A sharp chime echoed over the airport’s public address system. “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. We regret to inform you that all incoming and outgoing flights have been canceled. This unfortunate action is made necessary by a twenty-four-hour strike just announced by the national air traffic controllers’ union. All inbound flights are being diverted to either their point of origin or the closest open airfield…”
Within an hour, passenger air travel, a hallmark of the modern age, had come to a complete stop all across France.
Ten thousand leather-clad skinheads and brownshirt fanatics packed Berlin’s wide central avenue, spilling over its shade-tree-lined sidewalks. Black, red, and white swastika banners bobbed above the crowd, and their coarse, guttural voices blended into a rhythmic, almost hypnotic, marching song — the “Horst Wessel.”
Under the disapproving eyes of several hundred heavily armed riot police, some of Germany’s unemployed and under-educated were turning to an old master for new inspiration.
Three hundred meters up the avenue, a small, dark-haired man stood watching the neo-Nazi march come closer. His own pale blue eyes were half-closed in concentration. It was difficult to judge precise distances this far away.
But Joachim Speh, action leader for the Red Army Faction’s Berlin commando, was a master of timing. One hand slipped into his coat pocket, delicately caressing a tiny radio transmitter. Soon, he thought coldly, very soon.
The marching column crossed the Charlotten Strasse, passing close by a rusting, dented Trabant parked on the side of the road. The flat tire and broken jack propped up against the Trabant’s rear end showed its owner’s reason for abandoning his unfashionable vehicle.
Some of the leading skinheads took time out from their singing to hammer their fists along the parked car’s hood and roof, shouting and hollering in glee. The uniformed policemen paralleling the march stirred uneasily, reluctant to let such obvious vandalism go unchecked.
Now. Speh activated the transmitter hidden in his coat pocket.
The bomb he’d planted under the Trabant’s gasoline tank detonated — exploding outward in an expanding ball of orange-red flame, smoke, and razor-sharp steel fragments. Those closest to the car were either blown to pieces or incinerated by flaming gasoline. Outside the fireball, dozens of other marchers and policemen were shredded by white-hot shrapnel or smashed to the pavement by the shock wave.
When the last echoes of the explosion faded away, the street and sidewalk looked like a slaughterhouse. Bodies and parts of bodies dotted the Unter den Linden’s scorched pavement. Those who’d been wounded writhed in agony, screaming for help. Some were still on fire.
Moving calmly, Joachim Speh turned his back on the carnage and walked away. He had other punishment missions to plan.
Nearly four hundred miles from Germany’s strife-torn capital, five grimly determined men faced a battery of television news cameras and microphones.
Behind them cold sunlight glinted off a vast modernistic structure of red concrete, bronze-colored glass, and gleaming steel. During earlier, more optimistic times, the Palace of Europe had contained chambers for the European Parliament — one of the first, tentative steps toward a politically united continent. Now the huge building stood empty, almost completely deserted. Cynics pointed to it as the visible symbol of a faded and foolish dream.
The palace served as a different kind of symbol for the men grouped in front of its main doors. They’d chosen the Strasbourg site as a sign of renewed labor radicalism and unity in Europe’s two most powerful nations. Two of them headed France’s largest trade union confederations. The other three ran organizations representing millions of German laborers, assembly-line workers, and white-collar professionals.
“Fellow citizens and fellow workers, we stand at an historic crossroads.” Markus Kaltenbrunner, the tall, black-haired leader of Germany’s Scientists and Technical Workers Union, had been elected to speak for them all. He paused, knowing his words were being carried live into fifty million homes across the continent. “Down one road, down the path pursued by those in power, lie poverty and degradation for German and French workers. The corporate giants and their government lackeys have one aim, one purpose: to boost their obscene profits by cutting our collective throats! They strip us of our wages and our jobs and hand them over to foreign slaves! And they have the audacity, the utter gall, to ask for our patience and cooperation while this ‘restructuring,’ this cruel robbery, unfolds!”
Kaltenbrunner shook his head angrily. “But we will not stand for it! We will not cooperate in our own destruction.” He nodded toward the other union leaders standing around him. “That is why we have come here today. To join in common cause against those who would reverse the progress of fifty years.
“Accordingly, we have agreed to the following nonnegotiable demands — demands that apply to the corporations and governments of both our great nations.” He pulled a pair of wire-frame glasses from his pocket, flipped them open, and slipped them onto his nose. Then he cleared his throat and began reading from a document handed to him by an aide. “First, we call for an immediate end to the shipments of foreign workers to French- and German-owned factories in central and eastern Europe. All available positions in these facilities must be reserved for true French and German laborers, not for Turks or Algerians!”
The German labor leader scowled. “Second, there must be an immediate and across-the-board moratorium on all layoffs and firings during this time of economic crisis. And finally we call on the politicians in Paris and Berlin to fund massive new public works programs to put our fellow workers back to work. Profits, earnings, and budgets must bow to more important human needs!”
He stopped reading and stared directly into the cameras. “We have no illusions that the politicians and the fat-cat businessmen will agree to do these things simply because they are the
Kaltenbrunner paused again, letting the tension build. “The bureaucrats and plutocrats have until October 7. That gives them five days to accept our terms — without condition and without compromise. If they fail, we will take our people,
The assembled journalists and camera crews stirred in astonishment. The five trade unionists in front of them represented a sizable fraction of the Franco-German labor force. Any job action involving all of them would have almost unimaginable economic consequences.
Kaltenbrunner nodded. “That is right. This is an ultimatum. The governments and corporations must either meet our demands or face a general strike!” He held his right hand up with all five fingers extended. “If our warnings are ignored, in five days’ time no trains will run. No planes will fly. No trucks will bring food to the markets. No factories will operate. And no ships will sail with goods bound for foreign shores!”
No one listening to him could doubt that Markus Kaltenbrunner and his colleagues were in deadly earnest.
The eight men meeting in the presidential palace’s Cabinet Room were dwarfed by the chamber’s high ceiling and massive furniture. Each of the eight ran one of the republic’s most powerful ministries. They represented a self-selected inner circle, and for all practical purposes they controlled the French government. The chair reserved for France’s ailing President was empty.
“A general strike? Now? Can they be serious?” Henri Navarre, the Minister of the Interior, seemed stunned.
Other faces around the table mirrored his bewilderment. For more than a decade, support from the trade unions had helped keep their political party in power. The votes the labor confederations controlled were the margin of victory in any close election. And every recent election had been close.
“They are quite serious.” Jacques Morin, the new director of the DGSE, said it plainly, without emotion. “All reports from our informers point in the same direction. The preparations for a general strike are well under way. Our German allies are seeing the same signs. Isn’t that right, Foreign Minister?”
France’s new Foreign Minister, Nicolas Desaix, nodded in agreement and approval. He’d secured the appointment of his former deputy to head the intelligence service. It was an arrangement that guaranteed him de
