The Stone Leopard

by Colin Forbes

  `What was Martin talking about ?' the diplomatic Boisseau inquired.

  `You know as well as I do,' Grelle replied brutally. 'He was saying that someone who visited the Elysee last night, someone important enough to be saluted—so he has to be of cabinet rank—is a top Communist agent. . .'

  * * *

  On Grelle's instruction, Boisseau sent off an urgent cable to the police chief at Cayenne, Guiana, requesting all information on Gaston Martin, and then between them they sorted out the broken, often-incoherent story Martin had told them.

  He had stood in the vicinity of the Elysee Palace for about one hour—between, say, 7.30 pm and 8.30 pm, sometimes standing at the edge of the kerb where Lucie Devaud had been shot; sometimes wandering up towards the Place Beauvau, and then back again. At least they were sure of 8.30, the time when a car had knocked him down, because this had been witnessed by one of the Elysee sentries. 'Partially witnessed, that is,' Boisseau explained. 'I phoned the inspector in charge of the case while you were coming to the hospital and the fool of a sentry isn't even sure of the make of car which knocked down Martin. . .

  And at some moment during this approximate hour Martin swore he had seen the man he had once known as the Leopard walk into the Elysee courtyard and be saluted by the sentries. It was this brief statement which so disturbed Grelle. 'They saluted him . ' Martin's description of the man had been vague; by the time Grelle got round to asking this question the dying man had been slipping away fast. And often he had rambled off in another direction, forgetting the question Grelle had asked him.

  `But according to Martin this man was very tall—over six feet,' the prefect emphasized. 'He said that three times—the bit about his great height.'

  `This goes back over thirty years to the wartime Resistance,' Boisseau protested. 'That is, if Martin is to be believed at all. How on earth could he recognize a man he hadn't seen all that time? People change like hell. . .

  `He was very insistent that he saw the Leopard. Said he hadn't changed much, that the first thing he noticed was the man's walk—then I couldn't get him to describe the walk.'

  `It doesn't sound at all likely. . . Boisseau was tie-less by now, in his shirt-sleeves. Coffee had been brought in to them and the room was full of smoke as Grelle used up cigarette after cigarette. The rain was still lashing the windows.

  `It doesn't,' Grelle agreed, 'but I was the one who heard every word he said and he frightened me. I think I can judge when a man is telling the truth. . .

  `This Leopard then--you think he was really telling the truth about that ?' Boisseau, small and heavily-built, with almond-shaped eyes and thick eyebrows, had made no attempt to keep the scepticism out of his voice. 'Personally, I have never heard of him. . .'

  `But you are younger than me.' The prefect lit another cigarette. 'The Leopard is on file, a very old and dusty file by now. And yes, I do think Gaston Martin was telling the truth —as he believed it to be.'

  `Which could be a very different thing. . .'

  `Quite true. You see, there's something you don't know. The Communist Resistance leader known during the war as the Leopard is dead.'

  On Saturday morning, 11 December, David Nash, who had just returned from Europe aboard the night flight from Brussels, flew from New York to Washington for an emergency meeting with Andrew MacLeish at the State Department. The two men locked themselves away in a small room on the second floor and MacLeish listened without saying a word for fifteen minutes; it was one of his strong points, that he could absorb a verbal report without interruption, soaking up information like a sponge.

  `And Lasalle gave absolutely no indication of the identity of this alleged cabinet minister who could be a secret Communist agent ?' he inquired eventually. 'This man he calls the second Leopard—because he has adopted the pseudonym of the dead wartime Communist Resistance leader ?'

  `None at all,' Nash replied promptly. 'He played the whole thing very close to the chest. What he did tell me was that he believes he was on the verge of uncovering the agent when he had his titanic row with Florian—which ended in his flight from France. Since then he hasn't been able to carry his investigation any further and he's worried stiff that a coup d'etat is planned to take place while Florian is in Moscow on this coming visit. He suspects that the Russians invited the president to Russia to get him out of Paris at the crucial moment, The attempted assassination decided Lasalle—to make contact with me. He's pretty certain that if it had succeeded the coup d'etat led by the second Leopard would have taken place at once.'

  `So he wants us to complete the investigation that he started. . .

  `He has this list of three witnesses who worked closely with the original Leopard during the war. . .

  `A list he wouldn't give you,' MacLeish snapped.

  `I'm not sure I blame him for that,' Nash countered. 'He's very security-conscious and that I like. He'll only hand over the list to the agent we provide to go inside France to meet these people. . .

  `What the hell can these three so-called witnesses tell us?' MacLeish demanded irritably. 'If the original Leopard is dead I don't see the connection. . .

  `Lasalle believes someone who was in the Leopard's wartime Resistance group cleverly took over his name as the code-name the Russians would know him by. So to find this top Communist agent we have to dig back into the past, to find who could fit. Find out who he was in 1944 and we'll know who he is today.'

  MacLeish, whose other strong point was his ability to take a quick decision, drummed his thick fingers on the table like a man playing a piano. 'So the deadline is 23 December when Florian takes off for Moscow, which gives us exactly eleven days. You're going to have to move damned fast. .

  `So I can send someone in ?' Nash interjected.

  `You can send someone in,' MacLeish decided, 'but not an American. If Florian's security apparatus got hold of him the French would have a field day. I can hear Florian's next anti- American speech now—Yankee agent discovered trying to smear Paris cabinet minister. . . . That we can't risk. An agent yes, but not an American,' he repeated.

  'But not an American. . .'

  It was still Saturday morning when Nash gave the instruction to his assistant, Ward Fischer, in the suite of offices on the third floor which housed his staff. Normally everyone except Fischer would have been at home on a Saturday; but before boarding his New York flight to Washington, Nash had phoned ahead and the suite was now occupied by men recalled hastily while Nash was airborne.

  `Kind of narrows the field,' Fischer remarked.

  `Narrow it to zero. Find the man,' Nash snapped. 'Inside two hours,' he added.

  Fischer went into the next office and within five minutes his staff was searching through the files, looking for a name. The specification for the man who would go into France to interview Lasalle's witnesses was stringent. He had to have top security clearance; to be fluent enough in the language to pass as a Frenchman; to be experienced in the security field; and he must be a man of cold and careful temperament who could be relied on in an emergency, operating entirely on his own. As to nationality, he must not be an American, nor must he be a Frenchman.

  It was Nash himself who added this final qualification which caused Fischer to swear colourfully the moment he left his boss's office. 'The God-damned specification screams for a Frenchman,' he complained to one of his staff, 'so now you've got to find a Frenchman who isn't a Frenchman. Get on with it. . .

  Nash, however, had a very good reason for adding this qualification. Because France is a very special place and many of its people are highly political, Nash felt it would be dangerous to choose a Frenchman to spy on the French. He also felt pretty sure Col Lasalle would have the same doubts.

  While Fischer and his staff were searching, Nash went over the file in his mind of people he had known—or known of. One name came to him quickly, but he rejected it: he could never persuade this man to do the job. Sitting at his desk, his chubby hands clasped behind his neck, he checked back in hi
s mind, rejecting candidate after candidate. As Fischer had said, the specification certainly restricted the field. In the end he came back to the man he had first thought of.

  At 1.30 in the afternoon Fischer came into his office carrying two files. 'These are the only two people who fit,' he said wearily. 'We ate at our desks and we've been working since I left you. Cancelling out the French made it that much tougher. . . .' Nash looked at the two files. One of the names was Jules Beaurain, a Belgian. 'Belgium isn't France,' Fischer said hopefully. The other was the name Nash himself had thought of.

  `It will take pressure to get this man,' Nash said reflectively. `I may have just hit on how the pressure could be applied. Get me details of all overseas bids for security contracts inside the States. Get them now. . .

  `It's Saturday. . .

  `So the calendar tells me. Phone people at their homes, get them behind their desks fast. Tell them it's an emergency— and give them my compliments. . .

  `They're going to appreciate that,' Fischer said and went out of the office to phone his wife. She also was going to appreciate it, he felt sure.

  Left alone in his office, Nash took a ballpoint out of his pocket and indulged in his liking for doodling portraits. He drew from memory a head-and-shoulders sketch of a man he had once known well, a man he had liked and respected despite disagreements. When he had finished the sketch he added a caption underneath. Alan Lennox. Security expert. British.

  Three thousand miles across the Atlantic in London it was Saturday evening as Alan Lennox turned the key in the double- lock Chubb, checked the handle of the door to his office, and stood for a moment staring at the plate on the wall. Lennox Security Company Limited. On the stock exchange the shares had climbed to ?3.50 and it looked as though they were going higher; security companies were enjoying a minor boom. God knew why, but recently they had become a City cult. Probably because they were 'export-orientated' as the little wise men who sent out brokers' recommendations phrased it. All over the world large industrial concerns were employing Britons to organize their security because, it was alleged, they were incorruptible. Another cult. Lennox thought maybe it was a good time to sell out—once he had obtained the big American oil combine contract he was bidding for. With that under his belt the shares should go through the roof.

  The only man in the building—managing directors worked alone on Saturdays—he went down in the lift to Leadenhall Street and out into the storm which had broken over London. Collecting his Citroén DS 23 from the underground garage, he drove home through sheets of blinding rain to his flat in St James's Place, reflecting that it wasn't a Saturday night to encourage a man on his own to dine out. Arriving inside the flat, which he had furnished with antiques, Lennox took off his two-hundred-guinea coat and poured himself a large Scotch. The next problem was to decide whether to eat out or grill himself a steak from the fridge.

  Thirty-five years old, managing director of the most successful international security company based in London, Lennox was a well-built man of medium height who moved with a deceptive slowness; in an emergency he could react with the speed of a fox. Dark-haired, the hair cut shorter than the normal fashion, his thick eyebrows were also dark. The eyes were his most arresting feature; brown and slow-moving, they looked out on the world warily, taking nothing for granted. `It's in the nature of my job to be suspicious,' he once said. 'A man called Marc Grelle told me in Marseilles that I had the mind of a policeman; I suppose he was right. . .

  Born in Paris, Lennox's mother had been French, his father a minor official at the British Embassy in the Faubourg St Honore. The first ten years of his life had been spent in France and Lennox was fluent in French long before he mastered English at school. Disliking his father's idea that he enter the diplomatic service—`after eighteen I found we had nothing to say to each other'—he joined a large international oil company. Because of his fluency in English, French, German and Spanish he was attached to the security department. Five years later he was directing it.

  `I was lucky,' Lennox recalled. 'The timing was right. Security had become the key to survival. You can buy tankers, drill new oilfields—but where's the profit if people keep dynamiting them ?'

  Lennox's career soared at the time when Arab terrorists were turning their attention to blowing up non-Arab oilfields—to increase the economic power of the Middle East fields. In an emergency, boards of directors turn to the man who can save them; they turned to Lennox. Travelling widely, he organized new systems to protect oilfields, tankers and refineries in four continents. He soon decided that defensive measures were not enough; if you are to win you must carry the war into enemy territory.

  Disappearing into the twilight world of counter-espionage, often for months at a time, Lennox penetrated the terrorist groups, locating their camps in the Lebanon and farther back in Syria. At this time he was employing all sorts of dubious people, paying them large sums in tax-free cash—which drove prim accountants at headquarters crazy. One of his most successful anti-terrorist teams was recruited from the Union Corse—the French Mafia— who were annoyed because Arab money had bought up certain Parisian protection rackets they had previously controlled. 'The Red Night of July 14' was splashed across the world's headlines.

  Lennox waited until he was ready, waited patiently for months while he built up an intimate knowledge of the terrorist gangs. On 4. July he struck. The Union Corse team—speaking French, the second language in Lebanon—landed by helicopters and came ashore from boats on isolated beaches. In eight hours they wiped out three major terrorist gangs, killing over two hundred men. Only Corsicans could have killed so swiftly and mercilessly. From that night the sabotage of oil installations dropped to five per cent of its previous volume.

  It was during these years that Lennox came into contact with leading security and police chiefs from Tokyo to Washington, including men like David Nash and Peter Lanz, and organizations like the FBI and the Surete Nationale, all of whom provided discreet and unofficial help to a man who could take the ultimate measures they were not empowered to employ. At a later period he spent four years with an American company, including hazardous months along the Mexican border where terrorists were infiltrating with Mexican peasants coming into the United States to find work. Then, without warning, he resigned to set up his own outfit.

  His private life was less successful. Married twice, he lost both wives to other men who came home each night. 'To my home,' he said sardonically. In both cases he divorced his wife despite the urgent plea of one that he assume the role of guilty party. 'You knew what my life was like before we married,' he said bluntly. 'I warned you time and again—and the one thing I can't stand is people who break contracts. . . At the moment Lennox was consoling himself with his third girl friend without too much enthusiasm. He knew what the trouble was: three years after the foundation of his own company he felt that once again he had done what he had set out to do, so he was losing interest. 'I'm bloody bored,' he told himself as he drank his Scotch. 'I need something new. . . He raised his glass to the telephone. 'Ring,' he told it, 'ring from some faraway place. . .

  He had finished his Scotch and was taking the steak out of the fridge when the phone rang. Knowing it had to be a wrong number, he picked up the receiver. The international telephone operator had a seductive voice. 'Mr Alan Lennox ?' she inquired. 'Overseas call for you. Person-to-person. From Washington. . .'

  Two men stood talking in the walled Paris garden, their overcoat collars turned up against the chill December wind. One of them was tall and slim, the other short and powerfully-built, and the language they conversed in was French. The Leopard, tall and slim, shook his head doubtfully as his companion repeated the same argument forcefully.

  `We believe it is essential to eliminate Col Lasalle. We have people who can make it look like an accident, people waiting at this moment for the order to proceed. . .

  `It could be a mistake. . .

  `It could be a mistake to do nothing, not to take actio
n. These people who would deal with the matter ate competent, I assure you. . .

  They went on discussing the problem as darkness fell and beyond the walls the Paris rush-hour traffic built up to a peak. Not a score of metres from where the two men stood, the life of the capital proceeded in its normal mundane way and some people were even buying presents for Christmas.

  CHAPTER THREE

  CAREL VANEK drove the Citroén DS 21 forward at high speed, heading for the bulky figure standing in the middle of the concrete track. The light was bad; it was late in the afternoon of 11December, just before dark. Through the windscreen Vanek saw the figure rush towards him, blur as the car hit it at 90 kph, elevate under the impact, then the whole vehicle wobbled as he drove on, passing over the body. A dozen metres beyond he pulled up with a scream of tyres, looked over his shoulder, used the reverse gear, then backed at speed.

  The body lay still in the dusk, a vague hump as he backed towards it, accelerating. Vanek never enjoyed himself more than behind the wheel of a car; he felt he was an extension of the mechanism, that the gear lever was another arm, the brake a third foot. It was exhilarating. He went on backing at speed and his aim was perfect. For the second time he felt the wobble as the Citroén's wheels passed over the hump lying in the roadway. Then he went on, backing into a sharp curve, stopping, driving forward again, turning the wheel until he was moving away at speed in the opposite direction.

  `Thirty-five seconds,' the quiet man in the back of the car said as he clicked his stop-watch.

  Vanek braked with a jerk that nearly threw the passenger in the seat beside him through the windscreen, laughing as Walther Brunner cursed. 'Do you have to be quite so dramatic ?' Brunner demanded as he sagged back in his seat.

  `Reaction—reaction. . . Vanek snapped his fingers. 'It's what this is all about. On the day when we visit Lasalle I might have to do just that—you must be ready for it. . .