He was nineteen and at first the old sweats called him ‘petit bonhomme’. Then he showed them how he could kill, and they called him Kowalski.
Six years in Indo-China finished off what might have been left in him of a normally adjusted individual, and after that the giant corporal was sent to Algeria. But in between he had a posting to a weapons training course for six months outside Marseilles. There he met Julie, a tiny but vicious scrubber in a dockside bar, who had been having trouble with her mec. Kowalski knocked the man six metres across the bar and out cold for ten hours with one blow. The man enunciated oddly for years afterwards, so badly was the lower mandible shattered.
Julie liked the enormous legionnaire and for several months he became her ‘protector’ by night, escorting her home after work to the sleazy attic in the Vieux Port. There was a lot of lust, particularly on her side, but no love between them, and even less when she discovered she was pregnant. The child, she told him, was his, and he may have believed it because he wanted to. She also told him she did not want the baby, and knew an old woman who would get rid of it for her. Kowalski clouted her, and told her if she did that he would kill her. Three months later he had to return to Algeria. In the meantime he had become friendly with another Polish ex-Legionnaire, Josef Grzybowski, known as JoJo the Pole, who had been invalided out of Indo-China and had settled with a jolly widow running a snack-stall on wheels up and down the platforms at the main station. Since their marriage in 1953 they had run it together, JoJo limping along behind his wife taking the money and giving out the change while his wife dispensed the snacks. On the evenings when he was not working, JoJo liked to frequent the bars haunted by the legionnaires from the nearby barracks to talk over old times. Most of them were youngsters, recruits since his own days at Tourane, Indo-China, but one evening he ran into Kowalski.
It was to JoJo that Kowalski had turned for advice about the baby. JoJo agreed with him. They had both been Catholics once.
‘She wants to have the kid done in,’ said Viktor.
‘Salope,’ said JoJo.
‘Cow,’ agreed Viktor. They drank some more, staring moodily into the mirror at the back of the bar.
‘Not fair on the little bugger,’ said Viktor.
‘Not right,’ agreed JoJo.
‘Never had a kid before,’ said Viktor after some thought.
‘Nor me, even being married and all,’ replied JoJo.
Somewhere in the small hours of the morning, very drunk, they agreed on their plan, and drank to it with the solemnity of the truly intoxicated. The next morning JoJo remembered his pledge, but could not think how to break the news to Madame. It took him three days. He skated warily round the subject once or twice, then blurted it out while he and the missis were in bed. To his amazement, Madame was delighted. And so it was arranged.
In due course Viktor returned to Algeria, to rejoin Major Rodin who now commanded the battalion, and to a new war. In Marseilles JoJo and his wife, by a mixture of threats and cajolement, supervised the pregnant Julie. By the time Viktor left Marseilles she was already four months gone and it was too late for an abortion, as JoJo menacingly pointed out to the pimp with the broken jaw who soon came hanging around. This individual had become wary of crossing legionnaires, even old veterans with gammy legs, so he obscenely foreswore his former source of income and looked elsewhere.
Julie was brought to bed in late 1955 and produced a girl, blue-eyed and golden-haired. Adoption papers were duly filed by JoJo and his wife, with the concurrence of Julie. The adoption went through. Julie went back to her old life, and the JoJos had themselves a daughter whom they named Sylvie. They informed Viktor by letter and in his barrack bed he was strangely pleased. But he did not tell anyone. He had never actually owned anything within his memory that, if divulged, had not been taken away from him.
Nevertheless, three years later, before a long combat mission in the Algerian hills, the chaplain had proposed to him that he might like to make a will. The idea had never even occurred to him before. He had never had anything to leave behind for one thing, since he spent all his accumulated pay in the bars and whorehouses of the cities when given his rare periods of leave, and what he had belonged to the Legion. But the chaplain assured him that in the modern Legion a will was perfectly in order, so with considerable assistance he made one, leaving all his worldly goods and chattels to the daughter of one Josef Grzybowski, former legionnaire, presently of Marseilles. Eventually a copy of this document, along with the rest of his dossier, was filed with the archives of the Ministry of the Armed Forces in Paris. When Kowalski’s name became known to the French security forces in connection with the Bone and Constantine terrorism in 1961, this dossier was unearthed along with many others, and came to the attention of Colonel Rolland’s Action Service at the Porte des Lilas. A visit was paid to the Grzybowskis, and the story came out. But Kowalski never learned this.
He saw his daughter twice in his life, once in 1957 after taking a bullet in the thigh and being sent on convalescent leave to Marseilles, and again in 1960 when he came to the city when on escort duty for Lieutenant-Colonel Rodin who had to attend a court martial as a witness. The first time the little girl was two, the next time four and a half. Kowalski arrived laden with presents for the JoJos, and toys for Sylvie. They got on very well together, the small child and her bear-like Uncle Viktor. But he never mentioned it to anyone else, not even Rodin.
And now she was sick with Luke something and Kowalski worried a lot throughout the rest of the morning. After lunch he was upstairs to have the steel étui for the mail chained to his wrist. Rodin was expecting an important letter from France containing further details of the total sum of money amassed by the series of robberies Casson’s underground of thugs had arranged throughout the previous month, and he wanted Kowalski to pay a second visit to the post office for the afternoon mail arrivals.
‘What,’ the corporal suddenly blurted out, ‘is Luke something?’
Rodin, attaching the chain to his wrist, looked up in surprise.
‘I’ve never heard of him,’ he replied.
‘It’s a malady of the blood,’ explained Kowalski.
From the other side of the room where he was reading a glossy magazine Casson laughed.
‘Leukaemia, you mean,’ he said.
‘Well, what is it, monsieur?’
‘It’s cancer,’ replied Casson, ‘cancer of the blood.’
Kowalski looked at Rodin in front of him. He did not trust civilians.
‘They can cure it, the toubibs, mon colonel?’
‘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.
‘There’s nothing to screw here,’ said the armourer, ‘just press it on to the ends of the rods.’
The Englishman fitted the end of each steel rod into the appropriate hole and smacked the butt home. The rifle now, when seen in profile, looked more normal, with a trigger and a complete stock sketched in outline by the upper and lower strut and the base plate. The Jackal lifted the butt-plate into his shoulder, left hand gripping the underside of the barrel, right forefinger round the trigger, left eye closed and right eye squinting down the barrel. He aimed at the far wall and s
queezed the trigger. There was a soft click from inside the breech.
He turned to the Belgian, who held what looked like a ten-inch long black tube in each hand.
‘Silencer,’ said the Englishman. He took the proffered tube and studied the end of the rifle barrel. It had been finely ‘tapped’ or threaded. He slipped the wider end of the silencer over the barrel and wound it quickly round and round until it would go no more. The silencer protruded off the end of the barrel like a long sausage. He held his hand out from his side and M. Goossens slipped the telescopic sight into it.
Along the top of the barrel were a series of pairs of grooves gouged into the metal. Into these the sprung clips on the underside of the telescope fitted, ensuring the telescopic sight and the barrel were exactly parallel. On the right hand side and on the top of the telescope were tiny grub screws for adjusting the crossed hairs inside the sight. Again the Englishman held up the rifle and squinted as he took aim. For a casual glance he might have been an elegant check-suited English gentleman in a Piccadilly gunshop trying out a new sporting gun. But what had been ten minutes before a handful of odd-looking components was no sporting gun any more; it was a high-velocity, long-range, fully-silenced assassin’s rifle. The Jackal put it down. He turned to the Belgian and nodded, satisfied.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Very good. I congratulate you. A beautiful piece of work.’
M. Goossens beamed.
‘There still remains the question of zeroing the sights and firing some practice shots. Do you have any shells?’
The Day of the Jackal Page 12
