‘Grazie, signor. A ’appy holiday.’
The porter found a taxi, was well tipped, and soon the Jackal was speeding into Milan, its usually clamorous streets made even noisier by the streams of commuter traffic trying to get home and the hooter-conscious behaviour of the drivers. He asked to be taken to the Central Station.
Here another porter was summoned, and he hobbled after the man to the left-luggage office. In the taxi he had slipped the steel shears out of the overnight case into his trouser pocket. At the left-luggage office he deposited the hand-grip and two suitcases, retaining the one containing the long French military overcoat, which also had plenty of spare room.
Dismissing the porter he hobbled into the men’s toilet, to find only one of the washbasins in the long row on the left-hand side of the urinals was in use. He dropped the case and laboriously washed his hands until the other occupant was finished. When the toilet was empty for a second he was across the room and locked into one of the cubicles.
With his foot up on the lavatory seat he clipped silently for ten minutes at the plaster on his foot until it began to drop away, revealing the cotton-wool pads beneath that had given the foot the bulk of a normally fractured ankle encased in plaster.
When the foot was finally clear of the last remnants of plaster he put back on the silk sock and the slim leather moccasin which had been taped to the inside of his calf while the foot had been in plaster. The remainder of the plaster and cotton wool he gathered up and deposited down the pan. At the first flushing half of it jammed, but it cleared at the second.
Laying the suitcase on top of the toilet, he laid the series of circular steel tubes containing the rifle side by side among the folds of the coat until the case was full. When the inside straps were tight the contents of the case were prevented from banging about. Then he closed the case and cast a look outside the door. There were two people at the washbasins and two more standing at the urinals. He left the cubicle, turned sharply towards the door and was up the steps into the main hall of the station before any had time to notice him, even if they had wished to.
He could not go back to the left-luggage office a fit and healthy man so soon after leaving it as a cripple, so he summoned a porter, explained that he was in a hurry, wished to change money, reclaim his baggage and get a taxi as soon as possible. The baggage check he thrust into the porter’s hand, along with a thousand-lire note, pointing the man towards the left-luggage office. He himself, he indicated, would be in the bureau de change getting his English pounds changed into lire.
The Italian nodded happily and went off to get the luggage. The Jackal changed the last twenty pounds that remained to him into Italian currency, and was just finished when the porter returned with the other three pieces of luggage. Two minutes later he was in a taxi speeding dangerously across the Piazza Duca d’Aosta and heading for the Hotel Continentale.
At the reception desk in the splendid front hall he told the clerk:
‘I believe you have a room for me in the name of Duggan. It was booked by telephone from London two days ago.’
Just before eight the Jackal was enjoying the luxury of a shower and shave in his room. Two of the suitcases were carefully locked into the wardrobe. The third, containing his own clothes, was open on the bed and the suit for the evening, a navy-blue wool-and-mohair summer lightweight, was hanging from the wardrobe door. The dove-grey suit was in the hands of the hotel’s valet service for sponging and pressing. Ahead lay cocktails, dinner and an early night, for the next day, August 13th, would be extremely busy.
13
‘NOTHING.’
The second of the two young detective inspectors in Bryn Thomas’s office closed the last of the folders he had been allotted to read and looked across at his superior.
His colleague had also finished, and his conclusion had been the same. Thomas himself had finished five minutes before and had walked over to the window, standing with his back to the room and staring at the traffic flowing past in the dusk. Unlike Assistant Commissioner Mallinson, he did not have a view of the river, just a first-floor vista of the cars churning down Horseferry Road. He felt like death. His throat was raw from cigarettes, which he knew he should not have been smoking with a heavy cold, but could not give up, particularly when under pressure.
His head ached from the fumes, the incessant calls that had been made throughout the afternoon checking on characters turned up in the records and files. Each call-back had been negative. Either the man was fully accounted for, or simply not of the calibre to undertake a mission like killing the French President.
‘Right, that’s it, then,’ he said firmly, spinning round from the window. ‘We’ve done all we can, and there just isn’t anybody who could possibly fit the guide-lines laid down in the request we have been investigating.’
‘It could be that there is an Englishman who does this kind of work,’ suggested one of the inspectors. ‘But he’s not on our files.’
‘They’re all on our files, look you,’ growled Thomas. It did not amuse him to think that as interesting a fish as a professional assassin existed in his ‘manor’ without being on file somewhere, and his temper was not improved by his cold or his headache. When ill-tempered his Welsh accent tended to intensify. Thirty years away from the valleys had never quite eradicated the lilt.
‘After all,’ said the other inspector, ‘a political killer is an extremely rare bird. There probably isn’t such a thing in this country. It’s not quite the English cup of tea, is it?’
Thomas glowered back. He preferred the word British to describe the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, and the inspector’s inadvertent use of the word English he suspected might be a veiled suggestion that the Welsh, Scottish or Irish could well have produced such a man. But it wasn’t.
‘All right, pack up the files. Take them back to registry. I’ll reply that a thorough search has revealed no such character known to us. That’s all we can do.’
‘Who was the enquiry from, Super?’ asked one.
‘Never you mind, boy. Someone’s got problems by the look of it, but it isn’t us.’
The two younger men had gathered up all the material and headed for the door. Both had families to get home to, and one was expecting to become a first-time father almost any day. He was the first to the door. The other turned back with a thoughtful frown.
‘Super, there’s one thing occurred to me while I was checking. If there is such a man, and he’s got British nationality, it seems he probably wouldn’t operate here anyway. I mean, even a man like that has to have a base somewhere. A refuge, sort of, a place to come back to. Chances are such a man is a respectable citizen in his own country.’
‘What are you getting at, a sort of Jekyll and Hyde?’
‘Well, something like that. I mean, if there is a professional killer about of the type we’ve been trying to track, and he’s big enough for somebody to pull the kind of weight to get an investigation like this started, with a man of your rank leading it, well the man in question must be big. And if he’s that, in his field, he must have a few jobs behind him. Otherwise he wouldn’t be anything, would he?’
‘Go on,’ said Thomas, watching him carefully.
‘Well, I just thought that a man like that would probably operate only outside his own country. So he wouldn’t normally come to the attention of the internal security forces. Perhaps the Service might have got wind of him once …’
Thomas considered the idea, then slowly shook his head. ‘Forget it, get on home, boy. I’ll write the report. And just forget we ever made the enquiry.’
But when the inspector was gone the idea he had sown remained in Thomas’s mind. He could sit down and write the report now. Completely negative. Drawn a blank. There could be no comebacks on the basis of the search of records that had been made. But supposing there was something behind the enquiry from France? Supposing the French had not, as Thomas suspected they had, simply lost their heads over a rumour concerning t
heir precious President? If they really had as little to go on as they claimed, if there was no indication that the man was an Englishman, then they must be checking all over the world in a similar way. Chances were heavily odds-on there was no killer, and if there were, that he came from one of those nations with long histories of political assassinations. But what if the French suspicions were accurate? And if the man turned out to be English, even by birth alone?
Thomas was intensely proud of the record of Scotland Yard, and particularly of the Special Branch. They had never had trouble of this kind. They had never lost a visiting foreign dignitary, never even a smell of scandal. He personally had even had to look after that little Russian bastard, Ivan Serov, head of the KGB, when he came to prepare for Khrushchev’s visit, and there had been scores of Balts and Poles who wanted to get Serov. Not even a shooting, and the place crawling with Serov’s own security men, every one packing a gun and quite prepared to use it.
Superintendent Bryn Thomas had two years to go before retirement and the journey back to the little house he and Meg had bought looking out over the green turf to the Bristol Channel. Better be safe, check everything.
In his youth Thomas had been a very fine rugby player, and there were many who had played against Glamorgan who remembered clearly the inadvisability of making a blind-side break when Bryn Thomas was wing forward. He was too old for it now, of course, but he still took a keen interest in the London Welsh when he could get away from work and go down to the Old Deer Park at Richmond to see them play. He knew all the players well, spending time in the club house chatting with them after a match, and his reputation was enough to ensure that he was always welcome.
One of the players was known to the rest of the members simply to be on the staff of the Foreign Office. Thomas knew he was a bit more than that; the department, under the auspices of the Foreign Secretary but not attached to the Foreign Office, for which Barrie Lloyd worked was the Secret Intelligence Service, sometimes called the SIS, sometimes simply ‘The Service’ and more usually among the public by its incorrect name of MI-6.
Thomas lifted the telephone on his desk and asked for a number …
The two men met for a drink in a quiet pub down by the river between eight and nine. They talked rugby for a while, as Thomas bought the drinks. But Lloyd guessed the man from Special Branch had not asked to see him at a riverside pub to talk about a game for which the season would not start for another two months. When they had both got their drinks, and given each other a perfunctory ‘Cheers’, Thomas gestured with his head outside on to the terrace that led down to the wharf. It was quieter outside, for most of the young couples from Chelsea and Fulham were drinking up and heading off for dinner.
‘Got a bit of a problem, boyo,’ began Thomas. ‘Hoped you might be able to help.’
‘Well … if I can,’ said Lloyd.
Thomas explained about the request from Paris, and the blank drawn by Criminal Records and the Special Branch.
‘It occurred to me that if there ever was such a man, and a British one at that, he might be the kind who would never get his hands dirty inside this country, see. Might just stick to operations abroad. If he ever had left a trail, maybe he came to the attention of the Service?’
‘Service?’ asked Lloyd quietly.
‘Come on, Barrie. We have to know a lot of things, from time to time.’ Thomas’s voice was hardly above a murmur. From the back they looked like two men in dark suits staring out over the dusky river at the lights of the south bank, talking of the day’s dealings in the City. ‘We had to turn over a lot of files during the Blake investigations. A lot of Foreign Office people got a peek taken at what they were really up to. Yours was one, see. You were in his section at the time he came under suss. So I know what department you work with.’
‘I see,’ said Lloyd.
‘Now look, I may be Bryn Thomas down at the Park. But I’m also a superintendent of the SB, right? You can’t all be anonymous from everyone, now can you?’
Lloyd stared into his glass.
‘Is this an official enquiry for information?’
‘No, I can’t make it that yet. The French request was an unofficial request from Lebel to Mallinson. He could find nothing in Central Records, so he replied that he couldn’t help, but he also had a word with Dixon. Who asked me to have a quick check. All on the quiet, see? Sometimes things have to be done that way. Very delicate, all this. Mustn’t get out to the Press or anything. Chances are there’s nothing here in Britain at all that might help Lebel. I just thought I’d cover all the angles, and you were the last.’
‘This man is supposed to be after De Gaulle?’
‘Must be, by the sound of the enquiry. But the French must be playing it very cagey. They obviously don’t want any publicity.’
‘Obviously. But why not contact us direct?’
‘The request for suggestions as to a name has been put through on the old boy network. From Lebel to Mallinson, direct. Perhaps the French Secret Service doesn’t have an old boy network with your section.’
If Lloyd had noticed the reference to the notoriously bad relations between the SDECE and the SIS, he gave no sign of it.
‘What are you thinking?’ asked Thomas after a while.
‘Funny,’ said Lloyd staring out over the river. ‘You remember the Philby case?’
‘Of course.’
‘Still a very sore nerve in our section,’ resumed Lloyd. ‘He went over from Beirut in January ’61. Of course, it didn’t get out until later, but it caused a hell of a rumpus inside the Service. A lot of people got moved around. Had to be done, he had blown most of the Arab Section and some others as well. One of the men who had to be moved very fast was our top resident in the Caribbean. He had been with Philby in Beirut six months before, then transferred to Carib.
‘About the same time the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Trujillo, was assassinated on a lonely road outside Ciudad Trujillo. According to the reports he was killed by partisans—he had a lot of enemies. Our man came back to London then, and we shared an office for a while until he was re-deployed. He mentioned a rumour that Trujillo’s car was stopped, for the ambushers to blow it open and kill the man inside, by a single shot from a marksman with a rifle. It was a hell of a shot—from one hundred and fifty yards at a speeding car. Went through the little triangular window on the driver’s side, the one that wasn’t of bullet-proof glass. The whole car was armoured. Hit the driver through the throat and he crashed. That was when the partisans closed in. The odd thing was, rumour had it the shooter was an Englishman.’
There was a long pause as the two men, the empty beer mugs swinging from their fingers, stared across the now quite darkened waters of the Thames. Both had a mental picture of a harsh, arid landscape in a hot and distant island; of a car careering at seventy miles an hour off a bitumen strip and into the rocky verge; of an old man in fawn twill and gold braid, who had ruled his kingdom with an iron and ruthless hand for thirty years, being dragged from the wreck to be finished off with pistols in the dust by the roadside.
‘This … man … in the rumour. Did he have a name?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. It was just talk in the office at the time. We had an awful lot on our plate then, and a Caribbean dictator was the last thing we needed to worry about.’
‘This colleague, the one who talked to you. Did he write a report?’
‘Must have done. Standard practice. But it was just a rumour, understand. Just a rumour. Nothing to go on. We deal in facts, solid information.’
‘But it must have been filed, somewhere?’
‘Suppose so,’ said Lloyd. ‘Very low priority, only a bar rumour in that area. Place abounds in rumours.’
‘But you could just have a look back at the files, like? See if the man on the mountain had a name?’
Lloyd pulled himself off the rail.
‘You get on home,’ he said to the Superintendent. ‘I’ll ring you if there’s an
ything that might help.’
They walked back into the rear bar of the pub, deposited the glasses, and made for the street door.
‘I’d be grateful,’ said Thomas as they shook hands. ‘Probably nothing in it. But just on the off-chance.’
While Thomas and Lloyd were talking above the waters of the Thames, and the Jackal was scooping the last drops of his Zabaglione from the glass in a roof-top restaurant in Milan, Commissaire Claude Lebel attended the first of the progress report meetings in the conference room of the Interior Ministry in Paris.
The attendance was the same as it had been twenty-four hours earlier. The Interior Minister sat at the head of the table, with the department heads down each side. Claude Lebel sat at the other end with a small folder in front of him. The Minister nodded curtly for the meeting to begin.
His chef de cabinet spoke first. Over the previous day and night, he said, every Customs officer on every border post in France had received instructions to check through the luggage of tall blond male foreigners entering France. Passports particularly were to be checked, and were to be scrutinised by the DST official at the Customs post for possible forgeries. (The head of the DST inclined his head in acknowledgement.) Tourists and business men entering France might well remark a sudden increase in vigilance at Customs, but it was felt unlikely that any victim of such a baggage search would realise it was being applied across the country to tall blond men. If any enquiries were made by a sharp-eyed Press man, the explanation would be that they were nothing but routine snap searches. But it was felt no enquiry would ever be made.