Location: Director's office (The « Bunker », Level 4), Volta SA factory, Ivry-sur-Seine.
Date: August 1995.
Point of view: Omniscient (Sliding focus on Lazare Bonaparte and the state apparatus).
The death of a monarch is never measured by the number of tears shed along the funeral procession, but by the speed with which scavengers mass around the throne as soon as the coffin is sealed.
In the vastness of his executive office in Ivry-sur-Seine, Lazare Bonaparte gazed at the wall of screens. All the national and European television channels were broadcasting the same image, shrouded in an August rain that resembled a shroud.
The funeral of François Mitterrand. The bell tolled on the steps of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, sturdy, cavernous, marking the end of an era that had lasted fourteen years.
On the wet steps, beneath a forest of black umbrellas, the world's political elite had gathered. Lazarus saw the faces of those who had hated the Sphinx in life, bowing with hypocritical gravity before his remains.
He saw heads of state, American diplomats, industrialists, all communing in a feigned reverence.
Lazarus hadn't made the trip. His presence would have attracted cameras, provoked obscene questions, and violated the secret of the pact that bound him to the deceased. The Builder mourned in the absolute silence of Level 4.
A grief devoid of tears, but filled with a terrifying lucidity.
He knew perfectly well that the televised bows and scraps were just a facade. Behind the contrite faces and the funeral eulogies, the free world, and Washington at its head, was letting out a huge, unacknowledged sigh of relief.
The political nuclear umbrella had just closed.
The padded office door opened with a pneumatic hiss. Édouard Renault-Tessier and Nadia Chérif entered the room. The finance director and the communications director wore faces ravaged by insomnia and nervous tension.
They hadn't come to pay their respects. They had just heard the first creaks in the ship's hull.
« The shockwave didn't even wait for the burial, Lazare, » Nadia announced immediately, throwing a thick press folder onto the mahogany table. « The Wall Street Journal , the Washington Post , and the Times have just published synchronized editorials.
They're talking about 'the end of the French exception.' They're insinuating that Volta SA's hypergrowth was due solely to abusive state protection, illegal favoritism dictated by an autocratic president, and that democratic normalcy is finally about to be restored. »
Édouard stepped forward, adjusting his tortoiseshell glasses, his eye fixed on the stock exchange terminals which continued to blink.
« The financial markets smell of blood, » added the former banker. « Since Volta SA isn't listed, American pension funds are targeting our partners. ASML's share price in the Netherlands plummeted six percent this morning.
Shares of Dassault and our chemical suppliers are plunging. City analysts are openly betting on our judicial dismantling by the end of the year. »
Lazare moved away from the wall of screens and sat down in his armchair. He folded his long, pale hands on the leather blotter. There was no surprise in his obsidian gaze.
The omniscience of the time traveler, coupled with the instinct of a predator, had dictated this scenario to him the very second Auguste had informed him of the President's death.
« It's the kill, » Lazarus observed in a monotone voice. « The beast is supposed to be wounded, so the pack howls. »
« But we're not injured! » Nadia protested. « Jacques Chirac was clear.
He renewed the national security decrees ! He promised you, right there before Mitterrand's body, that the French state would continue to protect our factories and our networks. The new President is with us! »
Lazare let out a slow, almost weary sigh at the political naiveté of his communications director.
« Jacques Chirac is a man of honor, Nadia, » replied the Ogre of Ivry. « He has a fierce determination to maintain the sovereignty of the Nation. He sincerely wants to protect our silicon.
But the will of one man, even if he is the occupant of the Élysée Palace, is not enough to contain an empire. »
Lazare stood up, went around his desk to approach his two lieutenants, transforming himself into a professor of applied political science.
« François Mitterrand was not just a president. He was an architect of clandestine power. For fourteen years, he had placed his men at every level of the state apparatus.
He held magistrates, newspaper publishers, senior civil servants at the Ministry of Finance, and generals in his grip through a network of loyalties, unspeakable secrets, and blackmail that only he controlled. When the Sphinx gave an order, silence fell, not out of democratic respect, but out of sheer terror of the deep state. »
The young leader pointed a finger towards the window, indicating the capital.
« Chirac has just come to power. He is a conqueror, but he doesn't yet hold the keys to the Republic's inner workings. His own majority is fractured.
The right wing is torn between its loyalists and the supporters of Édouard Balladur, fervent Atlanticists, staunch liberals who secretly hate our monopoly and dream of a market open to the Americans. Chirac can give orders to his ministers, but he cannot prevent a rebellious investigating judge or an unscrupulous member of parliament from starting a fire.
The shield is no longer watertight. It has become porous. And the CIA knows it perfectly well. »
As if to confirm Lazarus' chilling prescience, the encrypted red phone on the security console began to ring.
Édouard and Nadia exchanged an anxious look. Lazare picked up the receiver.
« Bonaparte. »
« Boss, it's Vauquelin, » crackled the security chief's voice from the ground floor. « We have a critical problem. A search warrant. »
Lazarus didn't even flinch.
- Who ?
« The Financial Brigade and the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police. They forced their way into the Administrative Center with an arrest and seizure warrant. They refused to stop at the security gate.
They are accompanied by bailiffs and... boss, they are escorted by television cameras from the national channel. They are filming the operation live. »
The war was no longer being fought in the shadows. America had just brought the fight into the full glare of the spotlight, broadcast worldwide.
« Let them in, Vauquelin, » Lazare ordered with sepulchral calm. « Don't send our men in. No physical violence. Escort them to the legal archives. »
He hung up and turned to Nadia Chérif, his face suddenly hardened by the gravity of the assault.
« Washington has just activated its sleeper cells within the French judiciary, announced Lazarus. The non-aggression pact is broken. »
« A search? » Edward choked. « But on what legal grounds? Our accounting is a masterpiece of rigor; the State validated all our balance sheets after the debt was repaid! »
« They're not coming for the money, Edward, » murmured Lazarus, his eyes fixed on nothing. « They're coming for the blood. »
At the other end of France, under the summer mist of the Alsatian plain, the Strasbourg Palace of Justice resounded with the clatter of typewriters and the effervescence of a court under siege.
In the office of investigating judge Delcourt, an austere man known for his intransigence and thirst for media attention, files were piled up to the ceiling. On the cardboard cover of the main file, reopened the previous night at midnight, a red label bore the inscription: « VOLTA SA INDUSTRIAL INCIDENT – West Wing – August 1994 » .
Exactly one year.
A year had passed since the cataclysmic night when the silane valve exploded in the MegaFab, ravaging the technical plenum and inflicting horrific chemical and thermal burns on the three workers of the Delta maintenance team.
At the time, Lazare Bonaparte masterfully extinguished the media and legal firestorm. He publicly expressed contrition, personally accepted responsibility for refusing to halt production, and bowed his head during a televised address that became legendary.
Above all, he drowned the suffering in a deluge of money, granting the victims unlimited medical care and a lifetime pension of obscene generosity. Mitterrand, to protect the nation's industrial flagship, pressured the Ministry of Justice.
The case was buried, bogged down in slow technical investigations. The lawsuits were withdrawn.
But justice, when spurred on by intelligence from a superpower, has a terrifying memory.
Judge Delcourt looked up at the two men in civilian clothes sitting opposite his desk. They introduced themselves as « industrial risk consultants, » affiliated with an obscure London-based business intelligence firm.
In reality, they worked for a subsidiary of Kroll, itself a subcontractor of Langley.
They had placed a legal fragmentation bomb on the judge's desk.
« Your Honor, » said one of the consultants with a feigned British accent, « we bring you new evidence which amply justifies the immediate reopening of the investigation for 'involuntary injury by deliberate breach of a safety obligation' and 'endangering the lives of others'. »
The man pushed a thick cardboard folder towards the magistrate.
« Mr. Bonaparte's public confession was merely a smokescreen to conceal a far more systemic truth. This document proves that the silane valves were not the only failures.
These are the calibration records for the Class 1 cleanroom's HEPA air purifiers, dating from the weeks preceding the explosion. »
Judge Delcourt scanned the pages. His eyes widened.
« These records demonstrate that Volta SA's management deliberately deactivated the overpressure warning systems to maintain the etching outputs demanded by the Chinese market, » the consultant continued. « The three workers who were burned were not victims of a one-off error in judgment.
They were knowingly sent into a gas chamber. Even worse, the documents prove that the containment airlocks did not function properly, potentially exposing the nearby villages of Entzheim and Geispolsheim to toxic emissions. »
The magistrate looked up in outrage. It had been the dream of his entire career. To bring down the untouchable, the arrogant billionaire who believed himself above the laws of the Republic.
« Where did you get these documents? » the judge asked, his voice trembling with excitement. « The Ministry of the Interior had classified these records as 'Secret-Defense' to protect the engraving algorithms! »
« Let's just say that some courageous engineers, disgusted by Monsieur Bonaparte's tyranny, decided to break the code of silence, » the spy brazenly lied. « The era of impunity is over, Your Honor. President Mitterrand is no longer here to stifle the scandal.
The French people have the right to know that their so-called 'technological miracle' is built on blood and poison. »
Judge Delcourt closed the file with a sharp gesture. He grabbed his fountain pen and signed the order angrily.
« I am issuing arrest warrants and immediate appearance orders for the entire board of directors of Volta SA, » the magistrate decreed. « Lazare Bonaparte will come to my office to explain himself. If he refuses to comply with the summons, I will have him brought in in handcuffs.
The Republic will not bow to a computer salesman. »
The wheels were in motion. The CIA hadn't needed assassins or computer viruses. It had simply provided the ammunition for the vanity of a French magistrate.
In Ivry-sur-Seine, the explosion quickly swept across the television studios. America, the undisputed master of social engineering and information warfare, had orchestrated a pincer attack of perfect asymmetry.
While criminal justice was targeting the company's headquarters, global media networks erupted.
In Lazare's office, the televisions, usually silent, spewed forth a torrent of digital filth. The transatlantic press, followed with culpable docility by certain European media outlets quick to lynch the idol they had adored the day before, broadcast « exclusive investigations » at an industrial pace.
On CNN , during prime time , an hour-long report painted a damning portrait of the European silicon empire. Images of the Alsace factory in flames, filmed a year earlier, played on a slow-motion loop, accompanied by unsettling music.
Deep, theatrical voiceovers described the MegaFab as a « modern-day Gulag. »
« The compensation for the victims was nothing more than a giant bribe to buy the silence of the justice system, » claimed an « expert » in industrial ethics on the BBC . « Mr. Bonaparte didn't mourn his workers; he bought the right to continue operating his death machines without being bothered by the unions.
This young man is not a pioneer. He is the 'Butcher of Alsace.' »
The nickname, conceived in the communications offices at Langley, was a stroke of semantic genius. It erased the « Mozart of computing, » it destroyed the aura of the « Ogre » who commanded respect through power, reducing him to a sordid, criminal figure, unworthy of the trust of markets and institutions.
« They're trying to obliterate us, » whispered Nadia Chérif, tears of rage welling in her eyes, gazing at her image-building work reduced to ashes. « I'm getting calls from every procurement director in the European public sector.
Germany is threatening to freeze its orders for IMPERATOR servers . Spain is demanding a moratorium on installing our guidance systems in their armored vehicles until the investigation into the 'endangerment' allegations is closed.
They doubt our reliability. »
Édouard Renault-Tessier almost collapsed into an armchair, overcome by financial anxiety.
« If institutional markets turn their backs on us for fear of scandal, our cash reserves won't last forever against our colossal investments. The United States wants to stifle us with morality. »
Lazare Bonaparte, standing in the center of his office, stared at the television screens. The « Butcher of Alsace. » The insult echoed in his time-traveling mind.
He felt no sadness in the face of this lynching. He felt a pure, cold anger, of terrifying intensity.
He had given everything. He had sacrificed his own peace, alienated his family, worked himself to the point of physical collapse to offer Europe the only shield capable of protecting it from American digital slavery.
And at the first crack in the dome of national security, the very same bureaucrats and journalists who fed on his silicon were ready to devour him on the orders of a provincial judge manipulated by the CIA.
It was no longer a question of technological competition. Intel, AMD, Microsoft... these companies were now merely spectators to the execution orchestrated by their government.
The door flew open. Karim Belkacem entered, his face ravaged by anger.
« Lazare, the bailiffs from the financial crimes unit are cloning the human resources department servers downstairs, » the technical director spat. « I can order Volta Secure to activate the purge protocols.
We'll erase the maintenance logs from 1994, encrypt the hard drives. They'll find nothing but empty space. »
« No, » Lazarus immediately stopped him in a cutting voice, dismissing the idea with a sharp wave of his hand.
« You want to let them seize our records?! » Karim choked out. « If they find Volkov's notes on the pressure limits of the time, the judge will have grounds to have you remanded in custody! »
« If we erase the data, we're signing our own name. We're becoming the rogue state they describe on CNN , » Lazarus explained, his tactical mind overcoming his indignation. « Let them clone the servers.
Let them take whatever they want. The data is encrypted with the asymmetric CENTURION algorithm . By the time they gather enough computing power at the Department of Justice to decrypt a single document, I'll be dead of old age. »
Lazare approached Karim and Édouard, his obsidian eyes shining with a funereal resolve.
« America isn't attacking me over my microchips because it knows it has lost the architectural war. It's attacking me on legal grounds because it believes I still respect the rules of the civilized world.
It thinks that, without François Mitterrand, I've become just another citizen, subject to the control of the state apparatus. »
The young silicon monarch adjusted his shirt collar. The mourning for his protector was over. The hour of total defiance had struck.
« If they want to play the institutional game, we'll show them what Volta SA really is, » Lazare declared, his voice thick with the sound of utter destruction. « Get the car ready, Vauquelin.
We're going to meet this judge. If he wants the 'Butcher of Alsace,' I'll give him exactly what he wants. It's time to teach the Republic that you can't shackle an empire with arrest warrants. »
Location: Secure operations room (Level 4), Volta SA factory, Ivry-sur-Seine.
Date: Early September 1995.
Point of view: Omniscient (Sliding focus on Lazarus and Auguste Bonaparte).
The silence of Level 4 possessed the density of the ocean depths. Far, far above this fortress buried beneath the concrete of Ivry-sur-Seine, the media storm raged. Television news programs, galvanized by the opening of the judicial inquiry in Strasbourg concerning the MegaFab explosion, relentlessly attacked the Volta Empire.
But within the sanctuary of the IMPERATOR servers , the real war wasn't being waged on television screens. It was being fought on a geopolitical map whose epicenter had just shifted from Washington to the very heart of Paris.
Standing before the immense wall of control screens, Lazare Bonaparte contemplated the organizational chart of the French National Assembly. The green dots, representing loyal deputies or those neutralized by reasons of state, blinked.
But since the death of François Mitterrand, a worrying epidemic of red dots had been spreading across the matrix, contaminating both the benches of the Gaullist right and those of the Socialist left.
The armored door opened with a weighty pneumatic hiss.
Auguste Bonaparte entered. The patriarch, leaning on his walnut cane, bore no trace of the anxiety of the high-ranking officials who were panicking on the upper floors. The former colonel of the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DST) walked with the deliberate slowness of a predator who knows the hunting ground better than his own prey.
He carried under his good arm a weighty dark leather briefcase, whose patina betrayed its age and the countless secrets it had sheltered under the Fifth Republic.
« The legal battle is just a diversion, Lazarus, » Auguste announced immediately, his gravelly voice cutting through the hum of the air conditioning. « Judge Delcourt in Strasbourg is a useful idiot.
He's convinced he's doing justice, blinded by his ego. America provided him with the maintenance documents so he could ignite the media firestorm and grab your attention. »
The old spymaster approached the large frosted glass table and placed his briefcase on it.
« But the real blade, the dagger that Washington is about to plunge into your back, is here in Paris. At the Palais Bourbon. »
Lazare turned away from the screens. His obsidian gaze betrayed no surprise. He had anticipated the maneuver.
« A law, » guessed Lazarus, his voice monotone.
« A bill has been tabled under emergency procedures, » confirmed Auguste, unlocking his briefcase with a sharp click. « Populously titled: 'Law on the Regulation of Technological Monopolies and the Preservation of European Competitive Sovereignty' . »
Auguste took out a bundle of printed sheets and slid it towards his son.
« It's a blatant copy of the American antitrust legislation, the Sherman Act , translated into French by Parisian business lawyers secretly paid by Silicon Valley. The text is diabolical. Under the guise of preventing a private company from dictating its terms to the state, the law proposes to force Volta SA to split into two separate and independent entities: Volta Hardware on one side, Volta Software on the other. »
The old cop fixed his grey gaze on his son.
And the final blow: Article 4 of the bill would force you to open your VESLA architecture patents under a compulsory, free license to any European competitor... which includes Intel and AMD subsidiaries based on the continent. If they pass this, your closed ecosystem is destroyed.
They're gutting your fortress from within, using our own country's law.
Lazare took the document. He skimmed it in seconds, his analytical mind absorbing the text's lethality. This was the ultimate weapon.
If he refused to comply, he would become an outlaw, justifying the seizure of his factories by the authorities. If he accepted, he would lose exclusive control of the hardware and software that constituted his omnipotence.
The Americans couldn't beat him in the R&D labs, so they had decided to buy the playing field.
« Without François Mitterrand to enforce the Élysée's veto and hold the parliamentary group leaders in check through sheer terror, the lock has been broken, » Lazare analyzed coldly. « Jacques Chirac promised me his support even in my death throes, but the President can't prevent a cross-party parliamentary rebellion if public opinion is whipped into a frenzy by the MegaFab affair.
Washington is funding the MPs so they can capitalize on my weakened media presence. »
« You catch on quickly, son, » Auguste observed with a joyless grin. « I activated my old contacts at the DST.
We traced the flows. The deputy who is sponsoring this bill, the committee rapporteur, is a man renowned for his impeccable integrity. Henri de Villeroy.
An influential centrist, listened to across the political spectrum in the Assembly. »
Auguste took a thin cardboard folder out of his briefcase.
« Except that integrity comes at a price. Villeroy chairs a think tank on new technologies, supposedly advising Parliament. This think tank has just received, via intermediary foundations based in Switzerland, massive donations from American industrial conglomerates.
More than fifteen million francs. It's substantial-handed lobbying, Anglo-Saxon-style legal corruption. The CIA provided the financial engineering, and Intel supplied the money. »
Lazare placed the bill back on the glass table. He let out a sigh of infinite weariness. Human mediocrity was the only variable that perpetually slowed the purity of his mathematics.
« They're pathetic, » Lazare murmured, leaning back against the control console. « They think you can dismantle Volta SA like you dismantle a railway company or an electricity distributor.
They haven't understood the anatomy of the monster they're trying to slaughter. »
The young CEO glanced around the vast server room.
Volta Secure 's source code will have to be audited by independent authorities. The encryption keys of the Bank of France, the guidance algorithms for the Leclerc tank and the Rafale fighter jets, the communication channels of the DGSE… all of that will be compromised.
The VoltaOS-M operating system is embedded in the silicon of our chips. If we separate them, asymmetric security collapses."
Lazare turned a glacial look towards his father.
My company is metabolized within the vital organs of the Republic. We are a beneficial cancer. If they try to excise me with a scalpel, the State will bleed out on the operating table.
If Volta falls, France falls with it. Mutual destruction is guaranteed. Why don't they understand this?
« Because MPs don't read lines of code, Lazarus, » Auguste cut in with the brutality of the old world. « They read the polls, and they read their campaign accounts.
State suicide blackmail only works if the target is smart enough to understand it. A parliamentarian bought off by Washington doesn't care that the Bank of France is running on your servers. He just wants to appear on television as the white knight who brought down the 'Butcher of Alsace,' and collect his reward. »
The patriarch leaned on his cane, approaching his son.
« You cannot reason with them using arguments of sovereignty. You must crush them with their own sins. And that is where I come in. »
Auguste plunged his hands into the old leather briefcase. He pulled out five folders of different colors. Physical folders, thick, exuding the rancid smell of ink from the political police typewriters, cigarette ash, and carbon paper.
He spread them out on the frosted glass table, desecrating Lazarus' digital sanctuary with the analog relics of intelligence.
« I didn't spend fourteen years protecting François Mitterrand's back by collecting stamps, » Auguste murmured, his voice thick with utter darkness. « When you run the DST, you don't just listen to Russian or American spies.
You listen primarily to your own. »
The old cop tapped the first file.
« Deputy Henri de Villeroy, the famous rapporteur of this anti-monopoly law. Married, three children, a paragon of Catholic morality. He has a numbered account at the Pictet bank in Geneva, opened in his mistress's maiden name, whom he houses in an apartment in the 16th arrondissement paid for with kickbacks on public works contracts.
I have the account numbers, the transfer statements, and the wiretaps. »
He moved on to the second case.
« The chairman of the parliamentary group that supports the bill. A gambling addict. He lost millions in the capital's underground gambling dens.
His debts were wiped clean last month by a » generous donor « whose origin I traced back to a subsidiary of a Texas electronics company. »
Auguste continued to enumerate the sins, laying bare the evidence of the malfeasance, insider trading, and corruption of those who claimed to uphold the law in the name of republican virtue. This was the ugly face of power, the fifth column that Washington had activated with money and promises.
« I have the weapons for their personal, social and legal annihilation, » concluded the patriarch, placing his hand on the pile of files.
Lazare examined the cardboard folders. The weapon was formidable. It was the classic method of Françafrique and its secret agents: blackmail.
« Are you suggesting we arrange a private meeting? » the engineer guessed. « That we show them these files in a hotel room to force them to withdraw the bill? »
Auguste nodded.
« That's the procedure. Silent terror. They're shown the rope, they back down, the law is buried, and they become our docile little soldiers again for fear that the files might end up on a judge's desk. »
Lazare remained silent. He let his mind model the probability tree. His father's solution was logical, rational, and proven by decades of the Fifth Republic.
But Lazare Bonaparte was not a man of the Fifth Republic. He was an emperor of the twenty-first century.
Slowly, a cold smile, devoid of the slightest pity, of terrifying intellectual cruelty, stretched Lazarus's lips.
- No.
Auguste frowned, surprised by the rejection of his method.
« You refuse? Lazarus, it's the only way to stop this law before it goes to committee! If you try to bribe them on top of their own corruption, you'll enter into a financial bidding war with the CIA that you can't win in secret! »
« Private blackmail is the weapon of the weak, those afraid of the consequences of exposure, » Lazare said in an icy voice, stepping away from the table. « If I blackmail them in the shadows, I keep them alive.
They'll withdraw the law, certainly, but they'll harbor an unquenchable hatred for me. They'll remain in their positions, lurking in the shadows, waiting for my next misstep so they can stab me in the back with the Americans' help.
An enemy humiliated in secret is an enemy who never dies. »
The young silicon monarch turned to his father, Lazarus's aura radiating the room with his dark majesty.
« I do not want their submission, Father. I want their obliteration. »
« Obliteration? » Auguste worried. « If you kill sitting members of parliament, the GIGN will raze this factory before dawn. »
« I'm not talking about bullets, » Lazare smiled. « I'm talking about the cathode-ray guillotine.
Washington wanted to take the war to the court of public opinion? They accused me of being the 'Butcher of Alsace' on world television? Very well.
We'll show them how the Volta Empire uses light. We're not going to blackmail these congressmen. We're going to execute them in the public square.
And we're going to do it with our own weapon of mass destruction. »
The engineer pressed a button on his touchscreen console. One of the giant screens on the control wall lit up. It didn't display lines of code or processor diagrams.
He displayed the ultra-modern set, bristling with screens and bathed in bluish lights, of a brand new television studio. A set that did not exist a year earlier.
The red and white logo was spinning in the bottom corner of the screen. VOLTA INFO .
The 24-hour news channel, the media behemoth that Lazare had bought and built from scratch to protect his image and disseminate his own doctrine. And at the head of this channel, guaranteed by a contract of absolute editorial independence, reigned the fiercest, most incorruptible, and most feared investigative journalist in Paris.
Camille Bonaparte.
Auguste's eyes widened as he understood the Machiavellian perversity, the psychological genius of his son's plan.
« You want to give these files to Camille? » stammered the old spymaster. « Lazare, that's madness! Your sister hates you!
She's conducting her own investigations to try and prove you're using mercenaries! If you give her these files, she'll think it's a setup. She'll refuse to be your mouthpiece! »
« You understand nothing about your own daughter's psychology, Father, » Lazare replied with icy gentleness. « I'm not going to 'give' these files to Camille.
I'm not going to call her and ask her for a favor. I'm going to use her hatred, her obsession with the truth, and her absolute integrity as a weapon. »
Lazare pointed to the cardboard folders on the table.
« You're going to scan all of this evidence. The account numbers, the American wire transfers, the wiretaps. You're going to redact any trace of the DST or Volta Secure origin .
These documents must look like an internal leak from Parliament or a denunciation by a repentant Swiss banker. »
The engineer's mind calculated the trajectories with the precision of a quantum processor.
« Then, you will deposit this raw data, anonymously, on the secure drop-off server (SecureDrop) that Camille had installed for whistleblowers in her newsroom. »
Augustus gazed at his son, struck with holy terror at the architecture of the trap.
« She's incorruptible, » Lazare continued, his eyes shining with a fascinating darkness. « If I asked her to do it, she'd refuse on principle.
But if her journalists anonymously 'discover' irrefutable proof that members of the French Republic are selling the country's sovereignty to American firms to enrich themselves… Her visceral integrity, that moral nobility that makes her hate me, will force her to act. She'll check the sources, she'll find that the money is real, and she'll light the pyre herself, convinced she's doing her duty as a free journalist. »
Lazare approached the screen where the Volta Info logo continued to rotate.
« I gave her the most powerful news network in Europe so she could hunt down the truth. Let her use it. She wanted to unmask monsters? I'm serving her the American Fifth Column on a silver platter. »
Lazarus turned around, sealing the end of the defensive strategy.
« Prepare the files, Auguste. Tomorrow evening, at 8:00 PM, America will discover that you can't buy the French Republic without paying the price, broadcast worldwide. The hour of execution has struck. »
Location: Volta Info channel's final control room, Boulogne-Billancourt (Paris).
Date: Forty-eight hours later, 7:55 p.m.
Viewpoint: Internal (Camille Bonaparte).
The hubbub in the Volta Info newsroom was at its peak. The open space, designed on the model of major American CNN newsrooms, teemed with journalists in shirtsleeves, editors running around with Beta SP tapes, and phones screaming on every desk.
Isolated in her glass office overlooking the arena, Camille Bonaparte stood with her arms crossed, her gaze fixed on the monitors in the final control room.
The young, twenty-one-year-old editor-in-chief carried the weight of the world on her frail shoulders. She hadn't slept for forty-eight hours. An encrypted digital envelope, deposited on the channel's secure server by an « Anonymous » source, had landed on her desk.
The documents it contained were pure dynamite.
Swiss bank statements. Faxed correspondence between Washington lobbyists and French members of parliament. Irrefutable proof that the infamous « technology monopoly regulation » law, supposedly designed to moralize the market and break up his own brother's company, was in reality a firm, priced order from American industry to destroy European sovereignty.
Camille had her doubts immediately. Her instincts, sharpened by her family's paranoia, had screamed that she was being set up. She suspected Lazare of wanting to use her.
She put her best financial investigators on the case, hounds poached from Le Canard Enchaîné and Le Monde . They checked account numbers, called banks under false identities, and traced the real estate companies (SCIs) that served as fronts for the members of parliament.
Everything was true. Down to the last comma.
Deputy Henri de Villeroy, champion of republican morality, had indeed pocketed the equivalent of fifteen million francs in an account linked to his mistress, directly from a Californian investment fund holding massive shares in Intel. The other signatories of the law were just as corrupt, bought off to dismantle national industry for the benefit of Uncle Sam.
Camille was faced with the worst moral dilemma of her young life.
If she were to publish this investigation, she would destroy the American plot and indirectly save Lazarus's empire, that empire of blood and steel she so despised. She would, in effect, become the instrument of Lazarus's victory.
But if she suppressed the affair out of pride, so as not to help her brother, she would become complicit in a betrayal of the state. She would allow corrupt politicians to sell France out to a foreign power.
She would betray the very essence of her journalistic calling.
The truth belonged neither to Lazarus nor to Washington. It belonged to the public.
« Camille? »
The voice of her deputy editor-in-chief pulled her from her trance. The man, his face glistening with sweat, was holding the rundown of the 8 o'clock news.
« We're three minutes from going on air. The desk has finished putting together the infographics with the bank transfers. The network's lawyer has approved it; the evidence is airtight, rock solid.
Villeroy won't even be able to sue for defamation without being jailed for perjury. You give the go-ahead? »
Camille Bonaparte closed her eyes. She thought of the Avenue de Marigny. She reflected of the corpses her brother left in his wake.
But she also thought of those pot-bellied deputies, cloaking themselves in virtue while selling out their country's independence to pay for official apartments and repay gambling debts.
Lazarus was a monster, certainly. But he was their monster. He built factories, he designed buildings, he fought openly on the world markets.
These parliamentarians were nothing but parasites, traitors to the Nation.
She opened her eyes again. The cold and implacable determination of the Bonapartes, that gene for total war which she shared against her will with her brother, lit up in her grey pupils.
« Launch the special edition, » Camille ordered, her voice unwavering. « Cut the planned rundown.
I want thirty uninterrupted minutes on the investigation. Display the account numbers on the screen. Name the beneficiaries.
Name the American funds. No conditionals. Bring out the guillotine. »
« Green light, control room! » yelled the assistant, rushing towards the set.
At precisely 8:00 PM, the dramatic opening credits of Volta Info blared across millions of televisions throughout Europe. The channel's star presenter, his face grave, did not open the news with the usual international conflicts.
The screen split in two, displaying the face of MP Henri de Villeroy on one side, and a facsimile of a UBS bank transfer on the other.
« Good evening everyone. Special edition tonight on Volta Info. It's a state scandal, a corruption case of unprecedented scale under the Fifth Republic, that our investigative team is revealing tonight.
Interference. How a foreign power bought French parliamentarians to destroy our country's technological independence. »
The bomb had just exploded.
In the space of fifteen minutes, the undermining work carried out by Camille's journalists destroyed the careers of five of the most prominent figures in the National Assembly. Infographics dissected the flow of money from California to the deputies' Swiss bank accounts.
Wiretaps, whose mysterious origin was never even questioned in the face of the overwhelming physical evidence, revealed secret dealings with American lobbyists.
The shockwave was cataclysmic.
In the National Assembly chamber, where night sessions were being held, absolute panic reigned. The deputies' telephones rang in a cacophony of shrill ringtones. Parliamentary assistants ran through the Hall of Four Columns, pale with terror.
The name of Villeroy, once respected, became in seconds a zone of deadly radiation. The deputies who had co-signed the antitrust bill rushed to the microphones to denounce the text, swearing they had been deceived and manipulated, disavowing their signatures before the bill could even reach the committee.
The American bill, intended to dismantle Volta SA, was dead. Incinerated live on television, drowned in the infamy of high treason.
In Ivry-sur-Seine, in the dim light of the Level 4 director's office, Lazare Bonaparte was watching the giant screen.
He watched his younger sister Camille's face appear on screen during a short editorial segment, magnificently and coolly justifying the press's duty to expose the corruption of elected officials, reminding everyone that the integrity of the nation was not negotiable over offshore accounts. She was masterful.
She was the best journalist in the country.
And she had just, without ever suspecting it, executed the darkest and most perfect score of the strategist of Ivry.
Auguste, sitting on the leather sofa, contemplated his son's work with a mixture of horror and unacknowledged pride.
« You have just used your sister's pure light to commit a political assassination, » the old DST colonel observed, his voice hoarse. « You have made her integrity your most lethal weapon. »
Lazare did not smile. He grabbed the remote control and switched off the screen, plunging the room back into clinical silence.
« Washington thought they could use French democracy against me, » replied Lazare, turning toward the bay window overlooking the city. « They forgot that in a democracy, power resides neither in parliaments nor in money.
It resides in the narrative. »
He clasped his hands behind his back, his obsidian gaze fixed on the night horizon. The American winter that had threatened his fortress had just been abruptly halted. The « Butcher of Alsace » vanished from the headlines, instantly replaced by the « Villeroy Betrayal » scandal.
Public opinion would forget the MegaFab and feast on the blood of corrupt politicians.
Lazarus had just proven to the world that Volta SA wasn't just too big to fail. It had become too intrinsically linked to the truth of the State to be attacked without triggering the apocalypse.
The Fifth Column was destroyed. The purge was total. And Lazare Bonaparte, untouchable, resumed the march of his empire, the undisputed sovereign of a country that no longer even knew it belonged to him.