phone that he could take no more calls for the moment, then went over to the window to stare down into the rain- swept street. First he swore his deputy to absolute secrecy. 'In case anything happens to me,' he explained, 'there must be someone else who knows about this-who could carry on the investigation. Although I'm still praying that Martin got it wrong, that he didn't know what he was talking about…
`What was Martin talking about?' the diplomatic Boisseau inquired.
`You know as well as I do,' Grelle replied brutally. 'He was saying that someone who visited the Elysee last night, someone important enough to be saluted-so he has to be of cabinet rank-is a top Communist agent…'
On Grelle's instruction, Boisseau sent off an urgent cable to the police chief at Cayenne, Guiana, requesting all information on Gaston Martin, and then between them they sorted out the broken, often-incoherent story Martin had told them.
He had stood in the vicinity of the Elysee Palace for about one hour-between, say, 7.30 pm and 8.30 pm, sometimes standing at the edge of the kerb where Lucie Devaud had been shot; sometimes wandering up towards the Place Beauvau, and then back again. At least they were sure of 8.30, the time when a car had knocked him down, because this had been witnessed by one of the Elysee sentries. 'Partially witnessed, that is,' Boisseau explained. 'I phoned the inspector in charge of the case while you were coming to the hospital and the fool of a sentry isn't even sure of the make of car which knocked down Martin…
And at some moment during this approximate hour Martin swore he had seen the man he had once known as the Leopard walk into the Elysee courtyard and be saluted by the sentries. It was this brief statement which so disturbed Grelle. 'They saluted him. ' Martin's description of the man had been vague; by the time Grelle got round to asking this question the dying man had been slipping away fast. And often he had rambled off in another direction, forgetting the question Grelle had asked him.
`But according to Martin this man was very tall-over six feet,' the prefect emphasized. 'He said that three times-the bit about his great height.'
`This goes back over thirty years to the wartime Resistance,' Boisseau protested. 'That is, if Martin is to be believed at all. How on earth could he recognize a man he hadn't seen all that time? People change like hell…
`He was very insistent that he saw the Leopard. Said he hadn't changed much, that the first thing he noticed was the man's walk-then I couldn't get him to describe the walk.'
`It doesn't sound at all likely… Boisseau was tie-less by now, in his shirt-sleeves. Coffee had been brought in to them and the room was full of smoke as Grelle used up cigarette after cigarette. The rain was still lashing the windows.
`It doesn't,' Grelle agreed, 'but I was the one who heard every word he said and he frightened me. I think I can judge when a man is telling the truth…
`This Leopard then-you think he was really telling the truth about that?' Boisseau, small and heavily-built, with almond-shaped eyes and thick eyebrows, had made no attempt to keep the scepticism out of his voice. 'Personally, I have never heard of him…'
`But you are younger than me.' The prefect lit another cigarette. 'The Leopard is on file, a very old and dusty file by now. And yes, I do think Gaston Martin was telling the truth -as he believed it to be.'
`Which could be a very different thing…'
`Quite true. You see, there's something you don't know. The Communist Resistance leader known during the war as the Leopard is dead.'
On Saturday morning, 11 December, David Nash, who had just returned from Europe aboard the night flight from Brussels, flew from New York to Washington for an emergency meeting with Andrew MacLeish at the State Department. The two men locked themselves away in a small room on the second floor and MacLeish listened without saying a word for fifteen minutes; it was one of his strong points, that he could absorb a verbal report without interruption, soaking up information like a sponge.
`And Lasalle gave absolutely no indication of the identity of this alleged cabinet minister who could be a secret Communist agent?' he inquired eventually. 'This man he calls the second Leopard-because he has adopted the pseudonym of the dead wartime Communist Resistance leader?'
`None at all,' Nash replied promptly. 'He played the whole thing very close to the chest. What he did tell me was that he believes he was on the verge of uncovering the agent when he had his titanic row with Florian-which ended in his flight from France. Since then he hasn't been able to carry his investigation any further and he's worried stiff that a coup d'etat is planned to take place while Florian is in Moscow on this coming visit. He suspects that the Russians invited the president to Russia to get him out of Paris at the crucial moment, The attempted assassination decided Lasalle-to make contact with me. He's pretty certain that if it had succeeded the coup d'etat led by the second Leopard would have taken place at once.'
`So he wants us to complete the investigation that he started…
`He has this list of three witnesses who worked closely with the original Leopard during the war…
`A list he wouldn't give you,' MacLeish snapped.
`I'm not sure I blame him for that,' Nash countered. 'He's very security-conscious and that I like. He'll only hand over the list to the agent we provide to go inside France to meet these people…
`What the hell can these three so-called witnesses tell us?' MacLeish demanded irritably. 'If the original Leopard is dead I don't see the connection…
`Lasalle believes someone who was in the Leopard's wartime Resistance group cleverly took over his name as the code-name the Russians would know him by. So to find this top Communist agent we have to dig back into the past, to find who could fit. Find out who he was in 1944 and we'll know who he is today.'
MacLeish, whose other strong point was his ability to take a quick decision, drummed his thick fingers on the table like a man playing a piano. 'So the deadline is 23 December when Florian takes off for Moscow, which gives us exactly eleven days. You're going to have to move damned fast..
`So I can send someone in?' Nash interjected.
`You can send someone in,' MacLeish decided, 'but not an American. If Florian's security apparatus got hold of him the French would have a field day. I can hear Florian's next anti- American speech now-Yankee agent discovered trying to smear Paris cabinet minister.. .. That we can't risk. An agent yes, but not an American,' he repeated.
'But not an American…'
It was still Saturday morning when Nash gave the instruction to his assistant, Ward Fischer, in the suite of offices on the third floor which housed his staff. Normally everyone except Fischer would have been at home on a Saturday; but before boarding his New York flight to Washington, Nash had phoned ahead and the suite was now occupied by men recalled hastily while Nash was airborne.
`Kind of narrows the field,' Fischer remarked.
`Narrow it to zero. Find the man,' Nash snapped. 'Inside two hours,' he added.
Fischer went into the next office and within five minutes his staff was searching through the files, looking for a name. The specification for the man who would go into France to interview Lasalle's witnesses was stringent. He had to have top security clearance; to be fluent enough in the language to pass as a Frenchman; to be experienced in the security field; and he must be a man of cold and careful temperament who could be relied on in an emergency, operating entirely on his own. As to nationality, he must not be an American, nor must he be a Frenchman.
It was Nash himself who added this final qualification which caused Fischer to swear colourfully the moment he left his boss's office. 'The God-damned specification screams for a Frenchman,' he complained to one of his staff, 'so now you've got to find a Frenchman who isn't a Frenchman. Get on with it…
Nash, however, had a very good reason for adding this qualification. Because France is a very special place and many of its people are highly political, Nash felt it would be dangerous to choose a Frenchman to spy on the French. He also felt pretty sure Col Lasalle would have the same doubts.
While Fischer and his staff were searching, Nash went over the file in his mind of people he had known-or known of. One name came to him quickly, but he rejected it: he could never persuade this man to do the job. Sitting at his desk, his chubby hands clasped behind his neck, he checked back in his mind, rejecting candidate after candidate. As Fischer had said, the specification certainly restricted the field. In the end he came back to the man
