Games of State - Tom Clancy [79]
"And what happened?"
"The French police," Hausen said bitterly, "are different from other police forces. They look to settle cases, not solve them, particularly when they involve foreigners. To them, these were unsolved murders and they would remain unsolved."
"Did they even question Gerard?"
"I don't know," Hausen said. "But even if they did, think of it. A word of a French billionaire's son against that of a poor German boy."
"But he had to have explained why he left school suddenly--"
Hausen said, "Hen Hood, Gerard was the kind of man who could convince you, who could really convince you, that he left school because Trotsky's Mexican speeches were omitted from a text."
"What about the parents of the girls? I can't believe they let it go at that."
"What could they do?" Hausen asked. "They came to France and they demanded justice. They petitioned the French Embassy in Washington and the American Embassy in Paris. They offered rewards. But the girls' bodies were returned to America, the French turned their backs on the families, and that was that, more or less."
"More or less?"
There were tears in Hausen's eyes. "Gerard wrote to me several weeks later. He said he would return some day, to teach me a lesson about cowardice and betrayal."
"Other than that, you didn't hear from him?"
"Not until today when he phoned me. I went back to school, here in Germany, ashamed and consumed with guilt."
"But you hadn't done anything," Hood said. "You tried to stop Gerard."
"My crime was remaining silent immediately afterwards," Hausen said. "Like the many who smelled the fires at Auschwitz, I said nothing."
"There's a matter of degree, don't you think?"
Hausen shook his head. "Silence is silence is silence," he said. "A killer is at large because of my silence. He now calls himself Gerard Dominique. And he has threatened me and my thirteen-year-old daughter."
"I didn't realize you had children," Hood said. "Where is she?"
"She lives with her mother in Berlin," Hausen said. "I'll have her watched, but Gerard is elusive as well as powerful. He can bribe his way to people who disapprove of my work." He shook his head. "Had I yelled for the police that night, held Gerard, done something, I might have known peace over the years. But I didn't. And there was no way I could atone other than to fight the hatred that had driven Gerard to kill those girls."
Hood said, "You had no contact with Gerard, but did you hear anything about him over the years?"
"No," said Hausen. "He vanished, just like your Nancy. There were rumors that he had gone into business with his father, but when the old man died Gerard closed down the airbus parts factory that had been so profitable for so many years. He was rumored to have become the power behind many executive boards without ever being on any, but I don't know that for a fact."
Hood had other questions for the man, questions about the elder Dupre's business, about the identities of the girls, and about what Op-Center could do to help Hausen with what was shaping up as a serious case of blackmail. But his attention was snatched away by a soft voice that called him from behind.
"Paul!"
Hood turned, and the glow of Hamburg seemed to dim. Hausen and the trees and the city and the years themselves disappeared as the tall, slender, graceful angel walked toward him. As he found himself once again standing in front of a movie theater, waiting for Nancy.
Waiting for the girl who finally had arrived.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Thursday, 4:22 P.M.,
Hanover, Germany
Bob Herbert had not phoned Mike Rodgers when he first saw the white van.
It had appeared in his rearview mirror while he drove around the city, trying to figure out what to do. He'd paid little attention to the vehicle as he tried to come up with some way of getting information about the kidnapped girl. Though the straightforward approach had failed, he'd been thinking that bribery might work.
When Herbert turned off Herrenhauser Strasse onto