The Stone Leopard (34 page)

The two gendarmes had run off after the cab. Boisseau, shielded by the open car door, had escaped unscathed, but the three detectives lay on the ground, two of them moaning and gasping, the third very still. They had to lift the two men gently to get at Madame Devaud who lay face down, and when they eased her over they saw where the assassin's bullets had stitched a pattern across her chest.

`Armed and dangerous. . .

All over Paris patrol-cars leapt forward, moving inwards on a cordon pattern laid down by the commissioner in charge at central control. In a way he welcomed the emergency on the eve of the president's depature: it gave him a chance to check the system. The cordon closed in like a contracting web, its approximate centre-point the Place Beauvau, and with sirens screaming patrol-cars rushed along the big boulevards. The commissioner at control was moving into action his entire force, repeating time and again the warning.

`Armed and dangerous. . .

They found Vanek quite close to the Surete. His cab was spotted crossing the Place de la Concorde on the Tuileries side. Patrol-cars converged on the vast square, coming in over the Seine bridge, from Champs-Elysées, Rivoli and the Avenue Gabriel. A blaze of lamps, empty only seconds earlier, the Place was suddenly filled with noise and movement, with the high-pitched screams of sirens, the swivel of patrol-car headlights. Vanek braked by the kerb, jumped out with the sub-machine gun and ran for the only possible refuge. The Tuileries gardens.

At this point in the Place de la Concorde the pavement by the kerb has a low stone wall beyond it. Beyond that lies another pavement and beyond that a high stone wall rises up to a lofty balustrade with the Tuileries park beyond like a huge viewing platform overlooking the entire Place. Vanek started running for the entrance to Tuileries at ground level, saw a patrol-car pull up, blocking him off. Jerking up his weapon, he emptied the second magazine and everywhere policemen dropped flat. Throwing down the gun, Vanek jumped over the low stone wall, ran across the second sidewalk and began hauling himself up the wall, using projecting stones like a ladder.

To his left and below him a flight of steps went down and underground. He had almost reached the balustrade; once over it he would have the whole park to hide in. Behind him he heard shouts, the screams of half a dozen more patrol-cars rushing into the square. He whipped one leg over the balustrade.

The park beyond was a dark, tree-filled vastness, a place to manoeuvre in.

They caught him in a crossfire. Two gendarmes to the right on the sidewalk below, another group of three to the left as he hung above the world below him. There was a fusillade of shots as the gendarmes emptied their magazines very loud in the Place because all the patrol-cars had now halted. Vanek hung in the night, one leg draped over the balustrade, then his limp hand lost its grip and he slipped over, falling as they went on firing, crashing down into the deep staircase well where a large notice proclaimed `Descente Interdite.' Descent Forbidden.

CHAPTER SIX

`A WOMAN who can positively identify me as the Leopard has arrived in Paris. Her name is Annette Devaud. Apparently they brought her in under heavy guard aboard the
Stanislas
express. . .'

A dog barked, a deafening sound on the tape. The familiar, so recognizable voice, spoke sharply.

`Quiet, Kassim! I don't see how there is time to intercept her. I can personally take no action which will not arouse the gravest suspicion. . .'

`Why did you not add her to the Lasalle list earlier?' The second voice, husky, accented, was also quite recognizable.

`She went blind at the end of the war—so I assumed she was harmless. My assistant phoned the police chief at Saverne just before you arrived—apparently she had an operation recently which restored her sight. This is the most appalling mess, Vorin, coming at the last moment. . .'

`Mr President, we may be able to do something . .'

`I added her to the list later—when Danchin sent me his routine report with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung letter which mentioned her name. Your people were supposed to have dealt with the problem. . .'

`Something went wrong. . .'

`Then you cannot blame me!' An argument was developing; the well-known voice was sharp, cutting. 'It is imperative that you rectify your error. . .'

`Then I must leave at once for the embassy, Mr President. We have reached a stage where minutes count. Do you know where they will take the Devaud woman ?'

`To the rue des Saussaies. . .'

Alone in the fourth-floor room at Surete headquarters, Marc Grelle switched off the tape-recorder which had been linked to the tiny transmitter inserted inside Kassim's studded collar. He had played it twice, standing while he listened to it with a frozen expression, concentrating on the pitch of the voices. It was a futile exercise—replaying the tape—because the timbre of Guy Florian's voice had come over with such clarity the first time. In any case the words spoken were diabolically conclusive.

Staring at the opposite wall, the prefect lit a cigarette, hardly aware of the action. For days now the terrible truth had thrust itself into his mind and he had refused to accept the evidence. Gaston Martin had seen three men enter the Elysee, one of them the president. The surveillance on Danchin and Blanc had revealed no evidence of a Soviet link contacting either man, but Florian met Soviet Ambassador Vorin almost daily. And so on. . . . Staring at the wall, smoking his cigarette. Grelle felt a sense of nausea, like a husband who had just found his wife in bed with a coarse and brutal lover.

Extracting the tape from the machine, he put it inside his pocket. Picking up the phone he asked for an outside line and then dialled a number.

Still in a state of shock he made a great effort to keep his voice cold and impersonal.

`Alain Blanc? Grelle here. I need to see you immediately. No, don't come to the prefecture. I'm going straight back to my apartment. Yes, something has happened. You will need a glass of cognac before I tell you. . .'

The 2nd and 5th French Armoured Divisions, stationed in the German Federal Republic and commanded by Gen Jacques Chassou were already on the move. The German authorities had been informed, the consent of the government of the Duchy of Luxembourg had been obtained—all at very short notice. Within hours the advance elements of the two divisions had crossed the Luxembourg frontier and were moving into the Ardennes on their way back to France. At to p.m., just before he flew to Sedan, Gen Chassou opened the secret instructions which had been personally handed to him by President Florian when he made his lightning visit to Baden-Baden on the previous Monday.

`For the moment you will not return to Germany at the conclusion of the exercise. Once over the Sedan bridges you will proceed on into France. . . . You will halt in the general military area of Metz . . . transport parks have been prepared. . .'

Handing the secret communication to his assistant, Col Georges Doissy, Chassou told him to make the necessary adjustments and then flew off to Sedan. Doissy, who had once served under Col Rene Lasalle, immediately realized that this order would leave Germany isolated, with only a token British detachment alongside the German Army facing Russia. He thought about it for a few minutes, then he remembered President de Gaulle's advice to the recently elected President Kennedy: 'Listen only to yourself. . . Doissy picked up the phone and asked the night operator to put him through urgently to the Minister of National Defence, Alain Blanc.

At to pm. on 22 December, Commander Arthur Leigh- Browne, RN, the British officer in charge of the NATO analyst team watching the Soviet convoy K.12, issued a routine report. `If K.12 continues on her present course, at her present reduced speed, she can make landfall at Barcelona by changing course again some time within the next twelve to eighteen hours. . . Being a precise man, he added a rider. 'Theoretically she could also make landfall on the south coast of France, at Marseilles and Toulon. . . .' Following the normal practice, a coded signal of his report was despatched to all NATO defence ministers.

Abou Benefeika, the Arab terrorist who had come within seconds of destroying the El Al airliner at Orly, tried to make himself more comfortable as he rested his head against the `pillow' of bricks in the basement of the abandoned building at 17 rue Reamur. The fact that he had folded his jacket and placed it on top of the bricks did not help him to sleep, nor did the rustle of tiny feet he kept hearing; the rats also had taken up unofficial tenancy in the condemned building.

During the day Benefeika had crept out of his hiding-place to purchase food and drink from the local shops, and because this district of Paris was a ghetto peopled by Algerians he was not too worried about breaking cover. Absorbed as he was in his task, on the lookout only for uniformed police, he failed to notice two scruffily-dressed men who followed him everywhere with their hands in their pockets. Returning to his squalid hideaway, he ate and drank while outside one of the scruffily dressed men climbed up to the first floor of the building opposite. Using his walkie-talkie, Sergeant Pierre Gallon made his routine report. 'Rabbit has returned to his burrow. Observation is continuing. . .'

`Then I must leave at once for the embassy, Mr President. We have reached a stage where minutes count. Do you know where they will take the Devaud woman ?'

`To the rue des Saussaies. . .'

In his apartment on the Ile Saint-Louis, Grelle switched off the tape-recorder and looked at Alain Blanc who sat in an elegant chair with his legs crossed and a glass of cognac in his hand. The Minister's expression was grim: it was the third time the recording had been played back for his benefit and he now knew the conversation word for word. He drank the rest of his cognac in one gulp and there were beads of sweat on his high-domed forehead.

He looked up as Grelle spoke.

`Within two hours of that conversation—I phoned the security officer at the Elysee and Vorin arrived there at 9.15— Annette Devaud was brutally murdered by the assassin we later trapped in Place de la Concorde,' the prefect said. 'There is no room for doubt any more that the man who . .'

`I recognize Florian's voice,' Blanc broke in impatiently. `Vorin's too. There is no room for doubt at all.' He sighed. 'It is a terrible shock but not so much of a surprise. For days now I have been wondering what was going on—although I never suspected the appalling truth. These rumours of a right-wing coup which seemed to emanate from near-Communist sources. Florian's sudden and quite inexplicable journey to Baden- Baden. . .'

Blanc stood up and hammered his fist into the palm of his other hand.

`Oh Jesus Christ what have we come to, Grelle ? I have known him since he was a young man at the Polytechnique after the war. I organized his rise to power. How could I have been so blind?'

`Caesar is always above suspicion. . .'

`As I have just told you, I had a phone call from Col Doissy at Baden-Baden before I left to come here—saying that the 2nd and 5th divisions will proceed to Metz and stay there, which leaves Germany naked. With the American Congress in its present isolationist mood Washington will not even threaten to press the nuclear button—Moscow has its own button. The United States will only react if the American mainland is in danger. All this stems from the fiasco in Viet Nam and Cambodia. You know what I think is going to happen within the next few hours ?'

`What ?'

`I think Florian will announce in Moscow tomorrow the conclusion of a military pact with the Soviets—remember, the president can conclude such a pact himself. You've seen that report which just came in from Brussels—I think Florian will further announce joint military manoeuvres with the Russians. The ports of Toulon and Marseilles will be opened for the landing of Soviet troops aboard convoy K.12.'

`Then something must be done. . .'

`Germany will wake up to find herself encircled—Soviet divisions to the east of her, Soviet divisions west of the Rhine. On French soil! I think Florian will fly back from Moscow later tomorrow and if there is any reaction here he will say there has been an attempted right-wing coup d'etat by Col Lasalle and half of us will be behind bars. . .'

`Calm yourself,' Grelle advised.

`Calm myself he says. . . .' Blanc was showing great agitation, his face covered in nervous sweat as he moved restlessly about the living-room. 'Within a few days we may even have the Soviet flag flying alongside the tricolour!' Accepting the refilled glass from Grelle he made as if to swallow it in a gulp, then stiffened himself and took only a sip.

`We have to decide what to do,' Grelle said quietly.

`Exactly!' Blanc, after his outburst, suddenly recovered his natural poise. 'It is quite useless consulting other ministers,' he said firmly. 'Even if I called a secret meeting they would never take a decision, someone would leak the news, it would reach the Elysee, Florian would act, call us right-wing conspirators, declare a state of emergency. . .'