By PEGGY HOLLINGER and JEFFREY SACHS

In the novel Wargames, Roger Cordat is an ambitious young French executive who arrives in newly reunified eastern Germany determined to profit from the economic chaos unleashed by the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Christian Streiff, the new chief executive of Airbus, wrote the novel after his experience running a German company for 10 years for his former employer, Saint Gobain, a French industrial conglomerate.

The French executive, born on the border with Germany, was strongly marked by the time he spent there in the 1980s, and in particular in the turbulent months after November 1989.

A fluent speaker of German - as well as Italian, English and Spanish - he seems well placed to help heal the divisions of recent months at Airbus, even though he has no aeronautical experience.

Those who have worked with him say he has no prejudices on nationality. When Saint Gobain bought a company in eastern Germany, "he would defend the German point of view over the French", said a former colleague to Le Monde, the French daily newspaper.

Certainly he is well known to DaimlerChrysler, EADS' German industrial shareholder. During his time at Saint Gobain, rising through the ranks of six subsidiaries in France, Italy, Germany and the UK, he became known to the German carmaker as a supplier. He also sits on the boards of Continental, the German tyre group, and ThyssenKrupp, the engineering company.

Eighteen months ago, Mr Streiff was already so highly regarded by Daimler that his name was mooted in connection with Airbus when management changes were being considered.

But his past career equally raises some important questions about how well suited he may be to run a company where industrial issues appear to have taken a back seat to the ambitions of its leaders. If Wargames is based on his experiences, perhaps the ruthless Mr Cordat is a mere transposition of Mr Streiff himself.

At Saint Gobain, he was set to take over from Jean-Louis Beffa.

But within a year of being identified as Mr Beffa's successor, Mr Streiff was on his way out with no obvious explanation.

After 26 years' service to the same company, his departure seemed abrupt. It may have been that Mr Beffa, synonymous with the success of Saint Gobain, found it difficult to share power in the run-up to his retirement next year. But some inside the company speak of a ruthless ambition and an insensitive haste on the part of Mr Streiff to take full power. The heads of several of Saint Gobain's divisions are understood to have complained to Mr Beffa, who then decided he had made a mistake.

Mr Streiff has spent the last year doing some consulting to keep his hand in on business affairs, say EADS insiders. But reports also suggest he has been taking a bit of time to write another book - this time on the differences between Mediterranean and Anglo-Saxon management styles. No doubt that will be put on the backburner for a little while, unless the Franco-German differences at Airbus prove too deep to overcome.