The Stone Leopard

by Colin Forbes

  They got out of the car and walked back up the abandoned race-track which lies just outside the Czech town of Tabor, forty-five miles south of Prague. Little more than a bulky shadow in the distant gloom, Michael Borisov, the Russian in charge of the training centre, was bending over the form in the road, a form constructed of sacking and straw for the limbs, the body and the head. A powerful spring had held the make- believe man upright until Vanek had hit him.

  `Good?' Vanek inquired as he reached Borisov. 'No delay at all on the second run—I went straight back and straight over him. . .

  Borisov, thick-bodied and muffled in a fur coat and hat against the intense cold—a snow warning had been broadcast over the Prague radio—regarded the Czech sourly. Vanek was too sure of himself, too arrogant for him ever to like the man, and the trouble was Vanek was right: it had been a perfect run. The bloody Czech trained to perfection in everything he did. `We run back to the centre,' he said abruptly. 'I'll send someone to collect the car. . . .' Borisov had spoken in French; ever since training had begun all conversation had been carried on in the Gallic language.

  They ran down the track through the chilly dusk which was almost darkness now and Vanek deliberately kept a few paces in front of the other three men to demonstrate his fitness. As they went inside a concrete cabin huddled under a copse of fir trees a wave of warmth from a boiling stove met them. Borisov, the oldest and the last of the four men to enter the building, slammed the door shut to keep in the warmth. Taking off their coats, they lit cigarettes—Gauloises—and sagged into chairs round a table. A large-scale map of France and Germany covered one wall; on another hung a map of Paris. Various guidebooks, including timetables, Michelin and the Guide Bleu occupied a wooden shelf. Most prominently displayed was a large photograph of Col Rene Lasalle.

  `That's enough for today,' Borisov announced as he poured French cognac from a bottle. 'You're improving,' he added grudgingly.

  With typical bravado Vanek raised his glass to the photograph on the wall. 'To our meeting, my dear colonel. . .'

  Card Vanek was thirty-one years old, a tall, lean and bony- faced man with very dark hair and a neat dark moustache. A natural athlete, his quick-moving dark eyes stared back insolently as the Russian studied him. Vanek knew that he was good at his job, that the Russian disliked him but also recognized his ability, which made everything so much the better; and the way to keep Borisov in his place was to push the training even harder than the Russian wished. 'We'll repeat the night exercise,' Vanek said abruptly. 'Running a man down in the dark is even trickier.'

  In Russia they have a word for the Czechs which means 'the smart people, too clever by half. . . .' And this summed up the Russian trainer's opinion of his protege. On the other hand, Borisov was thinking, Vanek was definitely the man to lead this Soviet Commando; he had all the qualifications. Five years earlier Vanek had been attached to the security unit at the Czech Embassy on Avenue Charles-Floquet near the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Like so many Czechs, Vanek was an excellent linguist: he spoke French, German and English fluently. And when the three-man team was given the signal to leave for the west they would travel as Frenchmen, speaking that language and equipped with French papers.

  Vanek had other useful skills, too—besides those of the trained assassin he had perfected at the training centre. A handsome man, bold and confident in manner, the Czech was attractive to women, which at times proved highly convenient. After all, the way to a man was so often through his woman. And finally, Borisov thought as he smoked his Gauloise, Vanek had a cold streak which enabled him to kill a man and sleep well after the act. This had been proved when he had travelled to Istanbul to kill a Soviet cipher clerk who had developed an appetite for American dollars. Vanek had choked the man to death and then thrown him from a balcony into the Bosphorus one dark night.

  Much as it went against the grain, Borisov the Russian had to admit that the three Czechs, led by Vanek, made an ideal assassination Commando. And although Borisov could not have known it, the specification for the Commando leader was not at all unlike the specification David Nash had laid down for choosing a man to go into France. Fluency in French, knowledge of France, the ability to pass as a Frenchman—and whereas Nash had insisted on a non-American, so the three members of the Russian Politburo who had sanctioned the mission had added their own proviso: the men who made up the Commando must be non-Russian. If anything were to go wrong, the real power behind the operation must never be exposed.

  `When the hell are we going to leave to visit this Col Lasalle ?' Vanek demanded.

  `Soon,' Borisov replied, 'the signal will come soon. . .'

  On the same evening when Alan Lennox in London received the phone call from David Nash, two hundred miles away in Paris Marc Grelle sat up late in his bachelor apartment on the Ile Saint-Louis reading an old and dusty file. It was the file on the Leopard.

  Andre Boisseau, who lived in the rue Monge, spent the earlier part of the evening with the prefect, and since he had read the file earlier they compared notes. In the Second World War every single member of the Resistance had worked under a false name—to protect his family and his friends. Normally another French surname was chosen at random; sometimes a man would be known by a false Christian name; and certain high-ranking army officers labelled themselves with geometrical symbols such as Hypotenuse. But the Leopard was different: he had taken the name of a savage animal as though to stress his uniqueness.

  `I think the choice of the name indicates a supreme self- confidence,' Boisseau remarked. 'One of those people who kids himself up he's a man of destiny. . .

  The Leopard had certainly had a remarkable—although brief—career. In his earliest twenties—one of the few facts known about this elusive figure—he had commanded one of the most powerful Resistance groups in the Massif Central, operating in the departments of Lozere and Haute-Loire. He distinguished himself from other Resistance leaders by his brilliance and ruthlessness; there had been something almost Napoleonic in the way he had descended out of nowhere on the enemy, destroyed him, and then vanished again.

  The Leopard's extraordinary success was based on a widespread intelligence system. He had agents everywhere—in the Vichy police, in the telephone exchanges where operators plugged in to enemy calls, on the railways where the staff reported on the movement of munition and troop trains, and inside the Milice, a Vichy organization of vicious thugs and collaborators.

  He had even planted someone inside the Abwehr, the enemy counter-intelligence organization.

  `Perhaps we ought to be looking for someone who is an expert on intelligence and security apparatuses,' Boisseau suggested.

  The prefect grunted and continued reading. The thick file went on endlessly describing the Leopard's achievements, but the weird thing was, there was hardly a hint of what he looked like. There were reasons for this. The Communist leader had gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that no one—not even his close associates—had any idea of his personal appearance. There was one exception: a deputy, code-named Petit-Louis, had gone everywhere with him, issuing instructions while the Leopard stayed out of sight.

  `He was over six feet tall and not much more than twenty at the time, which would put him in his early fifties now if he had survived,' Grelle pointed out. 'And that's all we do know about this ghost. . .

  `Petit-Louis probably knew what he looked like,' Boisseau remarked.

  In the autumn of 1944 events took a more sinister turn. At the time of the second Allied landing—in August in the south of France—the Midi was practically under the control of the Resistance for a short period. It was a period no one talked about much in later years: the prospect had been too frightening. This was when the Communists came within an inch of establishing a Soviet Republic in the south of France.

  All the plans were laid. The signal for setting up the Soviet Republique du Sud was to be the capture by the Communists of the key cities of Limoges and Montpellier. It was calculated that, presented with a fait
accompli while the Allies were still fighting the enemy, the Soviet Republic would have to be accepted. The mastermind behind this plan was the Leopard himself. Only de Gaulle's swift and sudden descent on the region smashed the plot. Soon afterwards the Leopard died.

  His death was carefully documented in the file. He had been shot by an enemy sniper in the streets of Lyon on 14 September. Full of anguish at the death of their leader, worried that a gang of Vichy thugs might desecrate the grave, a small party of Communists had carried the body away and quietly buried it in the middle of a forest. Petit-Louis, the Leopard's deputy, had not been present at the burial. Near the end of the file an appendix noted small details which Grelle found interesting. The Leopard had always been guarded by a huge and ferocious wolfhound called Cesar which kept even trusted friends at a distance.

  `To make sure they never knew what he looked like,' Grelle commented. 'I wonder what happened to the hound ?'

  The Abwehr, the enemy intelligence service, had also apparently compiled a detailed file on their mysterious enemy. The officer who had undertaken this task was a certain Dieter Wohl, who had been thirty at the time. 'So he would be in his sixties now,' Grelle observed. 'I wonder whether he survived ?'

  Grelle received the shock after Boisseau had gone home to his wife and two children. At the end of the file he found a worn and tattered envelope with a photograph inside of the Leopard's deputy, Petit-Louis. At first he couldn't be sure, so he took the faded sepia print over to his desk and examined it under the lamp. The print was better preserved than he had feared and out of it stared a face, a face recorded over thirty years earlier. Age changes a man, especially if his life has been hard, but if the bone structure is strong it sometimes only makes clearer features which always existed. The face of Petit- Louis was the face of Gaston Martin, the man from Guiana.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FOR THE SECOND TIME in less than seventy-two hours David Nash had crossed the Atlantic. Disembarking from Pan Am flight 100 at Heathrow Airport at 9.40 pm on Sunday night, 12 December, only ten days before Guy Florian was due to fly to Moscow, Nash took a cab to the Ritz, left his bag in his room and walked to Lennox's flat in St James's Place. On arrival he presented the Englishman with a bottle of Moet & Chandon.

  `When the Greeks come bearing gifts . . .' Lennox greeted him cynically as he slipped the bottle inside the fridge. 'We'll open that later on—I presume we're going to be up half the night ?'

  `At the very least,' the American assured him. 'We're up against a deadline which is ten days from now. . .

  `You are up against a deadline,' Lennox corrected him. 'I warned you on the phone—your kind of business is something I can do without. . .

  They talked until 3 am, while Nash used up two packs of cigarettes, telling the Englishman about his recent visit to Peter Lanz and Col Lasalle, about the enormous anxiety in Washington that some great Communist coup was imminent, that Rene Lasalle might possibly—just possibly—be able to provide the key which would unlock the identity of the unknown Soviet agent in Paris. 'He's convinced the crunch is coming when Florian flies off to Moscow,' Nash said at midnight as he sipped his champagne. 'So we have no time at all to check out these three people inside France who, Lasalle believes, may come up with the answer. . .'

  `I had the quaint idea that Washington hates the guts of President Guy Florian,' Lennox observed.

  Nash's mouth tightened. 'That's as maybe. The hell of it is we're stuck with him—just as we were stuck with de Gaulle. In politics you may not like your bedmate, but you have to sleep with her all the same. President Florian of France and Chancellor Hauser of Germany are all that stand between Soviet Russia and the Channel coast now that Congress has opted out of Europe—your Channel coast, too,' he added.

  `So where does the Leopard come into it ? None of what you say makes much sense,' Lennox remarked bluntly. 'The Leopard is dead—he was shot in Lyon in 1944. I think Lasalle is just trying to stir up some muck, hoping it will stick to his old enemy, Guy Florian. Your French colonel is a fanatic.'

  `Even fanatics get to know things,' Nash persisted. 'We don't entirely go along with his Leopard story but we do think he stumbled on something six months ago just before Florian threw him out of France. He got a sniff of some highly placed underground link with the Soviets—and don't forget that Lasalle was the best army counter-intelligence chief the French ever had. . .'

  'But he won't give you this list of so-called witnesses, if it exists. . .'

  `I'm certain it exists,' Nash flared. 'He's very security- minded so he only gives that to the man who goes into France to interview them. . .

  `So why come to me ?'

  Nash swallowed the rest of his champagne, taking his time over replying. 'Because of who you are,' he said quietly. 'These witnesses may well only speak to a Frenchman. Lanz has agreed to supply cover papers. To avoid the security apparatus the man who goes in must merge with the landscape. You qualify, Alan. You were born and grew up in Paris. We gave you top security clearance while you were in the States. You're experienced in underground work, God knows. The Red Night in Syria proved that. You're made for the job,' the American went on. 'We need you. You need us. . .'

  `And just why do I need you ?' Lennox asked quietly.

  `Because you need American government approval of that bid you put in for a major security contract with an American company, a company which, incidentally, handles certain Defence Department projects. Confidentially, I understand your bid was the lowest and is acceptable—providing you get Washington's rubber stamp. . .'

  It was at this point that the explosion came, that Lennox started talking non-stop, refusing to allow Nash to interrupt while he told him what he thought about politics and politicians. 'Your own people do the same thing. . . .' Nash interjected and then subsided under the torrent of Lennox's words. 'It's pressure,' Lennox told him savagely, 'bloody pressure tactics, and you know how I react to that. . . .' The verbal battle went on until close to three in the morning as the atmosphere thickened with smoke, as they drank Scotch, as Nash, tie-less and in his shirt-sleeves now, fought back against Lennox's onslaught. Then, without warning, the Englishman switched his viewpoint.

  `All right,' he said as he refilled the glasses, 'I'll go and see Lasalle and talk to him—but on the clear understanding that I make up my mind when I get there whether it's worth going into France. . .'

  `That's great. . .

  `Wait a minute, there are conditions. If I go in, you'll personally guarantee my American contract is approved. You'll also guarantee that only MacLeish will know I've agreed—the security on this thing has to be ironclad tight. Finally, you'll pay me a service fee of twenty thousand dollars. . .

  `For God's sake,' Nash protested, 'you'll be getting the contract. . .'

  `Which is the least I deserve since my bid is lowest. The twenty thousand dollars is danger money. You think it's going to be a picnic going undercover into France now ?' Lennox demanded. 'For Christ's sake, before you arrived I was listening to the news bulletin—since the attempt on Florian's life French security is buzzing like a beehive. I'll risk tripping up over Grelle's mob, the counter-espionage gang, maybe even the CRS thugs. MacLeish is getting himself a non-American messenger boy on the cheap at twenty thousand.'

  `Who said anything about a non-American?' Nash inquired mildly.

  `You did when you phoned from Washington and then flew over here by the seat of your pants. . .

  Shortly after three in the morning they came to their agreement, Nash swallowed a final gulp of neat Scotch, checked over certain details with Lennox and then walked back through the rain to the Ritz, quite satisfied and grimly amused at Lennox's insistence on the service fee. MacLeish could damn well shell out the twenty thousand and trim his budget elsewhere. Back in his flat Lennox washed dirty glasses and then started packing. Like Nash he was a night bird, and like Nash he was satisfied. From the moment the proposition had been put to him he had been interested because it suited him. It gav
e him something new and interesting to poke his nose into; it made the American contract secure; and he had just concluded a hard-fought deal. Extracting the twenty thousand from MacLeish was a bonus which lived up to his main principle: never do anything for nothing.

  In Paris on Monday morning, 13 December, Grelle and Boisseau were no nearer clearing up the mystery surrounding Gaston Martin's strangely coincidental arrival only hours after the attempt on Florian's life. Detectives had visited the Hotel Cecile where Martin had dumped his bag after getting off the boat train from Le Havre, and his few miserable possessions had been brought to the prefecture. They consisted of one small suitcase of clothes. 'And this is all he had to show for sixty years of living,' the prefect commented. 'It's pathetic, the way some people live—and die. . .

  `This newspaper we found in his room is interesting,' Boisseau replied. 'It clears up the riddle of why he was standing at the spot where Lucie Devaud died. . .

  The copy of Le Monde, dated 9 December, the day after the assassination attempt, had carried one of those 'scene of the crime' diagrams newspaper editors are so fond of inserting; this one was a street plan of a section of the eighth arrondissement with a cross marking the spot where Lucie Devaud had been shot. Martin's copy of the paper, purchased at Le Havre when he came off the freighter, had been folded to the diagram, as though he had used it as a reference. 'They even showed the fur shop in the diagram,' Boisseau explained, 'so it was easy for him to find the spot. . .

  `Which tells us nothing about any connection he may have had with the Devaud woman,' Grelle snapped. 'We've traced her to an expensive apartment in the Place des Vosges but no one there seems to know anything about her. . .

  At nine in the morning the telex came in from Cayenne, Guiana—in response to Grelle's earlier request for information. It was a very long message and Grelle later supplemented it by a phone call to the Cayenne police chief. The story it told was quite damnable. During the war Gaston Martin had fought with the Resistance group commanded by the Leopard in the Lozere. He had, according to his own account—told to the Cayenne police chief only a few weeks earlier—worked closely with the Leopard, acting as his deputy. He even mentioned the savage wolfhound, Cesar, who guarded the Communist leader wherever he went.