Cauldron

CHAPTER 4 Cataract

Paris lay shrouded in darkness. The lights were out all over the city, cut off by a day-long wildcat strike that had crippled regional power plants. Only those government ministries and corporate buildings with backup generators were lit by electricity.

Others across the blacked-out capital fell back on older, more primitive means.

Flames licked the night sky above the 19th Arrondissement, dancing eerily among the district’s decaying houses and shabby tenements. Silhouetted against the fires they’d set earlier, crowds of howling men and women surged back and forth through streets strewn with wrecked cars, bodies, and smoldering barricades. Some waved bloodied knives and makeshift clubs over their heads. Many were drunk, hopped up on a lethal mix of cheap wine and unleashed violence. All of them were poor and out of work and ready to settle scores with those they blamed for their troubles.

They blamed les Arabes. The Arabs. The Algerians, Tunisians, Senegalese, and all the other diseased, job-stealing African immigrants packed into dirty, foul-smelling apartments in the northern and eastern districts.

No one knew exactly how the trouble started once the lights went out. Maybe with a fistfight on the Rue de Flandre. Or with a shouted racial slur in the Place du Maroc. It didn’t really matter much. What mattered now was that the riot was spreading through the immigrant slums, spilling through unlit streets in an orgy of arson, theft, and murder.

At the southern end of the Arab quarter, two armored riot-control vehicles and a thin line of security police in green combat fatigues and gas masks guarded the entrance to the Place de Stalingrad and its elevated Métro stop. The troops were members of the CRS, the government’s mobile antiriot force. Their armament reflected the unit’s well-deserved reputation for brutal efficiency. Some of the men were armed only with clear plastic shields and nightsticks, but others carried loaded shotguns and assault rifles. And turrets on both their armored cars mounted launchers equipped to lob tear gas and concussion grenades into unruly crowds.

So far, though, the CRS troopers hadn’t needed to use their weapons. The mobs running amok through the burning slums north of the square hadn’t tried forcing their way past them into the city’s more fashionable districts. They were too busy butchering anyone who looked “Arab” and looting neighborhood grocery stories, wine shops, and pharmacies.

And in turn, the security police had been too busy establishing a defensive perimeter to interfere. Now that was about to change.

“Yes, sir. I understand.” Lieutenant Charles Guyon swore in disbelief and lowered his walkie-talkie. He turned to the short, sour-faced sergeant at his side. “We have new orders. We’re to advance, clearing the streets as we go.”

An angry voice spoke up out of the darkness, mirroring his own unspoken thoughts. “That’s fucking crazy! We’ll all get killed in there!”

Guyon looked up sharply. “Who said that?” He waited, scanning the cluster of suddenly blank faces around him.

No one answered.

The lieutenant glared at his men for a moment longer before shifting his gaze back to the sergeant. “We move out in five minutes. Other units will parallel us, advancing along the canal and the Rue de Tanger. We’re free to use ‘all necessary force.’ Questions?”

The sergeant shook his head slowly.

“Good. Get the men ready. I want masks on and live rounds in every chamber.” He paused, knowing his words could be heard by every man in the platoon. “But no one, and I mean no one, will open fire without a direct order from me! Clear?”

“Clear.” The sergeant spat it out, sounding as though he wanted to say a lot more.

Guyon spun on his heel without waiting to find out what that might be and headed for the two armored cars. He wanted to make sure their crews were ready to follow his troopers into the flame-lit streets in front of them. Having their steel-sided bulk and heavy firepower on tap would be vital if the rioters tried to fight back.

When he returned, his platoon stood at attention in ranks — nightstick-armed men in front, and those with shotguns and assault rifles in the back. Their uniforms, gas masks, and helmets robbed them of all individuality.

The lieutenant stepped out in front of the formation. He left his own mask dangling around his neck. The bulky rubber masks kept you safe from tear gas, but they also left you nearly blind — especially at night. And he would need to see what was going on around them as long as possible.

Almost time. Guyon licked lips that suddenly felt cracked and bone-dry. He stared at the street straight ahead. Smoke from dozens of burning apartment houses and automobiles drifted across the square, growing thicker now that the wind had died down. Shapes moved inside the smoke, rioters carrying away stolen television sets, stereos, and furniture or simply prowling for new victims. Several corpses littered the street. Two more dangled from lampposts.

He bit his lower lip. This was madness. He and his men would be swallowed up inside the maelstrom ahead. Crushing peaceful political protests was one thing. Street fighting against a crazed mob was something else entirely. He was beginning to wish he’d never transferred to the CRS. All the extra pay and privileges he’d been so proud of just weren’t worth dying for.

His walkie-talkie crackled. “All units will advance.”

Christ. Guyon swallowed hard. He snapped open the flap on his holster and drew his pistol. “Right. This is it. Platoon, follow me!”

He went forward at a slow walk, hoping his measured pace showed determination and not fear.

No one followed him.

The lieutenant turned around in disbelief. His troops still stood along the edge of the square. Not a man had moved.

“Damn it! You heard me! I’m ordering you to advance. Now!”

Silence. In the sudden stillness, Guyon could hear agonized screams rising from the slums behind him. Oh, Jesus. He could feel the hand holding his pistol starting to shake.

“Sergeant Pasant!”

The sour-faced sergeant stepped forward smartly and came to attention. “Sir!”

Guyon lowered his voice. “All right. Just what the hell are you idiots playing at?”

“The boys won’t go in there… sir,” Pasant growled, nodding toward the immigrant quarter. “Not to save black-asses and ragheads.”

A low murmur swept through the platoon as each man muttered his agreement with what their sergeant had just said.

Guyon tried an appeal to reason. “Look, I don’t like this any better than you lads do, but refusing orders is a criminal offense. This is a very serious situation, Sergeant.”

“So’s dying… Lieutenant.”

Guyon leaned closer and dropped his own voice to a soft, barely audible murmur. “You know, Pasant, I could make you obey my orders.” He thumbed his pistol’s safety catch to the off position.

The sergeant stared back, unblinking. “Maybe.” He shrugged. “But then maybe you should think about how dangerous a city fight can be. You never know where that next bullet could come from… Lieutenant.”

Guyon’s blood ran cold. The sergeant’s soft-spoken threat was crystal-clear. He might be able to force his men into action against the mob, but he probably wouldn’t come out of it alive. His hands shook harder.

Hell. Nothing in his training had prepared him for this. Not for the prospect of being murdered by his own men. And for what? A bunch of useless foreigners. For stinking Arabs and Africans. He shook his head. Risk his life for them? Not him. Not now. Not ever.

The lieutenant reset his pistol’s safety catch and sighed. “Very well. I’ll call the command post and report our inability to go forward… under the present circumstances.” He looked angrily into his sergeant’s expressionless eyes. “Satisfied?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then redeploy the men for a perimeter defense.” Guyon holstered his weapon. “If we can’t put an end to this madness, we can at least make sure it doesn’t spread any further!”

Pasant saluted and strode back to the waiting security troops. They broke ranks, spreading out across the square in response to his shouted commands.

Guyon watched them for a moment, swore to himself again, and lifted the walkie-talkie to his cheek. He hesitated, reluctant to make a report that would undoubtedly end his police career. The force didn’t need officers who couldn’t control their own men. His thumb hovered over the transmit button and then stopped. There were other voices already crowding the circuit.

“I say again, Bravo Two, you are ordered to advance! Get moving!”

“Unable to comply, Echo Foxtrot. My men won’t budge. I request reinforcements.”

Another voice crackled over the radio. “Echo Foxtrot, this is Bravo Four. We can’t go any further south. The fires in this sector are out of control. I’m establishing a police line and firebreak at the church here…”

Guyon kept listening in growing shock as more and more of his counterparts called in with similar stories. His platoon wasn’t the only unit on the edge of mutiny. Others inside the CRS were just as willing to let the riot run its wild, bloody course.

Satellites and powerful ground transmitters spread the BBC’s evening broadcast around the world.

“Good evening. Here is the news.

“In Paris, French police and fire crews continued their rescue efforts in the aftermath of last night’s disastrous rioting. Officials at the Ministry of the Interior put the death toll at more than two hundred, with hundreds more injured and in hospital. Doctors at area hospitals report that almost all the dead and wounded appear to be Algerian or other North African immigrants.

“Thousands more have been left homeless by fires that have leveled fifteen square blocks of the city. For the moment, they are being housed in nearby schools and vacant warehouses. Unconfirmed but authoritative speculation suggests they may soon be moved to what are being labeled ‘refugee holding camps’ outside Paris.

“In related developments, a statement issued by the presidential palace blames, quote, ‘hooligan and criminal elements’ for what it terms ‘this regrettable incident.’ One high-ranking official went further, arguing that the violence pointed out once again the importance of ridding France of what he called ‘troublesome alien enclaves.’ Meanwhile, French government sources continued to deny persistent reports that police units refused orders to end the rioting. The delays observed by onlookers are said to have been caused by unspecified tactical considerations.”

The BBC’s newsreader paused, shifting from the broadcast’s lead story to the next. “In other European developments, a neo-Nazi rally in the eastern German city of Dresden drew an estimated seven thousand participants. Several policemen monitoring the demonstration were severely beaten when they tried to stop swastika banners from being unfurled…”

The first signs of trouble were electronic.

Video screens showing arriving and departing flights began flickering and then went blank. Passengers hurrying through the airport’s gleaming, ultramodern terminal buildings gathered in small dismayed groups around the darkened monitors. Most were sure it was only another minor power failure or cutback — a product of the continuing agitation for higher wages by the nation’s technical workers’ unions.

They were wrong.

A sharp chime echoed over the airport’s public address system. “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. We regret to inform you that all incoming and outgoing flights have been canceled. This unfortunate action is made necessary by a twenty-four-hour strike just announced by the national air traffic controllers’ union. All inbound flights are being diverted to either their point of origin or the closest open airfield…”

Within an hour, passenger air travel, a hallmark of the modern age, had come to a complete stop all across France.

Ten thousand leather-clad skinheads and brownshirt fanatics packed Berlin’s wide central avenue, spilling over its shade-tree-lined sidewalks. Black, red, and white swastika banners bobbed above the crowd, and their coarse, guttural voices blended into a rhythmic, almost hypnotic, marching song — the “Horst Wessel.”

Under the disapproving eyes of several hundred heavily armed riot police, some of Germany’s unemployed and under-educated were turning to an old master for new inspiration.

Three hundred meters up the avenue, a small, dark-haired man stood watching the neo-Nazi march come closer. His own pale blue eyes were half-closed in concentration. It was difficult to judge precise distances this far away.

But Joachim Speh, action leader for the Red Army Faction’s Berlin commando, was a master of timing. One hand slipped into his coat pocket, delicately caressing a tiny radio transmitter. Soon, he thought coldly, very soon.

The marching column crossed the Charlotten Strasse, passing close by a rusting, dented Trabant parked on the side of the road. The flat tire and broken jack propped up against the Trabant’s rear end showed its owner’s reason for abandoning his unfashionable vehicle.

Some of the leading skinheads took time out from their singing to hammer their fists along the parked car’s hood and roof, shouting and hollering in glee. The uniformed policemen paralleling the march stirred uneasily, reluctant to let such obvious vandalism go unchecked.

Now. Speh activated the transmitter hidden in his coat pocket.

The bomb he’d planted under the Trabant’s gasoline tank detonated — exploding outward in an expanding ball of orange-red flame, smoke, and razor-sharp steel fragments. Those closest to the car were either blown to pieces or incinerated by flaming gasoline. Outside the fireball, dozens of other marchers and policemen were shredded by white-hot shrapnel or smashed to the pavement by the shock wave.

When the last echoes of the explosion faded away, the street and sidewalk looked like a slaughterhouse. Bodies and parts of bodies dotted the Unter den Linden’s scorched pavement. Those who’d been wounded writhed in agony, screaming for help. Some were still on fire.

Moving calmly, Joachim Speh turned his back on the carnage and walked away. He had other punishment missions to plan.

Nearly four hundred miles from Germany’s strife-torn capital, five grimly determined men faced a battery of television news cameras and microphones.

Behind them cold sunlight glinted off a vast modernistic structure of red concrete, bronze-colored glass, and gleaming steel. During earlier, more optimistic times, the Palace of Europe had contained chambers for the European Parliament — one of the first, tentative steps toward a politically united continent. Now the huge building stood empty, almost completely deserted. Cynics pointed to it as the visible symbol of a faded and foolish dream.

The palace served as a different kind of symbol for the men grouped in front of its main doors. They’d chosen the Strasbourg site as a sign of renewed labor radicalism and unity in Europe’s two most powerful nations. Two of them headed France’s largest trade union confederations. The other three ran organizations representing millions of German laborers, assembly-line workers, and white-collar professionals.

“Fellow citizens and fellow workers, we stand at an historic crossroads.” Markus Kaltenbrunner, the tall, black-haired leader of Germany’s Scientists and Technical Workers Union, had been elected to speak for them all. He paused, knowing his words were being carried live into fifty million homes across the continent. “Down one road, down the path pursued by those in power, lie poverty and degradation for German and French workers. The corporate giants and their government lackeys have one aim, one purpose: to boost their obscene profits by cutting our collective throats! They strip us of our wages and our jobs and hand them over to foreign slaves! And they have the audacity, the utter gall, to ask for our patience and cooperation while this ‘restructuring,’ this cruel robbery, unfolds!”

Kaltenbrunner shook his head angrily. “But we will not stand for it! We will not cooperate in our own destruction.” He nodded toward the other union leaders standing around him. “That is why we have come here today. To join in common cause against those who would reverse the progress of fifty years.

“Accordingly, we have agreed to the following nonnegotiable demands — demands that apply to the corporations and governments of both our great nations.” He pulled a pair of wire-frame glasses from his pocket, flipped them open, and slipped them onto his nose. Then he cleared his throat and began reading from a document handed to him by an aide. “First, we call for an immediate end to the shipments of foreign workers to French- and German-owned factories in central and eastern Europe. All available positions in these facilities must be reserved for true French and German laborers, not for Turks or Algerians!”

The German labor leader scowled. “Second, there must be an immediate and across-the-board moratorium on all layoffs and firings during this time of economic crisis. And finally we call on the politicians in Paris and Berlin to fund massive new public works programs to put our fellow workers back to work. Profits, earnings, and budgets must bow to more important human needs!”

He stopped reading and stared directly into the cameras. “We have no illusions that the politicians and the fat-cat businessmen will agree to do these things simply because they are the right things to do. We are not that naïve. Not at all. If necessary, we are prepared to compel them to meet these just and reasonable demands.”

Kaltenbrunner paused again, letting the tension build. “The bureaucrats and plutocrats have until October 7. That gives them five days to accept our terms — without condition and without compromise. If they fail, we will take our people, all our people, off the job and into the streets.”

The assembled journalists and camera crews stirred in astonishment. The five trade unionists in front of them represented a sizable fraction of the Franco-German labor force. Any job action involving all of them would have almost unimaginable economic consequences.

Kaltenbrunner nodded. “That is right. This is an ultimatum. The governments and corporations must either meet our demands or face a general strike!” He held his right hand up with all five fingers extended. “If our warnings are ignored, in five days’ time no trains will run. No planes will fly. No trucks will bring food to the markets. No factories will operate. And no ships will sail with goods bound for foreign shores!”

No one listening to him could doubt that Markus Kaltenbrunner and his colleagues were in deadly earnest.

The eight men meeting in the presidential palace’s Cabinet Room were dwarfed by the chamber’s high ceiling and massive furniture. Each of the eight ran one of the republic’s most powerful ministries. They represented a self-selected inner circle, and for all practical purposes they controlled the French government. The chair reserved for France’s ailing President was empty.

“A general strike? Now? Can they be serious?” Henri Navarre, the Minister of the Interior, seemed stunned.

Other faces around the table mirrored his bewilderment. For more than a decade, support from the trade unions had helped keep their political party in power. The votes the labor confederations controlled were the margin of victory in any close election. And every recent election had been close.

“They are quite serious.” Jacques Morin, the new director of the DGSE, said it plainly, without emotion. “All reports from our informers point in the same direction. The preparations for a general strike are well under way. Our German allies are seeing the same signs. Isn’t that right, Foreign Minister?”

France’s new Foreign Minister, Nicolas Desaix, nodded in agreement and approval. He’d secured the appointment of his former deputy to head the intelligence service. It was an arrangement that guaranteed him de facto control over the DGSE and its associated security agencies.

He leaned forward, eyeing each of his cabinet colleagues in turn. “What Morin says is true. I do not think there is anything to be gained by hiding our heads in the sand. These radicals are not making idle threats.”

“Perhaps we should negotiate with them… come to some arrangement…” Navarre’s voice trailed off as Desaix frowned. The small, stoop-shouldered Interior Minister’s prestige had fallen precipitously in the past several weeks — a product of his growing inability to control the police and special riot troops.

“Negotiate? Impossible!” Desaix shook his head in contempt. “Their demands are absurd — an insult. Meeting even the least costly of them would bankrupt our largest and most profitable companies. Nor do I see any merit in surrendering effective control of this government to a band of mechanics and shop stewards!”

“Then what, precisely, do you propose, Nicolas?” Barrel-chested Michel Guichy, the Minister of Defense, tapped the table for emphasis. “If the gendarmes and the CRS can’t keep order now, how can we depend on them during such a strike? My God, most of the bastards are in the unions themselves!”

Others around the room echoed Guichy’s sharp-edged question. Even at the best of times cabinet meetings could be contentious. Now they were all on edge, worn down by the last month’s steady stream of strikes, riots, and worsening economic indicators, and they were frightened by what was coming. France simply could not afford either the threatened nationwide walkout or the exorbitant demands being made by her trade unions. Her heavily subsidized industries were already on the edge of bankruptcy.

Desaix kept his face still, careful not to show his irritation. He’d worked too hard for too long to build his influence with these men to risk losing his temper now. Besides, he scented opportunity in this crisis — even in a crisis partly of his own making.

He shrugged mentally. It was becoming all too apparent that he’d miscalculated the effects of the foreign worker relocations. He’d anticipated widespread anger in Eastern Europe — not this rage at home.

Still, there were positive aspects to the situation. This confrontation with organized labor had been building for years. So had public hatred for the immigrant population. His first attempt to solve those twin problems, the Sopron covert action, had partially backfired. Perhaps it was time to bring both disputes to a head. To kill two birds with one presidential decree. Especially if it could be done in a way that would advance his vision of a more powerful, more united France.

Desaix fixed his gaze on the Minister of Defense. Guichy’s support for his plan would be critical. “What I propose, my friend, are measures equal to the dangers we face.” He narrowed his eyes. “Drastic measures.”

Then, speaking with utter conviction and iron determination, he outlined the steps he believed would save France from ruin.

The argument he sparked lasted half the night.

Regular army soldiers in full combat gear ringed the small executive jet parked just off Le Bourget’s main runway. They were the innermost element of an airtight security cordon surrounding the airport. The authorities were taking every possible precaution against trouble. Nothing could be allowed to delay this plane’s scheduled departure.

“Attention!”

The soldiers snapped rigidly upright, presenting arms as a sleek Citroën limousine swung off an access road and purred up to the waiting aircraft. Tricolor flags fluttered from the Citroën’s black hood.

The limousine’s rear doors popped open, and a tall, hawk-nosed man emerged, carrying a leather briefcase. A single aide climbed out the other side, clutching a suit bag and a rolled-up umbrella. Clouds pushed west by a new high-pressure system rolling out of Russia carried the threat of rain over the next several days.

As the captain commanding the guard detachment saluted, both men hurried up a folding staircase and disappeared into the plane’s dimly lit but plush interior. Its twin turbofan engines whined into action, howling louder and louder as they spun up toward full power.

Five minutes later, its navigation lights blinking against a pitch-black sky, the jet carrying Nicolas Desaix roared off the tarmac and climbed at a steep angle. The ranking member of the still-secret Emergency Committee for the Preservation of the Republic was flying east — toward Germany.