Oval Office, White House, Washington D.C. — February 17, 1992 — 1:45 p.m. (Eastern time)
Omniscient (focus on George H. W. Bush)
The silence that reigned in the Oval Office was not the silence of calm, but that of the vacuum of space — an absolute void of air in which the lungs burn before they suffocate.
George Herbert Walker Bush — forty-first President of the United States of America, Second World War hero, former Director of the CIA, and victor of the Cold War — held the heavy handset of the secure telephone pressed to his ear. His knuckles were white. His face, ordinarily imbued with a serene patrician authority, was ravaged by an ashen pallor.
Down the highly encrypted transatlantic line, he heard nothing but a faint breath of static.
Around him, standing like pillars of salt before the apocalypse, were the most powerful men in the free world: Brent Scowcroft, his National Security Adviser; James Baker, his Secretary of State; and Robert Gates, the Director of the CIA, whose face still bore the marks of the night of crisis at Langley.
"Operator," Bush said, his voice gone hoarse with dread. "Do you have the Élysée Palace?"
"Yes, Mr. President," replied the professional, faintly trembling voice of the White House military switchboard operator. "The line is established with President Mitterrand's switchboard."
"Then put him through."
"Mr. President... the French switchboard has asked me to relay a message to you."
Bush closed his eyes. The humiliation now coming would be biblical.
"What is the message?"
"They say: 'The President of the French Republic has nothing to say to the head of a rogue state.' They have just cut the connection, Mr. President. The line is dead."
The disconnect click echoed through the speaker. Bush slowly set the handset back on its cradle. The plastic sound seemed deafening in the padded room.
For the first time since the creation of the famous red telephone between the Western capitals at the dawn of the Cold War, a major ally — a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a nuclear power — had just flatly refused to speak to the President of the United States. This was no mere diplomatic falling-out. It was an act of total geopolitical secession. François Mitterrand had just struck America from the map of those he would deign to address.
Bush sank into the leather chair behind his desk. He drew a trembling hand across his face.
"He refuses to take the call," the President murmured, his voice broken. "François refuses to speak to me."
James Baker — ordinarily the master of diplomatic grace — hurled a thick folder onto the coffee table, scattering classified memos.
"And how do you expect him to take the call, George?" the Secretary of State exploded, losing all composure. "Your spooks have just hosed down a car with military weapons in the middle of Europe! They assassinated one of France's top industrial leaders — a man who was dining with cabinet ministers in Paris last week — and they nearly killed Lazare Bonaparte! You know what the Europeans call that? State terrorism! We are being treated like Gaddafi's Libya!"
Robert Gates, the Director of the CIA, absorbed the blow, his eyes fixed on the carpet bearing the presidential seal.
"It is the isolated act of an uncontrollable deputy director, Mr. Secretary. Vance exceeded his orders. He has been placed under arrest."
"What a comfort!" Baker roared, rounding on Gates. "You think Mitterrand gives a damn about the malfunctions of your human resources at Langley? To the rest of the world, it was America that opened fire! Alexandre de Vigan's blood is on the American flag!"
Brent Scowcroft stepped forward, his face of marble gravity.
"Gentlemen, calm yourselves. The situation is infinitely graver than a simple public-relations crisis. Mitterrand's refusal to take the phone was only the aperitif. The Quai d'Orsay has just triggered the retaliation procedure."
Bush raised his head, his eyes red from lack of sleep and from the collapse of his world.
"What retaliation, Brent?"
Scowcroft opened a black briefcase and drew out a sheaf of diplomatic telegrams printed on yellow paper — the colour of maximum alerts.
"First, the French ambassador in Washington has been recalled to Paris for 'consultations,' effective immediately. He is already on a Concorde. Second, our ambassador in Paris, Pamela Harriman, has just been declared persona non grata. The Élysée has given her twenty-four hours to leave French territory, along with the senior officers of the CIA station in our embassy."
Bush felt his stomach knot. The expulsion of an American ambassador by France had never happened before. Even at the worst of the Euromissile crisis, or of de Gaulle's withdrawal from NATO's command in 1966, the diplomatic channels had stayed open. This was a measure reserved for countries with which one was about to go to war.
"They are cutting off our diplomatic head," Bush observed. "What else?"
"The military dimension, Mr. President," Scowcroft went on, his voice flat. "The French General Staff has just announced the unilateral, immediate suspension of all bilateral defence cooperation treaties. Their warships have just withdrawn from the inter-allied naval exercise in the North Atlantic, switching off their transponders. And worse still — General Roquejeoffre has just received orders to repatriate the entire Daguet division and the French fighter squadrons deployed in the Gulf. They are leaving the post-Gulf War coalition. They are abandoning Iraq."
"They are tearing the coalition apart..." Bush breathed, horrified. The crowning glory of his presidency, the grand alliance that had defeated Saddam Hussein the year before, was flying to pieces because of the Ogre of Ivry.
"They are doing more than tear it apart, George," Baker said. "They are telling us we are a greater threat than Saddam. The Élysée has just placed Volta S.A. under the protection of defence secrecy. Any American attempt to obstruct the interests of Bonaparte's company will henceforth be treated by France as an act of aggression against the sovereignty of the French state."
Bush rose from his chair, gasping for air. The walls of the oval room seemed to close in on him. His entire presidency was crumbling. The New World Order he had theorized after the fall of the Soviet Union was turning into a multipolar nightmare in which America was reduced to the rank of a brutal and isolated tyrant.
Suddenly, the heavy oak door of the Oval Office flew open.
John Sununu, the White House Chief of Staff, rushed in, followed by two panicked secretaries. Sununu did not look frightened; he looked like a man fleeing a forest fire.
"Mr. President," Sununu said, panting, ignoring protocol. "We have a critical breach. The Capitol is on fire."
"What are you talking about, John?"
"The Dutch leaked the information, Mr. President. The Dutch DSI has identified the rounds, the weapons, and the modus operandi of Alpha Unit. The European press is already preparing its special editions. The Financial Times and Le Monde are about to run front pages on 'The White House Death Squad.'"
Sununu approached the desk, planting his fists on the wood.
"The information reached the U.S. Senate twenty minutes ago. The members of the Intelligence Committee are in a state of absolute rage. Senator George Mitchell and the Republican majority leaders demand to see you. Immediately. They are on red line two."
Bush closed his eyes. The coup de grâce.
Foreign policy was his reserved domain — but to alienate Congress over so monstrous a blunder was tantamount to political suicide a year out from the 1992 presidential election.
Bush nodded toward the telephone on the conference table. Sununu pressed the speaker button.
"Senator Mitchell," said Bush, striving to impose a calm, presidential tone. "I am listening."
The voice of the Senate majority leader exploded from the loudspeakers, saturated with anger and outrage. Mitchell was not alone; the murmur of other indignant senators could be heard in the background.
"Mr. President, God forgive us, tell me this is a KGB manipulation! Tell me that what the Dutch Prime Minister has just confided to our ambassador in The Hague is a collective hallucination!"
"Senator, the situation is complex. We had a serious operational incident involving officers acting outside their chain of command—"
"An incident?" yelled another senator on the line, a moderate Republican breaking ranks with his own party. "You call that an incident? You have just sent a death squad to assassinate the civilian elite of our oldest ally! On the soil of a founding member state of NATO!"
"Listen to me carefully, George," Mitchell resumed, with a cutting coldness. "You are the President of the United States. Whatever is done under the seal of the CIA bears your signature. This is not Guatemala. This is not Nicaragua. This is Western Europe! You have just authorized a lethal strike against citizens of the very nation that gave us our own independence!"
The word was out. The weight of history fell like a blade on Bush's skull.
"France, Mr. President!" the Senator thundered. "The nation of General de Lafayette! The country without which the United States of America would not even exist! The country that gave us the Statue of Liberty! And how do we thank them today? By sending our shadow agents to gun down one of their industrial flagships on a European motorway — because he sells better microprocessors than we do!"
"Senator, it is a matter of national security," Robert Gates tried to argue, leaning toward the microphone. "Bonaparte was arming the Chinese administration with the VESLA architecture—"
"Shut your mouth, Bob!" the chairman of the Intelligence Committee yelled. "National security does not justify the outright murder of the civilians of a friendly nation! That is exactly the kind of action we used to condemn in the Soviet Politburo! You destroyed America's moral authority in five minutes! How do you expect us to lecture China or the Middle East on democracy if we execute the European capitalists who beat us fair and square on the free market?"
Bush felt a physical nausea wash over him. The argument was unanswerable. The U.S. Congress — deeply attached to the myth of the exceptional nation and its role as a beacon of liberty — had just discovered that its executive branch was behaving like an industrial mafia.
"George," Mitchell resumed, dropping his voice a notch to make it more menacing still. "The House of Representatives is already stirring. If President Mitterrand publicly confirms what everyone already knows behind the scenes — if the French display the corpses of their citizens cut down by our bullets — we will not be able to protect you."
Bush turned pale. The implicit word hung in the air, unspoken yet weighing tons.
Impeachment. Removal from office.
"We are a few months from the election," the Senator went on. "The economy is in recession. And now you have just touched off a cold war with Europe and brought about the fracturing of NATO. I warn you, Mr. President: if France refuses to cooperate and publishes the evidence of Alpha Unit's intervention, articles of impeachment will be on your desk before the end of the week. For high treason against the strategic interests of the United States, abuse of power, and political assassination. You have put the survival of the Republic in danger."
"I will resolve this, Senator," Bush managed to say, his throat dry. "You have my word. The internal investigation will be merciless."
"Your word is worth nothing abroad any longer, George. Try to save what is left of it within our own borders."
The line went dead.
The Oval Office fell back into its tomb-like silence.
Bush stayed a long while motionless, staring at the carpet. He had just lived through the worst day of his life. Worse than the day his plane was shot down over the Pacific in 1944. In those days he had fought a clearly identified enemy. Today the enemy was within his own walls, and the victim was the country without which America would never have existed.
"Mr. President..." James Baker began cautiously.
"Get out," Bush whispered.
"George, we have to prepare a statement for the press—"
"GET OUT!" the President shouted, slamming both fists down on the venerable Resolute desk. "All of you, get out of my office!"
The secretaries of state, the chiefs of staff, the director of the CIA — all recoiled, terrified by the old patriarch's eruption of violence. They left the room with hushed steps, drawing the heavy door shut behind them.
Alone, George H. W. Bush let himself sink into his chair. He turned his gaze to the window, to the White House lawn drowned in a cold winter light.
He thought back to the young man he had underestimated. Lazare Bonaparte. The Ogre of Ivry.
Bush had believed he could tame the French prodigy through the law, through tariffs, through financial pressure. And when all of it had failed, his own administration had reached for blood.
But blood had not killed the Ogre. Blood had sanctified him. Lazare Bonaparte, in his hospital bed in the Netherlands, had just won the war of world opinion. He had just divided America. He had just forced the Empire to mutilate itself.
"What are you, Bonaparte?" Bush whispered into the empty room, his mind reeling beneath the weight of guilt and helplessness.
The answer was obvious, though no one in Washington dared to put it into words. Lazare was not an industrialist. He was a sovereign monster, an anomaly of history that had just proved that silicon and raw will could break the steel of superpowers.
The President of the United States buried his face in his hands. The Atlantic rift gaped wide. America was alone. And in the shadow of old Europe, France — freed from its chains by the outrage — was preparing to take its revenge. The real war, the war of total hegemony, had only just begun, and Washington had just lost the first round.
⁊
Élysée Palace / National Assembly, Paris / Chancellery, Bonn / 10 Downing Street, London — February 17–18, 1992
Omniscient (multiple focuses on parliaments and chancelleries)
If Washington was living through a nightmare, Paris was entering a patriotic trance the like of which France had not known since the great days of the Liberation. The shock wave of the Eindhoven ambush had not merely shattered the windows of a Mercedes; it had shattered the political divisions of a nation famed for its internecine quarrels.
February 17, 1992 — 9:30 p.m. — National Assembly, Paris
The chamber of the Palais-Bourbon was packed to bursting. In a heavy atmosphere charged with historic electricity, deputies of every persuasion had gathered in extraordinary session. In 1992, France was living through its second "cohabitation": a Socialist president, François Mitterrand, and a right-wing parliamentary majority. In ordinary times, the Assembly was the theatre of permanent political guerrilla warfare.
But that evening, the silence that greeted the Prime Minister's entrance was sepulchral.
The rumour had spread like wildfire: a CIA commando had tried to assassinate Lazare Bonaparte — the man who carried the hope of French silicon — and had shot Alexandre de Vigan dead in cold blood. The insult was aimed not at a company, but at the flag.
Auguste Bonaparte, from the height of his fifty-one years, watched the scene from the visitors' gallery, motionless, his face of granite. He was no longer merely the father of the wounded man or the former DST colonel; he was the invisible architect of what was about to unfold. In the shadows, over the past two hours, Auguste had activated every one of his networks: old comrades-in-arms, Gaullist senators, Socialist deputies rallied to the reason of state. He had shown them the photographs sent by Vasseur — the blood on the asphalt, de Vigan's face. He had reminded them of a simple truth: "If we let America kill our geniuses in our streets, France is nothing more than a prefecture of Washington."
The political miracle took place before the eyes of the country. The leader of the right-wing opposition rose and, in a solemn voice, addressed the government bench.
"Prime Minister, in this tragic hour, when French blood has been shed by the betrayal of an ally who behaves as our master, there is no longer a right or a left. There is only France. The members of my group — and I am certain, of this entire chamber — will form, this very evening, a Republican Bloc. We suspend our criticisms. We suspend our oppositions. We give you a free hand to answer this aggression."
The roar of approval that followed set the woodwork of the Assembly trembling. For Mitterrand, the message was clear: cohabitation stopped at the borders of the national interest. The President now had a free hand.
In the same breath, a supplementary finance bill was tabled before the Assembly — a text drafted in haste by the advisers of Auguste and the Finance Ministry.
"We vote the immediate halt to the budgetary bloodletting of our armed forces and our intelligence services," the budget rapporteur proclaimed to cheers.
The drastic cuts planned after the fall of the Berlin Wall were cancelled in ten minutes. Better still: exceptional funds of several billion francs were released for the Ministry of Defence and the DGSE. France had just decided, in a single night, to become a fortress once more. The intelligence services, which had been begging for credits to modernize their technology, suddenly found themselves endowed with an all but unlimited "sovereignty" budget.
February 18, 1992 — 9:00 a.m. — London and Bonn
While France transformed itself into an entrenched camp, the rest of Europe watched the standoff with a terror mixed with admiration.
In Bonn, Chancellor Helmut Kohl stared at the television-news footage of the French Transall exfiltrating Lazare Bonaparte under escort of Mirage fighters. Germany was in an impossible position. Kohl was managing a reunification that cost the Bundesbank fortunes by the day, and his security still depended on the American divisions stationed on his soil.
"Mitterrand is a madman..." Kohl murmured to his diplomatic adviser. "A magnificent madman. He slams the door in Bush's face while we still need NATO."
"Chancellor, France had de Gaulle to teach her to say 'no,'" the adviser replied. "We have American bases at Ramstein. We cannot afford to break."
The same conclusion prevailed at 10 Downing Street. John Major, the British Prime Minister, was under pressure from his own secret services. MI6 was furious at the CIA's bloody amateurism, but the United Kingdom remained the United States' "special partner."
"We will not follow the French into a diplomatic rupture," Major ruled. "It is too dangerous. We have too many interests intertwined. We will call for calm, for restraint, and we will let the Dutch run the judicial inquiry."
But European hypocrisy had its limit: fear.
Though Kohl and Major refused to condemn George Bush in public, they were chilled by the brutality of Alpha Unit. Behind the scenes, a secret meeting of the European heads of government was held over an encrypted link. The sentiment was unanimous: "If the Americans can bring down a Bonaparte because he is winning market share, they are capable of liquidating us if we do not toe their political line."
The conclusion of this fear was paradoxical. Officially, Europe did not support France. But unofficially, the lock fell away. The European governments — fearing above all to become the next targets, or to remain at the mercy of an America gone mad — made a momentous decision: they would put up no further resistance to the installation of Volta systems in their administrations.
"Let the French wage war on Bush," Kohl told his ministers. "And in the meantime, let us buy Bonaparte's processors. It is our only chance of an exit if Washington spirals out of control."
February 18, 1992 — 8:00 p.m. — French homes
The eight o'clock news on TF1 drew a historic audience. The whole of France sat before its screens. The footage of the black Mercedes, shredded in the Eindhoven rain, ran on a loop.
A retired military expert — a former high-ranking intelligence officer and a close friend of Auguste Bonaparte — had been invited onto the set. He laid a deformed 9-millimetre round on the table, identical to those recovered at the scene.
"What you are looking at," said the expert, gazing straight into the camera, "is not the work of terrorists or mobsters. It is master's work. A motorized pincer, crossfire, subsonic ammunition. It is a surgical strike by a state service. America set out to decapitate France's technological independence. They killed Alexandre de Vigan, a servant of our economy, and they very nearly took Lazare Bonaparte from us."
The emotion in the country was immediate. Lazare was no longer the "arrogant billionaire" or the mysterious industrialist. In a single evening, he became the Martyr Hero — the face of a France that refuses to bend.
Mitterrand's approval ratings soared, lifted by his firmness against Bush. But above all, a national consensus took shape: Volta S.A. was no longer a private company. It was the flagship of French sovereignty.
At the Val-de-Grâce hospital, where the Transall had just landed, Lazare Bonaparte was transferred to an intensive-care unit under heavy military guard.
Auguste Bonaparte, standing in the corridor, watched the stretcher go by. He saw his son's face, white as a shroud, beneath the oxygen mask. He saw the blood-soaked dressings.
He felt a hand settle on his shoulder. It was Commandant Vasseur.
"The Republican Bloc has voted the funds, Auguste," Vasseur murmured. "The services have enough to recruit and equip themselves for ten years. The bloodletting is over. The army is behind us."
Auguste did not take his eyes off his son.
"America believed that by shedding my son's blood it would weaken us," said the colonel, in a low voice vibrating with hatred. "They did the very opposite. They woke the nation. They have given Lazare an army and an unlimited budget."
He turned to Vasseur, his eyes shining with a black resolve.
"Bush wanted to send us back to the Stone Age. We are going to send them to the graveyard of empires. Prepare what comes next, Vasseur. Lazare swore to crush them under gold. With the funds Parliament has just voted us, we are not merely going to buy their companies. We are going to buy their country."
In 1992, France had just recovered its sacred unity — a unity forged in blood and silicon. The Ogre, on his deathbed, had just received the finest of all gifts: an entire nation ready to march behind him to take its revenge on the New World.