“That, of course is the main trouble, sir,” replied Pierre St. Martin. “They know who they are.”
“Well, whoever they are, they can’t just keep sinking ships and killing people.”
“Sir, they can. And I believe they will, until we stop trying to ship oil out of the Middle East. They have issued a very firm warning, and with that dreadful bastard Morgan in the White House, they are going to continue.”
“Then you are saying we must stop trying to keep this country running?”
“No, sir. I am not. But we have to find other ways of importing oil than with tankers out of the Persian Gulf —”
“But, Pierre,” interrupted the French President, “that’s just not acceptable. We cannot just lie down and give in, like a…like a…poodle.” The President was so angry he could hardly speak.
“Sir, we have to, because those submarines of theirs are impossible to deal with. You cannot even find them, far less destroy them. And even if we did, the Americans could probably produce fifty more.”
“FIFTY!” yelled the President. “FIFTY! That’s ridiculous.”
“Sir, I have told you already. The U.S. Navy is invincible.”
At which point the President of France lost all semblance of control.
“I was only repeating naval advice.”
“GAZING AT YOUR NAVEL…THAT’S THE NEAREST YOU GET TO KNOWLEDGE!” he bellowed. “I am surrounded by lunatics. My friends and my enemies. Imbeciles and killers. And I am sick to death of it.”
At which point, the butler entered the room to announce the arrival of Gen. Michel Jobert’s staff car at the main door downstairs.
“Bring him straight up,” said the President, not even looking at the man.
And three minutes later, the Commander in Chief of France’s joint service Commandment des Operations Speciales walked into the room. General Jobert had presented himself with the task of trying to prove what had happened in the Strait of Hormuz and in the Red Sea. He instantly announced that he was the bearer of important information, which was just as well, given the general atmosphere in that room — the President fit to be tied, his Foreign Minister cowering before the onslaught.
“Sir, as you know,” said the General, “we were unable to discover anything about the
“Their sonar room caught an incoming torpedo three hundred meters out. They even had its bearing. They have the recording and the software, with someone calling out ‘Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo!’
“It’s the first time we have had incontrovertible evidence that our ships were hit by a malevolent enemy. And, sir, it gets better: Four of the crew of the
“Mr. President, we are in a position to go to the United Nations with irrefutable evidence that the United States has committed at least two most terrible crimes on the high seas.”
The President smiled for the first time that morning. “Paul Bedford may have thought he had enough to accuse us publicly, but we
“Except for one thing,” said St. Martin. “The Americans will deny it flatly. They’ll just say it was the Japanese or someone.”
“Not quite,” interjected General Jobert. “When a sonar search system acquires an incoming missile or a torpedo, it instantly bangs it into a software program that identifies the type of sonar the enemy is using.”
He saw the President’s slightly puzzled face, and simplified the matter. “Sir,” he said, “if I walked out of that door and shouted something from the other side, you would know it was me. You’d recognize my voice. Same with a sonar system. When it receives a radar or sonar beam, its computer can identify the source of that beam. In this case, according to the
Again, the President smiled. “Then we have them, General?”
“Yessir.”
“Then we shall humiliate the mighty U.S.A. publicly. I shall broadcast to the entire world, tonight, condemning their actions. I’ll describe them as cold-blooded killers, cowboys, bandits. Irresponsible. Reckless. I’ll say the United Nations should not even be in New York. It should be in Paris. Center of the world…where people are…well, civilized, not madmen.”
“Steady, sir,” cautioned St. Martin. “The Americans would be glad to be rid of the UN. What do they call it…? Yes, the Chat-terbox on the East River.”
“Hmm,” said the President. “We shall see, Pierre. We shall see.”
And that night the roof fell in on international relations between France and the United States of America. The French President made his broadcast at 7 P.M. in Paris, in precisely the terms he had outlined in the Elysee Palace for St. Martin and General Jobert. It was theatrical, accusing, rude in the extreme, and political to the nth degree.
The French President threw at the U.S.A. every insult every French President has longed to utter since World War II. Not even De Gaulle, at his most insufferably imperious, had ever let fly at the world’s policemen with quite that much venom.
And he ended it with this jackhammer flourish: “As from this moment, the envoys of the United States are no longer welcome in this country,” he thundered. “I hereby expel them all. I hereby close down their embassy, which pollutes the beauty of the Avenue Gabriel, not three hundred yards from where I am standing.
“I know that under international law that building and that land is officially designated land of the United States of America. As from this week, it is restored to its proper title deeds. Gabriel Avenue, in its entirety, belongs to
When he marched off the wide upper landing of the Elysee Palace, stepping between the television arc lights, he entered once more his private drawing room and clasped the hand of General Jobert, who had sat and watched the performance onscreen with the Foreign Minister.
“Well, General, how was that?” he demanded. “Did your President do your country proud?”
“Oh, most definitely, sir,” replied the General. “That was a speech from the very…er…heartbeat of the French people. It needed to be said.”
St. Martin once more sounded a word of caution. “It was perfect, sir,” he murmured softly. “Just so long as the Americans don’t get to Col. Jacques Gamoudi before we do.”
And that night the stakes were raised yet again. At 10 P.M. President Paul Bedford formally expelled every French diplomat from their embassy on Reservoir Road in Washington, D.C. And while he was about it, he ordered the following French consulates to close down: New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, and New Orleans.
It was the lowest point of relations between fellow Permanent Members of the UN Security Council since the Russians shot down the United States Air Force U-2 spy plane almost a half century previously.
And with the East Coast of America operating six hours behind Paris, the U.S. newspapers and television stations had ample time to rearrange their front pages and the top story that they had been planning all morning. That was the one about the state of the world economy, the one that had dominated the world’s media ever since the fateful March night when the French Navy had flattened the Saudi oil industry.
Every night things were globally bad, but tonight was especially dismal. There had been a complete electricity blackout in Tokyo, lasting from 11 P.M. to 6 A.M. Not one flicker of a neon light penetrated the blackness, and the Japanese government stated that this might be happening every night until further notice. They warned the
