Another Day, Another Jackal

by Lex Lander

  Sheryl made a pistol of forefinger and thumb and pointed it at the smiling image on the screen.

  ‘Bang,’ she said, imitating the hammer action of a revolver. ‘You’re dead, Mr Fucking Hypocrite Chirac.’

  PART FOUR

  FEBRUARY

  A Leap Year of Faith

  Nine

  * * *

  The shutter of the Pentax camera clicked open and closed, recording the telephotoed image. The motor wound forward, a faint buzz like a bee zipping past the ear, to the thirty-sixth and final exposure of this roll of film, full of images of the route taken by President Jacques Chirac on his way to lunch.

  Simonelli laid the camera on the seat beside him and lit a cigarette, his narrow brow crinkled in thought. It was cold, his breath a white plume, his feet like ice from too long sitting still. Paris in February was not Ajaccio, where winter never came. He raised the car window and twisted the ignition key. The diesel engine of the Mercedes clanked into life. He adjusted the climate control knob and set the fan high. He didn’t immediately drive off, but sat for a while, letting the heater warm him.

  Barail had chided him for personally visiting all prospective vantage points from which to hit the President. Let the assassin do it, he had grumbled, though the assassin had yet to be recruited. But Simonelli had his reasons and they were not for Barail’s ears.

  ‘I don’t entirely trust your Commissaire Barail,’ Sheryl had admitted, as they lay, limbs still twined together, in the aftermath of their third stint of lovemaking since their reunion. ‘He’s altogether too smooth.’

  ‘You think I trust him?’ Simonelli had snapped back at her, resenting the unuttered suggestion that he was gullible. ‘Never trust a man who rats on his employers - and especially if his employer is the President of the Republic. I may be a crook but I’m an honourable crook …’

  Sheryl had giggled at that. Right away he saw the funny side too and they finished up clutching at each other, convulsed in laughter which, as it subsided, led to her groping him, which led to his squeezing her tits, which led to a second grand finale. He impressed himself. He had believed the days of two fucks inside an hour were behind him.

  It was after the aftermath of their lovemaking when she asked him to work alongside Barail. Whereas he had assumed his job - favour, rather - to be at an end, she’d had second thoughts and offered him the role of overall coordination. His instinctive reaction was refusal. Only when, in the flush of sexual gratification, she offered to match Barail’s pay, was he won over. Twenty-five million francs to just keep Barail on track and a watchful eye on the assassin, plus a second watchful eye on his own back. It sounded like a sinecure.

  Later, pondering with mixed feelings on the rewards vs. the risk of incarceration or worse, he altered his view somewhat. Nobody on this trip could be just a passenger. As with Barail, he was doing it for financial gain, plus maybe a little of the personal satisfaction that any Corsican of the blood would derive from taking out a French president. But to earn the money was only part of it. He had to be around afterwards to spend it. Ergo, he would do his damnedest to make sure the operation ran as glitch-free as a Rolls-Royce engine and that Barail did likewise. He would baby the assassin by preparing the ground for him. He would wipe his nose and, yes, even his pink little bottom if that was what it took to make a clean kill. All the mec would have to do was pull the trigger and get out unscathed. And there, of course, lay the rub.

  Over the past month, using schedules provided by Barail, Simonelli had inspected every route used by the President and every venue visited. Some of them formed part of his daily routine, others were patently sporadic or one-offs, such as the ceremony at the new EU headquarters at Strasbourg, the meetings with other heads of state in Brussels, the visit to the Palais-Royal Theatre with that African president of the unpronounceable name and unspeakable reputation. Most of the locations were unsuitable, a few were downright dangerous - to the assassin, that is.

  Simonelli, who, unknown to Barail and certainly to Sheryl, was a former contract killer himself, knew better than most what to look for in setting up a hit. He was familiar with angles of fire, allowances for deflection and lay-off, the trajectory curve, moving targets, head shots, body shots. He was also adept at calculating the odds. So far only the itinerary from the Elysées Palace to the restaurant in the Place de l’Opéra showed possibilities and even this lacked a getaway route. Without an assured exit no self-respecting hired killer was going to take this contract, no matter the size of the pay cheque. A lavish funeral would be no compensation.

  So here he was, illegally parked across from the Opéra, about to take a last snapshot of the President’s favourite eating establishment. According to Barail, Chirac and an entourage frequented the place at least every other month on average. Any of a multitude of top floor apartments along any of the various routes between the Palais and the restaurant might do at a pinch. The security service couldn’t check them all. But Simonelli was opposed to hitting the President while he was in a moving vehicle. Such assassination attempts rarely succeeded. A typical failure in this category was the OAS attempt on de Gaulle at Petit-Clamart in the early sixties. No, the moment to do it would be when Chirac crossed the sidewalk from his car to the restaurant entrance.

  Opposite the restaurant was a typical apartment building from the 18th century - five floors topped by a mansard roof. About three hundred metres from the nearest fifth floor window to the restaurant door. The range was right on the limit for the kind of lightweight rifle an assassin would most likely elect to use. Not only that, but the flics who accompanied the President in two separate cars invariably erected a human wall around him the moment he quit his car, thus ruling out a body shot. So it was the head or nothing, calling for even greater accuracy.

  The other difficulty was the random nature of the President’s visits to the restaurant. Barail claimed to have little advance notification. To summon up the gunman and get him in position they would need several hours’ notice at least, ideally twenty-four. Yet of other prospects there were none so far - or none that Simonelli would be willing to commend to an assassin.

  He liberated the handbrake and moved out in the wake of a CD-plated limo with black glass all round and a miniature flag in red and green fluttering from each front wing. At little more than a walking pace he tagged on behind it to head down the Boulevard des Capucines towards the Church of Marie Madeleine.

  This job, he reckoned, was going to be an absolute fucking nightmare.

  Ten

  * * *

  The padded bag was delivered by Fedex at a few minutes before nine am. Her name was prominent as were the printed words PRIVATE AND PERSONAL. The label denoted French provenance.

  Sheryl sat down with her first coffee and cigarette of the day. The package was so securely sealed with packaging tape that she had to cut her way in with a kitchen knife. Inside was a single brown envelope on which her name was again written in upper case. She slit it open with the knife and drew out two pages, to the first of which a post-it note sticker was affixed. She upended the envelope and shook it. A photograph fell face down onto the table; she reversed it. It was a slightly out-of-focus study of a man emerging from a car with his hand extended to shake the hand of another man whose arm, shoulder and half his face were the only parts visible. On the note was scrawled:

  This is the dossier of the man I intend to approach. I personally translated it into English. Read it and if you have any questions, comments or objections telephone me on my cellphone before midnight 9/10 February

  Cordialement B

  There followed a cellphone number.

  Sheryl turned the photograph towards the light for a proper look. The man was thirty-plus, good physique, regular features, muddy blond hair worn long on top and at the sides - a lock of it had tumbled over his forehead and he was in the process of sweeping it back with his left hand. He was wearing a sandy-coloured jacket with an open-neck cream shirt and dark blue trousers.
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  ‘Not bad,’ she murmured, and sipped her coffee. ‘You can come into my parlour anytime, Mr Assassin.’

  The rest of the photograph was uninformative. Behind the man a line of trees in full leaf gave a clue as to the season but not the whereabouts. Sheryl laid the photograph on the table, peeled the sticker off the first sheet of paper and attached it to the photo. She began to read.

  CONFIDENTIAL

  PERSONAL PROFILE

  Subject’s name: LUX

  Subject’s first name/s: Dennis Randolph

  Nationality: American

  Place of birth: Topeka, Kansas

  Date of birth: 13th September 1959

  Status: Unmarried (divorced)

  Domicile: Paris France until January 1994.

  Marseilles France January 1994 – October 1994

  Present abode not known.

  Description: Ethnic category White Caucasian

  Height 184 cm

  Build Medium

  Hair Fair

  Eyes Blue-grey

  Disabilities None recorded

  Distinguishing Features None recorded

  BACKGROUND

  The subject is a US ex-infantry corps NCO who also served for a period with the US Special Forces as a sniper. He was honourably discharged from the service in March 1986.

  The subject was responsible for several killings during his two years with Special Forces, including the Venezuelan drug baron, Felipe Paulo DIAZ and the Argentinian torturers Lt.-Col Vincente MACTAVISH and Lieutenant Ramon BAIGORRI.

  The subject is believed to have committed his first act as a professional assassin in December 1987, when he undertook the killing of Jan VERMUELEN, a senior officer in the South African Police Force, alleged to have been responsible for a number of ‘deaths in custody’ of black South African detainees. The contract is thought to have been issued by the ANC.

  Between late 1988 and July 1990 the subject almost certainly undertook other contracts, including a second South African police officer and a Pakistani nuclear physicist. The latter is noteworthy since it was rumoured at the time that his employer was the Indian Government. Other contracts may or may not have been undertaken.

  The subject entered France in July 1990 purportedly on a business visit though at that time he was already active as a professional assassin. According to records the purpose of his visit was the assassination of Antoine FISS, a Swiss banker who was suspected of colluding with Nazi fugitives in the 1950s and 1960s in a bullion-laundering operation. FISS was killed in Basle in August 1990. The murder remains officially unsolved. The contractor is believed to have been one Erasmus KESSLER, a former German Jew, domiciled in Chicago. No formal link was ever established between Kessler and Lux.

  Shortly after the Fiss killing, while still in France the subject met the woman whom he subsequently married. Her birth name is Hélène Viollet-le-Duc and she is a member of the aristocracy, though she rarely uses her title. They married in October 1990. The marriage lasted until March 1994 when they separated. A divorce was granted in March 1995.

  As a result of this marriage the subject remained in France and applied for a residence permit which was granted in February 1992. Notwithstanding his marriage and despite his wife’s comparative wealth he remained active throughout, although it is probable that his activities were curtailed. During this period it is thought that he was implicated in the killing of at least two people.

  Between the divorce and the date of this report he has been linked to other further assassinations, the most notorious of which were a British Secret Service officer on behalf of the Provisional IRA, and paradoxically, an IRA brigade commander, on behalf of a Northern Irish Protestant businessman.

  Throughout his career as an assassin he appears to have avoided either by accident or design the killing of French nationals and the commission of crimes on French soil.

  RESUMÉ

  Apolitical, amoral and without loyalty to individuals or factions other than those who employ him. A specialist in assassination by rifle, occasionally explosives. Highly skilled, resourceful, and well-organised, with contacts in a number of countries.

  No crime having been committed by him in Metropolitan France or its overseas territories nor against French nationals, and no request for his extradition ever having been received or pending, he is not currently on the wanted list and no charges are currently outstanding against him.

  The sum total of his criminal record in France is a fine of 400F for exceeding the speed limit (October 1993) and a fine of 800F for failing to stop at a Stop sign (February 1994).

  Paris, 05.02.1996

  Sheryl’s cigarette had burned to nothing in the ashtray, virtually unsmoked, so engrossed had she become in the Lux file. What she read had horrified as well as impressed. Talking about recruiting a killer to remove Chirac was all very fine, the cause was just after all. Yet even if only half of what was contained in the file was fact instead of hearsay, it shook her essentially-Christian beliefs to know that such men really did exist outside of the world of fiction and movies.

  Self-doubt and doubts about whether the noble end really did justify ignoble means besieged her. For a minute or so she considered calling off the operation. Then a report at the bottom of the front page of yesterday’s Herald, opened out on the table from the previous evening, caught her eye. FRANCE TO SIGN NUKE TREATY BY MID-MARCH was the headline. One short paragraph in the article stood out; Gary Rosenbrand had coloured it with a yellow highlighter:

  French President Jacques Chirac said last month that France had ended nuclear tests forever after the sixth in a series of underground tests in French Polynesia.

  Beside it Gary had scrawled in black felt-tip:

  Does he think that will let him off the hook? No fucking way José!

  Those few barely-legible sentiments instantly stiffened her resolve. Gary was right. No fucking way José was Chirac going to be let off the hook.

  * * *

  Françoise Yvard was a divorcée of twenty-eight, who lived in a first floor apartment in Avenue des Ternes a short walk from the Palais des Congrès. She was tall and willowy with no chest worth speaking of but a derrière that more than compensated. Her brown hair was naturally curly and, although not pretty in the accepted sense, her features were regular, marred only by an over-long, lightly hooked nose.

  After being introduced at a mutual friend’s home in Chateau La Vallière, near Tours, she and Lux had formed a strictly sexual attachment that was now in its sixth month with no abatement in view. Their trysts were irregular and spontaneous. It was understood that whenever Lux was in town her bed was his for sharing. It was a relationship that suited both their lifestyles.

  It was morning but still dark. In the intimate glow of the bedside lamp Françoise lay asleep, belly up, almost but not quite snoring; a bare bony shoulder exposed, a broomstick of an arm protruding rigidly over the side of the bed like the bowsprit of a sailing ship. Only a few hours earlier she and Lux had made love after a fashion, her mechanical body contortions never quite in tune with her panted endearments. It mattered not to Lux. For him, she served a purpose and he did not doubt it was the same for her. He was physically content, that was what counted. He lay beside her, outside the duvet, slurping his first black coffee of the day, marvelling as ever that a woman of such taste and refinement could live amidst such junk. Apart from the oval cheval mirror with the mahogany frame and stand that she had bought in the flea market, and the painting by Manet or Monet, left her by her great-grandfather, there was little to covet. The most expensive item was a portable colour TV fixed to an extending wall bracket. Françoise Yvard was a woman without frills and the decor defined her character.

  The mirror was placed to reflect the bed and its occupants. In the glass, Françoise was no more than a bush of brown hair and a pair of nostrils. Lux himself, propped against two square pillows, had a pensive look; the muddy-blond hair was in disorder - he rectified that - the chunky, college-boy features marre
d by a bewhiskered chin, the old gunshot wound on his left bicep livid in the artificial light. About him an aura of world-weariness beyond his thirty-six years.

  He slid a hand beneath the covers to rest on the bony pinnacle of Françoise’s flank and she moved sinuously in her sleep. She was sexually undemanding; once a night was her mark which, unless he had undergone a prolonged drought, conformed to his own needs.

  He tipped the last droplets of coffee down his throat and got off the bed to patter stark naked to the bathroom. A pee to dispose of the previous evening’s wine intake, a fastidious brushing of teeth, an abbreviated shower, and he was ready to confront the day. It was almost seven and Paris was rousing itself.

  He switched off the bathroom light and shuffled back into the bedroom, yawning. At that point his sense of wellbeing was rudely demolished. Françoise was awake, sitting bolt upright, clutching the pink duvet to her chest. Well she might, for in Lux’s brief absence for ablutions she had received visitors. Specifically, three males, all clad in grey belted topcoats, two of them young, the third in his thirties, sporting wire-rimmed glasses, clearly the leader. The taller of the two subordinates had a pistol trained on Françoise; the shorter one now pointed his at Lux.

  ‘Who are these men, Dennis?’ Françoise quavered. She pronounced it Den-eece, as did most natural French speakers of his acquaintance.

  Before Lux could reply the taller man told her to ‘Shut it, slut!’

  She gave him a terrified glance and shut it.

  Naked, a man functions less effectively. Nakedness, when all around are clothed, induces inferiority, vulnerability, and a degree of ridicule, all of which lowers one’s capacity to think and act positively. Or so Lux was discovering now.