Patriot Act

by James Phelan

  CIA Director Robert Boxcell had dual purposes to his visit, and he’d just completed his officially scheduled tour of a new kill town. The live-fire range was set up to resemble an exterior and interior of real-world buildings, complete with doors and windows that could be blown in and out, to be replaced by the base carpenters within an hour of the exercise ending. Several agents and agents-in-training had demonstrated their small-arms skills before the director, in a rescue scenario of hostages and clearing rooms of life-sized cut-out terrorists.

  Boxcell was met as he exited the operations observation room, where instructors could watch every inch of the training facilities to judge their charges. Members of the clandestine action group Task Force 121 had just finished up, and his contact, once a high-ranking member of the team, had been required to attend.

  “You look like shit,” Boxcell said, shaking the man’s hand. About thirty years old and six foot two in height, the agent was underweight and looked harrowed from lack of sleep and rest.

  “Thank you, Director,” he said, taking a walk out towards the deserted rifle long-range. “I had to get in character for a meeting in New York, a couple of nights ago. Keeping it up just in case I need to make another appearance.”

  “How’s it tracking?”

  “Good. Lachlan Fox is onto it,” the agent said. “Bought that I was ex-NSA, he just went down to Fort Meade to follow up on the intercepts I fed him. We planted some listening devices in his home, and have been scanning his computer in his office. He’s investigating it, just like you want.”

  “It’s no good to me if he doesn’t get the story out,” Boxcell said. “What’s your read? Should we create and leak some more transcripts to journos in DC?”

  “Not yet,” the agent said, stopping at the sandbags facing the far-off targets. “Let Fox run with it for a couple of days. We scouted for a long while to set this up with the right guy, he’ll see it through.”

  “I want it out before Friday,” Boxcell said. “NSA are going to have a good news day on Friday, better to have the garbage out in the open before then.”

  “Fridays are good garbage days for the press,” the agent said, referring to the Washington practice of letting the bad news out on Friday to be swallowed up in the weekend news cycle.

  “That’s right, so let’s get it out before then, got it?” Boxcell replied, looking into the man’s bloodshot eyes.

  “All right, I’ll give him a nudge.” The agent bit his lip, plans going on behind his tired demeanour.

  “Okay, we done here?” Boxcell said, hands in pockets.

  “Yeah, leave it with me,” the agent replied, resting his foot on a sandbag and squinting off at the furthest target almost a kilometre away. “What about the bullshit that’s been fed to the French outfit?”

  “You just worry about your end of the op,” Boxcell said, turning back to face his bodyguard, spinning his finger in the air to announce his intention to head back to his helicopter. “Then you’ve got your pick of postings, no more Stateside babysitting assignments.”

  “I’ve been stuck here on this plan for so long, I was beginning to think you’d never offer me a passport,” the agent said with a smile.

  37

  NEW YORK CITY

  Fox tapped his fingers on the desk. His head felt like it was going to explode. His arm throbbed. And he missed his morning exercise. He was on his fifth coffee and it wasn’t even noon. His cell phone chimed and roused him from his thoughts.

  “Yeah?”

  “Lachlan, it’s Julian,” the voice said. The background noise sounded like a million seagulls.

  “Oh—hey, Julian, what’s up?” Fox replied. He sat up straighter in his chair; there was only one reason why this guy would call him.

  “You upstairs? You’ve got a visitor down here.”

  “Oh thanks, be there in a sec,” Fox said.

  He closed up his cell and walked out of his office and to the lift, pressed the button and waited, tapping his steel-capped RM Williams boots on the floor. His thin cotton trousers and polo shirt were not quite up to the dress code of where he was headed, but hey.

  The lift pinged and the doors opened, Gammaldi emerging with two big brown paper bags. “Where ya headed?” he asked while he stood in the open doors of the elevator.

  “Just outside for a breather, back in five,” Fox replied, stepping around his mate.

  “Ah, a little nip at your local, hey. Well, at any rate, hurry back. I got us a couple of pastrami Rubens from Katz’s,” Gammaldi said, holding up the two paper bags. The weight and grease of big sandwiches within threatened to burst them.

  Fox walked across the plaza that opened out onto Park Avenue. The day was another summer blast-furnace with high humidity, the westerly wind offering little respite as it blew through the built environment of Manhattan. By the time he had walked around the corner of the Seagram Building onto 52nd Street, he was beaded with sweat from the humidity, all the moisture that the heat sucked from the harbour being dissipated upon the city’s inhabitants. He entered the Four Seasons Restaurant and took a seat at the front bar.

  “Hey, Lachlan,” the barman said, passing over a short glass of Bombay Sapphire and tonic.

  “Thanks, Julian,” Fox said, looking around at the few scattered faces in the big square bar. Certainly no one familiar in the mix.

  “Dining Room Three,” Julian said, motioning with his head to the opposite corner of the restaurant. “Two guys, came in about ten minutes ago. Asked me to contact you for a chat like they know you regularly meet people here.”

  “But you’ve never seen them before?” Fox asked, leaning forward on the timber bar so they could converse quietly.

  “Nope.”

  Fox took his drink and left the bar, walking through the grill room and up the short staircase to the private dining rooms.

  Two men were in the hardwood-panelled room, behind the table facing the door to the grill room. The one seated he knew from the photo in the LeCercle file: Pierre Lopin, a founding member of the group and long-time stalwart of the French political scene. He was old, well on the other side of eighty, and sat low in his wheelchair with an oxygen bottle on the floor beside him.

  The other man was around forty, and stood close by Lopin’s side. Upon Fox entering, he walked over and handed him a note and a Barneys shopping bag. Fox couldn’t help but notice the massive automatic pistol under the guy’s open suit jacket as he leaned towards him. The way he passed the note, Fox knew he was expected to read it straightaway.

  There is a listening device on you. Go to the restroom, change all your clothes over, leave your old clothes in the wastepaper bin.

  “Are you serious?” Fox asked, cocking his head to the side at the absurdity.

  The man nodded, and Fox looked at the pair of them closely for a while. The old guy looked as though he was fading before Fox’s eyes, so he left the room and did as instructed.

  He was back in the room in two minutes, dressed in a new shirt and pants.

  “Okay, what is going on?” he asked.

  “Take a seat, Mr Fox,” the younger man said.

  “I’ll stand, thanks,” Fox responded. “Who are you?”

  “Akiva is my man,” Lopin said, his voice coming in raspy tones.

  “And you’re Pierre Lopin,” Fox said.

  “Yes,” Lopin replied, adjusting his nasal tube which pushed air into his lungs.

  “We are here to help you,” Akiva said. “You had a listening device on your shirt.”

  “From?”

  “They are watching and listening to you,” Lopin said, leaning forward in his wheelchair. “Hence the unusual circumstances of this meeting.”

  The bodyguard leaned against the far wall of the room, giving Fox space with Lopin.

  “Who are ‘they’? LeCercle?” Fox asked.

  “No,” Lopin said. “DGSE.”

  Fox couldn’t help but look startled.


  “French intelligence? What would they want with me?” he asked, drinking the last of his gin.

  “Akiva here made sure that the agent is tied up with the consular general until our meeting is over,” Lopin said. “Nice to see an old man still has some friends.”

  “How do you know that they are following me?”

  “Akiva hears things,” Lopin said, waving to his bodyguard. “They know you have been investigating the murders in Europe, that much is in the public domain. And as a result of your continued interest, and the actions that they are undertaking, we know they are following you.”

  “Old news, Mr Lopin. In the past couple of days I’ve been followed, beaten, cut,” Fox said, holding up his bandaged arm for evidence. “I feel I’m getting close but still can’t see where this is headed.”

  “It’s because you’re getting close,” Lopin told him, taking his time to get more oxygen, “that I think you may be able to stop them.”

  “Stop them?” Fox asked. He decided to take a seat close to the old man so that he was not straining so much to speak. “I’m writing up some newspaper pieces that can bring to light the truth behind the killings, but stop them?”

  “That may be enough,” Lopin said. “But you have to hurry.”

  “What can you give me?” Fox said. “Do you have proof that members of LeCercle sanctioned these murders?”

  “Forget LeCercle. And forget these murders,” Lopin said. “Sianne Cassel is the danger. And she has grand plans.”

  “You’re no longer part of the group?”

  “LeCercle was designed to keep European identity after the Second World War. A national flavour, unique,” he said, taking some deep breaths. “We were always conservative. But what they are now…” He nodded to Akiva, who came over behind Lopin to wheel him out.

  “What are they now?”

  “Still much the same, in that they are a collective of like-minded peoples. The Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty group is just an extension of that,” Lopin said. “It’s Cassel who’s the issue. She’s planning attacks. Get that message to someone you trust in the US administration—today.”

  Lopin said that like he knew Fox had the ear of McCorkell.

  “What’s the rush? What are her plans?”

  “A chain of events through Europe that will be kicked off with a Sixth Republic for France,” Lopin said. “It’s happening as we speak.”

  “A Sixth Republic?” Fox asked. He looked at the faces of these two Frenchmen. They were cold, hard, honest. “How?”

  “A coup d’état,” Lopin said. “And sooner than you may think possible.”

  Fox’s eyes went wide.

  “It was brought up at that conference in Nice?” he asked. “That’s why the Bilderbergers have been killed? Because of a planned coup in France?”

  The old man smiled at his bodyguard, looking back to Fox.

  “No. I know these plans because I was the first person Sianne’s father told them to, years ago.” Lopin adjusted his air supply. “What was discussed in Nice, however, was her plans, building on her father’s plans, first for France and then for the continent. For a new-look European Union.”

  “What’s so sinister about that? It’s something discussed in many editorials, a new constitution and all that. Hell, the EU as it stands is practically a superpower to rival the US right now. Its GDP is already higher…”

  “Mr Fox, listen to me carefully. I don’t know every detail, as I dismissed Joseph every time he got drunk enough to bring this up with me in his fool-hearted attempt to get me to join the fold. But Sianne Cassel has let it be known that she will disseminate valuable information to all group members to use in their own countries. Information on their political rivals, information on their commercial competitors outside of Europe. She’s strengthening the continent, putting the far right into power, and then shutting the gates.”

  “Shutting the gates?”

  “Putting walls up, however you want to look at it. Limited immigration. Isolationist economic terms. No more American dominance or European reliance on outside resources and services.” The old man shifted in his chair. “I’m telling you this because you’re already in this. You can do something with this information I’ve just told you. I’ve seen walls go up before. I’ve seen the looks in the eyes of madmen being led by a dictator before. I won’t allow it again.” The old man lifted up his arm and rolled up his sleeve, showing a line of numbers tattooed into his forearm. “This is forever my reminder.”

  Fox looked into the old man’s eyes. This man had seen it all, and once more was once too often.

  “Never again will there be fascists ruling my country,” Lopin said, his determined eyes wet with tears. “I love my country, and I love being free.”

  “Why can’t you move things through your own channels at home?” Fox asked. “Alert French and European authorities to what’s happening in their own backyard.”

  “This has been a plan in the making for all of Joseph Cassel’s life. The network is so entrenched throughout Europe, there are few left to trust,” Lopin said. “Even the centrists and lefts are swayed when such discussion of European grandeur comes up. The recent Iraq and Afghanistan invasions have cemented these sentiments in Europe. The populace are ready to be led by what they see as a way to share their own destinies in the world as Europeans. I fear this is coming to a close so soon that there may be nothing to stop it.”

  “But what? What’s Cassel planning to use to do all this?” Fox waited for an answer as the old man wheeled closer to him.

  “That most powerful of weapons, Mr Fox. Something that everyone wants to have control of. The true weapon of the twenty-first century,” Lopin said. “Information.”

  38

  FORT GAUCHER

  The two technicians tapped commands into their chunky military his-and-her laptops. They shared a knowing look; there was nothing wrong with the connection at their end. They worked in a pair to be sure of such things. What had been a strong signal relayed by satellites from New Zealand for the past few hours had vanished.

  “Mon general!” the first technician through the door said.

  “Yes, what is it?” Danton asked, noticing the pair of them now in his office. “One of you should be at your station at all times, this mission is—”

  “The New Zealand connection has just gone offline,” the other technician said. “It must have been discovered.”

  Once they left the room, Danton stared at his reflection in the blank screen of his video-conference monitor.

  Everything now rode on the second connection being made. The stakes had just been raised another notch.

  A heat rushed up his neck as he stared at his desk, fists clenched, face flushed.

  He picked up his military phone, hardwired into the fibre-optic military communications network that snaked throughout mainland France.

  “Put me through to the COFUSCO,” Danton said, pronouncing it Co-fu-sco.

  The Commandement des Fusiliers Marins et Commandos came onto the secure line.

  “Commander,” Danton said, keeping with Bonaparte’s tradition since the Battle of Trafalgar of not applying the salutation of ‘mon’ before the navy officer’s title. “Your force accompanying our agents into Greenland. I want them to wait there on the station until the mission is complete. At all costs.”

  “Up to forty-eight hours? That runs an enormous risk of being found out.”

  “If they are found, it will be too late,” Danton said. “They must ensure that the connection is made, and that it stays secure until activation. The entire mission rides on their shoulders. I will notify you as soon as the mission is completed from our end.”

  There was a long pause at the other end of the line, as the commander of France’s naval commando force considered this new dimension to the mission.

  “All right, it must be done. Contact me the minute that they can evacuate from the site.�
�

  “Merci, Commander,” Danton replied. He hung up the dedicated military-link phone and picked up his internal digital handset.

  “Find me Christian Secher.”

  39

  NEW YORK CITY

  “French intelligence agents—here in New York?” Faith asked.

  “Yep,” Fox said. “Working out of the French consulate on Fifth Avenue. Every nation in the world has its intelligence staff working in their consulates and embassies, and just because they’re an ally doesn’t mean they don’t want to know what goes on inside our borders. At any rate, you can bet your arse they’re who hired that PI.”

  “And who got rid of the PI once they found out you made him,” Gammaldi said.

  “This is where I’m at,” Fox answered, working with his laptop on a digital projector. “Sianne Cassel is the current head of France’s NFP, which in turn hands her the leadership of the European parliament’s Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty group,” Fox said, the image showing shots of Sianne Cassel with the party signage behind her. “Lopin confirmed her as the head of the last LeCercle meeting.”

  “Seems her father was grooming her for leadership,” Wallace said. “Bet that nepotism put some noses out of joint in both camps.”

  “Absolutely. The NFP has a tumultuous history under the leadership of Cassel senior, especially since his co-founder Lopin was forced out in the eighties. Cassel was seen by many party faithful as being too far to the right to ever gain a significant position of power, such as the presidency of France. That outlook proved fairly true, until the 2002 presidential elections, where their strong standpoint on immigration, the death penalty and economic protectionism brought Joseph Cassel forward to be the contender to Chirac.”

  Fox flicked to the next image, which showed a map of Europe. Headshots of known LeCercle members came up, lines formed like a spider’s web that linked them to their respective countries. “So far we have uncovered sixty-two members of LeCercle who have direct ties to either the NFP or ITS, either through funding their own political ambitions or using contacts within France’s DGSE spy network to eavesdrop on opponents.”