As they walked briskly through the terminal, Hood wondered if it had been coincidental. that Ballon had selected the salutation "See you tomorrow," which in French also reflected where they were going.

Ballon led the group to a pair of waiting vans. Without undo fuss, he made certain that Stoll was comfortable between Nancy and Hood. Ballon got in front, beside the driver. There were three other men in the rearmost seat. None carried arms. Those were in the second van, along with Hausen.

"I feel like the botanist on HMS Bounty," Stoll remarked to Hood when they were under way. "He had to transplant the breadfruit they were after and Captain Bligh really looked out for him."

"Where does that leave the rest of us?" Nancy said with a scowl.

"Bound for Tahiti," Hood said.

Nancy didn't smile. She didn't even look at him. Hood had the impression of being on the Ship of Fools, not the Bounty, Without the romanticism of memory to obscure it, he remembered now, vividly, how Nancy would regularly get into moods. She'd go from sad to depressed to angry, as if she were sliding down a muddy slope. The moods wouldn't last long, but when they came over her things could get nasty. He didn't know what scared him more: the fact that he'd forgotten them or the fact that she was in one now.

Ballon turned around. "I spent what was left of favors owed to me getting you into France. I had already used up most of them obtaining the search warrant to enter Demain. It expires tonight at midnight but I don't want to waste it. We've been watching the plant for days by remote video camera, hoping to see something that would justify entering. But so far, there's been nothing."

"What do you hope we'll find?" Hood asked.

"Ideally?" Ballon said. "Faces of known terrorists. Members of his terrible New Jacobin paramilitary force, a resurrection of the league which did not hesitate to murder old women or young children if they belonged to the upper classes."

The Colonel used a key attached to his wrist to open the glove compartment. He handed Hood a folder. Inside were over a dozen drawings and blurry photographs.

"Those are known Jacobins," Ballon said. "I need a match with one of them in order to go in."

Hood showed the file to Stoll. "Are you going to be able to see a face clear enough to make a positive ID?"

Stoll flipped through the pictures. "Maybe. Depends on what someone's standing behind, whether or not they're moving, how much time I have to do the imaging--"

"Those are a lot of conditions," Ballon said irately. "I need to place one of these monsters inside the factory."

"There's absolutely no leeway in the warrant?" Hood asked.

"None," Ballon said angrily. "But I won't let poor resolution allow us to pretend an innocent man is a guilty one just so we can go inside."