before take-off time. On the tarmac outside in the blazing sunshine the entire French cabinet stood in line, waiting for Florian to board the plane. Near by stood squads of Airport Gendarmerie, their automatic weapons cradled in their arms. From where Alain Blanc stood the view beyond Concorde went straight out across the plain, interrupted only by a tiny cluster of distant buildings which was the village of le Mesnil Amelot perched at the edge of the vast airport. The sun caught a minute spike which was a church spire, a tiny rectangle which was an abandoned factory. Then the president was walking past his cabinet ministers, smiling his famous smile.
`He has the presence of a king,' Danchin murmured to the minister standing next to him. 'France is indeed blessed at this time of her great power…'
About to board the aircraft, Florian seemed to remember something. Swinging round, still smiling broadly, he went back and shook hands with Alain Blanc. 'Alain,' he said warmly, 'I will never forget all you did for me in the past…' Only Blanc noticed the emphasis he placed on the last few words, like a chairman saying good-bye to the director he has just dismissed from the board. The execution is delayed, Blanc thought as he watched Florian going up the mobile staircase, but it will be carried out the moment he returns.
At the top of the staircase Florian turned, waved his hand, then disappeared. The jets began to hum and hiss. Technicians near the nose of the plane ran back. The incredible machine began to throb with power.
Watching the scene on television in Paris, Boisseau mopped his own forehead.
Earlier, before the motorcade turned out of the Elysee, it was helicopter pilot Jean Vigier who spotted the small black car moving at speed away from the centre of Paris. He saw it first below him, driving along the Boulevard des Capucines. Intrigued-it was the only vehicle moving along the deserted boulevard, he changed course and picked it up again beyond Opera. Impressed by its speed, by the sense of urgency it conveyed, he continued tracking it.
What started as a routine check turned into something more alarming as Vigier followed its non-stop progress; the car was moving past road-block after road-block without stopping, without any check being made on it. Worried now, Vigier continued his aerial surveillance on the rogue vehicle while he radioed central control.
`Small black car passing through all checkpoints without stopping
… now located at..'
Receiving the message, Boisseau took immediate action, telling an assistant to phone the police station at 1 rue Hittorf, which was the nearest checkpoint the car had passed through. The assistant returned a few minutes later. 'It is the police prefect inside that car-that is why they are letting him through the checkpoints. He radios each one as he approaches it… Boisseau wasted little time on speculation; his chief was clearly checking something out. Sending a message back to helicopter pilot Jean Vigier, 'Driver of black car identified-no cause for alarm,' he forgot about the incident.
Inside the car Grelle was now approaching the Goutte-d'Or district. Again he radioed ahead to the next checkpoint to let him through and then he did something very curious. Pulling in by the kerb in the deserted street, he changed the waveband on his mobile communicator, took out a miniaturized tape- recorder, started it playing and then began speaking over the communicator, prefacing his message with the code-sign. `Franklin Roosevelt. Boisseau here. Yes, Boisseau. Is that you, Lesage? Interference? Nothing wrong at this end. Now, listen!' The tape-recorder went on spewing out the static he had recorded off his own radio set in his apartment, garbling his voice as he went on speaking.
`Rabbit has been seen… Yes, Rabbit! Walking down rue Clichy five minutes ago. Take your men and scour the Clichy area now. Don't argue, Lesage, he's got away from you-just get after him! When you find him, tail him-no interception. I repeat, no interception. He may lead you to the rest of the gang…
Having given the code-word for the operation at the beginning of his message, Grelle was satisfied that Lesage would carry out his order immediately. Driving on again, he passed through the next checkpoint and then turned into the rue Reamur where Rabbit, the Algerian terrorist Abou Benefeika, was still waiting for his friends to come and collect him. Getting out of his car, he approached the derelict entrance to No. 17 with care, but the rubber-soled shoes he was wearing made no sound as he entered the door-less opening with his revolver in his hand. A stale smell of musty damp made him wrinkle his nose as he stood in the dark hallway listening. He was even more careful as he made his way down the staircase leading to the basement.
He waited at the bottom to accustom his eyes to the gloom, and gradually the silhouette of a sleeping man formed beyond the doorway into the cellar, a man sleeping on his side and facing the wall. Switching on his pocket torch the prefect found a wire stretched across the lower part of the doorway; following it with the beam of his torch he saw it was attached to a large tin perched on a pile of bricks. Any incautious person who walked through the doorway would bring down the tin, alerting the sleeping terrorist. Grelle stepped over the wire, still using the torch to thread his way among a scatter of old bricks as he approached the sleeping terrorist. Bending down, he picked up the Magnum pistol close to the man's inert hand. Then he wakened him.
Grelle drove out of Paris through the Porte de Pantin, and continued along route N3; then, just before reaching Claye Souilly, he turned due north through open countryside. The Algerian terrorist, Abou Benefeika, was crouched on the floor in front of the passenger seat Grelle had pushed back to its fullest extent. Covered with a travelling rug, which had apparently slipped on to the floor, he was crouched on his haunches facing the door with his back to Grelle who occasionally lifted the revolver out of his lap and pressed it against the nape of his neck to remind him of its presence.
Abou Benefeika was partly relieved, partly terrified. The civilian who had woken him up with a gun in his face, warning him to keep quiet, had told him he had come to take him away, to get him out of the country. 'Your friends ran for it,' Grelle told him savagely, 'so I have been left to see you don't get caught. The police are closing in on this district, I suppose you know?' Grelle had warned him to get his head down and keep it down. 'This is a stolen police car so you'd better hope and pray we can get past the road-blocks they've set up. I have the identity card of the detective I shot to take this car, so we should be able to manage it. But if I have to shoot you to save myself I shall do so…'
Benefeika, cooped up in the basement with the rats for days, was in a demoralized state. He didn't trust the man who had woken him, but he was encouraged when Grelle passed through police road-blocks without giving him up. What other explanation could there be except the one this man had given him? Beyond the Porte de Pantin there were no more checkpoints for a while, but the occasional prods with the muzzle of his rescuer's revolver encouraged Benefeika to keep his head down. In the back of the car another travelling rug was draped over the floor, but it was not a man who lay concealed beneath this covering.
The visit to the rue des Saussaies at 5 am had been hazardous. The guard who let him inside the building had assumed Grelle was going up to the room on the fourth floor where some mysterious project was carried out-the room, in fact, where a man waited for the next call from Hugon, Col Lasalle's treacherous deputy, Capt Moreau. Grelle did proceed to the fourth floor, going first to the office which had been set aside for his use, the room where he had interviewed Annette Devaud. He was only inside for a moment while he left a pack of cigarettes oh his desk. He then went to the strongroom on the other side of the building, unlocked the door, slipped inside and locked it again. He was now inside the outer office, facing the strong-room door.
Grelle proceeded with great care. Using gloves, he took the key to the strong-room door and pressed it into a key blank he had brought with him. He deliberately made a poor job of it, shifting the key so the impression was out of true. Afterwards it would be assumed someone had made a fresh and perfect blank, providing the means to furnish themselves with a duplicate key. Still wearing the gloves, he dropped the imperfect key blank on the floor and pushed it out of sight under a filing cabinet. Within a few hours teams of investigators would tear the room to pieces, would locate every speck of dust inside the place. Then he opened the strong-room door.
The SAM missile launcher was wrapped in protective canvas, laid on the floor against the wall. Beside it, inside a smaller roll of canvas, lay the two strela rockets. He made one bulky package of both, using the larger roll of canvas and fastening a strap he had brought round it. Leaving the strong-room, he locked it, went out into the corridor and re-locked the outer door.
The difficulty now would be getting the large roll out of the building. He was bound to encounter a guard at the exit, if not inside the building.
To avoid the patrolling guards, whose routine he knew, he went a long way round, walking through endless corridors and down back staircases. The damned building was a rabbit warren he had often cursed in the past but this time it could be his salvation. He went down the last staircase, then he crept back up it as he heard the footsteps of a guard in the passage below. He waited. The footsteps faded and silence returned to the decrepit interior. He walked down the staircase quickly, reached the bottom and slid the canvas roll inside a cupboard which
