David Golemon - Primeval

"Your perception and intelligence is something that I failed to get my friends at DGSE to take into account. I knew my charade would only last so long."

Everett twisted his head and looked at the drenched Frenchman. He knew the bastard had been up to something but leave it to Jack to have confirmed it somewhere along the way.

"The DGSE?" Mendenhall asked.

"Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure — The Directorate-General for External Security," Collins said.

"Are you saying that you're back in the spying business, Henri?" Carl asked, amazed and confounded that anyone could talk Farbeaux out of his lucrative retirement.

Another flash of lightning lit up the sky, and Jack could see Alexander looking at them from the large tent across the clearing. He was giving Sagli and Deonovich instructions about something and through the downpour Jack could see that the new orders made Deonovich smile while looking their way. It wasn't good.

"I'm afraid I had little choice in the matter, Captain. It seems my recent activities attracted the wrong sort of attention, and with pressure from your president, and with endorsements I'm sure from your little bald boss at the Event Group, I was… let's say, drafted."

"Niles Compton thought you were dead, Henri, lost at sea. Remember?" Jack reminded him.

"Regardless, here I am," he said as he noticed Deonovich gathering a few of his men together. "I must explain to you, time, I fear, is growing short for some of us."

Everett and Mendenhall saw what was coming as the guards made ready their pistols.

"The DGSE has uncovered an extreme terrorist cell operating in Montreal. They know it was being operated by someone immune to discovery because there was just too much information not being passed back through DGSE contacts. Many agents were found murdered, indicating someone was getting identifications out to the cell. Either we had a traitor in our midst, or the Canadian government had one in theirs. Obviously, being French, my superiors ruled out any DGSE failures, so they concentrated on the Canadian side."

Jack watched as Alexander looked his way and then turned back inside of the tent. Sagli gave the group of captives one last look and then he also turned away. Deonovich was explaining something to the three Spetsnaz he had pulled aside. They all looked their way as he explained something to them.

"Cut to the chase, Henri, our time is running out," Jack said as he took a shallow breath.

"DGSE suspected someone at the top of the Canadian food chain, but soon it was confirmed by the traitor himself. Back in 1962, during your governments' little spat with the Kremlin over the Cuban inclusion into the world of Soviet nuclear weapons, something went wrong. I know this will disturb you to no end, being Americans are thought of as the good guys, but I'm afraid your government was looking at the darker outcome of that battle of wills. Your President Kennedy had issued orders for a preemptive strike against the high command of the civilian and military heads of the Soviet regime. The mission was called Operation Solar Flare. Alexander was caught snooping where he shouldn't have been. However, my former superiors didn't know how far Alexander's treason went, thus, when they learned of this assault in Los Angeles, they sent me."

"Another coincidence, Henri?" Jack persisted.

"Not at all. I know of the importance of the Lattimer Notes and the journal, that's why I had them stolen. It is, as you say, a small world. My associates leaked this information to waiting ears, thus, I was volunteered by my old employers to find out what your Mr. Alexander was up to. I guess my government credentials had yet to expire."

"I don't believe it," Everett said. "If that had been an actual plan, our Group, above anyone in the country, would have the information — secret information to be sure — but we would have access to it."

"You still insist that your nation is morally superior to everyone else, Captain Everett; that is not being a true historian. Oh, Operation Solar Flare was approved by France, Great Britain, and Germany, so you weren't alone in hiding your heads in the sand. But my government made the dropping of the most powerful weapon in human history possible by disclosing the secret location where the hierarchy of the Soviet government would be bunkered. Thus, Operation Solar Flare was taken from fantasy to reality."

"What happened? I mean the mission was obviously canceled since history doesn't show any mushroom-cloud footage springing up in Moscow," Mendenhall said, not believing what he and his commanding officers were hearing.

"Now, Colonel Collins, it's your turn to come clean."

Will looked at Jack, but Everett knew what his boss was about to say as the memory of that brief moment on the boat came back to Mendenhall. The long talk Collins had with the captain.

"Punchy and I were on one of the last attempts to recover the downed weapon. The F-4 Phantom carrying Solar Flare went down somewhere north of the border. The air force never found its transponder beacon back in '62. The mission was a bust; we never found it. Higher-ups then figured that somehow the mission terminated over water."

"I'm afraid the Western democracies don't get let off the hook that easy, Colonel. The aircraft failed to even reach its fail-safe point. It went down either in Canada or in Alaska, and as the colonel just said, they never found the wreckage even though the most massive recovery operation the world had ever seen took place for close to fifty years."

"What was the megatonnage of the weapon and its type?" Mendenhall asked.

"That was a secret your government kept well. But the DGSE suspected it was what's known as a doomsday device, for lack of a better term, maybe as much as five hundred megatons — powerful enough to destroy any bunker in the world, no matter its depth in the earth. The fact that it was an advanced cruise missile designed for supersonic flight in a straight nose-down attitude, and equipped with a solid tungsten nose cone, it would bury itself so deep into the ground that no bunker ever made could survive."

"Jesus, the world really had gone mad," Will said.

"So, Alexander is after the weapon — and now he's found it, so what now?" Everett asked.

"I suspect he has found the Hyper Glide, as the weapon was known, or Solar Flare," Henri said. "The gold and diamonds was actually a ruse. Your Professor Ellenshaw, without knowing it, of course, pinpointed the location for Mr. Alexander in his report to Stanford University and to the next of kin of L. T. Lattimer."

"What are the DGSE's suspicions on why that asshole wants it? To sell it?" Everett asked as he saw the three Spetsnaz coming toward their group.

"No, he wants it for blackmail."

Farbeaux looked over at Collins, their eyes met and they both knew the reasons why blackmail was the obvious choice.

"Correct, Colonel, blackmail."

"The ballsy bastard is trying for a coup in Quebec, that's why Sagli and Deonovich were so quick to give up what they had going in Russia; a safe haven and their own country with Punchy at its head."

"My country believes the weapon in question can be broken up into twenty devices and would all be the equivalent of any high-yield weapon in the modern arsenals of the world—"

"An instant superpower armed with nuclear weapons only a hundred miles from the American border. A power that would be able to dictate terms to Ottawa and to London," Collins explained as he closed his eyes.

"Well, that may not happen. It is my understanding that this weapon can only be armed by a code particular to the Hyper Glide, and this code remains one of the most guarded secrets of your government. Only a few men in the world know how to activate it and disarm it, and these men are more of a secret than the code itself," Henri said trying to make the others see a brighter side to their predicament.