"Ah, yes. 'Bright colored lights are the key.' What can that mean?"
"You are, of course, aware of our difficulty penetrating the Blot?"
"Pah! It is just a matter of time."
"Agents go in. They come out. They report nothing. Nothing."
"Brainwashing?"
"I do not think so. They show no evidences of such cunning tamperings, but it is as if once they come under the sway of those cultural interlopers, their powers of resistance and duty are abolished. They speak highly of the experience."
"Just as my poor people are drawn into their colorful web."
"Yes. It is very chilling."
"Have you told anyone else of this?"
"No."
"Not even the president?"
"Should I?"
"I think not. He has shown great reluctance to act on this matter, despite the increasing and undeniable gravity of the threat."
"What can we do?"
"You, you may go back to your duties, all the while keeping me closely informed, while I shall make some discreet calls."
"To whom?"
"To those who share with me a higher sense of duty to La Belle France," said French Culture Minister Maurice Tourette, quietly replacing the receiver.
He next dialed the general of the French Air Army, doing so personally. There must be no record of this call.
"Mon General, " he said after getting through to the private, unlisted number.
"Oui, Monsieur Ministere?"
"The secret of the stain on the honor and dignity of your mother nation is becoming clearer and clearer with each passing hour."
"Oui?"
"I cannot now divulge this, but a brave military man, one who can envision himself as the next de Gaulle, could advance his career most wonderfully were he only to made a bold stab."
"How bold?"
"One so bold it might ripple across a certain ocean and lap at the clay feet of a certain ally of doubtful standing."
"I see...."
"The Blot must be pacified and its secrets wrested from within."
"And after that?"
"After that," said the French minister of culture carefully, "who can say? Poof! It might be bombed flat, salt sown into the very soil it once despoiled so that no trace of it passes into the next century."
"I cannot say what I may or may not do, Monsieur Ministere. "
"Nor would I expect you to."
"But if action is to be taken, it will be taken imminently."
The culture minister smiled broadly. "I knew you loved France above all things."
The minister of culture hung up the telephone and turned on the radio. He would pass the tense time to come listening to beautiful music and, if an important bulletin should break, he would be among the first to hear of it.
To his regret all the stations were playing either rock, heavy metal or that abominable cacophony known as rap. The minister of culture endured the unendurable for the sake of his higher duty, reflecting that if he had only known that rap lay around the cultural corner, he would never have moved so ruthlessly to suppress disco.
AT 5:57 PARIS TIME a squadron of six French Mirage 2000Ds rocketed out of Tavemy Air Base and dropped BGL laser-guided bombs onto the tiny village called Euro Beasley in the Averoigne suburb of the city.
The bombs, contrary to first reports, packed not high explosives, but a combination of dense black smoke and pepper gas.
As the first stinging clouds broke and wafted across the blue-and-cream towers of the Sorcerer's Chateau, Euro Beasley patrons, greeters and employees alike broke for the exits.
True, some were trampled to death in the ensuing confusion, so it was not an altogether bloodless engagement. But in less than an hour Fortress Euro Beasley lay naked before any who wished to enter it.
The trouble was finding someone with sufficient personal courage and the political will to do so.
THE PRESIDENT OF FRANCE was considering the problem in America when an aide entered his office unannounced. He did not look up. This was a difficult matter. America had hiccuped. According to the quarter-hourly reports coming across his desk, it was either a highly localized insurrection or the United States of America was poised on the brink of civil war.
If it was a hiccup, it didn't matter. Americans hiccuped several times a year. They were that way. Undoubtedly it was a consequence of their lackluster diet.
But if it was civil war, the president of France would be obliged to choose sides. Perhaps not immediately, and certainly not until a clear victor emerged, or if not a victor, he would wait until an undeniable political opportunity became visible, making either choice advantageous.
In the previous American Civil War-which seemed very recent in France's long history but was only halfway through the lifespan of the United States to date-France had sided with the Confederacy. It was not a good choice, but France had not suffered for it. America was a political nonentity in those lamented days. Unlike today.
Thus, it was politic not to choose a side until at least the second or possibly as late as the third year of the Civil War.
The immediate problem was how to remain neutral during that brief interval. After all, Washington would expect immediate support. The utter infants. But what did one expect from a nation that had occupied a distant corner of the planet for less than five hundred years? They had such growing up to do.
Frowning, the president of France picked up a solid gold Mont Blanc pen and began composing a neutral statement to be issued later in the day. It was very bland. One could read it any way one chose. This was very important, for French attitudes toward the United States were at a crossroads.
On the one hand there was the usual anti-American condescension and distaste always fashionable among the literate elite.
On the other hand the younger generation and even some of the old, their memories of France's liberation from Nazi occupation reawakened by the fiftieth-anniversary celebration of the Normandy invasion a year previous, had developed a renewed, if politically challenging, appreciation of certain things American.