The Stone Leopard

by Colin Forbes

  Another police van arrived, disgorging a dozen more policemen who ran inside the main hall. The energetic Inspector Dorre of Colmar had been in touch with his Strasbourg colleagues—Vanek's Citroen had now been traced to the Hertz car-hire branch in the Boulevard de Nancy—and Inspector Rochat's superiors, nervous now of a monumental blunder, co-operated fully. The abandonment of the car logically led them to the assumption that the recent hirers must now be travelling by train or air. A massive surveillance operation was put into action at the railway station and near-by airport. Ironically, the dragnet thrown out to trap the Soviet Commando was endangering Lennox.

  It is one thing to slip across a border with false papers; it is quite a different kettle of fish to risk being checked carefully when an emergency dragnet is under way. Lennox paid for his coffee, walked across the Place de la Gare to the bus station, and jumped on the first crowded bus leaving. It happened to be going to Haguenau, a place he had never heard of, so he bought a ticket which would take him the whole route. The earliest he could risk crossing over into Germany would be the following day; dragnets are at their most vigilant during the first twenty-four hours. And the big problem would be where to spend the night: when the police are really looking for someone they check every hotel, even phoning those outlying places they cannot easily reach.

  Lennox caught a late evening bus back from Haguenau to Strasbourg, and the first thing he noticed when he alighted at the Place de la Gare was the line of police vans drawn up outside the station. Early that morning, reading through the newspaper to find the report on Leon Jouvel's death, he had noticed a reference to an all-night session of the European Parliament being held in the city. After eating dinner in a back street restaurant, he took a cab to the Parliament building. His papers, which showed him as a reporter, readily gave him admittance and once inside he settled down in the press gallery to his own all-night session.

  Before taking the cab to the European Parliament he had slipped into a hotel washroom where he had shaved with equipment he had bought in Haguenau; it might not have been wise to present an unshaven appearance inside the august precincts of Europe's talking shop. The precaution turned out to be unnecessary—there were few other reporters in the press gallery and at times, as the dreary debate droned on and on, Lennox was able to snatch an hour or so of sleep. Checking his watch at frequent intervals, he waited while the night passed on leaden feet. In the morning he would try once again to cross the Rhine into the Federal Republic of Germany.

  It was Inspector Jacques Dorre (who in later years rose to the rank of Commissioner), who finally alerted Marc Grelle. When the prefect received Boisseau's report of his conversation with Colmar he personally phoned Dorre, who now had more information. He was able to tell Grelle that the Citroen which had transported two men to the hotel in Colmar had been handed in to the Hertz branch in the Boulevard de Nancy, Strasbourg.

  `Yes,' he further confirmed, 'the description of the man who returned the car corresponds with the description of one of the two men who stayed at the Hotel Bristol on the nights of 18 and 19 December—and on the 19th Robert Philip died in his bath. . .

  `If these two men—Jouvel and Philip—were murdered,' Grelle suggested to Dorre, 'it has to be the work of a professional assassin then? No amateur could fake both deaths so convincingly, you agree?'

  `I agree,' Dorre replied crisply. 'But it appears there is a team of at least two assassins on the move—maybe even three men. . .

  Grelle took a tighter grip on the phone. 'How do you make that out ?' he demanded.

  `I personally checked the register at the Bristol. Ten minutes after the first two men—Duval and Bonnard—booked in, a third man, Lambert, took a room also. There is nothing to link these three men together—except that they all arrived on the night of the 18th and departed on the morning of the l0th, which is early today, of course. The point is, at this time of the year the hotel was almost empty. . .

  Grelle thanked him for his co-operation and put down the receiver. 'There could be some kind of assassination team on the move in Alsace,' he told Boisseau. 'It's all theory, but if it were true who the hell could they be ?'

  `Only Lasalle and the Englishman, Lennox, have that list, presumably,' Boisseau pointed out. 'Surely Lasalle is not wiping out his own witnesses ? That doesn't make any sense at all. The only thing which would make sense is if someone employed by the Leopard were doing the job. . .

  `But the Leopard can't have the list. . .'

  Grelle stopped and the two men stared at each other in silence. An hour later the indefatigable Dorre was back on the line again. He was working in close touch with his colleagues in Strasbourg, he explained, and at his suggestion Rochat had started contacting every hotel in the city. The names Duval, Bonnard and Lambert had soon been tracked down. The first two had spent the night of Friday, 17 December, at the Hotel Sofitel, while Lambert had slept at the Terminus, and it was during the evening of 18 December that Leon Jouvel had hanged himself.

  `So,' Dorre pointed out, 'these same three men—and again the descriptions, though vague, tally—then moved down here to Colmar late on the evening of the 18th and were in the town when Robert Philip died. How far do you stretch the long arm of coincidence without breaking it ?'

  `That's it!' Grelle snapped. 'When your descriptions of these three men arrive I'll circulate them throughout the whole of France—and we have their names. I want that trio detained and questioned the moment they surface again. . .'

  On the night of 20 December it was dark by six o'clock in the Freiburg area as Dieter Wohl stood looking out between the curtains of his unlit bedroom. Wohl felt quite at home in the dark, possibly a relic of his wartime years when he had so often observed a suspect house from behind an unlit window. Wohl was not a nervous man, even though he lived alone in his two-storey house perched by itself at the roadside three kilometres outside Freiburg, but at the moment he was puzzled Why had a car stopped just short of his house and stayed there at this hour?

  Overnight there had been a weather change; the snow had melted, the temperature had risen, and now the sky was broken cloud with moonlight shining through, illuminating the lonely country road and the trees in the fields beyond. Most people would not have heard the car, but ex-policeman Wohl—he had joined the force after the war—had the ears of a cat. A black Mercedes SL 230, he noted by the light of the moon. One shadowy figure sat behind the wheel while his two passengers had got out and were pretending to examine the motor. Why did the word 'pretending' leap into his head? Because although they had the bonnet up they kept glancing at his house and looking all round them as though spying out the land. Their glances were fleeting—so fleeting that probably only a trained observer like Wohl would have noticed them.

  `My imagination is running away with me,' he murmured.

  Below him in the road one of the men left the car and made his way into a field alongside the house, his hand at his flies.

  He's just gone for a pee, Wohl decided. Leaving the front bedroom, still moving around in the dark, he went into the side bedroom where the curtains had not been drawn; keeping to the back of the room, he watched the man perform against a hedge. It was all perfectly innocent, except that the man relieving himself kept glancing at the back garden and up at the side of the house. Well hidden in the shadows, Wohl waited until the man had finished and returned to the car. A moment later the two men closed the hood as Wohl watched from the front bedroom, climbed back inside the Mercedes and the driver tried the engine. It sparked first time and drove off towards Freiburg. I must be getting old, Wohl thought, seeing sinister things where none exist. He went downstairs to continue work on his memoirs. Half an hour later the phone rang.

  `Herr Wohl ? Herr Dieter Wohl ? Good evening. This is the Morgenthau Research Institute, a market research organization. We are carrying out research connected with a campaign to increase state pensions. You have been selected . .'

  The researcher, a man called Bruckner, checked Wohl'
s status, noted that he was a widower living alone, that he owned his house, that he never took a holiday, and a number of other pertinent questions. Thanking Wohl profusely, the caller said he might wish to visit Wohl but he would first phone for an appointment. Would any of the next three evenings be convenient? It would? Excellent. . .'

  Putting down the phone Wohl went back to his desk in the front living-room and settled down again to the arduous task of completing the introduction to his memoirs. But he found it difficult to concentrate; his suspicious mind kept going back to the telephone call.

  Only eight hours earlier Vanek had phoned the special Paris number from Kehl. Each day, since arriving in Munich—with the exception of the Sunday in Colmar—he had phoned the number his trainer, Borisov, had given him from a post office— and each day there had been no new instruction passed over to him. Phoning from Kehl, he had anticipated the same dead call. Hearing the same voice and name—Jurgensen—repeat the number at the other end Vanek identified himself.

  `This is Salicetti. . .'

  `There is a development,' the voice said quickly. 'At the Freiburg branch you must collect a wartime diary and the manuscript of the customer's memoirs. Understood ?'

  `Understood. . .'

  `Then you must visit another customer—note the address. A Madame Annette Devaud, Saverne. . .' Jurgensen spelt out the name of the town. 'It is in Alsace. . .

  `That's a vague address. . .'

  `That's all we have. Good-bye!'

  Vanek checked his watch. The call had taken only thirty seconds. Quite calm while he had been making the call, the Czech swore to himself as he looked out of the phone booth to where people were queuing up to buy postage stamps. The new development was not to his liking at all; it meant that when they had made the visit to Freiburg they would have to re-cross the border back into France. And it was now 20 December, which gave them only seventy-two hours to complete the job.

  Alan Lennox crossed the border to Kehl on the morning of Tuesday, 21 December. At Strasbourg station the dragnet had been relaxed, although still partly in operation. After the initial burst of activity—which brought no result—the resentment felt by the local police at Paris's interference in their affairs began to surface again, especially since there was a terrorist alert—later proved to be unfounded—at Strasbourg airport. Men were rushed to the airport and the surveillance at the railway station was reduced.

  Collecting his bag from the luggage store, Lennox boarded a local train, later passed through the frontier control without incident—no one was looking for a man called Bouvier—and arrived in Kehl. He immediately put through a call to Peter Lanz at the special Bonn number he had been given and—in a roundabout way—told the BND chief everything that had happened. 'The two French witnesses have died suddenly, one might say violently—within twenty-four hours of each other. One of them partially identified our animal impersonator.. . by voice alone, I emphasize . . . Guy Florian.'

  Lanz adopted an off-hand tone, as though discussing something of minor importance. 'You would say your witness was reliable ? After all, we do have other depositions. . .'

  `It is by no means certain,' Lennox replied.

  `And your next move ?'

  `Peter, the third witness lives in Freiburg—I didn't mention it before, but I'm going to see him now. Yes, one of your countrymen. No, I'd sooner not mention names.'

  `In that case,' Lanz said crisply, 'I will be in Freiburg myself this evening. You will be able to contact me at the Hotel Colombi. Look after yourself. And if that is all, I have to go to a meeting which is urgent. . .'

  Franz Hauser, recently elected Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, agreed to see Peter Lanz at the Palais Schaumburg at 11 am, which was only one hour after Lennox had phoned from Kehl. Immersed in work—Hauser seldom got to bed before midnight—he had now asked Lanz to make his temporary headquarters in Bonn instead of at Pullach in Bavaria. 'I need you across the hall from me the way things are shaping up in Europe,' he informed the BND chief.

  Small, neat and wiry, Hauser had been elected on a platform of taking the strongest measures against terrorists, the urban guerrillas who were still plaguing Germany. He had also preached the gospel that now the Americans had withdrawn from Europe the continent must protect itself. 'Combining with our friends, France, Great Britain and our other allies we must build up such strength that the commanders of the Red Army will know Europe can only be their graveyard if ever they make the mistake of crossing the frontiers. . .

  At eleven o'clock promptly Lanz was ushered into his office and Hauser, a man who hated formality, came round his desk to sit alongside the security chief. 'Is there information from the Englishman, Lennox ?' he inquired. He listened for ten minutes while Lanz explained what had happened, his small alert face puckered in concentration. 'If this links up with the movement of Soviet convoy K.12,' he commented, 'then we may be on the eve of a catastrophe. The Russians are striking before we can build up our strength.'

  `You do not really believe it, sir?' Lanz protested. 'I mean that Florian could be this Communist Resistance chief, the Leopard ?'

  `No, that is impossible,' Hauser agreed. Tut it is no longer beyond the realms of possibility that one of his key cabinet ministers may be. And then there is the fact that the Leopard was not found when his grave was disinterred near Lyon. How did you hear about that, by the way ?'

  `A contact we have across the Rhine. . .'

  `All right, keep your secrets. What disturbs me are the growing rumours of a coup d'etat in Paris. Supposing the Leopard is Alain Blanc, Minister of National Defence—might he not be planning to seize power while Florian is away in Moscow ?'

  `That hadn't occurred to me,' Lanz admitted.

  'Is there some huge conspiracy afoot ?' Hauser murmured. `If Moscow is co-operating with the Leopard might they not have asked Florian to Moscow to get him out of the way while the Leopard takes over in France ? Why is that Soviet convoy proceeding into the Mediterranean at this moment ? Everything seems to be moving towards some climax. We need more information, Lanz. Immediately. . .'

  Arriving by train at Freiburg, Lennox left his bag at the station, checked the phone directory to make sure Dieter Wohl was still living at the address given on the list, and then phoned the German. He introduced himself as Jules Jean Bouvier, a reporter on the French newspaper Le Monde. His paper was about to embark on a series of the French wartime Resistance, with particular reference to operations in the Lozere. He believed that Herr Wohl had served in this area during the war, so . . .'

  Wohl was hesitant at first, trying to decide whether seeing Bouvier would help him with his memoirs, then it struck him that a little advance publicity could do no harm, so he agreed. Lennox took a cab to the ex-Abwehr officer's remote house and Wohl was waiting for him at the door. A cautious man, Wohl sat his visitor down in the living-room and then asked for some identification. Lennox produced his papers. 'Anyone can get a press card printed,' he said easily.

  It took half an hour to coax Wohl into a trusting frame of mind, but when Lennox mentioned the Leopard he saw a flicker in the German's eyes. 'This is something I am concentrating on,' Lennox explained. 'I find it excellent copy—the mystery surrounding the Leopard's real identity. It was never cleared up, was it ?'

  Wohl went over to his desk where part of a hand-written manuscript lay alongside a worn, leather-bound diary. For fifteen minutes he told Lennox in precise detail all the steps he had taken to track down the Resistance leader during 1944. Lennox had filled a dozen pages of his notebook with shorthand, had decided that the German really had no information of value, when Wohl mentioned the incident when he had almost ambushed the Leopard. At the end of the story he gave the name of the girl who had died in the submerged car. Lucie Devaud.

  `It was a shocking business,' Wohl remarked, 'leaving the girl to drown like that. The car was in eighteen feet of water, my men were some distance from where it went over the bridge. I'm convinced he could have save
d her had he tried. He didn't try. . . .'

  `Lucie Devaud,' Lennox repeated. 'That was the name of the woman who tried to kill Guy Florian. I suppose there's no possible connection ?'

  `I wondered about that myself,' Wohl admitted. 'Annette Devaud was very close to the Leopard—she was in charge of his brilliant team of couriers. I understand she went blind soon after the war. . .

  Lennox sat very still, saying nothing. Col Rene Lasalle had made a passing reference to Annette Devaud, dismissing her as of no importance because of her blindness. Could the French colonel have slipped up here—if Annette had indeed been so close to the Leopard ?

  `I wrote to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last week,' Wohl continued, 'and I mentioned the incident of the drowned girl. I also mentioned that another Devaud—Annette—who was involved with the Leopard, might still be alive in France. I even gave her last-known address, which perhaps I should not have done. Here it is. Annette Devaud, Woodcutter's Farm, Saverne, Alsace. It was a long time ago but some French people stay in one place for ever. . .'

  Wohl showed Lennox the address at the back of the war diary where he had underlined it several times. 'Living alone as I do,' he said apologetically, 'I get funny ideas. Only last night I thought some people were watching my house. And then there was that peculiar phone call from the market research people. . . .' As he went on talking, Lennox listened.

  `. . . in fact, Wohl only mentioned it in passing, but considering what happened in Strasbourg and Colmar, it just made me wonder. . . .' At four in the afternoon Lennox had met Peter Lanz in a bedroom of the Hotel Colombi in Freiburg soon after the BND chief had flown there from Bonn, and now he was telling the German about his meeting with Dieter Wohl. Earlier, Lanz had told the Englishman about the opening up of the Leopard's grave in a forest near Lyon, about how the French police had found only the skeleton of a hound inside the Resistance leader's coffin.