Henri Delos gently replaced the elegant receiver into its art deco cradle. He preferred it to his soulless cell phone that wanted to be everything, telling him when to exercise, when to brush his teeth. The antique phone had been his grandfather’s, a savvy old pirate who’d founded the Armament Météore at the start of the First World War. He’d sold weaponry and armaments to any country willing to pay his price, except to Germany, of course, because he was, after all, a French patriot. Henri’s father hadn’t appreciated either the phone or his own father and was fast running the company into the ground when he’d keeled over dead from a heart attack. Finally, Henri took over. Henri had expanded into aeronautics and aerospace and, like his grandfather, sold to anyone he could, except the Chinese, who stole the technology from other countries and had the brains and hands to build as many weapons as they wished. His major clients of late were in the Middle East, on all sides, an endlessly profitable place with its bone-deep hatreds and tankers of oil to finance never-ending attacks. Of course, many of his sales were off the books, the profits funneled back into his own pockets. He thought of the lovely little cliffside getaway near Portofino both his wife and his mistress enjoyed. Better in Italy, and not France, no reason to take chances. He’d learned early that dealing with the bureaucrats in the Direction Générale des Finances Publiques required a bit of stealth and subterfuge. As for the Sûreté Nationale, he knew the players, knew whose pockets required a few euros to look the other way, how to skate smoothly through their loopholes. All in all, everything had been working very well in his world. Until now.

He looked over at a painting of his father, done only six months before his death. Tufts of white hair stood up from his bone-white skull and Henri saw a familiar hint of a snarl in his compressed lips. His father had been a vicious drunk, a bad combination for a wife and son but now he was gone, forever. Henri thought of his mother living in luxury with her handmaiden divorced daughter, his older sister, to see to her every whim. When his mother spoke of her husband, it was with near reverence. He’d prefer to believe her myriad medications had altered her memory.

Henri did have to admit the old man had done one thing right. He’d been active in establishing the Organisation for Joint Armament Co-operation, or OCCAR, which had positioned his company, Armament Météore, as one of the actual authors of its export restrictions and their loopholes. Henri himself was a very vocal presence in the European Defence Agency, the EDA, which gave his company a position with far-reaching influence and respect.