and the Chinese are not only in bed together, they’re screwing each other’s brains out.”
“I’m not sure I can handle that image,” Hawke said.
“No choice. You landed smack in the middle of this unholy romance when you grabbed Brock without asking permission. The Chinese are going to be gunning for you soon enough. Bonaparte already is.”
“What’s in it for the Chinese?”
“Oil. We think France, now that she’s going it alone, is going to make some kind of move in the Gulf. China will back her. If the alliance proves successful there, Bonaparte will run France at China’s pleasure. That’s President McAtee’s view, and most folks in Washington share it.”
“The Chinese get a toehold in the Gulf and the French people get a direct descendant of their glorious emperor. It makes perverse sense.”
“You bet. The name Bonaparte translates to priceless political cachet with the populace of France. France is sick to death of being marginalized politically. The last half of the twentieth century wasn’t kind to them. The French people, and Bonaparte, despise being lumped in with ‘Old Europe,’ as the press now calls them. That’s why they voted against the EU constitution.”
“So the new France is really the old France.”
“Exactly. Believe me when I tell you that Bonaparte uses this current nostalgia for past glory to full advantage. The man generates enormous excitement wherever he speaks. Verging on hysteria at times. Even the ancien noblesse seem to go all giddy about him. Aristocrats, farmers, academia. The whole country seems to see him as the second coming.”
“Don’t tell me he’s got brains, too.”
Brick nodded. “Brilliant politician. Great student of global military and naval history. Solves solitary chess problems every second he gets alone. That type. I wouldn’t hesitate to use the word ‘genius,’ Alex. And you know I never use that word. I also believe he’s batty as a bedbug.”
Hawke said nothing, and continued to look at the photograph Brick had handed him, studying the man’s face carefully. He had the same handsome cast of expression, the same hooded and dark almond eyes, as Napoleon. The eyes, that was the thing. They looked as if they could ignite the paper they were printed on. A dangerous opponent by any standard.
“Is he short, too?” Hawke asked, dropping the paper to the carpet as if it had singed his fingertips.
“No, but he acts like it.”
“Napoleonic complex,” Hawke said, grinning. “I didn’t know Napoleon had any children, Brick.”
“Not with Josephine. That’s where most people get it wrong. The two of them couldn’t bear children together. Her problem, not his, apparently. He strayed from the marital bed. When his mistress, Princess Maria Louisa of Austria, became pregnant with his son and heir, Boney dumped Josephine and married the princess.”
“And she delivered?”
“Indeed, she did. Just what Boney wanted. A son. The kid was dubbed Napoleon Francois-Joseph Charles, heir to the French Empire and the king of Rome.”
“You’ve done your homework. I remember now that there was a child with the second wife. But I thought the boy died young.”
“Did indeed. Napoleon’s son died of consumption at age twenty-one.” Brick took another sip of his whisky. He was gradually warming the cold out of his bones.
“Twenty-one,” Hawke said. “So, this Napoleon the Second would certainly have been old enough to have children of his own.”
“Exactly. Never married, however. He liked to romp with the sporting ladies who frequented the arcades near the Ecole Militaire. His only known consorts were courtesans and hookers. One of them could easily have given birth to a boy and been paid to keep quiet about it.”
“What do you think, Brick? Personally. Is this guy going all the way to the top?”
“He could. He’s a star, Alex. You’ve seen his press. The country idolizes him, schoolchildren make up songs about him, and the current regime in Paris is terrified of him. And, rightly so. President Bocquet and his prime minister, Honfleur, were just reelected by a very slim margin. They’ve already got the long knives out for him.”
“How so?”
“The Elysee Palace insiders aligned with Bocquet and Honfleur and their cronies in the mainstream French media now claim the golden boy, Luca Bonaparte, is a fraud. Worse yet, a Corsican. Sacrebleu! Dangerous. Unstable. Naturally they would say that. He’s a clear and present danger to their tenuous grip on power. They’ve already taken to calling him ‘Phony-Boney’ in the right-wing press.”
“The right wing doesn’t like him because he’s a Mao-style Communist. And the left doesn’t like him because he doesn’t play by the rules. I need to know which side I’m on in this goddamn fight,” Hawke said, and Kelly smiled.
“You’re on my side. Anyway, Boney actually is a bona-fide Corsican and everybody at Langley who has looked into it says, short of a DNA confirmation, he’s probably a legitimate descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte.”
“You must be digging up some real dirt on this guy, Brick. Knowing you the way I do.”
“Yeah. And if we could prove it, we’d shovel it right to Honfleur and Bocquet. Let them do all the work. One of the stories we’re checking is based on a rumor Brock paid a lot of money for while running down General Moon in China. The gist of it is that when Bonaparte was a kid in Corsica he was an assassin for the left wing of the Union Corse. Something called the Brigade Rouge. At fifteen, the kid supposedly murdered his own father. Shot him in front of Napoleon’s Tomb, if you can believe that. Then hung him from the dome of the cathedral for good measure and left him there. Swinging in the breeze right above Napoleon’s sarcophagus.”
“Good God. Why?”
“Who knows? The way Brock heard it, his father got sideways with someone. One theory is his father was too right wing for his son’s leftist sensibilities, so the kid popped him. The other is the old man had murdered an American capo from Brooklyn. In those days, the Mob and the Corse were eating at the same table. Sharp elbows. Luca’s father crossed some line, and Luca took him out. He’s definitely got a purge mentality.”
“Sounds like he can’t decide if he’s Napoleon or Joe Stalin.”
“Close enough. As you say, Luca Bonaparte, though he would never admit this publicly, is not the moderate left-wing French politician we’ve all grown to know and love. He’s an old-style Stalinist Commie, Alex, with a dash of Chairman Mao thrown in for flavor. If he gets in power, watch out. We think this psychotic French fruit-cake is hellbent on world domination and will gladly kill anyone who gets in his way.”
Hawke looked at Kelly and said, “I know the world has passed me by when I hear ‘French’ and ‘world domination’ in the same sentence.”
“It’s not funny and it’s not that far-fetched, Alex. Think about it. We now know for certain that Bonaparte is backed by the boys from Beijing. Beijing happens to possess one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals. We have absolutely no reason to believe they won’t use it if we go to the brink.”
“Why on earth would they ever go to the brink?”
“Oil. That’s the imperative. They have to have it and they’ll do absolutely whatever is necessary to get it.”
“Risk nuclear annihilation?”
“China could lose a number roughly the size of the entire U.S. population in an all-out exchange and still have a billion or so souls to soldier on under the red banner. They are ascendant, the most powerful Communist dictatorship on earth, and the greatest threat we face in this century. Now they’ve got an ally in the heart of old Europe that wants to go along for the ride.”
“Christ. Teetering on the edge again, aren’t we, old Brick? If the Manchurian Candidate ever wakes up, we’ll have to ask him for advice on how we go about stopping all this.”
“While he’s wired to a polygraph, obviously.”
“Can we talk about this over food, Brick? I’m starved, and I think Pelham has our supper ready.”
“Just one more thing. We think our guy is homicidal, maybe psychopathic. A lot of this kid’s bodies are buried on Corsica. Even more family members, so rumor has it. And no doubt in remote corners of France, too, where his political rise has been a wee bit too meteoric.”
“Can you actually pin anything on him?”
“Not yet. Boney’s record has been scrubbed squeaky clean. Nobody’s ever even tried to pin his father’s murder on him, by the way. To this day, it’s booked on the gendarmes’ records as an unsolved homicide. They’ve
