Location: The Salon Doré, Palais de l'Élysée (Paris).
Date: September 26, 1992.
Point of view: Omniscient (sliding focus on Lazare Bonaparte and François Mitterrand).
The Salon Doré of the Palais de l'Élysée, with its woodwork carved in fine gold, its Gobelins tapestries, and its immense crystal chandelier, had witnessed many a capitulation and many a triumph throughout the Fifth Republic. But on this rainy morning of September 26, 1992, the opulence of the eighteenth century clashed violently with the cold ferocity of the war being planned within its walls.
At the center of the room, the elegant conference table had been desecrated. A heavy IMPERATOR server — unmistakable with its brushed black aluminum chassis and its "V"-shaped logo — sat enthroned among the Sèvres porcelain cups. The machine's industrial fans emitted a low, sustained hum, a bass frequency that seemed to make the very air vibrate.
François Mitterrand, his face parchment-thin but his eyes gleaming with a predator's cunning, studied the cathode-ray screen placed before him. Around the President of the Republic stood the inner guard of the French economy: the Finance Minister, the Governor of the Banque de France, and an areopagus of seasoned economists from Bercy, grey-faced and strictnecked. Across from them, Karim Belkacem typed at a mechanical keyboard with the virtuosity of a concert pianist.
Slightly withdrawn, standing near the tall French windows that looked out over the sodden gardens, Lazare Bonaparte kept watch.
The Builder wore a double-breasted midnight-blue suit, tailored to conceal the slight asymmetry of his left shoulder, still tender from the aftermath of the Eindhoven bombing. Beneath the fine fabric of his jacket, against the back of his hip, the reassuring weight of his compact Walther P228 chambered in 9mm reminded him that the age of naivety was gone. The Ogre of Ivry no longer traveled without his armor of metal.
"The transaction has been initiated," Karim announced, his voice betraying an electric tension.
On the screen, the kernel of VoltaOS — the company's sovereign operating system — displayed a progress bar.
"We have just simulated a settlement transfer of twelve billion francs between the Banque de France and the Bundesbank, via a standard civilian communications line," explained Volta's technical director. The asymmetric cryptographic architecture of our server, boosted by hardware acceleration, has just encrypted the entire data packet.
Karim struck the Enter key with a crisp, dry click.
"The stream has arrived in Frankfurt. The transaction is settled, validated, and recorded in the ledgers."
The Governor of the Banque de France stepped forward, narrowing his eyes behind his spectacles.
"And if the American National Security Agency or the ECHELON network intercepts this line?" If they place probes on the transatlantic or European cables, as is their habit?
Lazare detached himself from the window and approached the table, his dark gaze sweeping across the assembled officials.
"If they intercept this stream, they will see nothing but white noise," declared the CEO in a flat voice. A hexadecimal soup devoid of all logical entropy.
"They will know neither who the sender is, nor who the recipient is, nor the amount, nor even whether it is a financial transaction or a simple exchange of meteorological files. The American SWIFT network rests on a monopoly of trust and an architecture legible to those who possess its keys. Our network rests on mathematical chaos. It is hermetic."
The silence in the Salon Doré was of a suffocating density. The demonstration was an absolute success. The blackmail initiated by Mitterrand months earlier — when he threatened Washington with creating a sovereign interbank messaging system to destroy the hegemony of the dollar — had now taken form. The financial independence of Europe, the quintessential Gaullist dream, resided in this black box.
Mitterrand sketched a thin smile, savoring the moment. The former Socialist monarch had just found the ultimate weapon with which to protect the birth of the future Euro.
"Magnificent," murmured the President of the Republic. America believed it held us by the throat. We have just demonstrated that we no longer need its oxygen. We will be able to officially declare our withdrawal from the American network for our sovereign flows.
But the presidential enthusiasm was abruptly dampened.
"It is a perfect suicide, Monsieur le Président."
The voice belonged to the chief economist of Bercy, a man in his fifties, with a dry face and thinning hair. He was not looking at the screen with the same fascination as Mitterrand; he was regarding it with the terror of a man who sees a tsunami bearing down on him.
Lazare's gaze locked instantly onto the official. The Ogre detested the objections of the old guard.
"Explain yourself. Herr...?"
"Desroches. Antoine Desroches, Director of the Treasury," replied the man, undaunted by the glacial aura of the young billionaire.
"Monsieur Bonaparte, your technology is a masterpiece. Intellectually, it is a tour de force. But macroeconomically, it is a declaration of nuclear war that we would lose within forty-eight hours."
Desroches turned to Mitterrand, joining his hands in a posture of professional supplication.
"Monsieur le Président, if the Banque de France and the great institutions of our country officially and abruptly disconnect from the American SWIFT network to migrate to this "opaque" architecture, Washington's response will not be diplomatic. It will be systemic."
The official rested a finger on the IMPERATOR server.
"The American Eagle has no need for missiles when it has international law on its side. If we become invisible, the American Treasury will immediately accuse us of creating a financial black hole. They will cry money laundering on a state scale. They will brandish the specter of covert funding, of sanctions evasion. Karim frowned."
"That is false. Our internal protocols allow for complete traceability between European central banks."
"Washington could not care less what passes between you and Frankfurt!" Desroches erupted. They will use our opacity as a pretext. The Federal Reserve will instantly freeze the settlement of our dollar assets. The investment banks of Wall Street will be ordered to cut off our industrial champions. And worse still, our European allies... The British and the Germans will take fright. If they see France bear the brunt of American sanctions, they will retreat. Europe will refuse to follow us into this system if its official adoption means total economic war with the United States.
The silence fell again, thick and cloying. The Bercy economist's analysis was unassailable. Lazare Bonaparte knew it in his bones: financial markets were paranoid entities, driven by panic. The superiority of an algorithm was not sufficient to calm fear of the American sheriff.
Mitterrand leaned slowly back in his chair, his face darkening. Victory was escaping him at the very moment he believed he had seized it.
"You are telling me, then, that we have forged a sword we dare not draw, for fear of being shot dead by the world's referees? the President observed, bitterness piercing his rhetoric. Are we to throw this machine in the dustbin, Desroches?"
"No, Monsieur le Président," replied the economist, recovering his composure. It must not be thrown away. It must be concealed.
Lazare took a step forward. The mind of the former Service Action operator, steeped in cover operations and disinformation, had just collided with the logic of the civil servant.
"We must give them light in order to hide our shadows," Lazare completed, his voice returning to its hypnotic murmur.
Desroches nodded, relieved to be understood by the Builder.
"Exactly. The problem with your approach, Monsieur Bonaparte, is its radicalism. You propose a clean break. I propose a Trojan Horse. A glass screen."
The economist took a pen and sketched a rough diagram on a notepad bearing the Élysée letterhead.
"Volta S.A.'s network must not publicly replace SWIFT. It must interface with it. We are not going to disconnect France from the American servers. On the contrary, we will continue sending them traffic. Millions of daily transactions. The background noise of the Nation."
"Retail purchases, wholesale commerce, standard inter-company payments, "Karim understood, his eyes widening as the architecture of the deception took shape in his developer's mind. We leave them the illusion of transparency.
"Precisely!" Desroches exclaimed. The supercomputers of the NSA at Fort Meade will gorge themselves on this data. Washington will observe our bakeries purchasing their flour from Germany and our carmakers paying their suppliers. The Americans will be convinced that Europe remains under their absolute control. They will retain their false hegemonic confidence.
The Bercy official met Lazare's gaze, handing him the keystone of the institutional fraud.
"On the other hand... The Banque de France and the ministries will program your IMPERATOR servers to act as selective switching stations. The remaining ten percent of the stream... Sovereign transactions, gold purchases, National Defense financing," the DGSE budget, and the tens of billions of cash flow belonging to your own company, Monsieur Bonaparte... These sensitive streams will never see the shadow of an American cable. They will be diverted, before they even reach the SWIFT gateway, onto your asymmetrically encrypted network.
Mitterrand began to smile. A slow smile, laden with all the Machiavellianism of which the Florentine was capable. The idea of feigning submission in order to better eviscerate the American monopoly in its blind spot corresponded in every particular to his own geopolitical doctrine.
"Intoxication through abundance," the President summarized. We employed this "honeypot" strategy before, when we discovered the American backdoor in the Cray X-MP supercomputer at the DGA. We had fed them false nuclear simulation models to lull them to sleep.
"It is the same principle, Monsieur le Président, but applied to continental economics," the chief economist concurred. Finance despises opacity when it does not control it. Give them the illusion of control, and we shall have de facto independence.
All eyes converged on Lazare Bonaparte. He was the architect. It fell to him to write the code that would separate the wheat from the poison, the chaff from sovereignty.
The sixty-year-old engineer, imprisoned in his counterfeit youth, remained silent for a fraction of a second. Inwardly, the Ogre detested compromise. He would have preferred the frontal rupture, the spectacular destruction of SWIFT that he had envisioned upon regaining consciousness in this era. But Lazare was no blind fanatic; he was a monster of rationality. He knew the economist was right. A frontal assault on the very structure of the global settlement system would trigger an economic reprisal that Europe — cowardly and divided — could not sustain. The art of war sometimes consisted of smiling at one's executioner while severing his tendons.
"The gateway will be coded," Lazare cut in, his voice tolerating no reply. Karim, assemble the Level 4 team. I want a predictive routing algorithm. The server will identify the nature of the stream on the fly. The commonplace will be fed to the Americans; the lifeblood of the Nation will remain beneath our shield.
Lazare buttoned his jacket over the cold metal of his weapon, ready to take his leave of the Republic's gilded rooms.
"The "glass screen" is approved, Gentlemen. Washington will continue to scrutinize Europe under a microscope, ignorant of the fact that it is gazing at nothing but trompe l'oeil."
The delegation left the Salon Doré with the heady certainty of having rewritten the rules of global capitalism. But Lazare knew that the illusion carried a price. And the price of this hyper-growth, of this sovereignty wrenched from the throat of fate, was about to strike Volta S.A. with unimaginable violence the moment they returned to Ivry-sur-Seine. The Empire was bleeding itself dry.
Location: Executive Office of Volta S.A. (the "Bunker"), Ivry-sur-Seine.
Date: Late September 1992.
Point of view: Omniscient (sliding focus on Édouard Renault-Tessier and Lazare Bonaparte).
The return from the Élysée was met by no triumphalism in the corridors of the Ivry-sur-Seine headquarters. The deafening noise from the Assembly Line 4 production floor, where workers toiled in three-shift rotations, formed a wall of sound that forbade any complacency.
When Lazare Bonaparte crossed the threshold of his office, he found Édouard Renault-Tessier waiting.
The Chief Financial Officer of Volta S.A. did not have the look of a man whose company had just brought the Banque de France to heel. His features were drawn, his complexion a cadaverous pallor, and the ashtray before him overflowed with cold cigarette butts — evidence of an anxiety level that the former investment banker was finding it increasingly difficult to conceal.
"The "glass screen" agreement has been approved by Mitterrand," Lazare announced, removing his jacket and tossing it onto the Chesterfield sofa. The European SWIFT will operate in the shadows.
Édouard did not smile. He slid a heavy ledger across the leather blotter on Lazare's desk.
"That is excellent geopolitical news, Lazare. But from a purely accounting standpoint, we are sustaining a hemorrhage of unprecedented violence."
The Chief Financial Officer opened the ledger, pointing to columns of figures traced in red ink.
"Hyper-growth is a monster devouring us from within. In a single summer," the aggressive buyout of ARM in Cambridge, the enormous R&D budgets required to design the interbank network encryption, and the extortion of RAM supplies in Asia have cost us a fortune. And that is nothing compared to Alsace.
Édouard swallowed, his Adam's apple oscillating painfully.
"The soil inspection of the MégaFab site is complete. The civil engineering team has begun pouring the titanic anti-seismic foundations. The concrete work alone, plus the deposits for the clean rooms, have shattered our projections. In three months, Lazare, our treasury has dropped from one hundred and sixty-five billion to one hundred and forty billion francs. We have burned through twenty-five billion francs in a single summer. The burn rate is suicidal. If we continue at this pace, even with the royalties from Japan, we will be dry before the foundry opens its doors."
Lazare settled into his chair. His obsidian gaze fell upon the panicked figures of his lieutenant. The sixty-year-old engineer felt none of the banker's anguish. He felt the vertigo of velocity.
"You reason like an accountant hoarding pennies for his old age, Édouard," Lazare cut in, his voice polar. One hundred and forty billion francs sitting dormant in bank accounts is not a safety cushion. It is a target. Technological inflation and the war of attrition waged by our American competitors devalue that money every single day. I refuse to decelerate. On the contrary.
The Builder leaned forward, his hands crossing over the open ledger.
"We are going to accelerate. I want you to unlock sixty billion additional francs from our immediate reserves."
Renault-Tessier lost his breath. His mind reeled at the apparent irrationality of the order.
"Sixty billion?!" For what, Lazare? The Huabei plant is running, the MégaFab is financed... We have no remaining direct competitors to absorb in software!
"I no longer want thriving competitors. Healthy companies cost too much and are contaminated by arrogant corporate cultures," Lazare cut in. Volta S.A. is going to become a vulture. We are going to scour Europe to buy up the ashes.
Lazare seized a pen and rose, ignoring the stabbing pain in his collarbone. He strode toward the whiteboard and drew four distinct circles.
"The computing of tomorrow will not merely be a question of code and silicon. It will be a question of peripheral infrastructure. Of materials, telecommunications, and energy. We are targeting companies on the brink of insolvency, asphyxiated by the European recession and the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Empty shells dying on their feet, but possessing dormant patents or invaluable expertise."
He pointed the pen at the first circle.
"VEB Jenoptik, in Germany. The remnants of the Carl Zeiss Jena conglomerate from the former East Germany. Since the fall of the Wall, their factories have fallen to ruin and the Treuhandanstalt is desperately seeking to privatize their remains for a pittance. Their balance sheets are catastrophic, but their optical engineers are the finest in the world. I need their patents on optical precision to calibrate the ultraviolet laser lenses in our MégaFab. Buy them."
He moved to the second circle.
"Pechiney. Their "Ceramics and Advanced Resins" division is struggling. They are failing to make their specialty polymers profitable. Buy that division. We have a vital need for it to handle the thermal encapsulation of our future VESLA-III processors. We must control the chemistry of our own heat dissipation systems."
Édouard scribbled furiously, terror yielding to fascination in the face of his CEO's vertical integration logic. The Volta empire was mutating, moving from pure microelectronics into heavy industry.
"The third circle will seem absurd to you, Édouard, but it is the key to the coming decade," Lazare continued, striking the board. The company Nokia, in Finland.
The financier furrowed his brow.
"The cable and television manufacturer?" They are on the edge of the abyss, Lazare. They were eviscerated by the collapse of their exports to the Soviet Union. Their CEO killed himself a few years ago, and they are hemorrhaging cash at a ruinous rate. They are a corpse.
"A corpse that possesses a radio telecommunications division and patents on battery miniaturization," corrected the Ogre of Ivry, his eye gleaming. I bought ARM in Cambridge to secure the architecture for tomorrow's mobile phones. But I need the radio expertise, the transmission relays, and the plastics technology to manufacture the casing. Propose a massive recapitalization of twenty billion francs through our Luxembourg funds, structured as a hostile majority stake. If they refuse, strangle their credit lines by calling in our allies at BNP and Société Générale. We will take their patents by force.
Lazare pointed to the final circle.
"Finally, I want an undersea cable-laying division. Buy the struggling telecommunications subsidiaries of Alcatel or the cable-laying ships from the Atlantic shipyards. If we are creating an opaque European SWIFT, I refuse to have our data transit indefinitely through fiber optic lines laid and monitored by Anglo-Saxon operators. France will have its own glass arteries on the floor of the oceans."
Lazare set down his pen, allowing the immensity of the operation to imprint itself upon his Chief Financial Officer's mind. Sixty billion francs thrown into the real economy in less than a quarter. Volta S.A. was no longer a start-up. It was transforming itself into a true Zaibatsu — a totalitarian industrial conglomerate that controlled its product from the extraction of quartz in Russia to the East German optical lens, by way of the undersea cable that would carry the final data.
"You are no longer building a company," murmured Édouard Renault-Tessier, closing his ledger, simultaneously fascinated and unsettled by the predatory genius of his young patron. You are building a parallel nation.
"Nations have borders and elections, Édouard. They are weak," replied Lazare, picking up his jacket and adjusting the fabric over the cold metal of his concealed weapon. The silicon empire has no territorial limits. America sought to starve us last spring. Make certain that by next winter, we own the ground on which they walk. Go spend those sixty billion. The harvest of ashes has begun.