Topaz - Leon Uris [89]
His advisers were faithful to him ahead of the government, and as often as not La Croix was consulted even before the Premier.
As the Anglo-Franco forces neared the Canal, Colonel Brune asked for an urgent appointment with La Croix. Brune, a member of the General’s clique, was La Croix’s main source of power and information within the SDECE.
Jacques Granville, Pierre La Croix’s personal aide, ushered Brune into the General’s office at the moment of invasion.
“We have been following a desperate situation for several hours,” Brune said. “I’ve been waiting for confirmations. We have them. Messages started coming into SDECE from our military and naval Intelligence shortly after midnight to the effect that American warships of the Seventh Fleet picked up our expeditionary force. Throughout the night destroyers followed us and their airplanes put us under surveillance. This morning as we entered Egyptian territorial waters warning shots were fired by the Americans over the bow of our troopships.”
Without visible reaction Pierre La Croix took the dispatches, all stamped with the authenticity of the SDECE, and thumbed through them.
“Has the Premier been advised?” he asked.
“No,” Brune replied.
La Croix nodded. “The Premier is so pro-Israeli we will have to act on this information without his knowledge.”
“Yes, sir. But I can’t believe it. The Americans gave their word.”
“It’s obviously a double cross,” Colonel Brune said.
“I just can’t believe it,” Granville repeated.
Ambassador Rawlins was summoned to the Prime Minister’s after he was finally informed. The messages of American treachery were shoved unceremoniously into the Ambassador’s face, followed by an undiplomatic Gallic outburst by the Prime Minister.
Rawlins was thoroughly confused. With normal communications on Suez deliberately cut off, Marshall McKittrick was dispatched to Washington for clarification. It took several days to ascertain that there had been no American action against the expeditionary force and that the reports received by French SDECE had been false.
It had been the work of the Topaz ring, and the information General Pierre La Croix had been fed and in turn had fed to the Premier and Cabinet was Soviet Disinformation.
Moscow capitalized quickly on a hysterical situation by a saber-rattling threat to turn loose its missiles on Paris unless the French quit.
The seizure of the Suez Canal never came to pass, with only the Israelis achieving their objectives.
Following up the Disinformation coup, the Soviets convinced Nasser that the United States was really behind the plot to grab the Canal. And a final propaganda barrage put the blame on the Americans, in the minds of Frenchmen, forever.
It grew dark. Marshall McKittrick had fallen asleep.
But there was no sleep for André. Who had carried the Soviet Disinformation to La Croix and the French Premier during Suez?
The false dispatches had come from the SDECE. Who in SDECE was in constant communication with La Croix and Matignon? Who was doing the briefing on behalf of the Secret Service?
Who but Colonel Gabriel Brune?
The chiefs of SDECE were generally political appointees. Many were pro-American. They were largely functionaries totally dependent on their staffs. The real seat of power was with the Vice Administrators, the career professionals—as Colonel Gabriel Brune.
It was all in tune with a known Communist tactic of sneaking the actual power into the hands of a deputy working under a harmless figurehead.
And what of Brune’s nature and his past? He had kept himself nondescript and out of the limelight. He had held a key post with the NATO intelligence network, ININ, and he was a friend of Henri Jarré. A further look showed him to be a hostile anti-American who deliberately slanted reports and opinions against