Locations: Palais de l'Élysée (Paris) / Federal Chancellery (Bonn, Germany).
Date: Late October 1992 (forty-eight hours after the ambush).
Point of view: Omniscient (gliding focus on François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl).
On the morning of the day after, France woke with the hangover of nations that have grazed the precipice without realizing it. In his study on the first floor of the Élysée, François Mitterrand sipped a black tea while scanning the national press. Across the heavy oak table, the front pages lay spread out, unanimous and reassuring in their mendacity. Le Figaro ran its headline in block capitals: "SHOOTING IN MARIGNY: THE SERBIAN MERCENARY LEAD." Le Monde was more analytical: "BALKANS FALLOUT: A HEAVILY ARMED COMMANDO NEUTRALIZED IN THE HEART OF PARIS."
The Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) had done craftsman's work. Within a matter of hours, the bodies of the American operatives had been spirited away, the weaponry carefully disguised, and "convenient" evidence — forged Yugoslavian passports and nationalist pamphlets — had been slipped into the dead men's pockets before the press was permitted anywhere near the perimeter. The French public was horrified by the death of its police officers, but reassured: the state had vanquished foreign terrorists. No one, save a handful of initiates, suspected that the Third World War had just been averted by the narrowest of margins.
Mitterrand pushed the newspapers aside. The media illusion was functioning for the people. But for the true masters of the continent, the hour for theatre was past. The truth — the real truth — had just left Paris in diplomatic pouches, under armed escort, bound for the greatest European capitals.
Location: Federal Chancellery (Bonn, Germany).
Date: Same day, 11:00 a.m.
In Bonn, the sky was grey and heavy. In the Chancellor's office, Helmut Kohl was contemplating the classified dossier that the French ambassador had just delivered to him personally, bypassing the usual NATO channels. The massive German — the architect of his country's reunification — was not a man easily impressed. But the contents of this manila folder were turning his stomach.
It contained no reports on Serbian mercenaries. It contained high-resolution photographs taken at the military morgue of the Bégin hospital. Faces of young men, muscular, with military haircuts. Images of their stainless-steel identification tags, stamped USMC or US Army. Inventories of weaponry: MP5 submachine guns with integrated suppressors, unavailable on the Balkan black market but standard issue within the CIA's Special Activities Division.
At the top of the stack of photographs, a handwritten note, brief and deadly, signed in François Mitterrand's own hand:
"My dear Helmut. These are the terrorists who machine-gunned our police officers. The Eagle has gone rabid. It has just struck the family of Lazare Bonaparte. If we do not close the aviary today, our streets will become their permanent shooting range. With affection, François."
Helmut Kohl sat heavily in his armchair. Anger — a low, deep, tectonic anger — rose within him. For decades, West Germany had accepted the presence of tens of thousands of American soldiers on its soil. It had accepted the air bases, the munitions depots, and the US Air Force bombers overflying its cities. That was the price of protection against the Warsaw Pact. That was the price of freedom.
But the Berlin Wall had fallen. The Soviet Union no longer existed. America was no longer the shield of the free world; it was in the process of becoming its jailer.
The Chancellor made the connection, with glacial lucidity. This was not an isolated incident. A few months earlier, on a Dutch motorway, the French industrialist Alexandre de Vigan had been massacred by an alleged gang of armed robbers. German intelligence (the BND) had always doubted the official version. Today, with the Marigny corpses, doubt was no longer possible. The Eindhoven attack had been the work of the United States. This was, therefore, the second time in less than a year that Washington had ordered its killers to operate openly in Europe to settle questions of technological monopoly.
America was assassinating European industrialists and police officers to protect the profit margins of Intel and Microsoft.
"This is unacceptable," Kohl growled in the silence of his office, his enormous fists closing on the armrests. We are not a banana republic.
Germany had just recovered its full sovereignty with reunification. It was not going to surrender it once more in order to suffer the diktat of American silicon — especially not when Volta S.A. was promising it an impenetrable digital shield.
Kohl pressed the intercom.
"Summon the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Immediately. And prepare me a secure line to Rome and Madrid."
Kohl spent the next forty-eight hours on the telephone. Rome first, then Madrid. To each interlocutor he dispatched the photographs. To each head of state he repeated the same phrase, hammered home with the conviction of a man who had reunited a country torn in two:
"They are firing on our cities. This must stop."
The response was unanimous. Faster than any directive from the Brussels Commission.
Location: European chancelleries / Press conferences.
Date: November 2, 1992.
Kohl watched his own spokesman's press conference from the screen on his desk, arms folded.
"Major strategic reassessment of our national defense posture."
Translation: closure of four American bases and two NSA listening stations. US Army troops had sixty days to pack their bags.
When Rome announced restrictions on the Sixth Fleet's docking rights at Naples, Kohl nodded. When Madrid froze the US Air Force's basing agreements at Torrejón and Morón, he allowed himself half a smile. The mechanism was working. He called Mitterrand back that afternoon.
"It is done, the Chancellor said. But do you realize what we have just done, François?" We have cut the cord with Washington. In seventy-two hours. All of this because of a twenty-five-year-old industrialist you are protecting.
A silence on the line. Then the tired voice of the French President:
"No, Helmut. All of this because of an Empire that confused its allies with its vassals. Bonaparte is merely the catalyst. The rupture was inevitable. We have simply accelerated it."
Kohl hung up. Outside, the sky above Bonn was dragging heavy clouds. The Chancellor gazed at the map of Europe pinned to the wall of his office. The Franco-German axis had just severed the transatlantic umbilical cord. America was alone.
But if Lazare Bonaparte's geopolitical victory was total and crushing, it had been purchased at the most atrocious of prices. While the American Empire was reeling, Lazare's inner empire was beginning to collapse.
Location: Secure hearing room, the United States Capitol (Washington, D.C.).
Date: November 1992 (a few days after the American presidential election).
Point of view: Omniscient (focus on Robert Gates and the Senate Intelligence Committee).
In Washington, autumn tasted of ash. The wind swept dead leaves across the National Mall, but it was inside the Capitol that the true winter was settling in. In the windowless hearing room, bunkerized against all electronic interception, the Senate Intelligence Committee sat in closed session. The atmosphere was not that of ordinary political controversy. There was no longer a divide between Democrats and Republicans. There was only a bipartisan fury — cold and implacable.
Alone at the witness table, Robert Gates, the CIA Director, appeared to have aged ten years in a single week.
The Committee chairman, an elderly Democratic senator with a white mane, threw a copy of Le Monde onto his mahogany lectern. The headline about the "Serbian mercenaries" stared up at him under the fluorescent lights.
"Do not insult us with your redacted reports, Director Gates," the senator growled, his voice trembling with contained fury. Our own military attachés in Paris have briefed us. And every person in this room knows what was contained in the eight flag-draped coffins that landed quietly, in the middle of the night, at Dover Air Force Base three days ago. The excuse of a helicopter accident during a nocturnal exercise over the Atlantic is an insult to the intelligence of this committee.
Gates adjusted his microphone, his throat knotted.
"Mr. Chairman, Special Activities Division operations are covered by executive privilege. The executive made difficult decisions in the face of an existential threat posed by the company Volta—."
"An existential threat?! the Republican floor leader cut in abruptly — a man from the same party as President Bush himself. The French company sells computer chips and encryption software, Director!" It is not pointing nuclear missiles at New York! And how did you respond to it? By sending a death squad to machine-gun the French police two city blocks from the palace of their own head of state!
A murmur of indignation ran through the ranks of the senators. The disaster was of an unprecedented scale. The Committee chairman leaned forward, crossing his hands, his gaze boring through the CIA director.
"The bitterest irony of this tragedy, Mr. Gates, is that our constitutional arsenal has become moot. Last spring, after the NSA's digital humiliation, some among us were whispering the word impeachment. Removal from office. Today, that procedure would serve absolutely no purpose."
The old senator swept the room with his gaze, marking the end of an era.
"The presidential election has just taken place. The American people have spoken. George H.W. Bush has lost. He is now nothing more than a lame duck who will vacate the Oval Office in January to make way for the president-elect. We cannot impeach a man the ballot box has already dismissed. But do not believe for one single instant that the Senate will close its eyes to the apocalyptic legacy he leaves behind."
The Republican senator resumed the attack, pitiless.
"Twice. This is the second time this administration has ordered blood to be shed on the soil of our oldest allies to settle industrial disputes. Last spring, you allowed a civilian industrialist, Alexandre de Vigan, to be eviscerated on a Dutch motorway. We had looked the other way, believing it to be an isolated blunder. But this night in Paris… You deliberately targeted the family of a business leader. You have transformed the foreign policy of the United States into a Mafia contract!"
"We had to break Bonaparte, Gates attempted in justification, his voice almost pleading. Lazare Bonaparte was in the process of organizing the technological and financial secession of Europe!" If he imposes his Carte Bleue standard and his opaque interbank network, the American Treasury will lose its capacity to sanction and surveil the planet! President Bush acted to preserve the hegemony of our nation!
"And look at the result of this supposed preservation! the Committee chairman exploded, brandishing another sheaf of documents stamped with German, Spanish, and Italian diplomatic seals. He flung the pages onto the table."
"Germany is demanding the closure of our air bases. Italy is expelling us from the port of Naples. Spain is denying us access to its tarmacs. In trying to terrorize Lazare Bonaparte, you transformed him into a messiah for the Europeans!" You frightened our allies to the point that they now prefer to shelter behind the cryptographic shields of some kid from the Paris suburbs rather than endure our "protection."
The senator leaned back, his face heavy with patriotic despair.
"George Bush is the man who won the Cold War. History will record that he triumphed over the Soviet Union. But because of his boundless pride, because of his incapacity to accept that a single foreign company could be more intelligent than Silicon Valley, he has just lost the peace. In seventy-two hours, your brutality has destroyed fifty years of transatlantic alliance."
The verdict resounded in the closed hearing, definitive.
Robert Gates wanted to protest, but the numbers did not lie. He lowered his head. The demonstration was irrefutable.
"The new President will take office in January inheriting a fractured Empire," the old senator concluded in a mournful voice. America has been expelled from Europe. And it is we ourselves, through our own barbaric arrogance, who have bolted the door.
This hearing is adjourned.
When Robert Gates left the secure hearing room, he walked the marble corridors of the Capitol with the gait of a ghost. The military and economic superpower that was America endured, but its diplomatic soul and its moral influence had just been incinerated. The Eagle was falling from its pedestal, suffocated by silicon and by the cold resolution of Lazare.