Panting and wheezing, the concierge climbed to the sixth floor of the grey building at 53 Quai d'Orsay, overlooking the same stretch of the summery Seine as the nearby French Foreign Office. A 64-year-old World War I veteran, Louis-Christophe Gaillard was a vacation substitute for the regular concierge at the Hotel du Tabac (so called because it used to house the French state tobacco monopoly). He shuffled into the main conference room, where a council meeting of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation had just ended. Gaillard moved around the green-clothed table, carefully collecting cigarette butts from the overbrimming...
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