Hood didn't bother to ask how a single foreign businessman had been able to put so much of what Rodgers called "bad news" in position without being discovered. He knew the answer. Dominique had money, autonomy, and patience. With money and patience alone, the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult had been able to operate from a Manhattan office from 1987 to 1995, buying everything from a computer equipment to a laser system capable of measuring plutonium to several tons of steel for the manufacture of knives. All of this was going to be used to help begin a war between Japan and the United States. Though it was unlikely the war would have occurred; the nuclear destruction of a U.S. city might well have been achieved if investigators of the Senate Permanent Investigations Committee, working with the CIA and the FBI, had not been able to penetrate and arrest the members of the doomsday cult.

Hood asked, "What are the chances of stopping this from your end?"

"Obviously," said McCaskey, "until we know the scope of the man's ambitions or even specific targets, I can't say."

"But you think-- you feel-- that all of this is being generated by one man?"

McCaskey said, "That's how it looks from here."

"So if we were to get to the one man," Hood said, "we could put the brakes on everything."

"Conceivably," McCaskey said. "At least, that's the way it looks to me."

"Let's work on that," Hood said. "Meanwhile, has anybody heard anything from Bob?"

McCaskey said, "Actually… yes."

Hood didn't like the way that sounded. "What's he doing?"

McCaskey explained and Hood listened, feeling guilty as all hell for having let Herbert go off on his own. Chasing around the woods, a man in a wheelchair against a van-load of neo-Nazis. It was absurd. Then he got angry. Op-Center had lost Private Bass Moore in Korea and Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Squires in Russia. Herbert should have realized that if anything happened to him, Congress would chain the entire operation to a desk. Herbert had no right to jeopardize the entire organization. Finally, Hood felt a rush of pride. Herbert was doing something which distinguished Americans from most other nationalities. He was fighting injustice, regardless of who it was being directed against.

But righteous or not, Herbert was a semi-loose cannon, a U.S. government operative hunting neo-Nazis in Germany. If he broke the law or even if he were found out, the neo-Nazis would spin it as if they were being persecuted, ganged up on. It would send a firestorm of criticism sweeping over Op-Center, Washington, and Hausen.

Then, of course, there was always the danger that the neo-Nazis would rather eliminate Herbert. The men in the van might not have known who he was. But even knowing, not all radicals wanted publicity. Some of them just wanted their enemies dead.