Meudon is the setting for a crucial moment in the planning of the attempt on Charles de Gaulle: in a café there, Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry receives confirmation of the President’s route, while members of the attack group wait nearby. The scene brings the conspiracy out of private conviction and into coordinated action.

Setting and Participants

Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, a thirty-five-year-old lieutenant-colonel, waits in a café in the suburb of Meudon. He is married, has three children, and works at the Air Ministry. His outwardly conventional professional and family life contrasts with his commitment to the Secret Army Organisation, whose members have sworn to kill Charles de Gaulle and bring down his government.

Bastien-Thiry’s opposition is political rather than personal in the material sense: he has not suffered a personal loss through the loss of Algeria. He believes that Charles de Gaulle betrayed France and those who had called him back to power in 1958 by yielding Algeria to Algerian nationalists. In Bastien-Thiry’s own understanding, killing the President would be an act of patriotism on behalf of the country he believes has been betrayed.

The Café and the Route Confirmation

The immediate approach to the café is part of a surveillance chain. A young man on a scooter follows the presidential cortege through ordinary weekend traffic, keeping close enough to track its progress. After the motorcade passes along the Boulevard des Invalides, he turns towards a corner café and makes a local telephone call. The narrative then places Bastien-Thiry in a café in Meudon, sipping a beer when a call comes through.

The barman hands him the telephone and moves away to adjust the television. Bastien-Thiry listens briefly, responds, and leaves; his beer has already been paid for. Outside, he unfolds the newspaper he has been carrying. Across the street, a young woman drops the lace curtain at her first-floor flat and tells the twelve men in the room that the route is number two. Five young men, described as amateurs at killing, stop twisting their hands and get up. The café’s ordinary details—the paid beer, the telephone, the folded newspaper—frame the transition from watching and waiting to operational readiness.

Place in the Assassination Plot

Meudon’s significance lies in the way the scene compresses the conspiracy’s essential elements into a single handoff: surveillance of Charles de Gaulle’s movements, a telephone report, confirmation of the route, and the mobilization of the waiting group. Bastien-Thiry’s private conviction is shown alongside the practical machinery required to turn it into an attempt. The scene therefore makes the plot more than an abstract threat: its participants are positioned, information is moving, and a specific route has been selected.