Paris, France, December, 2077, Sunday…

Notre Dame stands on the southeast end of the Ile de la Cite. As usual, the crowds for Sunday morning mass had overflowed into the plaza in front of the grand old cathedral, many of them tourists from all over the world.

Gunther Schmidt had brought his men across the Pont Neuf, marched them down the Quai de l'Horloge, and taken a sharp right down the Rue d'Arcole to the plaza. Many police sirens could be heard as the few gendarmes that were usually there to keep order called for backups. The backups came too late.

Gunther and his men looked and acted like the Nazi brownshirts from one and a half centuries earlier, but they were not Nazis. The black armbands on their right shoulders had a white circle with a red cross inside, not a swastika. Their group was called the Christian Knights of Deutschland. They were loosely affiliated with the Christian Soldiers in the US, but were more vehemently anti-catholic.

They waded into the crowd, night sticks humming. They also slugged and kicked anyone they could. All the time they were singing "A Mighty Fortress is Our God."

Fear breeds chaos. The crowd tried to run, some stumbling, to be trampled on by the mass of humanity. Some made it across the Pont au Double. Others plunged into the cold waters of the Seine.

From a safe spot the observer from America watched. He had handed over a large sum of money to Gunther the night before, aid from their American brethren. It had been well worth it.