“This is Madame Gabrielle LaSalle-Guerinot,” Bruce said hastily. “She is the French minister of security.”
“Madame,” Mike said, bowing slightly. “A pleasure. I’m not sure I can get the whole last name. Can I call you Gabby?”
“No you may not,” Madame LaSalle-Guerinot responded angrily. “And if it wasn’t for the Cliff government making a stink of things, I would have you thrown out right now.”
“Pity,” Mike replied. “I thought we were getting on splendidly. But unless you are the clerk that hands out badges, I think we’re looking for someone else.”
Madame LaSalle-Guerinot started to reply, thought better of it and stomped off.
“You did not make a friend there, I think,” a French colonel sitting at the rear of the van said dryly.
“Well, I don’t think getting laid was in the cards, anyway,” Mike replied. “And I don’t think you are the clerk I need to see, either, Colonel… ?”
“Henri Chateauneuf,” the colonel said, languidly sliding out of the van and handing Mike a badge. “Call me Henri. And I am — I am the clerk. So Madame LaSalle-Guerinot informed me but minutes ago.”
“I suspect you don’t have a friend in the good madame either,” Mike said, taking the badge and hanging it around his neck on a lanyard.
“C’est la vie,” the colonel said, shrugging, then taking Mike’s arm and leading him towards the cathedral. “I doubt that I shall, as you say, get laid, either. It is a terrible world. The madame was appointed after the last election. She was an academic with copious papers to her name, explaining how the French security apparatus, including its military, oppressed the poor Muslims of our fine country. Since the Muslims are an increasing voting block, we inherited Madame LaSalle-Guerinot, a woman who has not once seen the inside of a refractary building except on carefully guided tours.”
“Refractary,” Mike said, frowning. “The low-income Muslims?”
“Indeed,” the colonel said, sighing. “She is very much against being ‘high-handed,’ as she puts it, with the refractary. Even when they riot, as they often do. May all the saints forbid that we, for example, make random sweeps for any who are holding guns or drugs. That we enforce French laws against battering women. She is a feminist, yes? But this is simply their ‘culture.’ Something that we have to learn to live with, as a multicultural society.”
“Has that interfered with this investigation?” Mike asked.
“Many of the drivers of press vans in Europe are of Middle Eastern or North African origin,” the colonel replied tightly. “Make your own conclusion.”
“Is she mad?” Mike snarled. “We’re talking about a nuke, here.”
“Calmly, calmly,” the colonel said, stopping and turning to regard him with lidded eyes. “The item has not come here, of course. The Muslims of the world are angry at the Cliff Administration, not France. It was not we who invaded Iraq. It was not we who staged a raid on Syria, who detonated a nuke over their territory. We did not set forces in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This was all America, so naturally the Muslims are angry at America, only. France has done so much for them they would not think to attack us. We are good friends to the Muslims here in France. And the way that we will continue to be friends is to treat them gently, as we would fellow Frenchman. Better, in fact. So we have not, for example, conducted a van-to-van search for a generator that does not run. Such would be intrusive, both to our Muslim brethren and to the news media. In the latter, I agree, she has a point. If we start searching vans, one by one, if the nuke is here, they would simply detonate it.”
“So that’s the way it is,” Mike said, breathing out. “In that case, I’m glad I came here.”
“As am I,” the colonel replied, turning to walk again. “With your diplomatic passport, Mr. ‘Duncan,’ the most that can be done to you is expulsion and making you persona non grata. And with the pressure the Cliff Administration exerted on your behalf, you have access to the full area. But I repeat; letting them know the van has been spotted, if it is here, will likely cause them to detonate the item.”
“It would have been nice if it had been stopped before it arrived in the middle of Paris,” Mike pointed out.
“Perhaps it will be,” the colonel said, shrugging. “Perhaps it is not here. Perhaps it will be found on some road somewhere else, and it will be their headache. And, then again, perhaps it is.”
“You have a suspicion?” Mike asked.
“No, simply the same deductive reasoning I assume you used,” the colonel said, stopping at the edge of the press area. “And here we must part, alas. I have many things to attend to, as do you. Feel free to stop by the van again; we have a superior coffee I would have you try.”
“Now you tell me,” Mike said, chuckling. “But onward and upward.” With that he passed through the security cordon around the press area.
The area set aside for parking the press vans was packed. Everyone in the news industry appeared to be there. There were vans for CNN and Skynews, all the major American networks, BBC and all the rest of the European networks. Most of them seemed to have more than one van. Mike quickly zoomed in on the larger ones, which were, he determined, mostly satellite uplink vans. All of them had dishes on top and he recognized that, if their van was there, they’d had to have been retrofitted somewhere. Most of the dishes were up and pointed at satellites, but not all.
He wandered around the area for about an hour, looking for anomalies and finding none. Part of that was the controlled chaos of the environment. People were moving around doing things about which he knew nothing. There were people arguing by the vans, people sitting around tapping at laptops, people eating breakfast.
He checked a couple of vans that were from networks he’d never heard of, and looked closely at the Al Jazeera van. That one had the usual collection of Middle Eastern types, including a woman, probably a reporter, who was a real looker. But he could hear the generator as he passed. He’d already determined that the generators were for providing power to the satellite links and all the rest of the equipment in the vans. But if they were running, they couldn’t contain a bomb.
After a while he got frustrated and headed back to the command center, cadging a cup of very good coffee and a couple of stale croissants. He hung around the command center for a bit, thinking, until he’d finished off the croissants, then headed back to the press area, sipping his coffee.
He was walking down the line of vans when he saw a lone person sitting outside of one from ABC. The guy looked like an American, blond hair cut short on the sides, American clothes, so Mike wandered over.
“How’s it going?” Mike asked, sitting down on a spool of cable.
“Purty good,” the guy replied in a thick Southern accent. “Gonna be a nice day.”
It was, too. There had apparently been a cold front through so the air was crisp and felt washed clean. The sky was clear and deep blue and the sun shone on Notre Dame perfectly.
“What’s your name?” Mike asked, continuing to look around. He saw a cluster of Middle Eastern types, probably drivers, and honed in on them for a second.
“Steve Edmonson,” the ABC guy said. “I’m from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. You?”
“Michael Duncan,” Mike replied. “Florida.”
“You don’t have a press badge,” the guy said.
“Nope,” Mike replied, turning back to look at him. He was eating a piece of pressed meat with a side of rice. In the Dari areas of Afghanistan, Mike had eaten the same thing. They called it chelo kebab, but it was what people in the U.S. put in gyros. Mike blinked for a second as something bothered him, but he mentally shoved it away. “I’m with the U.S. embassy. Just keeping an eye on things, you know. Making sure everyone has all the credentials they need and whatnot. You been over here long?”