The Stone leopard

CHAPTER FOUR

Monday was a bad day for Lennox, who never forgot that he was travelling with forged papers. Arriving back at Strasbourg station, intending to collect his suitcase from the baggage store and then take another train across the Rhine into Germany, he immediately noticed signs of intense police activity. There was a uniformed policeman on the platform as he alighted from the train, a young and alert man who was obviously scrutinizing all passengers as they walked past him to descend the exit steps.

In the main hall there were more police-some of them Lennox felt sure in plain clothes-and when he approached the luggage store two gendarmes stood by the counter, checking people's papers as they withdrew their luggage. Lennox walked away from the store and went inside the glassed-in cafe which fronted on the Place de la Gare. Sitting down at a table he ordered coffee, quite unaware that he was in the same cafe Lansky had waited in the previous Saturday evening before paying his final call on Leon Jouvel. While he drank his coffee Lennox watched the station and what he saw was not encouraging.

Another police van arrived, disgorging a dozen more policemen who ran inside the main hall. The energetic Inspector Dorre of Colmar had been in touch with his Strasbourg colleagues-Vanek's Citroen had now been traced to the Hertz car-hire branch in the Boulevard de Nancy-and Inspector Rochat's superiors, nervous now of a monumental blunder, co-operated fully. The abandonment of the car logically led them to the assumption that the recent hirers must now be travelling by train or air. A massive surveillance operation was put into action at the railway station and near-by airport. Ironically, the dragnet thrown out to trap the Soviet Commando was endangering Lennox.

It is one thing to slip across a border with false papers; it is quite a different kettle of fish to risk being checked carefully when an emergency dragnet is under way. Lennox paid for his coffee, walked across the Place de la Gare to the bus station, and jumped on the first crowded bus leaving. It happened to be going to Haguenau, a place he had never heard of, so he bought a ticket which would take him the whole route. The earliest he could risk crossing over into Germany would be the following day; dragnets are at their most vigilant during the first twenty-four hours. And the big problem would be where to spend the night: when the police are really looking for someone they check every hotel, even phoning those outlying places they cannot easily reach.

Lennox caught a late evening bus back from Haguenau to Strasbourg, and the first thing he noticed when he alighted at the Place de la Gare was the line of police vans drawn up outside the station. Early that morning, reading through the newspaper to find the report on Leon Jouvel's death, he had noticed a reference to an all-night session of the European Parliament being held in the city. After eating dinner in a back street restaurant, he took a cab to the Parliament building. His papers, which showed him as a reporter, readily gave him admittance and once inside he settled down in the press gallery to his own all-night session.

Before taking the cab to the European Parliament he had slipped into a hotel washroom where he had shaved with equipment he had bought in Haguenau; it might not have been wise to present an unshaven appearance inside the august precincts of Europe's talking shop. The precaution turned out to be unnecessary-there were few other reporters in the press gallery and at times, as the dreary debate droned on and on, Lennox was able to snatch an hour or so of sleep. Checking his watch at frequent intervals, he waited while the night passed on leaden feet. In the morning he would try once again to cross the Rhine into the Federal Republic of Germany.

It was Inspector Jacques Dorre (who in later years rose to the rank of Commissioner), who finally alerted Marc Grelle. When the prefect received Boisseau's report of his conversation with Colmar he personally phoned Dorre, who now had more information. He was able to tell Grelle that the Citroen which had transported two men to the hotel in Colmar had been handed in to the Hertz branch in the Boulevard de Nancy, Strasbourg.

`Yes,' he further confirmed, 'the description of the man who returned the car corresponds with the description of one of the two men who stayed at the Hotel Bristol on the nights of 18 and 19 December-and on the 19th Robert Philip died in his bath…

`If these two men-Jouvel and Philip-were murdered,' Grelle suggested to Dorre, 'it has to be the work of a professional assassin then? No amateur could fake both deaths so convincingly, you agree?'

`I agree,' Dorre replied crisply. 'But it appears there is a team of at least two assassins on the move-maybe even three men…

Grelle took a tighter grip on the phone. 'How do you make that out ?' he demanded.

`I personally checked the register at the Bristol. Ten minutes after the first two men-Duval and Bonnard-booked in, a third man, Lambert, took a room also. There is nothing to link these three men together-except that they all arrived on the night of the 18th and departed on the morning of the l0th, which is early today, of course. The point is, at this time of the year the hotel was almost empty…

Grelle thanked him for his co-operation and put down the receiver. 'There could be some kind of assassination team on the move in Alsace,' he told Boisseau. 'It's all theory, but if it were true who the hell could they be?'

`Only Lasalle and the Englishman, Lennox, have that list, presumably,' Boisseau pointed out. 'Surely Lasalle is not wiping out his own witnesses? That doesn't make any sense at all. The only thing which would make sense is if someone employed by the Leopard were doing the job…

`But the Leopard can't have the list…'

Grelle stopped and the two men stared at each other in silence. An hour later the indefatigable Dorre was back on the line again. He was working in close touch with his colleagues in Strasbourg, he explained, and at his suggestion Rochat had started contacting every hotel in the city. The names Duval, Bonnard and Lambert had soon been tracked down. The first two had spent the night of Friday, 17 December, at the Hotel Sofitel, while Lambert had slept at the Terminus, and it was during the evening of 18 December that Leon Jouvel had hanged himself.

`So,' Dorre pointed out, 'these same three men-and again the descriptions, though vague, tally-then moved down here to Colmar late on the evening of the 18th and were in the town when Robert Philip died. How far do you stretch the long arm of coincidence without breaking it?'

`That's it!' Grelle snapped. 'When your descriptions of these three men arrive I'll circulate them throughout the whole of France-and we have their names. I want that trio detained and questioned the moment they surface again…'

On the night of 20 December it was dark by six o'clock in the Freiburg area as Dieter Wohl stood looking out between the curtains of his unlit bedroom. Wohl felt quite at home in the dark, possibly a relic of his wartime years when he had so often observed a suspect house from behind an unlit window. Wohl was not a nervous man, even though he lived alone in his two-storey house perched by itself at the roadside three kilometres outside Freiburg, but at the moment he was puzzled Why had a car stopped just short of his house and stayed there at this hour?

Overnight there had been a weather change; the snow had melted, the temperature had risen, and now the sky was broken cloud with moonlight shining through, illuminating the lonely country road and the trees in the fields beyond. Most people would not have heard the car, but ex-policeman Wohl-he had joined the force after the war-had the ears of a cat. A black Mercedes SL 230, he noted by the light of the moon. One shadowy figure sat behind the wheel while his two passengers had got out and were pretending to examine the motor. Why did the word 'pretending' leap into his head? Because although they had the bonnet up they kept glancing at his house and looking all round them as though spying out the land. Their glances were fleeting-so fleeting that probably only a trained observer like Wohl would have noticed them.

`My imagination is running away with me,' he murmured.

Below him in the road one of the men left the car and made his way into a field alongside the house, his hand at his flies.

He's just gone for a pee, Wohl decided. Leaving the front bedroom, still moving around in the dark, he went into the side bedroom where the curtains had not been drawn; keeping to the back of the room, he watched the man perform against a hedge. It was all perfectly innocent, except that the man relieving himself kept glancing at the back garden and up at the side of the house. Well hidden in the shadows, Wohl waited until the man had finished and returned to the car. A moment later the two men closed the hood as Wohl watched from the front bedroom, climbed back inside the Mercedes and the driver tried the engine. It sparked first time and drove off towards Freiburg. I must be getting old, Wohl thought, seeing sinister things where none exist. He went downstairs to continue work on his memoirs. Half an hour later the phone rang.

`Herr Wohl? Herr Dieter Wohl? Good evening. This is the Morgenthau Research Institute, a market research organization. We are carrying out research connected with a campaign to increase state pensions. You have been selected..'

The researcher, a man called Bruckner, checked Wohl's status, noted that he was a widower living alone, that he owned his house, that he never took a holiday, and a number of other pertinent questions. Thanking Wohl profusely, the caller said he might wish to visit Wohl but he would first phone for an appointment. Would any of the next three evenings be convenient? It would? Excellent…'

Putting down the phone Wohl went back to his desk in the front living-room and settled down again to the arduous task of completing the introduction to his memoirs. But he found it difficult to concentrate; his suspicious mind kept going back to the telephone call.

Only eight hours earlier Vanek had phoned the special Paris number from Kehl. Each day, since arriving in Munich-with the exception of the Sunday in Colmar-he had phoned the number his trainer, Borisov, had given him from a post office- and each day there had been no new instruction passed over to him. Phoning from Kehl, he had anticipated the same dead call. Hearing the same voice and name-Jurgensen-repeat the number at the other end Vanek identified himself.

`This is Salicetti…'

`There is a development,' the voice said quickly. 'At the Freiburg branch you must collect a wartime diary and the manuscript of the customer's memoirs. Understood?'

`Understood…'

`Then you must visit another customer-note the address. A Madame Annette Devaud, Saverne…' Jurgensen spelt out the name of the town. 'It is in Alsace…

`That's a vague address…'

`That's all we have. Good-bye!'

Vanek checked his watch. The call had taken only thirty seconds. Quite calm while he had been making the call, the Czech swore to himself as he looked out of the phone booth to where people were queuing up to buy postage stamps. The new development was not to his liking at all; it meant that when they had made the visit to Freiburg they would have to re-cross the border back into France. And it was now 20 December, which gave them only seventy-two hours to complete the job.

Alan Lennox crossed the border to Kehl on the morning of Tuesday, 21 December. At Strasbourg station the dragnet had been relaxed, although still partly in operation. After the initial burst of activity-which brought no result-the resentment felt by the local police at Paris's interference in their affairs began to surface again, especially since there was a terrorist alert-later proved to be unfounded-at Strasbourg airport. Men were rushed to the airport and the surveillance at the railway station was reduced.

Collecting his bag from the luggage store, Lennox boarded a local train, later passed through the frontier control without incident-no one was looking for a man called Bouvier-and arrived in Kehl. He immediately put through a call to Peter Lanz at the special Bonn number he had been given and-in a roundabout way-told the BND chief everything that had happened. 'The two French witnesses have died suddenly, one might say violently-within twenty-four hours of each other. One of them partially identified our animal impersonator… by voice alone, I emphasize… Guy Florian.'

Lanz adopted an off-hand tone, as though discussing something of minor importance. 'You would say your witness was reliable? After all, we do have other depositions…'

`It is by no means certain,' Lennox replied.

`And your next move?'

`Peter, the third witness lives in Freiburg-I didn't mention it before, but I'm going to see him now. Yes, one of your countrymen. No, I'd sooner not mention names.'

`In that case,' Lanz said crisply, 'I will be in Freiburg myself this evening. You will be able to contact me at the Hotel Colombi. Look after yourself. And if that is all, I have to go to a meeting which is urgent…'

Franz Hauser, recently elected Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, agreed to see Peter Lanz at the Palais Schaumburg at 11 am, which was only one hour after Lennox had phoned from Kehl. Immersed in work-Hauser seldom got to bed before midnight-he had now asked Lanz to make his temporary headquarters in Bonn instead of at Pullach in Bavaria. 'I need you across the hall from me the way things are shaping up in Europe,' he informed the BND chief.

Small, neat and wiry, Hauser had been elected on a platform of taking the strongest measures against terrorists, the urban guerrillas who were still plaguing Germany. He had also preached the gospel that now the Americans had withdrawn from Europe the continent must protect itself. 'Combining with our friends, France, Great Britain and our other allies we must build up such strength that the commanders of the Red Army will know Europe can only be their graveyard if ever they make the mistake of crossing the frontiers…

At eleven o'clock promptly Lanz was ushered into his office and Hauser, a man who hated formality, came round his desk to sit alongside the security chief. 'Is there information from the Englishman, Lennox?' he inquired. He listened for ten minutes while Lanz explained what had happened, his small alert face puckered in concentration. 'If this links up with the movement of Soviet convoy K. 12,' he commented, 'then we may be on the eve of a catastrophe. The Russians are striking before we can build up our strength.'

`You do not really believe it, sir?' Lanz protested. 'I mean that Florian could be this Communist Resistance chief, the Leopard?'

`No, that is impossible,' Hauser agreed. Tut it is no longer beyond the realms of possibility that one of his key cabinet ministers may be. And then there is the fact that the Leopard was not found when his grave was disinterred near Lyon. How did you hear about that, by the way?'

`A contact we have across the Rhine…'

`All right, keep your secrets. What disturbs me are the growing rumours of a coup d'etat in Paris. Supposing the Leopard is Alain Blanc, Minister of National Defence-might he not be planning to seize power while Florian is away in Moscow?'

`That hadn't occurred to me,' Lanz admitted.

'Is there some huge conspiracy afoot?' Hauser murmured. `If Moscow is co-operating with the Leopard might they not have asked Florian to Moscow to get him out of the way while the Leopard takes over in France? Why is that Soviet convoy proceeding into the Mediterranean at this moment? Everything seems to be moving towards some climax. We need more information, Lanz. Immediately…'

Arriving by train at Freiburg, Lennox left his bag at the station, checked the phone directory to make sure Dieter Wohl was still living at the address given on the list, and then phoned the German. He introduced himself as Jules Jean Bouvier, a reporter on the French newspaper Le Monde. His paper was about to embark on a series of the French wartime Resistance, with particular reference to operations in the Lozere. He believed that Herr Wohl had served in this area during the war, so…'

Wohl was hesitant at first, trying to decide whether seeing Bouvier would help him with his memoirs, then it struck him that a little advance publicity could do no harm, so he agreed. Lennox took a cab to the ex-Abwehr officer's remote house and Wohl was waiting for him at the door. A cautious man, Wohl sat his visitor down in the living-room and then asked for some identification. Lennox produced his papers. 'Anyone can get a press card printed,' he said easily.

It took half an hour to coax Wohl into a trusting frame of mind, but when Lennox mentioned the Leopard he saw a flicker in the German's eyes. 'This is something I am concentrating on,' Lennox explained. 'I find it excellent copy-the mystery surrounding the Leopard's real identity. It was never cleared up, was it?'

Wohl went over to his desk where part of a hand-written manuscript lay alongside a worn, leather-bound diary. For fifteen minutes he told Lennox in precise detail all the steps he had taken to track down the Resistance leader during 1944. Lennox had filled a dozen pages of his notebook with shorthand, had decided that the German really had no information of value, when Wohl mentioned the incident when he had almost ambushed the Leopard. At the end of the story he gave the name of the girl who had died in the submerged car. Lucie Devaud.

`It was a shocking business,' Wohl remarked, 'leaving the girl to drown like that. The car was in eighteen feet of water, my men were some distance from where it went over the bridge. I'm convinced he could have saved her had he tried. He didn't try…'

`Lucie Devaud,' Lennox repeated. 'That was the name of the woman who tried to kill Guy Florian. I suppose there's no possible connection?'

`I wondered about that myself,' Wohl admitted. 'Annette Devaud was very close to the Leopard-she was in charge of his brilliant team of couriers. I understand she went blind soon after the war…

Lennox sat very still, saying nothing. Col Rene Lasalle had made a passing reference to Annette Devaud, dismissing her as of no importance because of her blindness. Could the French colonel have slipped up here-if Annette had indeed been so close to the Leopard?

`I wrote to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last week,' Wohl continued, 'and I mentioned the incident of the drowned girl. I also mentioned that another Devaud-Annette-who was involved with the Leopard, might still be alive in France. I even gave her last-known address, which perhaps I should not have done. Here it is. Annette Devaud, Woodcutter's Farm, Saverne, Alsace. It was a long time ago but some French people stay in one place for ever…'

Wohl showed Lennox the address at the back of the war diary where he had underlined it several times. 'Living alone as I do,' he said apologetically, 'I get funny ideas. Only last night I thought some people were watching my house. And then there was that peculiar phone call from the market research people…' As he went on talking, Lennox listened.

`… in fact, Wohl only mentioned it in passing, but considering what happened in Strasbourg and Colmar, it just made me wonder…' At four in the afternoon Lennox had met Peter Lanz in a bedroom of the Hotel Colombi in Freiburg soon after the BND chief had flown there from Bonn, and now he was telling the German about his meeting with Dieter Wohl. Earlier, Lanz had told the Englishman about the opening up of the Leopard's grave in a forest near Lyon, about how the French police had found only the skeleton of a hound inside the Resistance leader's coffin.

`This is what has turned a vague disquiet into alarm and crisis,' the BND official explained. 'It now seems probable that Lasalle had been right all along-that somewhere in Paris a top Communist is working close to Florian, maybe only waiting for the president to leave the capital for his visit to Moscow..

`I suppose it's confidential-how you heard about the exhumation of the Leopard's grave?' Lennox hazarded.

`It's confidential,' the German assured him.

He saw no advantage in revealing to Lennox that it was Col Lasalle who had passed the information to him. And Lanz himself had no inkling of the colonel's source which had passed on the news to Lasalle. Georges Hardy, police prefect of Lyon and Marc Grelle's great friend, had for some time disagreed violently with Guy Florian's policies, and to express this disagreement he had been secretly furnishing Lasalle with information about developments inside France.

Lennox had then reported to Lanz on his interview with Dieter Wohl, ending by describing the curious incidents of the previous day the ex-Abwehr officer had described. 'I gather he was looking out of a bedroom window last night in the dark when he saw this car stop outside,' he went on. 'It just reminded me of the man I saw following Leon Jouvel that night in Strasbourg. I suppose it isn't possible that someone has Dieter Wohl under observation? Then there was the peculiar telephone call. After all, two of the three men on Lasalle's list have already died suddenly. And it's damned lonely where he lives…

`If by a long chance you are right,' Lanz suggested, 'this could be a breakthrough. If we grab hold of someone trying to put Wohl out of the way, too, we can find out who is behind this whole business.'

`It's a very slim hope,' Lennox warned.

`What else have we got?' Lanz demanded. He was well aware he was grasping at straws, but Chancellor Hauser had said he wanted positive information immediately. From the hotel bedroom he phoned the police chief of Freiburg.

The Mercedes SL 230 hired in Kehl pulled in at the kerb close to Freiburg station and Vanek lit a cigarette as he watched people coming off a train. Nearing the end of the Commando's mission, the Czech had become mistrustful of hotels and the previous night the three men had slept in the car at the edge of the Black Forest, muffled up in travelling rugs they had purchased in Freiburg. Puffy-eyed and irritable, both Brunner and Lansky showed the minor ravages of their improvised night's rest. Vanek, on the other hand, who could get by with only catnapping, looked as fresh as on the morning when they had crossed the Czech border at Gmund.

`We have no time or need for any more research,' Vanek said. `Wohl lives alone. We know he is there every evening. We have checked the immediate surroundings where he lives. We will visit him tonight.'

Inspector Gruber of the Freiburg police took every possible precaution: without knowing what might happen, half- convinced that nothing at all would happen, he mounted a formidable operation. At Lanz's suggestion twenty men, all armed with automatic weapons, had thrown a loose cordon round the vicinity of Dieter Wohl's house-loose because they wanted anyone who approached the house to slip inside the net before they tightened it. So observation had to be from a distance and the nearest policeman was over a hundred metres from the building.

Six men were held back in a special reserve force, hidden inside a truck which had been backed into a field and parked behind trees. Communications were excellent; every man was equipped with a walkie-talkie which linked him with a control truck half a kilometre up the road to Freiburg and inside a field. Inside the truck the BND chief sat with Lennox, Inspector Gruber and the communications technician; a transceiver perched on a flap table linked them with the walkie-talkie sets.

To try and counter the distance problem-the fact that they had to stay well back from Wohl's house-Gruber had issued several men with night-glasses for scanning the house. His orders were specific: they must let anyone who approached reach the house, then close in on command from Gruber personally. Everything really depended on how well the men with the night-glasses were able to operate. And all traffic was to be allowed to pass along the road. Any attempt to set up checkpoints would have been useless: they had no idea who they were waiting for, whether in fact there was anyone to wait for.

`You really think someone is going to come and attack Wohl?' Gruber asked at one stage.

`I have no idea,' Lanz admitted. 'As I have explained to you, there could be political implications behind this operation.' `An urban guerrilla gang?' Gruber pressed.

`Something like that…'

They waited as night fell, as the naked trees faded into the darkness. And with the coming of night the temperature dropped rapidly. Then they had their first hint of trouble; huge banks of mist drifted in off the Rhine, rolling across the fields in waves like a sea shroud, a white fog which seemed to thicken as it approached the house. Very soon the man nearest the house was in difficulties. It wasn't so much that he couldn't see anything; what he could see was deceptive, hard to identify. Lennox, who was growing restless, said he was going outside to take a look at things. It was at this moment that Lanz handed him a 9-mm Luger. 'If you insist on prowling about outside, you had better carry this.'

Several cars and a petrol wagon had already passed down the road, and each one was checked in and out of the section under surveillance by an observer at either end. In the truck Lanz and Gruber were careful about this as the reports came in-especially since the mist had arrived. 'If one of those cars doesn't come out at the other end we're going to have to move damned fast,' Gruber remarked. 'This mist is something I could have done without…'

Worried, Lanz checked his watch.

`I'm almost hoping no one comes,' he said. 'We could have left Wohl inside a trap.'

Gruber shook his head. `Wohl took the decision himself when we consulted him,' he said. 'And remember, he's an old policeman…'

Behind the wheel of the black Mercedes he had hired at Kehl, Vanek was driving slowly as they came closer to Freiburg from the south. Ahead of him were two other cars in convoy. He could have passed them several times and Brunner, irritably, had suggested he should overtake. 'I'm staying on their tail,' Vanek told him. 'If there are any patrol-cars about they're less likely to stop three cars travelling together. They're always interested in the car which is on its own. A policeman in Paris once told me that.'

`There's a mist coming down,' Brunner commented. `I like mist. It confuses people.'

`I think we're close now,' Brunner said. 'I remember that old barn we just passed.'

`We are close,' Vanek agreed.

`Three cars coming in,' the policeman with the night-glasses at the southern end of the section reported. 'At least I think there were three. It's so thick I couldn't get any idea of the makes… '

`Were there three or not?' Gruber demanded over the air. 'I have told you before, you must be precise-otherwise the whole operation becomes pointless.'

`Probably two…'

`Probably?' Gruber shouted over the transceiver. 'I will ask you again. How many vehicles have just entered the section? Think!'

`Two vehicles,' the man replied.

`Something just went past,' reported the man at the northern end of the section. 'It's hellishly difficult to see now. More than one.. .'

Gruber looked at Lanz and then cast his eyes to the roof of the truck. 'Sometimes I wonder why I became a policeman. My wife wanted me to buy a grocer's shop.'

`It must be very difficult for them-in this mist,' Lanz said gently. 'I think they are doing very well.'

Gruber turned the switch himself and leaned forward to speak. 'Number Four. You said quite clearly there was more than one vehicle. Can you be sure of that?'

`Quite sure,' Number Four replied. 'There were two travelling close together. Two cars.'

`He's a good chap,' Gruber said as he returned the switch to `receive'. He rubbed the side of his nose. 'So is the other man, to be fair. It's my own fault-now the mist has come I just wish I'd blocked off the road with checkpoints. We'd better leave it alone now.'

`We'd better leave it alone,' Lanz agreed.

When he left the truck Lennox made his way back to the road and started walking along it towards Dieter Wohl's house. He was worried about the mist but he didn't dare get too close to the building for fear of confusing the watching policemen. When two cars approached him, nose to tail, he saw a blur of headlights and pressed himself close against the hedge. As they went past he walked a short distance further and then stopped on the grass verge. He was now at a point half-way between the northern end of the section and the house.

Under his seat Vanek carried the 9-mm Luger pistol which Borisov had obtained for him. Vanek didn't expect to use a gun but he believed in carrying some protection and he was an expert at concealing a weapon. At the moment the pistol was held to the underside of the seat with strips of medical adhesive tape. He was now driving even more slowly, allowing the two cars ahead to disappear into the fog, but he kept the Mercedes moving until they had just gone past Dieter Wohl's house which was a grey blur in the mist. Then he pulled up. No point in giving the German warning, making him wonder why a vehicle had stopped outside his house on a night like this.

`You wait with the car,' he told Lansky, 'and keep the motor running. I don't think there'll be any trouble but you never can tell.'

`Why are you nervous?' asked Brunner, who was coming with him. It was unlike Vanek to anticipate trouble-to refer to it openly.

`I'm nervous that Lansky will forget to keep the motor ticking over,' Vanek snapped.

Why was he nervous, Vanek wondered as he got out of the car with Brunner. Some sixth sense kept telling him something was wrong. He stood on the grass verge, looking at the blurred shape of the house, glancing up and down the road and across the fields he couldn't see. Then he walked back to the house and towards the front door. Changing his mind, with Brunner close behind, he went to the side, opened the wire-gate quietly and walked round to the back of the house. The only lights were in two windows on the ground floor at the front; all the other windows were in darkness. With his coat collar pulled up against the chill, Vanek walked back to the front door. Brunner slipped out of sight to the side of the house. Vanek pressed the bell by the side of the door, his right hand inside his pocket where it gripped the Luger he had extracted from under the car seat. It was uncannily quiet in the mist.

He had to wait several moments before he heard a rattle as a chain was removed on the other side of the door, then the door was opened slowly and the huge figure of Dieter Wohl stood in the entrance. He was carrying a walking-stick in his right hand, a heavy farmer's stick without a handle.

`Good evening,' Vanek said in his impeccable German. 'I am Inspector Braun of the Criminal Police.' He showed Wohl the forged Surete card Borisov had supplied and quickly replaced it in his pocket with his left hand. 'A man has been found dead in the road two hundred metres from here in the Freiburg direction. May I come in and have a word with you?'

`Could I have a closer look at that identity card?' asked the ex-Abwehr officer. 'The police themselves are always warning us to be careful who we let in…

`Certainly…' Vanek withdrew his right hand from his coat and pointed the Luger at the German's stomach. 'This is an emergency. I don't even know you really live here. I'm coming inside so please move slowly back down the hall and..'

The German was backing away as Vanek took a step forward.

`If it's as serious as that then please do come in, but I would be glad if you would put away..' Wohl was still talking when he wielded the heavy stick with extraordinary speed and strength. It cracked down on Vanek's wrist as he was still moving and the shock and pain of the blow made him drop the weapon. In acute pain, Vanek kept his nerve; whipping up his left hand, the palm and fingers stiffened, he thrust it upwards under Wohl's heavy jaw. Had the ex-Abwehr man stiffened, his neck would have snapped, but he let himself go over backwards and crashed down on the polished floor, rolling sideways to take the impact on his shoulder. Vanek suddenly realized that this was going to be a more dangerous opponent than Jouvel or Robert Philip. And Brunner couldn't get into the narrow hall to lend assistance because Vanek was in the way.

The Luger, sliding along the polished floor, had vanished. It turned into a dogfight. Vanek had age on his side; Wohl was enormously strong. The German, still gripping the stick, was clambering to his feet when Vanek crashed into him again to bring him down. Caught off-balance, Wohl toppled, half-recovered, then fell; clutching at a table to save himself; his hand caught a cloth, dragging it off with several porcelain vases which crashed to the floor. Falling backwards a second time, Wohl rolled again, taking the fall on his other shoulder. Vanek's legs loomed above him and he struck out with the stick he still grasped, catching the Czech a heavy blow on the shin. Vanek yelped, brought his fist down into Wohl's face, but the face moved and the blow was only glancing, sliding down the German's jaw. Behind them, Brunner still couldn't do anything in the narrow hall. The two men grappled on the floor, rolling over, smashing into furniture, each trying to kill the other.

`I don't like it,' said Lanz.

`Those two cars-which might have been three?' Gruber queried. 'I'm moving in,' he decided. He was on the verge of issuing the order to the truckload of six men waiting in reserve behind the copse of trees when another report came in: a bus and a petrol tanker had moved into the section from the south, travelling one behind the other. Cursing, Gruber delayed giving the order. 'That's something we can do without,' he rasped. 'A bloody collision in the fog…'

`They always do it in a fog,' Lanz commented. 'One vehicle comes up behind another and hugs its tail. It gives them comfort so they ignore the risk…'

`I'm getting worried,' said Gruber.

They waited until the policeman at the northern end of the section reported traffic moving past-he couldn't identify the vehicles-and then Gruber told the reserve truck to drive to Wohl's house. Twenty seconds later-too late to stop it- another report came in from the southern end of the section. A second petrol tanker had appeared and was now moving slowly into the section.

Wohl's hallway, normally so neat and tidy and cared for-the ex-Abwehr officer was a methodical soul-was a total shambles. Furniture was wrecked, pictures had come off the walls, the floor was littered with the debris of smashed porcelain, and there was a certain amount of smeared blood. Wohl's stick lay on the floor beside its dead owner; the German's skull had been cracked by his own weapon.

Vanek, still panting, left Brunner by the front door and went inside the living-room where a light was burning. The Czech had expected to spend some time searching for the war diary and manuscript but he found them waiting for him on the German's desk; Wohl had been working on his memoirs when the door-bell rang. Vanek read only a few words of the neat, hand-written diary. In 1944 the Leopard went everywhere accompanied by a vicious wolf-hound called Cesar…

Stuffing the diary and the few pages of manuscript into his pocket, he returned to the hall to look for the missing Luger; on his way out of the living-room he toppled a bookcase so it crashed to the floor, scattering its contents. There was no question of making this death look like an accident but it could still look like an attempted burglary which had gone wrong. He found the Luger hidden under a low chest and went to the front door where Brunner was waiting for him. 'Something's coming,' Brunner warned. As Vanek moved through the doorway a police truck appeared, stopping just beyond the house. A second later something large loomed out of the mist, corning very slowly. A petrol tanker. It began crawling past the stationary police vehicle as men emerged from it. Vanek raised the Luger, took deliberate aim, fired three times.

The heavy 9-mm slugs penetrated the side of the tanker with a series of thuds. Vanek began running towards the Mercedes, followed by Brunner. Behind them someone shouted, a muffled shout, succeeded by a muffled boom. The petrol tanker flared, a sheet of flame consumed the mist and behind the two running Czechs someone started screaming and went on and on. Billowing black smoke replaced the mist and a nauseating stench drifted on the night air. Vanek reached the car where Lansky, white-faced, sat behind the wheel with the motor ticking over.

`What the hell was that..'

`Get it moving,' Vanek snarled. 'Slam your foot down-if we hit something we hit it…'

The Mercedes accelerated, not to high speed but very fast for the mist-bound road. Brunner, who had wrenched open the rear door, was still only half-inside the vehicle when it moved off with the door swinging loose beside him. A few metres further along the road Lennox had heard the shots and then what sounded like an explosion. He was standing on the grass verge when the Mercedes's blurred headlights rushed towards him with the rear door still open and someone only half-inside the car. Behind it a police siren had started up. He fired twice as the car roared past him and both bullets penetrated Brunner's arched back. The Czech's body spun out of the open door and thumped down in the road as the Mercedes vanished in the mist, still picking up speed.