Location: CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, USA
Date: Tuesday, May 29, 1990, 7:15 a.m. (Eastern Time)
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on William Webster)
On the seventh floor of the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters, the office of the European Operations Division was plunged into a deathly silence.
Through the large armored bay windows, the sun rose peacefully over the forests of Virginia. But inside the "Bullpen"—the secure command center—the atmosphere was stifling. The air conditioning was running at full blast, stirring up the smell of cold coffee and pure anguish.
William Webster, the Director of the CIA, stood behind the main communications console. A former federal judge and former head of the FBI, he was a patrician lawman with impeccably combed white hair, who hated "off-the-books" operations. But faced with the threat posed by the French technological monopoly on American industry, he had given in to pressure from the hawks in the Pentagon. He had authorized the deployment of Marcus Vance and his team of cleaners to Paris.
"Try again," Webster ordered, his voice strained, his hands clutching the back of a chair.
The communications technician, his forehead glistening with sweat, tapped on his keyboard and adjusted the frequency of the encrypted transmitter.
"This is Base. Alpha, respond. I repeat. Alpha, submit the end-of-mission report. Over."
Only a static, high-pitched, indifferent crackle answered him over the loudspeakers.
The technician swallowed hard and looked up at the Director.
"Still nothing, Mr. Director. No signal from the Neuilly hideout. No activation of emergency beacons on Miller's or Hayes's vehicles. Radio silence has been absolute since two o'clock in the morning, Paris time. Operation Praying Mantis has vanished."
Webster closed his eyes, a ball of lead forming in his stomach. A special operations team did not simply "vanish." Marcus Vance was one of the most paranoid and methodical agents in the agency. If he hadn't called, it was because he couldn't anymore.
The heavy pneumatic door of the command center opened with a hiss. The head of the European station entered with a hurried step. He was holding a red briefcase, reserved for diplomatic mail classified as "Flash-Urgent." His face was a cadaverous pallor.
"Mr. Director," he said, in a voice that trembled slightly. "We have just received an encrypted cable from our ambassador in Paris, on Avenue Gabriel. The Quai d'Orsay woke him up an hour ago."
"Read," Webster ordered, feeling the ground give way under his feet. Had they arrested him? Did the DGSE have Vance in custody?
The station chief opened the file.
"No, sir. The French police have shown themselves to be... extremely courteous and cooperative with the embassy. The French government wanted to offer its most sincere condolences to the United States for the tragedy that struck three of our nationals last night."
Webster froze. The silence in the room became absolute. The communications technician stopped breathing.
"Condolences?" repeated the Director of the CIA.
"The cable says that three of our diplomatic employees lost their lives during the night," read the station chief, his eyes riveted on the paper so as not to meet his boss's gaze. "Agent Hayes, our communications specialist, was found hanged in an underground parking lot. The Paris police concluded that it was a tragic suicide, a confessional letter mentioning gambling debts having been found on him."
The station chief turned the page, his hand trembling.
"Agent Miller died of a sudden heart attack while driving his rental van. The preliminary autopsy report from the French forensic doctors, which was very diligent, points to excessive alcohol consumption. As for... Marcus Vance. He lost control of his sedan on the inner ring road in the pouring rain. The vehicle hit a pillar and burst into flames. Charred on the spot."
William Webster was left petrified.
A suicide. A heart attack. A road accident.
All causes of death were, from a purely forensic and diplomatic point of view, commonplace. Irreproachable. Daily tragedies in a metropolis of several million inhabitants.
But William Webster was the head of intelligence for the world's leading superpower. The statistics never lied. Three elite agents, belonging to the same secret cell, died on the same night, of three different "natural" causes, in the same city, a few hours apart. The equation had only one possible solution.
"It's not an operational failure," Webster murmured, gasping for breath. "It is a massacre."
The Director of the CIA leaned heavily against the communication console. The geopolitical reality had just hit him head-on. The French intelligence services had not been satisfied with simply spotting Vance's team. They had not sought to arrest them, nor to discreetly expel them from the territory as the unwritten rules between allied nations required.
France, an ally often considered arrogant but harmless by Washington, had just crossed the final line. To protect Lazare Bonaparte and the Volta factory, the French state had unleashed its own killers. The mythical and ruthless Service Action of the DGSE had tracked down, neutralized, and murdered three CIA agents, before staging the scenes with terrifying mastery, sending the insult back through diplomatic channels with the "condolences" of the Republic.
The message from Paris was clear: This is our territory. The Builder belongs to us. Touch him, and you will die.
"Mr. Director..." asked the station chief, utterly distraught. "What do we say to the ambassador?"
Webster raised his head. His term had probably just ended. He had authorized an assassination mission on the soil of a major NATO strategic ally, a nuclear-armed country, behind the State Department's back. And he had sent his men to have their throats cut.
The humiliation was total. And the worst was yet to come.
The President of the United States knew nothing about the lethal option. George H.W. Bush had only been informed of the technological espionage.
"We say nothing to the ambassador," said Webster, adjusting his tie with a mechanical gesture, like a man preparing for the scaffold. "Tell him to recover the bodies of our men and to thank the French authorities for their 'cooperation'. That's all. The case is closed."
The station chief opened his eyes wide.
"We are not going to protest? They murdered our agents!"
"And what do you want me to say to the world?" Webster suddenly exploded, anger driving his terror away. "That the DGSE was better at killing than us? If we protest, the French will leak that we were there to assassinate a twenty-four-year-old CEO! They hold all the cards!"
William Webster ripped his trench coat from the coat rack. He knew to whom he had to answer. And George H.W. Bush was no ordinary politician. He was the former Director of this very agency. He knew the consequences of such a fiasco.
"Get my car ready," the CIA director ordered, his face livid, as he walked to the elevator. "Call the Oval Office. Tell the President that the Paris option has failed. And that we have just triggered an earthquake."
PART 2: The Wrath of the Elder
Location: Oval Office, White House, Washington D.C.
Date: Tuesday, May 29, 1990, 12:30 p.m.
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on George H.W. Bush)
Spring light flooded the crisp lawns of the White House, streaming through the tall windows of the Oval Office to hit the famous Resolute desk. Outside, America was at peace, triumphant, reaping the dividends of the end of the Cold War.
But inside the room, the temperature seemed to have dropped below freezing.
George Herbert Walker Bush, the forty-first President of the United States, sat in his high-backed chair. His reading glasses rested on a cardboard folder stamped with the CIA seal. In front of him, standing like a convict waiting for the trapdoor to open, stood William Webster, the Director of Central Intelligence. A little further back, sitting on one of the sofas, General Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Advisor, stared into space, his face closed like a vault.
The silence in the Oval Office was heavy, thick, almost toxic. All you could hear was the slow ticking of the great grandfather clock.
Bush had finished reading the report five minutes ago. And for five minutes, he hadn't uttered a single word. He was content to stare at Webster with his clear, cold, and pitiless eyes.
William Webster, a former federal judge who was usually so self-controlled, felt a drop of icy sweat slide down his spine. He had faced hostile senators, Soviet crises, and media scandals. But nothing prepared a man for the wrath of a President who had once held his own seat at Langley. Bush was not a civilian who could be smoke-screened with spy jargon. Bush was an Insider.
The Old Man.
"Mr. President..." Webster tried feebly, his voice hoarse. "Post-mortem analysis indicates that..."
"Shut up, William."
Bush's voice had not burst forth. It had come out in a gravelly whisper, sharp as broken glass. The President stood up slowly. His tall figure suddenly seemed to fill the entire space of the room.
He walked around the Resolute desk, went to the window, and looked at the gardens for a moment, his hands crossed behind his back. When he turned around, the mask of the affable politician had disappeared. Only the spy chief remained, the man who had headed the CIA in the mid-seventies.
"Three men," Bush began, his voice vibrating with restrained rage. "You sent three of our best underground agents to be slaughtered like dogs in the streets of Paris. And you had the audacity to inform me of this after the French police sent us their fucking condolences."
"Mr. President, the Pentagon's mandate stipulated that Lazare Bonaparte posed a vital threat to our technological hegemony," Webster defended, desperately seeking support from Scowcroft, who superbly ignored him. "Economic sanctions failed. The embargo was stillborn. The executive option seemed the only one..."
"The executive option?" Bush suddenly exploded, slamming the palm of his hand into the solid wood of his desk with a violence that startled the Director of the CIA. "You talk like a Wall Street accountant! It's not an 'executive option', William! This is an act of war on the sovereign soil of a major NATO ally!"
The President stepped forward, pointing an accusing finger at his subordinate's pale face.
"What did you expect, exactly? That the DGSE was going to kindly watch Marcus Vance set up his sniper rifle on the banks of the Seine? You thought they were going to serve him coffee while he murdered the prodigy who is rewriting world geopolitics?"
"We thought our cover was impenetrable. And even if we were spotted, customs between allies required a discreet expulsion. We never imagined that they would retaliate with such a..."
"Lethality?" Bush cut in, with a bitter, dark laugh. "Lord, William, do you know nothing of the history of our own trade, then? The French services are the most brutal in the free world! They are not bothered by ethical rules or parliamentary committees. When they consider that a vital interest of the nation is threatened, they do not send you a diplomatic note: they liquidate you."
Bush paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, letting his fury pour out. The former head of the CIA let out his frustration at the terrifying amateurism of the new generation.
"They are state assassins, William! Some of our people, the old guard, will tell you that they make the KGB look like altar boys when they are cornered. And you... Did you have the brilliant idea to try to kill a massive strategic asset directly in their backyard? Are you idiots? Have you lost your minds in the halls of Langley?"
"Mr. President, Volta..."
"Volta is not just a start-up, it is the nuclear arsenal of tomorrow!" Bush almost yelled. "Do you think that François Mitterrand will let America destroy the boy who guarantees him France's technological sovereignty for the next century? Do you think that Auguste Bonaparte, the father of this kid, who is also a former senior executive of their damn Directorate of Territorial Surveillance, was going to leave his former colleagues inactive? They have turned this factory into a state fortress! And you went in like cowboys!"
Scowcroft cleared his throat, intervening for the first time.
"The President is right, William. What you have done is an absolute disaster. Not only have you lost a black cell, but you have just offered the Élysée an overwhelming moral and psychological victory."
Bush stopped pacing. He approached Webster, his face inches from the Director's. His tone became icy again, which was infinitely more terrifying than his screams.
"The raid on their servers last year in Dakar," Bush murmured. "We had managed to cover our tracks. We had plausible deniability. But by sending a team of assassins to Paris to eliminate Lazare Bonaparte, you have just confirmed to them all the suspicions they had about our involvement in Senegal. You have just signed a full confession to them."
Webster swallowed. Sweat was now beading openly on his forehead.
"What do we do, Mr. President? Can we impose secret sanctions? Retaliate?"
"Retaliate?" Bush let out a hollow laugh, running a weary hand over his face. "They have just humiliated us with a smile, and our hands are tied. If we move a finger, the French government will leak to the international press that the great and virtuous America, unable to stand commercial competition, sent hitmen to shoot a twenty-four-year-old civilian in the middle of Paris. The scandal would destroy my administration, annihilate NATO, and make this Bonaparte a world martyr for freedom. We are paralyzed."
Bush returned heavily to his chair. He suddenly looked exhausted, carrying the weight of an empire that was beginning to crack before his eyes.
The computer chip, a piece of silicon the size of a fingernail, had just triggered a geopolitical earthquake of incalculable magnitude.
"They're going to fight back," murmured the President, staring into space, analyzing the invisible matrix of international relations. "They are not going to stop there. Allies who kill each other because of the incompetence of my own services..."
"Do you think the DGSE is going to strike in the United States?" Webster asked, alarmed.
"No. They're not stupid," Bush replied. "Mitterrand sent his message. He drew his red line with the blood of Marcus Vance. But he has just tasted American blood. You have touched French pride, William. A pride that they have been ruminating on since we saved them in 1944. They have finally found the weapon to crush us, and thanks to you, they know that we are ready to kill to take it from them."
Bush leaned forward, looking up at his National Security Advisor. Scowcroft nodded slowly, sharing the same grim predictions.
"Listen to me, William," said the President of the United States solemnly. "What happened last night in Paris is not the end of an operation. This is the prologue to a new Cold War. But this will not be fought with missiles in Eastern Europe. It will be fought in the shadows."
"They won't let go of us for a long time now, damn it. Expect to see some of our economic agents in Europe having unexplained heart attacks. Expect our diplomats to fall from balconies in Asia. The shadow war has been declared. And if you think that Lazare Bonaparte is going to be intimidated by what has just happened, you are sorely mistaken. This boy just saw the American grim reaper up close, and he saw his own government behead her for him. He knows that he is untouchable."
"Intel is begging for federal aid..." Webster tried to add.
"Intel doesn't matter anymore!" Bush snapped. "The war has passed the commercial stage. Get out of my office, William. And pray that the press never finds a single link between the Paris embassy and the burned car on the ring road."
Webster picked up his file, his hands trembling, and left the Oval Office without another word.
When the heavy oak door closed, silence reasserted itself. Bush stood still for long minutes, staring at the portrait of George Washington on the wall.
"He's right, isn't he, Mr. President?" asked Scowcroft softly from the sofa. "This Lazare Bonaparte... He is imposing a new global paradigm."
Bush took off his reading glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"He doesn't impose a paradigm, Brent. He takes our crown from us. Compaq's computer sells by the millions, all of Japan demands his chips, Europe adores him. And we have just proved to him that the American state is ready to use rogue methods to stop him. We have legitimized his mistrust."
The forty-first President sighed.
"Prepare the counterintelligence agencies. American blood has been spilled in Paris. French blood will flow elsewhere. The age of silicon will be red, Brent. I fear it terribly."