The French Agent's Wars: Marisol Spy

By Lawrence Rose

FRANCE! Spycraft, seduction, power centered in France... Marisol's primary attributes. The CIA required these in an agent to stop or blunt the wars on three continents now brewing. The Great Powers slowly find out what was discovered in Africa from space.  It was common Lithium but in such amounts and concentrations that the owners or the deposits would control all global technology for at least a century. And who did they say she needed to help her out?  No one as far as she was concerned, but she was ordered to attach a civilian to her team, an ordinary sort of guy, weak in self-esteem, but strong as a geologist. Yes. It was Steven Dunning, failed corporate geology guy, a second-tier musician, and OK school teacher.  Someone they both knew saw them as a perfect match. 

Plots twist and wind around the infamy of Marisol's family, complicit in the Holocaust, and the strivings of ethnic terrorists in Europe.  Their chase can sometimes put them at the center of the art world, the music world, the Celtic World, the Occult World.... a travelogue through France, Spain, and the US West Coast and an all-out war in the Sahel of Africa...  But not in her lavish home overlooking Lyon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marisolwriter
• Release date: May 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201681142

Lawrence Rose

Lawrence Rose's papers say advanced degrees in Geochemistry and advanced degrees in Music Performance.  He weaves these together in most of his works. From New York to Oklahoma to San Francisco, he has lived an adventurous life in research and in concerts! Later, he is settled into Paris and Toulouse, and now in Medellin, Colombia! 

Book preview

THE HUNTING GROUNDS

N Lambda = 2D sin ...

Alluring, the earth in its beauty! She was also the giver of life to MAN, comfort, and wealth to MAN... and held the forces of destruction for feeble MAN.  All was visible... the geophysicists called it a God’s Eye.

... 

On its one-hundred and fourteenth turn, made now to dip low enough to risk atmospheric friction, Tyros 4-Landsat passed over the deadly brown and salted terrain of central West Africa for its fortieth look. Checking just once more, once more...this time at the risk of becoming a streaking cinder. Just once more...Just 150 kilometers at perigee, and as programmed, its argon-doped radars sensed the most precious metal on earth. In the Hals of Power, the Powerful rejoiced!

International Lithium Mines corporate people in liaison with NASA, and the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, had searched the Chilean lee slope, the Atacama desert, prospecting for more lithium deposits in salars, the briny lakes that sparkled with salt crystals of sodium, and potassium, and sulfurous hydroxides... and lithium. Deposits in Chile, Bolivia and Peru provided 85% of the world’s lithium. Vital lithium. Other sources, minerals from worldwide hard rock mines, provided a small percentage. Even the US had some, and some desert lakes on the lee side of Michoacan bore promise, but the lithium extracted there proved much more expensive, the labor costs being close to prohibitive and the production just too small to be counted.

Recycling provided a disappointing 8 percent of the annual need.

Lithium is not rare, but its international use curve rises almost straight up. We are going to run out. Soon. Remember...One electric car battery uses 10,000 times the lithium in a cell phone.

The central West African desert lakes promised similar geology to the South American, but nothing was found even by the French colonial interests.  In any case, the gold was obviously more important back then.  Not anymore.

Tyros 4 flew over in March of 2025.  Things would now change.

New synched-argon-gallium, SAGG, ground penetrating radars picked up the unmistakable lithium chloride signal at 20 Angstroms, 38 Angstroms, and a major peak at 53 Angstroms. The deposits were estimated to be more than 35 meters below the salt and sand-encrusted dry lake, Lake Al-Maas, in Burkina Faso.

The Department of Defense Strategic Materials Division located in a CIA annex building six stories below Virginia went Top Secret Critical. 

CIA LIAISON TO THE DOD-SMD, Agent Jeffie

Pentwyth, became Lead Agent-in-Chief, Project  Volta. 

CHAPTER 1 The Storm

November 18, 2024

Miserable. The storm and the cold were tearing Lyon apart, the storm and the ice rising along the banks of the Saône threatening the life of the city.

Steven, I have to get to La Perrache! Il le FAUT!  I must. Now! 

Marisol! Please! Pourquoi!?  It’s too dangerous! He had seen that face of hers resolved like this before. He knew he couldn’t stop her. They dressed against the cold and freezing rain and went off into the suffering city.

...

Ice moving down a fast river makes sounds in agony. Squeezed, constricted, strangled by artificial embankments, the booming and shrieking from the tortured ice was made worse piling up into a dam. The shriek could be heard everywhere over Lyon. 

It was stunningly cold. The worst November on record. The overflowing river, frozen, pushed ice in slabs half a meter thick and as long and wide as twenty meters over the roads and paths by the river, crushing through beautiful and expensive homes built on the banks. The ice shattered neighborhoods, families, took lives.

Cars, houses, schools turned to rubble in the slushy flood, the ice storm, and the attacking ice. 

The Saône entered the Rhône with its acute angle downstream, an angle created by engineers hundreds of years before. This made it worse. Unforeseen, at the Point du Confluence, in the tight ice-dammed junction, the Saône climbed over its banks and cut across a swath of lower Lyon via an old channel across the point, the old natural shallower angle. 

The recovered bodies of twenty-eight included two soldiers assigned to a team to detonate high explosives in the ice jam. Another ten souls went missing and were presumed dead.

Most of the casualties of the flood, recent immigrants from northwest Africa living in the low swale of the former stream bed which was now filled by torrents of water and ice, floated downstream. All were poor. The worst part of town, despised, always in turmoil was washed away. 

...

MARISOL DE FROISSART and Steven Dunning went as fast as they could to the wreckage at La Perrache. He kept warning her it was too dangerous. Anxiously breathing, she panted, I have to get there! 

She owed it to Lyon. She felt in debt to Lyon and its people, trying to make up for events in the past. Important members of her family including her father, and especially her grandfather, were infamous. 

...

Telephone poles and lost limbs from ancient trees blocked their path.  Glare ice made driving impossible and walking even as dangerous. Older roofs collapsed. The poor lit fires against the cold. Some fires escaped and houses caught fire in many quarters of the city. Nothing could move. The fire services, the EMT and police services could not respond. Mains fractured. Eighty percent of the city had no water. 

Both the Rhône and the Saône flooded dashing over the embankments in wild rushes and flourushes. And the freezing rains kept coming.

Holding on to rails, trees, gates, to whatever they could, slipping, falling twice, Marisol bruised and scraped, bled as they tried to make way.. Steven cursed the bitter stabbing sleet-laden wind. It took them an hour to make the short twenty-minute downhill walk to La Perrache. 

A huddled, falling, weeping army of refugees from the flood, slowly moving up the valley-side, carried nothing, leading their children. They shivered and slipped and fell dangerously. Their breath froze and breathing was hard.

She helped many in the freezing rain working with other volunteers and with the police. Evacuating the people, getting them to shelter by any sort of vehicle, couldn’t be done. The victims would have to make it through the night. 

She whispered a prayer to the Virgin. 

Marisol and Steven directed the refugees to the Mairie, the City Hall, or to the churches and mosques, to nearby undamaged schools. You must get indoors as soon as you can! Keep moving! It’s not far!

...

Marisol’s large home sat high above the terror of the lower town, well-stocked and safe and warm. She had the best emergency equipment, emergency generators, food. Instead of staying in her sanctuary against the storm, she went as fast as she could, boldly, to the Mairie, dragging her lover with her. The police, EMT services, the Croix Rouge, the Croissant Rouge and soon the army, would co-ordinate from there. Steven slowed. She raced ahead.

Martin Herriot smiled at her, looking relieved, as she came through the glass doors to his mayor’s office complex, and he took her immediately into his comfortable study for coffee and to rest. He helped her with her coat and looked affectionately into her eyes. Thank-you, Marisol! Thank-you for coming. 

He held her too close. Awkwardly she pulled away. From his grimace Marisol saw he didn’t like that. It was just another of what he thought of as Marisol’s insults. Nothing new from him.

May I, puis-je, Martin? She sat down at his desk. He nodded sullenly.

Without being asked, she made out a check to Services Urgences de Lyon for fifty thousand euros. More when you need it, Martin! Use it as you see fit. She asked it be anonymous. Herriot told everyone she asked it be anonymous. Isn’t she wonderful! He was not a friend.

Marisol greeted the victims as they entered the large salons in the ground level of the Mairie. She helped in the makeshift kitchens and helped to set up safe warm spaces to sleep for the dispossessed for the days to come. Herriot rolled up his sleeves and worked alongside her as camera lights flashed. He disappeared as soon as the photographers did. He had important things to do. 

The government in Paris operated quickly and much was put in order in two weeks. The crisis slowly passed with the dead buried and the missing searched for... and then mourned. 

Over the next weeks Steven witnessed her tireless rescue efforts for the many homeless, available and volunteering for whatever needed to be done. Steven volunteered to help as well helping her in serving food and setting up sleeping areas. She sped up the process of recovery by using her influence with the banks. She had them simplify their paperwork and many received desperately needed low interest loans quickly.

...

A month after the tragedy, a week before Christmas, Steven proudly stood behind her as she received the Ordre des Chévaliers de Lyon from the Mayor and the Minister of the Interior come down from Paris to honor her. Kept private, secret, the news of the ceremony never did reach the papers. 

CHAPTER 2 The Reception

December 18, 2024, Lyon, France

A few reporters mixed themselves amongst the small number of dignitaries celebrating her heroism during the flood. But Marisol had spoken with their editors. The story of the award wasn’t to be run. She felt she needed to be quiet so she could continue to live and do her work with her foundations and her corporations... and for the La Sûrété, now attached to the US Central Intelligence Agency. 

Certain things were to be kept as quiet as possible, just quiet. Other secrets, if they were known, could cost the lives of Marisol and many others. She worked at being in control of everything around her. And at keeping any attention she would receive as a well-known wine maker and philanthropist as low key as possible. Of course, that was not easy. 

Many gave her the power to control willingly because of her great beauty and elegant demeanor. Others were given incentives in the form of promises, spoken or implied, financial and social. Some would respond to threats, veiled or open. 

The business leaders and politicians, and the chairs of several charities, had an emotional need to honor her. She understood, so she agreed to the ceremony. They enthusiastically joined in the telling of her selfless and generous actions during Les Inondations des Glâces, the Lyon ice flood. Marisol humbly accepted the gold chain and medallion of the Ordre des Chévaliers de Lyon.

In the ceremonial chambers of the Mairie de Lyon, the champagne from Taittinger poured, and with the platters from Chez Bocuse rich with the finest hors d’oeuvres served, the day became a memorable event for the few fortunate enough to have been invited. The mayor, Martin Herriot, led the toast. Raise your glasses to the Daughter of Lyon. I give you, to the newest member of the Ordre, Merci, Merci, Merci. Nôtre Marisol Pilar de Froissart!

The small group responded, Merci, Merci, Merci! Marisol. Vive nôtre Marisol!

HERRIOT SAID, THE citizens of Lyon owe you so very much. Dear Marisol! We will not forget. He looked hard into her eyes. No, we will never forget!

Marisol looked back at him staring at her with his little smirking rat eyes. Steven thought he saw a dark cloud cross her face. It passed in an instant. Then she did what she does best, what Steven had often seen her do... she lit up the room with her grace and her beauty. 

The gathered dignitaries scattered into small groups. Marisol went from one to the next seeing everyone got their fair share of her. In each group her eyes went to each person, and each felt her looking only at him or at her. She enthralled them all. 

Steven watched her with her medallion of the Lion Rampant, the symbol of the city, on its chain hanging from her shoulders. Next to it was pinned her corsage of fleur-de-lys and petites roses against her French blue business suit. It was the same suit she wore that day last summer in Paris, at Le Jardin de Luxembourg. Just as then, her hair was in a French curl, pulled off her face. It was meant to please him, a present to Steven to dress that way, how she was dressed the day they met.

The mayor came up to Steven and the two men watched her together. So, Mister Dunning, Steven, what do you think of our Marisol? Splendide, non?

Oui, Splendide!, Steven answered, his face beaming with love and admiration.

You are to be envied. It is safe to say there is not a man in all Lyon who does not envy you. But some of us, I hope you are not offended, are surprised she has chosen to be a close friend to an American. His tone was accusative, accusing her of some sort of malfeasance. A poor alliance. A shallow relationship. 

Her politics reject some of the unpleasant things of your history, and of course of ours as well. Colonialisme. Empire. Nationalisme, hein? You have of course discussed it?  It never came up, Steven joked.

Herriot lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. No, our Marisol is strong in her beliefs, and she finds it impossible to believe a great power like your country could, could countenance... He saw Steven becoming uncomfortable, shifting his gaze and losing his pleasant smile. Herriot changed the subject.

The mayor’s voice still dripped with accusation. Have you talked to her about her family? No? I am not surprised. De Froissart was her mother’s name, you know? He stopped, and then whispered, Her father went by a different name. And her uncle? Marcel? There’s a strange one. Bad history there.

Herriot not too subtly tried to drive a wedge between Steven and Marisol. He tried to uncover some details of their relationship. He wanted to know why they were together. Lovers! His tone, syrupy and politically sweet, the nastiness still came through. He was almost sneering! Envy, yes? Social conscience perhaps, but Steven didn’t think so. Something else caused this. 

"No, we haven’t talked