Prologue  

If they are sentenced to be incarcerated in France’s toughest prison, La Sante, criminals face eternal loneliness, every hour, every day of their lives. It is hell on earth for the undisciplined, the mentally incapable.

Carlos Sanchez Alvarez, the notorious international terrorist and perhaps Sante’s most infamous inmate, focused his concentration on a stack of letters and newsprint before him. When finished, he would begin corresponding with several newspapers and his one remaining lawyer.

A sullen-faced guard opened the inspection hatch and eyeballed the solitary prisoner number 254217, a convicted murderer. France’s public enemy number one. Starkly centred against the backdrop of freshly painted stonework, he saw a middle-aged man of swarthy complexion seated at a small desk, studiously attending to another daily ritual. In reality, the cell belied the traditional image conjured up by its solitary classification, resembling budget motel accommodation rather than dungeon-style confinement. All appearing normal, the hatch was quickly shut.

 

Having first terrified Europe for two decades, the assassin was eventually trapped on foreign soil by the French Secret Service and sentenced to life imprisonment for the one killing they could prove. History and verbal testimony suggest the certainty of multiple personal killings and other assassinations as a consequence of terrorist attacks directed by the incumbent. One wonders to what extent such terrible crimes, perpetrated by the same individual, remain as yet unsolved. Perhaps even unknown … undiscovered …

Progressively, this despised lifer accumulated the facilities to provide many basic prison comforts. Number 254217 endured a solitary existence rather than sharing a cell for two reasons: First, because of his reputation for the murder of innocent citizens rather than the crimes for which he was convicted, his life was considered at serious risk should he be forced to share his existence with one of Sante’s more violent inmates; second, the preservation of this man’s safety, because of dubious circumstances surrounding his arrest, created mounting pressure in Paris especially, and in France generally.

Since his Sudanese arrest, kidnapping, snatch—call it what you will—on August 15 1997, French authorities endeavoured to break the iron-clad will of Carlos Sanchez Alvarez using every conceivable legal means. Solitary detention was therefore administered by the French to exert covert psychological pressure. Paris needed to stop the letters, complaints and accusations which, through his lawyer, created public pressures and international indignation.

Alvarez, dubbed ‘La Serpiente’, suffered more than most realised from deprivation of the things he was known to love most: the company of women, communication with allies and friends, and his favourite reading matter. In due course, through the agency of supporters and lawyers, Carlos was provided with most material requirements including his Cuban corona cigars. One such ally was none other than the incumbent president of his native Venezuela. Another was of course, his father, the revered judge, José Montegro Mavas.

It became a planned Carlos ritual to feed the media, claiming constant abuses and demeaning treatment at the hands of the sadistic French. As the game continued, the constant publicity continued to arouse growing support in many countries, especially Venezuela and Brazil. Venezuelan president Fernando Valleja had, on many occasions, publicly stated his commitment to Carlos as a citizen; his foreign ministry constantly issued demands that he be returned to serve the remainder of his sentence at the discretion of the president. The South American state insisted that the French Secret Service illegally kidnapped Carlos (which indeed they did) when security agents swept into an African hospital and forcibly removed him to another address. Here, Carlos was drugged and swiftly deposited into a waiting French Secret Service jet.

Since his interment in Sante Prison, Venezuelan officials remained vociferous in their insistence that the French authorities had unnecessarily subjected him to solitary confinement, constant provocation and humiliating treatment in an effort to break his spirit.

This accusation was, of course, not the complete truth. Isolation and the subtle mental torment that accompanied it, were intended as the ‘Chinese water torture’; but in a strangely perverse way, adverse psychological effects proved minimal, and the comforts afforded him provided a bearable prison existence.

 

The Serpent smiled thinly while perusing his correspondence for the following day. He began to sign off on a four-page letter to his bride-to-be―his lawyer and a woman loyal to his cause despite the frustrated resignation of many others. He had already completed what was brief but regular correspondence to his former wife, Magdalena Koch. Carlos had well-founded reasons to believe that Magdalena would soon become known again as a loyal ally. The Serpent’s final thoughts when once again lying on his single bed began as always with the re-enactment of his life. His glorious achievements. The memory of these adventures became a dual catalyst: A driving force for retention of sanity, and meticulous plans for a return to glory.

 The past shall become the future, only greater and globally devastating.

Yes, Carlos believed he had a future. With good reason. People now considered him too old, thought also he would die in prison. Twelve months ago he was nothing more than a fading memory―just another soft and seemingly defeated inmate, disintegrating in the bowels of Sante as had many others over the centuries. This man’s body however, was being slowly conditioned and his mind sharpened thanks largely to modern training equipment, the incentive to use it and books of meditative motivation delivered to him courtesy of his father.

And to an idea. Far from impossible. Complex but brilliant.

Though his body had deteriorated through both age and lack of exercise, the active and dedicated mind of La Serpiente never relented in its fanatical determinations. Carlos began his physical rejuvenation at the sowing of the first seed; the seemingly absurd concept transmitted by Koch to the only person permitted regular visiting rights. His dedicated lawyer, Teresa Palat. In his mind the elements of future plans were conceived and stored. Now, a more controlled and mature mind than before with a powerful resolve to exact revenge … and more. Many Western pigs would suffer for his betrayal, he vowed, with certain French government officials already targeted for stealing eight years of his life.

The brilliant mind of his padre was, at this very moment, developing a unique and terrifying plan to achieve these and more lofty ambitions, and in doing so would instil terror and confusion among Western nations. Though the fools out there think otherwise, the revolution is not dead, merely sleeping. Carlos will be back, and the world will know.

As will the cursed Englishman who again survived near-certain death. MI6 agent, Jarrod Boon. Chameleon.

 

Carlos drifted again into a world of dreams. Once again he was a young man in his twenties, motivated by the People’s Friendship University in Moscow. Having gained the necessary dedication and encouragement in true Marxist fashion, he was soon ready to undertake the serious side of his vocation—attacking France, Britain and other Western enemies. At age twenty-two, Carlos joined a Cuban training camp studying guerrilla tactics, explosives, sabotage, automatic weapons, disguise and every other conceivable terrorist skill.

As the Serpent slept, his finest triumphs were relived. The Black September massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, said to be masterminded by Yasser Arafat. And the OPEC kidnapping in 1975, a masterpiece of planning. Masterminding the hijack of Air France flight 139 with 257 people on board was credited, perhaps incorrectly many believe, to La Serpiente. The plan to exchange hostages for jailed terrorists failed, but they made their point … and the world knew it.

These crimes and others labelled him a brilliant terrorist possessing skills of surgical precision. To his enemies he was simply a cold-blooded assassin. The Serpent slept, but before he did, the developing and realistic advancement of Koch’s audacious concept had been re-examined in his mind. The man who, despite a global softening in communistic zeal following the Cold War, still remained dedicated to the inevitable triumph of world revolutionary forces over capitalistic greed.

Such were the beliefs, the certainties, in the mind of the human predator known in the business as the Serpent. The man currently spending his life in solitary confinement for the cold-blooded execution of two French Secret Service agents.