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Clever, intriguing and cunning, delivered with intelligence and wit, not blazing guns, blood-spattered walls, high-speed car chases. Espionage may be exciting, but it’s rarely so visible. Instead, a game of shadows and whispers, false identities and listening devices, the suspense bound up in subtlety, not obviousness. As such, the ‘action’ is highly psychological (covert operations, mock interrogations, dual and false identities, etc.) and cyber coordinated (computers, trackers, smartphones, hidden cameras and microphones, etc.). Geo-political wars are now hi-tech, resulting in a simple equation: greater technical precision = heightened personal danger for spies. Consequently, the world of agents and double-agents is not for the faint-hearted. It’s for the bold and courageous, the high rollers, risk takers, high-wire walkers.
Paul Lefebvre is not Paul Lefebvre. He’s a name, a shell, a chameleon, an illusion. He doesn’t exist. But French DGSE agent Guillaume Debailly (nicknamed Malotru) has been living so long as Paul Lefebvre in Syria (six years), that the lines between fact and fiction are beginning to blur in his mind. His handlers back at DGSE headquarters, continually monitoring him, have noticed. So he is recalled to Paris. But there’s a problem when he thinks Damascus is left behind. It isn’t. It follows him to Paris. Damascus is a woman, a Syrian woman. She’s beautiful, married and his lover. Her name is Nadia al-Mansour and she works for the Syrian Culture Ministry, a professor of antiquities. She’s in Paris ostensibly for government talks related to her field, or is there more to her movements, both politically and/or emotionally? Debailly doesn’t know. At any rate, she has never met him. She only knows Paul Lefebvre, a writer and teacher of French who lived in Damascus. Politics never much interested Paul. Poetry, literature, linguistics and writing are what he loves. He loves Nadia, too. It wasn’t easy leaving her. He was torn up about it, though he tried to cauterise the wound, camouflage the pain, concealing it from her. Later, he hoped homeland and the Parisian air might help ease the hurt of remembering her. It didn’t. It hasn’t. So when he discovers she’s in Paris he’ll walk a knife edge between his twin personas — Paul to her, Debailly to his bosses, colleagues and rest of the world, including his estranged wife and 18-year-old daughter.
His professional life was always complicated. His wife knew he worked in espionage on behalf of the state (DGSE is Directorate-General of External Security in English, the French equivalent of MI6), but he never told her any details, was never authorised to do so. So even at home with his wife and daughter he has led a double life. The daughter was 12 when he left France for the Middle East. Why did Papa have to go so far away? Work, she was told. She thus hated the idea of his work, whatever it was he did that separated him from her. She wanted her papa close by her, not far away.
But it’s worse for him now, far more complicated. He’s isolated now, truly alone: one man and identity for family and country and career, another for the woman he loves. It was easier in Syria where he could leave Debailly behind, just another Frenchman in France. Secret agents are essentially actors, and he loved the role of playing Paul. He had a chance to be bookish, philosophical, writerly, a public intellectual, his opinions taken seriously. The role suited him, as he’s thoughtful, sensitive, highly intelligent. And the cover was perfect: poetic man, mind far removed from international conflicts and intrigue. He loved Paul so much, in fact, that he started to become the thing he imitated. It’s why he had to be removed. And of course it was nothing he could tell Nadia about. The excuse he gave to her was that of his wife and daughter back in France. He had neglected them for too long, which was true. But he would have gone on neglecting his wife indefinitely had he been able to keep Nadia.
However, his daughter was different. He had already missed a third of her life between the ages of 12 and 18. But if it was painful to return, to leave Nadia and the make-believe life of poet Paul behind, his reward was the love of his beautiful daughter regained.
In Algeria the cover of a key DGSE operative code named Cyclone has been blown. A Muslim who never drinks, he was found drunk in Algiers and arrested by the police. Too strange. This is a big deal because Cyclone knows a lot. If they break him, find out who he really is and works for, if he gives names, DGSE operatives and missions throughout the Middle East will be compromised, not to mention the security of France endangered. So finding and rescuing Cyclone, if it can be done, becomes an important thread that runs through the narrative.
Another sub-plot involves the recruiting and training of Marina Loiseau, a young female operative, aged perhaps 23, for the DGSE’s Iran operation (infiltrating that country’s nuclear programme). Her mission is dangerous but she’s keen. She wants to be part of it, though easier said than done. She’s a thin waif of a girl who looks quite weak and naïve. She takes crash courses in geology and seismology to enter a programme run by an Iranian professor of Earth Sciences at an institute in Paris. She also studies Farsi. Can she win the approval of the professor and have herself selected as part of the team that gets sent back to Tehran with the professor?
Meanwhile Debailly’s superiors have been observing him with some concern. Is he having trouble decompressing, returning to his normal life? Re-entry can be difficult. To answer this question the DGSE brings in a female shrink (Dr. Balmes) to keep a close, continuous eye on him. But Balmes is mysterious too, and we only learn of her backstory later.
Then there’s Nadia (whom the DGSE is unaware of) and Debailly’s need to resurrect Paul Lefebvre to protect her and himself. As far as the DGSE knows, Paul Lefebvre was discarded, left on the scrapheap of Syria, a nation torn asunder. Debailly thought so too when he left Damascus for Paris. But now new circumstances, wholly unexpected, demand that Lefebvre be resurrected like Lazarus.
In these ways, and many others, things are complicated. The series is brilliant in the small details. If your aural comprehension of French is far from perfect (as mine is), you may need to engage the pause button frequently to catch the nuances of conversation rendered in English via subtitles. There is some English spoken too (by CIA spooks), but apart from Arabic, Farsi and Russian, most of the foreign dialogue is in French. You will need to focus and concentrate carefully to keep up with the many permutations of thought, action and interaction, as it’s one of the most intelligent espionage series I’ve yet encountered. Luckily, a second season has already been filmed and is out on DVD. A third season has also been commissioned and is being filmed.
The series has been called the finest French TV production yet made. I can believe it, even if I’m not in a position to judge what its competition might be. The going for me was slow at first, but once it picked up steam (halfway through Episode One) there was no holding back, so I was sorry when the last episode (no. 10) ended. I’ve already ordered Season Two, which will be in the post soon. I cannot recommend the series highly enough. Once you’re hooked, you’ll be abducted into an intricate web of intrigue that is the French foreign secret service. You may even torture yourself with sleep deprivation due to CVD, an acronym I just made up, I think — Compulsive Viewing Disorder. You’ll be knackered, completely worn out, but you’ll be happy.
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