The Stone Leopard

by Colin Forbes

  Beyond Grelle's windscreen the tiny village of le Mesnil Amelot was in sight, a silhouette of a duster of houses, a church spire and an abandoned factory building. Beside him on the floor Abou Benefeika was sweating; they had just passed another checkpoint. Leaving them behind at the Porte de Pantin, the prefect had run into them again as he approached the perimeter of Charles de Gaulle Airport, checkpoints which he had ordered to be set up. At the last one, still some way from the village, he called across quickly to a guard. 'Keep your eyes open for strangers. I have received a report there could be trouble round here. . .'

  `You are going on into the village, sir ?'

  `I'll probably stop well this side of it—to watch the take-off. . .'

  He drove on while Benefeika, huddled under the rug, marvelled at the audacity of this fake policeman. Several times he had asked where they were going and Grelle had been curt. `To a place where there is transport to get you out—and that's all you need to know. . . .' Coming close to the village, Grelle glanced at his watch. 10.20. Jesus Christ, it had taken him longer than he had estimated. In ten minutes Concorde would be airborne.

  Over to his left the plain stretched out in the sunlight beyond the wire which enclosed Charles de Gaulle Airport and he thought he could see the waiting Concorde. As he had hoped, the village street was deserted; everyone had crowded into their neighbours' houses overlooking the airport where they waited for the presidential plane to take off. Grelle turned the car sharply, driving round the back of an abandoned factory building into a large yard.

  `A helicopter will land here and take you off inside one hour,' Grelle informed the Algerian as he hustled him at gunpoint out of the car. 'In the meantime you will stay quiet. . . Taking him inside the building, Grelle prodded him up a crumbling staircase and into a small room on the second floor where the window was barred. He bolted the door with Benefeika on the inside. Only recently, checking every aspect of security surrounding the president's departure, the prefect had driven all round the airport perimeter and had stopped at le Mesnil Amelot ; intrigued by the old factory, he had walked all over it. Having locked away Benefeika, Grelle took the heavy canvas roll out of his car and lugged it up on to the roof. There was still no one about and only the church and the graveyard faced the derelict factory. Next he checked his watch. 10.27.

  In Paris at the prefecture Boisseau was extremely irritated when an assistant told him there was an urgent message from Lesage, the detective in charge of the team watching the Algerian terrorist, Abou Benefeika. 'For God's sake, at a time like this,' Boisseau fumed, then he remembered his chief's knack of keeping his eye on half a dozen things at once. Put him through,' he snapped. He listened for less than a minute and then exploded.

  `You fool! I gave no orders to pull out. You say the voice was badly distorted but it gave the correct code-sign? It wasn't me ! You've been fooled by someone in the terrorist cell. Get back to the building at once and search it. I can tell you now you'll find him gone!' Boisseau turned his attention again to the television image which showed the president going up the steps of the mobile staircase, turning to wave, then disappearing inside Concorde. 'In no time at all he'll be airborne,' he remarked to his assistant.

  Characteristically, in the manner of a Pierre Trudeau or a Jack Kennedy, Guy Florian went through the passenger section of Coneorde to the control cabin. He proposed to sit there while the plane took off, to watch how the pilots handled the controls.

  `Sit down,' he told the flight deck staff. 'I'm just another passenger now. . . .' He grinned boyishly. 'But important enough to sit with you while you take her up. If you have no objection. . .'

  At 10.30 precisely the huge machine began moving down the runway to reach the main take-off area, travelling some distance before Jubal turned the aircraft and pointed her along the main runway. There was a moment's pause while he waited for the control tower to give him formal permission, then he set the plane in motion. From where Main Blanc stood it still looked like a venomous bird of prey, a beautiful machine but something evil and predatory. The whine and hiss from the enormous power of the engines came across to the cabinet ministers as they stood in a dutiful line, waiting. The sky was now absolutely clear, the sun shining brilliantly. No other aircraft could be seen—the sky had been emptied for the departure of President Florian. Far down the runway the plane changed direction, climbing suddenly at an acute angle, its vulture-like head and neck arched with its body, trailing in its wake a stream of dirt.

  At 10.31 on the rooftop of the abandoned building Grelle was sprawled on a sheet of oilskin he had brought to protect his clothes.

  Hugging the missile launcher hard into his shoulder, the way Buvon had explained when he told the prefect at Orly how the weapon worked, Grelle was staring through the telescopic sight. Only a blur to the naked eye, Concorde came up close and clear through the sight, so close he could read the words Air France painted along its side. He was sweating profusely. In the president's entourage aboard the moving plane were men he knew well, men he liked and respected. Grelle's mouth was tightly compressed, his teeth clenched.

  She climbed like a triumphant bird, nose and neck arched, her huge bat-winged body arched, climbing at that severe angle which is so awe-inspiring—and terrifying—seen from the ground, or the rooftop of an abandoned factory. One thousand feet . . . two thousand . . . climbing. This is always the critical moment—when a huge aircraft laden with fuel has to keep on going up and up without pause because there is now no point of return and you keep going up towards the stratosphere—or there is oblivion.

  'For France. . .'

  Grelle squeezed the trigger.

  The rocket sped up from the rooftop. Grelle was running one flight down to the room where the Algerian terrorist was still waiting for the chopper to come and take him to safety. In the empty sky above Charles de Gaulle Airport there were only two occupants—the ascending rocket and ascending Concorde. There was instant panic among the radar operators tracking Concorde's course. Another object had appeared on their scanners. An incredibly small object, streaking across the screens at supersonic speed, moving so fast that only one operator was able to shout.

  Guy Florian was speaking from the flight deck over the radio, relaying a message which was being transmitted as people gathered around television sets in Paris bars to watch the climbing Concorde. 'This historic mission I am making to Moscow will further the cause of world peace so that our grand-children . .

  The Russian-made strela missile impacted with Concorde at the control cabin. The head and neck of the plane—which enclosed the control cabin from where Florian was speaking— broke off from the body. As the fuel detonated there was a tremendous b-o-o-m. In the streets of Paris twenty-five kilometres away people stopped as though they had been shot. From the ground the assembled cabinet ministers saw a terrible fireball flare as the fuel ignited seconds after the control cabin had gone spinning off into space. The fireball consumed half the body while the rear half fell away and plumed into a second fiery dart which plunged into fields thirty kilometres away. As the dart settled a great column of black smoke rose vertically into the clear morning sky. A fragment of tail landed a score of metres away from the cabinet ministers and they scattered. Up to that moment they had stood there in silence, motionless with horror.

  It was Main Blanc who recovered first, slipping away to his car. 'Drive like hell back to Paris,' he ordered.

  The entire village where the missile had been fired from was sealed off. Grelle personally directed the operation. Patrol-cars converging on the village overtook the police prefect as he was driving towards le Mesnil Amelot, and he led the way into the village where the inhabitants were now in the street, staring skywards in a state of shock. The cars pulled up and Grelle was the first to jump out.

  `Back into your houses . . . everyone off the street . .. there may be shooting at any second. . .'

  The village was sealed off within three minutes as more cars arrived, as Grelle ordered
a house-to-house search and warned his men against getting trigger-happy. saw something streak into the sky from this village,' he told the inspector in charge of the detachment. 'Me too,' the inspector replied excitedly. Over a car's radio Grelle got in touch with Boisseau. `Keep the streets of Paris clear. No crowd must be allowed to assemble. Use the CRS troops if necessary. Someone may try to organize an insurrection.'

  Having attended to Paris, Grelle resumed control of the house-to-house search. It was 10.55 am, exactly—he had checked the time by his watch—when he heard the inspector running down the street, shouting his head off. They had found the Algerian.

  Abou Benefeika was on the rooftop of the abandoned factory, sprawled on his back, his eyes open as he stared sightless at the sky, his own Magnum pistol in his hand, with one bullet fired, bearing his own fingerprints. He had apparently shot himself through the right temple. The SAM missile launcher lay close by next to a spare rocket; later, when they checked the weapon, it also carried his fingerprints.

  On 7 January the great bells of Notre Dame rang out for the state funeral of Guy Florian—part of his body had miraculously survived intact—and heads of state from all over the world attended the occasion, including the titular president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Alain Blanc, newly elected prime minister, led the mourners.

  On the previous Christmas Eve, Marc Grelle handed in his resignation as police prefect of Paris to Alain Blanc, who had also temporarily taken over the post of Minister of the Interior. The two men remained closeted in private for over an hour. Grelle then immediately issued a statement to the press. 'Failing in my duty to protect the life of the president of the French Republic, I have resigned and will go into immediate retirement.' Georges Hardy, Grelle's old friend and police prefect of Lyon, took over as police prefect of Paris.

  On 8 January, the day after the state funeral of the president, which Grelle had watched alone on television in his apartment on the Ile Saint-Louis, the ex-prefect drove Alan Lennox to the airport for his flight back to London. Still convalescent and heavily bandaged, Lennox had insisted on going home at once after making a lengthy deposition of his activities in France to Andre Boisseau. The deposition made no mention of the Leopard, and Boisseau, who carried out the interrogation personally, never referred to the Resistance leader once.

  After seeing the Englishman aboard his flight at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Grelle started the drive back to Paris alone. In his breast pocket he carried the photograph of his wife, Pauline, which he had extracted from the frame in his apartment. His last words to Alan Lennox before leaving him had been nostalgic. 'For years I have looked forward to retiring to a certain village in the Dordogne—the fishing there is good. . .' But Grelle had devoted most of his life to preserving and upholding the law; nor had he any illusions that the steps he had taken to cover his tracks would stand up to intensive investigation. He had only sought to buy himself a little time. If he was not available for questioning then, in due course, Boisseau could issue his report confirming that Abou Benefeika was responsible for the president's death. He hit the crash barrier travelling at 140 kph.

  Over five hundred people attended his funeral. And as at the funeral of Guy Florian, Alain Blanc, later to become the next president of France, was the chief mourner. On top of the coffin was draped Marc Grelle's black uniform embroidered in silver, which is reserved for official occasions. 'It struck me,' Andre the Squirrel remarked afterwards, 'that he would have preferred them to drape slacks and a polo-necked sweater. . . .' The Prime Minister was one of the pall-bearers, and as he walked slowly with a corner of the coffin perched on his shoulders there were people who said later that never before or since had they seen Alain Blanc so distressed.