Jacot had been surprised to be asked to accompany her on a visit to the DCRI, the French domestic intelligence service. After his dressing down in St James’ Park over his tensions with the CIA’s London Station he assumed he was not in her good books, least of all for a visit to the French, the trickiest of the intelligence allies. On their visits to London they tended to complain about the food, make disparaging remarks about the Americans and flirt inappropriately with the waitresses. All very tiring. But Jacot like many Englishmen of his type was securely Francophile and looking forward to the visit. On a professional level he also heartily approved of the way French Intelligence was set up. The inevitable and recurrent insecurities of French history ensured that France’s post-Napoleonic rulers had always kept a close eye on the popular mood, particularly in Paris. The organisation put in place by Napoleon’s minister of police, the utterly repellent but completely brilliant Fouché, had metamorphosed into a low level intelligence gathering outfit – the Renseignements Generaux (General Intelligence) with offices across the country. The government in Paris had a good handle on what was happening in the suburbs and provinces. As a result the French had been less surprised by the emergence of Al Qaida and its various franchisees. The French also had a version of MI5 responsible for protecting the French State from external and internal threats – the Direction du Surveillance Territoire (DST). Although like all the other French intelligence agencies it emerged somewhat murkily from the Second World War – it had had an enviable record since. The DST claimed with some justification never to have been penetrated by the Russians. They had one clear advantage over their colleagues at MI5 – they were essentially part of the police force and regarded themselves primarily as policemen. Thus they were happy doing bread and butter work like surveillance, hanging around in dingy bars and mosques. They never hankered after the James Bond life or the lifestyle of their intelligence counterparts who worked abroad. Protecting France and its way of life in France was a high enough calling. They had an additional advantage in that most Frenchmen had a certain idea of France.
President Sarkozy had re-organised the French intelligence establishment a couple of years before combining RG and DST into a new organisation. It made sense and worked well: combining a great tradition of collecting and considering valuable low-lever intelligence with the more traditional skills of a security police set up. But the new headquarters in an upmarket suburb did not appeal to some of the old hands who preferred their traditional stomping ground close to the Eiffel Tower at 7 Rue Nélaton, where today’s meeting with Celia Nevinson and Daniel Jacot was to take place.
As Jacot looked out at the French countryside speeding past his window he was struck by one difference between the two countries. The French had no intelligence heroes. Police heroes yes, but the spy had a different status in France. He or she remained not quite respectable in the popular mind. To work for the state was good – too good perhaps in these austere times. But the intelligence agent had been forever compromised by the war. It was unfair of course. Not every spook went to work for Vichy but the damage was done. But the Brits had James Bond. Jacot enjoyed both the books and the films but could not help wondering if the whole thing wasn’t an exercise in nostalgic fantasy. One of those scraps you clung onto when everything else familiar and re-assuring that propped up your status and national self esteem was gone. Like a pensioner of the Habsburgs we clung on to our trinkets and our past. All else had gone but at least we had a good analytical handle on our decline.
Like the remote wolf ancestors of today’s pet dogs who abandoned their independence in exchange for being looked after by men, we made a deliberate decision. Anything would be better than facing the full implications of our lost status. We preferred domestication by the United States to international insignificance.
The French had had much the same experience of decline but had internalised it through seeking to influence the EU. Jacot wondered if the French national mood would darken if the various crises afflicting that organisation got out of hand. But for now the French seemed very onside, especially since Libya. The newspapers suggested that there had been some kind of rupture between the French President and the British prime minister, but the word inside the cabinet office was that relations were as warm as before. It certainly made sense. French calculations had changed. The one clear effect of the current instability was to increase the power of Germany. Anathema to most Frenchmen. A renewed Entente Cordiale with their old adversaries the British to offset German hegemony would be preferable for many.
A Jaguar from the embassy met them at the Gare Du Nord and whisked them to the Rue Nélaton. They walked up to the security desk.
‘Madame la Baronesse Nevinson’, a voice boomed from behind them. They both turned. A large man with an olive complexion moved forward nimbly to kiss Nevinson on the cheeks – many times.
‘Madame Le National Security Adviser’ he chuckled. ‘Enchanté.’ He bowed low.
‘How nice to see you Monsieur Directeur. Monsieur le Directeur Gilles Navarre – this is my assistant Colonel Daniel Jacot.’
‘Mon Colonel’. And with that he swept them both into a lift which, in the way of French lifts, creaked slowly up to the fourth floor.
It was one of the most beautiful offices Jacot had ever seen. Decorated in the Empire style – all mirrors and striped material – you half expected the Empress Josephine to waft in. A portrait of Napoleon hung on one of the walls. Behind the director’s desk three large French windows overlooked the street with a good view of the Eiffel Tower beyond. In a corner a table was set for lunch – for four. They sat down around the gilded First Empire desk.
‘Monsieur Directeur, it was good of you to find the time to see us’, Lady Nevinson began.
‘Madame la Baronesse, I am as ever at your service. We have much to discuss.’
‘Colonel Jacot is a distinguished colleague of mine who shares many of my views. One view in particular.’
‘Of course.’
‘But I have not yet explained to him how it works.’
‘I think explaining over lunch would be in order.’
They moved to the small table in the corner. Jacot as well as being hungry was interested to see what they would get to eat. The catering in the Cabinet Office was like a works canteen in the 1950s. Jacot kept a small fridge in his office out of desperation and filled it with a few good things. Lady Nevinson occasionally asked to borrow some of his white burgundy or a salad. She had viewed him as something of a gourmet until she had discovered him eating corned beef sandwiches one day at his desk – an old army habit that was impossible to discard. MI5 and MI6 had better food. “C” was rumoured to keep a fine cellar – particularly strong in claret.
Navarre pressed a buzzer on his desk before sitting down. ‘Let me introduce you to a colleague.’ A few seconds later a young woman entered the room. She had obviously been waiting to be summoned. She nodded at the director and at Celia Nevinson whom she must have met before.
‘Monica Zaden – Daniel Jacot.’ The introductions were made.
She was in her mid thirties probably. Dark shining hair and olive skin. She was one of the most striking women Jacot had ever seen. And tall. Nearly six foot he reckoned. She sat down next to him.
‘Mme Zaden is one of our most experienced operatives. She has been undercover for some time in various grisly suburbs of Paris keeping an eye on some of our “bearded chums”, if I can put it like that. But it is time for a change of scene and I am pleased to say that she has been posted to our London Embassy. Part of her duties will be to liaise with your intelligence people.’
‘You say “part of her duties”’, Jacot intervened.
‘Yes, yes. Part’, replied Navarre.
Zaden herself continued, ‘Don’t worry. I won’t be undercover, I won’t have to live in Londonistan, and I won’t be on the front line but I will have overall responsibility for our agents in London who are concerned with Islamist extremism.’
Navarre had the decency to look embarrassed. ‘I am afraid that we prefer to keep our own eyes on some of the hotheads you appear to be willing to put up with in London.’ He shrugged.
Lady Nevinson did not seem put out, so Jacot did not pursue the line any further. Despite the presence of this beautiful girl and the congenial Navarre, Jacot was feeling increasingly uncomfortable. But Nevinson was all smiles. The waiters started to serve lunch.
Navarre dispatched his plain green salad with walnut dressing at speed and took large sips of ice-cold Chablis. He laughed, flashing his teeth at Nevinson. His mood continued to improve over a thick slice of cold beef fillet served with green beans, accompanied by two glasses of an unidentified but silky and strong red burgundy.
As Jacot tasted it Nevinson laughed, ‘I can see you are trying to work out where it’s from. It is extraordinarily good but you won’t get the answer. French intelligence have their methods. They also have their own vineyards.’
Navarre grinned. ‘What is the point of being the director of French Domestic Intelligence if you cannot have decent wine? Austerity yes. But not for Monsieur le Directeur of counter-terror. Anyway in France we organize these things better. In your country it is not the done thing to earn more than your prime minister if you are in public service. Here no one cares – as long as your cellar is not better than the Elysée.’
Everyone laughed. Jacot relaxed and got stuck in too. There may be no such thing as a free lunch in the intelligence world, and he certainly got that feeling, but he was going to enjoy it anyway.
Admiring a thick slice of Roquefort, Navarre finally came to the point. Looking at Lady Nevinson he said just one word, ‘Magenta?’
‘Magenta’, replied Nevinson.
All three smiled conspiratorially at Jacot.
Jacot was puzzled. Extremely puzzled. Actually he was alarmed. He thought Magenta was an entirely British affair. Here he was in the grand office of the head of the French equivalent of MI5 along with the British National Security Adviser no less. With possibly the most dazzlingly pretty French lady spook imaginable in attendance. And it seemed as if there was a private secret between them. He felt he was playing intelligence gooseberry.
The waitress left closing the doors behind her.
‘Madame La Baronesse?’
‘Yes I suppose I should. Jacot, I have come here for a meeting with my old friend Gilles – routine business really. We go back a long way – Saigon in the early 70s. We were both there when Saigon fell. I told you if you remember.’
Jacot now understood the strange nostalgic 1970s interlude in Nevinson’s office a few days previously. He was being pre-introduced to Gilles Navarre – not just the part he had played in the private life of her youth but the part he played in the intelligence life of her maturity.
Navarre chuckled. He looked like a Frenchman who had led a full life so far and though now in his early sixties fully intended to keep going to the end. ‘Madame Nevinson helped us at a critical time and ever since I personally – and France too I suppose – have been in her debt. We are part of a group – a kind of Franco-British liaison team and we think you should belong as well Mon Colonel.’
She nodded at Navarre.
Jacot said still slightly bewildered, ‘I had assumed, Lady Nevinson, that it was an all-British affair.’
‘Well, it’s not. It has a branch office in France. Indeed the Magenta codes and ciphers and various bits of kit are a joint Franco-British venture.’
‘You’re joking, of course.’
‘No. And as I said in London I want you to be part of the group. It’s small for now anyway but all of us are absolutely on side.’
‘Who else? I mean who else apart from these good people?’
Navarre said, ‘Never mind. It’s too dangerous. Not for our lives I hope but for our careers and our nerves. Madame La Baronnesse and I still have some secrets from each other.’
Jacot was stunned.
Navarre continued, ‘Your GCHQ works very closely with its American counterpart NSA – no doubt it gives you many advantages of which frankly our people are jealous. But it gives you two great disadvantages. One is that your system is completely intertwined with the Americans. The second is that you think like them technically. I can’t pretend that the French do not have their own methods, Mon Colonel. Unlike Captain Reynaud in Casablanca I am not shocked. It is true that we used to bug the seats in First Class on Air France. Nor should I explain that we are doing this just because of my friendship with Madame La Baronesse Nevinson. We are doing it in the interests of France as you would expect. But our interests coincide.’
He took a sip of his Burgundy and went on. ‘We had been worried for some time about our own communications. In particular the communication network surrounding our nuclear deterrent, which seems to have been subject to a sophisticated technical attack. We assumed initially that it was the usual suspects, but we do not think so now. It was almost certainly a technical attack by the United States. We are not sure whether the Americans wanted to find out how our command and control worked or whether they were actually trying to take control of it. Unlike yours our nuclear deterrent is not just called independent, in fact it really is. It can actually be launched by the President of the Republic in concert with a few others – all of them French. The codes and technical and engineering procedures required to get the missiles in the air are all under exclusive French control. As are the communications and the targeting. None of those apply to the English system I understand. But I digress.
‘To cut a long story short, last summer various ministers from your Coalition government spent their holidays in southern France, some quite close to where some of our nuclear facilities are. Two of the ministers, as far as we could tell, were required to be in touch with London and were receiving highly encrypted information for I think what you call their electronic red boxes. After some embarrassments a few years ago we do not as a rule try to intercept English communications.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘But we had hardened our nuclear communications to confuse the Americans. How shall I say – one of our command and control installations is in a part of France well known for its English tourists? We began to pick up indications of what might be a technical attack. But on investigation our system was not the target – one of your minister’s encrypted communications were. And yes it was the Americans. And we believe that they were able to read what your minister was sending and receiving. We have a more modest signals capability than you but because we don’t trust the Americans we are more sophisticated at keeping them out.’
‘I am afraid it get’s worse Daniel.’ Celia Nevinson looked appalled.
‘Yes, Mon Colonel. Indeed it does. As a result of our findings last summer we sent a small detachment out to Afghanistan – to make sure that our communications there are secure. They are but… and I think you know what I am going to say – yours are not. Some of the messages between your generals in the field and London are being read in real time in Washington. The scale of it surprised even us wearily cynical French.’
‘But Lady Nevinson – if this is the case we should take our information to GCHQ. The third party rule would apply – we can’t tell our people that the French told us, but at least we could improve our own security. A country has to have some secrets after all. Surely, Monsieur le Directeur, that is what a patriotic Englishman should do.’
Navarre stared down at the table avoiding Jacot’s gaze. There was silence. Nevinson looked out of the window. Only Zaden looked at him.
After several seconds Nevinson turned her head back from the window and looked him straight in the eye. ‘Daniel, we have thought of that. And you are right that would be the correct thing to do. But there is one rather crucial detail you still do not know about. We are not sure, the French are not sure, but there are some additional oddnesses about the comms attacks picked up by the French last summer and a few weeks later in Afghanistan. French technicians believe that on both occasions our systems alar
med, warned our people that some kind of attack was underway. There’s a protocol for that; what an outside observer like the French should have been able to see was some kind of adjustment of the system – a change in the transmitting frequency or the levels of encryption – a defensive manoeuvre, for instance. It should be like Chess. But nothing. It’s possible that we were trying to be clever – a kind of Donald Rumsfeld action – we know that you know, but you don’t know that we know. But it’s strange nevertheless. When our strongly encrypted stuff is attacked by the Chinese or the Russians our system behaves differently. In the case of these attacks it’s as if we don’t care.’
‘Or maybe you do but the people who saw the alarm don’t, or maybe someone did raise the alarm’, said Monica ‘and didn’t live to tell the tale.’
‘That’s absurd.’ Jacot looked weary. ‘So in summary French spooks are telling us that the Americans are reading chunks of our strongly encrypted data and we don’t seem to care.’
‘I am afraid, Daniel, there you have it. And times are changing which means we now will have to act more vigorously. Both the French and ourselves have been picking up signs in both intelligence and diplomatic reporting of increased paranoia in the Americans. Not so much the elected politicians but the officials, what some call the permanent government. We know – the world knows – that parts of the American set up got out of control post 911. Even the most sceptical minds underestimated the sheer vengeance of what they were up to all over the globe. They got mad and then tried to get even. It doesn’t work. If you really want to screw your enemies you need to keep a cool head.’
‘But we know all this Lady Nevinson. What’s different now?’ asked Jacot.
The Falklands Intercept Page 9
