Dominique Manotti - Lorraine Connection

Disappointed, Étienne decides to go home. Tomaso gets up and disappears. Maréchal comes and leans against the car, next to Quignard.

‘I’d never have believed things would move so fast.’ A few minutes’ silence. His face is turned towards the factory, furrowed, his skin looks yellow in the light from the blaze. A smile glints in his eye. It seems that after all fire has returned to his valley.

15 October

Standing in front of the bay window, his jacket unbuttoned and his hands in his trouser pockets, Pierre Benoît-Rey gazes out at the Eiffel Tower all illuminated, looking almost within reach, and the esplanade of the Palais de Chaillot beyond. Waiting. Tonight the government will announce the buyer for Thomson, France’s biggest military-electronics concern, a publicly-owned company it has decided to privatise. There are two rival bids, only two, for this huge deal on which the restructuring and perhaps even the survival of the French arms industry depends: Alcatel and Matra. And Pierre Benoît-Rey is head of the small team, or rather the commando, tasked by Alcatel’s management to put together the Thomson bid and see it through, reporting directly to the CEO.

The waiting drags on. Benoît-Rey rests his forehead against the window, against the night, as he used to do when he was a child. The damp cold soothes his brow. He seriously needs soothing. The body of a ten-kilometre sprinter, red lips and an angelic face framed with dark hair; a pronounced fondness for cocaine and alcohol; a sharp brain, always ticking, too clever, some say, and perhaps they could be right. They also say that everything he touches turns to gold. Tonight we’ll see. In a few minutes, it’ll be either the Tarpeian Rock or the Capitoline Hill. A slight churning in the pit of his stomach. He goes over every detail of the deal in his mind. Alcatel is divesting itself of its equipment-manufacturing arm to concentrate on electronics. Fewer jobs, more excellence. With the revenue from the sale, it buys Thomson and its military electronics. The company restructures its electronics capability, creates synergies, and restructures the entire sector, which would be impossible without the mega profits from the military section. From this French giant, we and our British allies, who have bought up our equipment-manufacturing arm — which means we don’t lose it altogether — create a European electronics giant that will challenge the Americans on their own turf. A brilliant piece of architecture, an empire within reach, like the Eiffel Tower, an engineer’s dream. And I’ll be flying. Director of strategy for the future group, most likely.

Time drags its heels. The three ministries involved, Defence, Industry and Finance, are one hundred per cent behind us. Our rival, Matra, a company that’s a quarter of the size of the one it wants to take over, is forced to juggle to finance the operation and is teaming up with an unlikely Korean partner to do so. The boss of Matra is a puffed-up frog who thinks he’s bigger than the ox. We have a cast-iron bid: how can it go wrong? Soon, power over a global group. In the arms sector, to boot. The prize industry, politics, superprofits, secret services. Another stomach contraction, almost painful. Playing for high stakes. For the future. And tonight …

The phone rings and Benoît-Rey swings around. In the meeting room serving as their HQ four men — his entire team — are killing time. They exchange the odd word from time to time and a glass tinkles against the whisky bottle. All eyes are glued to the telephone on a corner of the big table in the centre of the room.

‘It’s your call, Pierre.’

He picks it up, listens, nods and hangs up without a word. Sits down, suddenly drained.

‘Our chairman. He’s just had a call from the Prime Minister’s office. It’s Matra.’

A long silence. The men look at each other. This failure is all theirs. They accepted the mission, they gambled, they lost. Their first failure on such a scale. Rossellini, in charge of the financial side of the bid is an elegant and athletic forty-something, a graduate of France’s top management school, the École Nationale d’Administration. He’s doing a stint as an auditor in the Finance Ministry where he still has a discreet, efficient network of personal contacts. He acted as Alcatel’s financial director in the bid, a position that will be vacant in a few months: a financial director of one of the biggest global industrial groups at barely forty, a destiny he believed he was meant for. Only now he’s suddenly relegated to being just another departmental head, and has to stomach it. Then Alain Bentadj, a young engineer trained at the prestigious École Polytechnique, expert in new technologies: a spell at Thomson, highly valued by the military for his technical capabilities, his inventiveness and the clarity of his vision, dreaming of an international career, abruptly finding himself demoted. What can he do at Alcatel if Matra’s the leading arms manufacturer? He came to Alcatel precisely because the Thomson takeover was on the cards. What’s he supposed to do? Change jobs? Not easy after a failure on this scale. And anyway where can he go if Matra dominates the industry? They’re hardly going to welcome him with open arms. Frédéric Marion is head of communications. He thought he’d made a good fist of it, with the ministerial offices in his pocket. He’d dreamed of setting up his own PR and communications agency on the back of all this, its future assured with the giant Alcatel account. Those dreams have all just gone up in smoke. Roger Valentin sits alone on the sofa, the last man. He’s heavily built and older, watching the others and suppressing a smile. Former deputy director of the secret services, he’s now Alcatel’s head of security, making more money in the space of a few years than he ever made in the public sector, but lacking either further ambition or anxieties.

Rossellini breaks the silence.

‘Are we entitled to know why?’

‘No. No other information. The Prime Minister chose Matra. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.’

‘Right. The next question is where’s a good place for a holiday at this time of year? There’s no snow in the mountains and the coast’s horrible.’

‘There’s the islands.’ Benoît-Rey picks up the phone with a half-smile. ‘I’d planned a little victory celebration at Joseph’s too. I’d better cancel.’

‘OK, one last drink and we go home to our families. It’ll be strange for them, after hardly seeing us for four months while we’ve been practically married to each other.’

‘I’ll miss you, darling.’

‘Alain, are you sure the beautiful Madame Bentadj will have waited for you?’

‘Don’t rub salt into the wound. I have no desire to return home unexpectedly.’

‘An evening at Mado’s, blow jobs all round, getting fucked brainless.’

‘Now that’s a much better idea …’

Valentin is still sitting silently on the sofa. The phone rings again. They look at each other. Benoît-Rey says, ‘Nothing worse can happen now,’ and picks up the receiver.

‘Yes, we’re still here, chief. Yes, Valentin too.’ He utters groans and monosyllables, staring around wide-eyed. ‘Yes, we’ll be there.’ And he hangs up.

‘So, has the Prime Minister changed his mind?’

Shrug. ‘Our CEO’s received several phone calls. First of all from Prestat.’

‘Who?’

Half-smile. ‘Very funny. The CEO of Thomson Multimedia. He swears that the entire company, from senior management down to the workers, is going to fight the choice of Matra tooth and nail. They are absolutely against it because Matra’s flogging them off to Daewoo, a Korean company that can’t be trusted at all, in his view.’ A pause. ‘He’s talking about strikes, demonstrations.’