Games of State

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

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 is 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 afoot 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, Stop 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 radioreflective 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 awesome!" "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. "I 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," Bern 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.