The Day of the Jackal

«This will take some time. How long can you stay in Brussels?»

«Not long,» said the Jackal. «I must leave fairly soon, but I could be back on August 1st. From then I could stay another three days. I have to be returning to London on the fourth.»

The Belgian thought again for a while, staring at the photograph in the passport in front of him. At last he folded it closed and passed it back to the Englishman after copying on to a piece of paper from his pocket the name Alexander James Quentin Duggan. He pocketed both the piece of paper and the driving licence.

«All right. It can be done. But I have to have a good portrait photograph of yourself as you are now, full-face and profile. This will take time. And money. There are extra expenses involved… it may be necessary to undertake an operation into France itself with a colleague adept in picking pockets in order to acquire the second of these cards you mention. Obviously, I shall ask around Brussels first, but it may be necessary to go to these lengths…

«How much?» cut in the Englishman.

«Twenty thousand Belgian francs.»

The jackal thought for a moment. «About a hundred and fifty pounds sterling. All right. I will pay you a hundred pounds deposit and the remainder on delivery.»

The Belgian rose. «Then we had better get the portrait photos taken. I have my own studio.»

They took a taxi to a small basement flat more than a mile away. It turned out to be a seedy and run-down photographer's studio, with a sign outside indicating that the premises were run as a commercial establishment specialising in passport photographs developed while the customer waited. Inevitably stuck in the window were what a passer-by must have presumed to be the high points of the studio owner's past work-two portraits of simpering girls, hideously retouched, a marriage photo of a couple sufficiently unprepossessing to deal a nasty blow to the whole concept of wedlock, and two babies. The Belgian led the way down the steps to the front door, unlocked it and ushered his guest inside.

The session took two hours, in which the Belgian showed a skill with the camera that could never have been possessed by the author of the portraits in the window. A large trunk in one corner, which he unlocked with his own key, revealed a selection of expensive cameras and flash equipment, besides a host of facial props including hair tints and dyes, toupees, wigs, spectacles in great variety and a case of theatrical cosmetics.

It was halfway through the session that the Belgian hit on the idea that obviated the necessity to seek out a substitute to pose for the teal photographs. Studying the effect of thirty minutes working on the jackal's face with make-up, he suddenly dived into the chest and produced a wig.

«What do you think of this?» he asked.

The wig was of hair coloured iron-grey and cut en brosse.

«Do you think that your own hair, cut to this length and dyed this colour, could look like this?»

The jackal took the wig and examined it. «We can give it a try and see how it looks in the photo,» he suggested.

And it worked. The Belgian came out of the developing room half an hour after taking six photos of his customer with a sheaf of prints in his hand. Together they pored over the desk. Staring up was the face of an old and tired man. The skin was an ashen grey and there were dark rings of fatigue or pain beneath the eyes. The man wore neither beard nor moustache, but the grey hair on his head gave the impression he must have been in his fifties at least, and not a robust fifty at that.

«I think it will work,» said the Belgian at last.

«The problem is,» replied the Jackal, «that you had to work on me with cosmetics for half an hour to achieve this effect. Then there was the wig. I cannot emulate all that by myself. And here we were under lights, whereas I shall be in the open air when I have to produce these papers I have asked for.»

«But this is precisely not the point,» riposted the forger. «It is not so much that you will not be a dead image of the photograph, but that the photograph will not be a dead likeness of you. This is the way the mind of a man examining papers works. He looks at the face first, the real face, then asks for the papers. Then he sees the photograph. He already has the image of the man standing beside him in his mind's eye. This affects his judgement. He looks for points of similarity, not the opposite.

«Secondly, this photograph is twenty-five by twenty centimetres. The photograph in the identity card will be three by four. Thirdly, a too precise likeness should be avoided. If the card was issued several years previously, it is impossible that a man should not change a bit. In the photograph here we have you in open-necked striped shirt with collar attached. Try to avoid that shirt for example, or even avoid an open-necked shirt at all. Wear a tie, or a scarf or a turtlenecked sweater.