The Stone Leopard (13 page)

Presiding at the head of the table, Danchin waved the new arrival to a vacant chair. 'Everything said at this meeting is absolutely confidential,' he instructed in his best ministerial manner. 'Not to be discussed with personal assistants unless necessary in the execution of the operation. . .

`What operation ?' Grelle asked.

'You are not involved,' Danchin informed him. `Suchet will be in charge. But we need you to give us information about Col Lasalle's daily habits and routines—since you have the link with Hugon.'

`Minister, why do you need this information ?' Grelle inquired.

`Just give us the information, please, Mr Prefect. . . .' It was Suchet who intervened, clasping his plump hands on the table and leaning forward aggressively. 'I do not wish to be discourteous, but there is a question of security. The fewer people who are involved—you know what I mean. . .'

`I have no idea what you mean. Unless I know what you are up to I cannot possibly help—I shall probably leave out a vital piece of information. . .'

`I'll be the judge of that,' Suchet rapped back.

`Please, gentlemen,' Danchin interjected. 'We are all here to help one another. . .

`Thai let him tell me what he is up to,' Grelle repeated. `We have decided to arrest Col Lasalle.'

There was a silence and, knowing his reputation, every head round the table turned to stare at the prefect. Grelle requested permission to smoke and Danchin, who was already smoking, nodded impatiently. The prefect took his time lighting the cigarette, staring hard at Suchet whose eyes flickered and looked away. 'Is this Commissioner Suchet's mad idea ?' he inquired.

`No, it is mine,' Danchin said quietly.

`You are going to kidnap Lasalle. . .'

"Arrest" was the word he used,' Danchin snapped.

`You cannot arrest a man on foreign soil,' Grelle said in a monotone. 'You can only kidnap him and drag him over the border by brute force. How can we expect the public to respect the police, to obey the law, when the law itself is acting like the Mafia. . .

`Careful,' Danchin warned. 'Perhaps you would prefer to withdraw from the meeting. . .

`Like the Mafia,' Grelle repeated. 'Horrible little thugs in plain-clothes breaking into a man's house at dead of night, grabbing him. . .'

`Lasalle is a traitor. . .'

`Lasalle is living in Germany. There would be an international outcry.'

`We've thought of that. . . Danchin adopted a more conciliatory tone. 'It would be announced that Lasalle had secretly entered France of his own free will, that he had been seen and then arrested on French soil. . .'

`De Gaulle got away with it with Col Argoud,' Suchet said.

`It's not good enough!' The prefect's fist crashed down on the table. 'If you insist on going ahead with this bizarre operation I shall inform the president of my objections. . .

`The president is aware that this meeting is taking place.' Danchin informed him.

'How close is this operation, Minister ?' Grelle asked. `We may act tomorrow night.'

`Then I must act now.' Grelle stood up. 'You invited me to withdraw. May I accept your invitation now ?'

The interview with Florian was tense, so tense that Kassim the Alsatian, feeling the tension between the two men he regarded as his friends, slunk away under a couch. Beyond the tall windows of the president's study snowflakes drifted down into the Elysee garden, snow which melted as it landed. On the desk between the two men a sheet of paper lay with the telephones and the lamp. Grelle's hastily penned letter of resignation. Florian slid the sheet across the desk so it dropped over the edge into the prefect's lap.

`I won't be involved in this thing if that's what is worrying you,' he stated icily. `Danchin, from what I hear, plans to repeat the Col Argoud abduction technique. Lasalle will be brought from Germany and left a prisoner somewhere in Paris. You will receive a phone call—you will then find Lasalle tied up in a van in a back street. It will be your duty to arrest him.'

`It is an illegal act, Mr President. . .

`Neither of us will be directly involved. . .'

`But both of us will know. President Nixon once tried to play a dubious game—look what happened. . .

`You are frightened it will not work ?' Florian demanded. `I am frightened it will work. . .'

Florian's expression changed suddenly. Leaning back in his embroidered chair he steepled his hands and stared hard at Grelle, frowning. The desk lamp was on and against a wall Florian's shadow was distorted and huge. 'I think you're right,' he said quietly. 'I'm too much surrounded by politicians. Shall I tear up that piece of paper or will you ?'

Within three minutes of Grelle leaving the room, Florian picked up the phone and cancelled the operation.

Grelle left the Elysee in a stunned frame of mind When he first heard of the plot to kidnap Lasalle he felt sure it was the brainchild of the devious Suchet; then he thought it must be a brainstorm on the part of Roger Danchin. The realization that Guy Florian himself had sanctioned the plan had astounded the prefect. It seemed so alien in character, or had he all along misjudged the president's character? On an impulse, when he had got into his car, he drove in a circle round the high wall which encloses the Elysee garden—following the one-way system—and this brought him back to the rue des Saussaies. Going inside the Surete, he collected two more dusty files from the records department.

In the German city of Mainz, Alan Lennox was waiting impatiently at the Hotel Central to collect his French papers from Peter Lanz. At eleven in the morning he phoned Lanz at the Frankfurt number the BND chief had given him and the German came on the line immediately. He was apologetic. 'I doubt whether the documents we are talking about will be ready before tomorrow,' he explained. 'If you like to call me again at four this afternoon I may have more news. . .

`What's keeping the old boy ?'

`He's a craftsman. He wants the product to be right—and so do you. . .'

`He's not producing the Mona Lisa. . .'

`But a portrait which we hope will be equally convincing, Alan, trust me. . .'

Lanz put down the receiver and pursed his lips. He was unhappy about deceiving the Englishman; he even doubted his success in so doing. He felt sure that Lennox knew the BND had ways of collecting blank French identity cards, which they had, and that probably they possessed a store of such blanks, which they did. The papers made out in the name of Jean Bouvier, reporter, were in fact inside a drawer in Lanz's desk as he spoke to Lennox. What Lanz was waiting for was final approval from the Palais Schaumburg for the Englishman to proceed into France.

Chancellor Franz Hauser, whom Lanz had seen once before he met Lennox on the previous day, and once since the meeting, was still unsure about the wisdom of probing into the affairs of his most important ally. 'If this Englishman is caught —and talks—we shall be keelhauled by Paris,' Hauser had remarked to Lanz. 'Give me a few hours to think it over—I will take a positive decision tomorrow night. Maybe something will happen to decide me. . .'

It was in the evening of the night when Franz Hauser took his decision that Guy Florian made his violent onslaught on America in his speech at Lille.

As they had done on the previous Saturday night, Grelle and Boisseau spent the evening in the prefect's apartment, but this time instead of checking the Leopard's file they were studying the wartime files on Roger Danchin and Alain Blanc. It was close to midnight before they completed their reading.

`At least we know a little more,' Boisseau suggested.

`Do we ?' Grelle queried dubiously.

`Alain Blanc was officially studying at a remote farmhouse in Provence,' Boisseau stated as Grelle poured more black coffee. It had been agreed that Boisseau should concentrate on Blanc. `He was sent there by his father to stop him getting mixed up with the Resistance.'

`Did it stop him ?'

`No! He stayed at the farmhouse, continuing his studies, and allowed the local Resistance group—which incidentally was wiped out to a man in August 1944 in an ambush—to use the place as an ammunition and weapons store.'

`So you exonerate him ?'

`By no means,' Boisseau replied. 'The only person who could have vouched for his presence at the farmhouse during the critical period was the housekeeper who looked after him, a Madame Jalade. She died in July 1946 only a year or so after the war ended. There was an accident—she was driving her old gazogene-powered car into town and ended up at the foot of a sixty-foot gorge.'

`There were no witnesses ?' Grelle asked quietly.

`None at all. She was alone. A faulty braking system was given as the cause of the accident. So she died soon after Gaston Martin was imprisoned in Guiana. It could be a coincidence, of course. . .

`It could be,' Grelle agreed.

The prefect then relayed what he had discovered reading the files which pieced together the wartime career of Roger Danchin. Joining one of the Resistance groups in the Massif Central, Danchin had worked under the cover-name of Grand-Pierre. He had soon become an agile liaison officer between several groups, one of them commanded by the Leopard. 'He was a will-o'-the-wisp,' Grelle explained. 'Keeping in the background, he used a chain of couriers to keep one group in touch with another. Even in those days he had a great grasp of detail, apparently, He was reputed to be the best- informed man in the Midi.'

`We strike him out ?' Boisseau asked.

`I'm afraid not. His documentation in 1944 is so vague. And he was in the right area—very close to Lozere.'

'So it could still be either of them ?' Boisseau shrugged. 'Like so much police work—a great deal of sweat and then nothing. At least we are finished with these mouldy files.'

`Not quite.' Grelle balanced two files on his hand. 'I decided to check someone else—purely as a theoretical exercise. Gaston Martin said he saw a tall man walk into the Elysee between 7.3o and 8.3o, a man saluted by the guards. Remember we are policemen—we go solely by facts. At eight o'clock Guy Florian returned to the Elysee. I have also checked his wartime background.'

When Boisseau had recovered from the shock, when he grasped the fact that Grelle was conducting a theoretical exercise, he listened while the prefect briefly outlined the president's war-time career. He had served in a section of what came to be known as the Comet Line, an escape route for Allied airmen running from France across the Spanish border. Stationed in an old house up in the Pyrenees behind St Jean-de-Luz, Florian had escorted escaping airmen into Spain where they were met by an official from the British consulate at Bilbao.

`Two hundred and fifty miles away from Lozere,' Boisseau commented, joining in the game, `so he could not possibly be the Leopard.'

`Impossible,' Grelle agreed. 'Except that his brother Charles, who was older but looked like him, also served in the Comet Line. Now, if Charles had agreed to impersonate Guy Florian —remember, escape routes are shrouded in mystery and the operatives rarely appeared. . .

`I didn't know he had a brother. . .

`He hasn't any more. In July 1945 Charles set off on one of his solitary swims into the Atlantic and never came back. His body was washed ashore two weeks later.'

`I see. . .'
 
Boisseau sucked at his pipe. 'A lot of people died young in those days; a lot of them connected with the Leopard. I had the report in from Lyon late this afternoon about the men who buried him and the undertaker. . .

`Which reminds me,' Grelle interjected. 'We are flying to Lyon tomorrow. There is only one way to clear up the contradiction between the man Gaston Martin said he saw and the recorded death of the Leopard—and that is to open up his grave. I spoke to Hardy on the phone myself and he is rushing through an emergency exhumation order. Now, what about the men who buried the Leopard ?'

`All dead. Shot in an enemy ambush four days after the burial, the bodies riddled with Mauser bullets.'

`Plenty of Mausers about in all sorts of hands in 1944,' Grelle observed. 'And the priest ?'

`There was no priest—the Leopard was an atheist. . . `Of course. And the undertaker ?'

`Shot through the head the morning after the burial. Someone, identity unknown, broke into his house. And there was another curious thing,' Boisseau continued. 'A young Communist sculptor who had worked with the Resistance group wanted to do something to commemorate his beloved leader. So he sculpted a statue which was placed over the grave six months later. It is still there, I understand, deep inside the forest. It is a statue of a leopard, a stone leopard.'