"It didn't. Besides, I don't do the finishes on these programs. I write the parameters, the outlines, and other people color them in here. Paid big bucks and sequestered and loyal to the boss. When we do things like the extra game in the credits, that's more or less an afterthought. This is way out of my area."

Everyone was silent for a moment. Then Stoll clapped his hands once and dropped to the grass. "I know how to do it. I know how to get that bastard!"

Ballon crouched beside him. "How?"

The others moved around them as Stoll unwrapped the cables for his portable computer. He attached the machine to the T-Bird. "The programmers work like painters. Like we saw in Mr. Hausen's office, they take stuff from the landscape around them and use it in the games. It's dark now, so we'd have a problem eyeballing scenery. But if I take terahertz pictures of the trees and the hills and everything else, the chemical compounds appear as visual data. That'll give us the shape of things down to leaves and boulders. If we feed those into the computer--"

"You can run a video comparison program to see if any of the images match up," Nancy said. "Matt, that's brilliant!"

"Damn right," he said. "With any luck, I can handle the whole thing here. If I need more juice, I can download to Op-Center."

As Stoll worked Hood watched, confused but trusting his associate. And as he stood there, his phone beeped. He stepped toward the river to answer.

"Yes?"

"Paul?" said the caller. "It's John Benn. Can you speak?"

Hood said that he could.

"I have a full report for you, but here is the gist. Maximillian Hausen, father of Richard Hausen, worked for Pierre Dupre from 1966 to 1979. His title was Pilot and then Senior Pilot."

"You said 1966?" Hood said.

"I did."

That was before Richard Hausen and Gerard Dupre went to school together. In which case, it was not likely that they met at the Sorbonne, as Hausen had said. They almost certainly knew each other before that. Hood glanced back at Hausen, who was watching Stoll. The question which bothered Hood was not so much when they met but whether they were still in contact now. Not as enemies, but as allies.

"There's more," Bern said. "Apparently, Hausen the Elder was a loyal Nazi who continued to meet in secret with other ex-Nazis after the war. They belonged to the White Wolves, a group which plotted the creation of the Fourth Reich."

Hood turned his back on the group. He asked quietly, "Was Richard a member?"

"There's no evidence one way or the other," Benn said.

Hood was glad to hear that, at least. "Anything else, John?"

"Not at present."

"Thank you," Hood said. "This is all very helpful."

"You're welcome," Benn said, "and have a good night."