The Stone leopard

CHAPTER ONE

Any experienced policeman knows it: you can throw a cordon round an area, set up road-blocks, and three times out of four you are too late. Gruber set up a cordon and caught nothing but irate motorists and truck-drivers. The Mercedes, which had been hired in Kehl, was found a week later inside a copse at the edge of the Black Forest. Four of the six policemen who had been getting out of the truck when the petrol tanker detonated were lucky; most of the blast went the other way, travelling across open fields. The other two policemen were badly burned, one of them with first-degree injuries which required plastic surgery later. The petrol tanker driver died from the fumes which filled his cab before he could escape.

Lanz and Gruber searched Wohl's house, looking for the war diary which Lennox had seen, and found no trace of the diary or the manuscript. Brunner's dead body was taken to the police mortuary and examination of his clothing and pocket contents revealed very little. He was carrying a large sum of money- two thousand deutschmark-and a French identity card in the name of Emile Bonnard 'Which will undoubtedly prove to be false,' Gruber commented. Underneath his German hat and coat Brunner was wearing a French suit and underclothes. Apart from this there was very little to prove who he really was -until the preliminary results of the medical examination came through.

`My colleague has come up with something interesting,' the medical examiner reported to Gruber who was sitting in a hotel bedroom eating dinner with the BND chief and Lennox. `He is a dental technician and according to him the dental work and teeth fillings were definitely carried out in eastern Europe-probably in Russia…'

Lanz phoned Marc Grelle direct from police headquarters at Freiburg. Strictly speaking, any such call should have been made to the Surete, but whereas Lanz knew Grelle well and trusted his discretion, he neither liked nor trusted the Director-General who was Commissioner Suchet's superior. As Lanz explained to Grelle, he had two reasons for informing him of this development. The assassin Lennox had shot dead-and Lanz was careful not to mention the Englishman in any way- was travelling with French papers in the name of Emile Bonnard. Also-and here again Lanz phrased it carefully-he had reason to believe the Commando had recently come from France and might well have re-crossed the border back into that country…'

`You have solid grounds for saying an assassination Commando, possibly Soviet-controlled, is on the move?' Grelle inquired.

`Yes,' Lanz replied firmly. 'Without going into details, I'm pretty sure of it. And perhaps it would be helpful if we both keep in touch…'

Grelle had just put down the phone when Boisseau came into his office with a routine report.

`Lesage has just called in. That Algerian terrorist, Abou Benefeika, is still holed up in the derelict apartment building in the Goutte-d'Or. No sign of his pals coming to collect him yet. We let him go on fermenting?'

`Continue the surveillance…' Grelle took a bite out of the sandwich he would have to make do with for his evening meal. Normally he dined at Chez Benoit, an exclusive little restaurant in the old Les Halles district where you had to phone for a table; he was beginning to miss the place. 'I have just had a call from Peter Lanz of the German BND,' he informed Boisseau. `He played it very cagey but somehow he has found out that a Soviet assassination Commando is at work. This evening they killed an ex-Abwehr officer in Freiburg.' He paused. 'The name of the Abwehr man was Dieter Wohl…

`One of the three names on Lasalle's list…'

`Exactly. So now it looks as though this Commando has been sent with the express purpose of wiping out everyone on that list-and they've done it, for God's sake. All avenues through which we might have seen a little light are closed…'

`The surveillance on Roger Danchin and Alain Blanc is producing nothing?'

`Nothing…' The prefect frowned as his phone rang. He checked his watch. 10 pm. Only recently returned from his flight to Marseilles when he had accompanied the president while he delivered his most bitter anti-American tirade so far, Grelle was feeling very tired. Who the hell could it be at this hour? He picked up the phone, swallowing the last of his sandwich. It was Alain Blanc.

`No, Minister,' Grelle assured him. 'I have not dug up any connection between the president and Lucie Devaud as yet… We now know her father was Albert Camors, a wealthy stockbroker who died a few months ago and left her his apartment in the Place des Vosges… . No, we do not know any more… Yes, she must have been illegitimate… No, no connection at all with the Elysee…'

Grelle shrugged as he replaced the receiver. (He worries about a scandal, that one. As I was saying, all avenues seem closed to us, so all we can hope for once more is the unexpected break. And yet, Boisseau, I feel that somewhere I am overlooking something-something under my nose…'

`Something to do with the Commando? Incidentally, we may as well cancel the alert on the man the German police shot in Freiburg. Did Lanz give you a name?'

Grelle consulted a notepad. 'Emile Bonnard,' he replied. `And I do not expect we shall ever see the other two men- Duval and Lambert. They have done their job. They will never return to France.'

Carel Vanek and Antonin Lansky approached the checkpoint to cross back into France the following morning, Wednesday, 22 December, which was the deadline day Borisov had given them in Tabor to complete their mission. They were on their way to visit Annette Devaud. They came up to the passport control counter separately with half a dozen people between them and Vanek presented himself for inspection first.

`Papers…'

The passport officer took the document Vanek handed him, opened it after studying the Czech's face and then compared it with the photograph. The name he had already noted. Vanek waited with a bored look on his face, chewing a piece of chocolate while he studied the extremely attractive girl waiting next in line. He grinned at her engagingly and after a moment's hesitation she smiled back at him.

`You have been to Germany on business?' the passport official inquired.

`Yes.'

The official returned the passport and Vanek moved on, to be joined a few minutes later by Lansky. Vanek had presented the third set of papers he had brought from Tabor, papers made out in the name of Lucien Segard, papers which carried a photograph of him without a moustache. Only the previous night in Kehl he had shaved off the moustache in the station wash-room before accompanying Lansky to a small hotel where they had spent the night. Lansky had also used his third set of papers which carried the name Yves Gandouin. When frontier control officials have been asked to look out for men travelling under the names of Duval and Lambert it is only human for them to concentrate on people of those names, and to be anything but suspicious of different names.

Without having the least idea that their previous identities had been blown, Vanek had taken his decision the previous night after they had abandoned the Mercedes. 'Twice we have crossed the French border using our present papers,' he had told Lansky, 'and twice is enough.' He had then proceeded to burn the papers carrying the names Duval and Lambert before they walked to the nearest village and independently boarded a bus crowded with Christmas shoppers for Kehl. Inside Germany they were really in no danger: the only people who knew their names were inside France, and on the phone Marc Grelle had been reluctant to give Peter Lanz such information because of the delicacy of the investigation he was conducting.

Arriving back in Strasbourg, Vanek kept well away from the Hertz car-hire branch in the Boulevard de Nancy. 'Never go back,' was one of his favourite maxims. Instead, the two men took a cab to the airport where Vanek hired a Renault 17 from the Avis car-hire branch in the name of Lucien Segard. By 2 pm they were on their way to Saverne, which is only twenty- five miles from Strasbourg.

Alan Lennox had stayed up half the night at the Hotel Colombi in Freiburg talking to Peter Lanz. The German, who had been handed a copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung containing Dieter Wohl's letter just before he left Bonn-`I should have been shown it days earlier, but no one thought to read the correspondence columns'-was dubious as to whether Annette Devaud would still be alive.

`From what Wohl said to you,' he remarked, 'she would be a very old lady now-and if she is blind how could she recognize anyone? Even assuming she ever knew what the Leopard looked like.. .'

`There's nothing else left,' Lennox said obstinately. 'No one else left, perhaps I should say. What Leon Jouvel told me is very inconclusive-although he was convincing at the time. In any case, the poor devil is dead. I'm going back across the Rhine tomorrow to try and find Annette Devaud.'

`Going back again over the frontier for the third time on false papers? I'm not asking you to do that…

`Call it British bloody-mindedness-we're known for it. I just want to get to the bottom of this thing and find out who the Leopard really is. Wish me luck.'

`I have a feeling you're going to need more than luck,' Lanz replied gravely.

Remembering the atmosphere of intense police activity at Strasbourg station only thirty-six hours earlier, it took a certain amount of will-power for Lennox to hand his papers across the counter to French passport control and then wait while they were inspected. They were examined only cursorily and handed straight back; no one was interested in a man called Jean Bouvier. Probably the easiest way to pass through a checkpoint is to choose a time when someone else is being watched for.

Obtaining the address from Bottin, the telephone directory, Lennox left Strasbourg station and went straight to Hertz car-hire in the Boulevard de Nancy where he chose a Mercedes 350 SE. It was expensive but he wanted some power under the bonnet. By noon he was leaving Strasbourg, driving west for Saverne in the Vosges mountains. He had, of course, no idea that for the first time since he had embarked on this trip at the behest of David Nash of New York he was two hours ahead of the Soviet Commando.

It was Boisseau who heard about the newspaper cutting of Dieter Wohl's letter to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung sent to Paris by the French Secret Service agent in Bonn. Oddly enough he was shown the photostat of the cutting by Commissioner Suchet of counter-intelligence whom he had made it his business to cultivate. Suchet was under the impression that this gave him a private pipeline into the prefecture, whereas the reverse was true; the only information given to him by Boisseau had first been vetted by Marc Grelle. It was late in the morning of Wednesday, 22 December, when Boisseau showed the photostat to his chief.

`So there could just be a witness who never appeared on Lasalle's list,' Grelle mused. 'That is, assuming she is still alive, after all these years…'

`She is. I phoned the police station at Saverne. She's living at a remote farmhouse quite a distance from Saverne itself- high up in the Vosges mountains. This letter made me go through the files again and there is one we overlooked. Annette Devaud was in charge of the Leopard's courier network. The really interesting thing could be the name…'

`Annette Devaud-Lucie Devaud…' The prefect clasped his hands behind his neck and looked shrewdly at his deputy. `All avenues closed, I said. I wonder. All right, Boisseau, fly to Saverne. Yes, this afternoon, I agree. In view of what has happened to the other witnesses should you not call Saverne and ask them to send out a police guard?'

`She must be old-they might frighten her. And in any case, since she was not on Lasalle's list why should she be on the Commando's? Both Lasalle and the Commando must have been working from the same list-in view of what happened. So where is the danger?'

`I leave it to you,' the prefect said.

Driving across the flat plain of Alsace which lies between Strasbourg and the Vosges mountains, Lennox soon ran into atrocious weather. Curtains of rain swept across the empty road, adding even more water to the already flooded fields, and in the distance heavy mist blotted out the Vosges completely. He drove on as water poured down his windscreen and then the engine began knocking badly, which made him swear because he knew the mountain roads ahead could be difficult. It was his own fault: the Hertz people had been reluctant to let him have this car, the only Mercedes 350 on the premises for hire. `It has not been serviced, sir,' the girl had protested. 'I am not permitted…' Lennox had impatiently overridden her objections because he liked the car, and now he was paying for it.

Driving on across the lonely plain, the knocking became worse and he knew he had been foolish. Squinting through the windscreen, he saw a sign. Auberge des Vosges and petrol five hundred metres ahead. He wanted in any case to check Annette Devaud's address-and to find out whether anyone knew if she was still alive. Through the pouring rain a small hotel with a garage attached came into view. Pulling up in front of the pumps, he lowered the window and asked the mechanic to check the vehicle. A few minutes later the mechanic came into the hotel bar with the bad news. He had found the defect: it would take a couple of hours to put it right.

`Can't you hurry it up?' Lennox asked.

`I am starting work on it now,' the mechanic informed him. `I can hurry it up yes. It will take two hours.'

Lennox ordered a second cognac and two jambon sandwiches, which arrived as large hunks of appetizing French bread sliced apart and with ham inside them. Had the mechanic said three hours he would have been tempted to try and hire another car. He sank his teeth hungrily into the sandwich; two hours shouldn't make all that difference to the state of the world.

Annette Devaud, now spending the evening of her life at Woodcutter's Farm, had held one of the key positions in the Leopard's Resistance group in 1944: she had controlled the network of couriers, mostly girls in their late teens and early twenties, who had carried messages backwards and forwards under the very noses of the enemies. Almost forty years old, slim and wiry, she had been a handsome woman with a proud Roman nose and an air of authority which had rivalled that of the Leopard himself. Of all the men and women who had worked under him, the Leopard had most respected Annette Devaud, possibly because she was an outspoken anti- Communist. 'At least I know where I am with her,' he once said. And Annette Devaud had another distinction-she knew what the Leopard looked like.

Because he found it useful to build up the reputation of an invincible personality, the Leopard kept it a secret when he was shot in the leg during a running battle in the forests. The wound did not take long to heal, but for a short period he was bed-ridden. It was Annette Devaud who shared his solitary convalescence, nursing him swiftly back to health, and it was during these few weeks that she came to know exactly what he looked like.

Annette Devaud heard, but did not see, the celebrations of Liberation Day; she had gone blind overnight. No one was able to diagnose the cause of her affliction, although some thought it was the news of the death of her husband who had fought with General Leclerc's division. Then again it could have been the death of her nineteen-year-old daughter Lucie, who drowned when the Leopard drove his car into the river to avoid Dieter Wohl's ambush. This happened after Annette had nursed the Leopard back to health when he was shot.

At the end of the war, returning to her home, Woodcutter's Farm, she remained there for over thirty years. The onset of blindness was an even greater blow than it might have been for some people; Annette had been a talented amateur artist who drew portraits in charcoal, and this too she put behind her as she adjusted to her new life. But in a folder she kept the collection of portrait sketches she had made during the war from memory. Among the collection were two lifelike portraits of the Leopard.

Annette Devaud had endured another tragedy. Against her will, her daughter Lucie had insisted on becoming one of her couriers, and during her time with the Resistance the nineteen-year-old girl had taken as a lover an ex-accountant called Albert Camors. Out of the liaison a child had been born only six months before the Leopard drove Lucie Devaud into the river. Taking its mother's name, the child was called Lucie. Camors survived the war but quarrelled violently with the strong-willed Annette Devaud and he refused to let her have anything to do with the child. Prospering in peacetime-he became a Paris stockbroker-Camors brought up the child himself and never married.

A solitary but strong-willed child-reproducing in some ways the character of her grandmother, Annette, whom she never saw-Lucie grew up in a bachelor household and developed an obsession about the mother she couldn't remember. From her father she heard about the Leopard, about how her mother had died. Then, when she was almost thirty, Camors expired in the arms of his latest mistress and Lucie inherited his fortune and an apartment in the Place des Vosges. And for the first time she visited her blind grandmother.

The two women took to each other immediately and one day Annette, talking about the war, showed her grand-daughter the folder of sketches, including the two of the Leopard. Lucie instantly recognized the portraits, but in her secretive way she said nothing to the blind woman. Using the names of people who had belonged to the Resistance group-which Annette had mentioned-she began checking. With her father's money to finance the investigation, she employed a shrewd lawyer called Max Rosenthal to dig into the Leopard's background. And without saying anything to Annette, she removed the two portrait sketches from the folder and took them back to her Paris apartment.

It was Max Rosenthal who traced Gaston Martin, the Leopard's wartime deputy, to Guiana where he was on the verge of being released from prison. Lucie Devaud wrote a careful letter to the man Annette had mentioned, hinting to Martin that the Leopard had become an important political figure in France, and then waited for a reply. The letter reached Martin shortly after he had been released from prison and he took his time about replying to her.

It was during the opening of a Paris fashion show that Lucie played the macabre trick which finally convinced her she had uncovered the real identity of the Leopard. She had seen the animal in a rue de Rivoli shop which specialized in exotic presents costing a great deal of money. Purchasing the animal, she kept it in her apartment and then obtained a ticket for the fashion show in the rue Cambon. In a newspaper she had read that President Florian would be attending the show with his wife, Lise.

When Guy Florian arrived escorting Lise-he was attending the show to dispel rumours that they were no longer on speaking terms-the show had already started, models were parading, and Lucie Devaud was sitting in a front-row seat with her draped overcoat concealing the underneath of her chair. Florian and his wife sat down almost opposite her. The show was almost over when Lucie tugged at the chain she held in her hand and which led underneath her draped chair. A model had just walked past when the leopard cub emerged from under the chair, stood on the carpet with its legs braced and bared its teeth.

It was over in a moment. An armed plain-clothes security man, one of several sent to the show by Marc Grelle, caught the expression on the president's face, grabbed the chain out of Lucie's hand, tugged the animal and led it out of the salon, followed by its owner with her coat draped over her arm. Florian recovered quickly, made an off-hand gesture and cracked a joke. 'I have had nothing to drink and yet there are spots in front of my eyes!'

Outside in the foyer Lucie took the chain from the detective without a word and left the building. The salon owner had been amused when she arrived with a leopard cub. 'How chic,' he had remarked to his directrice. 'We should have one of the models parading with that animal…' Getting into her car, parking the leopard cub on the front seat beside her, Lucie drove back to the Place des Vosges. On the following day she returned the animal to the shop, which accepted it back at a much-reduced price.

So often a woman takes a decision on feminine instinct; so often she is right. Lucie Devaud was now certain Guy Florian was the Leopard. She had seen a certain expression in his eyes before he recovered, a sudden wariness and alarm as he stared back at her-as though when he saw the look in her own eyes he had understood. 'Who the hell are you? You have found me out…' She knew there was no way she could be traced: she had paid for the leopard cub in cash and had applied for the salon ticket in a false name. It was while she was driving back to her apartment that she decided she would kill Guy Florian. The following morning the letter from Gaston Martin arrived.

Martin replied to her letter with an equally guarded communication. He said that he was interested in her theory and told her that he was returning soon by ship from Guiana. Could they meet when he arrived in Paris? Lucie Devaud wrote back immediately, suggesting that they met at a small Left Bank hotel called Cecile in the rue de Bac. Presumably she was not too keen on inviting an ex-convict to her luxurious apartment in the Place des Vosges-or possibly she was still displaying the secretiveness which was so much a part of her life.

On the night before Wednesday, 8 December, she wrote out a complete account of her activities and sealed the report in a package which also contained the two sketches of the Leopard produced more than thirty years before by her grandmother, Annette Devaud. Across the package she wrote in her own hand, To be delivered to the police prefect of Path in the event of my death. In the morning she delivered the package to her lawyer, Max Rosenthal, with strict instructions that it must remain unopened. Reading in the paper about Florian's nightly walk from the Elysee to the Place Beauvau she had decided not to wait for Gaston Martin-even though the Frenchman was on the eve of arriving back in France. On Wednesday evening, waiting outside the fur shop in the Faubourg St Honore, she produced her 9-mm Bayard pistol. But it was Marc Grelle who fired two shots.

The letter Lucie Devaud had written and deposited with her lawyer, Max Rosenthal, was not delivered to the police prefect of Paris. An extravagant man, who spent vast sums on gambling, Rosenthal was not prepared to gamble his career. When he heard of his client's attempt to kill the president he became frightened that delivery of the package might involve him. Lucie had always come to see him and given only verbal instructions; no written correspondence had passed between them; and she had paid his bills in cash-which he had not declared to the tax man. Confident that there was no discoverable link between them, he locked the package away inside a deed-box where it stayed until a year later when he died unexpectedly.

One of Lucie Devaud's more benevolent actions before she died as a would-be assassin was to persuade her blind grandmother to see an eye specialist. Perhaps medical technique had advanced in the intervening thirty years, or maybe the trauma which had induced the affliction had run its course. Annette Devaud was operated on during September-three months before Guy Florian was due to fly to Russia-and recovered her sight completely. She went straight back to Woodcutter's Farm from the hospital and started reading and drawing avidly, resuming her old solitary way of life but now blessed with the return of her sight. When she was told about the death of her grand-daughter by the man who brought her supplies she flatly refused to accept the circumstances surrounding Lucie's death. 'It's all a ghastly mistake,' she said firmly. 'They must have mistaken her for someone else.' This was the old woman the Soviet Commando was now on its way to kill.