The Stone leopard

CHAPTER THREE

On the evening of Sunday, 19 December, Grelle waited in his office for Boisseau to return from Strasbourg, but as the hours ticked away the police prefect was far from idle. For a good part of the day he had been immersed in tightening up the security arrangements for the presidential motorcade drive to Charles de Gaulle Airport-or Roissy as it was often called -on the morning of 23 December when Florian departed for Russia.

Marc Grelle had made himself an expert on death by assassination-on the methods used, on the people who used them. He had made a particular study of the thirty-one attempts which had been made to assassinate General de Gaulle, on the reasons why they might have succeeded, on the reasons why they failed. The list of techniques employed was formidable.

Killing by remote detonation of explosive charges under a moving vehicle; killing by sniper armed with rifle and telescopic sight; killing at close quarters-by stabbing, by shooting; killing by imposture-by use of a stolen military or police uniform; killing by motor-bike outrider approaching presi- dential car; killing by suicidal air collision-one plane crashing into another carrying the president; killing by absurdly exotic methods-using a camera-gun, using explosive-carrying dogs trained to run to a certain spot where the president was due to speak; and killing by motorized ambush.

The last method was the favourite, and Grelle could see why. The motorized ambush was most deadly because it used highly-trained thugs at short range, men who could react at the last split second according to circumstances. De Gaulle had, in fact, come closest to death when his motorcade was ambushed by other cars. With this catalogue of assassination attempts in his head, Grelle, aided by the tireless Boisseau, set out to counter every one of them. He was still working on the problem when his deputy returned from Strasbourg.

It was nine in the evening, and Boisseau, who had had nothing to eat since lunch, sent out to the corner brasserie for food. He ate his meal at the prefect's desk while he went on reporting about the Strasbourg trip. 'You see,' he continued, Jouvel's suicide is technically sound, no doubt about that, and few people can fake that kind of death. As you know, they would overlook certain details…

`Unless we are confronted with a professional assassin? Which would give rise to all sorts of unpleasant implications…

`What I don't like,' Boisseau remarked, sopping up gravy with a piece of bread, 'is those two men who called on the tart and asked her-quite independently-almost the self-same questions about Jouvel. And that when Jouvel normally had no one calling on him or even interested in him. So, who were those two strangers-to say nothing of the man with the umbrella whom none of the tenants recognized?'

`Face it,' Grelle advised, Jouvel may well have committed suicide and these other people are probably irrelevant. At this end we are getting nowhere yet-neither Roger Danchin nor Alain Blanc have made contact with any known Soviet link. We are at that stage we have encountered on so many cases when everything is a blind alley. We have to wait for a development, a pointer…' He took out from a locked drawer the list of witnesses compiled by Col Lasalle, glancing at it again. Tor all we know the key to the whole thing may be a man we can't even put under surveillance-Dieter Wohl of Freiburg.'

`You could phone Peter Lanz of the BND,' Boisseau suggested. 'He is always very helpful…

`When even here on our home patch we are having to proceed with the secrecy which characterizes conspirators? I dare not start spreading this abroad.' Grelle stretched and yawned. `God, I'm tired. No, we must wait-and hope-for a pointer.'

In a two-storey house beyond the outskirts of Freiburg, the university town on the edge of the Black Forest, the ex Abwehr officer Dieter Wohl, stood by the window of his darkened bedroom as he peered across the fields towards the west, towards France only a few miles away across the Rhine. He was remembering.

A large, well-built man with a strong-jawed face, Wohl was sixty-one years old. As his shrewd blue eyes stared towards Alsace, a faint smile puckered his mouth. It had all been so long ago, so futile. Now there was peace on both sides of the Rhine, thank God; at least he had lived to see that. A retired policeman and widower, Dieter Wohl had plenty of time to think about the past.

It was the banner headline in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung eleven days ago which had first stirred memories, the story about the attempt to assassinate the French president. A shocking business. What had intrigued Wohl had been the name of the woman who had made the attempt, a Lucie Devaud. Curious. That was the name of the woman who had died in the sunken car when the Leopard went into the river. Could there be any connection he wondered?

After reading the newspaper story Wohl had dug out one of his old war diaries from the back of his desk. It had been strictly forbidden by military regulations-to keep a diary- but many soldiers had broken the regulation; even generals and field-marshals who later made a pot of money writing up their memoirs. With all the time in the world on his hands, Wohl read through the whole of the diary for 1944. As he read, it all came back to him.

As a keen young Abwehr officer stationed in the Lozere district of France, Wohl had made up his mind to trap the Leopard. Diligently he picked up every scrap of gossip about the mysterious Resistance leader and recorded it; his passion for secrecy, his remarkable network of agents, his ferocious dog, Cesar-the Leopard's only friend so far as Wohl could gather.

Once-and only once-Wohl had come close to capturing the Leopard when he received a tip-off that his adversary would be driving down a certain country road at a certain time. The ambush was laid on the far side of a bridge over a river the Leopard would have to cross. At this point a thick forest came down steeply to the water's edge and Wohl stationed himself high up among the trees with a pair of field-glasses. It was close to noon on a windy day when he saw the car coming behind a screen of trees, coming at high speed. Through his glasses Wohl saw an image blurred by foliage- and the speed of the approaching vehicle.

`God in Heaven!'

A man was behind the wheel and beside him sat a girl, her hair streaming behind her in the wind. This was something Wohl had not anticipated-a woman in the car-and it worried him as the car came closer to the bridge. She must be a Resistance courier, he imagined. He strained to see detail in his glasses and he was excited. This was the first time anyone had actually seen the Leopard. The trouble was he couldn't see the man's face-everything was blurred by the screen of trees and the vehicle's movement. But he would have to slow down as he came up to the river: there was a sharp bend just before the road went over the bridge. Beyond the far end of the bridge was a road-block.

The Leopard made no effort to slow at all. He was reputed always to move at speed to avoid being shot at. With a scream of tyres and a cloud of dust the vehicle careered round the bend and came up on to the bridge. It was a remarkable piece of driving, Wohl admitted, his eyes glued to the glasses. As the car came out of the dust-cloud half-way across the bridge the Leopard must have seen the road-block. He reacted instantly; still moving at speed he drove into the parapet, smashed through it and went down into the river which at this point was eighteen feet deep. Wohl could hardly believe his eyes as he saw the vehicle disappear and a belated burst of machine-gun fire rattled.

As it plunged the car turned turtle and went down roof first. When it settled on the bottom both the man and the girl must have been upside down as the river surged inside. Wohl was quite sure that the Leopard must now be dead but he took no chances. Using a megaphone he barked out orders and the soldiers began to force their way through the thick under-growth lining the banks. It was three hours later before a breakdown truck equipped with a crane hauled the sunken car slowly to the surface.

Wohl was on the bridge when the car, dripping with water, was swung over and down. He received another shock. There was no trace of the Leopard. But the girl was still there, imprisoned in the front seat, her dark hair plastered to her skull, an attractive girl of about twenty. After a few days, using the Vichy police's fingerprint records, Wohl was able to identify her as Lucie Devaud. The medical examiner told the Abwehr officer that at some recent time she had been delivered of a child.

The incident caused a minor scandal among the Resistance forces which split into two opposing views. Some said that the Leopard had acted correctly, had sacrificed everything to reach his rendezvous on time. Others were not so charitable- Lucie Devaud had a courageous record as a courier-and argued that he could have taken the girl out with him if he hadn't been so concerned to save his own skin. But then the surge of war, the later attempt to set up a Communist Republique du Sud, smothered the incident and it was forgotten, particularly when the Leopard himself was shot dead in Lyon…

Over thirty years later all this came back to Dieter Wohl when he read in the paper the name of the woman who had tried to kill Guy Florian. And by now Wohl himself had started to write his memoirs, so it seemed too good an opportunity to miss-to try and prompt people who might know something into writing him, to furnish more material for his book. On Friday, to December, he wrote a letter to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, referring to his wartime diary and the fact that he was writing his memoirs, and to give his communication an air of authority he mentioned the name of a certain Annette Devaud, who had also been a member of the Leopard's Resistance group, even going so far as to include her last known address of over thirty years ago. To make his letter even more arresting he quoted a sentence from one of Col Lasalle's provocative broadcasts. 'Who is this Lucie Devaud who last night tried to kill a certain European statesman?' At the conclusion of his letter Wohl added a question of his own. Is Annette Devaud still alive in Saverne, I wonder?

Wohl succeeded in his aim even more swiftly than he could have hoped. The letter was printed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday, 1 4 December, and was duly read on the same day by Paul-Henri Le Theule, the Secret Service officer attached to the French Embassy in Bonn. Le Theule, thirty-eight years old and only a child at the war's end, knew nothing about the Leopard, but his eye was caught by the brief reference to Col Rene Lasalle. Hard up for material to pad his next report, he cut out the letter and added it to the meagre pile waiting for the next Paris diplomatic bag.

The bag was delivered to Paris on Saturday, 18 December, but it was only Sunday morning when Roger Danchin, working his way through a pile of paperwork, came across the cutting, which he showed to Alain Blanc who happened to be with him Dictating a memo to the Elysee, Danchin sent both memo and cutting across the road and by lunchtime Guy Florian had seen both documents. At three in the afternoon Soviet Ambassador Leonid Vorin, who had lunched with Alain Blanc, arrived at the Elysee, talked briefly with the president and then hurried back to his embassy in the rue de Grenelle.

Returning to Colmar aboard the turbo-train from Strasbourg at seven on Sunday evening, Lansky hurried the few steps from the station across the place to the Hotel Bristol where he found his two companions waiting impatiently for him in Vanek's bedroom. He told them how he had dealt with Noelle Berger and Vanek was relieved. 'It means Philip is now alone in the house and we may be able to turn his girl's disappearance to our advantage, but we must advance the time of our visit…'

`Why?' asked Lansky. 'Late on a Sunday night would be much safer. ..'

`Because,' Vanek explained with sarcastic patience, 'Philip will soon begin to worry about what has happened to her. If we leave him to worry too long he may call the police…'

While Lansky had been away in Strasbourg the other two men had continued their research on Robert Philip, each of them taking turns to watch No. 8 from a small park further down the Avenue Raymond Poincare while they pretended to feed the birds or to be waiting for someone. And it was because it was difficult to keep Philip's villa under observation from a closer point-and a tribute also to their skill-that they escaped the notice of the occasional patrol-car which came gliding along the avenue while the officer behind the wheel checked on the same villa.

At three in the afternoon, throwing bread for some sparrows, Vanek saw Philip emerge from the house, come down the steps and walk to the gate which he proceeded to lean on while he smoked a cigarette. Slipping behind a tree, Vanek used the monocular glass he always carried to study the Frenchman close up. Under the flashy, camel-hair coat he wore, Vanek noticed between the railings that the Frenchman was still clad in pyjama trousers. On Sundays Philip rarely dressed; slopping about the house in his night-things was his way of relaxing. And also, he was thinking, that when Noelle returned it would be so much easier to flop her on the bed when all he had to divest himself of was pyjamas. Left alone in the house, Philip was lusting for his latest mistress.

`That could be a bit of luck, too,' Vanek informed Brunner later, 'bearing in mind the method we shall adopt…'

It was close to nine o'clock when Brunner walked up the steps leading to the porch of No. 8 and rang the bell. At that hour on a Sunday the snowbound Avenue Raymond Poincare was deserted and very silent. Lights were on behind the curtained bay window at the front and Brunner's ring on the bell brought a quick-but cautious-reaction. A side curtain overlooking the porch was drawn back and Philip stood in the window, still wearing his dressing-gown over his pyjamas. Holding a glass, he stared at Brunner suspiciously, then dropped the curtain. A few moments later the door was opened a few inches and held in that position by a strong chain.

`Mr Robert Philip?' Brunner inquired.

`Yes, What is it?'

Expecting to see Noelle Berger laden with packages, Philip was taken aback by the arrival of this stranger. Brunner presented the Siirete Nationale card he had carried since the Commando had left Tabor.

`Surete, sir. I am afraid I have some bad news about an acquaintance of yours, a young lady. May I come in for a moment?'

Worried as he was about his mistress, Philip was a wary man who had not survived all these years in the half-world of gunrunning by accepting people or identity cards at face value; in fact, he himself had more than a nodding acquaintance with false papers.

`I don't know you,' he said after a moment. 'And it just happens that I know most of the police in Colmar…'

`That doesn't surprise me…' Brunner made an impatient gesture. 'I was transferred here from Strasbourg only last week…'

`Wait there while I get some clothes on…' The door slammed shut in Brunner's face. Inside the hall Philip frowned, sensing something odd about this unknown visitor. He reached for the phone on a side-table and something hard and pipe-like pressed against his back, digging through the silk dressing-gown as a voice spoke quietly. 'If you make a sound I shall shoot you. Take your hand away from that phone. Now, face the wall…' While Brunner was distracting the Frenchman's attention, keeping him at the front of the house, Vanek had gone round the side-path to the back of the house. He had followed the same route earlier-soon after dark when Philip had drawn the curtains over the front windows-and had found the french doors which were locked and without a key in the hole. Now, using the skeleton keys, he had let himself inside and come into the hall while Philip was talking to his unexpected visitor.

`Don't move… Vanek pressed the Luger muzzle against Philip's back again to remind him it existed, then he turned the key in the front door, drew the bolt and removed the chain. Brunner himself turned the handle, came inside and closed the door quickly. 'Fasten it up again,' Vanek ordered. 'No one saw you? Good…'

Prodding Philip up the staircase ahead of him, Vanek waited until they were on the upper landing, then handed the Luger to Brunner and quickly explored the first floor. All the curtains were closed in the darkened bedrooms and he found what he was looking for leading off a large double bedroom at the back -a bathroom. Switching on the light, he studied the room for a moment and then nodded to Brunner who prodded Philip inside his own bathroom. 'What the hell is going on?' the Frenchman blustered. 'The police station is just round the corner and..'

`The Police Nationale headquarters is in the rue de la Montagne Verre which is well over a kilometre from here,' Vanek informed him quietly. 'Now, take off your clothes.'

`My brother and his wife will be calling…'

`The clothes…'

Brunner rammed the Luger barrel hard against him. Philip stripped, taking off dressing-gown and pyjamas until he was standing gross, hairy-chested and naked. Frightened by the coolness of Vanek, he still had some spirit left as he asked again what the hell this was all about.

`Haven't you heard of burglars?' Vanek inquired. 'It is a well known fact that a man without any clothes on is in no position to run about the streets seeking help-especially on a night like this. And before we leave we shall rip out the phone cord. Standard practice. Don't you read the newspapers?'

Telling him they were going to tie his feet to the taps, they made him lie down inside the bath and then Brunner turned on both taps, mingling the water to a medium temperature. The Frenchman, growing more frightened every second, for the third time asked what the hell was going on. It was Vanek who told him.

`We want to know where the safe is,' he said. 'We have been told you have a safe and you are going to tell us where it is…'

`There is no safe…'

`If you don't tell us where it is my colleague will grab hold of your feet and drag you under…'

`There is no safe,' Philip screamed.

`Are you sure?' Vanek looked doubtful, still aiming the Luger at Philip's chest. The bath continued to fill with water at a rapid rate. 'We wouldn't like you to lie to us,' Vanek went on, `and we shall be very annoyed if we search the place and find one…'

`There is no safe! There is money in my wallet in the bedroom-over a thousand francs…'

Brunner switched off both taps and stared at Philip who was now sweating profusely. Bending down, the Czech took hold of the Frenchman's jaw firmly, then pushed his face close to Philip's. Vanek moved to the other end of the bath and took hold of both the Frenchman's ankles. Half-sitting, half-lying in the bath, Philip braced himself, prepared to be dragged under, still protesting there was no safe in the house. Suddenly, he felt the grip on his ankles released as Vanek, in a resigned voice, said, 'I think perhaps he is telling the truth…' Philip relaxed. Brunner jerked the jaw he held in his hand upwards and backwards in a swift, vicious movement and the back of Philip's head struck the bath with a terrible crack. 'He's dead,' Brunner reported as he checked the pulse and then Philip slid under the water and his face dissolved into a wobbling blur.

`The correct sequence,' Vanek commented. 'The medical examiner will confirm he died by striking his head before he immersed himself. Get finished quickly…

Vanek checked the large double bedroom, looking under the bed, on the dressing-table, inside the wardrobe. The few feminine clothes confirmed to him that the girl who had been followed to Strasbourg by Lansky was only a brief visitor, so he set about removing traces of her presence. Taking a suitcase engraved with the initials N.B., he piled in her clothes, her night-things, her cosmetics and six pairs of shoes, her lipstick-stained toothbrush from the bathroom shelf and two lace-edged handkerchiefs from under a pillow. There would still be traces of her presence in the house the police would find, but without clothes they would shrug their shoulders. The last thing Vanek wanted to happen in the next few days was a police dragnet out for a missing woman. He was closing the case when he heard Brunner, who had fetched a pan from the kitchen, scooping out water from the bath and throwing it on the floor. He checked the bathroom before he went downstairs.

`Perfect?' inquired Brunner.

A tablet of soap he had dropped in the bath was muddying the water as it dissolved. Robert Philip had just had a fatal accident, and most accidents happen at home. He had been standing in the bath when he had stepped on the soap tablet, lost his balance and gone crashing down to hit the back of his head. Water had welled over the rim of the bath on to the floor, soaking his pyjamas and dressing-gown. 'I brought up that ash-tray from the living-room,' Brunner remarked. On a stool stood the ash-tray the Czech had carried up in his gloved hand, the burnt-out remnant of the cigarette Philip had left smoking when he answered the door still perched in the lip of the tray.

`Perfect,' Vanek replied, being careful to leave on the bathroom light as he followed Brunner downstairs, carrying Noelle Berger's suitcase; then he switched off the living-room light. Left on all night, it might well have attracted attention, unlike the bathroom which was at the back of the house.

They left by the way Vanek had entered the house-by the french door at the back. Once outside, they re-locked the door with the skeleton keys, and then Vanek waited with the suitcase in the little park until Brunner arrived with the Citroen. It took them only twenty minutes to drive to the banks of the Rhine, and on the way they stopped briefly at a deserted building-site while Vanek collected a few bricks to add weight to the suitcase. A few minutes later he watched the case sink into the swift-flowing current, took over the wheel from Brunner, and by 10.30 pm they were back inside their bedrooms at the Bristol, ready for a night's sleep. They would be leaving early in the morning-on their way to pay a visit on Dieter Wohl in Germany.

In Strasbourg, Alan Lennox woke early on Monday morning, got out of bed at the Hotel Sofitel, opened his door and picked up the local paper he had ordered from the hall porter. He read it in his dressing-gown, drinking the coffee he had ordered from room service. He hardly noticed the banner headline as he searched through the inner pages for a report on Leon Jouvel's suicide, which he found reported at greater length than he had expected; there was a shortage of local news after the weekend. The details it gave were hardly more illuminating than those he had heard from Louise Vallon, Jouvel's assistant, but an Inspector Rochat was mentioned as being in charge of the case and the address of the police station was given.

Finishing his coffee and croissants, Lennox showered and shaved, dressed and paid his bill. Snow was drifting down from a leaden sky as he took a cab to the station where he deposited his bag in the luggage store; Colmar was only thirty minutes away by train and he confidently expected that in one day he should be able to find and talk to Robert Philip, assuming the Frenchman was not away. He was just in time to climb aboard the 9.15 am turbo-train for Colmar before it began moving south. As the train left Strasbourg and moved across the flat plain with glimpses of the Vosges mountains to the west, Lennox read the banner headline story he had skipped over in his bedroom. Another international crisis was brewing.

The Turkish Naval Command in the Bosphorus had recently received a long signal from their opposite numbers at the Russian Black Sea port of Odessa. The signal informed the Turks that a very large convoy, code-named K. I2, would be making passage through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles en route for the Mediterranean. This was in accord with the long-time agreement whereby Soviet Russia always requests formal permission before sending ships through the Turkish-controlled straits.

As always, the Russians specified the make-up of the convoy, and this so startled the Turkish naval commander that he phoned Ankara urgently. The Defence Minister in the Turkish capital was woken in the middle of the night and he immediately reported the signal to NATO headquarters in Brussels. It was decided as a matter of policy to leak the news to the press. What caused the ripple of alarm was the size of the convoy. The Soviet signal had specified six heavy cruisers (four of them missile-bearing), one aircraft carrier, twelve destroyers and fifteen large transports. The size of the convoy was unprecedented. What could the fifteen large transports be carrying? Where was this enormous convoy headed for?

As the train pulled in to Colmar, Lennox folded up his newspaper and forgot about the scare story. After all, it had nothing to do with the job he was working on, and by now his whole attention was fixed on his coming interview with Robert Philip.

By eight o'clock on Saturday night, 18 December, every defence minister in western Europe and north America had received a copy of the Soviet signal, including Alain Blanc, who paid it rather more attention than Alan Lennox. Within only five days the president was due to fly to Soviet Russia and Blanc was not at all happy about the signal. On Sunday morning he had a brief interview with Guy Florian, who took a quite different view.

`Certainly they would never dream of precipitating a world crisis on the eve of my departure for Moscow,' he told Blanc. `They are much too anxious to cement relations with us as the major west European power…'

Alain Blanc left the Elysee unconvinced and even more disturbed than before he had arrived.

Why had Florian suddenly become so complacent about the intentions of Soviet Russia?

Arriving at Colmar, Lennox purchased a street-guide at the station kiosk and found that the Avenue Raymond Poincare was only a few metres away from where he stood. When he started walking down the avenue he received an unpleasant shock: two patrol-cars -with uniformed policemen standing beside them were parked outside a square-looking two-storey villa. He felt quite sure this would be No. 8 even before he drew level with the villa on the opposite side of the street and continued walking. Yes, it was No. 8. It was a repeat of the same scene he had witnessed outside No. 49 rue de l'Epine only the day before.

Fifteen minutes later-having walked in a circle to avoid re-passing the police stationed outside the villa-he walked into the bar of the Hotel Bristol opposite the station.

`What are all those police cars doing in the Avenue Raymond Poincare?' he asked casually as he sipped his cognac.

The barman was only too eager to pass on information; in a small town like Colmar the grapevine is reliable and swift. A local bigwig, Robert Philip, had died in his bath the previous evening, he confided. The tragedy had been discovered when his cleaning woman had arrived to find the front door still bolted and chained. 'She had a key,' the barman explained, `so Philip always undid the bolts and chain first thing and then she could let herself in. The police found him floating in his bath. He won't be running after skirt any more, that one…'

Lennox ordered another drink but the barman had little more information. Except that the police had been to the hotel asking a lot of questions about two men who had stayed there for two nights.

`They had a Citroen,' the barman went on, 'according to the night porter. I didn't see them myself-I don't think they ever came in here. Personally, I can't see the connection…'

As Lennox walked out of the bar two uniformed policemen came in, which decided him to leave Colmar as rapidly as possible; there was a fifty-fifty chance the talkative barman might relay to them his recent conversation with the stranger who had just left. Crossing the place to the station, he bought a one-way ticket to Lyon and then boarded a train for Strasbourg which had just come in. When the ticket collector came through the train he used the return to Strasbourg he already had in his possession. Of the three wartime survivors who were once familiar with the Leopard there was now only one left: Dieter Wohl of Freiburg.

Unlike Inspector Rochat of Strasbourg, Inspector Dorre of Colmar was only forty and he took nothing for granted. Saturnine-faced, impatient, a fast-talking man, he phoned Boisseau two hours after the death of Robert Philip had been discovered, explaining that there had been no surveillance on Philip after the Frenchman had returned home apart from observation by a routine patrol-car. 'We are very short of men,' he went on, 'so I was unable to obtain personnel for a proper surveillance, which is regrettable…'

At the other end of the line Boisseau guessed that someone higher up had been unhelpful-because they had resented Paris's intrusion into their backyard. This time he had neither the necessity nor even the opportunity to ask probing questions: Dorre went on talking like a machine gun.

`According to the medical examiner and my own observation there is no doubt at all that Robert Philip died by accident when he slipped and caught the back of his skull on the edge of his bath. He was alone in the house at the time and there are no signs of forcible entry or anything which would indicate foul play-although there had been a woman in the house, but probably only for a few hours. Philip was like that…'

There was a brief pause, then the voice started up again. `Pardon, but I have a cold and had to blow my nose. So, technically, it is an accidental death. For myself; I do not believe it for a moment. I have heard that another man you also requested to be put under surveillance-a Leon Jouvel hanged himself in Strasbourg less than forty-eight hours ago. I have also heard-I was in Strasbourg yesterday-that my colleagues are satisfied that Jouvel committed suicide. For me, it is too much. M. Boisseau-two men you ask to have put under surveillance both die in their homes by suicide, by accident in less than two days. I tell you, there has to be something wrong.. .'

`Is there anything specific..' Boisseau began, but he got no further.

`Pardon, Mr Director-General, but I have not finished. A woman who knows-knew-Robert Philip well, drove past his villa yesterday morning and saw a blue Citroen parked opposite his villa. Two men were trying to repair the car, but she thought they were watching Philip's villa. She reported it to me when she saw the patrol-cars outside this morning, assuming there had been yet another burglary…

`Any registration number?' Boisseau managed to interject.

`Unfortunately, no, but I have not finished,' Dorre continued. 'It occurred to me to check with all the local hotels and we find that two men arrived at the hotel nearest the station at 9.30 on Saturday night. The hotel, incidentally, is no more than a few metres away from the villa of the late Robert Philip. They arrived in a blue Citroen and we have the registration number. It is being circulated at this moment. Also, the descriptions of the two men. There may be no connection but I do not like this death at all, despite its technical perfection…'

`If it were not an accident then,' Boisseau hazarded, 'it would have to be the work of highly-skilled professionals?'

`They would have to be trained assassins,' Dorre said bluntly, `because if I am right-and I do not say I am-then presumably Leon Jouvel's death was also arranged, and again there was technical perfection. You must not think I am a romantic,' he insisted, 'trying to turn every event into a crime, but I repeat, two men under surveillance dying so quickly does not smell of roses to me, sir. And,' he went on, once again preventing Boisseau from speaking, 'the geography is interesting, is it not?'

`The geography?'

`It is not so very far to drive from Strasbourg to Colmar. I will let you know as soon as we get information on the car registration of the Citroen…'

Vanek, driving at speed, but always keeping just inside the legal limit, reached the Boulevard de Nancy in Strasbourg by nine in the morning, one hour before Inspector Dorre had circulated the car registration number. Handing back the Citroen to the Hertz agent, he walked out again and went into the restaurant where he had dropped Brunner and Lansky while he got rid of the vehicle.

`We've used that car quite long enough,' he told the two men, 'and two visits is more than enough by the same mode of transport.'

Refusing to allow them to finish their drinks, he took them outside where they again separated. With Brunner he took a cab to Strasbourg station, leaving Lansky to follow in a second vehicle. They joined forces again at the station but they each bought their tickets separately. Boarding the train by himself while the other two men went into a different coach, Lansky put his bag on the rack and lit a cigarette. Within fifteen minutes the train had crossed the Rhine bridge and was stopping in Kehl.

The Soviet Commando had arrived in Germany.