Red Alert in Paris: Eiffel Tower Evacuation

Here's the link to the CBS story on the evacuation of the tower. Your guess is as good as mine as to what is really going on.
I'm quoting myself here, from a blog entry in April 2009, over a year ago:

"A fast-moving, atmospheric thriller. Best to start reading this one early in the evening... unless, that is, you don't mind losing a night's sleep!" ——David Hunt, best-selling author of The Magician's Tale

Why do we Americans have such short memories, and why do we always seem to focus on ourselves, ignoring or forgetting the lessons to be learned from others?

While president Barack Obama was visiting France in April, without a word of commentary to set Obama’s statements in a historical context, ABC News reported him as saying “I think that it is important for Europe to understand that even though I'm now president and George Bush is no longer president, al Qaeda is still a threat and that we cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president suddenly everything's going to be OK.”

Some Europeans legitimately took offense at the suggestion that they have failed to grasp the threat posed by extremist violence. Paris has experienced deadly bombing episodes periodically for decades, long before 9/11 awoke the sleeping American giant.

On October 1, 1995, The NY Times’ Alan Riding reported that “It is probably fair to say that if Paris were not normally such a safe city a recent spate of terrorist bombs would not have been so disturbing. Parisians -- and visitors to Paris -- are used to feeling secure here. And now, metaphorically speaking, they have to look over their shoulders.”

What many had already forgotten in the fall of 1995 were the bombings of the mid-1980s. Here is the NY Times, again (in an April 15, 1992 report): “The Tunisian leader of an Iranian-backed group that killed 13 people and wounded 303 others in a series of bomb attacks in central Paris in 1985 and 1986 was sentenced to life imprisonment by a special anti-terrorist court here today.”

Little attention was given in the USA to reports of an even older bombing incident in Paris. On November 13, 2008, CBC News reported “A University of Ottawa sociology professor has been arrested in Gatineau, Que., in relation to a bombing that killed four people near a synagogue in Paris almost three decades ago. Canada's Department of Justice confirmed that 56-year-old Hassan Diab was arrested Thursday, Agence-France Presse reported.”

That bombing occurred on Oct. 3, 1980, outside the Rue Copernic synagogue in Paris.

Live and learn?

Eiffel Tower bomb: Does Life Follow Art?

The Eiffel Tower is under threat. An attack on the tower was foreshadowed in Paris City of Night, my thriller, published in 2009. So let's hope life does not follow art.
Of course, as I've noted before in this blog, plots to attack the tower are not new.
Here's the cover of the book, and the back-cover copy.

And here's the copy:

Paris is alluring and seductive, but by no means benign, as Jay Grant well knows. Orange alerts make people trigger-happy. Red and black alerts are worse. They transform the City of Light into a hellish City of Night...

June 18, 1950: The blurry image of escaping Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann wells up in a CIA darkroom in pre-dawn Paris.

December 26, 2007: Madeleine Adelaïde de Lafayette, celebrated Résistance and Free French hero, former CIA deputy chief of station in Paris, is found dead in her mansion fronting the Eiffel Tower. Few know she was a key player in the misguided Allied effort to fight Communism by smuggling Nazis to freedom. So was William Grant, Madeleine’s favorite operative, also recently deceased.

December 28, 2007: As the countdown to New Year’s Eve flashes from the top of the Eiffel Tower, vintage photography and Daguerreotype expert Jay Grant, "son of a spook," races to piece together a deadly picture-puzzle. Why were Madeleine and his father William murdered——and whose side is the CIA really on? Someone is trying to kill Jay before he can crack a code embedded on a set of Daguerreotype plates and flush out terrorists plotting to attack Paris. Persuing Jay through the menacingly dark City of Light are a shadowy recycled Cold Warrior, a sexy Homeland Security officer, and his father William's aged, fanatic former colleague, a man whose mission is no longer beating the Commies but battling radical Islam, even if it means destroying parts of the city he loves...

“A wild ride through the dark side of Paris.”——Diane Johnson

"A fast-moving, atmospheric thriller. Best to start reading this one early in the evening... unless, that is, you don't mind losing a night's sleep!" —David Hunt, best-selling author of The Magician's Tale

"Unputdownable——a real page-turner. No one should miss this." —Anton Gill, author of the world best-selling series The Egyptian Mysteries

Paris City of Night is available on line and at bookstores everywhere. To purchase your copy, visit Amazon.com. Thanks, David

Cinque Terre from Above, my latest on Gadling

As some of you know, I'm a regular contributor from Europe to Gadling.com, AOL's literary travel site. My latest posting comes from the Cinque Terre, which I explore from above, away from the crowds.
Here's a teaser, with a link to the article on Gadling.com. Please share!
All the best, David

A seagull and hawk dueled in the clear, blue sky directly in front of our noses. Waves crashed but we could not hear them, because they were far too far below.

Was this the land of dreamy dreams? No. Try the Cinque Terre.

The grapegrowers and woodsmen of the old, impoverished Cinque Terre used to be the exclusive owners of the view from on high, from what's now known as ridge trail #1. That view features not only seagulls and hawks but also stunted pine trees, scalloped scrabble cliffs, and tiered terraces planted with low grapevines and gnarled olive trees. All seem to be tumbling into the Mediterranean....
READ MORE
(photo: Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/globetrotter1937/148782186/)