[War] France: Notre Dame

[Bryan Tribble]

"Notre Dame"
President Adrien Durant
French Republic
20 January 2013
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

For the past month, the Cathedral of Notre Dame had been closed to the
public. Tourists were still allowed to congregate near the building to take
photos of the structure and admission at the Louvre had been subsidized by
half for foreign nationals in the Durant administration's bid to compensate
tourists who could not visit the Cathedral.

But the place was no longer the same. It was largely cordoned off by police
tape and constantly staffed by members of the Gendarmerie Nationale.
Investigators from practically every intelligence and policing agency in
France were constantly scrambling over the place.

>From his perch atop the Cathedral, President Adrien Durant could look down
on the scene of the crime with little disturbance from anyone other than his
security detail. The blood had been washed from the stones but he could
still picture it. He'd received the news moments after it occurred and
arrived on the scene within an hour's time.

When he'd arrived, he was shocked by the level of carnage. The square in
front of the Cathedral looked nothing like itself. People were pressing in
against the Parisian police force, screaming and cursing them. Bodies were
strewn everywhere and it seemed as if every stone in front of the Cathedral
had been painted red with blood. Off to the side a clutch of children were
being treated by emergency medical personnel, crying in the arms of their
parents or staring blankly ahead.

He met with each of the children, their families and the families of those
who had lost their loved one in the attack. He assured each of them that the
full resources of the Republic would be brought to bear in the search for
the perpetrators. There would be serious repercussions for the attack, he
promised.

Adrien Durant tightened his grip against the stonework he'd rested his hands
on. Meetings had been convened, suspects detained, individuals interrogated.
Citizens had looked to the Republic to quickly resolve the matter but a
month later they were still practically at square one. He turned away from
the edge of the Cathedral and made his way inside, intending to make good on
his promise.

=-=-=

In the eerie silence of the Cathedral, usually filled with the shuffling of
tourists' feet and their muted whispers, the President of the Republic had
convened a meeting with Director Etienne Bourbois of the Direction Centrale
du Renseignement Intérieur (DCRI), the domestic intelligence agency; Jacques
Moreau, the DCRI's terrorism department chief; Director Laurent Chevalier of
the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), the foreign
intelligence agency; and Christian Vie, the DGSE's long-serving Action
Division Director.

"I don't care right now why we didn't see this coming. We can certainly
address that separately," Durant snapped at Bourbois, the DCRI Director. The
man had been offering a litany of excuses for the past five minutes to cover
for his agency's failure. "What I want to know now is why on Earth we have
failed to locate and prosecute these individuals. We cannot simply have
terrorists freely wandering around the Republic, waiting to strike again.
Every day they continue to remain at large is a political and moral
disaster."

"The latest intelligence indicates that they have more than likely returned
to Algeria," Laurent Chevalier, the DGSE Director, said as he opened a
dossier and offered it to Durant. "We have some preliminary information on
the suspects that hasn't been released to the press yet. They are all
Algerian nationals; a few of them seem to have known one another prior to
immigrating to France but beyond that we have no particular connection
linking them."

"And the Algerians?" Durant asked, thumbing through the dossier.

"Quiet," Chevalier grunted. "Probably more than a little worried about what
we intend to do about these fellows, and probably also afraid they somehow
had a hand in all this at some point."

Durant remained quiet for several moments, contemplating the situation. He
was a well known supporter of Francophone countries, and the fact that these
terrorists came from one of those countries was going to have serious
implications for his foreign policy agenda. People were demanding action,
and the pressure was building up. The media continued to flash pictures of
the bloodied bodies of children despite the Élysée's best efforts at
suppressing such distasteful images.

"Do you know Colonel Djaafar?" the President asked, looking in the direction
of Chevalier and Vie, referring to Algeria's intelligence tsar. He already
knew the answer. "Contact him, and tell him we intend to look for the
suspects in Algeria. If they want to help then all the better, but indicate
that we intend to move on this whether or not they agree to it. We can't sit
on our hands gathering intelligence all day; it's improper and politically
damaging. And let's keep this on an intelligence level. There's no need to
move things to any higher level than that."

He turned his attention to Bourbois and Moreau, neither one of which was
sitting in a particularly good position.

"I want a report on my desk, first thing in the morning, that outlines every
single connection these suspects have had to anything. I want to know the
leads we have and the terrorist groups we suspect they have a connection
to," Durant said, focusing in on Moreau and pointing his finger at him. "And
above all, track down any associates they may have had and look for any
other cells lurking around. I'm authorizing you to do everything that can be
done to shut down terrorist cells, apprehend suspects and get to the bottom
of this, understood? And release those photos to the media. I want the
entirety of the Republic looking for these men, and they should be joined in
doing so by every ally of this nation abroad."

Durant turned his attention back to the dossier in his hand and frowned down
at the pictures and profiles. A thousand matters were running through his
head, but time again he came back to the empty, dazed look on the faces of
the children injured during the attack. What manner of criminal turned their
hatred on innocent children?

Actions:
1.) Initiate intelligence-level contact with Algerians to explore
possibilities about cooperating to apprehend suspects; if they refuse,
authorize foreign intelligence operations to locate and extract suspects.

2.) Begin searching for terrorist cells associated with the one suspected of
carrying out the attack on Notre Dame.

3.) Release all non-classified material related to the suspected terrorists
and their activities to the media with the specific request for more
information from the public, including French nationals abroad and citizens
of the Francophonie.