Desaix fixed his gaze on the Minister of Defense. Guichy’s support for his plan would be critical. “What I propose, my friend, are measures equal to the dangers we face.” He narrowed his eyes. “Drastic measures.”
Then, speaking with utter conviction and iron determination, he outlined the steps he believed would save France from ruin.
The argument he sparked lasted half the night.
Regular army soldiers in full combat gear ringed the small executive jet parked just off Le Bourget’s main runway. They were the innermost element of an airtight security cordon surrounding the airport. The authorities were taking every possible precaution against trouble. Nothing could be allowed to delay this plane’s scheduled departure.
“Attention!”
The soldiers snapped rigidly upright, presenting arms as a sleek Citroën limousine swung off an access road and purred up to the waiting aircraft. Tricolor flags fluttered from the Citroën’s black hood.
The limousine’s rear doors popped open, and a tall, hawk-nosed man emerged, carrying a leather briefcase. A single aide climbed out the other side, clutching a suit bag and a rolled-up umbrella. Clouds pushed west by a new high-pressure system rolling out of Russia carried the threat of rain over the next several days.
As the captain commanding the guard detachment saluted, both men hurried up a folding staircase and disappeared into the plane’s dimly lit but plush interior. Its twin turbofan engines whined into action, howling louder and louder as they spun up toward full power.
Five minutes later, its navigation lights blinking against a pitch-black sky, the jet carrying Nicolas Desaix roared off the tarmac and climbed at a steep angle. The ranking member of the still-secret Emergency Committee for the Preservation of the Republic was flying east — toward Germany.
CHAPTER 5
Peacekeepers
Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm “Willi” von Seelow glanced out a headquarters building window at the brigade Kaserne.
The area was alive with men and vehicles. Detachments of soldiers in gray-green field uniforms milled around open armory doors collecting weapons and ammunition. Other parties stood in line, waiting their turn. All wore the dark green beret and silver crossed-rifles badge of Germany’s mechanized infantry, the panzergrenadiers.
The afternoon light, dimming as the sun set, was made grayer by a solid overcast sky. It fell on but did not illuminate the steel sides of tracked Marder APCs and the crumbling concrete walls of the brigade’s barracks and garages. The outside lights were already on, but it was still too early for them to do much to brighten a scene of military confusion.
The chaos outside was matched inside the brigade’s crowded operations room. Every phone was in use, and he could hear more than one officer demanding instant action in a strident tone, as if shouting made things work better. Von Seelow noticed one young captain who seemed to be doing most of the yelling. At least he could put a stop to that.
He called the man over, spoke softly and sharply to him, and then sent him on an errand out of the building. A little trip into the cold afternoon air should cool him off. More important, it would send a signal to the rest of the staff. Good soldiers stayed calm, even in the midst of crisis.
His reprimand had the desired effect. In the resulting quiet, von Seelow turned to his own work, trying hard to organize both his thoughts and the brigade. There was a lot to be done in an unreasonably short time.
They’d been galvanized into action by a sudden, hurry-up order from 7th Panzer Division’s headquarters in Munster: Mobilize the entire brigade immediately for civil peacekeeping duties. Von Seelow had taken the call himself once the duty officer convinced him it wasn’t a joke.
He frowned at the memory. Major Feist, at division headquarters, had managed to sound arrogant and worried at the same time. He’d also peremptorily brushed aside every one of Willi’s objections.
“No, Herr Oberstleutnant, I do mean the entire brigade. Yes, Herr Oberstleutnant, we are aware of your fuel situation. Yes, we know you are short of gear and men. I’m sorry, Herr Oberstleutnant, but we can’t spare you any troops ourselves. We’ve problems here as well. We need your brigade on the road to Dortmund by midnight. The situation is very bad. The anarchists are holed up in several vacant buildings.” Willi knew the ones he meant. Unemployed youths had taken them over several months ago, turning them into graffiti-sprayed fortresses. “They’re using them as bases for looting and burning much of the surrounding area, as well as fighting with rival gangs. The police are doing their best, but they’re outclassed.”
On that encouraging note, Feist had wished him luck and hung up.
Von Seelow knew the situation in Germany’s towns and cities was grim, but he hadn’t thought it was bad enough to warrant calling up regular army units.
A small chill ran down his back. Years ago, he’d served with Germany’s U.N. peacekeeping forces in Yugoslavia and had watched with horror as civil strife wrecked a nation. Separating the warring factions had cost the U.N. force hundreds of lives and billions of marks. It had been a months-long nightmare of frustrating patrolling, sudden, bloody ambushes, and the horrid experience of being hated and shot at by both sides. Now he was being told his own country might stand on the brink of a similar nightmare.
His combat experience had been useful to him, though. In any peacetime army, promotions were rare. He’d moved up from major to lieutenant colonel because he’d shown himself cool and utterly reliable under fire. And von Seelow knew that he couldn’t have gained promotion in any other way. His experience and training in the East German Army before the unification more than qualified him for his current rank, but “ossies,” those born in the East, were not popular in the unified Bundeswehr, the Federal German Army. Most of Willi’s former colleagues were back in civilian clothes or stuck in dead-end posts. The odds were that he’d join them in a few years. The “wessies” didn’t want too many tainted soldiers from the East in their army’s upper echelons.
Still, that might not be so bad. Soldiering wasn’t the honorable career it had once seemed. With the Russian bear apparently declawed, peacekeeping was turning into the Bundeswehr’s main job. At least half their training was devoted to “civil affairs,” and tactics learned the hard way in Zagreb and Sarajevo were spreading fast through the entire army. This emergency deployment to Dortmund was probably only a taste of things to come.
Riots and clashes with police were now almost routine in every city in Germany. Unemployment hovered near the twenty percent mark, climbing steadily as the economy wound down. The figures were even higher among the young. But unemployment wasn’t the only problem. Racial tensions were also rising rapidly as more and more Eastern European refugees evaded the border patrols — all fleeing economies that were in even worse shape.
Von Seelow shook his head. It was difficult to imagine anything that could be worse. Germany’s urban centers were the scene of daily pitched battles as a dangerous mix of right-wing fanatics, left-wing anarchists, and unemployed workers fought with each other, with police, and with shopkeepers. They wanted work and food, and both were scarce.
And he knew that food and work were bound to grow even more impossible to find if the nation’s trade unions carried out their insane threat to call a general strike. Even his country’s recent problems would pale in comparison during a wholesale work stoppage.