Games of State - Tom Clancy [131]
Nancy said, "I know those early days better than you think, Matt. And I'm telling you Demain isn't like that. When I program games for Dominique we leave our personal vision at the door. Our job is to pack as many colors and realistic graphics into a game as possible."
Hood said, "That doesn't mean Demain wasn't behind the game. Dominique would hardly produce hate games which looked like his regular games."
Nancy said, "But I've seen the portfolios of the people who work up there," she said. "I've been sitting here thinking about their graphics. None of them work like this."
"What about outside designers?" Hood said.
"At some point, they'd still have to come through the system," she said. "Tested, tweaked, downloaded-- there are dozens of steps."
"What if the entire process were done outside?" Hood asked.
Stoll snapped his fingers. "That kid Reiner, Hausen's assistant. He said he designed stereogram programs. He knows computers."
"Right," said Hood. "Nancy, if someone did design a game on the outside, what's the fewest number of people who would see the diskettes at Demain?"
She said, "First of all, something that dangerous would not come in on diskettes."
"Why not?" Hood asked.
"It would be a smoking gun," she said. "A time-encoded program on a diskette would be proof in court that Dominique was trafficking in hate games."
"Assuming they didn't erase it once it was uploaded," Stoll said.
"They'd keep it until they were sure everything went off as planned," Nancy said. "That's how they work here. Anyway, an outside program like that would have to be modemed to a diskless workstation."
"We've got those, Boss," Stoll said. "They're used for highly sensitive data which you don't want copied from the file server-- the networked computer-- onto a local diskette."
Hood was at the limit of his technical know-how, but he got the gist of what Stoll was saying.
Nancy said, "The only people who have diskless workstations at Demain are vice-presidents who deal with information about new games or business strategies."
Stoll erased the program on his laptop. "Give me the names of some of those high-ups who have the technical chops to process game programs."
Nancy said, "The entire process? Only two of them can do that. Etienne Escarbot and Jean-Michel Horne."
Stoll input the names, sent them off to Op-Center, and asked for a background report. While they waited, Hood addressed something that had been roiling around inside him ever since he'd spoken with Ballon. The Colonel had been less than enthused about Hausen's participation. He'd called him a headline-grabber.
What if he were worse than that? Hood wondered. He didn't want to think ill of someone who seemed a good man, but that was part of the job. Asking yourself, What if? And after listening to Hausen talk about his Luftwaffe father he was asking himself, What if Hausen and Dominique weren't enemies? Hood only had Hausen's account of what had transpired in Paris twenty-odd years ago. What if the two were working together? Christ, Ballon said that Dominique's father had made his fortune in Airbus construction. Airplanes. And Hausen was a goddamned pilot.
Hood carried his thinking a few steps further. What if Reiner had been doing exactly what his boss wanted? Making Hausen look like a victim of a hate game in order to sucker Op-Center, Ballon, and the German 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