by James Phelan
“We have kept it to ourselves until now for fear of your generosity, mon General,” Cassel said with a smile.
“You don’t trust us?” the Italian asked.
“We trust you all, without question,” Cassel said. “But as the generals have mentioned, should they feel compelled to provide more security it may compromise the mission by attracting suspicion. Secrecy is our best security.”
“But there is so much invested in this, our careers, our lives if it fails—”
“Failure, mon ami, is not an option,” Cassel said. “My father worked his entire life towards setting up a Sixth Republic for France, for a unification of Europe into a single economic state. It was he who included you in on this plan, all those years ago. Indeed, it was he who steered many of you into the high-ranking positions you enjoy today. His untimely death will not be in vain.
“While we all share in the dream of a greater European state, and indeed a Sixth Republic for France,” Cassel said, motioning to her French military chiefs, “so you too want similar goals for your own countries. We have all invested our lives towards this—it is the only dream I have ever known. And as we shall go into the annals of history as the parents of the greatest republic France has ever seen, we will all share in the glory when a unified Europe will be the leading superpower of the twenty-first century.”
“We are behind you with our lives, Madame President.” Nods all around.
“I know, as my life is in your hands.” Cassel flicked the projector to show a map of continental Europe. Another click and a line went around the shoreline, the only land borders are Russia and Turkey. “With the rest of our allies, we have representatives in every nation either already in power or ready to assume power once we give them the information they can use to oust the current governments.”
“How immediate will the information be handed to us?” This came from the only German present, an ex-officer in the Stasi who now had his own political party—and a side job of selling NATO supplies to terrorists.
“Within days,” Danton said. “Our own DGSE interceptions have quite a few dirt files that you will find useful too.”
“The line you see, gentlemen,” Cassel said, “is what will occur over the next twelve to eighteen months. Russia is still to be left out, initially, until they prove their worth in terms of securing their borders and managing their own population. But their resource wealth will prove to be a necessity for us.”
“So we will need to militarise the eastern-border states?” the opposition leader from Poland asked.
“I can’t see why,” Cassel said. “Our power will be economic, and countries like Russia and Turkey will want to comply to join the fold. We will spend a great proportion of the new EU’s budget on border security, though, to stem the flow of illegal immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.”
“I don’t want Turkey in the EU,” the German said.
“It won’t be, at least in our lifetime. They would be far too much of a drain on us.” Cassel clicked the monitor again and the projector showed the world map. She used a laser pointer as she spoke. “Without these actions we are undertaking, the USA will continue to be the dominant world power, with China and India emerging as rivals for that power around the middle of this century. Without our actions, terrorists and refugees will continue to flood Europe’s shores, our shores, and slow us down. This has gone on for far too long already.”
“And what of China and India?” the Austrian Prime Minister asked. “They are still emerging superpowers, China particularly.”
“Their rate of economic growth is slowing, and they will soon face their own political dangers,” Cassel said. “Their power is reliant on a populace that functions as a cheap labour force. While the rich get richer in that nation, and the middle class expand, a billion people remain in or near poverty. That is a time-bomb that will occupy itself for the immediate term.”
“Regardless, I for one have no qualms about another fifty-year cold war, and I’m sure we will have many more meetings such as this to plan what to do,” Danton said, adding his voice to what he planned would be a commanding role in Europe’s future military and intelligence leadership. “But my gut says let China and India have Asia. A united Europe, a closed Europe, has almost everything she needs.”
There were smiles all around the table.
“But please, Madame Cassel, tell us, how will the data be accessed?” the current French defence minister said. “How on earth are you hacking into the Americans’ most secure intelligence apparatus? Surely we are close enough now for you to tell us?”
Cassel looked about the room.
“Indeed we are close enough,” Cassel said. She took her time, choosing her words carefully and speaking them deliberately. “We learned of a vulnerability in the American security system some time ago, a vulnerability that will only be apparent for a short while longer. To access the Americans’ information two things must occur: the planting of the hardwired key at a relay station, in order to pick up their coding information and to piggyback on their data transfer frequency.”
Cassel paused for effect, and the Italian could not contain himself:
“And the second part of the operation?”
“We must log into the mainframe at NSA using a specific one-time remote-access key,” she said. “Because of the timeframe, this will be activated via a burst transmission from a submarine in the North Atlantic.”
“Why the Atlantic?” the navy admiral asked.
“Due to the timing constraints,” Danton said. “We will pick up the DGSE agent with the access key from the United States’ east coast, drop him via helicopter into the Atlantic—in international waters—and transmit the NSA key data from the submarine’s burst transmitter. Relayed to our military satellite in Fort Gaucher, we then have access to download whatever we want.”
“Then,” Cassel smiled with all her teeth bared, “we shall see the rightful place of Europe in the world order.”
21
NEW YORK CITY
“I really don’t have time for this,” Fox said, lying back on the couch.
“And yet here you are,” Dr Bender said, writing down some notes. “It’s GSR policy, and while I don’t care what you all may say about me when I’m not in the building, I’m here to make the workforce as stable and efficient as possible.”
“Stable, efficient,” Fox said, closing his eyes. “I just need a holiday.”
“Your humour is your holiday, Lachlan. You use it to avoid thinking deeper about the problem at hand.” The psychiatrist made more notes. “And we’ve discussed your running-away issues. It’s a temporary fix, until something happens where the issues rise again. Like at Christmas Island last year.”
“I need a holiday from my mind,” Fox said, as if he hadn’t heard what she had just said, ‘from those “deepest, darkest terrors that linger in there.”’ Fox was quoting her, something from their last session about obtaining wisdom and knowledge from ordeals, but she didn’t take the bait.
From the corner of his eye Fox caught her looking him over.
“You look like you’ve lost weight,” Dr Bender said, taking him in lying there in his rolled-up shirtsleeves and slim-fitting trousers. “Have you been sick?”
“I’m trying out to be a model for Paul Smith,” Fox said, smiling at her. She didn’t look impressed.
“I’ve been away, in Africa,” he relented. “Didn’t do much for the appetite. Not that the past twenty-four hours helped.”
“What did you see there?” she asked, scribbling away on her pad.
“In Africa?” Fox looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Death.” He turned to look at the ceiling and closed his eyes.
“Still having the dreams?”
“Still having the dreams,” he replied.
“Have they changed at all?”
Fox thought about it for a while. “They’re worse since coming back.” He opened his
eyes, looking up at the white ceiling. “I only dream of dead people. And the dreams are always worse after I’ve seen people die.”
“Did you see people die in Africa?”
“I saw too many people dying, too many dead people,” he said. He closed his eyes again, thinking. “I was somewhere else yesterday, another country, another continent.” He couldn’t say anything that would require her to make a police report. “More death. I saw someone die, killed quite brutally actually.”
The psychologist waited for Fox to go on, but he was finished. She’d learned that she could not push him further for details.
“Let’s talk some more about the choices you have made,” Dr Bender said.
“I decided to eat fruit for—”
“Lachlan.”
He turned to look at her. “The choices? I assume you mean the choices I’ve made over the past two years that resulted in me watching two people being killed in front of me.”
She nodded.
“We’ve talked about that,” he said, attempting to close the issue.
“That was months ago. Refresh my memory.”
Fox sighed. “I was given the choice to save the soldier under my command, John Birmingham, or some hostages. That is, to walk away with him, alive, and leave behind a village full of captured East Timorese. Instead, I tried to save him with force, with the thought to saving the others after that, and I … I lost them.”
“Your decision wasn’t the problem there, Lachlan, it was the outcome. At least in your mind, at the present.”
“I went against the odds. I took them on. I gambled with his life. I lost…”
“Generally one loses when one gambles,” she said. “But again, Lachlan, surely you can see that the decision you made, the choice under extreme pressure, was worthy of that risk.”
“At the time, yeah, I thought that. He was a soldier under my command. I did what I was trained to do. The only saving grace, I later learned, is that some of the East Timorese escaped in the pandemonium.”
“You decided to be a frontline soldier, you could have stayed behind a desk,” she said. “Surely you would have known the decisions you’d make out there, at the ‘pointy end’ as you have called it before, would result in some choices that led directly to loss of life. Results that are not without heavy consequences, James Bond-like actions, are firmly placed in the realm of fiction.”
“Tell me about it…” Fox said. “It’s not like I trained to be an assassin. We were water-born recon troops, marine and shore-assault specialists, waterway clearers. Until I went under fire I thought it was a thousand times better than an office job. God, there was no way I could have gone back into military intelligence,” he said. “I wasn’t the right thinker.”
Dr Bender made more notes, tapping her pen on the pad when she finished.
“And the second incident?” she asked. “I’m not letting you off. Tell me about this other scene that haunts you.”
Fox closed his eyes again. He could see her face, her eyes full of tears, pleading. The face of Ivanovich, the Chechen leader, his hand pushing a pistol hard against Alissa Truscott’s head.
“Again, I was given a choice. I had the option to leave a scene, with the life of this young woman being threatened before me, in place of averting a catastrophic terrorist attack,” Fox said. “Wallace’s only daughter, no less. Not that that really makes it any different. But you know…”
Dr Bender waited a moment before prompting him further. Her voice was soft, caring.
“And the decision you made?”
“It came almost too quickly,” Fox said. “I chose to let her die. Didn’t even hesitate that time around.”
“And the result? Thousands lived in her place?”
“In her place?” Fox looked to her, anger there. He turned back to the ceiling, closing his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “The result, for me, was just as bad that time around. Seeing an innocent killed. Explaining that loss of life to a parent.”
“It was another example of your character coming out through choice in dilemma, Lachlan,” she said. “The true Lachlan Fox shining through.”
“I guess there’s a brighter side to anything if you’re prepared to look hard enough,” Fox said, with a degree of cynicism that he immediately regretted. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I want to talk about this more today.”
“Okay, let’s finish off with a different topic,” Dr Bender said, pausing as if thinking what to ask, but Fox knew she always had her questions well and truly planned. “What do you think makes you happy?”
“Part of me wants to reply that I can’t remember being happy,” Fox said. “Seriously. But that’s another issue you’ll want to delve into for months on end.”
It took him a minute or two to think about it in the silence that the psychologist provided. “I think I’m happy when I’m busy, like, really busy,” Fox offered into the silence.
“Or rather, your mind is more at ease when you are busy because your mind is busy,” she said. “Busyness that is double-edged, as is evident when you have these dreams. And now, while you are very busy here at GSR, and you immerse yourself in your work, you have your downtime. Those times when you are alone, when it’s just you and your actions that you are reflecting upon.”
“What, you’re thinking I need a wife or something?” Fox said, trying to avoid the situation with humour. “Think I’ll start with a puppy.”
“A partner would probably help, or even a pet, but at the end of the day it’s still you and your mind, alone, that you have to deal with.”
“I like my alone time,” Fox said, looking at her. “Sometimes I really need to just be alone, surrounded by silence. Some space around me. Actually, that’s something I really miss since leaving Christmas Island, those silent horizons that disappeared into the sky. Here all you see are buildings.”
She made more notes, tapping her pen at the end of the thought.
“What’s happening with your drinking?” she asked. “How many a day?”
Fox didn’t respond.
“Lachlan?”
“I don’t know, a few. Hardly drank a thing in Africa, though,” he said. “I’m telling you, that place would make a fortune on health tourism.”
“Lachlan, you need to confront your demons. Own up to them, explore them. It’s natural to have regrets, but you can’t have them rule your life, pushing your thoughts and future choices into negative space. You can’t keep avoiding the seriousness in what’s driving you right now.”
“Sounds very Zen-like.”
“I’m not saying that you should be happy every second. Hell, if I knew how to condition my patients with that kind of therapy…” Dr Bender said. “We just need to find some methods that work for you to deal with these thoughts. Not to distract you so much as to lead your mind in another direction at times. Have you been keeping the dream journal?”
“For a couple of weeks,” Fox said. “It was always the same. Well, not exactly the same, but the same result. I was useless, couldn’t move. I was watching myself making all the wrong choices, all the wrong moves, again and again.”
“We’ve been over this, Lachlan. There were no right choices. There were snap decisions that were made that saved lives. No one said it was easy being a hero. You choosing to go through that door is something you can’t take back.”
“If only,” Lachlan Fox said.
22
NEW YORK CITY
The DGSE agent dressed as an electrical worker knocked on Fox’s houseboat door. He knew Fox was at GSR but he had to be sure it was deserted. He picked the lock, sliding the glass door open.
“Hello?” he called out, walking through, holding a small pistol in the pocket of his overalls. “Electricity man…”
He smiled to himself, dropped his toolbox on the table, and turned his attention to the alarm pad by the front door. He punched in the override code to the alarm system. Off-the-sh
elf devices were far too easy to disable, particularly American brands.
Opening his toolbox, he removed a plastic packet of listening devices, each smaller than a dime. He placed one in each room, the adhesive backing sticking under furniture. A few went hidden behind the lapels and collars of Fox’s work-wear.
His job almost done, he reset the alarm, and went up to the top deck. He taped a signal-booster device to the far side of the rooftop exhaust stack, out of view except if you were looking from the direction of the water on the East River.
23
SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN
Secher looked out of the canopy of the fighter jet as it banked sharply to an approach run.
De Gaulle, France’s only aircraft carrier, and the only nuclear-powered surface vessel outside the US’s arsenal, sat in the middle of the carrier battle group doing exercises. Four Cassard-type air-defence frigates rimmed the perimeter, while two Rubis attack subs trawled somewhere in the waters. Inside the protective ring, two landing ships and three replenishment ships steamed behind the carrier’s wake. She was big, but from where Secher was seated she looked like a postage stamp.
He closed his eyes as they touched down on De Gaulle in the Dassault Rafale N fighter jet, the arresting hook pulling them to a violent halt on the short runway deck.
Secher climbed down from the cockpit and landed on the flight deck with wobbly legs. The ship captain greeted him.
“Major Secher, your team is in the ready room, this way,” the captain said. Secher trailed behind, amazed that even a ship of this bulk was moving so much with the sea.
“We are nine hundred nautical kilometres north of New Zealand,” the captain said as they walked. “This is the biggest display of French naval power in the Pacific since Chirac’s resumption of nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll back in 1995.”
A sleek black Eurocopter Panther was being readied on the aft section of the deck. A dozen mechanics worked with tools, removing any unnecessary weight to get maximum fuel range in the flight. Long-range fuel tanks hung from stubby wings.
