Location: Volta S.A. plant (Ivry-sur-Seine)
Date: June 1985, 08:00 a.m.
Point of view: Omniscient (Slippery Focus on Karim and Lazarus)
The June sun struggled to break through the heavy grey clouds that stagnated over Ivry-sur-Seine. Inside the Volta factory, the harsh light of the industrial neon lights had not been extinguished all night.
It was seven fifty-five. Assembly line workers would soon arrive for their shifts, but for now, the warehouse was shrouded in cathedral silence, disturbed only by the hum of UNIX servers and the hum of the coffee machine.
Karim Belkacem held a trembling plastic cup in his hands. He was pacing back and forth on the metal walkway, his eyes surrounded by black, his skin glistening with a sticky sweat that had refused to dry since they had risen from the sewers of Paris. Every thirty seconds, he stopped, pushed aside the Venetian blinds of the bay window of the overhanging office, and scanned the deserted street below.
"They're coming, Bonaparte," Karim stammered, his voice breaking in the silence of the shed. "They're going to show up. I threw up twice this morning. I hear sirens everywhere. We should have fled. We should have taken the cash register and gone to Switzerland. »
Seated behind his metal desk, Lazare Bonaparte was slowly turning the page on Le Figaro. He was wearing an immaculate white shirt, without a tie, with an open collar. He had taken the time to take an icy shower when he got home, to shave carefully, and to dress with the rigor of a man who is about to sign a contract of the century.
"If we had fled, Karim, we would have become fugitives," replied Lazarus, without looking up from his article on the stock market. "Fleeing is the confession of the guilty. However, we have not stolen anything. We conducted an unsolicited security audit. We are service providers who expect their customer to respond. »
"An unsolicited audit?!" Karim almost yelled, panic shattering his last reserves of restraint. "We hacked the National Defense network! We encrypted memos on nuclear submarines! This is high treason! You left our name in plain text on the terminal of the General Staff! Volta! What did they need? Five minutes to call the clerk of the commercial court and find our Kbis? They have our address, Lazarus! They know where we are! »
"Of course they do," the young CEO nodded peacefully. He folded up his newspaper and placed it on the edge of the desk, aligned to the millimeter with the desk pad. "That was the purpose of the operation. The State does not consult the directory when it has a problem. You have to force the state to invite itself into your home. »
Lazarus lifted his cup of coffee and took a sip. His black, unfathomable eyes were fixed on the armored door of the main entrance, fifty meters below.
The sixty-year-old engineer who lived in this eighteen-year-old corps knew the mechanics of the Republic better than anyone else. He knew exactly what had happened since 4:30 a.m.
He was visualizing the communication desks of the Ministry of Defense on Boulevard Saint-Germain. He imagined the officer on duty discovering Volta's message, the screen blackened, the stream of vital data suddenly transformed into an indecipherable cryptographic mush. He imagined the emergency calls made to the generals who woke up with a start, the immediate summoning of the management of the DST (Directorate of Territorial Surveillance) and the DGSE.
It was not anger that animated the state apparatus at that precise moment. It was terror. A visceral terror, coupled with an unbearable humiliation. The heart of French military power, its reputedly inviolable network, closed in on itself, had just been padlocked from the outside. If this fact leaked to the press, if the Americans or the Soviets learned about it, the entire government was in danger of falling.
To wash away this affront, to plug the breach before it was made public, the state was not going to send two inspectors in raincoats with a summons. The state was going to strike down the lightning.
BAM.
The noise was so violent that Karim dropped his cup of coffee, which crashed into the metal grating.
A second, terrifying impact shook the walls of the warehouse. The heavy iron curtain of the main entrance had just been hit by a hydraulic battering ram mounted on a heavy vehicle. The security hinges, designed to resist burglars, tore off the cement under the unprecedented pressure.
CRAAAACK.
The iron curtain collapsed with a deafening metallic crash, letting in the gray morning light and a cloud of brick dust.
"POLICE! FREEZE! »
The order was shouted over a loudspeaker, followed immediately by the heavy trampling of dozens of assault boots on the epoxy resin. De-encirclement grenades exploded in series in the workshop, projecting blinding flashes and a sound that shattered eardrums. The white smoke invades the space in a few seconds.
Karim let out a scream of terror, tripped back against his desk, and fell to his knees with his hands pressed to his ears.
About twenty men from the Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI), supported by tactical agents from the DST, had just stormed the plant. They wore black balaclavas, heavy bulletproof vests, and pointed HK MP5 assault rifles sweeping every corner of the workshop.
They were not taking any risks. They expected to find a heavily armed terrorist cell, mercenaries from the east or a paramilitary commando. The disproportion of the force deployed was a direct expression of the panic of the government.
"OFFICE UPSTAIRS! TWO TARGETS! One of the tactical operators yelled, pointing the barrel of his weapon at the bridge's bay windows.
Half a dozen men in black climbed the metal staircase with the speed of a pack of wolves.
The door of the glass office was smashed with kicks. Shards of safety glass rained down on the carpet.
"ON THE GROUND! HANDS BEHIND THEIR BACKS! LYING DOWN! »
Karim, paralyzed by fear, almost sobbing, was violently tackled to the ground. A heavy knee smashed between his shoulder blades, taking his breath away. His arms were pulled back roughly, and the cold metal of the tightening handcuffs cut into his wrists. He felt the barrel of a gun press against his temple. His career, his life, everything ended here, in the dust of the factory.
Lazarus, for his part, had not made the slightest gesture of flight.
When the door had exploded, he had simply stood up. Slowly. The back perfectly straight, the hands open, palms turned forward as a sign of absolute surrender.
The tactical operator who rushed at him stopped for a fraction of a second, destabilized by the immobility of the target's statue. The elite policeman was used to facing panic, aggressiveness, or flight. But the boy in the white shirt looked at him without blinking, without blinking an eyelid, with the mineral calm of a general inspecting his troops.
"To the ground, I said!" the officer yelled, approaching to mow him down.
"I'm not armed. I am fully cooperating," Lazarus said in a polar voice, kneeling on his own with millimeter fluidity, crossing his fingers behind his neck even before he was ordered to.
He applied the arrest protocol to the letter, depriving the intervention forces of the slightest pretext for using physical violence against him. The officer, a little disturbed by this chilling professionalism, handcuffed him firmly but without throwing him to the ground.
In the factory below, plainclothes agents—DST analysts—were already beginning to secure the UNIX stations, unplugging the hard drives, photographing the benches, and seizing the fifty V-1 modules ready for delivery. The state swallowed the technological crime scene.
"Get them up," ordered a man in a dark suit, wearing an orange armband, who had just entered the devastated office. His gaze slid over Karim, in a state of shock, then stopped at Lazarus. The DST officer narrowed his eyes, incredulous at the suspect's age.
Karim was brutally dragged to his feet. Volta's technical director staggered, short of breath, tears in his eyes.
Lazarus straightened up. As he was pushed towards the stairs, he met Karim's eyes.
In this chaos of screaming police, smoke and automatic weapons, the young CEO imposed a moment of mental silence. His black eyes stared at his lieutenant's reddened eyes. Lazarus' silent message was absolutely clear, a direct officer's order dealing with his soldier:
Total silence. Whatever they tell you, shut up. Let me play.
Karim swallowed and looked away, nodding imperceptibly.
The two young men were pushed roughly down the stairs, through the police-infested Tolbiac factory, under the pale morning light. Outside, the street had been cordoned off by dozens of police vehicles with flashing lights. Onlookers were kept at a distance by security cordons.
Lazarus was thrown into the back of a heavy unmarked van, followed closely by Karim. The metal doors closed with a dull noise, plunging them into the half-light, lit only by a small barred porthole.
The vehicle's engine roared, and the two-tone siren ripped through the air. The convoy moved at full speed towards Paris, escorted by motorcyclists.
Karim, curled up on the tin bench, his hands cuffed behind his back, let out small uncontrollable moans. The reality of high treason was imposed on him.
"It's over... He sobbed, his head resting on his knees. "Twenty years... We're going to get twenty years in prison... »
Sitting opposite him, Lazarus leaned comfortably against the side of the van, accompanying the jolts of the road with flexibility. His wrists were shackled, but his mind was already flying ten moves ahead of the board. The panic of the state was irrefutable proof that the V-1 module was unclassifiable. If they had been able to break his code, they would have sent simple financial investigators. If they deployed the GIGN and the BRI, it was because they were still stuck outside their own systems.
Lazarus looked at his terrified friend, and a very faint, almost affectionate smile stretched the corner of his lips.
"This is not an arrest, Karim," Lazarus whispered over the siren howl. "She's a VIP escort. The customer is eager to meet us. »
Location: Premises of the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DST), rue des Saussaies (Paris 8th)
Date: June 1985, 2:00 p.m.
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare Bonaparte)
The basement of the Ministry of the Interior, rue des Saussaies, had not been designed to house the justice of men, but to stifle the murmurs of reasons of state.
The secure interrogation room where Lazarus had been thrown six hours earlier resembled a vault. A blind box, painted an institutional grey that is chipped in places, measuring just three by four metres. The air was heavy, recycled by asthmatic ventilation that diffused a subtle smell of ozone and cold sweat. In the center, a solid steel table, sealed to the raw concrete floor, and two metal chairs with uncomfortable backrests. On the right wall, a large two-way mirror reflected the image of a teenager in a white shirt.
Behind that glass, Lazare knew full well, an army of analysts, intelligence psychologists, and senior officers scrutinized his every shudder. They were waiting for him to crack. Whether he rubs his wrists bruised by the handcuffs, whether he cries, whether he asks for his mother or a lawyer.
But Lazarus did not move.
Sitting with his back perfectly straight, his hands flat on the cold metal of the table, he stared at his own reflection with a mineral placidity. In his mind, the sixty-year-old engineer was regaining full control of the nervous system of his eighteen-year-old body. He had experienced much worse interrogations in his previous life. Jails in Eastern Europe where the notion of human rights was just a bourgeois joke. Here, in Paris, he was protected by the veneer of the Republic.
However, the tension was unbearable, because in the adjacent room, the Republic did not have the same respect for its technical director.
Through the thick partition Lazarus could hear the muffled screams. Not screams of physical pain, but of psychological terror. The barking of DST officers falling on Karim Belkacem. The scholarship student was being crushed. He was to be shouted at that he was going to spend the next twenty years in solitary confinement, that his family in Algeria was going to be worried, that his life was a field of ruins.
Lazarus closed his eyes for a moment. Hold on, Karim. Let them burn out.
Suddenly, the heavy armored door of the cell opened with a metallic crash.
The airlock of pale light let three men in.
The first was Divisional Commissioner Lemaire. With drawn features and a greyish face, the DST officer seemed to have aged ten years since his visit to the rue d'Assas. His gaze avoided that of Lazarus, consumed by the discomfort of having to treat the son of his former brother-in-arms like a terrorist of the worst kind.
The second man, on the other hand, radiated pure and devastating hostility. He was a soldier. A Lieutenant General. The three silver stars on his epaulettes and the rows of medals on his bulging chest testified to a life spent in command. His face, cut with a pruning hook, was red with a suppressed fury. He exuded the rage of the powerful man who has just been publicly castrated.
The third man remained in the background, near the door. A civilian in a dark suit, carrying a metal briefcase connected to his wrist by handcuffs. A liaison officer of the Élysée or Matignon.
Lemaire stepped forward to pull the chair in front of Lazarus, but the General pushed him away with a blow of his shoulder. The soldier refused to sit down. He rested both clenched fists on the steel table, leaning forward until his face was inches away from the teenager's.
"You breathe the air of a dead man, Bonaparte," spat the General, his deep voice vibrating with menace. "You don't know it yet, you think you're smart with your little computers, but you're already buried."
Lazare blinked slowly, holding the officer's gaze without blinking.
"High treason," the soldier continued, hammering out every syllable. "Attack on State security. Sabotage of critical infrastructures of the National Defense. Intelligence with a foreign power. I could have you shot in the courtyard of the Invalides if we were in time of war. Failing that, I'll personally make sure that you languish in a three-square-meter cell, without daylight, until your bones rot. »
"I have no understanding with any foreign power, General," Lazarus replied in a polar voice, the grown-up resonance of which once again surprised Lemaire. "If I were a Soviet or American agent, I wouldn't have left my company's signature on your ticker. And you'd be reading about your nuclear submarine compromise in the Washington Post. »
BAM!
The General struck the table violently with the flat of his hand. The noise startled Lemaire, but Lazare didn't back down a millimetre.
"Shut your mouth!" the soldier yelled, the veins on his neck throbbing under the collar of his uniform. "You have violated the staff network! You've read documents classified as Secret Defense! Who do you think you are, little? Your father was a hero of the Nation! Auguste Bonaparte sacrificed his flesh in Lebanon so that France would remain standing! The only reason you're not right now in a bathtub coughing up blood under the question is the name! Your name protects you for a few more minutes! But I don't give a damn about your father. Give me the code to unlock our network. Right now. »
The tug-of-war had just begun. The General thought he could terrorize a high school student. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost from the Action Service.
"I will give nothing," whispered Lazarus. "Not until we discuss the terms of surrender."
"Surrender?!" The General burst into a joyless laugh, the laugh of a cornered predator. He strode round the table and seized Lazarus by the collar of his white shirt. With brute force, he half lifted the teenager from his chair.
"Listen to me, you pretentious little shit," the soldier hissed in Lazarus' ear. "Do you think you're in a movie? Do you think we're going to negotiate with a pubescent terrorist? Your servers in Ivry have been seized. My DGA experts are in the process of disassembling them. We'll find your key. And when we get it, I'll have you thrown into a hole so deep that even God will forget your existence. »
Lazarus did not try to free himself. He let the soldier use his physical strength, aware that it was the last refuge of intellectual impotence.
"Let him go, General," Lemaire finally interjected in a tired voice. "He will not give in to physical constraint. He is the son of Augustus. He has the same icy blood. »
The General violently pushed Lazarus away, who fell back into his chair. The young man calmly adjusted his crumpled collar.
"Your DGA experts won't find anything," Lazare said, as if the physical assault had been just a slight draught. "Let me explain to you the magnitude of your defeat, General. You are not mad because I have committed a crime. You are mad with rage because I proved to you, in two hours, from a filthy sewer and with rudimentary equipment, that the safe of the French State is an illusion. »
Lazarus placed his hands flat on the table and leaned forward. The power dynamic had just shifted.
"The document on your submarines classified Le Redoutable has not been erased. It's always on your network. But it is encapsulated in a 1024-bit RSA asymmetric encryption key. The architecture of your mainframes, provided by your dear usual manufacturers, will take about three centuries to factor the prime numbers needed to read it. »
"We have your factory computer! We have your accomplice! barked the General. "We're going to make him talk! If it is necessary to break his fingers one by one, Lemaire will take care of it! »
"Karim doesn't have the key," Lazarus said. "The master key was randomly generated during kernel compilation and stored in the V-1 module that I plugged into your line. A physical module. Molded in an epoxy resin saturated with alumina. If your technicians try to open it, pierce it, or apply solvents, the resin will tear the matrix out of the silicon. The chip will self-destruct. The code will disappear. And your strategic data will be permanently lost in the limbo of the hexadecimal. »
Silence fell in the cell. A leaden silence.
Lazare had just detailed the perfect trap. There was no technical way out. The brute force of the state was breaking against the laws of cryptography and materials chemistry.
The General took a pale step back. He looked at Lemaire. The commissioner lowered his eyes. The DST already knew. Technical analysts had to confirm the words of the teenager behind the two-way mirror. They were taken hostage.
But the pride of the state machine is infinite.
The soldier straightened his shoulders. His gaze became fanatical. The humiliation of accepting defeat at the hands of this eighteen-year-old boy was greater than the loss of the data.
"Then let them be lost," the General said, his voice deathly calm, ready to scuttle the ship rather than give up the helm. "If we have to sacrifice a week of interministerial communications so as not to bow to a blackmailer, I will do it. We'll destroy your damn module, reset the network from backups, and we'll lock you up. Your blackmail stops here, Bonaparte. Lemaire, prepare the transfer papers for the very high security district of Fleury-Mérogis. Without contact with the outside. I want this individual to disappear. »
Lemaire shuddered. He knew that the General was half bluffing, but that the machine, once started, would crush Lazarus and Karim with no way back. The loss of the Navy's tactical data would be a disaster, but the state knew how to cover up its disasters.
Lazarus felt a drop of cold sweat, the first since the beginning of the interrogation, slide down his spine. He had just reached the limit of his strategy. The irrationality of the human ego. The General was ready to mutilate the State to save his honor. If the discussion ended there, Lazarus would end up in the dungeon and Volta S.A. would be destroyed.
We needed an external referee. We needed the supreme voice.
As Lemaire opened his file to fill out the transfer order, a shrill beep tore through the silence of the room.
The civilian in the dark suit, who had remained near the door, jumped. The metal briefcase hanging from his wrist flashed red. It was a secure direct-access communication telephone. The highest level of authorization in the Republic.
The civilian opened the briefcase, picked up the heavy red handset, and listened for a second. His face lost all color.
"General," stammered the civilian, holding out the receiver. "It's... it is the Palace. For you. »
General de Saint-Hubert froze. He stepped forward stiffly, took the phone and put it to his ear.
"My respects, Mr. President..." »
He didn't have time to finish his sentence. The voice on the other end of the line spoke in a monotone, low, but charged with an authority that crushed the General's stars.
The room was so quiet that Lazare and Lemaire could hear the crackling of the voice in the receiver. The General listened, his face changing from red to total lividity. Her eyes avoided Lazarus' gaze.
"But Mr. President... He's a terrorist... It has jeopardized... Yes, Mr. President. Of course. I get it. »
The General slowly lowered his arm. He looked at Lazarus as if he had just seen the devil appear himself. The balance of power had just been destroyed from the absolute top of the pyramid.
"He... He wants to talk to you," the General said with visceral disgust, holding out the red handset to the teenager.
Lazarus rose calmly. He picked up the phone. The heavy plastic was still warm from the General's sweat.
"Lazare Bonaparte," he said simply, without a title of civility, like a head of state addressing one of his peers.
At the other end of the line, a faint nasal laugh rang out. A cynical, weary laugh, loaded with all the culture and all the political malice of a republican monarch. It was François Mitterrand. The "Sphinx".
"Monsieur Bonaparte," murmured Mitterrand's voice, slow and articulate. "I am told that since four o'clock this morning, the military apparatus of my country has been going round in circles like a headless fowl, because a young man of eighteen has decided to lock my communications for fun."
"I am not amused, Mr. President," replied Lazarus with absolute gravity. "And I haven't locked anything that you haven't left open to the four winds. I have demonstrated to you a sovereign urgency. »
"Sovereignty... Mitterrand whispered, amused by the audacity of the term in the mouth of a child. "It's a concept that requires broad shoulders, young man. Your methods are worthy of a putschist. The general staff wants your head, and I have to admit that from a strictly legal point of view, you deserve it. Why should I stop the General from sending you rotting in a fortress? »
"Because you are not a General whose pride has been wounded, Mr. President. You are the guarantor of the continuity of the state," counters Lazarus, staking his life on every syllable. "You know for a fact that the Americans, with the NSA, listen to European networks. You know that the Soviets are infiltrating your cables. If the General locks me up and destroys my module to save face, he leaves you naked. You will remain dependent on foreign technologies. I am not blackmailing you, I am offering you the absolute weapon of French digital independence. The Volta core is tamper-proof. And it is made in France. »
There was a long silence on the secure line.
Mitterrand hated American hegemony. Since the Farewell affair, he had been obsessed with silent cyberwarfare. The idea that a French mastermind, however young and arrogant he may be, had developed a technological shield superior to that of the CIA, awakened in him an implacable pragmatism.
"You are a frightful gambler, Monsieur Bonaparte," replied the voice of the Sphinx. "So be it. You have proven to me your capacity for harm. Give control of the network back to my armies. And present your conditions. But understand this: the Sphinx does not like to be woken up in the middle of the night, and it hates blackmailers. If you betray this country, if your technology proves to be fallible, or if you try to humiliate me again, I will not send you the General of Saint-Hubert.je will send you the action service. And you will disappear. Did we understand each other correctly? »
"The message is clear, Mr. President. The Republic will be impregnable. »
"Pass me Commissioner Lemaire."
Lazare handed the receiver to the DST officer. Lemaire listened for a few seconds, let out a "Yes, Mr. President", and hung up the phone on the briefcase with overwhelmed slowness.
The tug-of-war was over. The French state had just capitulated to the evidence of its own vulnerability.
General de Saint-Hubert picked up his file on the table. His hands trembled with impotent fury. He glared at Lazarus.
"You have won this round, Bonaparte. But don't sit too comfortably in the chair of power. Military personnel have long memories. »
He turned on his heel and walked out of the interrogation room, unable to bear the young man's presence for a second longer.
Lemaire was left alone with Lazarus. The old cop ran a tired hand over his face.
"You played with nuclear fire, Lazarus. Your conditions? »
Lazare sat down again, resuming his position as Chairman and CEO. The maximum-security prison had evaporated, replaced by the negotiating table of the biggest deal of the decade.
"First, a total and immediate amnesty for Karim Belkacem and myself," Lazare dictated, without the slightest trace of triumphalism. "Secondly, the absolute 'Secret Defense' classification of last night's incident. The registers must mention a simple IT resilience exercise organised by the ministry. »
"And for your company?"
Lazarus plunged his hand into his inner pocket. He took out one of the fifty Volta-1 modules and placed it on the steel table. The black monolith shone in the harsh light of the cell.
"An exclusive framework contract, by mutual agreement, bypassing the public procurement commission on the grounds of national defence imperatives. Volta S.A. becomes the sole and mandatory supplier of hardware and software security for the entire French interministerial network, from embassies to the Presidency of the Republic. We will deploy fifty thousand modules over three years. And the state will pay a high price for its security. »
Lemaire looked at the black brick. The cost of this technology was to be in the tens of millions of francs. It was an industrial hold-up legalized by the Élysée.
"I'll get the papers ready," the commissioner sighed. "Write me the unlock sequence for the engineers."
"I'll type it myself on the main terminal," Lazare corrected. "You never give an encryption key in writing."
Lemaire smiled sadly. This kid was a monster of rationality. Augustus would have been terrified, or immensely proud. Maybe both.
"I'll have your friend released," said Lemaire, going to the door. "He cries like a kid next door. You'd better give him a vacation after that, Lazarus. »
"He will rest when our factory runs in three-shifts," replied the Builder.
A few minutes later, in the icy reception hall of the DST, Lazare found Karim. The scholarship student was livid, his eyes reddened, his clothes wrinkled with the smell of cold sweat. When he saw Lazarus approaching him, free, without handcuffs, and accompanied by a commissioner who politely held the door for him, Karim thought he was hallucinating.
"Shall we go?" stammered Karim, his voice trembling. "They let us go? But... Why? »
Lazare placed a firm and reassuring hand on the shoulder of his technical director.
"Because we just signed the biggest state contract of the Fifth Republic, Karim," Lazare replied softly, pushing him toward the glass doors that looked out onto the Rue des Saussaies. "The Leviathan is ours. Go back to bed. Tomorrow, we will have to hire two hundred workers for the Ivry factory. »
The late afternoon sun hit Lazarus' face as he stepped out into the street. Paris was noisy, indifferent to the earthquake that had just shaken its secret foundations. The Builder looked up at the blue sky.
The game of survival was over. The era of absolute conquest had just begun. The Volta Empire, validated by blood and dubbed by state terror, was ready to devour the world.