A riveting on-the-edge-of-your-seat tale about the notorious 1978 kidnapping of Baron
Édouard-Jean Wado Empain intertwined with the story of his famous grandfather the first baron
and builder of the Paris Métro. A multigenerational saga told against the backdrops of both
Belle Époque and 1970s high-fashion Paris. What does it take to create a dynasty? What does it
take to keep one going? And what does it take to save the life of the dazzling but flawed man
who inherited it all? Launched in the 1880s by the first baron the Empain industrial empire
spread from Belgium and France to span more than a dozen countries. When Wado took over he
further expanded the company became a key player in France s nuclear sector and by the
mid-1970s was one of the country s most powerful business leaders a self-described master of
the universe. But these were also the years of lead marked by a rash of high-profile
kidnappings around the globe including the headline-grabbing seizure of American heiress Patty
Hearst. Wado s vertiginous rise caught the eye of Alain Cailloll a small-time gangster who had
grown up in a wealthy family before embracing a life of crime. On January 23 1978 Caillol and
his confederates snatched the baron off the Paris streets sure that they d get the 80 million
francs they demanded in ransom. To show they meant business they chopped off Wado s little
finger and warned that more body parts would follow. But nothing unfolded as the kidnappers or
Wado himself expected. Would Empain s company pay? Could his family afford this astronomical
sum? How much was the life of a leader a father and a husband worth? Most important could a
determined police chief and his crack investigators outsmart the kidnappers? The answers to
those questions unspooled over two months in a tangle of events leading to a bloody showdown
whose consequences would prove fatal to the Empain dynasty.
