The Day of the Jackal

‘Mere hoping isn’t going to get us far,’ snapped Saint-Clair.

‘Perhaps the Colonel has a fresh suggestion?’ enquired Lebel politely.

‘Personally, I feel the man has certainly been warned off,’ said Saint-Clair icily. ‘He could never get near the President now that his plan has been exposed. However much Rodin and his henchmen have promised to pay this Jackal, they will ask for their money back and cancel the operation.’

‘You feel the man has been warned off,’ interposed Lebel softly, ‘but feeling is not far from hoping. I would prefer to continue enquiries for the present.’

‘What is the position of these enquiries now, Commissaire?’ asked the Minister.

‘Already, Minister, the police forces who have made these suggestions are beginning to send by telex the complete dossiers. I expect to have the last by noon tomorrow. Pictures will also come by wire. Some of the police forces are continuing enquiries to try and pin the whereabouts of the suspect down, so that we can take over.’

‘Do you think they will keep their mouths shut?’ asked Sanguinetti.

‘There’s no reason for them not to,’ replied Lebel. ‘Hundreds of highly confidential enquiries are made each year by senior policemen of the Interpol countries, some of them on an unofficial person-to-person basis. Fortunately all countries, whatever their political outlook, are opposed to crime. So we are not involved in the same rivalries as the more political branches of international relations. Co-operation among police forces is very good.’

‘Even for political crime?’ asked Frey.

‘For policemen, Minister, it’s all crime. That is why I preferred to contact my foreign colleagues rather than enquire through foreign ministries. Doubtless the superiors of these colleagues must learn that the enquiry was made, but there would be no good reason for them to make mischief. The political assassin is the world’s outlaw.’

‘But so long as they know the enquiry was made, they can work out the implications and still privately sneer at our President,’ snapped Saint-Clair.

‘I do not see why they should do that. It might be one of them, one day,’ said Lebel.

‘You do not know much about politics if you are not aware how some people would be delighted to know a killer is after the President of France,’ replied Saint-Clair. ‘This public knowledge is precisely what the President was so anxious to avoid.’

‘It is not public knowledge,’ corrected Lebel. ‘It is extremely private knowledge, confined to a tiny handful of men who carry in their heads secrets that, if revealed, might well ruin half the politicians of their own countries. Some of these men know most of the inner details of installations that protect Western security. They have to, in order to protect them. If they were not discreet, they would not hold the jobs they do.’

‘Better a few men should know we are looking for a killer than they should receive invitations to attend the President’s funeral,’ growled Bouvier. ‘We’ve been fighting the OAS for two years. The President’s instructions were that it must not become a press sensation and public talking point.’

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ interposed the Minister. ‘Enough of this. It was I who authorised Commissaire Lebel to make discreet enquiries among the heads of foreign police services, after …’ he glanced at Saint-Clair … ‘consulting with the President.

The general amusement at the Colonel’s discomfiture was ill-concealed.

‘Is there anything else?’ asked M. Frey.

Rolland raised a hand briefly.

‘We have a permanent bureau in Madrid,’ he said. ‘There are a number of refugee OAS in Spain, that’s why we keep it there. We could check on the Nazi, Kassel, without bothering the West Germans about it. I understand our relations with the Bonn Foreign Office are still not of the best.’

His reference to the Argoud snatch of February and the consequent anger of Bonn brought a few smiles. Frey raised his eyebrows at Lebel.

‘Thank you,’ said the detective, ‘that would be most helpful, if you could pin the man down. For the rest there is nothing, except to ask that all departments continue to assist me as they have been doing over the past twenty-four hours.’

‘Then until tomorrow, gentlemen,’ said the Minister briskly and rose, gathering his papers. The meeting broke up.

Outside on the steps, Lebel gratefully drew in a lungful of the mild night air of Paris. The clocks truck twelve and ushered in Tuesday, August 13th.

It was just after twelve when Barrie Lloyd rang Superintendent Thomas at his home in Chiswick. Thomas was just about to put the bedside light out, thinking the SIS man would ring in the morning.

‘I found the flimsy of the report we were talking about,’ said Lloyd. ‘I was right in a way. It was just a routine report of a rumour running round the island at that time. Marked “No action to be taken” almost as soon as it was filed. Like I said, we were pretty tied up with other things at that time.’

‘Was any name mentioned?’ asked Thomas quietly, so as not to disturb his wife who was asleep.

‘Yes, a British business man on the island, who disappeared around that time. He might have had nothing to do with it, but his name was linked in the gossip. Name of Charles Calthrop.’

‘Thanks, Barrie. I’ll follow it in the morning.’ He put the phone down and went to sleep.

Lloyd, being a meticulous young man, made a brief report of the request and his reply to it, and dispatched it to Requirements. In the small hours the night duty man on requirements examined it quizzically for a moment, and as it concerned Paris, put it in the pouch for the Foreign Office’s France Desk, the entire pouch to be delivered personally according to routine to Head of France when he came in later the same morning.