Games of State

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

As Colonel Ballon sat watching the video monitor he thought, like most Frenchmen, how little he cared for Americans. Ballon had two younger sisters who lived in Quebec, both of whom were full of stories about how Americans were imperious and cocky and crude and just too damn near. His own experiences with tourists in Paris, where he was based, indicated to him quite clearly what the problem was. Americans wanted to be French. They drank, they smoked, and they dressed like the French did. They affected artistry and insouciance like the French did. Only they refused to speak like the French did. Even in France, they expected everyone to speak English.

Then there was the military. Because of Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign and World War II, they assumed that members of the French armed forces were vastly inferior to American soldiers and deserved only the bones they signed to throw them.

But Bonaparte and the Maginot Line were aberrations in an otherwise proud military history, he told himself. Indeed, without the French military helping George Washington there would not be a United States. Not that the Americans would ever acknowledge that. Any more than they would allow that the Lumiere brothers, not Edison, invented motion pictures. Or that the Montgolfier brothers, not the Wright brothers, were the ones who enabled people to fly. The only good thing about Americans was that they gave him someone other than Germans to hate.

His phone beeped and he regarded it for a moment.

That would be him. Paul Hood. Ballon didn't really want to talk to this Mr. Hood, but he didn't want to let Dominique get away even more. Thus resolved— quickly, as with all things— he snatched up the phone.

"Oui?" "Colonel Ballon?" "Oui." The caller said without missing a beat, "Je suis Paul Hood. Vous avez besoin d'assistance?" Ballon was caught off guard by that. "Oui," he replied.

"Eh… vous parlez la langue?" he asked.

"Je parle un peu," Hood said.

He spoke a little French. "Then we'll speak English," replied Ballon. "I don't want to hear you murder my tongue.

I'm particular about that." "I understand," said Hood. "Six years of French in high school and college didn't exactly make me a linguist." "School does not make us anything," Ballon said. "Life makes us what we are. But talk is not life, and sitting in this room is not life. Mr. Hood, I want Dominique. I've been told you have equipment which will help me get him." "I do," Hood said.

"Where are you?" "Hamburg," said Hood.

"Very good You can fly here on one of the airbuses which made Dominique's father a fortune. If you hurry, you can be here in about two hours." "We'll be there," said Hood.

"We?" Ballon felt his passion leak away. "Who else is there?" Hood said, "Deputy Foreign Minister Richard Hausen and the two other persons in my party." Ballon had been glowering. Now he was sulking. It had to be a German, he thought. And that German in particular.

God does not love me as He promised He would.

"Colonel Ballon," Hood said, "are you there?" "Yes," he said glumly. "So now I don't have to just sit here for two hours. I can fight with my government to get an attention-hungry German government official into France on an unofficial visit." I take a different view of him," Hood said. "Attention can be selfless if it's for a worthy cause." "Don't lecture me about selflessness. He's a general. I fight in the trenches. But," Ballon added quickly, "this is pointless. I need you, you want him, so that is that. I'll make a few calls and I will meet you at the Aerodrome de Lasbordes at eight o'clock." "Hold on," Hood said. "You've asked your questions now I want to ask mine." "Go ahead." "We think Dominique's preparing to launch an online campaign designed to spread hate, inspire riots, and destabilize governments." "Your associate General Rodgers told me all about this chaos project." "Good," said Hood. "Did he also tell you we want him stopped, not threatened." "Not in so many words," Ballon said. "But I believe that Dominique is a terrorist. If you can help me prove that, I will go into his factory and stop him." "I'm told he's avoided arrest in the past." "He has," Ballon said. "But I intend to do more than arrest him. Let me give you an overview which I hope will answer all of your questions. We French are very solidly behind our entrepreneurs. They've prospered in the winter of our economy. They've thrived despite government manacles. And I admit, with some shame, that a great many Frenchmen approve of the work of the New Jacobins. No one likes immigrants here, and the New Jacobins attack them like pack dogs. If people knew that Dominique was behind those attacks, he would be an even greater hero." Ballon's eyes burned through the image on the TV. He saw, in his mind, Dominique sitting smug and comfortable in his office.

"But while we French are an emotional people, most of us also believe in concord. In healing wounds. In harmony.

You Americans see that as waving a white flag, but I see it as civilized. Dominique is not civilized. He violates the laws of France and God. Like his father, he has a conscience made of diamond. Nothing scratches it. It is my intention to make him answer for his crimes." Hood said, "I believe in moral crusades and I'll back yours with the full resources of my organization. But you still haven't told me where this crusade is headed." Ballon replied, "To Paris." "I'm listening," said Hood.

"I intend to arrest Dominique, confiscate his papers and software, and then resign from the Gendarmarie.

Dominique's attorneys will see to it that he never goes to trial. But while that process is under way, I'll go to the press with a catalogue of his crimes. Murders and rapes he has committed or ordered, taxes he hasn't paid, businesses and properties he misappropriated, and more that I couldn't reveal as a government employee." "A dramatic gesture," Hood said. "But if French law is anything like American law, you'll be sued, drawn, and quartered." "That is correct," replied Ballon. "But my trial will be Dominique's trial. And when it's over he'll be disgraced.

Finished." "So will you." "Only this career," Ballon said. "I'll find other honorable work." "Do your teammates feel the same way you do?" "Not all," he admitted. "They're committed only to— what's the word? The limitations? Boundaries?" "Parameters," said Hood.

"Yes." Ballon snapped his fingers. "They're committed to the parameters of the mission. That's all I ask of you as well. If you help me prove what Demain is doing, if you give me a reason to go inside, we can bring Dominique down.

Today." Hood said, "Fair enough. One way or another, we'll get there." He added, "Et merci. " Ballon replied with a gruff thank you of his own, then sat holding the handset. He dropped his finger on the plunger.

"Good news?" asked Sergeant Ste. Marie.

"Very good news," Ballon replied without enthusiasm.

"We have help. Unfortunately, it's an American and a German. Richard Hausen." Ste. Marie moaned. "We can all go home. The Hun will take Dominique singlehandedly." "We'll see," said Ballon. "We'll see what his pluck is like when there are no reporters present to admire it." With a short aftershock of outrage— "Americans and a German," he declared— Ballon called the office of an old friend in the CDT, the Comite Departemental de Tourisme, to see if they could simply look the other way when the plane arrived, or if he'd have to tangle with the territorial carnivores in Paris.