Location: Volta S.A. plant (Ivry-sur-Seine)
Date: December 23, 1988
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Auguste Bonaparte)
On December 23, 1988, at 7 p.m., the Volta S.A. factory resembled a huge mausoleum of cold concrete erected against the leaden sky of the Paris suburbs.
Usually, the site roared with frenzied activity under the rule of René Castella, but that evening, the silence was almost supernatural. The distribution of end-of-year bonuses, backed by the billion francs freshly collected, had emptied the workshops. The workers and engineers had all gone home. There was only one source of light left in the entire building: a flickering yellow glow that escaped from the third-floor bay window. The CEO's bunker.
Auguste Bonaparte advanced in the deserted corridor of the direction.
The former colonel of the DST wore a heavy woollen coat with a velvet collar. His gait was slow, asymmetrical, punctuated by the dull clatter of his walnut cane on the thick carpet — the eternal aftermath of the Drakkar truck bomb in Beirut. Augustus did not stop in front of the flashing digicode of the presidential office. He knew the Builder. He knew that when his son plunged into the abyss of his architecture, he forgot to lock the outside world.
Augustus pushed the heavy oak casement.
Inside, the air was saturated with the smell of cold coffee and paper superheated by the architect's lamp. Lazarus was there. The twenty-two-year-old had dropped his jacket and tie. His white shirt was wrinkled, his sleeves rolled up over his forearms. It was literally drowned under the layers of the IMPERATOR project.
The old intelligence cop stopped in the middle of the room. He looked at his elder. Lazarus' eyes were ringed with dark circles of an almost black purple. His hands, guided by the mind of an exhausted sixty-year-old engineer, frantically traced data vectors between the future VESLA-II CPU and the CENTURION controller. He mumbled latency and cache coherence equations like a desperate incantation.
Augustus saw the Empire devouring the Emperor.
Eleven years ago, in an underground shooting range in the southern suburbs, Auguste understood that his son was not a soldier, but a force of nature, a sovereign continent that could not be colonized. He had let it be built. He had financed Volta's foundation with the secret trust. But today, the digital fortress was crushing the boy's humanity.
With a curt gesture, moved by the strength of his able-bodied shoulder, Auguste lowered his cane on the heavy oak desk.
CLAC.
The shock sounded like a gunshot. Lazarus jumped violently, his pen skidding on the tracing paper. He blinked, blinded by his own fatigue, struggling to make sense of his father's massive figure.
"Daddy?" croaked Lazare, his voice hoarse. "What is..." What time is it? I am in the middle of validating the multiprocessor system bus for the DGA. If I stop now, the March prototype will be... »
"There will be no prototype tonight, Lazarus," Auguste said in a rocky voice that admitted no reply.
The colonel walked around the desk, grabbed the architect's lamp, and abruptly diverted it from the plans. Then he put his large calloused hand on the IMPERATOR tracing paper and folded it back.
"Hey!" protested Lazarus feebly, holding out his hand. "Don't touch it. This is the architecture of military servers. The war economy was launched. If I lose track of the algorithm... »
"If you lose track, your mathematical monster brain will find it again next week," Augustus cut him off. "Get up. Take your coat. Your mother loaded the family car. We left for Rouen. »
In the name of the city, Lazarus' brain paused.
"Rouen? With... at grandmother Éléonore's? he murmured.
"At your maternal grandmother's, yes," Auguste confirmed, his gaze unyielding. "Éléonore heated up the rooms of the Dufresne manor. Victor, Claire and Camille are waiting for us at the bottom in the Peugeot. And you come with us. »
Lazarus leaned heavily against his leather chair. He rubbed his face with both hands.
"Dad, you're going to have a great time without me," the engineer tried to negotiate with the diplomacy of a man at the end of his rope. "Magdalene will make a feast. Eleonore will lecture you on bourgeois good manners. I financed the trip, take advantage of it. My mind is in the middle of the circuits... Leave me here. »
"Your mind is in the circuits, Lazarus, but your soul is rotting in this office," Augustus suddenly growled.
The senior officer leaned over the table, fixing his gray eyes in his son's dark eyes.
"I don't care about your sovereign servers. I don't care about your billion francs and I don't care about the Pentagon. I'm talking to you about your family. I'm talking about Linh and Minh. »
Lazare felt a hint of anguish pierce his CEO's armor. The twins. He had brought them back from the orphanage in Đà Nẵng in July 1986. It had been more than two years. They had found a balance on rue d'Assas.
"What's going on with the twins?" he asked, his voice suddenly more alert.
"They are regressing, Lazarus," Augustus blurted out, mercilessly. "Since September, since you locked yourself in this war of attrition to buy up factories and design your military processors, you have become a ghost. You come home when they're sleeping, you leave before they get up. »
"I'm doing this for them, Dad. To secure their future. So that no one can ever threaten them... »
"Stop your strategist!" Augustus cut him off violently. "A ten-year-old child doesn't give a damn about a technological monopoly or a patent! What they understand is absence. And for war orphans, absence has a very specific name: abandonment. »
Auguste sat up, leaning heavily on his cane, his breathing slightly wheezing.
"Minh started having nightmares again. Yesterday, he destroyed one of the models that Victor had given him. He didn't take it apart to understand how it worked. He crushed it, with the same methodical rage he had in Vietnam. Because his reference point has disappeared. And Linh... »
The old cop's voice broke for a split second.
"Linh has closed his notebook. She sits in the hallway, and she stares at the front door of the apartment. Just as she did in the courtyard of the Holy Childhood, waiting for the world to collapse. She is walling herself up in silence again, Lazarus. And if you let her, neither me nor your mother's praline buns will be able to get her back this time. »
Augustus' words struck Lazarus with the kinetic force of a ball of seven seventy-two. The sixty-year-old engineer, the cold calculator that manipulated the French state and the world's banks, had just come up against an equation that he could not solve by algebra.
He relives Linh's unfathomable gaze, the silent little lookout who guarded the entrance to his mind during his own post-traumatic stress attacks. He saw Minh's hands repairing the clock with him. He was in the process of building a digital shield worth a billion francs, but he let those he was supposed to shelter behind him freeze to death.
The mask of the Chairman and CEO of Volta S.A. cracked, falling to pieces on the office floor. Lazarus bowed his head. His shoulders slumped.
Augustus instantly softened. He was no longer the colonel lecturing his troops. He became again the father who, years earlier, had placed a Manurhin MR73 on a table to understand the monster that was his son. He laid his calloused hand on Lazarus' shoulder.
"I know that you bear the weight of the world, Lazarus," whispered Augustus with a rocky sweetness. "But you did not snatch these children from the monsoon and the war to let them drown in your indifference. Your machines can wait. They don't. »
Lazarus raised his head gently. His dark eyes caught those of his father.
He rose. He did not look at the grandiose plans of the imperator, took no floppy disk, no confidential files. He simply unhooked his heavy dark coat from the coat rack, put it on, and turned off the office light with a sharp gesture.
Darkness engulfs the processors of the French Defense.
"You're right, Dad," Lazarus said simply, his voice clear, stripped of his corporatist arrogance. "On the way to Rouen."
Auguste smiled in pure relief. He turned around, his cane once again rhythming his walk towards the exit.
The Titan had just capitulated. For the first time in months, Lazare Bonaparte abandoned his war economy, accepting to become a big brother, a surrogate father, a man among his own people.
Location: House of Éléonore Dufresne (Rouen, Normandy)
Date: December 24 and 25, 1988
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare Bonaparte)
The Peugeot 505 wagon entered the narrow streets of the historic center of Rouen a little before midnight. The heating was running at full speed in the cabin, diffusing a dry heat that contrasted with the biting cold outside. In the back, huddled under a thick checkered wool blanket, Linh and Minh had finally dozed off, lulled by the steady purr of the engine and the hypnotic sweeping of the windshield wipers.
In the passenger seat, Lazarus watched the half-timbered facades pass by, illuminated by the yellow glow of the street lamps. The snow fell in large flakes, covering the uneven cobblestones with a white blanket that drowned out the sounds of the city. Far from the neon lights of Paris and the pale lighting of his office in Ivry-sur-Seine, this provincial setting seemed to him to belong to another era. His mind, which a few hours earlier had been spinning at breakneck speed between processor schemes and confidentiality clauses, was finally starting to slow down. He felt physical fatigue setting in, an almost pleasant heaviness in his limbs.
The carriage stopped softly in front of an imposing bourgeois residence, the upper floors of which seemed to jut out to watch over the alley. It was the house of Éléonore Dufresne, Madeleine's mother.
Before Augustus had even time to turn off the ignition, the heavy solid oak front door opened.
Eleanor stood on the doorstep. Despite the late hour, the grandmother had lost none of her righteousness. Wrapped in a large dark woollen shawl, she waited for her family with the same strict posture she had always had. When Lazarus got out of the car, shivering in his shirt open at the collar, she measured him from head to toe. She frowned as she noticed his sunken cheeks and deep dark circles that marked his face.
She had prepared a scathing remark about her perpetual backwardness, but when she saw the exhaustion of her twenty-two-year-old grandson, she changed her mind.
"It's about time you came, my boy," she said simply, her dry voice softened by a hint of genuine concern. "You've got skin and bones. It's indecent to work to the point of forgetting yourself. Go home quickly to warm up before catching cold. »
"Good evening, Grandmother," Lazarus replied, approaching to place a kiss on each cheek. Its scent of lavender and old paper enveloped her. "Pardon me for having made you stay up so late."
"The beds are ready. Don't stay in the draft," she whispered, grabbing him by the arm and pushing him in.
As soon as he crossed the threshold, the house greeted him with a familiar flush of warmth. The air smelled of cinnamon, wood fire, and beeswax that was passed over the old floors. It was the reassuring smell of the winters of his childhood, an unchanging smell that had nothing to do with molten silicon or electronic components.
Madeleine came from the drawing-room, wiping her hands on a cloth. His face lit up with total relief when he saw his eldest son. She hugged him forcefully, without a word, stroking the back of his head. Victor, who was going down the stairs in his socks, gave him a big smile and gave him a slap in the shoulder, while Claire and Camille greeted him happily from the doorway of the large living room.
But Lazarus was looking for the twins.
They stood at the bottom of the huge oak staircase, awakened by the commotion. They were wearing their thick pajamas. There was no dramatic distance, no unfathomable looks, just the very human and very frank reaction of two ten-year-olds deeply disappointed by the broken promises of their older brother.
Minh had his arms firmly crossed over his chest. He looked at Lazarus, his chin slightly tucked in, his lower lip quivering. He was torn between the relief of finally seeing him and the anger that had built up over the weeks of absence.
"You said you'd come home for dinner," Minh said, his voice sulky and full of legitimate reproach. "Mamma cooked the poultry especially for tonight, with the potatoes as you like. You missed everything. We ate without you. »
Linh, standing next to him, didn't cross her arms, but she nervously fiddled with the fabric of her pajama pants. Her large black eyes stared at Lazarus with obvious apprehension.
"Are you going to leave tomorrow morning?" she asked in a very small voice. "To your work? Mom said that you had to sign very important papers with gentlemen... »
The question, asked with the direct innocence of childhood, had the effect of a slap in the face. He measured, at that precise moment, the futility of his schedule of the last few months in the face of the very real anxiety it had generated in them. He put his duffel bag on the floor, ignoring the stiffness of his knees, and crouched down on the floor to get exactly at their level.
"No, Linh," he replied softly, looking for her gaze to reassure her. "I'm not leaving tomorrow morning. Nor tomorrow afternoon. I am staying here with you, every day, until the end of the holidays. The factory is closed. »
Minh turned his head away, trying to maintain his sulky posture, refusing to give in too quickly.
"Anyway, you always say that, and then the phone rings and you lock yourself in your office," the boy insisted. "You promised to teach me how to use the new soldering iron to assemble the kit of the little radio. And every Sunday, you were never there. I tried to read the plan on my own, but I don't know the difference between the resistances. »
"You're absolutely right, Minh. I was wrong," Lazarus admitted without making any excuses, without invoking contracts, money, or the urgency of his plans. "I forgot my promise, and it's my fault. But believe it or not, I put the radio kit and the soldering iron in the trunk of the car before leaving. We sit on the large table in the dining room tomorrow morning after breakfast. You and me. We're going to put it together together. I promise, and this time, I don't have an office to lock myself in. »
Linh did not hold out any longer. She released the fabric of her pajamas and threw herself forward, wrapping her little arms around Lazarus' neck. She buried her face in her brother's shoulder. Lazarus closed his eyes and held her tight, feeling the child's warmth dissipate the cold that had been in his mind for weeks. Minh hesitated for half a second more, sighed for form, then gave up his anger for good to come and snuggle up to them.
Auguste, who had just entered with the baggage, exchanged a knowing glance with Madeleine. The family was complete.
"Good," Lazarus said as he stood up, the twins still clinging to his hands. "I'm going to change. I feel like I'm cramped in these clothes. »
He went up to the little room under the roof which was usually reserved for him when they came to Rouen. The room was sloping ceiling, covered with faded floral wallpaper. He took off his double-breasted suit. The fabric, which he wore like a second skin when negotiating with bankers or industrial managers, suddenly seemed incredibly stiff and uncomfortable. He threw him on a chair unceremoniously. In the old Normandy wardrobe, his mother had taken care to put away comfortable things. He put on an old pair of brown corduroy pants, soft and worn at the knees, as well as a heavy chunky cable wool sweater that he had had for years.
As he went back down to the ground floor, he felt lighter. The house had calmed down. Auguste, Madeleine, Eleonore and the girls had gone up to bed. Only Victor was reading an old magazine in the living room.
In the great corridor, the pendulum of the Comtoise clock punctuated the night with its deep ticking. He and Minh had restored it to working order two years ago, during their first real Christmas together, and since then, it had never stopped beating time.
Minh was sitting on the large Persian carpet in the living room, not far from the fireplace where a few embers were still glowing. He had taken out a box of plastic building pieces, Lego, and was busy assembling an intricate structure, methodically sorting the bricks by color.
Lazarus approached silently and sat cross-legged on the carpet, right in front of him. Minh looked up, gave him a small smirk, and pushed a handful of blue bricks at him. It was a silent invitation.
For nearly an hour, they built some sort of unlikely spaceship, adding wings, thrusters, and antennas. They were talking in low voices so as not to wake up the rest of the house. Minh talked about his school, his teacher who was too strict with spelling, his friend Paul who had a new bicycle. He asked Lazarus about how television antennas worked, about how electricity traveled through the wires of the street.
It was a simple, disjointed, normal conversation. Lazarus listened to him with absolute attention, patiently explaining the basic principles of radio waves in simple words. He watched the child's nimble hands fit together the plastic pieces, admiring his little brother's natural curiosity and intelligence. Minh was not frightened or mute; He was just a ten-year-old boy who needed to be given time. And Lazarus imbibed this normality as a remedy.
The next evening, the whole house resounded with the effervescence of Christmas Eve.
The large fireplace in the living room crackled, a beautiful fire of oak logs casting a golden and moving light on the exposed beams of the ceiling. The dining-room table had been set with Eleonore's beautiful silverware, the crystal glasses glittering in the light of the chandelier.
The dinner was a moment of pure conviviality. Madeleine and Éléonore had spent the afternoon in the kitchen, and the result was equal to their efforts. Between the foie gras, the turkey with chestnuts and the praline log, conversations were going well. Victor monopolized much of the attention by telling, with grand theatrical gestures, his anecdotes of being on call in the hospital emergency room, provoking Camille's frank laughter and his mother's amused comments. Clare, true to form, was debating a political issue with Auguste, who answered her with her usual phlegm.
The twins participated happily, asking for more dessert and heckling gently. Lazare watched them, intervening from time to time to throw a friendly jab at Victor or to answer a question from his grandmother. He felt good. Present. He was thinking neither of the Taiwanese foundries, nor of the meetings with the DGA, nor of the lines of code of the OS. His mind was entirely focused on the laughter of his family, on the taste of the wine, on the warmth of the room.
After the meal, it was the long-awaited moment of opening the presents. The excitement of the children reached its peak. Minh let out a shout of joy as he unpacked a large box containing model planes and new precision grippers for electronics. Linh, for his part, discovered with a marvellous smile a varnished wooden easel, blank canvases and a magnificent box of oil paint with dozens of tubes of color.
While the children settled on the carpet to examine their treasures, the adults spread out in the armchairs around the fire. Madeleine served the coffee and Auguste offered a glass of cognac to those who wished it.
Lazare had settled into the back of a large leather club chair patinated by the years. He held his glass in his hand, observing the amber reflections of the alcohol in the light of the flames. He listened to the reassuring hubbub of the conversations that crossed each other, the distant ticking of the Comtoise, the clinking of the cups on the saucers.
Linh got up from the carpet. She put her new brushes aside and gently approached him, holding her inseparable sketchbook under her arm. She pulled herself up on the wide armrest of the chair and leaned against Lazarus' shoulder, letting her little legs sway in the air.
Lazarus put an arm around her waist to secure her and smiled at her.
"Are you happy with your presents, little one?" he asked in a low voice.
"Yes, a lot," she replied, nodding vigorously. "Camille said she would teach me how to mix colors to make the afternoon sky."
She was silent for a moment, watching the flames dance in the hearth, then she turned her head towards him.
"Lazarus?" she whispered, thoughtfully.
"What is the matter?"
"Yesterday, when we were driving in the car, Papa Auguste explained to me why you were so often absent at the moment. He said that you have to work very hard in your office to build a big, solid house for all of us. Is that true? Is that why you weren't there in the evening? »
Lazarus set his glass down on the small side table. He looked at the little girl. She was so far from the dusty streets of her past, so well integrated into this European family cocoon, but she kept this acuity, this visceral need to understand the why of things.
"That's kind of it, Linh," he explained softly, choosing his words to be honest without worrying her. "It's not a house with bricks and cement. But I'm trying to build something very solid, so you never need to worry about anything. So that no one can ever come and disturb you. Sometimes I put so much energy into it that I forget to look at the time and I come home too late. »
Linh pondered this answer. She rested her cheek against her brother's woollen sweater.
"It's good to want to make a very solid house," she says with the implacable logic of her ten years. "But it's useless if you're all alone in it. It's when you're there with us that we feel really calm. Otherwise, Minh gets angry for nothing, and I don't like to see him like that. »
The simplicity of the remark resounded in Lazarus with absolute clarity.
He placed a kiss on the top of Linh's head and tightened his arm around her. "I promise you, I'll be more careful now. We're going to build this house together, but we'll take the time to live in it. »
Linh smiled, satisfied with the promise, and jumped from the armrest to go back to her twin brother's models.
As he watched her walk away, Lazare thought back to the complex plans for his processors, the billions of francs lined up in bank accounts, the industrial strategies aimed at countering the computer giants. He had believed, in his architectural pride, that absolute security lay in the accumulation of technological and financial power.
But as he watched his family gathered around the fireplace, listening to the laughter and lively discussions, he knew that his father was right. The technology, the processors, the patents, they were just tools. Metal, plastic and lines of code.
Their one and only value was to preserve this precise moment. To guarantee that this living room, this golden light, and the tranquility of these children endure, untouchable, protected from the tumult of the outside world. If he shut himself up in his office to the point of losing the link with those he wanted to protect, the whole enterprise became tragically futile.
The fatigue of the last few months seemed to melt away definitively, replaced by a new, more serene, more balanced determination. He was not going to give up his conquest, quite the contrary. But he wasn't going to let her devour him anymore.
The Christmas truce was coming to an end, and the year 1989 was fast approaching. A year that promised to be decisive, brutal and fundamental for the rest of his plans. But this evening, sitting in the old leather armchair, in the midst of his family, Lazare Bonaparte knew exactly why he was going to take up the fight again. He took his glass, savored the warmth of the cognac, and allowed himself the right to simply enjoy the present time, to the reassuring rhythm of the old Comte clock.