Cauldron

by Larry Bond

  Banich scanned the list in growing disbelief. Sales figures and prices for French and German industrial tools and pharmaceuticals? For Japanese automobiles? Evidence of “payoffs” for Russian buyers or government officials? It went on for ten or fifteen more categories, each one growing more obscure and more difficult to dig up. He looked up angrily. “These assholes can’t be serious! We’re trying to keep tabs on a dozen republics spread across eleven time zones and they want us to waste time on this kind of crap?”

  Kutner held up a hand to slow him down. “Yes, they do. Look, Alex, I’m pulling in every chit I’ve got to get this reversed or at least trimmed down. But for right now, those are your new targets.”

  “Great.” Banich tried unsuccessfully to tone down the bitterness in his voice. “Can you tell me which of my contacts I’m supposed to cut off while I chase down this garbage? The Ministry of Defense? Or maybe my recruits inside the Foreign Ministry?”

  Kutner shook his head. “Just do what you can. Nobody’s expecting miracles from you, Alex.”

  “Well, that’s good, because I’m fresh out of loaves and fishes.” Banich took a deep breath, fighting to calm down. It wouldn’t do any good to piss Kutner off. He needed all the upper-echelon backing he could get. “Look, Len. I can’t even begin to track half of this junk. Not with the resources we’ve got now. We’re going to need more bodies around here just to get the necessary legwork off the ground.”

  “Agreed. I’ll see what I can do.” The taller man patted his shoulder kindly and edged past him out the narrow office door.

  Banich sat staring down at his crowded desk till far past midnight, trying to work out how to spin a finely tuned intelligence apparatus onto a completely new tack — all without irretrievably wrecking it.

  He was still at it when the first delicate snowflakes began falling on Moscow’s empty streets.

  CHAPTER 4

  Cataract

  SEPTEMBER 21 — NEAR THE RUE DE FLANDRE, PARIS

  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!”<
br />
  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.

  SEPTEMBER 22 — BBC WORLD SERVICE

  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…”

  SEPTEMBER 25 — ROISSY/CHARLES-DE-GAULLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, PARIS

  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.

  SEPTEMBER 29 — ON THE UNTER DEN LINDEN, BERLIN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

  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 wh
o’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.

  OCTOBER 2 — OUTSIDE THE PALAIS DE L’EUROPE, STRASBOURG, FRANCE

  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.