The Stone Leopard Page 7

  'Favel named the man ?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

  `Frankly, I don't,' Lennox replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  `Yes.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  `Marc,' Nash interjected quietly, 'I'll tell you now that you are the only man inside this embassy who will hear what I have just told you. . .'

  `Why?' Grelle snapped.

  `Because you are the only Frenchman I really trust with this secret—the only contact I have come to warn. I want you to be on your guard—and you have ways of checking things out, ways that we couldn't even attempt. . .'

  `You'd get chopped if you did!' Grelle, his face flushed, moved towards the door, then seemed to calm down and for a few minutes he chatted with the American about other topics. It was, Nash told himself after the prefect had gone, a very polished performance: outrage at the suggestion and then a brief relaxation of tension to indicate to the American that they would remain friends in the future. Lighting a cigarette, Nash wandered back across the hall to the reception, satisfied with the result of his trip to Paris. Because
despite what he had said, Grelle would check. Grelle was the policeman's policeman. Grelle always checked.

  To give himself time to think, Grelle drove round in a circle to get back to the prefecture. On his way he passed the Elysee and had to pull up while a black Zil limousine with one passenger in the back emerged from the palace courtyard. Leonid Vorin, Soviet ambassador to France, was just leaving after making one of his almost daily visits to see Guy Florian. Since the trip to Moscow on 23 December had been announced, the Soviet ambassador had consulted frequently with the president, driving from his embassy in the rue de Grenelle to the Elysee and back again. Inside the limousine Leonid Vorin, short and stocky with a pouched mouth and rimless glasses, sat staring ahead, looking neither to right nor left as the car swung out and drove off towards Madeleine.

  The uniformed policeman who had halted Grelle, saluted and waved him on. Driving automatically, the prefect had half his mind on what Nash had told him. Up to half an hour ago his suspicions had been based on Gaston Martin's strange story and what he had heard from the Cayenne police chief, all of which was disturbing but by no means conclusive. Now the same story was coming from Washington, and soon rumours might start sweeping through the European capitals. As Grelle told Boisseau later, 'I don't believe a word of that fairy-tale Nash told me about a Soviet defector—he was protecting his real informant—but this is something we are going to have to investigate in the greatest secrecy. . .

  As he crossed the crowded Pont Neuf on to the Ile de la Cite Grelle shivered, a nervous tremor which had nothing to do with the chill night air now settling over Paris. For the police prefect his world had suddenly become unstable, a place of shifting quicksands where anything might lie under the surface. 'Roger Danchin . . . Alain Blanc . . he muttered to himself. 'It's impossible.

  Leaving the isolated farmhouse at about the same time when Grelle was returning to the prefecture, Lennox drove back to Saarbrucken through slashing rain with the distant rumble of thunder in the night. The storm suited his mood; he also was disturbed. At one point in the conversation he had asked the colonel who had typed out the list of names and addresses he now carried tucked away inside his wallet. 'Captain Moreau, my assistant, of course,' Lasalle had replied. 'He was the only officer who came with me when I left France and I trust him completely.'

  `You didn't trust him with my real name until shortly before I arrived,' Lennox had pointed out. 'When I phoned from Saarbrucken he had no idea who I was. . .'

  `That was to protect you until you arrived safely, I called Nash in London at a certain time and he gave me your name, but I withheld it from Moreau. If my assistant had been kidnapped while you were on the way he couldn't have identified you under pressure. For the same reason Moreau does not know I am in touch with the Americans. . .'

  Under pressure. . . . As he peered through the rain-swept windscreen Lennox grimaced. What a life the colonel was living since he had fled France. Locked away inside a German farmhouse, guarded at the gate by a man with a sub-machine gun, ready at any time for the intruders in the night who might arrive with chloroform—or something more lethal. And tomorrow Lennox himself would cross the border into France— after first meeting Peter Lanz of the BND.

  While Alan Lennox was driving through the night to a hotel in Saarbrucken, Marc Grelle had returned to the prefecture from the reception at the American Embassy where he dealt with the paperwork which had accumulated in his absence. 'There are too many typewriters in Paris,' he muttered as he initialled minutes from Roger Danchin and ate the sandwich brought in from the local brasserie. He was just about to leave when the phone rang. 'Shit!' he muttered, picking up the receiver. It was Cassin, one of the phone operators in the special room at Surete headquarters.

  `Another message has come in from Hugon, Mr Prefect.' `Routine ?'

  'No. There has been a development. . .

  Grelle swore again under his breath. He would have liked to ask the operator to relay the message over the line, but that was impossible—he had personally issued strict orders that this must never be done. Phones can be tapped: all you need is a post office communications expert who knows how to leak off a private phone. Never mind about exotic electronic bugs; splicing the right wires will do the trick. 'I'll come over,' Grelle said and put down the receiver.

  Rush hour was over as he drove along streets gleaming wetly under the lamps and turned into the rue des Saussales where Surete headquarters forms part of the huge block of buildings centred round the Ministry of the Interior. In the narrow street he waited while a uniformed policeman dropped the white-painted chain, and then drove under the archway into the courtyard beyond. The room was on the fourth floor and at that hour he met no one as he climbed the gloomy staircase, walked down an ill-lit corridor and used his key to open the locked door. Closing the door on the inside, Grelle stared down at Cassin, the night man. The room smelt of garlic, which meant the operator had eaten a snack recently. A half-filled glass of red wine was on the table beside the tape-recorder which was linked to the phone.

  `Well?' the prefect asked.

  `Hugon phoned at 6.45 pm. . . Cassin, a lean, pasty-faced man of thirty, was reading from a notebook in a bored tone. 'I recorded the message as usual and it's on tape.'

  `How did he sound?' Grelle perched his buttocks on the edge of the table. He would hear what Hugon had said in a minute, but the recording was inclined to iron out a man's voice, to drain it of emotion, and Cassin had listened while the tape recorded.

  `A bit excited, nervous, agitated—as though he hadn't much time and was afraid of being interrupted.'

  `That's a precise analysis.'

  `He's sending something through the post—a list of names and addresses. He didn't want to transmit them over the phone. Said it would take too long. . .

  `Or he was being careful,' Grelle suggested. 'Did he say when he would post this list?'

  `He's already done it. He was in the post office.'

  `You look as though you could do with a bit of fresh air, Cassin. Come back in fifteen minutes—I'll stay and listen to the tape. . .

  Alone, Grelle listened to the operator locking the door from the outside, then sat down in the chair and lit a cigarette. The room was sound-proofed and was checked daily for bugging devices, so every possible precaution had been taken to protect Hugon. Grelle pressed the replay button.

  The tape which had recorded Cassin's conversation with Hugon was waiting on the machine. The man whose voice he was going to listen to had phoned one of the special numbers reserved for the Surete Nationale's private use, numbers unlisted in any directory. If anyone called the number by mistake, without giving the correct name, the operator informed him that he was the exchange, that the number had been disconnected. The machine crackled.

  `What number are you calling?' Cassin inquired.

  `Hugon speaking. Is that the Polyphone Institute? Good, I haven't much time. . .

  `Where are you calling from?'

  `The Saarbrucken post office. Look, I told you . .

  `Take it easy. I'm listening. Don't babble,' Cassin snapped.

  Grelle was standing up now, perched against the table edge, watching the spools turn slowly, recording each word in his brain as the machine replayed them. And Cassin had been right: Hugon's agitation came through even the recording.

  `The colonel had a meeting this evening with an Englishman. Name Alan Lennox. . . .' Hugon spelt out the name. 'Thirty- five, dark-haired, clean-shaven, wearing . . .' A description of the clothes followed. 'They talked alone in the farmhouse. . .'

  `How did this Lennox arrive? By taxi ? By car ?'

  `In his own car . I can't stay here long. It's dangerous, you know. The car was a blue Citroén DS 2 I . Registration number BL 49120. Lennox came by appointment. I was able to get back to the farmhouse and overhear just a few words, but it was dangerous. . .'

  `So you keep saying. Who is this man Lennox?'

  `I've no idea. Stop interrupting me. For God's sake listen! When
I heard them talking Lennox was asking about a man called the Leopard . .

  Grelle stiffened, stopped the machine. Gabbling on, Hugon had blurred the words. He played it back again, listening carefully. Yes, for Christ's sake, Hugon had said 'the Leopard'. The recording continued.

  `. . . and there was something about a list of witnesses. Yes, witnesses. If you don't let me get on I'm hanging up. Yesterday morning the colonel dictated to me a list of three people's names and addresses. I think this is the list they were talking about. I think the colonel gave Lennox this list . .'

  `We need those names and addresses,' Cassin interjected.

  `Shit!' Hugon spoke the word with venom. 'I was just going to tell you—I made a carbon copy when I typed out the list. I put this in an envelope and sent it off yesterday to the address you gave me. And yes, Lennox has left. No! I have no idea where he has gone. I got the idea he's going to see the people on the list. . .'

  `Which country are these people in?'

  `Two in Alsace, one in Germany. Goodbye!'

  The prefect stopped the machine, still perched on the table with a forgotten Gauloise smoking at the corner of his mouth. It was Guy Florian himself who authorized Marc Grelle to conduct the operation which penetrated Col Lasalle's farmhouse refuge in the Saarland. Normally such an assignment would have been handled by the Surete but the president had told Danchin he wanted Grelle to deal with it. 'I trust Grelle,' he remarked casually, watching the minister wince.

  The penetration operation had not been too difficult. Capt. Moreau, who had been given the code-name Hugon, had fled France with Col Lasalle on an impulse; later, as the months went by, as he found himself acting as housekeeper to the colonel, which even included preparing the meals and keeping the house clean, his enthusiasm for exile had waned. Seeing nothing ahead but an empty future, Moreau had snapped up Grelle's secret offer of four thousand francs a month paid into a Paris bank account. 'With indecent haste,' as the prefect had remarked at the time.