Games of State

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Hood was looking out the window as Hausen guided the jet to a careful, easy landing. Hood had no doubt about where they were headed. A bright spotlight mounted high on the small terminal shone down on a band of eleven men clad in jeans and workshirts. A twelfth man was dressed in a business suit. As he watched the young fellow check his watch repeatedly or brush down his hair, Hood could tell he wasn't a lawman. He didn't have the patience for it. Hood also knew right off which man was Ballon. He was the one with the bulldog expression who looked as though he wanted to bite someone.

Ballon walked over before the plane had come to a complete stop. The man in the business suit scurried after him.

"We didn't even get bags of peanuts," Matt Stoll said as he undid his seatbelt and drummed his knees.

Hood watched as Ballon— and it was the bulldog he'd picked out— ordered his men to roll the stairway toward the jet. When the copilot finally opened the door, it was waiting.

Hood ducked through the door. He was followed by Nancy, Stoll, and Hausen. Ballon glanced at them all, but his gaze lingered harshly on Hausen. It snapped back to Hood when he reached the tarmac.

"Good evening," Hood said. He held out his hand. "I'm Paul Hood." Ballon shook it. "Good evening. I'm Colonel Ballon." He pointed with his thumb to the man in the business suit. "This is M. Marais of Customs. He wants me to tell you that this is not an international airport and that you are only here as a favor to myself and the Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale." "Vive la France," Stoll said under his breath.

"Les passeports, " M. Marais said to Ballon.

"He wants to see your passports," Ballon said. "Then, hopefully, we can be on our way." Stoll said to Ballon, "If I forgot mine, does that mean I get to go home?" Ballon regarded him. "Are you the man with the machine?" Stoll nodded.

"Then no. If I have to shoot Marais, you're coming with us." Stoll reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew his passport. The others produced theirs as well.

Marais looked at each in turn, checking the faces against the photographs. Then he handed them back to Ballon, who passed them to Hood.

"Continuez," Marais said impatiently.

Ballon said, "I'm also supposed to tell you that, officially, you have not entered France. And that you will be expected to leave within twenty-four hours." ' "We don't exist but we do," Stoll said. "Aristotle would have loved that." Nancy was standing behind him. "Why Aristotle?" she asked.

"He believed in abiogenesis, the idea that living creatures can arise from nonliving matter. Francesco Redi disproved it in the seventeenth century. And now we've disproved Redi." Hood had returned the passports and stood watching Marais. He could tell from the man's face that all was not well. After a moment, Marais took Ballon aside. They spoke quietly for a moment. Then Ballon walked over. His face was even unhappier than before.

"What is it?" Hood asked.

"He's concerned," Ballon said. He looked at Hausen.

"He doesn't want this very irregular situation to receive any publicity." Hausen said coolly, "I don't blame him. Who would want to advertise that they are the home of Dominique?" "No one," Ballon replied, "except, perhaps, the nation which gave us Hitler." Hood's instinct in any confrontation of this type was to mediate. But he decided to stay out of the way of this one.

Both men had been out of line, and he felt he could only make enemies by interfering.

Nancy said, "I came here to help stop the next Hitler, not make cracks about the last one. Anybody care to help?" Shouldering past Ballon, Marais, and the other members of the Gendarmerie, Nancy headed for the terminal.

Hausen looked at Hood and then at Ballon. "She's right," he said. "My apologies to you both." Ballon's mouth scrunched as if he weren't quite ready to let the matter go. Then it relaxed. He turned to Marais, who appeared deeply confused.

"A demain, " he said sternly, then signaled his men to go on. Hood, Stoll, and Hausen followed.

As they walked briskly through the terminal, Hood wondered if it had been coincidental. that Ballon had selected the salutation "See you tomorrow," which in French also reflected where they were going.

Ballon led the group to a pair of waiting vans. Without undo fuss, he made certain that Stoll was comfortable between Nancy and Hood. Ballon got in front, beside the driver. There were three other men in the rearmost seat.

None carried arms. Those were in the second van, along with Hausen.

"I feel like the botanist on HMS Bounty," Stoll remarked to Hood when they were under way. "He had to transplant the breadfruit they were after and Captain Bligh really looked out for him." "Where does that leave the rest of us?" Nancy said with a scowl.

"Bound for Tahiti," Hood said.

Nancy didn't smile. She didn't even look at him. Hood had the impression of being on the Ship of Fools, not the Bounty, Without the romanticism of memory to obscure it, he remembered now, vividly, how Nancy would regularly get into moods. She'd go from sad to depressed to angry, as if she were sliding down a muddy slope. The moods wouldn't last long, but when they came over her things could get nasty. He didn't know what scared him more: the fact that he'd forgotten them or the fact that she was in one now.

Ballon turned around. "I spent what was left of favors owed to me getting you into France. I had already used up most of them obtaining the search warrant to enter Demain.

It expires tonight at midnight but I don't want to waste it.

We've been watching the plant for days by remote video camera, hoping to see something that would justify entering. But so far, there's been nothing." "What do you hope we'll find?" Hood asked.

"Ideally?" Ballon said. "Faces of known terrorists.

Members of his terrible New Jacobin paramilitary force, a resurrection of the league which did not hesitate to murder old women or young children if they belonged to the upper classes." The Colonel used a key attached to his wrist to open the glove compartment. He handed Hood a folder. Inside were over a dozen drawings and blurry photographs.

"Those are known Jacobins," Ballon said. "I need a match with one of them in order to go in." Hood showed the file to Stoll. "Are you going to be able to see a face clear enough to make a positive ID?" Stoll flipped through the pictures. "Maybe. Depends on what someone's standing behind, whether or not they're moving, how much time I have to do the imaging—" "Those are a lot of conditions," Ballon said irately. "I need to place one of these monsters inside the factory." "There's absolutely no leeway in the warrant?" Hood asked.

"None," Ballon said angrily. "But I won't let poor resolution allow us to pretend an innocent man is a guilty one just so we can go inside." "Gee," Stoll said. "That doesn't put too much pressure on me, does it?" He returned the folder to Ballon.

"That is what separates professionals from amateurs," Ballon noted.

Nancy glared at Ballon. "I'm thinking that a professional wouldn't have let these terrorists get inside. I'm also thinking that Dominique has stolen, possibly killed, and is ready to start wars. But he gets the job done. Does that make him a professional?" Ballon replied evenly, "Men like Dominique disregard the law. We don't have that luxury." "Bull," she said. "I live in Paris. Most Americans are treated like shit by everyone from landlords to gendarmes.

The laws don't protect us." "But you obey the laws, don't you?" he asked.

"Of course." Ballon said, "One side operating outside the law is still just that. A rogue force. But both sides operating outside the law is chaos." Hood decided to get in the middle of this one by changing the subject. "How long until we reach the factory?" "Another fifteen minutes or so." Ballon was still looking at Nancy, who had turned away. "Mlle. Bosworth, your arguments are sound and I regret having spoken harshly to M. Stoll. But there is a great deal at stake." He looked at all of them. "Have any of you considered the risks of success?" Hood leaned forward. "No, we haven't. What do you mean?" "If we work surgically and only Dominique falls, his company and its holdings can still survive. But if they fall, billions of dollars will be lost. The French economy and its government will be seriously destabilized. And that will create a vacuum similar to those we have seen in the past." He looked past them toward the van behind them. "A vacuum in which German nationalism historically has flourished. In which German politicians stir the blood." His eyes shifted to Hood. "In which they look with greed at Austria, Sudetenland, Alsace-Lorraine. MM. Hood and Stoll, Mlle. Bosworth— we are on a tightrope. Caution is our balancing pole and the law is our net. With them, we will reach the other side." Nancy turned to look out the window. Hood knew she wouldn't apologize. But with her, the fact that she'd stopped arguing meant the same thing.

Hood said, "I also believe in the law and I believe in the systems we've built to protect it. We'll help you get to the other side of that tightrope, Colonel." Ballon thanked him with a small nod, the first appreciative display he'd shown since they arrived.

"Thanks, Boss," Stoll sighed. "Like I said, that doesn't put too much pressure on me, does it?"