The Day of the Jackal

  ‘Me?’ he asked, ‘what, personally? Yes, of course, I’ll come over. Give me five minutes? Fine, see you.’

  He left the building and walked across to Parliament Square, blowing his nose noisily to clear the blocked sinuses. Far from getting better, his cold seemed to be worse, despite the warm summer day.

  From Parliament Square he headed up Whitehall and took the first left into Downing Street. As usual it was dark and gloomy, the sun never penetrating to the inconspicuous cul-de-sac that contains the residence of the Prime Ministers of Britain. There was a small crowd in front of the door of No. 10, kept on the far side of the road by two stolid policemen, perhaps just watching the stream of messengers arriving at the door with buff envelopes to deliver, perhaps hoping to catch a glimpse of an important visage at one of the windows.

  Thomas left the roadway and cut to the right across a small courtyard enclosing a little lawn. His walk brought him to the back entrance of No. 10 where he pressed the buzzer beside the door. It opened immediately to reveal a large uniformed police sergeant, who recognised him at once and saluted.

  ‘ ’Afternoon, sir. Mr Harrowby asked me to show you to his room directly.’

  James Harrowby, the man who had telephoned Thomas in his office a few minutes before, was the Prime Minister’s personal security chief, a handsome man looking younger than his forty-one years. He wore a public-school tie, but had a brilliant career as a policeman behind him before he was transferred to Downing Street. Like Thomas, he had the rank of a superintendent. He rose as Thomas entered.

  ‘Come in, Bryn. Nice to see you.’ He nodded to the sergeant. ‘Thank you, Chalmers.’ The sergeant withdrew and closed the door.

  ‘What’s it all about?’ asked Thomas. Harrowby looked at him with surprise.

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me. He just rang fifteen minutes ago, mentioned you by name and said he wanted to see you personally and at once. Have you been up to something?’

  Thomas could only think of one thing he had been up to, but he was surprised it had got so high in such a short time. Still, if the PM did not wish to take his own security man into his confidence for once, that was his business.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ he said.

  Harrowby lifted the telephone on his desk and asked for the Prime Minister’s private office. The line crackled and a voice said ‘Yes?’

  ‘Harrowby here, Prime Minister. Superintendent Thomas is with me … yes, sir. Right away.’ He replaced the receiver.

  ‘Straight in. Almost on the double. You must have been up to something. There are two Ministers waiting. Come on.’

  Harrowby led the way out of his office and down a corridor towards a green baize door at the far end. A male secretary was coming out, saw the pair of them and stepped back, holding the door open. Harrowby ushered Thomas inside, said clearly, ‘Superintendent Thomas, Prime Minister,’ and withdrew, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Thomas was aware of being in a very quiet room, high-ceilinged and elegantly furnished, untidy with books and papers, of a smell of pipe tobacco and wood-panelling, a room more like the study of a university don than the office of a Prime Minister.

  The figure at the window turned round.

  ‘Good afternoon, Superintendent. Please sit down.’

  ‘Good afternoon, sir.’ He chose an upright chair facing the desk and perched on the edge of it. He had never had occasion to see the Prime Minister that close before, nor ever in private. He got the impression of a pair of sad, almost beaten, eyes, drooping lids, like a bloodhound who has run a long race and taken little joy from it.

  There was silence in the room as the Prime Minister walked to his desk and sat behind it. Thomas had heard the rumours round Whitehall, of course, that the PM’s health was not all it might be, and of the toll taken by the strain of bringing the Government through the rottenness of the Keeler/Ward affair, which had even then only just ended and was still number one talking point throughout the land. Even so, he was surprised at the look of exhaustion and sadness in the man opposite him.

  ‘Superintendent Thomas, it has come to my attention that you are presently conducting an investigation based on a request for assistance telephoned from Paris yesterday morning by a senior detective of the French Police Judiciaire.’

  ‘Yes, sir … Prime Minister.’

  ‘And that this request stems from a fear among the French security authorities that a man may be on the loose … a professional assassin, hired, presumably by the OAS, to undertake a mission in France at some future time?’

  ‘That was not actually explained to us, Prime Minister. The request was for suggestions as to the identity of any such professional assassin who might be known to us. There was no explanation as to why they wanted such suggestions.’

  ‘Nevertheless, what do you deduce from the fact that such a request was made, Superintendent?’

  Thomas shrugged slightly.

  ‘The same as yourself, Prime Minister.’

  ‘Precisely. One does not need to be a genius to be able to deduce the only possible reason for the French authorities wishing to identify such a … specimen. And what would you deduce to be the eventual target of such a man, if indeed a man of this type has come to the attention of the French police?’

  ‘Well, Prime Minister, I suppose they fear an assassin has been engaged to attempt to kill the President.’

  ‘Precisely. Not the first time such an attempt would have been made?’

  ‘No, sir. There have been six attempts already.’

  The Prime Minister stared at the papers in front of him as if they might give him some clue as to what had happened to the world in the closing months of his premiership.

  ‘Are you aware, Superintendent, that there apparently exist some persons in this country, persons occupying not obscure positions of authority, who would not be distressed if your investigations were to be less energetic than possible?’

  Thomas was genuinely surprised.

  ‘No, sir.’ Where on earth had the PM got that titbit from?

  ‘Would you please give me a résumé of the state of your enquiries up to the present time?’

  Thomas began at the beginning, explaining clearly and concisely the trail from Criminal Records to Special Branch, the conversation with Lloyd, the mention of a man called Calthrop, and the investigations that had taken place up to that moment.

  When he had finished the Prime Minister rose and walked to the window, which gave on to the sunlit square of grass in the courtyard. For long minutes he stared down into the courtyard and there was a sag to the set of the shoulders. Thomas wondered what he was thinking.

  Perhaps he was thinking of a beach outside Algiers where he had once walked and talked with the haughty Frenchman who now sat in another office three hundred miles away, governing the affairs of his own country. They had both been twenty years younger then, and a lot of things had not happened that were to come later, and a lot of things had not come between them.

  Maybe he was thinking of the same Frenchman sitting in the gilded hall of the Elysée Palace eight months earlier destroying in measured and sonorous phrases the hopes of the British Premier of crowning his political career by bringing Britain into the European Community before retiring into the contentment of a man who has fulfilled his dream.

  Or possibly he was just thinking of the past agonising months when the revelations of a pimp and a courtesan had almost brought down the Government of Britain. He was an old man, who had been born and brought up in a world that had its standards, for good or evil, and had believed in those standards and had followed them. Now the world was a different place, full of a new people with new ideas, and he was of the past. Did he understand that there were new standards now, which he could dimly recognise and did not like?

  Probably he knew, looking down on to the sunny grass, what lay ahead. The surgical operation could not long be delayed, and with it retirement from the leadership. Before long the world would be handed
over to the new people. Much of the world had already been handed over to them. But would it also be handed over to pimps and tarts, spies and … assassins?

  From behind, Thomas saw the shoulders straighten, and the old man in front of him turned round.

  ‘Superintendent Thomas, I wish you to know that General de Gaulle is my friend. If there is the remotest danger to his person, and if that danger could emanate from a citizen of these islands, then that person must be stopped. From now on you will conduct your investigations with unprecedented vigour. Within the hour your superiors will be authorised by me personally to accord you every facility within their powers. You will be subjected to no limits in either expenditure or manpower. You will have the authority to co-opt on to your team whomsoever you wish to assist you, and to have access to the official documentation of any department in the land which may be able to further your enquiries. You will, by my personal order, co-operate without any hint of reserve with the French authorities in this matter. Only when you are absolutely satisfied that whoever this man may be whom the French are seeking to identify and arrest, he is not a British subject, nor operating from these shores, may you desist from your enquiries. At that point you will report back to me in person.

  ‘In the event that this man Calthrop, or any other man bearing a British passport, may reasonably be considered to be the man whom the French are seeking, you will detain this man. Whoever he is, he must be stopped. Do I make myself clear?’

  It could not have been clearer. Thomas knew for certain that some piece of information had come to the PM’s ears that had sparked off the instructions he had just given. Thomas suspected it had to do with the cryptic remark about certain persons who wished his investigations to make little progress. But he could not be sure.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

  The PM inclined his head to indicate the interview was over. Thomas rose and went to the door.

  ‘Er … Prime Minister.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There is one point, sir. I am not certain whether you would wish me to tell the French yet about the enquiries into the rumour about this man Calthrop in Dominican Republic two years ago.’

  ‘Do you have reasonable grounds to believe as of now that this man’s past activities justify fitting him to the description of the man the French wish to identify?’

  ‘No, Prime Minister. We have nothing against any Charles Calthrop in the world except the rumour of two years ago. We do not yet know whether the Calthrop we have spent the afternoon trying to trace is the one who was in the Caribbean in January 1961. If he is not, then we are back to square one.’

  The Prime Minister thought for a few seconds.

  ‘I would not wish you to waste your French colleague’s time with suggestions based on unsubstantiated rumours two and a half years old. Note the word “unsubstantiated”, Superintendent. Please continue your enquiries with energy. At the moment you feel there is enough information in your possession concerning this, or any other, Charles Calthrop, to add substance to the rumour that he was involved in the affair of General Trujillo, you will inform the French at once and at the same time track the man down, wherever he is.’

  ‘Yes, Prime Minister.’

  ‘And would you please ask Mr Harrowby to come to me. I shall issue the authorities you need at once.’

  Back in Thomas’s office things changed quickly through the rest of the afternoon. Round him he grouped a task force of six of the Special Branch’s best detective inspectors. One was recalled from leave; two were taken off their duties watching the house of a man suspected to be passing classified information obtained from the Royal Ordnance Factory where he worked to an East European military attaché. Two of the others were the ones who had helped him the day before go through the records of the Special Branch looking for a killer who had no name. The last had been on his day off, and was gardening in his greenhouse when the call came through to report to the Branch headquarters immediately.

  He briefed them all exhaustively, swore them to silence, and answered a continuous stream of phone calls. It was just after 6 pm when the Inland Revenue found the tax returns of Charles Harold Calthrop. One of the detectives was sent out to bring the whole file back. The rest went to work on the telephone, except one who was sent to Calthrop’s address to seek out every neighbour and local tradesman for information as to where the man might be. Photographs taken from the one submitted by Calthrop on his application form for a passport four years previously were printed in the photographic laboratory, and every inspector had one in his pocket.

  The tax returns of the wanted man showed that for the past year he had been unemployed, and before that had been abroad for a year. But for most of the financial year 1960-1 he had been in the employ of a firm whose name Thomas recognised as belonging to one of Britain’s leading manufacturers and exporters of small arms. Within an hour he had the name of the firm’s managing director, and found the man at home at his country house in the stockbroker belt of Surrey. By telephone Thomas made an appointment to see him immediately, and as dusk descended on the Thames his police Jaguar roared over the river in the direction of the village of Virginia Water.

  Patrick Monson hardly looked like a dealer in lethal weapons but then, Thomas reflected, they never do. From Monson, Thomas learned the arms firm had employed Calthrop for just under a year. More important, during December 1960 and January 1961 he had been sent by the firm to Cuidad Trujillo to try and sell a consignment of British Army surplus submachine guns to Trujillo’s police chief.

  Thomas eyed Monson with distaste.

  And never mind what they later get used for, eh, boyo, he thought, but did not bother to voice his distaste. Why had Calthrop left Dominican Republic in such a hurry?

  Monson seemed surprised by the question. Well, because Trujillo had been killed, of course. The whole regime fell within hours. What could be expected from the new regime by a man who had come to the island to sell the old regime a load of guns and ammunition? Of course he’d had to get out.

  Thomas pondered. Certainly it made sense. Monson said Calthrop had later claimed he was actually sitting in the office of the dictator’s police chief discussing the sale when the news came through that the General had been killed in an ambush outside the town. The Chief of Police had gone white, and left immediately for his private estate where his aircraft and pilot were permanently waiting for him. Within a few hours mobs were rampaging through the streets seeking adherents of the old regime. Calthrop had to bribe a fisherman to sail him out of the island.

  Why, Thomas asked eventually, did Calthrop leave the firm? He was dismissed, was the answer. Why? Monson thought carefully for a few moments. Finally he said:

  ‘Superintendent, the second-hand arms business is highly competitive. Cut-throat, you might say. To know what another man is offering for sale, and the price he is asking, can be vital for a rival wishing to clinch the same deal with the same buyer. Let us just say that we were not entirely satisfied with Calthrop’s loyalty to the company.’

  In the car back into town Thomas thought over what Monson had told him. Calthrop’s explanation at the time as to why he had got out of Dominican Republic so fast was logical. It did not corroborate, indeed it tended to negate, the rumour subsequently reported by the Caribbean SIS resident that his name was linked with the killing.

  On the other hand, according to Monson, Calthrop was a man who was not above playing a double cross. Could he have arrived as the accredited representative of a small-arms company wishing to make a sale, and at the same time have been in the pay of the revolutionaries?

  There was one thing Monson had said that disturbed Thomas; he had mentioned that Calthrop did not know much about rifles when he joined the company. Surely a crack shot would be an expert? But then of course he could have learned that while with the company. But if he was a newcomer to rifle-shooting, why did the anti-Trujillo partisans want to hire him to stop the General’s car on a fast road with a single sh
ot? Or did they not hire him at all? Was Calthrop’s own story the literal truth?

  Thomas shrugged. It didn’t prove anything, nor disprove anything. Back to square one again, he thought bitterly.

  But back at the office there was news that changed his mind. The inspector who had been enquiring at Calthrop’s address had reported in. He had found a next-door neighbour who had been out at work all day. The woman said Mr Calthrop had left some days before and had mentioned he was going touring in Scotland. In the back of the car parked in the street outside the woman had seen what looked like a set of fishing rods.

  Fishing rods? Superintendent Thomas felt suddenly chilly, although the office was warm. As the detective finished talking one of the others came in.

  ‘Super?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Something had just occurred to me.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Do you speak French?’

  ‘No, do you?’

  ‘Yes, my mother was French. This assassin the PJ are looking for, he’s got the code-name Jackal, right?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Well, Jackal in French is Chacal. C-H-A-C-A-L. See? It could just be a coincidence. He must be as thick as five posts to pick a name, even in French, that’s made up of the first three letters of his Christian name and the first three letters of his …’

  ‘Land of my bloody fathers,’ said Thomas, and sneezed violently. Then he reached for the telephone.

  15

  THE THIRD MEETING in the Interior Ministry in Paris began shortly after ten o’clock, due to the lateness of the Minister who had been held up in the traffic on his way back from a diplomatic reception. As soon as he was seated, he gestured for the meeting to start.

  The first report was from General Guibaud of the SDECE. It was short and to the point. The ex-Nazi killer, Kassel, had been located by agents of the Madrid office of the Secret Service. He was living quietly in retirement at his roof-top flat in Madrid, had become a partner with another former SS-commando leader in a prosperous business in the city, and so far as could be determined was not involved with the OAS. The Madrid office had in any case had a file on the man by the time the request from Paris for a further check came through, and was of the view that he had never been involved with the OAS at all.