government into an embarrassing incursion? Who would ever attack Dominique a second time if the first assault turned up nothing?
Stoll said, 'Aha! We've already got some potential rotten apples here. According to Lowell Coffey's legal files, in 1981 M. Escarbot was charged by a Parisian firm with stealing trade secrets from IBM about a process of displaying bit-mapped graphics. Demain paid to settle that case. And criminal charges were filed and then dropped nineteen years ago against M. Horne. Seems he received a French patent for an advanced four-bit chip which an American company said was stolen from them. Only they couldn't prove it. They also couldn't find the person who supposedly ripped off the…' Stoll stopped reading. His white face turned slowly toward Hood, then toward Nancy.
'No,' she said, 'there aren't two Nancy Jo Bosworths.
That was me.' 'It's okay,' Hood said to him. 'I knew all about it.' Stoll nodded slowly. He regarded Nancy. 'Forgive me,' he said, 'but as a software designer m'self, I just have to say that that's very uncool.' 'I know,' Nancy replied.
'That's enough, Matt,' Hood said sternly.
'Sure,' Stoll said. He sat back, tightened the seatbelt which he'd never unbuckled, and turned around so he could look out the window.
And then Hood thought, Damn everything. Here he was rebuking Stoll when what he should have been doing was wondering about Nancy showing up in the park the way she did. And when he happened to be with Richard Hausen. Was it a coincidence, or could it be that all of them were in this thing with Dominique? He suddenly felt very unsure and very stupid. In the rush of events, in his eagerness to stop Dominique from getting his message and his games to America, Hood had utterly ignored security and caution.
What's more, he'd allowed his group to be split. His security expert, Bob Herbert, was roaming around the German countryside.
It could be that he was making more of this than there was. His gut told him he was. But his brain told him to try and find out. Before they got to Demain, if possible.
Hood remained beside Stoll while Nancy had returned to her side of the aircraft. She was unhappy and not attempting to hide it. Stoll was disgusted and not trying to hide it either. Only Hood had to keep his feelings to himself, though not for long.
As Elisabeth came on the intercom to announce the final descent into Toulouse, Hood casually borrowed the laptop from Stoll.
'Want me to boot up Solitaire?' Stoll asked, referring to Hood's favorite computer game.
'No,' Hood said as he switched the machine back on. 'I feel like Tetris.' As he spoke, Hood typed a message onto the screen. 'Matt,' he wrote, 'I don't want you to say anything. Just put me on-line with Darrell.' Stoll casually touched his nose, leaned over, and entered his password and Op-Center's number. The disk drive hummed as the prompt said, 'Processing.' Stoll sat back when the prompt said, 'Ready.' He turned his head toward the window, but kept his eyes on the screen.
Hood typed his personal transmission code in quickly, then wrote: 'Darrell: I need every detail you can get an the life of German Deputy Foreign Minister Richard Hausen. Check tax records from 1970s. Looking for employment by Airbus Industrie or by a man named Dupre or Dominique of Toulouse. Also want details of postwar life and activities of Maximillian Hausen of the Luftwaffe. Call me when you have anything. Shoot for 1600 hours EST today at the latest.' Hood sat back. 'I suck at this game. What do I do now?' Stoll reached over. He transmitted the E-mail message.
'You want to save any of these games?' 'No,' Hood said.
Stoll typed in:-) then erased the screen.
'In fact,' Hood said, shutting off the computer, 'I want you to take this machine and throw it out the window.' 'You should never play video games when you're tense,' Nancy said. She looked across the cabin at Hood.
'It's like sports or sex. You've got to be loose.' Hood handed Stoll the computer. Then he walked over to Nancy and buckled himself in beside her.
'I'm sorry I got you into this,' he said.
'Which 'this' do you mean?' she asked. 'This little raid or this whole stinking, lousy business?' 'The raid,' he said. 'I shouldn't have imposed on our…' He stopped to search for the right word, settled reluctantly on 'friendship.' 'It's all right,' Nancy said. 'Really it is, Paul. A big part of me is tired of running and of depending on Demain and on the whole expatriate life that you have to be drawn to to enjoy. What was it that Sydney Carton said on the way to the scaffold in A Tale of Two Cities? 'It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done.' This is far, far better than the things I've done till now.' Hood smiled warmly. He wanted to tell her not to worry about the scaffold. But he couldn't guarantee her fate any more than he could swear to her allegiance. As the plane landed gently on the soil of France, he only hoped that the worry on her face was for her future and not his.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Hood's wireless transmission was received by Darrell McCaskey's executive assistant Sharri Jurmain. The FBI Academy graduate E-mailed it to McCaskey's personal computer and to Dr. John Benn of Op-Center's Rapid Information Search Center.
The RI-Search Center was little more than two small, interconnected offices with twenty-two computers run by two full-time operators and overseen by Dr. Benn. A former librarian with the Library of Congress, the British- born bachelor had been an embassy researcher in Qatar for two years when the Arab state declared its independence from Britain in 19? 1. Benn remained there for seven years before moving to Washington to stay with his sister when her diplomat-husband died. Charmed by Washington and by Americans, Benn remained behind after his sister returned to England. He became an American citizen in 1988.
Benn's proud, singular skill, acquired during his otherwise uneventful years in Qatar, was quoting obscure lines of dialogue from English literature. Even with the help of Usenet groups, no one at Op-Center had ever correctly identified a single one of Benn's characterizations.
Benn was taking an early tea and pretending to be Mr.
Boffin from Dickens's Our Mutual Friend when Hood's E-mail request came through. It was heralded by a synthesized electronic voice calling out, 'I will arise and go now' from Yeats's The Lake Isle of Innisfree, followed by the identification number of the person making the request.
'Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,' Benn said with a flourish as they swung to the number one screen. He and his assistants Sylvester Neuman and Alfred Smythe immediately recognized Stoll's 'greeting,' the:-), his 'smiley face' lying on its side. In one of his more paranoid moments, Stoll had arranged with them that if he were ever being forced to transmit data, he would input:-(, a frowning face.
The team went to work efficiently gathering the information.
For a biography of Deputy Foreign Minister Richard Hausen and any information on his father, Smythe went online and executed FTPs— File Transfer Protocols— to acquire data from ECRC Munich, Deutsche Elektronen Synchotron, Gerniart Electro-Synchotron, DKFZ Heidelberg, Gesellschaft f?r wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung GmbH, Konrad Zuse Zentrum f?r Informationstechnik Konrad Zuse Center, and Comprehensive TeX Archive Network Heidelberg. Neuman used three computers to enter gopherspace on the Internet and accessed information from Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum Hamburg, EUnet Germany, the German Network Information Center, and ZIB, Berlin auf Ufer. With the help of an aide to Matt Stoll, Deputy Assistant Director of Operations Grady Reynolds, they hacked into tax, employment, and education records of the former Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic,
The records of many Germans, especially the former East Germans, existed as hard copy only. However, the educational and financial history of politicial figures would have to have been put on disk for filing with various government commissions. Moreover, many large corporations had scanned their books onto computer. Those, at least, might also be available.
Darrell McCaskey's office, which had dominion over contact with other agencies, put them on-line with the FBI, Interpol, and various German law enforcement agencies: the Bundeskriminalamt or BKA, the German
