Terror at the Cathedral

By Keith Spicer

Hurling seven workmen to their deaths, a massive bomb blows off the facade of the eight hundred-year-old Cathedral of Reims, Frances most revered monument to its national and Christian traditions. Public opinion blames radical Islamists, and hysterical mobs attack Muslims in streets, stores, and mosques.

Fear of civil war brings President Emmanuel Macron and even Pope Francis to the scene to plead for peace.

Commissaire Denise Caron, though losing a loved one in the blast and under pitiless media fire, leads a daring, sophisticated investigation. Its astonishing conclusion cuts to the core of France itself and offers lessons to a Europe facing ultranationalist tensions.

Carons lover, Mario, an opera conductor, comforts her all the way from despair to doubt and finally to stunning success.

A bracing pursuit of terrorists with French police to a surprising conclusion right out of todays headlines . . . enlivened with politics, eroticism, and champagne . . . a great read . . . best with a flute of Roederer Cristal (Russell Mills, editor, publisher, and newspaper executive).

A fast-paced thriller you will want to read without interruption. Here, fiction is a twin sister of reality. Smart, seductive Commissaire Denise Caron uses high-tech, brazenness, and inspired hunches to catch fiendish terrorists. Un rcit men un train denfer. Bravo! (Georges Tsa, Fondation Chirac, Paris, former assistant deputy minister of immigration, Canada).

This mysterious sequel zooms in on challenges inherent in intercommunal tensions in France and elsewhere. What a twist! What a thriller! (Dr. Ratna Ray).

A frightening picture of the chaotic violence that may engulf Franceand other European countriesif narrow nationalisms continue to fight the other in a fast-growing and changing world. Supercop Denise Caron tackles the problem with style (Paddy Sherman, editor and publisher).

This fascinating book tackles a major contemporary challengehate and violence that maim and kill innocents by the thousands (Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan, CM, OOnt).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jan 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781480858206

Keith Spicer

Journalist, editor, TV host, professor, businessman and public official, Keith Spicer is known in Canada as a passionate defender of national unity and minority rights. After an Honours B.A. in modern languages and literatures and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Toronto, he taught at several Canadian and American universities, including Univ. of Toronto, Univ. of Ottawa, Dartmouth College and UCLA. His articles have appeared widely in the Canadian press, and in the New York Times and Frances Le Monde diplomatique. He became editor of the daily Ottawa Citizen and later its European columnist. He was Canadas first federal commissioner of official languages, chairman of the national broadcasting and telecom regulator (CRTC) and chairman of the Citizens Forum on Canadas Future. He founded the Media and Peace Institute of the UN-linked University for Peace, Costa Rica. Since 1996 he has lived in Paris, where he taught at the Sorbonne, served on government new-media committees, and worked as an associate of Ernst & Young. He is a member of the editorial board of Paris-based Ilissos, a centre-right political and economic newsletter. Father of three adult children, grandfather of three girls, and matre dhtel of a cat named after French prime minister Pierre Mends France, Spicer divides his time between Paris and Ottawa.

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Copyright © 2018 Keith Spicer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of pure fiction. It does not judge the ideas, actions or reputations of any person living or dead. Names already in the public domain are used strictly to enhance realism.

All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-5819-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-5820-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018901303

Archway Publishing rev. date: 1/31/2018

Contents

Day One: Sacrilege

Day Two: Exploitation

Day Three: Crisis

Day Four: Order?

Day Five: Solemnity

Day Six: Oblivion

Day Seven: Escalation

Day Eight: Aftershocks

Day Nine: Paranoia

Day Ten: Seeing

Day Eleven: Blackmail

Day Twelve: Eavesdropping

Day Thirteen: Flashbacks

Day Fourteen: Enough!

Day Fifteen: Leadership

Day Sixteen: Derailment?

Day Seventeen: Determination

Day Eighteen: Breakthrough?

Day Nineteen: Racing

Day Twenty: Showtime

Day Twenty-One: Solitude

Day Twenty-Two: Gamble

Day Twenty-Three: Acceleration

Day Twenty-Four: Action

Day Twenty-Five: Reaction

Day Twenty-Six: Adaptation

Day Twenty-Seven: Turnaround

Day Twenty-Eight: Stupefaction

Day Twenty-Nine: Vindication

To my children and grandchildren, all of whom have two passports because on September 4, 1954 a shy Canadian boy met a beautiful French girl on the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry.

Loyalty to tribe is honorable. But loyalty to mankind is the justification for life itself.

Premonition

REIMS. Auguste-Delaune Football Stadium, 33 Chaussée Bocquaine:

Two young soccer fans in the bleachers, just ordinary guys you’d pass in the street or hoist a beer with at the billiards bar. Scruffy shaves, blue jeans, the Reims Stadium team’s red-and-white T-shirts and baseball caps. The rosy-faced blond guy with cap on backward might be in his early twenties, the coffee-skinned one maybe twenty-six.

They’re here to cheer the hometown team in the Reims-Nantes semi-final. And to plot how to blow up the eight-hundred-year-old western façade of the UNESCO-celebrated Reims Cathedral, revered as a monument to France’s ancient monarchy and Christian tradition. Twenty-nine kings received their crowns here and 2,303 statues of saints cover the church’s dramatic façade.

Behind and in front of the two fans sit four other guys. Faking a boisterous inattention, they’re undercover cops from the DGSI anti-terrorist police and their crime-busting cousins from the regional Police judiciaire (PJ). They’re seated to eavesdrop on and record everything the twin suspects are saying.

The cops have been tracking these soccer fans for several months. Both are objects of an S file identifying them as possible threats to state security. Between 12,000 and 20,000 residents of France own that distinction, including several thousand potential Islamic radicals. Some of these are deep-cover ideologues. Others are young online converts or brainwashed Islamic State returnees from Syria.

The S files show that the dark-haired fan was born in Algeria from poor but pious Muslim parents. After jail-terms for petty crime and non-lethal violence he became a Salafist radical bent on restoring seventh-century desert Islam.

The blond came from a devout Catholic family from nearby Troie. Radicalized online at eighteen by a French-speaking jihadist in northern Iraq, he trained and fought in Syria for a year, then returned to France last year. For DGSI this made him a serious suspect for lone-wolf mayhem in his homeland – stabbing, shooting or running over innocents by truck or car on his own initiative.

National and local media have long alerted the public to such profiles. Almost everyone half-expects attacks on major monuments, or on infrastructure such as train stations and airports.

As autumn leaves fall, Reims’s population of 187,000 (including maybe 35,000 Muslims) is already on edge about risks of Islamic violence. They only wonder when and where it will occur.

The eavesdropping cops record intriguing scraps from the two boyish fans. They hear talk of a mission, of equipment, weapons and a huge shock to the heathens. They mention a window of a few days."

The cops put both youths on 24/7 watch, and try to pinpoint the ideal time and places to make a major sweep of jihadists.

Convinced of their thoroughness, the authorities are cautiously confident. Alas, the usual rivalries between police forces –especially between Police judiciaire and anti-terrorism cops - continue as gleefully and irresponsibly as always.

Then three weeks later…

Day One: Sacrilege

Sprawled naked beside her lover, Denise watches out the window as a thin orange horizon creeps up on the night. She yawns, then lounges in a long cat-stretch, taking forever. She smiles at her lover’s gradual awakening behind her. After their night of slow sweet passion she glows in a peace of animal satisfaction. She and visiting Marseille Opera conductor Mario are both at their peak, her young woman’s need rising to lose itself in his gray-haired maleness. The ancient rituals need no words. They infuse everything.

She reaches a hand back to welcome Mario’s familiar solicitation. She gently holds him, then squeezes him.

Suddenly she freezes. She screams, her eardrums bursting. The whole world shakes in a deafening roar. She throws herself back on Mario and meets his instinctive hug. Struck dumb, the lovers turn to hold each other for a few seconds, trying to guess what’s happening.

Stay here, I’ll protect you, says Mario.

No, she snaps. I have to see.

Me too. Jumping up, the lovers stare wide-eyed out the window to the right of her inherited penthouse on the long Place Drouet-d’Erlon, the city’s central esplanade.

Look at that pillar of black smoke darkening the sky in front of the steeple, she gasps. It’s the Cathedral! The bastards have finally come!’’

Mother of God! Yes, that’s what it looks like – sons of bitches!

Mario puts his arms around her as they watch the smoke rise and spread.

Che peccato! How awful, blurts Mario. I know you have to go, my darling, but I’ll come with you."

No, you would just be in the way. Stay here. You can’t do anything. This is my job.

After her spectacular breakthrough in the Hubert Repentigny champagne-cave murder case, Commissaire Denise Caron had been promoted from Chief of Investigations to Regional PJ Director. But she’s a hands-on director. She likes to run complex investigations herself, often on the ground with her teams.

Let me help you get ready.

No, Mario. Just get out of my way. I know how to get away fast.

Caron yanks her cell phone out of its recharger and dials the Commissariat’s duty officer, l’officier de quart:

Hello, Laurent? Denise. It’s the Cathedral, plainly a terrorist attack. Listen to these orders. For starters: warn the hospitals and firemen and send a dozen ambulances to the parvis in front of the church, plus all available cops. Patch me into our Sécurité intérieure cousins across the courtyard. Make sure, for God’s sake, that this time they and we both share the same frequencies. Alert the proc ASAP, we need him as state prosecutor to cover our ass legally. Tell him I’ll be on the spot in three minutes. Same for our DGPJ bosses in Paris, as well as the media – but give the press guys my media cell number, not my ops one.

Will do, patronne. I’ve got it all down and will do everything on the run.

Also: call all cars and tell them to throw a perimeter of 10 km. out from the Cathedral. They should check all cars and individuals leaving that area.

Got it.

And of course: tell our Police Technique et Scientifique to bring their whole bag of tricks – fingerprinting, dogs, and everything else they’ve got for explosives. I suspect it may be Semtex or TAPT: our night inspectors at the Cathedral report nothing fancy or metal.

Still naked, Denise can’t help stirring Mario’s imagination. He adores her lean firm body, but knows enough not to annoy her when duty calls.

Back on the edge of the bed, Caron throws Mario a quick hug, then