Fabvier’s eyes narrowed. “I am prepared to withdraw unmolested. I am not prepared to surrender. We can cut our way out through your precious land if need be,” he warned.
Oskar Kiraly shrugged, speaking for the first time. “A brave sentiment. But we know your supply status. You’ve got less than twenty thousand liters of fuel, barely enough ammunition for one short battle, and you’re already forced to send foraging parties out to scour the countryside for any food they can find.” His smile reappeared.
Fabvier sat, impassive and silent, showing neither agreement nor disagreement with Kiraly’s figures.
Hradetsky leaned forward a little, pressing home the point. “You’ve got just enough gas for an uncontested road march to the Austrian border. But what then? The Austrians have turned against you, too. Besides, you know you’d never make it that far.”
Kiraly nodded. “We have two motorized rifle divisions, also fresh and rested, dug in along the roads east of here. More Hungarian and Slovak units are moving into striking range. You are already outnumbered. Within hours, you will also be completely surrounded.”
Fabvier sat silent, his head bowed.
“Here are our terms, General.” Hradetsky removed a document from his jacket pocket. “Your troops will disarm and assemble in areas we designate. They will turn over all their equipment intact, down to the last radio and pistol. Only personal gear — clothing, bedding, and the like — is exempt. Your tanks and guns will be partial compensation for what you’ve destroyed here.
“In return, we will transport you and your men to the Austrian border. We will also grant all French soldiers immunity from prosecution under Hungarian law.”
“What?” Fabvier exploded. “How dare you threaten us with prison! We are at war — ”
Kiraly interrupted him. “Many of your men have committed what could be considered war crimes, General. Your own hands aren’t clean, either. Summary execution of hostages, demolition of homes by the occupying forces…”
“Make up any charges you want. That’s the right of the winning side,” Fabvier snarled.
Hradetsky ignored the dig. “What will it be, General?” he demanded. “Will you yield or will you throw your men’s lives away to save your own pride?”
“Your soldiers will die, too.”
“We’re used to it,” Hradetsky said coldly.
Fabvier looked at the two implacable Hungarians, then away from them as though a solution to the dilemma they posed might lie off to one side. It didn’t. “Very well, we will disarm,” he said, refusing to face them.
Six hours later, 25,000 French troops marched into temporary captivity. Tens of thousands more left stranded in Germany and Poland met the same fate before nightfall.
Abandoned by his closest associates and subordinates, Nicolas Desaix sat alone in his private office. Ever the opportunist, Morin had vanished as soon as the news of Germany’s defection reached his desk. Guichy was dead. Shamed by failure and fearful of the future, the Defense Minister had shot himself after learning that all French units in Germany and Eastern Europe had capitulated.
Desaix grimaced. Both the DGSE chief and the Defense Minister had chosen a coward’s way out. He had not yielded so easily. For hours he had worked frantically, trying his best to restore order — to salvage something for France from the wreckage of his ambitious schemes. He had failed.
His orders were ignored. His telephone calls went unanswered. France was tired of Nicolas Desaix and all his works.
Not that there was very much he could have done anyway, he reflected sourly. Spread thin from the Mediterranean to the Channel ports, the tattered remnants of the French Army and Air Force were no match for the armies arrayed against them. At last report, U.S., British, and Belgian troops were already past Cambrai, advancing cautiously toward Paris against pitiful resistance. Most Frenchmen seemed content to sit at home waiting for a change of government — whether imposed from the outside or altered from within.
Cloaked in his own despair, Desaix barely noticed the four tough-looking men file in from his outer office. Even wearing civilian clothes they couldn’t hide the air of complacent authority common to policemen or special security agents.
“You are M. Nicolas Desaix?” one of the men asked in a bored, unhurried voice.
Desaix glanced up sharply. Idiots! Who else would he be? His fingers drummed sharply on his desk. “I am.”
“Then I must inform you that you are under arrest.”
Something of his old fire flashed through Desaix. He drew himself up haughtily. “I am a minister of the republic! By whose authority do you arrest me?”
In answer, the senior plainclothesman handed him a sealed warrant.
Signed by all his cabinet colleagues except for Guichy and Morin, it also bore the signature of the President. Desaix stared down in utter astonishment. Having at last nerved themselves to act against him, the little worms had even roused Bonnard from his senile torpor long enough to plant this dagger in his back. Determined to save themselves, the President and the others were throwing him to the wolves.
Numbed by constant disaster, Nicolas Desaix allowed his captors to lead him out to a waiting unmarked car.
His downfall preceded the complete collapse of the French Fifth Republic by only a matter of hours.
CHAPTER 38
New Beginnings
The President’s smiling face was the first thing Ross Huntington saw when he walked into the Oval Office. It was hard to recognize him as the same coldly determined leader who had sent him off to Europe to break EurCon to pieces. “Ross! Come on in and take a pew.”
Huntington dropped lightly into a chair, amazed to find himself feeling better than he had in years. Considering how he’d spent the past few weeks, that was strange: First the sleepless days and nights at sea off an enemy coast. Then the twenty-hour days he’d spent shuttling between European capitals to patch together a temporary armistice. And finally the long, red-eye flight home. By any rational measure, he should be dead on his feet. Maybe even dead, period — given his prior medical history. But victory and the prospect of a lasting peace seemed to be a better tonic than bed rest.
He said as much to the President.
The other man nodded, still grinning. “Damn right. I feel like a kid again myself.”
That wasn’t quite true, Huntington thought, studying his longtime friend carefully. New lines and creases on what had once been a boyish face showed where the strains and stresses of war had taken a permanent toll.
Still, the President’s essential optimism remained intact. It came roaring to the surface as the two men talked about what came next. “At least now we’ve got a real chance to put the world back on the right track! A real window of opportunity.”
Huntington nodded. Thoroughly discredited by the war, the apostles of ultra-nationalism and protectionism were in retreat around the globe. Shocked by the sight of so many new blood-soaked battlefields, politicians and peoples alike seemed ready to lay aside old hatreds and misguided ambitions. But how long would that last? “That window could slam shut pretty damn fast, Mr. President,” he warned.
“I know.” The President’s gaze turned inward. “We’ve paid a high price for this peace. I don’t intend to see it thrown away. Not this time.”
Huntington knew what he meant by that. Transfixed by domestic squabbles after the cold war ended, the world’s industrial nations had turned inward and against each other. Recessions had bred resentment — resentment against “foreigners” and “foreign”-made products. And cynical politicians had made use of those resentments for their own gain. Protective tariffs had spawned more tariffs and more trade restrictions in a vicious cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation. The trade wars and festering racial and ethnic hatreds had all been part of a long, ugly, melancholy slide toward real war — wars between neighbors and between nations.