Location: Order Room / Crisis Control Center, Volta S.A. Factory, Ivry-sur-Seine
Date: May 20, 1991 (afternoon)
Point of View: Omniscient (Focus on the inner circle)
At the precise moment Lazare's hologram evaporated from the stage in Chicago, a single illuminated slide appeared on the giant screen at COMDEX. It contained no slogan and no logo. Only three secure international phone numbers and one fax line, followed by the words:
"Open lines. 4,000 units available. No waiting list will be tolerated."
In the Ivry-sur-Seine bunker, the holographic capture room had been hastily transformed into a nerve center for order processing. Thirty telephone operators, recruited under strict confidentiality clauses, were on standby, headsets on. Against the back wall, a battery of eight industrial fax machines waited in silence.
For forty-five seconds, nothing happened. The natural delay between the shock of the announcement and human reaction.
Then, the first phone rang.
It was immediately followed by a second. Then a tenth. In less than a minute, Volta S.A.'s makeshift switchboard turned into a wall of flashing red lights. The polite hum of the operators gave way to a cacophony of urgency.
Suddenly, the first fax machine shook with a shrill whistle. The cylinder began to spin, spitting out a sheet of thermal paper. Then the second fax activated. Then the third. Soon, all eight machines were screaming in unison, vomiting tens of meters of paper that piled up on the floor amidst the smell of hot ink and ozone.
Alexandre de Vigan, standing in the center of the room, snatched up the first sheet that had just fallen. He straightened it with aristocratic composure, his gray eyes scanning the document. A predatory, almost cruel smile stretched across his lips.
"Goldman Sachs," the Chief Marketing Officer announced, holding up the paper. "The New York office. They don't want a brochure. They just sent a firm purchase order for fifty units, payable in cash upon delivery."
Benoît, the Chief Financial Officer standing a few meters away, turned pale. He grabbed a pocket calculator.
"Fifty units... at twenty-five thousand dollars..." the accountant stammered. "That is one million, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. On a single fax. In less than three minutes."
"Read the others, Benoît," de Vigan invited him with carnivorous elegance. "Read what the male ego is willing to pay for reassurance."
The CFO rushed over to the pile of paper growing before his eyes. His hands trembled as he scanned the prestigious letterheads.
"An investment bank in Geneva wants twenty... A Washington law firm is ordering ten... My God, a royal purchase order from Riyadh demands the immediate shipment of thirty Nomads for the ruling family!"
Buying hysteria had taken over from stupefaction. In Chicago, on Wall Street, in the towers of La Défense, and in the City of London, the phones were melting down. The sheer arrogance of the price set by de Vigan had worked beyond all logical expectations. By positioning the Volta Nomad as a hyper-luxury product, the brand had triggered the elite's most visceral fear: the fear of being downgraded.
No CEO of the CAC 40 or the Fortune 500 wanted to walk into a board meeting the following week without placing the famous black monolith on the table. Price was no longer an obstacle; it was the barrier to entry into an ultra-exclusive club with limited membership.
Karim, sitting in front of his master terminal, was typing frantically. The young genius of network architecture had just linked the operators' order inputs and digitized faxes to a small, custom-built internal program.
On the large screen in the room—which just a few minutes earlier had displayed Lazare's face—a simple red digital counter appeared.
3,850
"I'm compiling payment validations in real-time," Karim announced, his eyes glued to his lines of code. "The operators are entering American Express Centurion card numbers and SWIFT transfers. As soon as the funds are verified, the inventory ticks down."
The counter flashed.
3,420
"It's dropping too fast," Karim said, an incredulous laugh bubbling to his lips. "We sold six hundred machines in less than fifteen minutes! Lazare, the switchboards at Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch are trying to bypass our operators to speak directly with management. They want preferential treatment—they're offering to bid thirty thousand dollars apiece just to be delivered first!"
Lazare Bonaparte had not moved since the end of the holographic broadcast. Standing in the shadows with his arms crossed, the Ogre of Ivry observed the chaos of the trading floor with absolute coldness. His face betrayed no euphoria. Where Benoît saw an accounting miracle and de Vigan saw the crowning achievement of his psychological warfare, Lazare simply saw a human equation resolving itself.
"No free passes," Lazare ordered, his dry voice cutting through the din of the ringing phones. "Refuse to entertain any bidding wars. The rule is the same for the Saudi prince as it is for the New York trader: first come, first served. The prestige of the Nomad relies entirely on our uncompromising attitude."
The counter dropped again.
2,900
Benoît wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. The panic that had gripped him a few days earlier over the financial hemorrhage of Operation Cannibal had just evaporated, replaced by the sheer vertigo of massive numbers.
"We are going to cross the twenty-five-million-dollar mark before the end of the hour," the CFO whispered, as if reciting a prayer. "One hundred million dollars is within reach. In a single day... This is unprecedented. Not even Apple's IPO generated a profitability ratio per second like this."
"I told you so, Benoît," whispered Alexandre de Vigan, lighting a cigarette despite the strict prohibition in the bunker, savoring his victory. "America tried to strangle us with a hardware blockade. We have just smothered them with their own vanity."
Karim's counter went completely crazy, ticking down in blocks of ten, twenty, and fifty to the frantic rhythm of the fax machines relentlessly spitting out purchase orders from across the globe.
1,500... 1,200... 850...
Silicon Valley wasn't just buying a computer. It was in the process of financially capitulating to French sovereignty. And the sun hadn't even set on Chicago yet.
Location: Executive Office, Volta S.A. Factory, Ivry-sur-Seine
Date: May 20, 1991 (evening)
Point of View: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare and Auguste)
It was nine o'clock in the evening in Paris. In the bunker's improvised order room, silence had fallen with the heaviness of a leaden cloak. The fax machines were silent, out of paper. The telephone lines, completely saturated a few hours earlier, now rang into the void, redirecting to an automated hold message.
In the center of the room, Karim stared at the big screen. His fingers hovered suspended over his keyboard.
On the digital display, the numbers were no longer dropping. Only four red digits remained, completely motionless.
0000
"It's over," Karim whispered, his voice cracking with fatigue and disbelief. "The inventory is empty. Sold out."
Benoît, the Chief Financial Officer, was slumped in an office chair, his tie loosened, staring blankly at the ceiling. In the span of a single afternoon, Volta S.A. had just collected one hundred million dollars. Four thousand units sold in under eight hours. An absolute record, a statistical anomaly that defied all the known laws of global commerce.
Lazare Bonaparte left the crisis control room without a word, leaving his teams to savor the intoxication of this senseless triumph, and went upstairs to his office on the first floor.
Night had enveloped the industrial complex of Ivry. Through the huge bay window, Lazare gazed out at the lights of the Parisian suburbs. His veteran's spirit refused to allow him any euphoria. In his past life, he had learned that the most dangerous moment in any military operation was almost always the moment immediately following a crushing victory. That was when you let your guard down.
The door to his office opened softly. Auguste Bonaparte entered, holding two crystal glasses and a bottle of old Cognac—an aged Rémy Martin he reserved only for special occasions.
The former head of the DST's anti-terrorist cell approached silently and poured the amber liquid. He handed a glass to his adopted son.
"You just robbed America blind without firing a single shot," Auguste said with a smile of immense pride.
Lazare took the glass, inhaling the woody aroma, but did not drink immediately.
"Alexandre de Vigan has just received the first dispatches from the American press agencies," Auguste continued, leaning against the edge of the desk. "CNN interrupted its programming to talk about the 'V-Note.' The Wall Street Journal is releasing a special edition tonight. Their headline focuses on the 'organized shortage' and buyer hysteria. In Chicago, journalists physically fought each other just to get close to the prototype on stage. You didn't just sell a computer, Lazare. You just created the most aggressive demand in modern history by selling scarcity."
"Scarcity is a temporary illusion, Father."
Lazare turned away from the window and sat down in his armchair. His face, half-lit by the desk lamp, suddenly looked far older than his twenty-four years. It was the face of a tactician of the shadows.
"A hundred million dollars," Lazare said in a calm, level voice. "It is a colossal sum for any European company. It erases the losses of Operation Cannibal and secures our cash flow for the next two years. But this is not a strategic victory. It is simply a smokescreen."
Auguste frowned, setting his glass down.
"You brought Silicon Valley to its knees today. The public image of Intel and Compaq is devastated. They look like dinosaur merchants."
"Public image doesn't keep the factories running!" Lazare cut him off with sudden intensity. "The federal embargo is still in place, Father. The White House is still actively blocking the import of our RAM from Japan and South Korea. Tomorrow morning, when the sun rises, we will be in exactly the same situation we were in yesterday: unable to produce the four-thousand-and-first machine. The Americans still control access to the resources."
Lazare leaned forward, resting his elbows on the leather desk pad. His dark eyes stared at Auguste with implacable lucidity.
"I set the price at twenty-five thousand dollars to replenish our coffers, certainly. But I had a secondary objective. A political objective."
The former spy crossed his arms, his instincts kicking in. He was beginning to understand what his son was aiming at.
"Tell me, who bought our four thousand machines today?" Lazare asked.
"Investment banks, major Washington law firms, Fortune 500 CEOs, hedge funds..." Auguste listed them off.
"Exactly. The American elite. The financial and political aristocracy of the United States. We got them hooked on our technology. We made it an indispensable status symbol. In a few weeks, when a Wall Street CEO uses his Nomad in a board meeting, all of his associate directors will demand one. And when they call us to order a hundred thousand more machines... we will tell them no."
Lazare smiled—a smile completely devoid of joy. It was the smile of a predator snapping its jaws shut.
"We will tell them that we are very sorry, but their own government prevents us from supplying them. We will tell them that the White House is depriving them of the most powerful tool on the market."
Auguste's eyes widened. The maneuver was an act of absolute Machiavellian brilliance.
"You're turning their own military-industrial complex against them," the former DST operative murmured, fascinated. "What do American billionaires do when a federal law prevents them from getting what they want?"
"They pay armies of lobbyists in Washington," Lazare concluded, finally raising his glass. "They finance election campaigns. They bribe senators. I no longer need to negotiate with the U.S. Department of Commerce or beg the CIA to lift the embargo. I have just hired the most powerful men in America, without paying a single dime, to destroy their own blockade from the inside out."
The two glasses clinked softly in the silence of the office.
"To sovereignty," Auguste declared.
"To the war," Lazare corrected, before downing his drink in one gulp.
The Ogre of Ivry had won the battle of optics. He had won a historic financial victory. But they were merely passing through the eye of the storm. By manipulating the American elite into breaking the federal embargo for him, Lazare had just declared an all-out political war on the White House. And in that war, blood would spill far beyond lines of code and assembly lines.