Games of State

CHAPTER FORTY

Located just a short ride from the popular Place du Capitole and the Garonne River, the Rue St. Rome is one of the shopping streets in old Toulouse. Many of the two- and three-story medieval structures there sag or slant with age.

The floors are buckled due to their proximity to the river.

But these buildings do not fall. It's as if they're telling the brash, new, out-of-place signs for Seiko watches or mopeds, the once-new TV aerials and still-new satellite dishes, "No.

We won't surrender this street to you." And so, after centuries of watching ramparts come and go, of bearing silent witness to countless lives and dreams, the facades still look out on the crooked network of narrow roads and hurrying masses.

Situated in a third-floor room of one of those structures, a dilapidated old store called Magasin Vert which he had rented, Colonel Bernard Ballon of the Gendarmerie Nationale was watching the live pictures being broadcast from outside the Demain factory to four small TV monitors.

The plant was located some thirty kilometers north of the city center. But for all the intelligence he was collecting, the plant might just as well have been situated thirty kilometers north of the earth's center.

Ballon's men had placed hidden cameras at all four sides of the ancient edifice in the ancient town of Montauban. They videotaped every truck and employee that entered or left. All they needed to see was one known member of the New Jacobins. Once one of the terrorists had been spotted, Ballon and his elite tactical squad would be inside within twenty minutes. The cars were parked nearby, the men were sitting around audio equipment and other video monitors, and the weapons were in duffel bags in the corner. The search warrants, too, were in order provided they had what the courts called "raison de suspicion." Reason for suspicion. Reasons which would survive a defense assault in court.

But however close Dominique's "big push" might be, the reclusive tycoon wasn't getting careless. And Ballon suspected that the push was close indeed. After seventeen long and frustrating years of following the elusive billionaire; after seventeen years of tracking, arresting, and trying to break members of the New Jacobin terrorist organization; after seventeen years of watching his own interest become an obsession, Ballon was certain that Dominique was ready to make something happen. And not just the heralded launch of his new video games. He had launched new games before and they had never required this level of manpower.

Or this level of commitment from Dominique, Ballon thought.

Dominique was staying at the factory more and more at night instead of going home to his red-brick estate in the countryside outside of Mountauban. Employees were working longer shifts. Not just the company's videogame programmers but also the technicians who worked on Internet projects and hardware. He watched their comings and goings on the monitors.

Jean Goddard… Marie Page… Emile Tourneur.

The Frenchman knew them all by sight. He knew their backgrounds. He knew the names of family members and friends. He'd looked under every rock he could find to learn more about Dominique and his operation. Because he was convinced that twenty-five years ago, when he was a rookie police officer in Paris, this man had gotten away with murder.

The forty-four-year old officer shifted stiffly in the folding wooden chair. He stretched his short legs and looked distractedly around the makeshift command center. His brown eyes were bloodshot, his weathered jaw was covered with stubble, and his small mouth was slack. Like the seven other men in the room, he was dressed in jeans and a flannel workshirt. They were workers, after all, in Toulouse to restore the building they'd rented. Downstairs, three other men were busy sawing wood they'd never be using.

It had been extremely difficult to convince his superiors to let him undertake this month-long stakeout. The Gendarmerie Nationale was supposed to be an entirely independent caste-blind national police force. But they were very much aware of the legal forces and deadly publicity Dominique could muster against them.

"And for what?" Commander Caton had asked him.

"Because you suspect him of a crime that is more than two decades old? We can't even prosecute him!" That was true. Too much time had passed. But did that make the crime or the person who committed it any less monstrous? Upon investigating the crime scene that night, Ballon had learned that wealthy Gerard Dupre had been seen in the area with another man. He'd discovered that they had left Paris for Toulouse after the murders. And the police hadn't wished to pursue them. Hadn't wished to pursue Dupre, Ballon thought bitterly, the upper-class pig.

As a result, he had quite possibly gotten away with murder.

Ballon had resigned from the police force in utter disgust. Then he'd joined the Gendarmerie and studied the Dupre family. Over the years his hobby became a passion.

He learned from sealed files in the government archives in Toulouse about how the elder Dupre had been a collaborator during World War II. How he'd infiltrated the Resistance and informed on many of its members. At least thirty deaths over four years were attributed to that batard. After the war, Dupre founded a successful business manufacturing spare parts for the Aerospatiale Airbus. He established his company using money from the United States. Money which had been earmarked for the rebuilding of Europe.

Gerard, meanwhile, appeared to resent everything about his father. PŠre Dupre had sold information to the Germans to survive the War. So Gerard surrounded himself with young German students who needed his money to get by. PŠre Dupre had stolen money from the Americans after the War. So Gerard designed software to appeal to Americans, to have them give him their money. PŠre Dupre hated the Communists. Which is why, as a student, Gerard was drawn to them. Everything he did was an act of defiance against his father.

But then something happened to the younger Dupre.

After leaving the Sorbonne, he began collecting historical documents. Ballon had talked to some of the autograph dealers from whom Dupre had made purchases. It seemed to amaze Dupre that he could own important letters written by the great figures of the past.

One dealer had told the Gendarmerie officer, "Gerard seemed to feel as if he were looking over the shoulders of great men. Watching history unfold brought fire to his eyes.

" Dupre bought documents from the French Revolution, as well as actual costumes and weapons and memorabilia. He purchased religious letters that were even older. He even bought guillotines.

A psychiatrist who worked for the Gendarmerie said, "It is not uncommon for people disappointed with the real world to cocoon themselves, to create a safe reality with letters or mementos." "And might he then wish to expand that?" Ballon had asked.

"Very possibly, " he'd been told. "Enlarge the haven, as it were." When Dupre changed his name to Dominique, there was no longer any question in Ballon's mind that he had begun to see himself as a modern-day saint. The patron saint of France. Or else he had gone mad, or perhaps both.

And when the New Jacobins began terrorizing foreigners at the same time, Ballon had little doubt that they were the soldiers guarding Dominique's spiritual fortress— a France that was pure, as chaste as the original Jacobins had envisioned.

The Gendarmerie had refused to launch an official investigation into Dominique. It wasn't just because he was a powerful man. As Ballon quickly discovered, the Gendarmerie was only slightly less xenophobic than Dominique. The only reason he didn't resign was so that he could keep the idea alive that the law was supposed to serve the public— all of it. Regardless of national origin or religion. The son of a Belgian Jewish mother who had been disinherited when she married his poor, French Catholic father, Ballon understood what hate could do. If he quit the force, the bigots would win.

However, as Ballon watched the video of the factory, he wasn't certain that they hadn't already won.

Ballon pushed his strong fingers along his cheek. He savored the sandpaper roughness of his face. It was manliness that he felt nowhere else in his life. How could he feel manly as he sat inactive in this stuffy old room? As they reviewed procedure over and over in case they ever got inside. Code words. "Blue" for attack. "Red" for stay where you were. "Yellow" for retreat. "White" for civilians in danger. Light pulses via the radio in case audio would give someone away. One tone to close in. Two to stay where they were. Three to retreat. Emergency contingencies. He was beginning to wonder if Dominque knew about the investigation and was intentionally doing nothing in order to embarrass Ballon and put a stake in the heart of his investigation.

Or are you just being paranoid?

After this long at any task, Ballon had heard that paranoia was an inevitability. He had once had one of Dominique's men tailed, a longtime employee named Jean- Michel Horne. Horne had gone to a meeting whistling and Ballon's first thought was that he was whistling to annoy Ballon.

He rubbed his face harder. It's working, he thought as he exploded from the chair with disgust. He checked the urge to kick it through a ten-pane window that was older than he was.

The other men in the room jumped.

"Tell me, Sergeant!" Ballon demanded. "Tell me why we should not simply storm the place? Shoot Dominique and be done with it!" "I honestly don't know," replied Sergeant Maurice Ste.

Marie, who had been sitting beside him. "I'd rather die in action than die of boredom." "I want him," Ballon said, ignoring his subordinate. His hand became a fist and he rattled it at the TV monitor. He put his entire body into the shaking of the fist. "He is a corrupt, twisted maniac who wants to corrupt and twist the world." "Unlike us," said Sergeant Ste. Marie.

Ballon fired him a look. "Yes, unlike us! What do you mean?" "We are obsessed men who want to keep the world free so that it can continue to breed lunatics like Dominique.

Either way, it seems a hopeless tangle." "Only if you give up hope," said Ballon. He retrieved his chair, slammed it back into place, and sat down heavily. "I lose sight of that sometimes, but it's still out there. My mother always hoped her family would forgive her for marrying my father. That hope was in every birthday card she ever sent them." "Did they ever forgive her?" asked Sergeant Ste. Marie.

Ballon looked at him. "No. But hope kept my mother from becoming deeply depressed about it. Hope, plus the love she had for my father and me, filled that emptiness." He turned back to the screen. "Hope and the hate I have for Dominique keeps me from becoming too depressed. I will get him," he said as the telephone rang.

One of the young officers answered the phone. There was a scrambler attached to the mouthpiece, one which mixed high and low voice tones at one end and descrambled them at the other.

"Sir, it's another call being routed from America." Ballon screamed, "I told them before not to put anyone through. It's either a bloody opportunist trying to ride our efforts across the finish line, or a saboteur trying to hold us back. Whichever it is, tell them to go to hell!" "Yes, Sir." "Now they want to help me. Now!" Ballon muttered.

"Where have they been for seventeen years?" Sergeant Ste. Marie said warily, "Perhaps this is not what you think." "What are the chances of that?" Ballon asked.

"Dominique has employees the world over. It's better if we stay insulated, uncontaminated." "Inbred," Ste. Marie added.

The Colonel looked at the crisp color video picture of leaves moving slowly beside the wall of the ancient fortress which was now a factory. Ste. Marie had a point. These four days here had been totally unproductive.

"Wait!" Ballon barked.

The soldier repeated the command into the telephone.

His face was expressionless as he watched the commander.

Ballon rubbed his face. He wouldn't know the answer to that unless he took the call. And what was more important?

he asked himself. Pride or getting Dominique?

"I'll take it," he said.

He walked briskly toward the phone, arm extended as Sergeant Ste. Marie watched with delight.

"Don't look so pleased," Ballon said to him as he passed. "It was my own decision. You had nothing to do with it." "No, Sir," Ste. Marie replied as he continued to look very pleased.

Ballon took the phone. "This is Ballon. What is it?" "Colonel," said the dispatcher, "I have a phone call from General Michael Rodgers of the National Crisis Management—" "Colonel Ballon," Rodgers cut in, "forgive the interruption but I need to talk to you." "C'est evidement." "Do you speak English?" Rodgers asked. "If not, give me a minute to get a translator—" "I speak English," Ballon said reluctantly. "What is it, General Rodgers?" "I understand you're trying to close in on a mutual enemy." "Trying, yes." "We believe," Rodgers said, "that he's planning to download computer software which will help to cause rioting in cities around the world. We believe he intends to use those riots to throw the economies of major American and European nations into chaos." Ballon's mouth began to go dry. This man was either a godsend or the pawn of Satan himself. "How do you know this?" Rodgers said, "If we didn't, the government would take away all the money they give our team." Ballon liked that too. "What about his terrorist squads?

What do you know about those?" he asked, hoping for some new information. Any new information.

"Nothing," Rodgers admitted. "But we suspect he's working closely with several neo-Nazi groups in America and abroad." Ballon was silent for a moment. He still didn't trust this man entirely. "Your information is interesting but not very useful," he said. "I need evidence. I need to find out what's going on inside his fortress." Rodgers said eagerly, "If that's the problem, I can help.

I was calling, Colonel Ballon, to offer you the assistance of a NATO commander in Italy. His name is Colonel Brett August, and his speciality is—" "I have read white papers by Colonel August," said Ballon. "He is a brilliant counterterrorist operative." "And a lifelong friend of mine," said Rodgers. "He'll assist you if I ask him. But I also have equipment in Germany which I'll lend to you." "What kind of equipment?" Ballon asked. He was getting suspicious again. This man seemed like too much of a good thing. A good thing he wouldn't be able to resist. A good thing who might be taking his marching orders from Dominique. A good thing which might end in an ambush.

"It's a new kind of X-ray device," Rodgers said. "One with which my operator can probably work some nearmiracles." "A new kind of X-ray," Ballon said dubiously. "That isn't going to help. I don't need to know where people are—" "It might be able to read papers for you," Rodgers said.

"Or lips." Ballon was attentive but still wary. "General Michael Rodgers," he said. "How do I know you're not working with Dominique?" Rodgers said, "Because we also know about a pair of murders he committed twenty-five years ago. We know about them because we know the person who was with him at the time. I can tell you nothing more— except that I want Dominique brought to justice." Ballon looked at his men, who were all looking at him.

"Watch the monitors!" he yelled.

They did. Ballon was dying to get out of there and into action.

"All right," said the Colonel. "How do I get in touch with this miracle worker of yours?" Rodgers said, "Stay where you are. I'll have him phone you there." Ballon agreed and hung up. Then he told Ste. Marie to take three men outside and watch the building. If it looked as though anyone was staking them out or closing in on them, they were to radio him at once.

But Ballon had a feeling in his gut that General Rodgers was one of the good men, just as he'd had a feeling in his gut about Dominique being one of the bad men.

I only hope my gut is not getting soft, he said as Ste.

Marie and the men left and he continued to stand by the telephone.