The Day of the Jackal

«That would indeed be lucky,» he told his adjutant, «but don't count on it. The British Special Branch reported that all his washing things and shaving tackle were missing from the bathroom, and that he had mentioned to a neighbour that he was going away touring and fishing. If Calthrop left his passport behind, it was because he no longer needed it. Don't count on this man making too many errors; I'm beginning to get a feeling about the jackal.»

The man the police of two countries were now searching for had decided to avoid the agonising congestion of the Grande Corniche on its murderous way from Cannes to Marseilles, and to stay away from the southern part of the RN7 when it turned north out of Marseilles for Paris. Both roads in August he knew to be a refined form of hell on earth.

Safe in his assumed and documented name of Duggan, he decided to drive leisurely up from the coast through the Alpes Maritimes where the air was cooler in the altitude, and on through the rolling hills of Burgundy. He was in no particular hurry, for the day he had set for his kill was not yet on him, and he knew he had arrived in France slightly ahead of schedule.

From Cannes he headed due north, taking the RN85 through the picturesque perfume town of Grasse and on towards Castellane where the turbulent Verdon river, tamed by the high dam a few miles upstream, flowed more obediently down from Savoy to join the Durance at Cadarache.

From here he pushed on to Barreme and the little spa town of Digne. The blazing heat of the Provençal plain had fallen away behind him, and the air of the hills was sweet and cool even in the heat. When he stopped he could feel the sun blazing down, but when motoring the wind was like a cooling shower and smelled of the pines and woodsmoke from the farms.

After Digne he crossed the Durance and ate lunch in a small but pretty hostelry looking down into the waters. In another hundred miles the Durance would become a grey and slimy snake hissing shallow amid the sun-bleached shingle of its bed at Cavaillon and Plan d'Orgon. But here in the hills it was still a river, the way a river should look, a cool and fishful river with shade along its banks and grass growing all the greener for its presence.

In the afternoon he followed the long northward curving run of the RN85 through Sisteron, still following the Durance upstream o':its left bank until the road forked and the RN85 headed towards the… north. As dusk was falling he entered the little town of Gap. He could have gone on towards Grenoble, but decided that as there was. no hurry and more chance of finding rooms in August in a small '" town, he should look around for a country-style hotel. Just out of ° town he found the brightly gabled Hotel du Cerf, formerly a hunting,, lodge of one of the Dukes of Savoy, and still retaining an air of a rustic comfort and good food., There were several rooms still vacant. He had a leisurely bath; a' break with his usual habit of showering, and dressed in his dovegrey's suit with a silk shirt and knitted tie, while the room-maid, after receiving several winning smiles, had blushfully agreed to sponge and press the check suit he had worn all day so that he could have it back by morning.

The evening meal was taken in a panelled room overlooking a sweep of the wooded hillside, loud with the chatter of cicadas among the pinedes. The air was warm and it was only halfway through the t meal when one of the women diners, who wore a sleeveless dress and a decollete, commented to the maitre d'hotel that a chill had entered:' the air that the windows were closed.

The jackal turned round when he was asked if he objected to the window next to which he sat being closed, and glanced at the woman' indicated by the maitre as the person who had asked that they be shut. She was dining alone, a handsome woman in her late thirties; with soft white arms and a deep bosom. The jackal nodded to the maitre to close the windows, and gave a slight inclination of the head to the woman behind him. She answered with a cool smile.

The meal was magnificent. He chose speckled river trout grilled on a wood fire, and tournedos broiled over charcoal with fennel and thyme. The wine was a local Cotes du Rhone, full, rich and in a bottle with no label. It had evidently come from the barrel in the cellar, the proprietor's personal choice for his vin de la maison. Most of the diners were having it, and with reason.

As he finished his sorbet he heard the low and authoritative voice of the woman behind him telling the maitre that she would take her, coffee in the residents' lounge, and the man bowed and addressed her; as «Madame la Baronne'. A few minutes later the jackal had ordered his coffee in the lounge, and headed that way.