document. 'I suppose you will be driving into France?' he inquired. 'It will give you total mobility.'
`Probably. I want to be off in about twenty minutes. Is there anything else I need to know?'
`I'm afraid there is.' Lanz leaned across the table, smiling as though he were saying something of little consequence. 'We've just heard that some kind of alert has gone out from Paris. We've no idea why. But there is increased surveillance at all French frontier crossing points.'
`Thanks, I'll watch out.' Lennox made no mention of the fact that he already knew this. It wasn't that he distrusted the BND chief, but when he was working alone he made it a point to let no one know what he was doing next.
He rested his hand lightly on the copy of Der Spiegel. 'The papers seem a bit bulky,' he commented, drinking the rest of his coffee.
`We've included five thousand deutschmarks in high-denomination bills-for expenses. We don't expect you to be out of pocket on this thing…
`Thanks again. If I want to contact you, I use the Frankfurt number?'
`No, a different one. In Bonn, actually…' Lanz didn't explain that from now on he was staying in the German capital where he could have immediate access to Franz Hauser in case of a crisis. 'You'll find the new number written on the inside of the envelope,' he went on. 'You can reach me at that number at any hour of the day-or night. I shall stay in my office at that number, eat there, sleep there. If you phone I promise you it will be my hand which will lift the receiver.'
Lennox stared at the German. This kind of consideration he had not expected. 'Thanks once more,' he said. 'But this trip could take anything up to a fortnight if I run into trouble- and you could get pretty stiff staying locked up in one room for as long as that.'
`It's the least I can do, for Christ's sake.' Lanz spread his hands. 'I wouldn't want to take on the job myself, I can tell you. There's something stirring in the French security system, and it may not be healthy. If you get in a jam, call me. I can't promise one damned thing-not inside France-but I can at least try. If it gets hot, get out…'
Grelle was airborne in an Alouette helicopter, heading south for Lyon to attend the exhumation of the Leopard's grave, when he took another decision. He had been sitting silently for some time, not speaking to Boisseau who was beside him, staring down at the flooded landscape below. For large stretches it was more like travelling over Asian rice paddy- fields than the plains of France.
`Boisseau,' Grelle said eventually, 'there are two persons on that list Hugon supplied who live in France- excluding the man in Germany.. .'
`Two,' Boisseau agreed.
`I want you to set up close surveillance on both those people. It must be very discreet-the two men being watched must have no idea they are under surveillance.'
`They are to intercept the Englishman, Lennox, if he Shows up?'
`No! If Lennox appears I want the fact reported, then I want Lennox discreetly tailed. But he must not be intercepted.'
`I will have to quote your personal authority. It is out of our jurisdiction, of course.'
It was, indeed, out of Grelle's jurisdiction. Normally the power of the police prefect of Paris ends at the city's boundaries; he possesses not one shred of authority outside the capital. But Florian had expressly handed over to Grelle the responsibility for his own security to cover the whole of France since the assassination attempt.
`Of course,' Grelle agreed. 'So you tell them this concerns the safety of the president of the French Republic.'
To check passengers travelling from Vienna to Germany, passport officials sometimes board the train at Salzburg, but not often; this is one of the more open frontiers of Europe. The Soviet Commando crossed the Austro-German border without any check at all. With their ski equipment in the luggage van, travelling with French papers, carrying French francs and German marks in their wallets, the trio were to all outward appearances French tourists returning home from Austria via Germany.
Even so, Vanek was still taking precautions. Deciding that two travellers were less conspicuous than three, he sat with Brunner in one first-class compartment while Lansky travelled alone in a different coach. As they moved through the snowbound countryside of Bavaria beyond Salzburg after dark they caught glimpses in the moonlight of the white Alps to the south.
Later, when approaching Munich, they passed close to Pullach, the home of the BND headquarters. Reaching Munich at eight in the evening, Vanek and Brunner took a cab to the Four Seasons Hotel, the most expensive hostelry in the city.
`No one,' as Vanek explained earlier, 'looks for assassins in the best hotels…
Privately, Brunner had a more simple explanation. Vanek, he felt sure, believed that only the best was good enough for a man of his talents. While they proceeded to their own hotel. Lansky left the station by himself and booked a room at the Continental. To adjust themselves to the western atmosphere they went out in the evening after Vanek had phoned Lansky from an outside call-box to make sure he had arrived. 'Don't sit in the hotel room,' Vanek ordered his subordinate. 'Get out and sniff the place. Circulate…' But he did not invite Lansky to join himself and Brunner.
At a beer hall Vanek picked up a couple of girls, using his fluent German to pull off the introduction, and later the four of them ate a very expensive dinner. When Brunner, hurrying after his leader to the lavatory, questioned these tactics, Vanek was brusque. 'Don't you realize that two men with a couple of girls are far less conspicuous than two foreigners on their own? In any case,' he said as he adjusted his flies, 'they are nice girls…'
At the end of the evening, drinking absurdly-priced champagne in a night-club, Vanek persuaded his girl friend to take him back to her flat. Outraged, Brunner cornered Vanek in the foyer, saying he was going back to the hotel to get a good night's sleep.
`A good night's sleep?' Vanek queried. 'My dear comrade, I can spend a little time with a girl, sleep for four hours and face the morning with the physique of an athlete…'
`We are catching the early morning train to France,' Brunner reminded him.
`So don't oversleep,' Vanek replied.
Lennox, who was always a lone wolf, waited until Lanz had left the Mainz Hauptbahnhof restaurant, then he picked up the copy of Der Spiegel, went into the lavatory and locked the door of the cubicle. Sitting on the seat, he extracted the French papers, put the five thousand deutschmarks into his wallet, memorized the Bonn telephone number and tore up the envelope which he flushed down the pan. Emerging from the lavatory, he made no move to leave the station to collect his car. He had, in fact, already handed it in to the car-hire branch in Mainz.
At 12.38 p.m. he boarded the Trans-European express Rheingold which had just arrived from Amsterdam. Finding an empty compartment-there are few people on the Trans- European express in mid-December-he settled down in a corner seat and lit a Benson and Hedges cigarette. He had waited until the last second to board the train and no one had followed him. The people he was worried about were the French Secret Service agents attached to their embassy in Bonn. They would hardly know about him yet, but the second in command of the BND was an obvious target for them to follow.
As the express picked up speed he took hold of his suitcase and went along to the spacious lavatory.
The man who went inside was Alan Lennox, British. The man who emerged ten minutes later was Jean Bouvier, French. Settling down again in his empty compartment, Lennox was dressed in French clothes and smoking a Gitane. He was also wearing the hat he had purchased in Metz and a pair of horn- rim glasses. Normally hatless, Lennox knew how much the wearing of headgear changes the appearance of a man. When the ticket collector arrived a few minutes later and he had to purchase the TEE supplement, Lennox conversed with him in French and a little ungrammatic German.
When the express reached Freiburg, the last stop before the Swiss border, Lennox had a moment's hesitation. One of the three people on Lasalle's list of witnesses-Dieter Wohl-lived in Freiburg. Shrugging his shoulders like a Frenchman, Lennox remained in his seat. At the moment the important thing was to get clear of Germany, to break his trail; Freiburg was just across the Rhine from Alsace and he could visit Wohl later, after he had seen the Frenchmen. Promptly at 3.36 pm the Rheingold stopped at Basel Hauptbahnhof where Lennox got off.
