's hands fell back.
"No one will ever believe you were shot. That you fought with King Bob Herbert on St. Crispin's Day."
Five seconds. He pulled at the matches. They broke from the burned flesh with a slight tug. He dropped the book, then brushed away the embers which still clung to her skin. It was a small, ugly job, but at least the wound was closed.
He removed his hand from her teeth. His palm was bleeding.
"Now we'll both have scars to show off," he grumbled as he reached for the passenger's side door. "Think you'll be able to walk now?"
Jody looked at him. She was sweating and her perspiration glistened in the car light.
"I'll make it," she said. She didn't look at the wound as she pulled her blouse over it. "Did I hurt your hand?"
"Unless you have rabies I'll be fine." He opened the door. "Now if you'll help me with the chair we can get the hell out of here."
Jody moved slowly, tentatively as she came around the car. She was more confident with each step and seemed her old self by the time she reached him. She struggled slightly to get the chair out, then held it open for him.
Pressing his hands on the car seat, he hopped in.
"Let's go," he said. "Due east. To the left."
"That's not the way I came," she said.
"1 know," Herbert replied. "Just do it."
She started pushing. The chair seemed to snag on every exposed root and fallen branch. Far behind them, in an otherwise still and silent night, they heard crunching.
"We're never going to make it," Jody said.
"We are," Herbert said, "as long as you keep going in this direction.
Jody leaned into the chair and they moved slowly through the dark. And as they did, Herbert told the young woman one thing more he needed her to do.
FIFTY-FIVE
Thursday, 9:56 P.M., Toulouse, France
Leaving the vans behind, Ballon, Hood, Stoll, Hausen, and Nancy crossed the Tarn by foot across the high-arched brick bridge. Streetlights placed every twenty yards or so provided enough light for them to see--and, Hood knew, enough light for them to be seen.
Not that that mattered. Dominique would have assumed he was being watched in any case. Their approach would probably not cause him to take any extra precautions.
Upon reaching the former bastide, the group stopped. They sat beside a thicket on the narrow stretch of grass which sloped toward the river.
Muttering the entire time, Stoll entrusted his computer to Nancy while he unpacked the T-Bird.
"You're sure we're not doing anything illegal," Stoll said. "I'm not going to end up starring in Midnight Express II and getting caned."
"We don't do that in France," Ballon said. "And this i
s not illegal."
"I should've read the warrant on the plane," Stoll said. "Except I don't read French, so what difference would it've made?"
The computer scientist hooked the shoebox-like device to the fax-machine-sized imager. He pointed the front at the building and used a button on the imager to activate the laser line scanner. This scanner would clean up the image, removing blur caused by air particles which scattered the light.
Stoll said, "Colonel, you got any idea how thick those walls are?"
"Half a foot in most places."
"Then we should be okay," Stoll said as he squatted and switched on the terahertz generator. Less than ten seconds later the device beeped. "But we'll know now for sure in half a minute."
Still squatting, Stoll leaned over and waited for the color picture to come from the imager. The paper emerged at a rate equivalent to a moderately slow fax machine. Ballon watched expectantly as the glossy sheet curled out.
When the machine stopped, Stoll tore off the paper and handed it up to Ballon. The Colonel studied it in the light of a small flashlight. The others moved closer.
Hood's spirits plummeted. On the strength of this they'd be going nowhere very soon.
"What is this?" Ballon asked. "It looks like a swimming pool."
Stoll's knees popped as he rose. He looked at the image. "It's a picture of wall which is a lot thicker than six inches," he said. He studied beam-back data on the bottom of the paper. "It got 6.27 inches through the wall, then stopped. Which means it's either thicker than you thought or there's something on the other side."
Hood looked at Nancy, who was frowning. Then he looked at the five-story-tall edifice. There were windows, but they were shuttered. He was sure there would be radio-reflective materials on the other side.
Ballon threw the paper down angrily. "This is what we came here for?"
"Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances," Stoll said. He was obviously relieved. "I guess we should've known it wouldn't be as easy as hacking into government computers."
Even as he said it, Stoll obviously knew he'd made a mistake. Ballon turned the flashlight on him. Hood regarded the computer whiz.
"Can you break into computers?" Ballon asked.
Stoll looked at Hood. "Yes. I mean, I have. But that's highly illegal, especially--"
"We tried to get into Demain's computers," Ballon said, "but Dominique wasn't on-line anywhere we could find. I had some of our best people working on the problem."
Nancy said, "That's because you probably didn't know what you were looking for. Did you find any of his games?"
"Of course," said Ballon.
"Then they were probably in there. Hidden inside MUDs. Multi-User Dungeons."
"Hey," said Stoll. "I was fooling around with one on the plane."
"I know," Nancy said. "I saw the commands you were typing. Also, the other message you sent."
Hood grew warm with embarrassment.
"It's like reading lips," Nancy said. "With enough experience you can read keyboards. Anyway, when we program games we always put in secret doorways to other games. I hid a game of Tetris inside Ironjaw, a game I wrote for Demain."
"That was yours?" Stoll asked. "That was awe-some!"
"It was mine," she said. "No one ever reads the credits at the end. But if you did, you'd have found Tetris. All you had to do was highlight the correct letters sequentially in the fictitious names Ted Roberts and Trish Fallo."
Hood said, "How the hell would anyone ever think to do that?"
"They wouldn't," Nancy smiled. "That's what makes it so much fun. We leak the information through fan magazines and on-line bulletin boards."
Hood said, "But no one would ever think of looking for an activation code in an innocent adventure game."
"Right," said Nancy. "But that's exactly what it takes. A simple activation code. A program in somebody's computer in Jerkwater Township, U.S.A., could unleash a hate game across the entire Internet."
"Why didn't you say anything about this?" Hood asked.
"Frankly, it didn't occur to me until now," she snapped. "I didn't think of somebody sneaking hate games into the world through role-playing programs. Why didn't Matt think of it? He's your computer maven!"
"She's right," Stoll said. "I should've. Like the old joke says, you go hunting for elephant, sometimes you forget to look in the refrigerator."
Hood didn't remember the old joke, and didn't care right now. He said, "So the hate games are hidden. Where do we look for them?"
"And even if we find them," Hausen asked, "can we trace them back to Demain?"
"It's tough to say where to look for them," Stoll said. "He could have had the program passed around like a football--The Scorpion Strikes to The Phoenix from Space to Claws of the Tiger-Man."
"Would the hate game program have to come to rest in a Demain game?" Hood asked.
"No," said Stoll. "Once it was planted, it's like a virus. Timed to go off at will."
"So there's no smoking gun," Hood said.
"Right," said Stoll. "Even if you could stop the program from being launched, which is debatable since he'd probably have a backup somewhere, there wouldn't be any fingerprints on it."
Ballon said disgustedly, "That doesn't help me. Not a bit."
Hood looked at his watch. "He's going on-line now," he said. "Nancy, are you sure you don't know anything more about this? About his M.O. or about the programmers and how they work?"
"If I did, Paul, I'd have told you."
"I know. I was just thinking maybe something slipped your mind."
"It didn't. Besides, I don't do the finishes on these programs. I write the parameters, the outlines, and other people color them in here. Paid big bucks and sequestered and loyal to the boss. When we do things like the extra game in the credits, that's more or less an afterthought. This is way out of my area."
Everyone was silent for a moment. Then Stoll clapped his hands once and dropped to the grass. "1 know how to do it. I know how to get that bastard!"
Ballon crouched beside him. "How?"
The others moved around them as Stoll unwrapped the cables for his portable computer. He attached the machine to the T-Bird. "The programmers work like painters. Like we saw in Mr. Hausen's office, they take stuff from the landscape around them and use it in the games. It's dark now, so we'd have a problem eyeballing scenery. But if I take terahertz pictures of the trees and the hills and everything else, the chemical compounds appear as visual data. That'll give us the shape of things down to leaves and boulders. If we feed those into the computer--"
"You can run a video comparison program to see if any of the images match up," Nancy said. "Matt, that's brilliant!"
"Damn right," he said. "With any luck, I can handle the whole thing here. If I need more juice, I can download to Op-Center."
As Stoll worked Hood watched, confused but trusting his associate. And as he stood there, his phone beeped. He stepped toward the river to answer.
"Yes?"
"Paul?" said the caller. "It's John Benn. Can you speak?"
Hood said that he could.
"I have a full report for you, but here is the gist. Maximillian Hausen, father of Richard Hausen, worked for Pierre Dupre from 1966 to 1979. His title was Pilot and then Senior Pilot."
"You said 1966?" Hood said.
"I did."
That was before Richard Hausen and Gerard Dupre went to school together. In which case, it was not likely that they met at the Sorbonne, as Hausen had said. They almost certainly knew each other before that. Hood glanced back at Hausen, who was watching Stoll. The question which bothered Hood was not so much when they met but whether they were still in contact now. Not as enemies, but as allies.
"There's more," Benn said. "Apparently, Hausen the Elder was a loyal Nazi who continued to meet in secret with other ex-Nazis after the war. They belonged to the White Wolves, a group which plotted the creation of the Fourth Reich."
Hood turned his back on the group
. He asked quietly, "Was Richard a member?"
"There's no evidence one way or the other," Benn said.
Hood was glad to hear that, at least. "Anything else, John?"
"Not at present."
"Thank you," Hood said. "This is all very helpful."
"You're welcome," Benn said, "and have a good night."
Hood clicked off, then stood for a moment looking at the dark waters of the Tarn. "I hope that's possible," he said under his breath as he turned and headed back to the others.
FIFTY-SIX
Thursday, 10:05 P.M., Wunstorf, Germany
Jody moved as quickly as her sandbag-heavy legs and aching shoulder would permit. It was amazing, she thought, how she had always taken so many things for granted. A healthy body, for one. A walk through the woods for another. Pushing or sometimes pulling a wheelchair with someone in it made the exercise a much different proposition.
Add the fact that someone was chasing her, someone she could hear but couldn't see, and every aspect of the experience became more vivid still.
She stumbled, got up, pushed, groaned, and leaned against the wheelchair. She relied on it nearly as much as it relied on her. And then she heard the woman's voice shout from behind her.
"Don't move another foot!"
Jody stopped.
"Lift your arms."
Jody did.
"Take two steps to your left and remain facing away."
Jody obeyed. She listened as Karin Doring walked forward. The German was breathing heavily. Jody started as the woman put three bullets into the back of the wheelchair. The dead body fell forward.
"God--god!" Jody gasped.
Karin circled the girl. Even in the dark the terrified young woman could see her angry expression. She also saw the SA knife.
"You dared come to my camp as you did!" Doring screamed at her. Her voice was angrier than it had been earlier in the day. She kicked the wheelchair out of her way. "You dared to challenge me, to insult me!"
"I'm sorry," Jody said, trembling. "You--you would have done the same, wouldn't you?"
"You are not me!" Karin said. "You've paid no dues!"
Games Of State (1996) Page 33