He ordered a coffee and a metal disc for the telephone, left the coffee on the counter and went into the back of the café to dial. Directory Enquiries put him on to the International Exchange and he asked them the number of a hotel in Rome. He got it within sixty seconds, replaced the receiver and left.
At a café a hundred metres down the street he again used the phone, this time to ask Enquiries for the location of the nearest all-night post office from which international calls could be placed. He was told, as he had expected, that there was one round the corner from the mainline station.
At the post office he placed a call to the Rome number he had been given, without naming the hotel represented by the number, and spent an anxious twenty minutes waiting until it came through.
‘I wish to speak to Signor Poitiers,’ he told the Italian voice that answered.
‘Signor Che?’ asked the voice.
‘Il Signor francesi. Poitiers. Poitiers… .’
‘Che?’ repeated the voice.
‘Francesi, francesi …’ said the man in Paris.
‘Ah, si, il signor francesi. Momento, per favore …’
There was a series of clicks, then a tired voice answered in French.
‘Ouay …’
‘Listen,’ said the man in Paris urgently. ‘I don’t have much time. Take a pencil and note what I say. Begins. “Valmy to Poitiers. The Jackal is blown. Repeat. The Jackal is blown. Kowalski was taken. Sang before dying. Ends.” Got that?’
‘Ouay,’ said the voice. ‘I’ll pass it on.’
Valmy replaced the receiver, hurriedly paid his bill and scurried out of the building. In a minute he was lost in the crowds of commuters streaming out of the main hall of the station. The sun was over the horizon, warming the pavements and the chill night air. Within half an hour the smell of morning and croissants and grinding coffee would vanish beneath the pall of exhaust fumes, body odour and stale tobacco. Two minutes after Valmy had disappeared a car drew up outside the post office and two men from the DST hurried inside. They took a description from the switchboard operator, but it could have described anybody.
In Rome Marc Rodin was awakened at 7.55 when the man who had spent the night on the duty desk on the floor below shook him by the shoulder. He was awake in an instant, half out of bed, hand groping for the gun under his pillow. He relaxed and grunted when he saw the face of the ex-legionnaire above him. A glance at the bedside table told him he had overslept anyway. After years in the tropics his habitual waking hour was much earlier, and the August sun of Rome was already high above the roofs. But weeks of inactivity, passing the evening hours playing piquet with Montclair and Casson, drinking too much rough red wine, taking no exercise worth the name, all had combined to make him slack and sleepy.
‘A message, mon colonel. Someone phoned just now, seemed in a hurry.’
The legionnaire proffered a sheet from a note pad on which were scribbled the disjointed phrases of Valmy. Rodin read through the message once, then leapt out of the thinly sheeted bed. He wrapped the cotton sarong he habitually wore, a habit from the East, round his waist, and read the message again.
‘All right. Dismiss.’ The legionnaire left the room and went back downstairs.
Rodin swore silently and intensely for several seconds, crumpling the piece of paper in his hands. Damn, damn, damn, damn Kowalski.
For the first two days after Kowalski’s disappearance he had thought the man had simply deserted. There had been several defections of late from the cause, as the conviction set in among the rank and file that the OAS had failed and would fail in its aim of killing Charles de Gaulle and bringing down the present Government of France. But Kowalski he had always thought would remain loyal to the last.
And here was evidence that he had for some inexplicable reason returned to France, or perhaps been picked up inside Italy and abducted. Now it seemed he had talked, under pressure of course.
Rodin genuinely grieved his dead servitor. Part of the considerable reputation he had built up as a fighting soldier and commanding officer had been based on the enormous concern he showed for his men. These things are appreciated by fighting soldiers more than any military theorist can ever imagine. Now Kowalski was dead, and Rodin had few illusions of the manner of his passing.
Still, the important thing was to try to recollect just what Kowalski had had to tell. The meeting in Vienna, the name of the hotel. Of course, all of that. The three men who had been at the meeting. This would be no news to the SDECE. But what did he know about the Jackal? He had not been listening at the door, that was certain. He could tell them of a tall blond foreigner who had visited the three of them. That in itself meant nothing. Such a foreigner could have been an arms dealer, or a financial backer. There had been no names mentioned.
But Valmy’s message mentioned the Jackal by his code-name. How? How could Kowalski have told them that?
With a start of horror Rodin recalled the scene as they had parted. He had stood in the doorway with the Englishman; Viktor had been a few feet down the corridor, annoyed at the way the Englishman had spotted him in the alcove, a professional outmanoeuvred by another professional, waiting for trouble, almost hoping for it. What had he, Rodin said? ‘Bonsoir, Mr Jackal.’ Of course, damn and blast it.
Thinking things over again, Rodin realised that Kowalski could never have got the killer’s real name. Only he, Montclair and Casson knew that. All the same, Valmy was right. With Kowalski’s confession in the hands of the SDECE, it was too far blown to be retrievable. They had the meeting, the hotel, probably they had already talked to the desk clerk; they had the face and figure of a man, a code-name. There could be no doubt they would guess what Kowalski had guessed—that the blond was a killer. From then on the net around De Gaulle would tighten; he would abandon all public engagements, all exits from his palace, all chances for an assassin to get him. It was over; the operation was blown. He would have to call off the Jackal, insist on the money back, minus all expenses and a retainer for the time and trouble involved.
There was one thing to be settled, and quickly. The Jackal himself must be warned urgently to halt operations. Rodin was still enough of a commanding officer not to send a man out on his orders on a mission for which success had become impossible.
He summoned the bodyguard to whom, since the departure of Kowalski, he had given the duties of going every day to the main post office to collect the mail and, if necessary, make telephone calls, and briefed him at length.
By nine o’clock the bodyguard was in the post office and asked for a telephone number in London. It took twenty minutes before the telephone at the other end began to ring. The switchboard operator gestured the Frenchman to a cabin to take the call. He picked up the receiver as the operator put hers down, and listened to the bzzz-bzzz … pause … bzzz-bzzz of an English telephone ringing.
The Jackal rose early that morning, for he had much to do. The three main suitcases he had checked and re-packed the previous evening. Only the hand-grip remained to be topped up with his sponge bag and shaving tackle. He drank his habitual two cups of coffee, washed, showered and shaved. After packing the remainder of the overnight toiletries he closed up the hand luggage and stored all four pieces by the door.
He made himself a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs, orange juice and more black coffee in the flat’s small but compact kitchen, and ate it off the kitchen table. Being a tidy and methodical man he emptied the last of the milk down the sink, broke the two remaining eggs and poured them also down the sink. The remainder of the orange juice he drank off, junked the can in the trash basket and the remainder of the bread, egg shells and coffee grounds went down the disposal unit. Nothing left would be likely to go rotten during his absence.
Finally he dressed, choosing a thin silk polo-necked sweater, the dove-grey suit containing the private papers in the name of Duggan, and the hundred pounds in cash, dark grey socks and slim black moccasin shoes. The ensemble was completed by the inevitable dark glas
ses.
At nine-fifteen he took his luggage, two pieces in each hand, closed the self-locking flat door behind him, and went downstairs. It was a short walk to South Audley Street and he caught a taxi on the corner.
‘London Airport, Number Two Building,’ he told the driver.
As the taxi moved away, the phone in his flat began to ring.
It was ten o’clock when the legionnaire returned to the hotel off the Via Condotti and told Rodin he had tried for thirty minutes to get a reply from the London number he had been given, but had not succeeded.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Casson, who had heard the explanation given to Rodin and seen the legionnaire dismissed to return to his guard duties. The three OAS chiefs were sitting in the drawing room of their suite. Rodin withdrew a piece of paper from his inside pocket and passed it over to Casson.
Casson read it and passed it to Montclair. Both men finally looked at their leader for an answer. There was none. Rodin sat staring out of the windows across the baking roofs of Rome, brow furrowed in thought.
‘When did it come?’ asked Casson eventually.
‘This morning,’ replied Rodin briefly.
‘You’ve got to stop him,’ protested Montclair. ‘They’ll have half France on the lookout for him.’
‘They’ll have half of France on the look-out for a tall blond foreigner,’ said Rodin quietly. ‘In August there are over one million foreigners in France. So far as we know they have no name to go on, no face, no passport. Being a professional he is probably using a false passport. They still have a long way to go to get him yet. There’s a good chance he will be forewarned if he rings Valmy, and then he’ll be able to get out again.’
‘If he rings Valmy he will, of course, be ordered to drop the operation,’ said Montclair. ‘Valmy will order him.’
Rodin shook his head.
‘Valmy does not have the authority to do that. His orders are to receive information from the girl and pass it on to the Jackal when he is telephoned. He will do that, but nothing else.’
‘But the Jackal must realise of his own accord that it is all over,’ protested Montclair. ‘He must get out of France as soon as he rings Valmy the first time.’
‘In theory yes,’ said Rodin thoughtfully. ‘If he does he hands back the money. There’s a lot at stake, for all of us, including him. It depends how confident he feels of his own planning.’
‘Do you think he has a chance now … now that this has happened?’ asked Casson.
‘Frankly, no,’ said Rodin. ‘But he is a professional. So am I, in my way. It is a frame of mind. One does not like to stand down an operation one has planned personally.’
‘Then for God’s sake recall him,’ protested Casson.
‘I can’t. I would if I could, but I can’t. He’s gone. He’s on his way. He wanted it this way and now he’s got it. We don’t know where he is or what he is going to do. He’s completely on his own. I can’t even call up Valmy and order him to instruct the Jackal to drop the whole thing. To do so would risk “blowing” Valmy. Nobody can stop the Jackal now. It’s too late.’
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 waste-paper 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 homegrown 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 Valery 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 comm
it 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 Day of the Jackal Page 23