CHAPTER 12
COMMISSAIRE CLAUDE LEBEL ARRIVED BACK in his office just before six in the morning to find Inspector Caron looking tired and strained, in shirt-sleeves at his desk.
He had several sheets of foolscap paper in front of him covered with handwritten notes. In the office some things had changed. On top of the filing cabinets an electric coffee percolator bubbled, sending out a delicious aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Next to it stood a pile of paper cups, a tin of unsweetened milk and a bag of sugar. These had come up from the basement canteen during the night.
In the corner between the two desks a single truckle bed had been set up, covered with a rough blanket. The wastepaper basket had been emptied and stored next to the armchair by the door.
The window was open still, a faint haze of blue smoke from Caron’s cigarettes drifting out into the cool morning. Beyond the window the first flecks of the coming day mottled the spire of St Sulpice.
Lebel crossed to his desk and slumped into the chair. Although it was only twenty-four hours since he had woken from his last sleep he looked tired, like Caron.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I’ve been through the lot over the past ten years. The only foreign political killer who ever tried to operate here was Degueldre, and he’s dead. Besides, he was OAS and we had him on file as such. Presumably Rodin has chosen a man who has nothing to do with the OAS, and he’s quite right. There were only four contract-hire killers who tried it in France over the past ten years – apart from the home-grown variety – and we got three. The fourth is serving a lifer in Africa somewhere. Besides, they were all gangland killers, not of the calibre to shoot down a President of France.
‘I got on to Bargeron of Central Records and they’re doing a complete double-check, but I suspect already that we don’t have this man on file. Rodin would in any case insist on that before hiring him.’
Caron lit up another Gaulloise, blew out the smoke and sighed.
‘So we have to start from the foreign end?’
‘Precisely. A man of this type must have got his training and experience somewhere. He wouldn’t be one of the world’s tops unless he could prove it with a string of successful jobs behind him. Not presidents perhaps, but important men, bigger than mere underworld caïds . That means he must have come to someone’s attention somewhere. Surely. What have you arranged?’
Caron picked up one of the sheets of paper, showing a list of names with, in the left-hand column, a series of timings.
‘The seven are all fixed,’ he said. ‘You start with Head of the Office of Domestic Intelligence at ten past seven. That’s ten past one in the morning Washington time. I fitted him in first because of the lateness of the hour in America.
‘Then Brussels at half past seven, Amsterdam at quarter to eight and Bonn at eight-ten. The link is arranged with Johannesburg at eight-thirty and with Scotland Yard at nine. Lastly there is Rome at nine-thirty.’
‘The heads of Homicide in each case?’ asked Lebel.
‘Or the equivalent. With Scotland Yard it’s Mr Anthony Mallinson, Assistant Commissioner Crime. It seems they don’t have a homicide section in the Metropolitan Police. Apart from that, yes, except South Africa. I couldn’t get Van Ruys at all, so you’re talking to Assistant Commissioner Anderson.’
Lebel thought for a moment.
‘That’s fine. I’d prefer Anderson. We worked on a case once. There’s the question of language. Three of them speak English. I suppose only the Belgian speaks French. The others almost certainly can speak English if they have to …’
‘The German, Dietrich, speaks French,’ interjected Caron.
‘Good, then I’ll speak to those two in French personally. For the other five I’ll have to have you on the extension as interpreter. We’d better go. Come on.’
It was ten to seven when the police car carrying the two detectives drew up outside the innocent green door in the tiny Rue Paul Valéry which housed the headquarters of Interpol at that time.
For the next three hours Lebel and Caron sat hunched over the telephone in the basement communications room talking to the world’s top crime busters. From the seemingly tangled porcupine of aerials on the roof of the building the high-frequency signals beamed out across three continents, streaming high beyond the stratosphere to bounce off the ionic layer above and home back to earth thousands of miles away to another stick of aluminium jutting from a tiled rooftop.
The wavelengths and scramblers were uninterceptable. Detective spoke to detective while the world drank its morning coffee or final nightcap.
In each telephone conversation Lebel’s appeal was much the same.
‘No, Commissioner, I cannot yet put this request for your assistance on the level of an official enquiry between our two police forces … certainly I am acting in an official capacity … It is simply that for the moment we are just not sure if even the intent to commit an offence has been formulated or put into the preparation stage … It’s a question of a tip-off, purely routine for the moment … Well, we are looking for a man about whom we know extremely little … not even a name, and only a poor description …’
In each case he gave the description as best he knew it. The sting came in the tail, as each of his foreign colleagues asked why their help was being sought, and what clues they could possibly go on. It was at that point that the other end of the line became tensely silent.
‘Simply this; that whoever this man is or may be, he must have one qualification that marks him out … he would have to be one of the world’s top professional contract-hire assassins … no, not a gangland trigger, a political assassin with several successful kills behind him. We would be interested to know if you have anybody like that on your files, even if he has never operated in your own country. Or anybody that even springs to mind.’
Inevitably there was a long pause at the other end before the voice resumed. Then it was quieter, more concerned.
Lebel had no illusions that the heads of the Homicide departments of the major police forces of the Western world would fail to understand what he was hinting at but could not say. There was only one target in France that could interest a first-league political killer.
Without exception the reply was the same. ‘Yes, of course. We’ll go through all the files for you. I’ll try and get back to you before the day is out. Oh, and, Claude, good luck.’
When he put down the radio-telephone receiver for the last time, Lebel wondered how long it would be before the Foreign Ministers and even Prime Ministers of the seven countries would be aware of what was on. Probably not long. Even a policeman had to report to the politicians something of that size. He was fairly certain the Ministers would keep quiet about it. There was, after all, a strong bond over and above political differences between the men of power the world over. They were all members of the same club, the club of the potentates. They stuck together against common enemies, and what could be more inimical to any of them than the activities of a political assassin? He was aware all the same that if the enquiry did become public knowledge and reached the Press, it would be blasted across the world and he would be finished.
The only people who did worry him were the English. If it could only be kept between cops, he would have trusted Mallinson.
But he knew that before the day was out it would have to go higher than Mallinson. It was only seven months since Charles de Gaulle had brusquely rebuffed Britain from the Common Market, and in the wake of the General’s 14th January press conference the London Foreign Office, as even so apolitical a creature as Lebel was aware, had become almost lyrical in its campaign of words planted through the political correspondents against the French President. Would they now use this to get their revenge on the old man?
Lebel stared for a moment at the now silent transmitter panel in front of him. Caron watched him quietly.
‘Come on,’ said the little Commissaire, rising from the stool and heading for the door, ‘let’s get some breakfast and try to get some sleep. There’s not much more we can do now.’
Assistant Commissioner Anthony Mallinson put down the telephone with a thoughtful frown and left the communications room without acknowledging the salute of the young policeman who was entering to take up his morning shift. He was still frowning as he went back upstairs to his spacious but soberly appointed office overlooking the Thames.
There was no doubt in his mind what kind of enquiry Lebel had been making, nor of his motives for making it. The French police had got some kind of a tip-off that a top-class assassin was on the loose, and that it affected them. As Lebel had predicted to himself, it took very little acumen to work out who could be the only possible target in France in August 1963 for that kind of killer. He considered Lebel’s predicament with the knowledge of a long-time policeman.
‘Poor bastard,’ he said aloud as he stared down at the warm and sluggish river flowing past the Embankment beneath his window.
‘Sir?’ asked his personal aide, who had followed him into the office to put the morning mail that needed his attention on the walnut desk.
‘Nothing.’ Mallinson continued to stare out of the window as the PA left. However he might feel for Claude Lebel in his task of trying to protect his president without being able to launch an official manhunt, he too had masters. Sooner or later they would have to be told of Lebel’s request to him that morning. There was the daily heads-of-department conference at ten, in half an hour’s time. Should he mention it there?
On the balance he decided not to. It would be enough to write a formal but private memorandum to the Commissioner himself, outlining the nature of Lebel’s request. The necessity for discretion would explain later, if necessary, why the matter had not been raised at the morning meeting. In the meantime it would do no harm to put through the enquiry without revealing why it was being made.
He took his seat behind the desk and pressed one of the buttons on the intercom.
‘Sir?’ His PA’s voice came through from the adjoining office.
‘Come in here a minute, would you, John?’
The charcoal-grey-suited young detective inspector came in, notebook in hand.
‘John, I want you to get on to Central Records. Speak to Chief Superintendent Markham personally. Tell him the request is from me personally, and that I cannot explain for the moment why I am making it. Ask him to check every existing record of known living professional assassins in this country …’
‘Assassins, sir?’ The PA looked as if the Assistant Commissioner had asked for a routine check on all known Martians.
‘Yes, assassins. Not, repeat not, run-of-the-mill gangland thugs who either have or are known to be capable of knocking off somebody in a feud in the underworld. Political killers, John, men or a man capable of assassinating a well-guarded politician or statesman for money.’
‘That sounds more like Special Branch customers, sir.’
‘Yes, I know. I want to pass the whole thing to Special Branch. But we had better do a routine check first. Oh, and I want an answer one way or the other by midday. OK?’
‘Right, sir. I’ll get on to it.’
Fifteen minutes later Assistant Commissioner Mallinson took his seat at the morning conference.
When he returned to his office he flicked through the mail, pushed it to one side of the desk and ordered the PA to bring him in a typewriter. Sitting alone, he typed out a brief report for the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. It mentioned briefly the morning call to his home, the person-to-person call over the Interpol link at nine in the morning, and the nature of Lebel’s enquiry. He left the bottom of the memorandum form empty, and locked it away in his desk to get on with the day’s work.
Shortly before twelve the PA knocked and entered.
‘Superintendent Markham’s just been on from CRO,’ he said. ‘Apparently there’s no one on Criminal Records who can fit that description. Seventeen known contract-hire killers from the underworld, sir; ten in jail and seven on the loose. But they all work for the big gangs, either here or in the main cities. The Super says none would fit for a job against a visiting politician. He suggested Special Branch too, sir.’
‘Right, John, thank you. That’s all I needed.’
With the PA dismissed, Mallinson took the half-finished memo from his drawer and re-inserted it into the typewriter. On the bottom he wrote:
‘Criminal Records reported upon enquiry that no person fitting the description of type submitted by Commissaire Lebel could be traced in their files. The enquiry was then passed to the Assistant Commissioner, Special Branch.’
He signed the memorandum and took the top three copies. The remainder went into the waste-paper basket for classified waste, later to be shredded into millions of particles and destroyed.
One of the copies he folded into an envelope and addressed to the Commissioner. The second he filed in the ‘Secret Correspondence’ file and locked it into the wall-safe. The third he folded and placed in his inside pocket.
On his desk note-pad he scribbled a message.
‘To: Commissaire Claude Lebel, Deputy Director-General, Police Judiciaire, Paris.
‘From: Assistant Commissioner Anthony Mallinson, A.C. Crime, Scotland Yard, London.
‘Message: Following your enquiry this date fullest research criminal records reveal no such personage known to us, stop. request passed to Special Branch for further checking, stop. any useful information will be passed to you soonest, stop. mallinson.
‘Time sent: … 12.8.63.’
It was just gone half past twelve. He picked up the phone, and when the operator answered, asked for Assistant Commissioner Dixon, head of Special Branch.
‘Hallo, Alec? Tony Mallinson. Can you spare me a minute? I’d love to but I can’t. I shall have to keep lunch down to a sandwich. It’s going to be one of those days. No, I just want to see you for a few minutes before you go. Fine, good, I’ll come right along.’
On his way through the office he dropped the envelope addressed to the Commissioner on the PA’s desk.
‘I’m just going up to see Dixon of the SB. Get that along to the Commissioner’s office would you, John? Personally. And get this message off to the addressee. Type it out yourself in the proper style.’
‘Yessir.’ Mallinson stood over the desk while the detective inspector’s eyes ran through the message. They widened as they reached the end.
‘John …’
‘Sir?’
‘And keep quiet about it, please.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Very quiet, John.’
‘Not a word, sir.’
Mallinson gave him a brief smile and left the office. The PA read the message to Lebel a second time, thought back to the enquiries he had made with Records that morning for Mallinson, worked it out for himself, and whispered ‘Bloody hell.’
Mallinson spent twenty minutes with Dixon and effectively ruined the other’s forthcoming club lunch. He passed over to the Head of Special Branch the remaining copy of the memorandum to the Commissioner. As he rose to leave he turned at the door, hand on the knob.
‘Sorry, Alec, but this really is more up your street. But if you ask me, there’s probably nothing and nobody of that calibre in this country, so a good check of records and you should be able to telex Lebel to say we can’t help. I must say I don’t envy him his job this time.’
Assistant Commissioner Dixon, whose job among other things was to keep tabs on all the weird and crazy of Britain who might think of trying to assassinate a visiting politician, not to mention the scores of embittered and cranky foreigners domiciled in the country, felt even more keenly the impossibility of Lebel’s position. To have to protect home and visiting politicians from unbalanced fanatics was bad enough, but at least they could usually be relied upon as amateurs to fail in the face of his own corps of case-hardened professionals.
To have one’s own head of state the target for a native organization of tough ex-soldiers was even worse. And yet the French had beaten the OAS. As a professional, Dixon admired them for it. But the hiring of a foreign professional was a different matter. Only one thing could be said in its favour, from Dixon’s point of view; it cut the possibilities down to so few that he had no doubts there would prove to be no Englishman of the calibre of the man Lebel sought on the books of the Special Branch.
After Mallinson had left, Dixon read the carbon copy of the memorandum. Then he summoned his own PA.
‘Please tell Detective Superintendent Thomas I would like to see him here at …’ he glanced at his watch, estimated how long a much shortened lunch-hour would take him … ‘two o’clock sharp.’
The Jackal landed at Brussels National just after twelve. He left his three main pieces of luggage in an automatic locker in the main terminal building and took with him into town only the hand-grip containing his personal effects, the plaster of Paris, pads of cotton wool and bandages. At the main station he dismissed the taxi and went to the left-luggage office.
The fibre suitcase containing the gun was still on the shelf where he had seen the clerk deposit it a week earlier. He presented the reclamation slip and was given the case in return.
Not far from the station he found a small and squalid hotel, of the kind that seem to exist in proximity to all main line stations the world over, which ask no questions but get told a lot of lies.
He booked a single room for the night, paid cash in advance in Belgian money that he had changed at the airport, and took his case up to the room himself. With the door safely locked behind him, he ran a basin of cold water, emptied the plaster and bandages on to the bed, and set to work.
It took over two hours for the plaster to dry when he had finished. During this time he sat with his heavy foot and leg resting on a stool, smoking his filter cigarettes and looking out over the grimy array of roof-tops that formed the vista from the bedroom window. Occasionally he would test the plaster with his thumb, each time deciding to let it harden a bit more before moving.
The fibre suitcase that had formerly contained the gun lay empty. The remainder of the bandages were re-packed in the hand-grip along with the few ounces of plaster that were left, in case he had to do some running repairs. When he was finally ready he slid the cheap fibre case under the bed, checked the room for any last telltale signs, emptied the ashtray out of the window, and prepared to leave.
He found that with the plaster on a realistic limp became obligatory. At the bottom of the stairs he was relieved to find the grubby and sleepy-looking desk clerk was in the back room behind the desk, where he had been when the Jackal arrived. Being lunchtime, he was eating, but the door with the frosted glass that gave him access to the front counter was open.
With a glance at the front door to make sure no one was coming in, the Jackal clutched his hand-case to his chest, bent on to all fours and scuttled quickly and silently across the tiled hall. Because of the heat of summer the front door was open and he was able to stand upright on the top of the three steps that led to the street, out of the line of sight of the desk clerk.
He limped painfully down the steps and along the street to the corner where the main road ran past. A taxi spotted him inside half a minute, and he was on his way back to the airport.
He presented himself at the Alitalia counter, passport in hand. The girl smiled at him.
‘I believe you have a ticket for Milan reserved two days ago in the name of Duggan,’ he said.
She checked the bookings for the afternoon flight to Milan. It was due to leave in an hour and a half.
‘Yes indeed,’ she beamed at him. ‘Meester Duggan. The ticket was reserved but not paid for. You wish to pay for it?’
The Jackal paid in cash again, was issued with his ticket, and told he would be called in an hour. With the aid of a solicitous porter who tut-tutted over his plastered foot and pronounced limp, he withdrew his three suitcases from the locker, consigned them to Alitalia, passed through the Customs barrier which, seeing that he was an outgoing traveller, was merely a passport check, and spent the remaining hour enjoying a late but pleasant lunch in the restaurant attached to the passenger departure lounge.
Everybody concerned with the flight was very kind and considerate towards him because of the leg. He was assisted aboard the coach out to the aircraft and watched with concern as he made his painful way up the steps to the aircraft’s door. The lovely Italian hostess gave him an extra wide smile of welcome and saw him comfortably seated in one of the group of seats in the centre of the aircraft that face towards each other. There was more legroom there, she pointed out.
The other passengers took elaborate pains not to knock against the plastered foot as they took their seats, while the Jackal lay back in his seat and smiled bravely.
At 4.15 the airliner was on take-off, and soon speeding southwards bound for Milan.
Superintendent Bryn Thomas emerged from the Assistant Commissioner’s office just before three feeling thoroughly miserable. Not only was his summer cold one of the worst and most persistent he had ever been plagued with, but the new assignment with which he had just been saddled had ruined his day.
As Monday mornings went it had been rotten; first he had learned that one of his men had been slipped by a Soviet trade delegate whom he was supposed to be tailing, and by mid-morning he had received an interdepartmental complaint from MI-5 politely asking his department to lay off the Soviet delegation, an unmistakable suggestion that in the view of MI-5 the whole matter had better be left to them.
Monday afternoon looked like being worse. There are few things that any policeman, Special Branch or not, likes less than the spectre of the political assassin. But in the case of the request he had just received from his superior, he had not even been given a name to go on.
‘No name, but I’m afraid plenty of pack-drill,’ had been Dixon’s bon mot on the subject. ‘Try and get it out of the way by tomorrow.’
‘Pack-drill,’ snorted Thomas when he reached the office. Although the short-list of known suspects would be extremely short, it still presented him and his department with hours of checking of files, records for political trouble-making, convictions and, unlike the criminal branch, mere suspicions. All would have to be checked. There was only one ray of light in Dixon’s briefing: the man would be a professional operator and not one of the numberless bee-in-the-bonnet merchants that made the Special Branch’s life a misery before and during any foreign stateman’s visit.
He summoned two detective inspectors whom he knew to be presently engaged on low-priority research work, told them to drop whatever they were doing, as he had done, and to report to his office. His briefing to them was shorter than Dixon’s had been to him. He confined himself to telling them what they were looking for, but not why. The suspicions of the French police that such a man might be out to kill General de Gaulle need have nothing to do with the search through the archives and records of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch.
The three of them cleared the desks of outstanding paperwork and settled down.
The Jackal’s plane touched down at Linate Airport, Milan, shortly after six. He was helped by the ever-attentive hostess down the steps to the tarmac, and escorted by one of the ground hostesses to the main terminal building. It was at Customs that his elaborate preparations in getting the component parts of the gun out of the suitcase and into a less suspicious means of carriage paid dividends. The passport check was a formality but as the suitcases from the hold came rumbling through on the conveyor belt and were deposited along the length of the Customs bench, the risks began to mount.
The Jackal secured a porter who assembled the three main suitcases into a line side by side. The Jackal put his hand-grip down beside them. Seeing him limp up to the bench, one of the Customs officers sauntered across.
‘Signor? This is all your baggage?’
‘Er, yes, these three suitcases and this little case.’
‘You have anything to declare?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘You are on business, signor?’
‘No. I’ve come on holiday, but it turns out it must also include a period of convalescence. I hope to go up to the lakes.’
The Customs man was not impressed.
‘May I see your passport, signor?’
The Jackal handed it over. The Italian examined it closely, then handed it back without a word.
‘Please, open this one.’
He gestured at one of the three larger suitcases. The Jackal took out his key-ring, selected one of the keys and opened the case. The porter had laid it flat on its side to help him. Fortunately it was the case containing the clothes of the fictitious Danish pastor and the American student. Riffling through the clothes, the Customs officer attached no importance to a dark-grey suit, underwear, white shirt, sneakers, black walking shoes, windcheater and socks. Nor did the book in Danish excite him. The cover was a colour plate of Chartres Cathedral, and the title, although in Danish, was sufficiently like the equivalent English words not to be remarkable. He did not examine the carefully resewn slit in the side lining, nor find the false identity papers. A really thorough search would have found them, but his was the usual perfunctory run-through that would only have become intensive if he had found something suspicious. The component parts of a complete sniper’s rifle were only three feet away from him across the desk, but he suspected nothing. He closed the case and gestured to the Jackal to lock it again. Then he chalked all four cases in quick succession. His job done, the Italian’s face broke into a smile.
‘Grazie, signor . A ’appy holiday.’
The porter found a taxi, was well tipped, and soon the Jackal was speeding into Milan, its usually clamorous streets made even noisier by the streams of commuter traffic trying to get home and the hooter-conscious behaviour of the drivers. He asked to be taken to the Central Station.
Here another porter was summoned, and he hobbled after the man to the left-luggage office. In the taxi he had slipped the steel shears out of the overnight case into his trouser pocket. At the left-luggage office he deposited the hand-grip and two suitcases, retaining the one containing the long French military overcoat, which also had plenty of spare room.
Dismissing the porter he hobbled into the men’s toilet, to find only one of the washbasins in the long row on the left hand side of the urinals was in use. He dropped the case and laboriously washed his hands until the other occupant was finished. When the toilet was empty for a second he was across the room and locked into one of the cubicles.
With his foot up on the lavatory seat he clipped silently for ten minutes at the plaster on his foot until it began to drop away, revealing the cotton-wool pads beneath that had given the foot the bulk of a normally fractured ankle encased in plaster.
When the foot was finally clear of the last remnants of plaster he put back on the silk sock and the slim leather moccasin which had been taped to the inside of his calf while the foot had been in plaster. The remainder of the plaster and cotton wool he gathered up and deposited down the pan. At the first flushing half of it jammed, but it cleared at the second.
Laying the suitcase on top of the toilet, he laid the series of circular steel tubes containing the rifle side by side among the folds of the coat until the case was full. When the inside straps were tight the contents of the case were prevented from banging about. Then he closed the case and cast a look outside the door. There were two people at the washbasins and two more standing at the urinals. He left the cubicle, turned sharply towards the door and was up the steps into the main hall of the station before any had time to notice him, even if they had wished to.
He could not go back to the left-luggage office a fit and healthy man so soon after leaving it as a cripple, so he summoned a porter, explained that he was in a hurry, wished to change money, reclaim his baggage and get a taxi as soon as possible. The baggage check he thrust into the porter’s hand, along with a thousand-lire note, pointing the man towards the left-luggage office. He himself, he indicated, would be in the bureau de change getting his English pounds changed into lire.
The Italian nodded happily and went off to get the luggage. The Jackal changed the last twenty pounds that remained to him into Italian currency, and was just finished when the porter returned with the other three pieces of luggage. Two minutes later he was in a taxi speeding dangerously across the Piazza Duca d’Aosta and heading for the Hotel Continentale.
At the reception desk in the splendid front hall he told the clerk:
‘I believe you have a room for me in the name of Duggan. It was booked by telephone from London two days ago.’
Just before eight the Jackal was enjoying the luxury of a shower and shave in his room. Two of the suitcases were carefully locked into the wardrobe. The third, containing his own clothes, was open on the bed and the suit for the evening, a navy-blue wool-and-mohair summer lightweight, was hanging from the wardrobe door. The dove-grey suit was in the hands of the hotel’s valet service for sponging and pressing. Ahead lay cocktails, dinner and an early night, for the next day, 13th August, would be extremely busy.