Boulevard Mortier is the location of the SDECE headquarters from which its Action Service became a principal instrument in the covert struggle against the OAS. Set amid the understated streets of north-eastern Paris, the headquarters gives the novel’s secret conflict a concrete institutional base: behind an unremarkable exterior, a specialist force prepares and conducts operations against a violent underground organization.

Setting and headquarters

The headquarters occupied a complex of nondescript buildings off Boulevard Mortier, close to Porte des Lilas in a dingy suburb of north-eastern Paris. Its inconspicuous surroundings contrast with the scale of the conflict directed from it. The description does not present the address as a public landmark or a dramatic battlefield; its importance comes from the secret work housed behind an ordinary-looking façade.

The site belongs to the larger SDECE structure. While that organization handled both intelligence abroad and counter-espionage within France, its Action Service was the office at the centre of the anti-OAS campaign. Boulevard Mortier therefore marks not simply a government address but the headquarters of a particular kind of intervention: clandestine, trained, and prepared to use force.

The Action Service

The hundred members of the Action Service went out to war from the headquarters. They were mainly Corsicans and were described as unusually tough, physically trained operatives. Their preparation continued at Satory Camp, where a section separated from the rest of the camp taught them methods of destruction and combat.

Their instruction ranged from small-arms use and unarmed fighting to karate and judo. It also covered radio communication, demolition, sabotage, interrogation with and without torture, kidnapping, arson, and assassination. Some spoke only French; others were fluent in several languages and comfortable operating in foreign capitals. The account makes clear that their remit extended beyond gathering information: they had authority to kill in the course of duty and often exercised it.

The anti-OAS campaign

As OAS violence intensified, SDECE director General Guibaud allowed the Action Service to act against the organization. Some operatives entered the OAS and penetrated its highest councils. From inside, they supplied information that enabled others to act; OAS emissaries on missions into France or other places where they were vulnerable to police action were seized on the basis of intelligence from these infiltrators.

When wanted men could not be drawn into France, the response could instead be lethal and take place abroad. The novel also records the uncertainty surrounding some disappearances: relatives of OAS members who vanished believed that the Action Service had liquidated them, though the account does not establish each suspected killing as a confirmed operation. Boulevard Mortier is thus associated with a campaign whose methods blur the boundary between intelligence, policing, and violence.

Narrative significance

The location gives institutional shape to the underground war described as unfolding beneath the cultivated surface of Parisian life. Its plain buildings stand in marked contrast to the secret service’s exceptional training and methods. From this base, the state’s response to the OAS is presented not as ordinary police work alone but as a clandestine struggle involving infiltration, intelligence-led arrests, and lethal action.

That counterforce operates in a wider climate of heightened danger around Charles de Gaulle. Earlier OAS attempts had failed, but the would-be assassin’s professional assessment is that those failures have made the target more difficult: the general intention to kill him is known, so security cannot safely lapse into routine. Later, preparations for public ceremonies include steel barriers, searches of buildings and sewers, and armed observers on rooftops. These measures are not identified as work conducted at Boulevard Mortier; they clarify the national stakes of the covert conflict for which the Action Service headquarters serves as a focal point.