‘No, Kowalski, it’s fatal. There’s no cure. Why?’
‘Nothing,’ mumbled Kowalski, ‘just something I read.’
Then he left. If Rodin was surprised that his bodyguard who had never been known to read anything more complex than standing orders of the day had come across that word in a book he did not show it and the matter was soon swept from his mind. For the afternoon’s mail brought the letter he was waiting for, to say that the combined OAS bank accounts in Switzerland now contained over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Rodin was satisfied as he sat down to write and despatch the instructions to the bankers transferring that sum to the account of his hired assassin. For the balance he had no qualms. With President de Gaulle dead there would be no delay before the industrialists and bankers of the extreme right wing, who had financed the OAS in its earlier and more successful days, produced the other two hundred and fifty thousand. The same men who had replied to his approaches for a further advance of cash only a few weeks earlier with mealy-mouthed excuses that the ‘lack of progress and initiative shown over recent months by the forces of patriotism’ had decreased their chances of ever seeing a return on previous investments, would be clamouring for the honour of backing the soldiers who shortly afterwards would become the new rulers of a re-born France.
He finished the instructions to the bankers as darkness fell, but when he saw the orders Rodin had written instru
cting the Swiss bankers to pay over the money to the Jackal, Casson objected. He argued that one vitally important thing they had all three promised their Englishman was that he would have a contact in Paris capable of supplying him constantly with the latest accurate information about the movements of the French President, along with any changes in the security routines surrounding him that might occur. These could, indeed probably would, be of vital importance to the assassin. To inform him of the transfer of the money at this stage, Casson reasoned, would be to encourage him to go into action prematurely. Whenever the man intended to strike was obviously his own choice, but a few extra days would make no difference. What might very well make a difference between success and another, certainly the last, failure would be the question of information provided to the killer.
He, Casson, had received word that very morning in the mail that his chief representative in Paris had succeeded in placing an agent very close to one of the men in De Gaulle’s immediate entourage. A few days more would be necessary before this agent was in a position to acquire consistently reliable information as to the General’s whereabouts and above all his travelling intentions and his public appearances, neither of which were being publicly announced any more in advance. Would Rodin therefore please stay his hand for a few more days until Casson was in a position to supply the assassin with a telephone number in Paris from which he could receive the information that would be vital to his mission?
Rodin reflected long over Casson’s argument, and eventually agreed that he was right. Neither man could be aware of the Jackal’s intentions, and in fact the transmission of the instructions to the bankers, followed later by the letter to London containing the Paris telephone number, would not have caused the assassin to alter any detail of his schedule. Neither terrorist in Rome could know that the killer had already chosen his day and was proceeding with his planning and contingency precautions with clockwork precision.
Sitting up on the roof in the hot Roman night, his bulky form merging into the shadows of the air conditioner ventilation stack, the Colt .45 resting easily in a practised hand, Kowalski worried about a little girl in a bed in Marseilles with Luke something in her blood. Shortly before dawn he had an idea. He remembered that the last time he had seen J0J0 in 1960 the ex-legionnaire had talked of getting a telephone in his flat.
On the morning that Kowalski received his letter, the Jackal left the Amigo hotel in Brussels and took a taxi to a corner of the street where M. Goossens lived. He had rung the armourer over breakfast in the name of Duggan, which was how Goossens knew him, and the appointment was for 11 am. He arrived at the corner of the street at 10.30 and spent half an hour surveying the street from behind a newspaper on a kerbside bench in the little public gardens at the end of the street.
It seemed quiet enough. He presented himself at the door at eleven sharp and Goossens let him in and led him to the little office off the hallway. After the Jackal had passed M. Goossens carefully locked the front door and put it on the chain. Inside the office the Englishman turned to the armourer.
‘Any problems?’ he asked. The Belgian looked embarrassed.
‘Well, yes, I am afraid so.’
The assassin surveyed him coldly, with no expression on his face, the eyes half closed and sullen.
‘You told me that if I came back on August 1st I could have the gun by August 4th to take home with me,’ he said.
‘That’s perfectly true, and I assure you the problem is not with the gun,’ said the Belgian. ‘Indeed the gun is ready, and frankly I regard it as one of my masterpieces, a beautiful specimen. The trouble has been with the other product, which evidently had to be made from scratch. Let me show you.’
On top of the desk lay a flat case about two feet long by eighteen inches broad and four inches deep. M. Goossens opened the case and the Jackal looked down on it as the upper half fell back to the table.
It was like a flat tray, divided into carefully shaped compartments, each exactly the shape of the component of the rifle that it contained.
‘It was not the original case, you understand,’ explained M. Goossens. ‘That would have been much too long. I made the case myself. It all fits.’
It fitted very compactly. Along the top of the open tray was the barrel and breech, the whole no longer than eighteen inches. The Jackal lifted it out and examined it. It was very light, and looked rather like a submachine-gun barrel. The breech contained a narrow bolt which was closed shut. It ended at the back with a knurled grip no larger than the breech into which the rest of the bolt was fitted.
The Englishman took the knurled end of the bolt between forefinger and thumb of the right hand, gave it a sharp turn anti-clockwise. The bolt unlocked itself and rolled over in its groove. As he pulled the bolt slid back to reveal the gleaming tray into which the bullet would lie, and the dark hole at the rear end of the barrel. He rammed the bolt back home and twisted it clockwise. Smoothly it locked into place.
Just below the rear end of the bolt an extra disc of steel had been expertly welded on to the mechanism. It was half an inch thick but less than an inch round and in the top part of the disc was a cut-out crescent to allow free passage backwards of the bolt. In the centre of the rear face of the disc was a single hole half an inch across; the inside of this hole had been threaded as if to take a screw.
‘That’s for the frame of the stock,’ said the Belgian quietly.
Jackal noticed that where the wooden stock of the original rifle had been removed no trace remained except the slight flanges running along the underside of the breech where the woodwork had once fitted. The two holes made by the retaining screws that had secured the wooden stock to the rifle had been expertly plugged and glued. He turned the rifle over and examined the underside. There was a narrow slit beneath the breech. Through it he could see the underside of the bolt that contained the firing pin which fired the bullet. Through both slits protruded the stump of the trigger. It had been sawn off flush with the surface of the steel breech.
Welded to the stump of the old trigger was a tiny knob of metal, also with a threaded hole in it. Silently M. Goossens handed him a small sliver of steel, an inch long, curved and with one end threaded. He fitted the threaded end into the hole and twiddled it quickly with forefinger and thumb. When it was tight the new trigger protruded below the breech.
By his side the Belgian reached back into the tray and held up a single narrow steel rod, one end of it threaded.
‘The first part of the stock assembly,’ he said.
The assassin fitted the end of the steel rod into a hole at the rear of the breech and wound it till it was firm. In profile the steel rod seemed to emerge from the back of the gun and cant downwards at thirty degrees. Two inches from the threaded end, up near the mechanism of the rifle, the steel rod had been lightly flattened, and in the centre of the flattened portion a hole had been drilled at an angle to the line of the rod. This hole now faced directly backwards. Goossens held up a second and shorter steel rod.
‘The upper strut,’ he said.
This too was fitted into place. The two rods stuck out backwards, the upper one at a much shallower angle to the line of the barrel so that the two rods separated from each other like two sides of a narrow triangle with no base. Goossens produced the base. It was curved, about five or six inches long and heavily padded with black leather. At each end of the shoulder guard, or butt of the rifle, was a small hole.