by Tom Clancy
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.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Thursday, 3:23 P.M., The Leine River, Germany
As she cleared a patch of trees and looked ahead, Karin Doring allowed herself a very rare smile.
The camp was one of the most beautiful sights she had ever seen. The spot on the Leine River had been bought by Manfred's family over a decade before. It was twenty acres of sweet-smelling woodland, with the river to the east and a high hill to the west, directly behind them. A deep gorge protected them to the north, and the trees provided cover from spying eyes in the air. The camp her followers had erected was a series of tents arranged in four rows of five, with two people in each tent. The tops were covered with foliage so they couldn't be seen from the air when the authorities went looking for the stolen movie prop van. The cars and vehicles which had brought them here were parked in rows to the south and were also camouflaged.
The nearest town of any size was Garbsen, which was nearly twenty miles to the south. The ground search for the terrorists who attacked the film set would start there and move toward Hanover, the seat of Chaos Days activities.
That was well southeast of them. The authorities would not look for them here, in the middle of this Grimm Brothers fairyland. They couldn't spare the manpower. Not for three days, and by the end of Chaos Days Karin and her followers would be gone. Even if the police did conclude that the assault was her handiwork, and even if they did manage to find her camp, they would never take her and her followers.
Sentries would warn her and attack dogs would delay the police while the mementoes were dropped into the lake or burned. A sad but necessary precaution, for there must be no evidence to tie them to the attack.
Let them try to catch us, she thought defiantly. And if it became necessary, they would fight to the last soldier. The German government could pass its apologetic laws, deny its past, kowtow to the United States and the rest of Europe.
She and her followers would not bow. And in time, the rest of Germany would embrace the heritage she had helped to preserve.
The forty members of Feuer who had come here were among Karin's most devoted followers. Cheers rose from those nearest the perimeter as the van pulled up. By the time Rolf had parked beside the line of cars to the south, her Feuermenschen, her "Firemen," as she called them, had arranged themselves in a semicircle before the van. They raised their right arms diagonally, held their fists thumbside up, and shouted over and over, "Sieger Feuer!" "Conqueror Fire!" Karin said nothing as she emerged. She walked to the back of the van, pulled open the door, and grabbed a steel helmet. There were hints of rust, and the black leather chinstrap was brittle and cracked. But the red, white and black, white shield on the right side and the silver-white Werhrmachtadler, an eagle and swastika on a black shield on the left, were vivid and clean.
Karin held the helmet in her open hands and stretched it before her, face high, as though she were crowning a king.
"Warriors of the cause," she said, "today we have enjoyed a great victory. These trappings of the Reich have been snatched from the curio-seekers and professors and resigned warriors. They are once again in the hands of fighters. They are once again in the hands of patriots." The Firemen cried "Sieger Feuer!" in unison, and Karin hand the helmet to the young man nearest her. He kissed it, trembling, and held out his hand for more as Karin handed the relics to her followers. She kept an SA dagger for herself.
"Keep them safely," she said. "Tonight they will be reactivated. Tonight they will once again be the tools of war." As she handed out the items, assisted by Rolf, Manfred walked from around the cab.
"There's a phone call for you," he said.
She looked at him as if to say, "Who?" "Felix Richter," Manfred told her.
Karin's expression didn't change. It rarely did. But she was surprised. She didn't expect to speak with him tonight at the rally in Hanover, much less talk to him before then.
She handed Manfred the rifle she was holding. Without a word, she made her way to the driver's side of the van, climbed in, and shut the door. Manfred had left the phone on the seat. She picked it up and hesitated.
Karin disliked Richter. It wasn't just the old rivalry which made her feel that way— his political movement versus her military movement. Both were different means to the same goal, the realization of the dream that had been launched when Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany in 1933: the establishment of an Aryan world. Both knew that this
could only come about through formidable nationalism followed by an economic blitzkrieg against foreign investments and culture. Both knew that these goals would take more organization and diversity than each now possessed.
What troubled her about Richter was that she had never been convinced of his devotion to Nazism. He seemed to be more interested in making Felix Richter a dictator of anything, it didn't matter what. Unlike Karin, who wanted Germany more than she wanted life itself, she always felt that he could be content ruling Myanmar or Uganda or Iraq.
She killed the mute button. "Good afternoon, Felix." "Karin, good afternoon. Have you heard?" "About what?" "Then you haven't or you wouldn't ask. We've been attacked. Germany has. The movement." "What are you talking about? By whom?" "The French," said Richter.
The word alone was enough to blacken her day. Her grandfather had been an Oberfeldarzt, a lieutenant colonel in the medical troops in Occupied France. He was killed by a Frenchman while caring for German soldiers wounded during the fall of St. Sauveur. Growing up, she would lie in bed and listen as her parents and their friends swapped tales of French cowardice, disloyalty, and betrayal of their own country.
"Go on," Karin said.
"This morning," said Richter, "I met with Dominique's emissary to Chaos Days. He demanded that I fold my organization into his. When I refused, my club was destroyed. Burned." Karin didn't care. The club was for degenerates, and she was happy to see it gone. "Where were you?" she asked.
"I was led out at gunpoint." Karin watched the parade of her Feuermenschen as they made their way through the trees. Each soldier bore a symbol of the Reich. Not a one of them would have run from a Frenchman, gun or no gun.
"Where are you now?" she asked.
"I've just arrived at my apartment. Karin, these people intend to build a network of organizations to serve them.
They imagine that we will be just another voice in their chorus." "Let them imagine that," she said. "The Fhrer allowed other governments to imagine whatever they wished. Then he forced his Will on them." "How?" Richter asked.
"What do you mean?" she asked. "He did it through his will. Through his armies." "No," Richter said. "He did it through the public. Don't you see? He tried to overthrow the Bavarian government in the Beer-Hall Putsch in 1923. He hadn't enough support and was arrested. In jail, he wrote Mein Kampf and set forth his plan for a new Germany. Within ten years he was in command of the nation. He was the same man saying the same things, but My Struggle helped him to win over the masses. Once he controlled them, he controlled the Fatherland. And once he did that, it didn't matter what other nations thought or did." Karin was confused. "Felix, I don't treed a history lesson." "This is not history," he said, "this is the future. We must control the people and they're here, Karin, now. I have a plan for making tonight an evening history will remember." The woman did not care for Richter. He was a conceited, self-serving fop who had the Fhrer's arrogance and some of his vision, but very little of his courage.
Or did he? she wondered. Could the fire have changed him?
"All right, Felix," she said, "I'm listening. What do you propose?" He told her. She listened carefully, her interest high and her respect for him rising slightly.
The glorification of Germany and Felix Richter permeated his every thought, his every word. But what he had to say made sense. And though Karin had undertaken every one of her thirty-nine missions with a plan, a result in mind, she had to admit that part of her responded to Richter's impulsive idea. It would be unexpected. Daring.
Truly historic.
Karin looked out at the tents, at her warriors, at the artifacts they were carrying. This was what she loved, and it was all she needed. But what Richter had suggested gave her the opportunity to have that and strike at the French.
The French… and the rest of the world.
"All right, Felix," she said. "I agree that we should do this. Come to my camp before the rally and we'll arrange it.
Tonight, the French will learn that they can't fight Feuer with fire." "I like that," Richter said. "I like that very much. But one of them will learn it before then, Karin. Definitely before then." Richter hung up. Karin was sitting, listening to the dial tone, as Manfred wandered over. "Is everything all right?" "Is it ever?" she asked bitterly. She handed him the phone, which he placed in his windbreaker. Then she got out of the car and resumed the work she really enjoyed, putting arms into the hands of her followers, and fire in their hearts.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Thursday, 3:45 P.M., Hamburg, Germany
Hood and Stoll had spent the early afternoon outlining their technical needs and financial parameters to Martin Lang. Later, Lang brought in several of his top technical advisors to find out how much of what Op-Center needed was doable. Hood was pleased, though not surprised, to discover that much of the technology they needed was already on the drawing board. Without an Apollo space program to underwrite research and development work and create the spinoffs, private industry had had to carry the load. These undertakings were costly, but success could mean billions of dollars in profits. The first companies to snare patents for important new technology and software would be the next Apple Computers or Microsoft.
The two sides had been closing in on costs for the Regional Op-Center technology when a loud gong resonated through the factory.
Hood and Stoll both jumped Lang placed a hand on Hood's wrist. "I'm sorry," he said, "I should have prepared you. That's our digital bell tower. It chimes at ten o'clock, twelve o'clock, and three o'clock and signals break time." "Charming," said Hood, his heart racing.
"We feel it has a pleasant Old World feel," Lang said.
"To create a sense of fraternity, the bell rings simultaneously in all of our satellite factories throughout Germany. They're linked fiber-optically." "I see," Stoll said. "So that's your little Quasimodem, the bell-ringer." Hood frowned deeply at that.
After the meeting and a half-hour ride back to Hamburg proper, Hood, Stoll, and Lang head three miles northeast to the modern City Nord region. Within the nearly elliptical, encircling Ubersee Ring roadway were over twenty public and private administration buildings. These sleek structures housed everything from the Hamburg Electricity Works to international computer firms, as well as shops, restaurants, and a hotel. Every weekday, over twenty thousand people commuted to City Nord to work and to play.
When they arrived, Richard Hausen's neatly groomed young male assistant Reiner showed them right into the Deputy Foreign Minister's office. Stoll took a moment to stare at the framed stereogram hanging on the assistant's wall.
"Orchestra conductors," Stoll said. "Clever. I've never seen this one." "It's my own design," Reiner said proudly.
Hausen's Hamburg office was located at the top of a complex in the southeastern sector, overlooking the 445- acre Stadtpark. When they entered, the Deputy Foreign Minister was on the phone. While Stoll sat down to have a look at Hausen's computer setup, Lang watching over his shoulder, Hood walked over to the large picture window. In the deep gold light of late afternoon, he could see a swimming pool, sporting areas, an open-air theater, and the famed ornithological facility.
As far as Hood could tell from looking at him, Hausen was once again his strong, outspoken self. Whatever had been bothering him earlier was either taken care of or somehow had been back burnered.
Hood thought sadly, If only I could do the same. In the office, he was able to manage pain. He kept Charlie's death from getting to him because he had to be strong for his staff. He'd felt bad when Rodgers told him about the hate game in Billy Squires's computer, but there had been so much hate back in Los Angeles that it didn't shock him very much anymore.
All of that, he could manage, yet the incident in the hotel lobby was still with him. All those fine thoughts about Sharon and Ann Farris and fidelity were just that: thoughts.
Bullshit and words.
After just a few weeks, he had accepted Squires's death. Yet after more than twenty years she was stil
l with him. He was surprised by the disorientation, the urgency, the near-panic he had felt speaking to the doorman.
God, he thought, how he wanted to despise her. But he couldn't. Now, as over the years, whenever he tried he ended up hating himself. Now as then, he felt that somehow he was the one who had screwed up.
Though you'll never know for sure, he told himself. And that was nearly as bad as what had happened. Not knowing why it had happened.
He absently ran his hand along the breast pocket of his sports jacket. The pocket with his wallet. The wallet with the tickets. The tickets with the memories.
As he looked out the window at the park, he asked himself, And what would you have done if it had been her?
Asked her, "So. How've you been? Are you happy? Oh, and by the way, hon— why didn't you put a bullet in my heart to finish the job?" "It's quite a view, is it not?" Hausen asked.
Hood was caught off guard. He came back to reality hard. "It is a magnificent view. Back home, I don't even have a window." Hausen smiled. "The work we do is different, Herr Hood," he said. "I need to see the people I serve. I need to see young couples pushing baby carriages. I need to see elderly couples walking hand in hand. I need to see children playing." "I envy you that," Hood said. "I spend my days looking at computer-generated maps and evaluating the merits of cluster bombs versus other weapon systems." "Your job is to destroy corruption and tyranny. My arena is—" Hausen stopped, reached up as though plucking an apple from a tree, and pulled a word from the sky. "My arena is the antithesis of that. I try to nurture growth and cooperation." "Together," Hood said, "we'd've made a helluva Biblical patriarch." Hausen brightened. "You mean a judge." Hood looked at him. "Sorry?" "A judge," he repeated. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to correct you. But the Bible is a hobby of mine. A passion, really, since I was in a Catholic boarding school. I'm particularly fond of the Old Testament. Are you familiar with the judges?" Hood had to admit that he was not. He assumed they were like contemporary judges, though le didn't say so.
