Another Day, Another Jackal

by Lex Lander

  God, he was missing her like he wouldn’t have believed possible.

  Ahead, the entrance to the estate. Less than a hundred metres to go. Lights everywhere. The place was illuminated like a football stadium.

  ‘Nous sommes arrivés, Robert,’ Leandri called over his shoulder. ‘We’re here.’

  From behind the rear seat a muffled expletive.

  The wrought iron gates stood open, white in the glare as if freshly painted. Uniformed figures in little clusters, almost to a man turned their faces towards the approaching car. Mostly CRS, toting sub-machine guns, with a dash of gendarmes. Lux quailed before this display of manpower. If it came to a shoot-out he was a dead man. The fifteen rounds in the magazine of the MAB would not save him even if he managed to get off every shot and make them all count.

  Leandri brought the car to a sighing stop, its nose well short of the gates so as to leave room for manoeuvre in case a speedy retreat was called for. He lowered his window and displayed his plasticised ID between finger and thumb. Two CRS men came up; one shone a flashlight into the interior of the car.

  ‘Ca va, ca va,’ Leandri protested, shielding his eyes and passing first his, then Lux’s IDs across to the CRS man with the flashlight. It had been agreed that Leandri would do the lion’s share of the talking.

  Only the lower half of the features of the CRS man examining the IDs were visible to Lux; he had a moustache, trimmed very short and thin.

  ‘RG, eh?’ he said, the initials shaded with grudging respect. ‘And the reason for your visit?’

  There was no hint of suspicion in the man’s voice or his manner. It was casual, even bored. No doubt there had been many such comings and goings during the day.

  ‘We’ve been summoned by Commissaire Barail,’ Leandri responded, making it sound resentful.

  ‘Ah, bon. What for, exactly?’ It was an idle question. The other officer, the one wielding the flashlight, was yawning.

  ‘How the fuck would I know?’ Leandri said, projecting just the right amount of irritation. ‘He’s one of your lot so why don’t you buzz him and ask him. We’re underlings, like you. We obey orders, we don’t ask questions of commissaires and the like.’ He swivelled his head towards Lux. ‘Do we?’

  Lux grunted. The CRS man thrust the IDs back through the open window.

  ‘Will you be staying the night?’

  ‘Shit, no. We’ll be out of here in fifteen minutes, I hope. I have a little friend waiting for me in town.’

  ‘Moi aussi,’ Lux ventured, trying to look pissed off. ‘Ma femme.’

  The CRS man nodded. A smile seemed to be beyond him, which was perhaps why he had chosen employment in the most hated organisation in France.

  The flashlight clicked off. Both CRS men took a step back.

  ‘Allez-y,’ the churlish one said, with a sloppy salute. ‘Just follow this road to the house. Don’t leave it or you might get shot.’

  Sloppy in other ways too, was Lux’s professional view. The elaborate modifications to the trunk to accommodate Bernanos had been wasted on these two.

  The avenue of silver limes was illuminated. The effect was striking, making the trees appear to be covered in snow.

  ‘Nice place,’ Leandri observed, as they cruised along the well-maintained asphalt.

  ‘With money you can make a trashcan look like a work of art,’ Lux said.

  Leandri surprised him with his comeback. ‘You’re nothing but a cynic.’

  Ahead, the house and more floodlights and uniforms. Quite a few plain-clothes too, a mixture of Police Judiciare and CRS from the Corps de Securité Présidentielle, Barail’s crowd, gathered in front of a barrier. One of their number waved the Citroën to a standstill.

  The ritual was identical. The flashlight, the lowered window, the scrutinised IDs, the casual banter. The plain-clothes officer was more affable than the CRS man, though he did at least check the trunk.

  ‘Où est le Commissaire?’ Leandri enquired.

  The officer pointed at the house; lights burned in several downstairs windows.

  ‘In there. Not far from the drinks cabinet.’

  Cue for roars of laughter.

  ‘But don’t leave the car here,’ the officer went on. ‘Put it in the visitors’ car park, over there behind the trees.’ He indicated the oblong parking area off to the right that Lux had already noted on the aerial photographs and during his recce.

  The barrier rose. They drove through and turned in the semi-circle. Lux lifted a hand to the officer in acknowledgement as they proceeded sedately down a short connecting driveway to the car park.

  ‘Well, we’re in,’ Leandri said under his breath.

  ‘Park well away from the light,’ Lux enjoined. ‘We don’t want to be seen unloading.’

  ‘Right.’

  As they passed down the line of parked vehicles, many of them bearing gendarmerie livery, a van pulled out just ahead; the uniformed driver bipped his horn at them, lawman to lawman. They responded with raised hands. The parking area was lit by a single light on a pole more or less in the centre. It left the cars on the periphery in deep shadow.

  Leandri continued on until the asphalt ended, parking on grass. He killed the engine and he and Lux got out. Lux had allowed two minutes for unloading the car, after which an alert security man might start wondering why they were taking so long to park. Now their movements were swift, urgent. Leandri lifted the trunk lid. With a small penknife he prised down the top hinge of the false panel; it flopped into the well of the trunk. Bernanos tumbled out, cursing, in a heap with the gun and the rest of the cargo.

  ‘Shut up!’ Leandri snarled at him.

  A minute already gone and the odds on some nosey cop checking on them were growing. Working fast, Lux and Leandri transferred Lux’s kit to the grass beside the car while Bernanos flexed his cramped joints.

  ‘That’s the lot.’ Leandri slammed the trunk lid.

  Lux’s self-imposed time frame was almost up. He proffered his fake ID card to Bernanos, who took a break from knee-bending exercises to grasp Lux’s hand.

  ‘Good luck, Monsieur Yank,’ he said. ‘Is my face okay?’

  ‘As far as I can tell in this light.’ Lux felt along the edges of the mask, where it merged into Bernanos’s neck. The join felt smooth and unbroken, the thin silicone of the mask almost like real skin.

  ‘You’ll pass. Just don’t forget yourself and try to shave.’

  Bernanos chuckled, then Leandri was elbowing him aside to bid Lux farewell, his handclasp knuckle-cracking.

  ‘Be sure to shoot straight, my friend.’

  ‘You can count on it. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’ He reached inside the car and lifted a brown envelope off the rear seat, then locked the car with the remote key.

  ‘If it gets stolen with so many flics around, nowhere in France is safe,’ he cracked, and Bernanos, despite his tautened nerves, gave a snort of laughter.

  A last bob of his head for Lux and he set off towards the house, with Bernanos hurrying to keep up. A good man to have around in a tight corner, Lux reckoned. So far he had merited his high wages.

  * * *

  Lux got moving. He pulled the fatigues on over his suit; they would make him hot but it beat carrying them. The smaller items of gear he shovelled into the knapsack which he then slung over one shoulder. The gun in its bubble wrapping he would carry in one hand, the spade in the other. He stepped behind one of the trees that encircled the parking area and stood listening. Waiting for the challenge to Leandri and Bernanos; the shouts of alarm, the gunshots … Still so much could go wrong. For the first time this evening he found himself sweating. Instinctively his fingers tightened around the Barrett. They wouldn’t take him cheaply. Barail had already convinced him that if he was arrested he was unlikely ever to face a judge, so why surrender?

  Another minute dragged past. All was quiet. Lux loosened his hold on the Barrett. Sagged against the tree trunk, weak in his relief. What p
rice Mister Cool now?

  But he was inside the grounds and nobody knew.

  He was invisible.

  * * *

  Leandri and Bernanos walked side by side past the parked vehicles, back towards the house. None of the gendarmes and security officers milling about accosted them as they crossed the semi-circular area. At the door, a bored-looking plain-clothes officer demanded their passes. A quick scrutiny and they were cleared through.

  ‘The Commissaire is in the room on the right.’

  Barail was indeed in close proximity to the lavishly-stocked drinks cabinet and even closer to a chunky glass of amber liquid. He toasted Leandri and Bernanos with it as the pair entered, then froze.

  ‘Lux? What the fuck are you doing here?’ He spoke in English, and Leandri and Bernanos exchanged uncomprehending glances.

  ‘Commissaire Barail?’ Leandri said warily. ‘I’m Brigadier-Major Castel.’ The name on his phoney ID.

  Barail, staring in mixed horror and disbelief at the man he took to be Lux, said, addressing Leandri, ‘I don’t care a fuck who you are. What is he doing here, in my office?’ He pointed with his glass at Bernanos/Lux.

  ‘This is Gardien Villeneuve, my assistant, Commissaire. We are here to make a special delivery.’

  Leandri passed across the envelope marked SECRET in red. It contained several blank sheets of A4 paper - a precaution in case the CRS guards had demanded material evidence of a ‘message’.

  Barail shook his head as if trying to clear it.

  ‘Are you telling me you’re not Lux?’ he said at last to Bernanos.

  Bernanos snapped to attention. ‘Gardien Villeneuve à votre service, Commissaire.’

  ‘Well, you look like Lux to me,’ Barail growled, tossing the envelope on a table. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had a twin? I mean, why didn’t Lux tell me he had a twin.’

  ‘Who is this Lux you speak of, Commissaire?’ Leandri queried, fashioning a frown of puzzlement.

  ‘Never mind, never mind. Do you want something to drink?’

  ‘Non, merci,’ Leandri replied for both of them. ‘We must leave.’

  Barail swirled the amber liquid around his glass. ‘You had better be on your way then, whoever you are. Good luck.’

  Leandri offered a sloppy salute, Bernanos likewise, and they took their leave. The same plain-clothes man flagged them out of the building without re-checking their passes. In silence they retraced their steps to the car park, just two security men amidst a multitude of security men. Invisible.

  * * *

  Lux started up the slope, using the lights of the driveway and the house to maintain a sense of direction, just as he had on his trial run. So long as the ground was rising and the house square on to his back he was confident of not straying off course. Sooner or later he would come to the copse or, if he overshot, to the wall, which would suffice to orientate him. Barail had assured him that, apart from a short section along the western side of the estate, the wall was only patrolled from the outside. The grounds had been swept and in theory were free of unauthorised persons.

  The moon was in its first quarter, providing only a meagre glow, just enough to enable Lux to avoid most obstacles, though at six hundred and twelve paces up the slope, he put his foot in a rabbit hole and went sprawling. He landed painfully on his shoulder, losing the rifle but making no disturbance. Even his curse was mouthed not spoken.

  For a minute or two he lay there, face to the sky, looking - really looking - at the rest of the universe for perhaps the first time since he was a child. It left him unmoved. It always had. He was an earthbound creature who could relate only to that which he could touch and taste, and harboured no ambition to learn about other worlds.

  Retrieving the gun, he went on, the ground steeper and becoming more rugged as he left the cultivated area closer to the house. From his previous outing he was sure that the copse was close. Even as the certainty entered his mind he saw it on his left quarter, the ragged outline of the treetops, near black against the night-blue backwash. If it was the copse, the wall was not far away, and where there was wall there were police. He stood still, listening. For voices, a footfall, a cough, a striking match … a challenge. He heard none of these, only a distant pulsation around the house, now far below, an illuminated oasis in the arid darkness of the countryside.

  A few more steps and he entered the resin-perfumed embrace of the trees. He transferred safety glasses from pocket to nose, a precaution against branches and twigs at eye level. Now he could risk using the penlight. He propped the rifle and spade against a tree trunk. Making a tube of his left hand he inserted the penlight in it and thumbed the switch. Counted two seconds as he got his bearings and noted obstacles in his path and switched off. Then a three-minute wait for his night vision to return before shuffling forward, gun and spade held out in front of him to ward off protruding branches. The spade connected with wood almost at once and he swerved to the right. Then his sleeve caught on a jagged branch and held him there until he picked it free, careful not to snap the branch.

  In this way he proceeded some twenty metres into the copse, far enough he judged to make him undetectable come the dawn. Another two-second flash of the penlight. He placed gun and shovel on the ground and sank down beside them, feeling for a tree trunk to rest his back against. He positioned himself to face down the hill, towards the house, though the massed trees largely obscured the buildings and only a yellow penumbra marked its position.

  He unbuckled the knapsack, extracted the bottle of water and took a couple of swigs. Up here the air carried a slight nip and as the warming effect of his exertions diminished he began to notice it. In his suit and fatigues though, he was snug enough. He closed his eyes and listened without fear to the nameless rustlings and scurryings above and in the undergrowth. This was the music of the night and it didn’t trouble him. His analytical mind rejected phantoms and bogeymen. Now and again the buzz of an engine overlaid nature’s diapason, and once the clearing of a throat - the phlegmy crackle of a heavy smoker - startled him with its seeming nearness. He realised that it was a trick of the acoustics of the amphitheatrical shape of the terrain, but it was also a reminder of the presence of the gendarmes on the other side of the wall, not a hundred metres away. Soon afterwards he drifted into semi-slumber, a disciplined state that allowed him to stay alert while trickle-charging his energy for the coming day, D-Day.

  Twenty-Six

  * * *

  A single shaft of sunlight reached out across the valley like a laser beam. The ray broadened and was joined by others, spread fingers of brilliance. They gradually merged into a single broad fan, creating instant colour where before was only grey. A bird cheeped, was joined by a second of the same species; a pause then an exultant trilling, like a bugler sounding reveille.

  Lux came fully awake with the birds, chilled and stiff, bladder close to bursting. In the copse it was still near-dark, with just enough light to see by. He stood up, stamped his feet to rouse the circulation, brushed fallen pine needles from the shoulders of his fatigues, before relieving himself at some length.

  Directly overhead a bird took off with a shrill of alarm. Lux hunted out the binoculars and slung the strap around his neck. He made for the edge of the trees. Keeping to the shadows, he focused the glasses on the house. Two plain-clothes men stood by the front entrance, yawning and smoking. No other humanity. All was calm. Lux grinned to himself. The proverbial lull before the storm.

  Retreating to his overnight bivouac, he stripped off the fatigues and the redundant suit, letting the suit lie where it fell. He donned the gendarme’s uniform, pulling the fatigues over the top. He drank some water. His stomach gurgled. Maybe later he would munch an apple. Right now his appetite was zero. A cigarette, that he could use. Mindful of the gendarmes a hundred metres away, if that, beyond the wall, he rejected the temptation. In all probability the smoke would disperse as it filtered upwards through the foliage but even so there remained a small element of risk.
So he refrained, self-discipline overruling the craving for nicotine. This small sacrifice even gave him a perverse pleasure, was proof that he was the master of his vices.

  * * *

  Before the day began to heat up he dug a trench in the earth, some five feet long by two wide and eighteen inches deep. It took about forty minutes. The earth was bone dry but loose packed. Into it he dumped suit, shoulder holster, oilskins, since it clearly was not going to rain, and the emptied knapsack. All he kept was the kepi, the belt and holster, and the MAB automatic. It wasn’t the standard gendarmerie sidearm - which is a Beretta M92 - but no one was likely to check unless he was caught, in which case it wouldn’t matter what make of gun he was toting.

  He had just finished digging when a helicopter flew over, first patrol of the day. After circling each of the other two copses in turn it came bowling along towards where Lux was resting from his toils. It was a routine check but no less unsettling for all that, watching the machine pass back and forth only a few feet above the treetops. Inspection over, it chattered off to the south.

  Lux checked the time: it was a few minutes from 7.30. H-Hour was 11.30 give or take thirty minutes. So any time from eleven o’clock onwards. If he were to allow, say, an additional thirty minutes either way as a comfort zone, he would have to be at readiness from 10.30.

  The morning dragged by. As the sun rose he became overheated in his two sets of clothes. It was a penance he would have to bear. The need to transform himself quickly into a gendarme as soon as Chirac went down took precedence over comfort. As for the fatigues, their function was twofold: to keep the uniform clean, and as camouflage. Well, shit, he couldn’t expect to make ten million bucks without some suffering.

  Helicopters came and went every thirty minutes. As the beat of the rotors of the ten-thirty patrol faded, Lux began his final preparations. He peeled the bubble wrap from the rifle, folded it flat and dumped it in the trench. He tipped the Ubertl scope sight and the sound suppressor from their bubble wrap tubes. The scope he clipped on its mount and the suppressor he screwed into the muzzle, extending the gun’s overall length to well over five feet. He detached the magazine and individually re-checked the ammunition for the slightest blemish. All ten rounds passed. He patted his left breast pocket where reposed a spare magazine containing ten more rounds, also previously inspected.