‘I need to put certain questions to him,’ observed the Colonel, studying the tip of his glowing cigarette. The doctor’s prison clinic lay one way, the stairs leading to the ground floor the other. Both men stopped. The doctor glanced at the head of the Action Service with distaste.
‘This is a prison,’ he said quietly. ‘All right, it’s for offenders against the security of the state. But I am still the prison doctor. Elsewhere in this prison what I say, concerning prisoners’ health, goes. That corridor …’ he jerked his head backwards in the direction from which they had come … ‘is your preserve. It has been most lucidly explained to me that what happens down there is none of my business, and I have no say in it. But I will say this: if you start “questioning” that man before he’s recovered, with your methods, he’ll either die or become a raving lunatic.’
Colonel Rolland listened to the doctor’s bitter prediction without moving a muscle.
‘How long?’ he asked.
The doctor shrugged, ‘Impossible to say. He may regain consciousness tomorrow, or not for days. Even if he does, he will not be fit for questioning—medically fit that is—for at least a fortnight. At the very least. That is, if the concussion is only mild.’
‘There are certain drugs,’ murmured the Colonel.
‘Yes, there are. And I have no intention of prescribing them. You may be able to get them, you probably can. But not from me. In any case, nothing he could tell you now would make the slightest sense. It would probably be gibberish. His mind is scrambled. It may clear, it may not. But if it does, it must happen in its own time. Mind-bending drugs now would simply produce an idiot, no use to you or anyone else. It will probably be a week before he flickers an eyelid. You’ll just have to wait.’
With that he turned on his heel and walked back to his clinic.
But the doctor was wrong. Kowalski opened his eyes three days later, on August 10th, and the same day had his first and only session with the interrogators.
The Jackal spent the three days after his return from Brussels putting the final touches to his preparations for his forthcoming mission into France.
With his new driving licence in the name of Alexander James Quentin Duggan in his pocket he went down to Fanum House, headquarters of the Automobile Association, and acquired an International Driving Licence in the same name.
He bought a matching series of leather suitcases from a second-hand shop specialising in travel goods. Into one he packed the clothes that would, if necessary, disguise him as Pastor Per Jensen of Copenhagen. Before the packing he transferred the Danish maker’s labels from the three ordinary shirts he had bought in Copenhagen to the clerical shirt, dog collar and black bib that he had bought in London, removing the English maker’s labels as he did so. These clothes joined the shoes, socks, underwear and charcoal-grey light suit that might one day make up the persona of Pastor Jensen. Into the same suitcase went the clothes of American student Marty Schulberg, sneakers, socks, jeans, sweat-shirts and windcheater.
Slitting the lining of the suitcase, he inserted between the two layers of leather that comprised the stiffened sides of the case the passport of the two foreigners he might one day wish to become. The last additions to this caseful of clothes were the Danish book on French cathedrals, the two sets of spectacles, one for the Dane, the other for the American, the two different sets of tinted contact lenses, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, and the preparations for hair tinting.
Into the second case went the shoes, socks, shirt and trousers of French make and design that he had bought in the Paris Flea Market, along with the ankle-length greatcoat and black beret. Into the lining of this case he inserted the false papers of the middle-aged Frenchman André Martin. This case remained partly empty, for it would soon also have to hold a series of narrow steel tubes containing a complete sniper’s rifle and ammunition.
The third, slightly smaller, suitcase was packed with the effects of Alexander Duggan: shoes, socks, underwear, shirts, ties, handkerchiefs and three elegant suits. Into the lining of this suitcase went several thin wads of ten-pound notes to the value of a thousand pounds, which he had drawn from his private bank account on his return from Brussels.
Each of these cases was carefully locked and the keys transferred to his private key-ring. The dove-grey suit was cleaned and pressed, then left hanging in the wall cupboard of his flat. Inside the breast pocket were his passport, driving licence, international licence and a folder containing one hundred pounds in cash.
Into the last piece of his luggage, a neat hand case, went shaving tackle, pyjamas, sponge-bag and towel, and the final pieces of his purchases—a light harness of finely sewn webbing, a two-pound bag of plaster of Paris, several rolls of large-weave lint bandages, half a dozen rolls of sticky plaster, three packs of cotton wool and a pair of stout shears with blunt but powerful blades. The grip would travel as hand-luggage, for it was his experience that in passing Customs at whatever airport an attaché case was not usually the piece of luggage selected by the Customs officer for an arbitrary request to open up.
With his purchases and packing complete he had reached the end of his planning. The disguises of Pastor Jensen and Marty Schulberg, he hoped, were merely precautionary tactics which would probably never be used unless things went wrong and the identity of Alexander Duggan had to be abandoned. The identity of André Martin was vital to his plan, and it was possible that the other two would never be required. In that event the entire suitcase could be abandoned in a left-luggage office when the job was over. Even then, he reasoned, he might need either of them for his escape. André Martin and the gun could also be abandoned when the job was over, as he would have no further use for them. Entering France with three suitcases and an attaché case, he estimated he would leave with one suitcase and the hand luggage, certainly not more.
With this task finished he settled down to wait for the two pieces of paper that would set him on his way. One was the telephone number in Paris which could be used to feed him information concerning the exact state of readiness of the security forces surrounding the French President. The other was the written notification from Herr Meier in Zürich that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars had been deposited in his numbered bank account.
While he was waiting for them he passed the time by practising walking round his flat with a pronounced limp. Within two days he was satisfied that he had a sufficiently realistic limp to prevent any observer from being able to detect that he had not sustained a broken ankle or leg.
The first letter he awaited arrived on the morning of August 9th. It was an envelope postmarked in Rome and bore the message: ‘Your friend can be contacted at MOLITOR 5901. Introduce yourself with the words “Ici Chacal”. Reply will be “Ici Valmy”. Good luck.’
It was not until the morning of the 11th that the letter from Zürich arrived. He grinned openly as he read the confirmation that, come what may, provided he remained alive, he was a wealthy man for the rest of his life. If his forthcoming operation was successful, he would be even richer. He had no doubts that he would succeed. Nothing had been left to chance.
He spent the rest of that morning on the telephone booking air passages, and fixed his departure for the following morning, August 12th.