Then there was the military. Because of Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign and World War II, they assumed that members of the French armed forces were vastly inferior to American soldiers and deserved only the bones they signed to throw them.

But Bonaparte and the Maginot Line were aberrations in an otherwise proud military history, he told himself. Indeed, without the French military helping George Washington there would not be a United States. Not that the Americans would ever acknowledge that. Any more than they would allow that the Lumiere brothers, not Edison, invented motion pictures. Or that the Montgolfier brothers, not the Wright brothers, were the ones who enabled people to fly. The only good thing about Americans was that they gave him someone other than Germans to hate.

His phone beeped and he regarded it for a moment. That would be him. Paul Hood. Ballon didn't really want to talk to this Mr. Hood, but he didn't want to let Dominique get away even more. Thus resolved-- quickly, as with all things-- he snatched up the phone.

"Oui?"

"Colonel Ballon?"

"Oui."

The caller said without missing a beat, "Je suis Paul Hood. Vous avez besoin d'assistance?"

Ballon was caught off guard by that. "Oui," he replied. "Eh… vous parlez la langue?" he asked.

"Je parle un peu," Hood said.

He spoke a little French. "Then we'll speak English," replied Ballon. "I don't want to hear you murder my tongue. I'm particular about that."

"I understand," said Hood. "Six years of French in high school and college didn't exactly make me a linguist."

"School does not make us anything," Ballon said. "Life makes us what we are. But talk is not life, and sitting in this room is not life. Mr. Hood, I want Dominique. I've been told you have equipment which will help me get him."

"I do," Hood said.

"Where are you?"

"Hamburg," said Hood.

"Very good You can fly here on one of the airbuses which made Dominique's father a fortune. If you hurry, you can be here in about two hours."

"We'll be there," said Hood.

"We?" Ballon felt his passion leak away. "Who else is there?"

Hood said, "Deputy Foreign Minister Richard Hausen and the two other persons in my party."

Ballon had been glowering. Now he was sulking. It had to be a German, he thought. And that German in particular. God does not love me as He promised He would.

"Colonel Ballon," Hood said, "are you there?"

"Yes," he said glumly. "So now I don't have to just sit here for two hours. I can fight with my government to get an attention-hungry German government official into France on an unofficial visit."

I take a different view of him," Hood said. "Attention can be selfless if it's for a worthy cause."