Half a million dollars is the price. Considering you expect to get France itself, you value your country very cheap.”

Experienced in psychological warfare, he understood that the fight against Gaullist France had to be conducted on all levels, by terror, diplomacy, and public relations.

Claude Lebel was, as he knew, a good cop. He had always been a good cop, slow, precise, methodical, painstaking. Just occasionally he had shown the flash of inspiration that is needed to turn a good cop into a remarkable detective. But he had never lost sight of the fact that in police work ninety-nine percent of the effort is routine,

The French Secret Service is called the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionage, known for short as SDECE.

Like most fanatics, Rodin could blind himself to facts with sheer belief.

Colonel Antoine Argoud. A product of one of France’s top universities, the Ecole Polytechnique, Argoud had a good brain and dynamic energy.

Like all men created by systems and procedures, he did not like the unpredictable and therefore the uncontrollable.

He was aware that most crime in any society is either carried out against, or witnessed by, the little people: the shopkeeper, the sales assistant, the postman, or the bank clerk. These people he could make talk to him, and he knew it.

Service Five has a one-word title—Action. This office was the core of the anti-OAS war.