Jean-Christophe Grangé - The Empire Of The Wolves

All of which might have been possible without September II, 2001. The attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

The wave of those explosions blew away all of the police's certitudes, all their investigative and surveillance techniques, on a global scale. The secret services, information agencies, police forces and armies of all the countries threatened by Al Qaeda were on tenterhooks. The politicians were panicking. Once more, terrorism had shown that its greatest strength was secrecy.

There was talk of holy war, of chemical attacks, atomic bombs…

Philippe Charlier was back in the front line. He was the man to deal with such persistence and obsession. A figure of power, with methods that were obscure, violent and… effective. The Morpho project was dug up again. Terrible words were on everyone's lips-conditioning, brainwashing, infiltration.

In mid-November, Charlier turned up at the Henri-Becquerel Institute. With a broad smile: he announced, "The Arabs are back."

He invited me to lunch in a restaurant specializing in Lyonnaise cuisine and Burgundy wine. The nightmare started up again in the stench of fat and cooked blood.

"Do you know the annual budget of the CIA and FBI?" he asked. I shook my head.

"Thirty billion dollars. The two agencies have spy satellites and submarines, automatic reconnaissance equipment and mobile phone tapping systems. The cutting-edge technology in the field of surveillance. Not to mention the National Security Agency and its know-how The Americans can listen in and spy anywhere. There are no more secrets on earth. Or so everyone thought. The entire world felt concerned. People were even talking about Big Brother… but then there was September.

A few men, armed with plastic knives, destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center and took a good lump out of the Pentagon, while notching up a score of a good three thousand dead. The Americans listen to everything, receive everything, except when it's coming from people who are really dangerous."

The Jolly Green Giant was not smiling anymore. He slowly turned his palms to face the ceiling, above his plate. "Can you imagine the two sides of the scales? On the one hand, thirty billion dollars. On the other, some plastic knives. What do you think makes the difference? What made the fucking scale tip?"

He violently hit the table.

"Willpower. Faith. Madness. Confronted with an armada of technology, and thousands of American agents, a handful of determined men managed to slip through all their surveillance. Because no machine will ever be as powerful as the human mind. Because servants of the state, leading ordinary lives with normal ambitions, will never be able to catch fanatics who don't give a damn about their own lives, who are completely given over to a higher cause."

He paused, got his breath back, then went on: "The kamikaze pilots of September 11 had removed all their body hair. Do you know why? So as to be perfectly pure at the moment they entered paradise. What can you do against loonies like that? You can't spy on them, bribe them or understand them."

His eyes glittered with a strange light, as if he had warned everyone of the imminent catastrophe.

"I'll repeat: there's just one way to round up fanatics. Turn one of them against the others. Get a convert so as to be able to read the depths of their madness. Then, and only then, will we beat them."

The Jolly Green Giant laid his elbows on the tablecloth, put his rounded lips to his wineglass, then raised his mustache with a smile. "I've got some good news for you. As of today. the Morpho project is back on. I've even found you a guinea pig."

The wicked grin widened.

"A young lady."

"Me."

Anna's voice hit the concrete like a table-tennis ball. Eric Ackermann smiled weakly, almost apologetically, at her. He had now been talking nonstop for almost an hour. sitting in his five-door Volvo, the door open, legs stretched outside. His throat was dry. and he would have given anything for a glass of water.

Leaning against the pillar, Anna Heymes remained still, as slender as a graffito in India ink. Mathilde Wilcrau continuously paced up and down, putting on the headlights when the timer turned them off.

While speaking, he observed them both: the slight, pale and dark one who, despite her youth, seemed struck with a very ancient, even mineral, rigidity; and the large one who, on the contrary, was vegetal and vibrant with lingering freshness. Still that over-red Mouth, that overblack hair, that clash of brute colors, like a market stall.

How could he be having such ideas at a time like this? Charlier's men must be searching the neighborhood, escorted by the local police officers, all out to get him. Battalions of armed men set on gunning him down. And that need for drugs that was mounting, along with his thirst, irritating every inch of his body…

Anna repeated, a few notes lower: "Me.." She took a pack of cigarettes from her pocket.

Ackermann risked asking, "I couldn't have one, could I?"

She lit her Marlboro first, hesitated for a moment, then offered him one. At the moment she lit her lighter, darkness fell again. The flame pierced the night, making a negative print of the scene.

Mathilde turned the headlights back on. "What then, Ackermann? We're still missing the main point. Who is Anna?"

Her tone was still threatening but void of any anger or hatred. He now knew that these women would not kill him. No one turns into a murderer just like that. His confession was voluntary and also a relief. He waited for the taste of burning tobacco to fill his throat before answering.

"I don't know everything. Far from it. But according to what I was told, your name is Sema Gokalp. You're an illegal Turkish immigrant. You come from the Gaziantep region, in the south of Anatolia. You used to work in the tenth arrondissement. They took you to the Henri-Becquerel Institute on November 16, 2001, after a short stay in Sainte-Anne Hospital."

Anna remained impassive, leaning against the pillar. His words seemed to pass through her with no apparent impact, like a bombardment of invisible-but lethal-particles.

"I was kidnapped?"

"Found, more like. I don't know what happened exactly. A clash between Turks. The pillaging of a sweatshop around Strasbourg-Saint Denis. Some kind of racket. I'm not sure. All I know is that when the cops arrived, you were the only person left in the workshop. You were hiding in a stockroom…"

He took a drag. Despite the nicotine, the smell of fear lingered. "Charlier heard about the case. He immediately realized that he had a perfect guinea pig for his Morpho project."

"What do you mean, 'perfect'?"

"No I.D. papers, no family, no friends. And, even better, in a state of shock."

Ackermann glanced at Mathilde knowingly. Then his gaze returned to Anna.

"I don't know what you saw that night, but it must have been something terrible. You were completely traumatized. Three days later, your limbs were still paralyzed by a cataleptic fit. You jumped at the slightest noise. But the most interesting thing is that the trauma had disturbed your memory. You seemed incapable of remembering your name, your identity, the few scraps of information in your passport. You kept muttering incoherently. This amnesia had prepared the ground for me. I was going to be able to implant new memories even more quickly. You were ideal."

Anna yelled, "You fucking bastard!"

He closed his eyes and nodded; then he seemed to pull himself back together, and added cynically: "What's more, you spoke perfect French. It was that fact which gave Charlier the idea."

"What idea?"

"To start with, all we wanted to do was to inject artificial fragments into the head of a foreigner, with a different culture. We wanted to see what would happen if we tried, for example, to alter the religious convictions of a Muslim. Or give her a reason for resentment. But you offered other possibilities. You spoke our language perfectly. Physically, you could easily pass for a European. So Charlier placed the bar even higher. Total conditioning. We would totally wipe out your personality and culture and replace them with Western ones."