The Stone Leopard (9 page)

`They will come for me one day,' Lasalle remarked crisply. `Shabby little Corsican thugs with knives in their pockets. They may try to kidnap me—they may come to kill me. But they will come.'

The one-armed colonel, his left sleeve flapping loose like the broken wing of a bird, was small and spare, and as he fetched drinks from a sideboard he moved with a springy step. Lennox immediately had an impression of enormous energy, of a strong- willed personality likely to dominate any group of people he might be a part of. Fifty-five years old, Lasalle's features were sharp and gaunt, his eyes large and restless, his thin moustache little more than a dark slash. He still had a full head of dark hair and his most prominent feature was a hooked nose. In some ways he reminded Lennox of a miniature version of Charles de Gaulle himself. The colonel handed him a large brandy, raised his own glass. 'To the destruction of the enemies of France!'

`I'll drink to that. . . .' Lennox was watching the colonel carefully. 'Whoever they might be.'

`The Soviet faction inside Paris—led by the Leopard. But first I need to know something about you, about your background. . .

For fifteen minutes he grilled the Englishman. It was the most shrewd and penetrating interrogation Lennox had ever experienced, with a lot of cross-questioning, a lot of jumping backwards and forwards as the Frenchman swiftly absorbed the details of Lennox's life and probed deeper and deeper. 'You have met Marc Grelle ?' he said at one point. 'You are a personal friend of the police prefect then ?' Lennox assured him that this was not so, that they had met only once for an hour in Marseilles during the planning of a counter-terrorist operation. At the end of fifteen minutes Lasalle pronounced himself satisfied.

`You can go into France for me,' he said as though conferring a high honour.

`I'm glad I pass inspection,' Lennox replied ironically, 'but what you may not realize is I haven't made up my mind about you. . .'

`That is necessary ?'

`That is essential. You see—it's going to be my head laid on the block. ..'

Leon Jouvel. Robert Philip. Dieter Wohl.

These were the names of the three witnesses, as Lasalle persisted in calling them, which he wished Lennox to visit and quietly interrogate. 'I'm convinced that one of these three people—all of whom were involved with the Leopard during the war—can tell you something which will lead us to the Communist agent inside Paris today,' the Frenchman said emphatically. 'In any case, as far as I know, they are the only survivors, apart from Annette Devaud—and she is blind. . .'

`Devaud ?' Lennox queried. 'That was the name of the woman who tried to shoot Florian. .

`A common enough name.' Lasalle shrugged and made an impatient gesture with his right hand. 'I see no reason for a connection. And in any case, Annette Devaud, who must be over seventy now, has been blind since the end of the war. A blind person can identify no one positively. Now. . .'

It had started eighteen months earlier—a year before the climactic row with President Florian which ended in the colonel's flight from France. Lasalle had been interrogating a known Communist agent who had infiltrated inside a French army barracks near Marseilles. 'That area is infested with the vermin,' the colonel remarked. Lennox gathered the interrogation had been preceded by a physical session which had reduced the agent, a man called Favel, to a moaning wreck. `While trying to escape from the barracks,' Lasalle explained, `he accidentally shot a sergeant. The men who questioned him before me were the sergeant's friends. So . .'

An hour after Lasalle had begun his own interrogation just before midnight Favel had started rambling on about the wartime Resistance. At first Lasalle had thought this was a trick to veer the interrogation into other channels; later he had become interested as the prisoner made repeated references to the Leopard. At intervals—the interrogation had continued for over twelve hours—the broken man had told a strange story about a man who would one day rise from the dead to liberate France from the capitalist yoke. This man, had, in fact, already risen from the dead and was walking the streets of Paris.

`It seemed absolute nonsense for a long time,' Lasalle explained. 'I thought I was dealing with a religious maniac— which seemed odd for a dedicated Communist—and then he told me he had been hiding in the barracks....'

`Hiding ?' Lennox queried.

`Hiding from his own people,' Lasalle said impatiently. 'I had got it the wrong way round—instead of trying to spy for the Communist cell in Marseilles he was fleeing from them. What better place to hole up than in a military barracks—or so he thought. They were trying to kill him—I think because he knew too much.'

Tut he did know something?'

`He said it was no common spy he was talking about—a civil servant who photographs documents at dead of night and passes over microfilm inside a cigar or some such absurdity. No, Favel was referring to a highly placed mandarin close to the centre of power. To a man who for years had waited and worked his way up steadily—without having a single contact with any Communist organization. That is the genius of the idea—with no Communist contacts it is impossible to detect him.'

'Favel named the man ?'

Lasalle made a gesture of resignation. 'He did not know who he was—only that he existed. What finally convinced me was a tragedy. The day after I completed my interrogation, Favel escaped from the barracks—twenty-four hours later he was found at the bottom of a cliff with his neck broken.'

`His so-called friends caught up with him?'

`I'm convinced of it,' Lasalle replied. 'I started my own investigation and eventually I came up with those three names on the list. I visited one of them—Leon Jouvel in Strasbourg— but I think my position frightened him. I came away feeling sure that he knew something. Shortly after that, I had my great confrontation with Florian and had to flee my own country. . .

Lennox asked other questions. Both Jouvel and Philip, the two Frenchmen on the list of witnesses, lived in Alsace. Was it a coincidence ? 'Not at all,' Lasalle explained. 'The Leopard favoured men from Alsace in his Resistance group—he believed they were more reliable than the more excitable men from the Midi.' The colonel smiled sarcastically. 'He was, I am sure, a realist in everything.'

`But the Leopard is dead,' Lennox pointed out. 'He died in Lyon in 1944. . . '

`Which is the clever part of the whole thing. Don't you see ?'

`Frankly, I don't,' Lennox replied.

`The man has to have a code-name for the few occasions when he is referred to in Soviet circles. So they chose the name of a man known to be dead. What is the immediate reaction if the name ever slips out? It must be nonsense. He is dead! My God, what was your own reaction ?'

`I see what you mean,' Lennox said slowly. 'You're saying there is . . .'

`A second Leopard—who was in some way connected with the Leopard's original Resistance group. This unknown man would easily think of using this name—if he once worked with the man whose name he has stolen. One of those three witnesses on that list should be able to clear up the mystery. . .

`Who is this Dieter Wohl ?' Lennox inquired. 'I see he lives in Freiburg now. He's a German, of course ?'

`Dieter Wohl was the Abwehr officer who tried to track down the Leopard during the war. He knew a great deal about the Resistance in the Lozere. . .

Lasalle had thought more than once of approaching Dieter Wohl himself; unable to get back into France to interview the two Alsace witnesses he could easily have travelled to Freiburg. He had decided against the idea in case the BND heard of the visit.

`They might have said that I was interfering in German affairs,' he remarked. 'I cannot afford to be thrown out of the Federal Republic at this stage. Now, answer me one question quite simply. With those names and addresses, will you go into France ?'

`Yes.'

While Lennox was talking to Col Lasalle near Saarbrucken, two hundred miles away to the west in Paris Marc Grelle was arriving at the American Embassy on the Avenue Gabriel. As he walked through the gateway at 6 pm he was well aware he was being photographed by agents of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire—political counter-intelligence. He even knew where the camera with the telescopic lens was situated, hidden inside the large blue Berliet truck parked by the sidewalk opposite the Embassy. Uniformed gendarmes lounged round the truck, giving the impression they were a reserve force, standing by in case of trouble. By the following morning the photo would lie on the desk of the Minister of the Interior. Attached to the print would be a form filled in to show the details.
1800 hours. Visitor: Marc Grelle, police prefect of Paris
. Later, the time of his departure would be duly recorded.

Going inside the embassy, Grelle signed the visitors' book and went upstairs where he was relieved of his raincoat by a girl with a Texan accent. 'I was once in Dallas,' he told her, `on the day President Kennedy was assassinated.' He went into the large room overlooking the Place de la Concorde where the reception was being held. The room was a blaze of lights, a babble of voices, and the curtains were drawn, presumably to mask the room against the probing telephoto lens inside the Berliet truck. Grelle hovered at the edge of the crowd, getting his bearings and noting who was present.

`That computer-like mind of yours must have listed all the guests by now,' a voice behind him suggested, 'so why don't we slip away into the library where the real stuff is kept ?' David Nash grinned and shook hands when the prefect turned round. `I had to come to Paris, so . . .'

`You thought we could chat? Or, you came to Paris so we could chat ?' Grelle inquired in English.

`That policeman's mind of yours !' Nash led the way out of the reception room and across the corridor into another room lined with books. Shutting the door, he turned the key which was already on the inside. 'Now we won't be disturbed. . . . Pouring a large Scotch, Nash handed it to the prefect, ushered him into an armchair and perched himself on the arm of another chair as he raised his glass. 'Here's to France. May she survive for ever, including the next two months. . .

`Why shouldn't she ?' Grelle peered at the American over the top of his glass. 'Or is it a state secret? You still hold the same post as when we last met, I presume ?'

`The same post.' Nash leaned forward, keeping his voice low. `I come here as a friend, not as an agent of my government. As a friend of France, too. Marc, have you ever heard of the Leopard ?'

Aware that Nash was studying him, Grelle sipped his Scotch and kept his face expressionless. He mopped his lips with a silk handkerchief before he replied. 'The leopard ? An animal with a spotted coat which can be dangerous. . .'

`This one is dangerous,' the American agreed. 'He's sitting behind a government desk not a mile from where we are at the moment. Let me tell you a story. . . .' Nash told the story well —about a Russian defector who had arrived in New York only a week earlier, who had been rushed from Kennedy airport to a secret camp in the Adirondack mountains where Nash himself had questioned the man. The following morning—before the interrogation had been resumed—the Russian had been shot by a long-distance sniper with a telescopic rifle. 'It happened while I was walking beside him,' the American went on. 'One moment he was walking beside me, the next he was sprawled on the track with a bullet through his skull. . .'

Grelle went on sipping his Scotch, listening with the same expressionless face as the American related how the high-grade Russian had told him about a French Communist agent— adopting the name of the wartime Resistance leader Leopard —who for over thirty years had worked himself up to become one of the top three men in France. 'The Leopard could be any one of your top cabinet ministers,' Nash concluded. 'Roger Danchin, Alain Blanc. . .

Grelle drank the rest of his Scotch in two gulps, placed the empty glass on the table and stood up. His voice was crisp and cold.

`The lengths to which the American government has gone recently to smear our president have been absurd, but what you have just suggested is outrageous. . .'

Nash stood up from the chair. 'Marc, we don't have to blow our tops. . .

`Your so-called story is a tissue of fabrication from beginning to end,' Grelle went on icily. 'Clearly you are trying to spread a lying rumour in the hope that it will damage the president because you don't like his speeches. . .