Games of State

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

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 rubber 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.

But Richter would do something. He had to. Honor demanded it.

Turning from the window, Dominique made his way back to his office. Speculation was always fun, but ultimately it was pointless. There was only one thing Dominique knew for sure: he was glad to be in his position and not Richter's.