Games of State - Tom Clancy [170]
She started to walk away, swaying as she had when he'd seen her at the hotel, her hair snapping this way, then that. Hood started after her. Without turning around, she held up her hand like a police officer stopping traffic and shook her head.
Hood watched her go, his own eyes dampening. And when she had disappeared into the crowd of police and medics he smiled sadly.
The date, at last, had been kept.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Monday, 9:32 A.M.,
Washington, D.C.
Hood, Stoll, and Herbert were welcomed back to Op-Center with a small party in the Tank, the high-security conference room. When they arrived, the senior staffers were already gathered with trays of coffee, croissants, and crullers.
"We bought out all of the French and German-sounding pastries in the commissary," Ann Farris pointed out as she welcomed Hood with a cheek-to-cheek air kiss.
Ed Medina and John Benn had spent the weekend building a small tableau of toy soldiers representing NATO, Hood, and Herbert. They were defending a fort labeled "Decency" from a horde of disfigured soldiers pouring from a troop transport labeled "Hate."
The bruised but unbowed Herbert was touched. Stoll lapped it all up. Hood was embarrassed. Rodgers stood cross-armed in the corner, out of Hood's limelight, a hint of envy in his expression.
When prompted to speak, Hood perched himself on the corner of the conference table and said, "All we did was what people like General Rodgers and our Striker personnel do all the time."
"Run amok abroad," Lowell Coffey suggested, "and make the diplomats earn their pay?"
"No," Stoll countered. "Fight for truth, justice, and the American way!"
"Where're my pom-poms?" Ann Farris asked.
Hood quieted the twenty-odd people gathered in the office. "Like I said, we only followed the example that our Op-Center colleagues have set for us. Speaking of which, Mike-- you want to make the announcement?"
Rodgers shook his head and extended his hand toward Hood. Hood wanted to drag him over, force him to share in this triumph. But self-promotion was not in Rodgers's lexicon.
Hood said, "Over the weekend, General Rodgers finalized plans for Colonel Brett A. August to come to Washington to take command of Striker. Colonel August was the man who actually collared Gerard Dominique, and he's going to be a great stragetic and personal asset to our team."
There was a smattering of applause and upthrust thumbs.
"As I'm sure you've all noticed," Hood went on, "this weekend the press was full of the fall of Dominique and the implications of Operation L'Ecouter. I saw a lot of editorials about the way the prejudices and suspicions of otherwise good people were going to be manipulated, used to destroy lives and societies. I hope the warnings don't die with the headlines. Ann, we'll have to talk about that. Let's see if we can work up some kind of educational program for schools."
She nodded and smiled proudly at him.
Hood said, "The evidence Matt dug up on the Demain computers is safe with French prosecutors. Since there were international elements to the crime, representatives of the U.S., Germany, and other nations will be on hand to make sure that Dominique doesn't wriggle away. I would also like to congratulate Matt and his team. Yesterday, they traced the launch site of the hate games here in the U.S. to a bank computer in Montgomery, Alabama. They were planted there over the Internet so they could be launched as close as possible to the place where Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white man in 1955. Dominque believed in history. Too bad he didn't learn a damn thing from it."
Rodgers said solemnly, "As Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, 'If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us. But passion and party blind our eyes.' "
Hood said, "I think we opened a few eyes in Europe, especially thanks to Bob."
"And Jody Thompson," Herbert said. "I'd be under a pile of rocks if it weren't for her."
"Yes, and Jody," said Hood. "We've been told that the Chaos Days celebration in Germany fizzled after what