The Day of the Jackal

He had several sheets of foolscap paper in front of him covered with handwritten notes. In the office some things had changed. On top of the filing cabinets an electric coffee percolator bubbled, sending out a delicious aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Next to it stood a pile of paper cups, a tin of unsweetened milk and a bag of sugar. These had come up from the basement canteen during the night.

In the corner between the two desks a single truckle bed had been set up, covered with a rough blanket. The waste-paper basket had been emptied and stored next to the armchair by the door.

The window was open still, a faint haze of blue smoke from Caron's cigarettes drifting out into the cool morning. Beyond the window the first flecks of the coming day mottled the spire of St Sulpice.

Lebel crossed to his desk and slumped into the chair. Although it was only twenty-four hours since he had woken from his last sleep he looked tired, like Caron.

«Nothing,» he said. «I've been through the lot over the past ten years. The only foreign political killer who ever tried to operate here was Degueldre, and he's dead. Besides, he was OAS and we had him on file as such. PresumabIy Rodin has chosen a man who has nothing to do with the OAS, and he's quite right. There were only four contract-hire killers who tried it in France over the past ten years apart from the home-grown variety and we got three. The fourth is serving a lifer in Africa somewhere. Besides, they were all gangland killers, not of the calibre to shoot down a President of France.

«I got on to Bargeron of Central Records and they're doing a complete double-check, but I suspect already that we don't have this man on file. Rodin would in any case insist on that before hiring him.»

Caron lit up another Gaulloise, blew out the smoke and sighed.

«So we have to start from the foreign end?»

«Precisely. A man of this type must have got his training and experience somewhere. He wouldn't be one of the world's tops unless he could prove it with a string of successful jobs behind him. Not presidents perhaps, but important men, bigger than mere underworld caids. That means he must have come to someone's attention somewhere. Surely. What have you arranged?»

Caron picked up one of the sheets of paper, showing a list of names with, in the left-hand column, a series of timings.

«The seven are all fixed,» he said. «You start with Head of the Office of Domestic Intelligence at ten past seven. That's ten past one in the morning Washington time. I fitted him in first because of the lateness of the hour in America.

«Then Brussels at half past seven, Amsterdam at quarter to eight and Bonn at eight-ten. The link is arranged with Johannesburg at eighty-thirty and with Scotland Yard at nine. Lastly there is Rome at nine-thirty.»

«The heads of Homicide in each case?» asked Lebel.

«Or the equivalent. With Scotland Yard it's Mr Anthony Mallinson, Assistant Commissioner Crime. It seems they don't have a homicide section in the Metropolitan Police. Apart from that, yes, except South Africa. I couldn't get Van Ruys at all, so you're talking to Assistant Commissioner Anderson.»

Lebel thought for a moment.

«That's fine. I'd prefer Anderson. We worked on a case once. There's the question of language. Three of them speak English. I suppose only the Belgian speaks French. The others almost certainly can speak English if they have to…»

«The German, Dietrich, speaks French,» interjected Caron.

«Good, then I'll speak to those two in French personally. For the other five I'll have to have you on the extension as interpreter. We'd better go. Come on.»

It was ten to seven when the police car carrying the two detectives drew up outside the innocent green door in the tiny Rue Paul Valery which housed the headquarters of Interpol at that time.

For the next three hours Lebel and Caron sat hunched over the telephone in the basement communications room talking to the world's top crime busters. From the seemingly tangled porcupine of aerials on the roof of the building the high-frequency signals beamed out across three continents, streaming high beyond the stratosphere to bounce off the ionic layer above and home back to earth thousands of miles away to another stick of aluminium jutting from a tiled rooftop.

The wavelengths and scramblers were uninterceptable. Detective spoke to detective while the world drank its morning coffee or final nightcap in each telephone conversation Lebel's appeal was much the same.

«No, Commissioner, I cannot yet put this request for your assistance on the level of an official enquiry between our two police forces… certainly I am acting in an official capacity… It is simply that for the moment we are just not sure if even the intent to commit an offence has been formulated or put into the preparation stage… It's a question of a tip-off, purely routine for the moment… Well, we are looking for a man about whom we know extremely little… not even a name, and only a poor description…»