committed suicide. For me, it is too much. M. Boisseau-two men you ask to have put under surveillance both die in their homes by suicide, by accident in less than two days. I tell you, there has to be something wrong.. .'
`Is there anything specific..' Boisseau began, but he got no further.
`Pardon, Mr Director-General, but I have not finished. A woman who knows-knew-Robert Philip well, drove past his villa yesterday morning and saw a blue Citroen parked opposite his villa. Two men were trying to repair the car, but she thought they were watching Philip's villa. She reported it to me when she saw the patrol-cars outside this morning, assuming there had been yet another burglary…
`Any registration number?' Boisseau managed to interject.
`Unfortunately, no, but I have not finished,' Dorre continued. 'It occurred to me to check with all the local hotels and we find that two men arrived at the hotel nearest the station at 9.30 on Saturday night. The hotel, incidentally, is no more than a few metres away from the villa of the late Robert Philip. They arrived in a blue Citroen and we have the registration number. It is being circulated at this moment. Also, the descriptions of the two men. There may be no connection but I do not like this death at all, despite its technical perfection…'
`If it were not an accident then,' Boisseau hazarded, 'it would have to be the work of highly-skilled professionals?'
`They would have to be trained assassins,' Dorre said bluntly, `because if I am right-and I do not say I am- then presumably Leon Jouvel's death was also arranged, and again there was technical perfection. You must not think I am a romantic,' he insisted, 'trying to turn every event into a crime, but I repeat, two men under surveillance dying so quickly does not smell of roses to me, sir. And,' he went on, once again preventing Boisseau from speaking, 'the geography is interesting, is it not?'
`The geography?'
`It is not so very far to drive from Strasbourg to Colmar. I will let you know as soon as we get information on the car registration of the Citroen…'
Vanek, driving at speed, but always keeping just inside the legal limit, reached the Boulevard de Nancy in Strasbourg by nine in the morning, one hour before Inspector Dorre had circulated the car registration number. Handing back the Citroen to the Hertz agent, he walked out again and went into the restaurant where he had dropped Brunner and Lansky while he got rid of the vehicle.
`We've used that car quite long enough,' he told the two men, 'and two visits is more than enough by the same mode of transport.'
Refusing to allow them to finish their drinks, he took them outside where they again separated. With Brunner he took a cab to Strasbourg station, leaving Lansky to follow in a second vehicle. They joined forces again at the station but they each bought their tickets separately. Boarding the train by himself while the other two men went into a different coach, Lansky put his bag on the rack and lit a cigarette. Within fifteen minutes the train had crossed the Rhine bridge and was stopping in Kehl.
The Soviet Commando had arrived in Germany.
CHAPTER FOUR
Monday was a bad day for Lennox, who never forgot that he was travelling with forged papers. Arriving back at Strasbourg station, intending to collect his suitcase from the baggage store and then take another train across the Rhine into Germany, he immediately noticed signs of intense police activity. There was a uniformed policeman on the platform as he alighted from the train, a young and alert man who was obviously scrutinizing all passengers as they walked past him to descend the exit steps.
In the main hall there were more police-some of them Lennox felt sure in plain clothes-and when he approached the luggage store two gendarmes stood by the counter, checking people's papers as they withdrew their luggage. Lennox walked away from the store and went inside the glassed-in cafe which fronted on the Place de la Gare. Sitting down at a table he ordered coffee, quite unaware that he was in the same cafe Lansky had waited in the previous Saturday evening before paying his final call on Leon Jouvel. While he drank his coffee Lennox watched the station and what he saw was not encouraging.
Another police van arrived, disgorging a dozen more policemen who ran inside the main hall. The energetic Inspector Dorre of Colmar had been in touch with his Strasbourg colleagues-Vanek's Citroen had now been traced to the Hertz car-hire branch in the Boulevard de Nancy-and Inspector Rochat's superiors, nervous now of a monumental blunder, co-operated fully. The abandonment of the car logically led them to the assumption that the recent hirers must now be travelling by train or air. A massive surveillance operation was put into action at the railway station and near-by airport. Ironically, the dragnet thrown out to trap the Soviet Commando was endangering Lennox.
It is one thing to slip across a border with false papers; it is quite a different kettle of fish to risk being checked carefully when an emergency dragnet is under way. Lennox paid for his coffee, walked across the Place de la Gare to the bus station, and jumped on the first crowded bus leaving. It happened to be going to Haguenau, a place he had never heard of, so he bought a ticket which would take him the whole route. The earliest he could risk crossing over into Germany would be the following day; dragnets are at their most vigilant during the first twenty- four hours. And the big problem would be where to spend the night: when the police are really looking for someone they check every hotel, even phoning those outlying places they cannot easily reach.
Lennox caught a late evening bus back from Haguenau to Strasbourg, and the first thing he noticed when he alighted at the Place de la Gare was the line of police vans drawn up outside the station. Early that morning, reading through the newspaper to find the report on Leon Jouvel's death, he had noticed a reference to an all-night session of the European Parliament being held in the city. After eating dinner in a back street restaurant, he took a cab to the Parliament building. His papers, which showed him as a reporter, readily gave him admittance and once inside he settled down in the press gallery to his own all-night session.
Before taking the cab to the European Parliament he had slipped into a hotel washroom where he had shaved with equipment he had bought in Haguenau; it might not have been wise to present an unshaven appearance inside the august precincts of Europe's talking shop. The precaution turned out to be unnecessary-there were few other reporters in the press gallery and at times, as the dreary debate droned on and on, Lennox was able to snatch an hour or so of sleep. Checking his watch at frequent intervals, he waited while the night passed on leaden feet. In the morning he would try once again to cross the Rhine into the Federal Republic of Germany.
It was Inspector Jacques Dorre (who in later years rose to the rank of Commissioner), who finally alerted Marc Grelle. When the prefect received Boisseau's report of his conversation with Colmar he personally phoned Dorre, who now had more information. He was able to tell Grelle that the Citroen which had transported two men to the hotel in Colmar had been handed in to the Hertz branch in the Boulevard de Nancy, Strasbourg.
`Yes,' he further confirmed, 'the description of the man who returned the car corresponds with the description of one of the two men who stayed at the Hotel Bristol on the nights of 18 and 19 December-and on the 19th Robert Philip died in his bath…
`If these two men-Jouvel and Philip-were murdered,' Grelle suggested to Dorre, 'it has to be the work of a professional assassin then? No amateur could fake both deaths so convincingly, you agree?'
`I agree,' Dorre replied crisply. 'But it appears there is a team of at least two assassins on the move-maybe even three men…
Grelle took a tighter grip on the phone. 'How do you make that out ?' he demanded.
`I personally checked the register at the Bristol. Ten minutes after the first two men-Duval and Bonnard- booked in, a third man, Lambert, took a room also. There is nothing to link these three men together-except that they all arrived on the night of the 18th and departed on the morning of the l0th, which is early today, of course. The point is, at this time of the year the hotel was almost empty…
Grelle thanked him for his co-operation and put down the receiver. 'There could be some kind of assassination team on the move in Alsace,' he told Boisseau. 'It's all theory, but if it were true who the hell could they be?'
`Only Lasalle and the Englishman, Lennox, have that list, presumably,' Boisseau pointed out. 'Surely Lasalle is not wiping out his own witnesses? That doesn't make any sense at all. The only thing which would make sense is if someone employed by the Leopard were doing the job…
