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 Citroen 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.
When Cassin returned from his breath of fresh air, Grelle left the Surete to drive back to his apartment on the Ile Saint- Louis. The next step would be to circulate Alan Lennox's description to all French frontier checkpoints.
CHAPTER SIX
Leon Jouvel. Robert Philip. Dieter Wohl.
The list of names and addresses meant nothing to either Grelle or Boisseau when the envelope containing the typed sheet reached the prefecture on Tuesday morning, 14 December. The envelope arrived in the prefect's hands by a somewhat devious route. As instructed earlier if he had anything to send by post, Hugon-Moreau had sent the envelope to an address in the rue St Antoine near the Place de la Bastille. The rue St Antoine is one of the many 'village' districts which make Paris one of the most complex and varied cities in the world. The envelope was addressed to the owner of a small bar who lived over his business; an ex-police sergeant, he supplemented his income by acting as a post-box for the Surete. Under the circumstances, it would hardly have been discreet for Moreau to send a communication direct to the rue des Saussaies. Warned of its imminent arrival, the bar-owner phoned the Surete when it arrived, who in turn phoned the prefecture. A despatch rider delivered the envelope to Grelle's desk by ten in the morning.
`These people mean nothing to me,' Boisseau told Grelle as they checked the list together. 'Do you think Hugon is inventing information to justify his four thousand francs a month?'
`No, I don't. Look at the German name-Dieter Wohl. I read about him in the file on the Leopard. He was the Abwehr officer in the Lozere during the war. I seem to remember he compiled a diary on the Leopard's activities…'
`In any case,' Boisseau said, sucking on his extinct pipe, 'the Leopard, as I keep reminding you, is dead…'
`So, Boisseau, we have two facts which contradict each other. First, the Leopard's deputy, Petit-Louis, whom we now know to have been Gaston Martin, stated quite categorically that he saw the Leopard walk in through the gates of the Elysee five days ago. That is a fact-he made the statement. Fact two, the Leopard is dead-the record says so. How do we reconcile these two contradictory facts?'
`We check them..'
`Precisely. I want to know everything there is on file about the burial of the Leopard in 1944. I want to know where the grave is, whether a priest attended the funeral, whether he is still alive, who the undertaker was, whether he is still alive- every little detail that you can dig up. Phone my friend Georges Hardy, the police prefect of Lyon. But tell him to keep the inquiry just between me and him… .' His deputy was leaving the office when Grelle called him back. 'And Boisseau, I want the information yesterday…'
The prefect next called in his secretary and dictated a confidential memo to Roger Danchin telling him the contents of the latest message from Hugon-Moreau. When the memo was typed he initialled it and a despatch rider immediately took it to the Place Beauvau. And as has been known to happen before when a subordinate reports to his superior, Grelle censored the report, omitting any reference to the Leopard. Danchin was reading the memo before noon.
Earlier, as soon as he arrived at his office, the prefect started the machinery moving which, in a few hours, would have circulated to all French frontier checkpoints the name and description of Alan Lennox. 'It's odd,' he said to Boisseau, 'I once met a man with this name when I was in Marseilles. Get someone to phone the right man at our embassy in London and try to check him out-with particular reference to his present whereabouts. Alan Lennox-he was an international security expert…'
