Unraveling French Twist

James Bond has Q. Chet Fletcher has EQ. . . .

FRENCH TWIST: A CHET FLETCHER NOVEL is a fresh take on the spy thriller that delivers cinematic action and adventure through the voice of a witty, emotionally aware, trope-savvy protagonist.

Chet’s a good shot and he learned pradal serey when he was in Cambodia with the Peace Corps—but his best weapons are his mind and heart.

FRENCH TWIST lets you have your cake and eat it, too—by giving you a full-throttle genre ride while also respecting your intelligence (through its nimble voice and imaginative approach to plot, our shared way of acknowledging this is a story, not the supposed inside-scoop).

It reads like a movie but thinks like a novel.

It also comes with a virtual ticket to France: it’s part spy novel, part getaway. . . .

And part romance: Chet’s relationship with his French colleague Sylvie is characterized by teamwork, witty banter—and an occasional tendency to find themselves in each other’s arms.

* * * * * *

The Pitch:

Chet Fletcher is no ordinary secret agent. Raised in Arkansas by an oppressive father who sold fences for a living, he developed an expertise in foreign lands and languages as a means of escape. Now he’s a Dartmouth grad, Peace Corps vet, and CIA dropout working for ASTRID, a private intelligence agency fighting global authoritarianism.

When the top U.S. designer of cyberweapons is murdered in France and his latest creation Corpse Flower—a virus that can breach any firewall—goes missing, Chet is sent to the Riviera to investigate.

Teaming up with brilliant French analyst Sylvie Allaire, he follows a trail from Saint Tropez to Bordeaux to Paris, scuba diving for clues, stealing racehorses, hanging from helicopters—and uncovering a sinister plot by Dr. Herve Gosse, a rogue ophthalmologist working for LEOPARD, a shadowy antidemocratic cabal and ASTRID’s frequent adversary around the world. Gosse plans to merge Corpse Flower with his optical weapon Helios to blind the people of Paris by hijacking their smart phones.

As Chet and Sylvie race to stop him, they’re led to wonder whether the devices we use to connect might be putting us in danger—and whether imagination, wit, and empathy are of any use in fighting people intent on maximizing their own wealth and power at whatever cost to other people and the planet.

Here are a few excerpts:

From Chapter 2:

           “He fell off a tower overlooking the Mediterranean,” said Amara. “However, the medical examiner thinks fall is not the correct word. There was fluid in his lungs as if he’d been held under water. And bruises on his wrists and ankles suggested he was swung to and for by assailants and thrown over the guard wall.”
         “Any leads on who they were or why they did it?” asked Chet.
         “No leads, only a fear.”
         “What’s the fear?”
         “That he was killed for an encrypted flash drive he was carrying.”
         “What was on the flash drive?”
         “Have you heard of a plant called the corpse flower?”
         “It sounds like something Dracula would wear in his buttonhole.”
         “It’s a plant native to Sumatra that’s widely cultivated in botanical gardens. When it blooms it looks like a ten-foot-high baguette standing in a purple vase.”
         “The perfect boutonnière.”
         “Except that it smells like decomposing flesh.” She continued: “Alan had just put the finishing touches on a new virus called Corpse Flower that he said was even more powerful than Blowtorch. He told the NSA its ability to get through firewalls could enable it to send the stink of death into every corner of the Internet.”
         “Where is this miracle bug?” Chet asked. “Safely under lock and key, I hope.”
         “The night Alan was killed, he was scheduled to fly home to bring Corpse Flower to the NSA on an encrypted flash drive.”
         “And the drive is missing.”
         “Without a trace.”
         “How strong is the encryption?” he asked.
         “Fairly strong, they tell us. AES 256-bit something or other; I’ll send you the details. Anyway, the fear is, it’s not strong enough. We’re worried the thieves will eventually manage to access the virus and do something unpleasant with it. They could use it to clean out the banks, shut off the power—just about anything.”
         “So what does Barbara want me to do?” Chet asked.
         “Find out who took the flash drive and recover it, preferably before they can break into it and launch some sort of attack with Corpse Flower. There’s a suspicion that LEOPARD is involved,” she added.
         “We wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Chet ruefully.
         LEOPARD was a shadowy cabal of oligarchs, dictators, and tech barons intent on doing everything they could to increase their own wealth and power, at whatever cost to other people and the planet. Their M.O. was to back country-level villains whose aims dovetailed with theirs—like angel investors except for demons. The name stood for League of Enemies of Participatory Democracy.
         Amara looked back at her phone and tapped the screen.
         “I just sent you your ticket to Nice,” she said. “Your plane leaves tonight out of Boston.”

From Chapter 4:

The road to Saint-Tropez wound southwest between the glittering blue sea and a range of rugged brown hills. With the windows up and the air conditioner on, the Audi was a cool, quiet retreat from the heat and glare. Chet’s hunch about the car counting as basic transportation was proven correct as he encountered one Bentley, Range Rover, and Ferrari after another. Still, he was delighted by the car, whose handling threw that of his Subaru wagon into the shade. Working the stick like he was racing at Monaco, he sped through the curves and sailed over the rises, slinging his body from side to side and occasionally floating off the seat.
         The road unfolded one glimpse of heaven-on-earth after another. There were pocket beaches, red-tile villages, rock-bound coves, and cliff-top villas that looked out over the sea. The sight of a group of golden children hurling themselves off a yacht’s swim platform gave him a pang of retrospective envy. When he was their age, his afternoons had run more to playing with an old Matchbox in the dirt of the backyard while waiting for his father to come home and put everyone on edge. A little later, single as he now was, a glimpse of a slender, tan woman with no top on reaching up to close the back of her car filled him with longing.
         At one point he found himself thinking about the Riviera phases in the lives of various writers and artists he liked. Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Matisse and Somerset Maugham. Mick and Keith. He couldn’t remember the name of the town where the Stones had recorded Exile on Main Street, but he believed the name of the house was Villa Nellcôte. Alas, the days when the Riviera offered any kind of Bohemian refuge for artists were long gone, he knew. Having been bought up for use as a playground and safe harbor by the dubious ultra-rich, it now possessed all the soul of a twenty-four-karat conflict diamond.
         It was just before four when he pulled into the small dirt parking lot of La Cabane Jolie. The club occupied a relatively remote location two thirds of the way down Pampelonne Beach, which was two miles long and oriented north-south. The lot was shoehorned full of expensive cars and surrounded by maquis, the dry, scrubby vegetation that covered the Riviera’s hills. Stiff from the drive, he took a few seconds to stretch after parking the car, then he headed up the slatted walkway leading to the club.

From Chapter 5:

The jet ski turned out to be a Kawasaki Ultra. Miraculously, the key was in the ignition. Mentally begging the owners’ pardon, he pushed the machine into the water, guided it over the surf, and hopped aboard. Slipping his hand through the curly purple shut-off bracelet, he grasped the left grip and mashed the start button. The machine rumbled to life and started vibrating like a rocket on a launch pad. Gripping the seat with his thighs, he said a prayer for luck—nonbeliever though he now was—and pulled on the throttle. Soon he was streaking across the bay at fifty miles an hour with the wind blowing his hair back and the jet ski jouncing up and down.
         As soon as the speedboat driver saw him coming, he bore away toward the open sea with the obvious goal of leaving him behind. But the parasail slowed him like a drag chute, and Chet slowly reeled him in. Before long they were well outside the line of yachts, in the place where Pampelonne Bay merged with the Med. As Chet drew near, the parasailer directed a few desultory bursts his way then stopped shooting, either because he was out of ammunition or worried about hitting the boat. Finally, when he was good and close, he rose up and leapt onto the boat’s starboard quarter like a cowboy tackling calf, taking the key with him to prevent the jet ski’s running off and getting itself into trouble.
         The boat had an open cockpit lined in white plastic and the driver was standing at the wheel, in the front left corner. His washboard stomach and the nasty glint in his eye suggested his day job might be mugging people behind the Marseille train station. As Chet regained his feet, the driver lifted the anchor out of its storage bucket and threw it at him, obliging him to twist out of the way. The anchor sank its flukes into the cockpit lining like Dracula biting somebody’s neck. Chet dropped into his pradal serey stance and began advancing up the deck.

From Chapter 15:

With the approach of midnight, the mainstream people who had formerly predominated on the Place du Palais had gone away and the vagabonds had spread out to occupy the entire plaza. They were now sitting in circles around a hundred campfires, sending up a chorus of hoots and jeers and the whanging of a dozen ill-played guitars. The sight reminded Chet, who was looking down at it from the terrace in front of Notre Dame des Doms cathedral, of the camp of the Greeks on the plain before Troy. However, tonight it wasn’t the Greeks who had the task of rescuing a kidnapped woman, it was him.
         Notre Dame des Doms was located just north of the palace and immediately south of Rocher des Doms, a park whose name meant rock of the popes—and one occupying a bluff so obdurate it diverted the Rhone. Chet had received no more texts from the people in control of Sylvie’s phone beyond the horrible first; however, he was in little doubt as to who was behind the message and her abduction. He was sure the skull-heads, having grabbed her when she followed them from the plaza, now wished to use her as bait to lure him into the park, where they probably hoped to serve both of them a fate similar to that they had visited on Alan Lomax.
         He was beset by guilt and worry, but he knew such emotions could only impede his effectiveness and did his his best to tamp them down. This was a time to focus on the here and now. He glanced at his watch and saw it was ten minutes to twelve. Then he looked over his shoulder at the terrace’s crucifix statue, a uniquely morbid rendering of a white bodybuilder Jesus impaled by brown stakes and thorns. As a boy he would have begged God for help, but that impulse, like his belief, had died a long time ago. After taking another look at his watch, he racked the slide of the Beretta and tucked the pistol into his belt at the small of his back. Then he pushed off the balustrade, passed under the outstretched arms of Jesus and his cross, and set off toward the stairs at the north side of the church.

From Chapter 24:

“Of course, the eye is as well-protected as it can be commensurate with its function,” Gosse continued. “There’s the surrounding bone to protect against impacts, the lids and lashes to guard against splashes and dust. The tear ducts to lubricate and cleanse. Although those protections do little good in instances of vitriolage, such as one sees in India and Bangladesh and similar countries. . . .”
         “Acid attacks,” said Chet.
         “That’s right. Typically against women for refusing to marry a male suitor. Or for declining a man’s sexual advances. And then there is the whole issue of targeting an enemy’s eyesight with weapons of war, which you can’t do, legally. The United Nations issued a Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons prohibiting their use.”
         Chet recalled the copy of the protocol he had seen in the office, the one on which the word garbage had been scrawled.
         “The protocol came into force in 1998,” Gosse continued. “As of last year it has been subscribed to by one hundred and nine nations. At least according to some countries—including yours—it’s perfectly all right to plant a mine that pops up and blows a man’s testicles off. But God forbid you direct a laser beam into his eyes and render him incapable of seeing.”
         “You oppose the treaty,” Chet prompted.
         “Optikon could have made a lot of money off of the manufacture of blinding laser weapons. As it happens, studying the eye to learn how to treat it renders one exceptionally well-qualified to destroy it.”
         On the inside, Chet was quivering like a fawn. He sensed there were riches to be gathered here if could pose the right questions in the right way.
         “Why do you have a room full of electronic devices?” he asked, still using his hypnotist’s voice.
         “The Internet has extended its tendrils into every home, into every hand, almost,” said Gosse. “Have you ever watched a person staring into a cellphone or digital television? The eyes shine, the irises relax and open wide. The pupils gape like the rima vulvae of a concupiscent woman! Imagine if needles were to leap out of those screens at such moments! Their path to the center of every eye would be completely unobstructed!”
         “Are you talking about Helios?”
         “I’m talking about history!”
         “And Corpse Flower?”
         “Corpse Flower will play a supporting role but an important one. Acquiring it has made everything else possible.”
         “Why?”
         “Because it’s capable of permeating every barrier.”
         “Every barrier to what?”
         “You yourself identified the domain of the god in question.”
         “That of Helios?”
         “Sufficient light illuminates,” Gosse said. “A surfeit can destroy.”
         “Destroy what? Where?”
         “I am not entirely without poetry, Mr. Fletcher.”
         “Poetry respecting your target?”
         “In which of the world’s cities would the irony be greatest if suddenly its residents could no longer see?”

From Chapter 33:

He was in a kind of red and gold grotto spottily illuminated by a few floodlights and broken by forest of slim pillars supporting a cross-vaulted ceiling some twenty feet up. There was no one in sight and the place was quiet as a crypt. The dearth of windows and relatively low height puzzled him till he remembered having read somewhere that Sainte-Chapelle actually included two chapels, a modest one for the lower-ranking members of the royal household and a much grander one for the king and his court. Clearly this was the chapel for the hoi polloi. Suddenly, he heard, from the canvas stalls of the gift-shop lining the left-hand wall, a splenetic rustling sound such as might be made by a burglar rummaging irritably through disappointing merchandise. A second later the noise came to an abrupt and suspicious halt.
         A man stepped out of one of the stalls and stared at him, a big, lumbering dark-haired one with a submachine gun in his hands. He started raising it, and Chet jerked the Beretta up and fired twice. A loud double bark caromed around the room, and the man took two steps, grabbed a postcard carousel, and toppled over, taking the carousel down with him. Hitting the floor with a metallic shivering noise, it threw out a sheaf of postcards which slid smoothly away across the polished terrazzo.
         Reflecting that he might as well have hit a bee hive with a stick, Chet hurried deeper into the chapel, took cover behind a pillar, and waited for the gunman’s friends to come pouring out of the stair towers. Thankfully, none did, and after a few moments, he concluded that the turns of the stairs must have kept the noise of the shots from reaching the upper chapel. Then he advanced to the mouth of the stair tower to the right of the entrance and began to ascend.
         The stairway was as tight as a tomb. It was also perfectly quiet—until he heard from behind and below the scuff of rubber on stone. Spinning, he glimpsed another burly tough taking aim at him with a pistol. He simultaneously ducked and fired. Two shots roiled in the narrow tube, then the man fell back against the wall, slid to a sitting position, and tumbled down out of sight, leaving a smear of red on the undressed stone. Fighting nausea and wondering how long his luck was going to hold, Chet turned and continued up the stairs.

From Chapter 37:

He had a dreamy feeling of flying through the air while his stomach rose into his throat—then he crashed into a shockingly cold body of water in which he was instantly and completely submerged.
         Suddenly wide awake, he registered that his ears were plugged and that he was holding his breath as liquid pressed against him and chill currents swirled over his skin. Then he became aware of an uncomfortable and growing firmness in his chest—and a rising desire to open his mouth and inhale. He needed air, he realized. Okay, he thought, he needed air. The discovery was not especially upsetting. He had always been a good swimmer, and since he had only recently entered the water he could not be at any great depth. All he had to do was swim back up to the surface and he could breathe to his heart’s content. He sent out the appropriate orders to his arms and legs. But while his legs spread out and got ready to kick, his arms tried to extend but were prevented from doing so. Suddenly he was as horrified as if he had found himself falling from an airplane without a parachute. His hands were tied behind his back.
         He remembered lying on the ground wanting to sleep and seeing his stumbling feet being dragged over cobblestones. Then he recalled Gosse shooting Tracy and himself destroying their equipment and rushing to her side. As the scenes came back to him they put spurs to his already racing heart. Then he remembered shouting at the phone for them to send an ambulance and a flash of pain in his head that led to everything going black. Suddenly it came to him, with a feeling of ice in his chest, that Tracy might still be lying on the floor in need of help. He had to get back right away and make sure she got it.
         Trying to break the cord, he attempted with all his strength to spread his arms, but while the sinews in his shoulders popped and his bonds cut into his skin, the cord was not affected. Becoming aware once again of the hunger in his lungs, he realized freeing his hands would have to wait. Then he aimed his body in the direction he believed was up and started frog-kicking with all his might.
         Miraculously, after a few seconds, his head popped free and clear into the warm night air. He desperately sucked in oxygen while snatching his head around to see where he was. Surrounding him were light-spangled black water, stone quais, and city lights, as well as a knot of policemen on a point of land looking up at the sky. Could he be in the Seine? Good God, he really had been thrown in the Seine with his hands tied. Getting and keeping his head above the surface required a prodigious effort by his frantically churning legs. Now his legs began to tire, burn, and slow. Despair skidded through him like an out-of-control car then he tipped over and slid back under the surface.
         Grief welled inside him as he grappled with the reality of his imminent death. Drowning was going to be agony and he loved being alive. Then he had the idea of drawing his knees up to his chest and trying to pass his hands forward under his feet. If he could get his arms in front of his body, he might be able to swim well enough to get back to the surface. Of course, if the cord got hung up under the soles of his boots, he’d be doomed—but he was equally doomed if he did nothing.
         Tightening his body into a ball, he began working the U of his linked arms forward under his seat and boots. He immediately began to sink and spin, then his forearms got stranded on his hipbones. Come on, he told himself. Don’t panic. Fight through. With a huge effort, he contracted his stomach muscles and managed to compress himself just enough to get his arms over his hips and into the V of his bent legs. And for half a second, he felt the bliss of triumph and the relief that came with moving into a comparatively loose and relaxed body position. Then he realized, with a wave of fresh horror, that he was now more hopelessly trussed up than ever.

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