Location: Management office, Volta S.A. factory (Ivry-sur-Seine) / La Défense
Date: April 1986
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazarus Bonaparte)
The spring of 1986 had settled in Paris, but the Volta empire was unaware of the cycle of the seasons. The Ivry-sur-Seine factory had become an autonomous fortress, an industrial micro-state governed by its own laws. Under the dictatorship of René Castella, the production of V-1 modules had reached a watchmaking regularity. Armored trucks left the loading docks every morning to deliver to the ministries and the headquarters of the major Parisian banks. Money, the warm blood that irrigates power, flowed uninterruptedly into the company's accounts.
In the R&D lab, Karim Belkacem's team was waging its war of attrition against American silicon. The software patch to circumvent the hidden defect of the Intel 386 processor was in the testing phase, and the VoltaOS code was growing line by line, of absolute mathematical purity.
Everything worked perfectly. The machine was oiled, financed, protected.
Yet, locked in his office overlooking the assembly line, Lazare Bonaparte contemplated a huge cork board with the icy dissatisfaction of the conqueror who knows that his victory is only a temporary illusion.
On this board, Lazare had pinned dozens of articles from the international economic press, growth charts, and the logos of the computer giants: IBM, Compaq, Olivetti, Bull, Nixdorf. And, in the center, a smaller name, but which spread like a computer virus: Microsoft, and its operating system MS-DOS.
The young nineteen-year-old CEO clasped his hands under his chin. The sixty-year-old engineer read the future in these slips of paper.
The microcomputer market was exploding. The concept of the "IBM Compatible PC" became the world standard. Soon, every office in every administration, every bank counter, every company would have a computer. And on almost all of these machines, manufacturers installed the American MS-DOS system by default.
Selling a security hardware module like the V-1 to terrified customers was one thing. It was an act of piracy. A legal racket.
But selling a complete operating system like VoltaOS was going to be was a whole other war. You didn't sell an OS directly to the end customer. A banker or a general didn't buy an empty floppy disk to install it himself. He bought a complete computer, ready to use.
For VoltaOS to triumph, computer manufacturers — the giants of the industry (the famous "OEMs") — had to agree to format their hard drives at the factory, to erase the American MS-DOS, and to install the French system in their place.
Lazarus closed his eyes. He knew perfectly well his own limits.
He was a Builder. A strategist. He knew how to paralyze a ministry and extort hundreds of millions from a bank by the sheer force of his technical intelligence. But he remained, in the eyes of the outside world, a nineteen-year-old kid. If he appeared before the board of directors of Olivetti in Italy or Bull in Paris to ask them to abandon the American standard, they would laugh in his face.
He did not speak the language of the old bosses of the industry. He despised social lunches, golf games, façade smiles and the hypocritical diplomacy of multinationals.
If he went to the front himself, he would lose.
Lazarus opened his eyes. He pressed the intercom in his office.
"Yes, Monsieur Bonaparte?" replied the voice of his new executive assistant, recruited a month earlier.
"Call the headhunting firm Gauthier & Associates, Place Vendôme," Lazare ordered. "Tell them I don't want to receive their profiles of nice guys from the top schools for my job as Director of Business Strategy. Tell them I want to look at their blacklists." »
"Their blacklists, sir?" repeated the assistant, perplexed.
"The profiles they refuse to present to their clients. The executives fired for aggressiveness, the sociopaths in sales, the men the industry deems too cynical or too dangerous for their brand image. I'm looking for a shark, not a dolphin. Let them have the files delivered to me before tonight, or I'll cut their contract." »
"Good, sir."
Forty-eight hours later, Lazare had gone through about fifteen confidential files. Most of them were failures, aging salespeople who had sunk into alcoholism or small-time scammers.
But one of the files had caught his attention.
Alexandre de Vigan. Thirty-eight years old. The passport photo showed a man with a racy face, brown hair perfectly slicked back, with a smile that was more of a bite than a politeness. The look was that of a bored predator.
Alexandre de Vigan's career was dazzling. A graduate of the best schools, he had spent the last ten years at one of the largest American computer manufacturers, climbing the ladder to become Vice President of Sales for Southern Europe. He had multiplied the turnover of his division by four.
But the "Reason for leaving" section of the file was what interested Lazare the most.
De Vigan had not resigned. He had been brutally disembarked six months earlier with a seven-figure severance check and a solid-solid confidentiality clause. Reading between the lines of the headhunter's report, Lazare had understood the story. De Vigan was too ferocious. He had almost provoked a lawsuit for abuse of dominant position and illicit collusion by crushing a local competitor with methods that even unsavage American capitalism deemed unmentionable. The Americans had sacrificed him on the altar of public relations.
Since then, the "shark" had been wandering the waters of La Défense, the business district in western Paris, operating as an "independent consultant". This was the polite term for an exiled mercenary who was looking for a war to suit him.
Lazare closed the cardboard file. Alexandre de Vigan was perfect. He knew all the CEOs of European computer manufacturers. He knew their weaknesses, their alcove secrets, their fears. He spoke the language of shareholders, he mastered the art of blackmail in a three-piece suit, and above all, he had an unquenchable thirst for revenge against the industry that had banned him.
He had to be recruited. But a man like de Vigan didn't let himself be summoned for a job interview by a kid from Ivry-sur-Seine. You had to bait him.
Lazare grabbed the heavy black telephone in his office and dialled the direct number of Alexandre de Vigan's consulting firm, indicated in the file.
A secretary with an icy voice answered the second ring.
"Vigan's Cabinet, good morning."
"I wish to speak to Alexandre de Vigan," Lazare said, without giving his name.
"Monsieur de Vigan is at present in a meeting, sir. What is it about? Can you give me your name?" »
"Tell him that the man who sold fifty thousand hardware modules to the French Ministry of Defense without any tender needs a general for his next campaign."
There was a floating silence at the other end of the line. The secretary, accustomed to arrogant interlocutors, seemed unsettled by the chilling aplomb of the voice.
"Wait a minute, please... »
The waiting music lasted less than twenty seconds. When the line was resumed, it was no longer the secretary.
"Alexandre de Vigan," said a baritone voice, honeyed but laden with an undeniable Parisian haughtiness. "I am told that I am speaking in the shadows that terrorize Crédit Lyonnais and the general staff. I admit that I am curious." The financial world is buzzing with rumors about a famous company called Volta, but no one seems to know the face of its boss. »
"My face is of no importance, Mr. de Vigan. Only my order book is."
De Vigan let out a cynical chuckle.
"A mystic of industry is charming. What do you want with me, sir...? You have not given me your name. »
"Lazare Bonaparte. I want to meet you. »
"I'm flattered, Mr. Bonaparte. But I'm a very busy man. My consulting fees are ten thousand francs for half a day. And I'm not in the habit of going to the industrial suburbs for security startups, even if they are endorsed by the state. »
Lazare let the insult slide. Vigan's arrogance was exactly what he was looking to buy.
"We are not going to consult, Mr. de Vigan. And I don't want you to sell security. This market is already mine. I am going to give you the mission of destroying the software monopoly of the company that fired you. I am going to give you the absolute weapon to force Bull, Olivetti and IBM Europe to replace MS-DOS with my operating system. »
Vigan's laughter stopped abruptly. Replacing the American operating system with European manufacturers? It was pure commercial science fiction.
"You're crazy, or very misinformed about the reality of this business," de Vigan retorted, his tone suddenly sharp. "The manufacturers are married to the Americans. Their contracts are armored. No one will replace a global standard with unknown French software. Even if your product is better, the market doesn't care. The market buys compatibility. »
"The market will buy VoltaOS, because I discovered a hidden flaw in the architecture of the future Intel 386 processor," Lazare said, dropping his strategic nuclear bomb with the calm of a chess player moving a pawn. "And that my system is the only one in the world that can isolate and cancel it."
Absolute silence fell on the line. Alexandre de Vigan, the former VP of sales for the industry, knew exactly what such a flaw meant. If Intel put a defective chip on the market, and a French OS was the only remedy, the entire balance of power in the global computer market could be turned upside down.
It was industrial blackmail on a global scale.
"To-morrow, thirteen o'clock," De Vigan went on slowly, all haughtiness gone. "At the InterContinental, in the Rue de Castiglione. The bar, at the back. Don't be late, Monsieur Bonaparte. I hate to wait." »
The line cut off.
Lazarus put the heavy handset back on its base. A thin predatory grin stretched the corners of his lips. The line was taut. The bait, engorged with Intel's blood, floated in the murky water. The shark had taken the bait.
Now the most difficult thing remained: convincing this shark to submit to a nineteen-year-old kid, and to help him devour the old world.
Location: Bar of the InterContinental Hotel (Rue de Castiglione, Paris 1st)
Date: May 1986
Point of view: Focus on Alexandre de Vigan
The bar at the InterContinental, with its dark woodwork, deep leather club chairs and soft lighting, was one of Alexandre de Vigan's favourite hunting grounds. It was a place where silence was expensive and industrial alliances were sealed over glasses of outdated whiskey.
Sitting at the back of the room, de Vigan swirled the ice cube in his Dry Martini. At thirty-eight, the former Vice-President of Sales exuded the carnivorous elegance typical of the financial elite. Wearing a double-breasted suit with tennis stripes, a white gold Patek Philippe watch protruding from an immaculate cuff, he observed the entrance to the bar with the impatience of a wild animal who has been promised an exotic meal.
Volta S.A. For months, this name whispered in the boards of directors had fascinated him. A phantom company that had managed the feat of robbing the National Defense budget and imposing a de facto monopoly on the security of the banks. De Vigan expected to see the arrival of an old retired general converted to business, or a paranoid sixty-year-old engineer, the kind of guy who is brilliant but unable to tie his own tie.
At 13 o'clock sharp, a young man walks through the entrance of the bar.
De Vigan narrowed his eyes. The boy was wearing a dizzyingly cut charcoal gray suit. His gait was feline, almost disturbingly fluid. But his face... it was that of a student. Nineteen, twenty at most. A dark, abyssal gaze, without the slightest trace of the hesitation of youth.
The young man spotted de Vigan, approached his table and sat down in the leather armchair facing him, without waiting to be invited.
"Monsieur de Vigan," he said in a low voice, whose adult tone clashed with his features. "Lazare Bonaparte."
Alexandre de Vigan froze, his glass of Martini halfway to his lips. He looked at the boy, looking for the hidden camera or the joke in bad taste.
"Is that a joke?" the business shark blurted out, a condescending sneer rising from the corner of his mouth. "Your boss sends you to be the courier? Look, kid, I charged this hour of my life at a rate that is probably five years of your salary. Go tell your boss that..." »
"I am the Chairman and CEO of Volta S.A., its largest shareholder, and the designer of its security architecture," Lazare cut in with absolute placidity, resting his hands flat on the small round table. "If my age offends your bourgeois prejudices, I can get up and go back to directing my two hundred and fifty workers. But if you have the intellectual capacity to go beyond the civil registry, we can start talking about the destruction of your former employers. »
Alexandre de Vigan's laughter died in his throat.
The boy's aplomb was terrifying. There was no forced arrogance, no posturing. Just the mineral certainty of power. De Vigan had crossed paths with CAC 40 CEOs, ministers and American billionaires; none of them exuded this aura of cold, calculated threat.
The cynic swallowed his ego. He put down his glass.
"Very well, Mr. Bonaparte," the shark conceded, sinking into his chair and crossing his legs. "Let's say you're the genius behind the state hold-up. You have a knack for material security. Bravo. But on the phone, you talked about an operating system. To replace MS-DOS with European manufacturers. »
De Vigan leaned forward, his face echoing the ferocious expression of the sales manager who had just entered his arena.
"It's suicide. You don't know anything about the microcomputer market. Manufacturers like Bull, Olivetti or Compaq don't care if your OS is better coded, faster or more secure. They want compatibility. The end customer wants to be able to use his Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet or his word processor. MS-DOS is a religion, Bonaparte. It's the de facto standard imposed by IBM. You don't show up with unknown French software and ask manufacturers to reformat their machines. They'll laugh in your face, and I will laugh in your face. »
Lazare let the expert unpack his commercial doctrine without batting an eyelid. He let silence settle in a few seconds after the tirade.
"You're reasoning with yesterday's logic, Alexander," Lazare replied, using the mercenary's first name to break the hierarchical barrier. "You think I want to sell computers. I don't sell computers." »
"What are you selling, then?" scoffed de Vigan. "Dreams?"
"Terror."
Lazare opened his elegant black leather napkin. He took out a thin cardboard file, sealed with a red wax seal. He slid it on the table, towards Vigan.
"You're telling me the market wants compatibility," Lazare continued, his voice almost hypnotic. "That's right. The manufacturers are all going to snap up Intel's new chip, the 80386, to build the next generation of their computers. They're going to spend billions on marketing to sell the prodigious speed of the 32-bit architecture. »
Lazarus pointed to the file with the tip of his index finger.
"Open it."
De Vigan broke the seal and opened the file. Inside, lines of hex code, architectural diagrams, and a crystal-clear summary report.
"The California engineers botched the arithmetic unit of this chip," Lazare explained as the shark read wide-eyed. "When you push it to its limits in 32-bit, it makes a mistake in its calculations. It's not a software bug. It's a design flaw fused into the material itself." Intel probably knows this, but is keeping quiet so as not to miss the market. »
Alexandre de Vigan raised his head. His face had lost its color. As a former boss of industry, the commercial implication of this flaw hit his brain with the violence of a freight train.
"If... if this information leaks after the manufacturers have launched their machines..." de Vigan stammered.
"Their computers will be deemed unfit for banking, military and accounting management," Lazare finished mercilessly. "The stock of Olivetti, Bull and the others will collapse. Their customers will demand the reimbursement of machines at a hundred thousand francs each. This is the industrial disaster of the decade. A systemic bankruptcy. »
Lazarus leaned back in turn, clasping the tips of his fingers.
"This is where VoltaOS comes in, Alexandre. My operating system is not just more secure. My system is currently the only software architecture in the world capable of identifying this hardware defect and circumventing it by software calculation without crashing the machine. »
Alexandre de Vigan remained silent. The extent of the blackmail overwhelmed him. It was pure Machiavellian poetry.
"You're going to make an appointment with the CEOs of Olivetti, Bull and Siemens," Lazare dictated, telling him his roadmap. "You're not going to see them to sell them a French system. You're going to see them in the greatest secrecy, and you're going to put this proof on their desks. You're going to tell them that they're about to assemble suicidal machines. »
"I'm going to terrorize them..." De Vigan breathed, an ecstatic smile slowly stretching his predatory lips.
"You're going to paralyze them with fear," Lazare corrected. "Then, once they beg for a solution to avoid the stock market crash and lawsuits for their customers, you'll reach out to them. You'll offer them VoltaOS as a pre-installation on their professional series. MS-DOS will be eradicated from their hard drives. They'll pay us exorbitant licenses not for the beauty of our code, but to save their own heads. We're the vaccine for a plague that Intel is about to spread." »
Alexandre de Vigan closed the file. He looked at the nineteen-year-old boy with admiration mixed with dread. De Vigan had been fired from his former position because he had crushed a small company under the weight of unfair practices. Lazare Bonaparte, on the other hand, was preparing to take the largest European multinationals hostage with the coldness of a hitman.
It was the absolute shark. The predatory Apex. And de Vigan desperately wanted to be part of the feast.
"It's despicable," the salesman whispered, his heart pounding. "It's high-flying extortion. It's absolute genius." »
"This is the business of digital independence," Lazare said.
De Vigan cleared his throat, instantly regaining his negotiating reflexes. If the war was going to be good, the spoils had to be pharaonic.
"I want the title of Deputy General Manager in charge of International Strategy," de Vigan demanded, his voice firm. "I want an annual operating budget of twenty million francs, without having to justify my expense reports, my trips to Concorde or the gifts to be given to decision-makers. I want a fixed salary equivalent to what I received in the Americans, and above all, I want a commission of twelve percent on each VoltaOS license sold to the manufacturers in my portfolio. »
Twelve percent. It was blackmail within blackmail. On potential volumes of hundreds of thousands of machines, de Vigan would become one of the richest men in France within two years.
Lazarus did not even blink.
The sixty-year-old engineer knew that greed killed conquest. Paying a straw man for contracts of this magnitude required stuffing him with gold, to ensure his fierce loyalty and insatiable hunger.
"Granted," said Lazarus simply.
De Vigan blinked, surprised by the total lack of negotiation.
"I'll have the contracts prepared this afternoon," the Builder added, rising from his leather chair. He smoothed his suit jacket with a precise gesture. "Welcome to Volta S.A., Alexander. Get your ceremonial costumes. The arena is waiting for you. In a month's time, I want Olivetti's management to piss blood, and for Bull to sign our software surrender." »
The young CEO didn't reach out. He wasn't smiling. He left the file on the table and turned on his heels, leaving the bar at the InterContinental with the same ghostly grace he had when he arrived.
Left alone, Alexandre de Vigan stared at the sealed file. His Dry Martini had warmed up, but he couldn't care less. He ran his tongue over his dry lips, feeling the adrenaline flood his veins as in his finest hours.
The mercenary's exile was over. The devil in a tailor-made suit had just offered him the apocalypse of industry on a silver platter, and the merchant of fear was going to make Europe howl.