Games of State o-3 Read online

  Rodgers tried not to look at them as Melissa led him to the computer table. He set the comic books beside the printer as Melissa turned on the computer.

  "I thought it would be.a fun distraction to get Billy on the Internet," she said. "There's a gopher." "Sorry?" Rodgers said.

  "I take it you're not up on this?" "No," Rodgers said. "You could say I'm a little down on high-tech inactivities, but that's another story." Melissa nodded. "A gopher is a system of menus which allows users relatively easy access to text archives on the Internet." "Like a Dewey Decimal card file," Rodgers said, "in real libraries." "Like that." Melissa smiled. "The point is, there are Web sites— forums— where kids who have lost a parent can talk to one another. It's all faceless and raceless. Billy got online and met some great kids there who had a lot to share with him. Then last night, one of them, a twelve-year-old named Jim Eagle, led Billy on a surfing expedition that took them to a locale called the Message Center." The computer whirred and Melissa leaned over the keyboard. She directed them to the Message Center, and as soon as they logged on Rodgers knew what the "message" was going to be.

  The S's in the logo for the Message Center resembled the design of the Nazi SS. Melissa tapped into the FAQ list, the frequently asked questions listing, which was posted as a file for newcomers. Rodgers read it with increasing disgust.

  The first question had to do with "Netiquette": the appropriate terms to call blacks, Jews, homosexuals, Mexicans, and other minorities. The second question listed the ten greatest figures in history and offered a short list of their accomplishments. Adolf Hitler was on top of the list, which also included murdered American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell, Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray, Confederate cavalry General Nathan Bedford Forrest, and one fictional character: slave overseer Simon Legree from Uncle Tom's Cabin.

  "Billy didn't understand what the FAQ list was all about, so he kind of blindly followed Jim Eagle into the conversation," Melissa said. "This kid Jim— if he was a kid, which I doubt— is obviously someone who goes fishing among grieving, lonely kids and tries to hook them into the movement." "By giving them a new father or mother figure," Rodgers said.

  "Exactly," Melissa replied as she brought Rodgers into the ongoing discussion.

  There were short letters, full of misspellings, expressing hate of individual people and groups. There were others which provided new, hateful lyrics to old songs, and there was even a guide on how to kill and fillet a black woman.

  "That's the one Billy saw," Melissa said quietly. She pointed to the printer. "They even sent him the accompanying artwork. I left it there, tried not to make a big deal about it. I didn't want to scare him." Rodgers looked into the printer tray and saw the color printout. It was a photograph of side and overhead views, with arrows and instructions and a body from which the skeleton had been removed. Judging from the surroundings, it was taken in a morgue. Rodgers had been sickened by sights he'd seen on the battlefield, but that was always anonymous. This was personal and sadistic. It made him want to tear the First Amendment into tiny pieces, but he backed off when he realized that that would probably give him something in common with these bastards.

  He picked up the paper and folded it into his pants pocket.

  "I'll have Op-Center's tech people have a look at this," Rodgers said. "We've got this Samson program we use to bring software down. Maybe we can stop them." "They'll only start up again," Melissa said. "Besides, that's not the worst of it." The young woman leaned over the keyboard again. She went to a different Web site, where a short videogame sequence repeated every fifteen seconds.

  The picture showed a man with a noose chasing a black man through the woods. The pursuer had to leap dead bodies and duck the feet of lynched black men in order to catch his quarry. The text above the scrolling artwork said, "WE'VE GOT NOOSE FOR YOU! COMING IN JUST NINE HOURS AND TWENTY MINUTES: WHOA'S DOWNLOADABLE HANGIN' WITH THE CROWD. AND THERE'S MORE TO COME!" Rodgers asked, "You have any idea what WHOA is?" "I do," said a voice from behind them. "Jim told me." Rodgers and Melissa turned and saw Billy standing there. The young boy walked briskly toward them.

  "Hey, Billy!" Rodgers said.

  He saluted, the boy, who saluted back. Then he bent down and they hugged.

  "Good morning, General Rodgers," Billy said. "WHOA stands for Whites Only Association. Jim said they want to stop everyone else. 'Just say WHOA!' " "I see," Rodgers said. He continued to squat in front of the boy. "How do you feel about that?" He rolled a shoulder. "I dunno." "You don't know?" Melissa asked.

  "Well," Billy said, "last night, when I saw the photo I thought about my dad being killed. Then I was upset." "You understand," said Rodgers, "that these people are really, really bad. And that most people don't believe the terrible things they believe in." "Jim said that people do but they just don't admit it." "That isn't true," Rodgers said. "Everybody's got 'pet peeves,' little things that really annoy them like barking dogs or car alarms. And some people do hate one or two other people, like a boss or a neighbor or—" "My dad hated people who drank instant coffee," Billy said. "He said they were Phyllis-somebodies." "Philistines," Melissa said. She looked away quickly and rolled her lips together.

  Rodgers smiled at the boy. "I'm sure your dad didn't really hate them. We use that word pretty freely when it's not exactly what we mean. The point is, Jim is wrong. I know a lot of folks, and I don't know anyone who hates whole bunches of people. Guys like Jim— it makes them feel good to put other people down. They have to hate, it's like a disease. A mental disease. If they didn't hate immigrants or people who followed a different religion, they'd hate people with different color hair, or people who were shorter, or people who liked hamburgers instead of hot dogs." Billy chuckled.

  "What I'm trying to say is, these people are evil and you shouldn't believe what they tell you. I've got books and videotapes about people like Winston Churchill and Frederick Douglass and Mohandas Gandhi." "That's a funny name." "It may sound a little strange to you," Rodgers said, "but his ideas are really good. All of these men have wonderful things to say, and I'll bring some of that stuff next time. We can read and listen to them together." "Okay," Billy said.

  Rodgers stood and cocked a thumb toward the printer stand. All of a sudden, a long-haired Superman didn't seem so bad.

  "Meantime," Rodgers said, "I brought some comic books for you. Batman. today, Gandhi next time." "Thanks!" Billy said. He stole a look at his mother, who nodded once. Then he bolted over and grabbed the stack of magazines.

  "You can read those after school," Melissa told her son as he flipped through them.

  "Right," Rodgers said. "And if you finish getting ready, I'll give you a lift to school. We can stop at the diner for Crations and maybe a video game, and you can be the first person to ride shotgun in my brand-new Blazer." "A video game?" Billy said. "They have Blazing Combattle at the diner." "Great," Rodgers said.

  Billy threw the General a snappy salute, thanked him again for the comic books, and ran off.

  As the boy thumped up the stairs, Melissa gently put her hand around Rodgers's wrist. "I owe you big time," she said. She kissed him on the cheek.

  Rodgers was caught off guard and blushed. He looked away and Melissa released his arm. He started after Billy.

  "Mike," Melissa said.

  He stopped and looked back.

  "It's okay," she said. "I feel very close to you too. What we've all been through— you can't help it." The flushing around his collar intensified. He wanted to say something about how he loved them all, including Charlie, but he didn't. At that moment, he wasn't sure what he felt.

  "Thanks," he said.

  Rodgers smiled but said nothing more. Billy thundered back down the stairs and the General followed him, like straw caught in a whirlwind, as he raced across the living room, backpack in tow, carrying his young man's morning appetite into the parking lot.

  "No sugar, General!" Melissa shouted as the screen door slammed behind them. "And don't let him
get too excited on the video game!"

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Thursday, 8:02 A.M., Washington, D.C.

  Senator Barbara Fox and her two aides arrived at Andrews Air Force Base in the Senator's Mercedes. Senior aide Neil Lippes was sitting in the back, with the Senator.

  Junior aide Bobby Winter was driving, a briefcase on the seat beside him.

  They were early for their 8:30 meeting, as the guard politely informed them before admitting the car.

  "On the contrary," the white-haired Senator said through the window as they drove past. "We're about twenty-five million dollars too late." The trio drove toward a nondescript, two-story building located near the Naval Reserve flight line at Andrews Air Force Base. During the Cold War, the ivory-colored building had been a ready room, a staging area for flight crews. In the event of a nuclear attack, it would have been their job to evacuate key officials from Washington, D.C.

  Now, after a hundred-million-dollar facelift, the building was the headquarters of Op-Center, the seat of the National Crisis Management Center. The seventy-eight full-time employees who worked there were crack tacticians, logisticians, soldiers, diplomats, intelligence analysts, computer specialists, psychologists, reconnaissance experts, environmentalists, attorneys, and media liaisons. The NCMC shared another forty-two support personnel with the Department of Defense and the CIA, and commanded the Striker tactical strike team.

  As her budget-conscious peers were quick to remind her, Senator Fox had been one of the authors of the NCMC charter. And there was a time when she supported its efforts. Originally, Op-Center had been designed to interface with and serve as backup for the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, White House, State Department, Department of Defense, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, and the Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center. But after handling a hostage situation in Philadelphia which the Waco-shy FBI dropped in their lap, and uncovering and defusing a sabotage attempt against the space shuttle, Op-Center had earned parity with those agencies— and then some. What had been chartered as an information clearinghouse with SWAT capabilities now had the singular capacity to monitor, initiate, and/ or manage operations worldwide.

  And with those singular capacities came a new budget of sixty-one million dollars. That was forty-three percent higher than the second year, which had been only eight percent higher than the first. It was a budget the fifty-twoyear- old four-term Senator from California was not about to accommodate. Not with an election coming up. Not with friends at the CIA and FBI demanding parity. Paul Hood was a longtime friend, and she'd used her influence with the President to help get him the job of Director. But he and his uppity second-in-command, Mike Rodgers, were going to have to scale their operations back. Scale them back more than they were going to like.

  Winter parked the car behind a concrete flowerpot, which doubled as a barricade against potential terrorist car bombers. The three got out and crossed the slate walkway set in the close-cut grass. When they reached the glass door, a video camera took their picture. A moment later a woman's voice came from a loudspeaker beneath the camera, telling them to enter. There was a buzz and Winter pulled the door open.

  Inside, they were greeted by two armed guards. One was standing in front of the security office, the other was behind the bulletproof glass. The guard on the outside checked their Congressional photo I.D.s, ran a portable metal detector over the briefcase, then sent them through the first-floor administration level. At the end of the hall was an elevator, where a third armed guard was standing.

  "I see one place where we can prune the budget by about fifty thousand dollars," Barbara said to Neil as the elevator door closed.

  The aides chortled as the silver-walled elevator shot downstairs, to the underground area where the real business of Op-Center was conducted.

  Another armed guard was stationed outside the elevator— "Seventy-five thousand," Barbara said to her aides— and after they showed her their I.D.'s, the guard directed them to a waiting room.

  Senator Fox glared at her. "We're here to see General Rodgers, not await his pleasure." "I'm sorry, Senator. But he's not here." "Not here?" The Senator looked at her watch. She exhaled through her nose. "My God, I thought that General Rodgers lived here." She looked at the guard again. "Has he a car phone?" "Yes, ma'am." "Call it, please." "I'm sorry," she said, "but I don't have that number.

  Mr. Abram does." "Then call him," the Senator said. "Tell Mr. Abram that we would like to see him. Tell him as well that we do not sit in waiting rooms." The guard began to phone the Assistant Deputy Director. Although his shift officially ended at 6:00 A.M., he was empowered to act in the absence of a superior.

  As she rang him, the elevator opened and Political and Economics Officer Martha Mackall stepped out. The handsome, forty-nine-year-old black woman was wearing her dour morning expression. It vanished when she saw the Senator.

  "Senator Fox." She beamed. "How are you?" "Ticked," the Senator replied.

  The women shook hands.

  Martha looked from the Senator to the young guard.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  "I didn't think that Superman needed sleep," the Senator said.

  "Superman?" Martha asked.

  "General Rodgers." "Oh." Martha laughed. "Gotcha. He said he was going to be stopping by the Squireses this morning." "To look after the boy, I trust," the Senator said.

  The guard looked away uncomfortably.

  Martha extended her arm. "Why don't you wait in my office, Senator Fox? I'll have some coffee and croissants brought in." "Croissants?" The Senator grinned. She turned to Neil and said, "Seventy-five thousand and a couple hundred." The two men smiled; as did Martha. The Senator knew that Martha had no idea what they were talking about. She smiled just to be make herself part of the group. There was nothing wrong with that, Senator Fox had to admit, except that while her smile showed a lot of teeth, it told the Senator nothing about the person behind them. The truth was, she didn't think Martha had a sense of humor.

  As they walked down the carpeted corridor, Martha asked, "So how are things on the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee? I haven't heard of any serious repercussions about allowing Striker's Russian incursion." "Considering that Striker prevented a coup, I'm not surprised," Senator Fox replied.

  "Nor am I," said Martha.

  "Last I heard, in fact," said the Senator, "President Zhanin told his aides at the Kremlin that he wanted to erect a plaque on the bridge, when it's rebuilt, honoring Lieutenant Colonel Squires." "That would be wonderful," Martha smiled.

  They had reached her office door, and Martha entered her code in the keypad on the jamb. The door clicked open and she allowed the Senator and her aides to enter first.

  Even before Martha had shown the Senator to a chair, Bill Abram swung in.

  "Morning, all," said the chipper, mustachioed officer.

  "Just wanted to let you know that General Rodgers phoned a minute ago from the car and said he'd be a little late." Senator Fox's long face grew a little longer as her chin fell and her eyebrows rose. "Car trouble?" she asked.

  Martha laughed.

  Abram said, "He's caught in traffic. Says he didn't know it got so bad this late." Senator Fox sat in a thickly cushioned armchair. Her aides stood behind her. "And did the General say why he was running late? He knew about our appointment." "Yes, he remembered it," Abram said. His little mustache rose on one side. "But he, uh— he said to tell you he got caught up in a war simulation with Striker personnel." Martha glared at Abram. "He didn't schedule any war simulations for this morning." The glare deepened. "It wasn't one of their chicken fights in the pool—" "No," Abram assured her. He absently pulled at the ends of his bowtie. "This was something else. Something unplanned." Senator Fox shook her head. "I'll wait," she said.

  Bobby Winter still had the briefcase in his hand. When the Senator spoke he set it down, beside the chair.

  "I'll wait," the Senator went on
, "because what I have to say can't wait. But I promise you that when General Rodgers arrives, he's going to find an Op-Center vastly different from the one he left last night." Her small, ski-slope nose rose as she said, "Vastly and permanently different."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Thursday, 2:10 P.M., Hamburg, Germany

  Paul Hood's party left the restaurant at 1:20. They dropped Bob Herbert at the hotel so he could continue making calls about the attack on the movie set. Then the group went on to Martin Lang's Hauptschlssel facility, which was located a scenic thirty-minute drive northwest from Hamburg, in Gluckstadt.

  Like Hamburg, the town was situated on the Elbe.

  Unlike Hamburg, it was quaint and Old World, the last place Hood would have expected to find a modern microchip factory. Not that the building looked like a factory. It resembled a truncated pyramid covered from top to bottom with dark mirrors.

  "A stealth gumdrop," Stoll quipped as they approached.

  "Not a bad description," Lang said. "It was designed to reflect the surroundings rather than intrude on them." Hausen said, "After having a good look at how the Communists polluted the air, war, and beauty of East Germany, we began working harder to create buildings which not only complement the environment, but are also pleasing to the employees." Hood had to admit that unlike American politicians, Hausen wasn't talking in neatly manicured sound bites.

  Inside the three-story structure was a bright and uncluttered working environment. The main floor was divided into three sections. Just inside the door was a large, open space with cubicles in which people were working at computers. To the right were rows of offices. And in the far section, behind the cubicles, was a clean room. There, behind a glass partition, men and women in lab whites, masks, and caps were working on the complex photo-reduction process that turned full-size blueprints into micro-sized chips and printed circuits.