The Day of the Jackal

The South Africans had learned Piet Schuyper was now the head of a private army of a diamond-mining corporation in a West African country of the British Commonwealth. His duties were to patrol the borders of the vast mining concessions owned by the company and ensure a continuous disincentive to illicit diamond poachers from across the border. No inconvenient questions were asked of him as to the methods he used to discourage poaching, and his employers were pleased with his efforts. His presence was confirmed by his employers; he was definitely at his post in West Africa.

The Belgian police had checked on their, ex-mercenary. A report in the files from one of their Caribbean embassies had been unearthed, which reported the former employee of Katanga had been killed in a bar fight in Guatemala three months previously.

Lebel finished reading the last of the reports from the file in front of him. When he looked up it was to find fourteen pairs of eyes on him, most of them cold and challenging.

«Alors, rien?»

The question from Colonel Rolland was that of everyone present.

«No, nothing, I'm afraid,» agreed Lebel. «None of the suggestions seem to stand up.»

«Seem to stand up,» echoed Saint-Clair bitterly, «is that what we have come to with your "pure detective work"? Nothing seems to stand up?»

He glared angrily at the two detectives, Bouvier and Lebel, quickly aware that the mood of the room was with him.

«It would seem, gentlemen,» the Minister quietly used the plural form to take in both the police commissaires, «that we are back: where we started. Square one, so to speak?»

«Yes, I'm afraid so,» replied Lebel. Bouvier took up the cudgels on his behalf.

«My colleague is searching, virtually without clues and without;; any sort of lead, for one of the most elusive types of men in the; world. Such specimens do not advertise their professions or their whereabouts.»

«We are aware of that, my dear commissaire,» retorted the Minister, coldly, «the question is…»

He was interrupted by a knock on the door. The Minister frowned; his instructions had been that they were not to be disturbed except in an emergency.

«Come in.»

One of the ministry's porters stood in the doorway, diffident and abashed.

«Mes excuses, Monsieur Le Ministre. A telephone call for Commissaire Lebel. From London.»

Feeling the hostility of the room, the man tried to cover himself. «They say it is urgent…»

Lebel rose.

«Would you excuse me, gentlemen?»

He returned in five minutes. The atmosphere was as cold as when he had left it, and evidently the wrangle over what to do next had continued in his absence. As he entered he interrupted a bitter denunciation from Colonel Saint-Clair, who tailed off as Lebel took his seat. The little commissaire had an envelope in his hand with scribbled writing on the back.

«I think, gentlemen, we have the name of the man we are looking for,» he began.

The meeting ended thirty minutes later almost in a mood of levity. When Lebel had finished his relation of the message from London, the men round the table had let out a collective sigh, like a train arriving at its platform after a long journey. Each man knew that at last there was something he could do. Within half an hour they had agreed that Without a word of publicity it would be possible to scour France for a man in the name of Charles Calthrop, to find him and, if deemed necessary, to dispose of him.

The fullest known details of Calthrop, they knew, would available until the morning, when they would be telexed not be from London. But in the meantime Renseignements Generaux could check their miles of shelves for a disembarkation card filled in by this man, for a hotel card registering him at a hotel anywhere in France. The Prefecture of Police could check its own records to see if he was staying at any hotel within the confines of Paris.

The DST could put his name and description into the hands of every border post, harbour and airfield in France, with instructions that such a man was to be held immediately on his touching on French territory.

If he had not yet arrived in France, no matter. Complete silence would be maintained until he arrived, and when he did, they would have him.

«This odious creature, the man they call Calthrop, we have him already in the bag,» Colonel Raoul Saint-Clair de Villauban told his mistress that night as they lay in bed.

When Jacqueline finally coaxed a belated orgasm from the Colonel to send him to sleep the mantlepiece clock chimed twelve and it had become August 14th.

Superintendent Thomas sat back in his office chair and surveyed the six inspectors whom he had regrouped from their various tasks after putting down the phone following the call to Paris. Outside in the still summer night Big Ben tolled midnight.