The Color of Fear td-99

by Warren Murphy

  He saw his mission in life to purify France, much as Joan of Arc had in an earlier time with her unflinching sacrifice.

  To Maurice Tourette the worst calamity in the proud history of his country was the liberation from Germany. Not for a moment did Maurice consider the German occupation a good thing. No. It had been a travesty. But the Germans in time would have withered and gone home to their heavy beers and their unpalatable bratwursts, and knockwursts and sauerbraten. It would have been possible to wait them out. And when they finally left, they would have been gone for good.

  The liberators, on the other hand, had left their many stains on the proud soil they had supposedly liberated.

  Maurice Tourette had grown up in post-liberation Paris and watched, helpless and impotent, over the decades as the foul and corruptive gangrene of Americanism crept across his beloved city of lights.

  First it was the Ford cars, then the McDonald's hamburger kiosks with their hideous golden arches. American movies with their shallow emptiness of spirit began crowding Clavie and Depardieu and the treasure of France, Deneuve, from the cinemas. While Parisians laughed at the brilliant crudities of Jerry Lewis-as they should-they had let down their defenses and had embraced such ugly coinages as le marketing, le cash flow and that impossible neologism, le cheeseburger.

  By the time the threat had made itself manifest, and Pompidou had created the High Committee for the Defense and Expansion of the French Language, the language had been swamped and the tide was all but irreversible.

  And so it seemed when Maurice Tourette had taken over the culture ministry.

  In his first public speech as culture minister, he vowed to rid France of junk-junk food and junk words. He went after the fast-food emporiums first, and succeeded in getting most of them closed down.

  It was hailed as a magnificent triumph of French culture over Anglo-Saxon barbarism.

  For Maurice Tourette saw the spread of American popular culture as nothing less than a dangerous hegemony that, unlike Nazism, would envelop the world and France in a cultural dark age from which it might never emerge.

  After that first triumph, Maurice went after the advertising billboards that littered the Champs-Elysees with crude slogans such as Always Coca-Cola and Just Do It and the worst offender, Ford Vous Offre L'Airbag.

  He coined a name for the horrid words that mangled French articles with Anglo-Saxon nouns. This, he told the press, was the abominination of abominations, Franglais. He drew up a list and called for such words to be outlawed.

  A bill was put before parliament. It passed after much rancorous debate. Henceforth, foreign words were forbidden on television, radio, billboards, public signs and announcements. No work contract or advertisement could be written in anything but pure French, or the offender faced severe fines and six months in jail.

  Oh, the multinational companies fought back, but their cause was already lost. Maurice Tourette himself composed a long list of acceptable alternatives to the hated Franglais. No more l'airbag or le video clip or the unpronounceable data processing. Instead, the linguistically acceptable sac gonfable, bande promo, and informantique were the law of the land.

  Maurice Tourette felt justifiably proud of what Parisians called La Loi Tourette. He had begun the long battle to reclaim his nation from the hated liberators. It was only a matter of time before all who wished to enjoy the benefits of living in la Belle France learned to speak the lingua franca-or be summarily deported.

  When his desk telephone in the culture ministry rang, Maurice Tourette picked it up and said, 'Allo?"

  "I have most distressing news."

  "I am steeled."

  "The Blot. We may have an understanding of it."

  "Tell me of this understanding," the culture minister invited.

  "We have an agent in Ameri-"

  The culture minister pinched the bridge of his nose painfully. "Do not enunciate that horrid name, please."

  "The Uncouth Nation, I should say."

  "Very good. Proceed."

  "The agent code-named Arlequin."

  "Ah, yes. An excellent lover. You have had her, I presume?"

  "I daresay I have not."

  "Pity. Go on."

  "She reported the following-'The charade is perpetrated with bright colored lights.'"

  "Bright colored lights?"

  " 'Bright colored lights are the key,' was her last transmission. Then all communications ceased."

  "Was she compromised?"

  "In what way?"

  "Why, in any way."

  "I do not know."

  "Advise me if you learn her fate, will you? I should hate to think that her charms should be denied us in the future."

  "Of course. Now, as to this other matter."

  "Ah, yes. 'Bright colored lights are the key.' What can that mean?"

  "You are, of course, aware of our difficulty penetrating the Blot?"

  "Pah! It is just a matter of time."

  "Agents go in. They come out. They report nothing. Nothing."

  "Brainwashing?"

  "I do not think so. They show no evidences of such cunning tamperings, but it is as if once they come under the sway of those cultural interlopers, their powers of resistance and duty are abolished. They speak highly of the experience."

  "Just as my poor people are drawn into their colorful web."

  "Yes. It is very chilling."

  "Have you told anyone else of this?"

  "No."

  "Not even the president?"

  "Should I?"

  "I think not. He has shown great reluctance to act on this matter, despite the increasing and undeniable gravity of the threat."

  "What can we do?"

  "You, you may go back to your duties, all the while keeping me closely informed, while I shall make some discreet calls."

  "To whom?"

  "To those who share with me a higher sense of duty to La Belle France," said French Culture Minister Maurice Tourette, quietly replacing the receiver.

  He next dialed the general of the French Air Army, doing so personally. There must be no record of this call.

  "Mon General, " he said after getting through to the private, unlisted number.

  "Oui, Monsieur Ministere?"

  "The secret of the stain on the honor and dignity of your mother nation is becoming clearer and clearer with each passing hour."

  "Oui?"

  "I cannot now divulge this, but a brave military man, one who can envision himself as the next de Gaulle, could advance his career most wonderfully were he only to made a bold stab."

  "How bold?"

  "One so bold it might ripple across a certain ocean and lap at the clay feet of a certain ally of doubtful standing."

  "I see...."

  "The Blot must be pacified and its secrets wrested from within."

  "And after that?"

  "After that," said the French minister of culture carefully, "who can say? Poof! It might be bombed flat, salt sown into the very soil it once despoiled so that no trace of it passes into the next century."

  "I cannot say what I may or may not do, Monsieur Ministere. "

  "Nor would I expect you to."

  "But if action is to be taken, it will be taken imminently."

  The culture minister smiled broadly. "I knew you loved France above all things."

  The minister of culture hung up the telephone and turned on the radio. He would pass the tense time to come listening to beautiful music and, if an important bulletin should break, he would be among the first to hear of it.

  To his regret all the stations were playing either rock, heavy metal or that abominable cacophony known as rap. The minister of culture endured the unendurable for the sake of his higher duty, reflecting that if he had only known that rap lay around the cultural corner, he would never have moved so ruthlessly to suppress disco.

  AT 5:57 PARIS TIME a squadron of six French Mirage 2000Ds rocketed out of Tavemy Air Base and dropped BGL laser-guided bombs onto
the tiny village called Euro Beasley in the Averoigne suburb of the city.

  The bombs, contrary to first reports, packed not high explosives, but a combination of dense black smoke and pepper gas.

  As the first stinging clouds broke and wafted across the blue-and-cream towers of the Sorcerer's Chateau, Euro Beasley patrons, greeters and employees alike broke for the exits.

  True, some were trampled to death in the ensuing confusion, so it was not an altogether bloodless engagement. But in less than an hour Fortress Euro Beasley lay naked before any who wished to enter it.

  The trouble was finding someone with sufficient personal courage and the political will to do so.

  THE PRESIDENT OF FRANCE was considering the problem in America when an aide entered his office unannounced. He did not look up. This was a difficult matter. America had hiccuped. According to the quarter-hourly reports coming across his desk, it was either a highly localized insurrection or the United States of America was poised on the brink of civil war.

  If it was a hiccup, it didn't matter. Americans hiccuped several times a year. They were that way. Undoubtedly it was a consequence of their lackluster diet.

  But if it was civil war, the president of France would be obliged to choose sides. Perhaps not immediately, and certainly not until a clear victor emerged, or if not a victor, he would wait until an undeniable political opportunity became visible, making either choice advantageous.

  In the previous American Civil War-which seemed very recent in France's long history but was only halfway through the lifespan of the United States to date-France had sided with the Confederacy. It was not a good choice, but France had not suffered for it. America was a political nonentity in those lamented days. Unlike today.

  Thus, it was politic not to choose a side until at least the second or possibly as late as the third year of the Civil War.

  The immediate problem was how to remain neutral during that brief interval. After all, Washington would expect immediate support. The utter infants. But what did one expect from a nation that had occupied a distant corner of the planet for less than five hundred years? They had such growing up to do.

  Frowning, the president of France picked up a solid gold Mont Blanc pen and began composing a neutral statement to be issued later in the day. It was very bland. One could read it any way one chose. This was very important, for French attitudes toward the United States were at a crossroads.

  On the one hand there was the usual anti-American condescension and distaste always fashionable among the literate elite.

  On the other hand the younger generation and even some of the old, their memories of France's liberation from Nazi occupation reawakened by the fiftieth-anniversary celebration of the Normandy invasion a year previous, had developed a renewed, if politically challenging, appreciation of certain things American.

  The president of France was scribbling a sentence suggesting a youthful and untested country like the United States of America was bound to experience growing pains when the patient aide standing before his desk cleared his throat.

  The president looked up. "Yes? What is it?"

  "It appears the insurrection in America has been quelled."

  The president of France quirked a salt-and-pepper eyebrow to the vaulted ceiling. "How severe were the casualties?" he asked, crumpling his three-sentence draft speech into a ball and tossing it into a waiting wastepaper basket.

  "Light."

  "Did the Army put it down?"

  "Non, Monsieur President."

  "Local police units, then? I understood they were neutral."

  "Non, Monsieur President."

  "Then who? Quickly, speak!"

  "The Sam Beasley Company."

  The president of France blinked in a kind of stunned stupefaction. "The Sam Beasley Company?"

  "They descended from the sky in balloons, and the fighting ceased."

  "Were they not the instigators?"

  "That is the suspicion of the DGSE."

  "How curious," said the president of France. "Then it is over?"

  "It is most definitely over."

  The president of France sighed. "Perhaps it is just as well. The long-term positive aspects might not outweigh the short-term political embarrassment of remaining neutral while they fought it out among themselves. And we may need their industrial might should the Germans become territorial again!'

  "Do you wish to make an official statement?"

  "I wish to take a nap."

  "Oui, Monsieur President, " said the aide, withdrawing discreetly.

  The president of France did not take a nap, however. He had barely thirty minutes to digest the lost opportunity of an American Civil War when the same aide who had so quietly entered now reentered with his face like a cooked beet and his eyes resembling cool Concord grapes.

  "Monsieur President! Monsieur President!"

  "Calm down! What is it?"

  "Euro Beasley. It has been bombed!"

  "Bombed? Bombed by whom?"

  "Early reports have it air-army Mirages bombed it."

  The president of France came out of his leather chair as if hoisted by unseen guy wires.

  "On what authority?"

  "This is not known."

  "Get me the general of the air army! At once!"

  But no one could reach the general.

  "What is happening?" the president demanded of anybody who proved reachable by telephone. "How severe are the casualties? Are any of our people dead or injured?"

  "All pilots returned safely," he was told.

  "No! I mean our French citizens on the ground."

  But no one had that answer. The event was barely ten minutes old.

  Then came the call from Minister of Culture Maurice Tourette.

  "Monsieur President, a wonderful opportunity has fallen in our hands."

  "Are you mad! We have bombed an American theme park."

  "We have bombed French soil. It is our sacred right to bomb French soil."

  "We have bombed a symbol of American culture residing on French soil," the president shouted.

  "Is this such a bad thing?"

  The president swallowed hard and sat down. He lowered his voice, straining to retain his self-control. "I do not wish to get into this argument with you at this moment. This is a very awkward thing. The Americans are supposed to be our friends."

  "We own the overwhelming majority of Euro Beasley. The Americans have reneged on many of our understandings. The park has lost over a billion in US. dollars over its first three years."

  "That has turned around," the French President pointed out.

  "Yes, at our expense. We French have been pouring into it at an alarming rate."

  "Yes, I saw your confidential figures," said the president of France, who did not think it unusual that the minister of culture tracked French attendance at Euro Beasley. It was not for nothing that the place had been denounced as a cultural Chernobyl when it was first opened. "I understood this was the result of Parisians wishing to experience the cultural abomination once before it closes. Possibly to gloat over the triumph of French cultural resistance to its gaudy blandishments."

  "Propaganda. We have reason to believe there is a sinister explanation for Parisian citizenry suddenly flocking to this Blot."

  "Blot?"

  "It is a blot and a stain upon the bosom of La Belle France."

  "I do not disagree with that. Unofficially, of course," said the president of France. "But we can't go around bombing American symbols. This is not the nineteenth century anymore. Perhaps in another generation or two we can spit into their eyes with impunity should we wish to, but not now."

  "I have developed intelligence suggesting that Euro Beasley has been exerting a diabolic hypnotic influence upon our citizenry, luring them in and shucking them of their francs and their inborn appreciation of French culture."

  "This is a most grave charge."

  "Highly serious."

  "With international im
plications. Are you suggesting that Euro Beasley is some sort of espionage platform?"

  "Worse."

  "Military?"

  "Worse still. It is a cultural neutron bomb, dispensing hard, corrupting radiation throughout France."

  "Go on."

  "I have only limited information, but as we speak, Euro Beasley lies naked, unguarded and undefended. We can take it with minimal difficulties and light-to-negligible casualties."

  "Take it? What on earth would we want with it?"

  "You must act quickly, Monsieur President. For as you know, this is a difficult predicament, politically speaking. We have bombed an American theme park. Explaining this would be difficult under ordinary conditions."

  "Impossible, you mean," the president said bitterly.

  "Justifying it is your only option. You must send troops in to secure it and discover its secret."

  "What is its secret'"

  "Bright colored lights."

  "What do you mean by 'bright colored lights'?"

  "I am sorry. That is all I have."

  "That is not enough to act upon."

  "Can you afford to wait for the reaction from Washington? You must act immediately if you are to spare yourself the embarrassment of the hour."

  The president of France chewed his moist lower lip until bright specks of blood discolored his incisors. "I must think on this problem."

  "Time flees," the culture minister reminded, terminating the connection.

  And in his office in the Palais de L'Elysee, the president of France watched the clock tick and click its hands along the dial while he considered which of the few and unimpressive cards he would play this day.

  Chapter 14

  When DGSE Intelligence operative Dominique Parillaud had been told that her latest assignment was to go to the United States of America, her first impulse was to faint dead.

  Upon being revived, she briefly considered suicide.

  "Do not send me to that cultural hellhole," she pleaded with her case officer.

  "It is for the good of France," he told her in a stern voice.

  "I would do anything for France," Dominique said anxiously. "I would give my very life for France. I would spill my blood for her. I would drink the very blood that I spill just to be privileged to spill even more blood for France. You must know this."