Lorraine Connection

by Dominique Manotti

  Étienne, ashen, goes from group to group repeating tirelessly: ‘I saw the guys who started the fire, I saw the guys who started the fire.’ People are mesmerised by the spectacle, and no one pays any attention to him. Amrouche, sitting on a mound some distance away, away from the crowd, his head in his hands, weeps silently.

  Quignard has slipped an anorak and trousers over his pyjamas and borrowed his wife’s car. Sitting on the bonnet, a woollen hat pulled down over his eyes, he watches the blaze, seemingly unperturbed. How did a dustbin fire, the pretext for evacuating the premises rapidly, turn into this inferno? Tomaso comes and sits down beside him, a tall figure in a military parka. He gazes at the fire without a word, his long, bony face obscured by the shadow of the hood, impassive and mute. Quignard is grateful to him for being there. A gust of wind, the fire intensifies, roaring. It still makes less noise than a steelworks, he thinks with a half-smile.

  Étienne walks past the two men, seeking a bit of attention.

  ‘I saw the guys who started the fire, you know.’

  A crushing moment of silence, then Quignard, icily: ‘If that’s true, young man, I advise you to keep your mouth shut here and save your statement for the police.’

  Disappointed, Étienne decides to go home. Tomaso gets up and disappears. Maréchal comes and leans against the car, next to Quignard.

  ‘I’d never have believed things would move so fast.’ A few minutes’ silence. His face is turned towards the factory, furrowed, his skin looks yellow in the light from the blaze. A smile glints in his eye. It seems that after all fire has returned to his valley.

  PART TWO

  15 October

  Standing in front of the bay window, his jacket unbuttoned and his hands in his trouser pockets, Pierre Benoît-Rey gazes out at the Eiffel Tower all illuminated, looking almost within reach, and the esplanade of the Palais de Chaillot beyond. Waiting. Tonight the government will announce the buyer for Thomson, France’s biggest military-electronics concern, a publicly-owned company it has decided to privatise. There are two rival bids, only two, for this huge deal on which the restructuring and perhaps even the survival of the French arms industry depends: Alcatel and Matra. And Pierre Benoît-Rey is head of the small team, or rather the commando, tasked by Alcatel’s management to put together the Thomson bid and see it through, reporting directly to the CEO.

  The waiting drags on. Benoît-Rey rests his forehead against the window, against the night, as he used to do when he was a child. The damp cold soothes his brow. He seriously needs soothing. The body of a ten-kilometre sprinter, red lips and an angelic face framed with dark hair; a pronounced fondness for cocaine and alcohol; a sharp brain, always ticking, too clever, some say, and perhaps they could be right. They also say that everything he touches turns to gold. Tonight we’ll see. In a few minutes, it’ll be either the Tarpeian Rock or the Capitoline Hill. A slight churning in the pit of his stomach. He goes over every detail of the deal in his mind. Alcatel is divesting itself of its equipment-manufacturing arm to concentrate on electronics. Fewer jobs, more excellence. With the revenue from the sale, it buys Thomson and its military electronics. The company restructures its electronics capability, creates synergies, and restructures the entire sector, which would be impossible without the mega profits from the military section. From this French giant, we and our British allies, who have bought up our equipment-manufacturing arm – which means we don’t lose it altogether – create a European electronics giant that will challenge the Americans on their own turf. A brilliant piece of architecture, an empire within reach, like the Eiffel Tower, an engineer’s dream. And I’ll be flying. Director of strategy for the future group, most likely.

  Time drags its heels. The three ministries involved, Defence, Industry and Finance, are one hundred per cent behind us. Our rival, Matra, a company that’s a quarter of the size of the one it wants to take over, is forced to juggle to finance the operation and is teaming up with an unlikely Korean partner to do so. The boss of Matra is a puffed-up frog who thinks he’s bigger than the ox. We have a cast-iron bid: how can it go wrong? Soon, power over a global group. In the arms sector, to boot. The prize industry, politics, superprofits, secret services. Another stomach contraction, almost painful. Playing for high stakes. For the future. And tonight …

  The phone rings and Benoît-Rey swings around. In the meeting room serving as their HQ four men – his entire team – are killing time. They exchange the odd word from time to time and a glass tinkles against the whisky bottle. All eyes are glued to the telephone on a corner of the big table in the centre of the room.

  ‘It’s your call, Pierre.’

  He picks it up, listens, nods and hangs up without a word. Sits down, suddenly drained.

  ‘Our chairman. He’s just had a call from the Prime Minister’s office. It’s Matra.’

  A long silence. The men look at each other. This failure is all theirs. They accepted the mission, they gambled, they lost. Their first failure on such a scale. Rossellini, in charge of the financial side of the bid is an elegant and athletic forty-something, a graduate of France’s top management school, the École Nationale d’Administration. He’s doing a stint as an auditor in the Finance Ministry where he still has a discreet, efficient network of personal contacts. He acted as Alcatel’s financial director in the bid, a position that will be vacant in a few months: a financial director of one of the biggest global industrial groups at barely forty, a destiny he believed he was meant for. Only now he’s suddenly relegated to being just another departmental head, and has to stomach it. Then Alain Bentadj, a young engineer trained at the prestigious École Polytechnique, expert in new technologies: a spell at Thomson, highly valued by the military for his technical capabilities, his inventiveness and the clarity of his vision, dreaming of an international career, abruptly finding himself demoted. What can he do at Alcatel if Matra’s the leading arms manufacturer? He came to Alcatel precisely because the Thomson takeover was on the cards. What’s he supposed to do? Change jobs? Not easy after a failure on this scale. And anyway where can he go if Matra dominates the industry? They’re hardly going to welcome him with open arms. Frédéric Marion is head of communications. He thought he’d made a good fist of it, with the ministerial offices in his pocket. He’d dreamed of setting up his own PR and communications agency on the back of all this, its future assured with the giant Alcatel account. Those dreams have all just gone up in smoke. Roger Valentin sits alone on the sofa, the last man. He’s heavily built and older, watching the others and suppressing a smile. Former deputy director of the secret services, he’s now Alcatel’s head of security, making more money in the space of a few years than he ever made in the public sector, but lacking either further ambition or anxieties.

  Rossellini breaks the silence.

  ‘Are we entitled to know why?’

  ‘No. No other information. The Prime Minister chose Matra. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Right. The next question is where’s a good place for a holiday at this time of year? There’s no snow in the mountains and the coast’s horrible.’

  ‘There’s the islands.’ Benoît-Rey picks up the phone with a half-smile. ‘I’d planned a little victory celebration at Joseph’s too. I’d better cancel.’

  ‘OK, one last drink and we go home to our families. It’ll be strange for them, after hardly seeing us for four months while we’ve been practically married to each other.’

  ‘I’ll miss you, darling.’

  ‘Alain, are you sure the beautiful Madame Bentadj will have waited for you?’

  ‘Don’t rub salt into the wound. I have no desire to return home unexpectedly.’

  ‘An evening at Mado’s, blow jobs all round, getting fucked brainless.’

  ‘Now that’s a much better idea …’

  Valentin is still sitting silently on the sofa. The phone rings again. They look at each other. Benoît-Rey says, ‘Nothing worse can happen now,’ and picks up the receiver.
>
  ‘Yes, we’re still here, chief. Yes, Valentin too.’ He utters groans and monosyllables, staring around wide-eyed. ‘Yes, we’ll be there.’ And he hangs up.

  ‘So, has the Prime Minister changed his mind?’

  Shrug. ‘Our CEO’s received several phone calls. First of all from Prestat.’

  ‘Who?’

  Half-smile. ‘Very funny. The CEO of Thomson Multimedia. He swears that the entire company, from senior management down to the workers, is going to fight the choice of Matra tooth and nail. They are absolutely against it because Matra’s flogging them off to Daewoo, a Korean company that can’t be trusted at all, in his view.’ A pause. ‘He’s talking about strikes, demonstrations.’

  ‘Nobody gives a fuck about multimedia. Thomson is first and foremost arms, it’s only arms. We didn’t know what to do about the multimedia arm either, we couldn’t have kept hold of it, we’d have ended up selling it to the Japanese or to another Korean firm.’

  ‘Maybe, but we never said so publicly. Then our chairman had a long phone conversation with one of his contacts in the Finance Ministry. The minister doesn’t agree with the PM’s choice, but he’ll go along with it, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Apparently, the senior civil servants at the ministry are firmly opposed to the choice of Matra. Opinion is divided among the senior officials in the other ministries.’ He pauses for breath. ‘In short, the minister is encouraging us not to consider tonight’s decision as final.’

  ‘He’s taking the piss.’

  ‘Possibly, but that’s not the view of our chairman. He wants us in his office at six p.m. tomorrow to present a new action plan – with the emphasis on “new” – one that’s appropriate for this second round.’

  Rossellini explodes: ‘Now, it’s our chairman who’s taking the piss.’

  ‘What second round? You’ve got to be joking. Who’s going to overturn the Prime Minister’s decision? The President? They’re as thick as thieves.’

  ‘The chairman was talking about a vote in the National Assembly …’ An eruption of general mirth … ‘Rejection by the Privatisation Committee or the Commission in Brussels.’

  ‘Now that makes more sense, although it’s highly unlikely. The Privatisation Committee has always backed the government.’

  ‘No. It rejected a bid in 1994.’

  ‘But until now, the government has always gone by the book, and always waited for its approval before making its decision public.’

  ‘By the book …’

  Benoît-Rey sits up and suddenly seems to regain his fighting spirit.

  ‘Gentlemen, we have no choice. The acquisition of Thomson is as vital for Alcatel as it is for us. So let’s go for it and see the game out. We’ve nothing else left to lose. If the Privatisation Committee follows its usual practice, we have one or two months at most before it announces its verdict.’ He takes off his jacket and rolls up his shirtsleeves. ‘The night’s still young. We have time.’ He looks at his watch. ‘There’s nobody left in the kitchens so I’ll phone the downstairs brasserie and have them bring up sandwiches and beers.’

  Benoît-Rey begins to clear away the empty glasses and bottles then takes notepads and pens out of the drawers and places them randomly on the table. The machine is back in operation, with mobile features and expressive hands. When the sandwiches arrive, they resume their places around the table, more resigned than enthusiastic, after all rather pleased to be in their cocoon immersed in familiar trappings: the atmosphere, the stress. Valentin extricates himself from the sofa and chooses a Camembert sandwich. And Benoît-Rey continues:

  ‘The chief wants something new. First of all, I’d like to make sure that everything’s clear. We consider the acquisition of Thomson to be vital, because in our high-tech sector only the military markets give the necessary stability to safeguard a long-term future. So we need Thomson in order to restructure Alcatel. And if we don’t restructure Alcatel, we’ll stagnate and then be gobbled up by the first-comer. Our British friends, for example.’ A pause as an obsessive refrain goes round and round in their heads: merger, takeover, buyer, change of personnel, career in tatters, having to carve out a new niche. Benoît-Rey continues: ‘Our bid was the best, we had solid, extensive backing. Yet we lost. Where did we go wrong?’

  Rossellini, his tie loosened and expression impassive, drinks beer and whisky, English-style and without eating, repeatedly brushing away the strand of fair hair which keeps falling over his left eye.

  ‘We lost for political reasons, I think it’s as simple as that. Several of Alcatel’s big bosses made their careers under the Socialist government. You too, Valentin, and you left the security service when the current lot came to power because they didn’t want you heading it up. Matra’s boss is much closer to the Prime Minister and the President.’ He pauses, then continues, on a bitter note: ‘I think I was wrong to get involved in all this. The Socialists are out of the running for the time being, and I don’t give a damn.’

  Got to get things back on track, fast.

  ‘If it was a political decision, how do you explain the support from the ministerial departments?’

  ‘Is that support as widespread as you say? Our only source of information so far is our chairman, and it’s in his interest to present things that way to keep us going.’

  ‘Valentin, what do you think?’

  Interesting, first time they’ve asked me for my opinion. These youngsters are really up shit creek. He puts down his barely-touched sandwich and takes a sip of beer. Another precautionary pause. This will take a while.

  ‘I don’t think our failure is primarily or exclusively political. The fact is, there was never any competition between Matra and Alcatel for Thomson’s takeover. The decision was made before the bidding process began, and for reasons that probably have nothing to do with industrial logic or politics, even with a capital P.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Firstly the decision to sell Thomson by mutual agreement rather than by putting it up for tender. That has never been done for such a large company. So it was clear, right from the start, that it would be the Prime Minister’s decision alone, and for reasons of his own.’

  ‘Thomson is up to its ears in debt.’

  ‘That’s an excuse and that’s not the end of it. Just after the bidding process opened, Gomez – Thomson’s boss – was fired, to everyone’s surprise, in a real battle for power.’

  ‘He’s also in bed with the Socialists.’

  ‘He’s a crafty character who’s got influential friends in all camps and has survived two government cohabitations. But above all he’s a bitter personal enemy of Matra’s boss. The way had to be cleared. Matra’s takeover of Thomson would be out of the question if Gomez remained at Thomson’s helm. It would have been him calling us this evening instead of Prestat, and that would have been a major problem for the Prime Minister, whereas the new boss of the Thomson group, appointed by the government and in post for three or four months, has no choice but to keep his mouth shut. Gomez was fired eight months ago. At that point, the decision had already been taken in favour of Matra. Allow me to continue. Matra put in its takeover bid late, as everyone knows. We can surmise, without being too paranoid, that they had access to ours, thanks to a few friends in high places. Under normal, transparent conditions, being late would have been enough for their bid to be disqualified. Finally, Daewoo’s senior management booked Fouquet’s several days ago. They’re throwing a fabulous party to celebrate their victory – which they were certain of well before the official announcement – as we speak.’

  Rossellini speaks frostily, with a disdainful smile:

  ‘Basically, your theory doesn’t make much difference, Valentin.’ He whistles the sibilants. ‘Whether Matra was chosen before the bidding process opened or at the end, the fact is they were chosen because they’re close to the Prime Minister.’

  Going round and round in his head, the same old nagging doubt: W
hat am I doing here? Talking to a cop. A police view of History. That fat Valentin, coarse and probably incompetent. I’m a fish out of water here. I’d do better to try and cover my arse rather than get deeper into this mess, in bad company.

  ‘Yes, it makes a lot of difference. The Prime Minister keeps his decision secret for months on end, not sharing it with his ministers, and lets the governmental departments carry on as if the whole process were being conducted under normal conditions. The natural suspicion is that if this decision is secret, it’s because the plans to restructure the industry are covering up some highly compromising flaws. If I manage to uncover those flaws, then I don’t need to worry about deadlines or authorities, I have the power to get the Prime Minister to change his mind. It’ll be up to him to worry about how to save face. Finding motives, gathering evidence … In other words, this will turn into nothing more than an ordinary police investigation.’

  Benoît-Rey, tense, listens attentively, is almost calm.

  ‘Why didn’t we think of that sooner?’

  ‘I spoke to the chairman about it quite early on. He didn’t agree. He believed in the integrity of the process and the viability of his industrial proposal, and was confident of winning the bid. He was probably alluding to our conversation when he told you to come up with something new.’

  ‘I find that assumption and the implied method of working rather exciting. And of course, you already have a few concrete leads …’