Senator Fox's long face grew a little longer as her chin fell and her eyebrows rose. "Car trouble?" she asked.

Martha laughed.

Abram said, "He's caught in traffic. Says he didn't know it got so bad this late."

Senator Fox sat in a thickly cushioned armchair. Her aides stood behind her. "And did the General say why he was running late? He knew about our appointment."

"Yes, he remembered it," Abram said. His little mustache rose on one side. "But he, uh-- he said to tell you he got caught up in a war simulation with Striker personnel."

Martha glared at Abram. "He didn't schedule any war simulations for this morning." The glare deepened. "It wasn't one of their chicken fights in the pool--"

"No," Abram assured her. He absently pulled at the ends of his bowtie. "This was something else. Something unplanned."

Senator Fox shook her head. "I'll wait," she said.

Bobby Winter still had the briefcase in his hand. When the Senator spoke he set it down, beside the chair.

"I'll wait," the Senator went on, "because what I have to say can't wait. But I promise you that when General Rodgers arrives, he's going to find an Op-Center vastly different from the one he left last night." Her small, ski-slope nose rose as she said, "Vastly and permanently different."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Thursday, 2:10 P.M.,

Hamburg, Germany

Paul Hood's party left the restaurant at 1:20. They dropped Bob Herbert at the hotel so he could continue making calls about the attack on the movie set. Then the group went on to Martin Lang's Hauptschlüssel facility, which was located a scenic thirty-minute drive northwest from Hamburg, in Gluckstadt.

Like Hamburg, the town was situated on the Elbe. Unlike Hamburg, it was quaint and Old World, the last place Hood would have expected to find a modern microchip factory. Not that the building looked like a factory. It resembled a truncated pyramid covered from top to bottom with dark mirrors.

"A stealth gumdrop," Stoll quipped as they approached.

"Not a bad description," Lang said. "It was designed to reflect the surroundings rather than intrude on them."

Hausen said, "After having a good look at how the Communists polluted the air, war, and beauty of East Germany, we began working harder to create buildings which not only complement the environment, but are also pleasing to the employees."

Hood had to admit that unlike American politicians, Hausen wasn't talking in neatly manicured sound bites. Inside the three-story structure was a bright and uncluttered working environment. The main floor was divided into three sections. Just inside the door was a large, open space with cubicles in which people were working at computers. To the right were rows of offices. And in the far section, behind the cubicles, was a clean room. There, behind a glass partition, men and women in lab whites, masks, and caps were working on the complex photo-reduction process that turned full-size blueprints into micro-sized chips and printed circuits.