already on board. Together the three of them controlled the most important functions of the French government — the military, foreign policy, and espionage. Under the emergency decrees now governing France, they held most of the war-making and diplomatic powers ordinarily reserved for the head of state and commander in chief. Once they joined hands, the rest of the rump cabinet would trip all over itself falling into line.
On the surface, executive power in the European Confederation they were proposing would rest with a Council of Nations made up of officials from all member states. But the council would meet only two or three times a year. That and its very size ensured that it could never be anything more than a glorified debating society. In practice, real day-today decision-making would lie in the hands of permanent secretariats. And the leaders for those secretariats would be appointed by France and Germany.
Military matters would be handled through a NATO-like command structure. The Germans were prepared to accept French candidates for the top military and foreign policy slots. They were even willing to integrate their armed forces all the way down to the divisional level.
Those arrangements at least had Guichy’s unhesitating approval. Combining French and German troops in a unified army would act as a powerful check on any future German territorial ambitions. An existing Franco-German corps showed that creating such an army was possible, if not easy. Better yet, he would be the logical choice to head the new confederation’s forces.
“But what do the
“You’re right about that.” Desaix allowed himself a smile. Bored by anything not directly connected with defense policy, Guichy had absented himself from the talks concerned with other matters. “They want us to guarantee their control over the finance and industry posts.”
“And you’ve agreed?”
“Of course.” Desaix shrugged. “We each have our spheres of influence in Eastern Europe and our own vital industries. The Germans know better than to interfere with those. If they want to play at printing pretty new bank notes and setting interest rates for our junior ‘allies,’ I for one see no reason to stop them.”
“True.” Guichy stroked his chin. Awarding Germany the nominal responsibility for making economic policy meant very little. France had long ago learned how to ignore policies and agreements it disliked. In any event, these days the Germans were better businessmen and bankers than they were soldiers and statesmen. “I begin to see why you want this new alliance so badly.” He shook his head in undisguised admiration. “You are a sly one, Nicolas.”
“Merely careful, my friend. I gamble, but only when I know what cards the other players are holding.”
The Defense Minister nodded. “So I’ve seen.” He hesitated. “But what about the wild card? The United States, I mean. I doubt the Americans will want to see Europe unified under our banner.”
“The Americans?” Desaix grimaced. “They’re nothing. All wind and no backbone.”
“But this Polish venture of theirs…”
“Means nothing, Michel.” Desaix contemptuously waved away the U.S. oil and gas supply effort. True, he’d been stunned by the first reports. He’d never expected Washington to break the energy embargo he’d engineered. Since then, however, he’d seen American public and political opinion starting to crack. Americans liked quick, easy victories like the Persian Gulf War. They didn’t have the stomach these days for open-ended, expensive commitments.
That was a weakness — one he planned to exploit.
Desaix laughed sourly. “Even their own Congress is trying to stop these shipments. One small setback and the whole ridiculous thing will come to an end. Like that!” He snapped his fingers. “And when it does, we’ll have the Poles and the Czechs begging at our doorstep.”
He could tell that Guichy liked that image. The Defense Minister was a proud man, and several failed attempts to sell the two countries French military hardware and expertise still burned in his memory. Reports he’d seen suggested that they’d all but laughed at Guichy’s offers before turning to the Americans and British for weapons and advice. Seeing them come crawling for admission to a new European alliance would avenge that insult.
Equally important, Guichy was a patriot. Desaix’s vision of a continent subject to French authority — no matter how indirect or disguised — was bound to stir his spirit. The twentieth century had not been kind to their beloved country. Bled white by World War I and crushed underfoot during World War II, she had been largely ignored by the two superpowers during the cold war years that followed. Now, for the first time in a hundred years, France had a real chance to regain its glory and its rightful place in the sun.
“Well, Michel? Will you stand with me?” Desaix stood waiting while his colleague came to a decision. Though it irked him to plead with any man, he concealed his irritation. For the time being, humility best served his ends.
Slowly, ponderously, the Defense Minister nodded.
Nicolas Desaix had his ally. France would pursue its old imperial ambitions in a new guise.
Heinz Schraeder and Jurgen Lettow, Germany’s Defense Minister, stood at a window overlooking the Orangerie, watching the two Frenchmen take their walk.
Lettow, shorter and leaner than his leader, nodded toward Desaix’s distant figure. “I do not trust that man, Chancellor.” He grimaced. “Was it wise to award the French so much?”
He had reason to be displeased. The treaties they were finalizing would make the ministry he headed only an adjunct to a French-dominated Confederation Defense Secretariat. French generals would command German troops. The Defense Minister’s scowl grew deeper.
Schraeder shrugged, unconcerned. “Let the French strut about in uniform for a time, Lettow. This is a modern age. Who will go to war now?” He smiled thinly. “The rest of these agreements are very much in our favor. We give Desaix and his colleagues a slight measure of authority over the trappings of power — the soldiers and the diplomats — and they give us control of the real
Germany’s Chancellor shook his head. “No, Lettow. We will allow France to bask in its artificial glory while we reshape the continent to our advantage.”
For their own wildly contradictory reasons, Europe’s two strongest powers were coming to the same conclusions.
Colonel Zoltan Hradetsky folded his newspaper and took his feet off the desk. He glanced at the clock hanging on his wall. Only two-thirty in the afternoon. Another hour and a half before he could leave the office, and even that would be an hour earlier than everyone else who worked in the ministry. Of course, his peers had real work to do. He didn’t. After being yanked out of Sopron for offending the French-owned Eurocopter conglomerate, he’d been shunted from dead-end department to dead-end department.
Now stuck in a windowless office, with flaking green paint so old it was starting to look gray, he pushed papers all day. It was bad enough to go from an active, challenging post to a desk job, but what a job!
Oh, his title sounded impressive enough. He was the Ministry of the Interior’s “academy training supervisor.” Hradetsky smiled wryly. Less impressive was the fact that his only task involved monitoring the number of students enrolled in each of the nation’s police training academies. Each day he filled out the proper form and gave it to his immediate superior’s secretary. And each day, he was sure, Brigadier General Dozsa signed the report without reading it — promptly filing it into oblivion.
Whenever he’d tried to make his post anything more than a waste of time and space, he’d been slapped down. Dozsa, the National Police commander, hadn’t even bothered to hide his disdain. During his first and only meeting with the precise, perfectly uniformed officer, he’d been told, “Be grateful for what you still have, Colonel. Especially after all the trouble you’ve caused me. Rock the boat just once more, and I’ll see that you’re drummed out of the service in disgrace.”
Hradetsky’s hands curled into fists, crumpling the newspaper he still held. Remembering Dozsa’s insults brought all his repressed rage roaring to the surface. In the old days, he could have erased the stain on his honor with a well-timed saber cut. But dueling was out of place in this modern world. In any case, honor meant nothing to the government he still served — however unwillingly.
The simple truth was that he had nowhere else to go. He was a policeman, first and last. With the whole
