address of a television shop in the Quai des Bateliers. Using a street map of Strasbourg purchased from a newspaper kiosk, Vanek and Brunner had driven round the old city to locate both addresses before Vanek made his first call from the bar. He then drove a short distance from the quai before handing over the car to his companion. For the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening the three men would move round Strasbourg on their own, familiarizing themselves with the city's layout and getting the feel of being in France.
`Buy a paper, go into bars and cafes, chat with everyone you can,' Vanek had instructed. 'Start merging with your background by mixing with it. Take a short bus-ride, find out what people are talking about. By tonight I want you to be more French than the French themselves…'
Following his own advice, Vanek sampled the flavour of Strasbourg by walking. Unlike Brunner, from now on he walked everywhere, knowing that the easiest way to get your bearings in a strange city is to walk. As the street map indicated, the old quarter of the city was for all practical purposes an island surrounded by water, the huge 'moat' being formed by the river Il which encircles the heart of Strasbourg. A series of bridges all round the perimeter crossed the river into this ancient heart, built, for the most part, in the fourteenth century. It was still daylight at four o'clock, but only just in the narrow, silent rue de l'Epine, when Vanek walked in under the archway of No. 49.
One of the numerous plates at the entrance to the building registered the fact that Leon Jouvel lived on the second floor, and he was knocking on the door of the second-floor apartment when the door of the neighbouring apartment opened and a red-haired girl peered at him speculatively.
`He's gone away for the day to see his sister-back in the morning,' she informed the Czech. 'Do you think I could help you in some way?'
Vanek, careful to eye her hips and other parts of her anatomy with due appreciation, had no trouble at all in extracting from Denise Viron the information he needed. He was, he explained, a market research specialist. 'Mr Leon Jouvel is one of the people chosen to answer our questionnaire . a survey on pension needs.' Within a few minutes he learned that Jouvel was a widower, that he occupied the apartment on his own, that he possessed no animals-here Vanek had in mind a guard-dog-that he was out all day at the shop arid only returned at 6.30 in the evenings, that he was no longer a sociable man, so there were few visitors.
`If you would like to come in,' the girl said, smoothing her skirt down over her long, lithe legs, 'I might be able to help you in other ways…'
Vanek, whose appetite for women was healthy, made it a point never to mix business with pleasure. And in any case, the girl had so far not had too close a look at him in the gloomy hall. Explaining that he had five more people to interview that day, he left her with a vague impression he would certainly be calling on her again within a few days. As arranged earlier, at eight in the evening he met Brunner and Lansky at a corner of the Place Kleber as snow drifted down over the huddled rooftops of Strasbourg. Taking them into a crowded bar, he found a table at the back.
`… and so,' he continued a few minutes later, 'it is made to order for a quick solution. You visit him tomorrow night, soon after 6.30 when he has returned home…' It was Lansky he had chosen to pay a call on Leon Jouvel. 'He is a widower and lives on his own. He has a second-floor apartment and the building is quiet. No one about at all except for a red-headed girl who lives next door. She could be a nuisance-she's looking for somebody to keep her bed warm.'
`I don't like it,' Brunner said. 'You're moving too fast. We need more time to check on this man…
`Which is exactly what we have not got,' Vanek snapped. 'In five days from now-December 22-we have to complete the whole job, which includes visiting three people, one of them in Germany. So, the strategy is simple-we deal with the first two on the list quickly.. .'
`If the place is empty, I'd better take a preliminary look inside it tonight,' Lansky said. He stood up. 'We'll meet at the bus station in the Place de la Gare tomorrow at the time agreed?'
`It's dangerous to hurry it,' Brunner muttered.
Vanek leaned forward until his face almost touched Brunner's, still speaking very quietly. 'Think, man! It will be Saturday night-the body won't even be discovered until Monday morning at the earliest…'
The Rope used the set of French skeleton keys-which had been flown from Kiev to Tabor with the false Surete cards at the last moment-to open Jouvel's apartment door. It was a four-roomed apartment: a living-dining room with a colour television set, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. When he entered the apartment the first thing he did was to draw the curtains, then he examined the place with the aid of a pocket torch.
Everything was neat and tidy; Lansky reminded himself he must remember this when it came to setting the stage.
Lansky had brought no rope with him; purchasing a length of rope can be dangerous if the police institute a proper check afterwards. Instead he looked round for something on the premises-a sash cord, a belt, anything strong enough to hang a man by the neck until he is dead. Inside an old-fashioned, free-standing wardrobe he found what he was looking for-an old woollen dressing-gown with a cord-belt round the waist.
He tested the strength of the cord carefully by tying one end to the leg of the old-fashioned gas cooker in the kitchen and pulling hard on it. If necessary, to give it more strength he could immerse it in water later. Privately, he had already rejected Brunner's suggestion that Jouvel might drown in his own bath; that involved undressing a man, which took more time. And suicide was always something the police were willing to accept with a widower living on his own. He next tested the handle on the outside of the bathroom door to make sure it was firm. Brunner had told him it was not unusual for people to hang themselves on the inside of a bathroom door; perhaps they felt they could do the job here in decent privacy.
Twenty minutes is the maximum time a burglar allows for being inside a house; after that the statistics show the law of averages moves against him. Lansky carefully timed his visit for twelve minutes. He had re-opened the curtains and was ready to leave when he heard voices in the corridor near by. With his ear pressed against the door panel he listened carefully. Two voices, a man's and a girl's, probably the girl in the next apartment Vanek had mentioned. They were talking in French but Lansky couldn't catch what was being said. He waited until the voices stopped, a door closed, and footsteps retreated along the corridor. When he came out and relocked Jouvel's door the building was full of silence. In less than twenty-four hours, at seven on the following evening, he would return to pay his last call on Leon Jouvel.
He emerged from the archway into the rue de l'Epine with equal caution. But tonight police detective Armand Bonheur was fifty kilometres away in Sarrebourg, sitting cold and depressed inside his car while he watched the house where Leon Jovel was paying his duty call on his elderly sister. Lansky waited a little longer until the only person in sight, a man walking away towards the Place Kleber, disappeared. The man was Alan Lennox.
At eight o'clock in the evening of Friday, 17 December, at about the time the Soviet Commando went into a bar near the Place Kleber, Andre the Squirrel made his suggestion to Marc Grelle in the prefect's office in Paris. Would it be worth while for him to fly to Strasbourg to interview Leon Jouvel and then go on to see the other witness in Colmar? 'If Lasalle is right and these people knew the Leopard they might be able to tell me something.'
Grelle considered the suggestion and then decided against it. For the moment at least. The trouble was he needed his deputy in Paris to help complete the security fence he was building round the president. 'Let it wait,' Grelle advised.
Travelling up from Switzerland by train, Alan Lennox had arrived at Strasbourg station while the Soviet Commando was still in Kehl across the river Rhine. Since there are only two or three first-class hotels in the city, it was not surprising that he chose the Hotel Sofitel, which is built like an upended shoe-box and more like the type of hotel found in America. Registering in the name of Jean Bouvier, he went up to his fourth-floor room which overlooked a concrete patio.
His first action was to consult Bottin, the telephone directory, and like Vanek in the same hotel only two hours later, he noted that Leon Jouvel had two addresses, one of which corresponded with the Lasalle list, the other a television shop. Unlike Vanek, he phoned the shop from the hotel room. The number went on ringing, but no one answered it. In the shop, Louise Vallon was having her busiest time of the day and she was damned if she was going to attend to the phone as well. In the Sofitel, Lennox replaced the receiver. The obvious next move was to try Jouvel at home.
Checking the street-guide he had bought at the station, he found that the rue de l'Epine was only a short walk from the hotel. Putting on his coat and hat again, he went out into a world of slow-falling snowflakes which made it seem even more like Christmas in Strasbourg. Unlike Paris, the city was full of reminders of the approaching
