The Day of the Jackal

«You told me that if I came back on August 1st I could have the gun by August 4th to take home with me,» he said.

«That's perfectly true, and I assure you the problem is not with the gun,» said the Belgian. «Indeed the gun is ready, and frankly I regard it as one of my masterpieces, a beautiful specimen. The trouble has been with the other product, which evidently had to be made from scratch. Let me show you.»

On top of the desk lay a fiat case about two feet long by eighteen inches broad four inches deep. M. Goossens opened the case and the jackal looked down on it as the upper half fell back to the table.

It was like a flat tray, divided into carefully shaped compartments, each exactly the shape of the component of the rifle that it contained.

«It was not the original case, you understand,» explained M. Goossens. «That would have been much too long. I made the case myself. It all fits.»

It fitted very compactly. Along the top of the open tray was the barrel and breech, the whole no longer than eighteen inches. The Jackal lifted it out and examined it. It was very light, and looked rather like a submachine-gun barrel. The breech contained a narrow bolt which was dosed shut. It ended at the back with a gnarled grip no larger than the breech into which the rest of the bolt was fitted.

The Englishman took the gnarled end of the bolt between forefinger and thumb of the right hand, gave it a sharp turn anticlockwise. The bolt unlocked itself and rolled over in its groove. As he pulled the bolt slid back to reveal the gleaming tray into which the bullet would lie, and the dark hole at the rear end of the barrel. He rammed the bolt back home and twisted it clockwise. Smoothly it locked into place.

Just below the rear end of the bolt an extra disc of steel had been expertly welded on to the mechanism. It was half an inch thick but less than an inch round and in the top part of the disc was a cutout crescent to allow free passage backwards of the bolt. In the centre of the rear face of the disc was a single hole half an inch across; the inside of this hole had been threaded as if to take a screw.

«That's for the frame of the stock,» said the Belgian quietly.

Jackal noticed that where the wooden stock of the original rifle had been removed no trams remained except the slight flanges running along the underside of the breech where the woodwork had once fitted. The two holes made by the retaining screws that had secured the wooden stock to the rifle had been expertly plugged and blued. He turned the rifle over and examined the underside. There was a narrow slit beneath the breech. Through it he could see the underside of the bolt that contained the firing pin which fired the bullet. Through both slits protruded the stump of the trigger. It had been sawn off flush with the surface of the steel breech.

Welded to the stump of the old trigger was a tiny knob of metal, also with a threaded hole in it. Silently M. Goossens handed him a small sliver of steel, an inch long, curved and with one end threaded. He fitted the threaded end into the hole and twiddled it quickly with forefinger and thumb. When it was tight the new trigger protruded below the breech.

By his side the Belgian reached back into the tray and held up a single narrow steel rod, one end of it threaded.

«The first part of the stock assembly,» he said.

The assassin fitted the end of the steel rod into a hole at the rear of the breech and wound it till it was firm. In profile the steel rod seemed to emerge from the back of the gun and cant downwards at thirty degrees. Two inches from the threaded end, up near the mechanism of the rifle, the steel rod had been lightly flattened, and in the centre of the flattened portion a hole had been drilled at an angle to the line of the rod. This hole now faced directly backwards. Goossens held up a second and shorter steel rod.

«The upper strut,» he said.

This too was fitted into place. The two rods stuck out backwards, the upper one at a much shallower angle to the line of the barrel so that the two rods separated from each other like two sides of a narrow triangle with no base. Goossens produced the base. It was curved, about five or six inches long and heavily padded with black leather. At each end of the shoulder guard, or butt of the rifle, was a small hole.

«There's nothing to screw here,» said the armourer, «just press it on to the ends of the rods.»

The Englishman fitted the end of each steel rod into the appropriate hole and smacked the butt home. The rifle now, when seen in profile, looked more normal, with a trigger and a complete stock sketched in outline by the upper and lower strut and the base plate. The Jackal lifted the butt-plate into his shoulder, left hand gripping the underside of the barrel, right forefinger round the trigger, left eye closed and right eye squinting down the barrel. He aimed at the far wall and squeezed the trigger. There was a soft click from inside the breech.