he had first thought of.
At 1.30 in the afternoon Fischer came into his office carrying two files. 'These are the only two people who fit,' he said wearily. 'We ate at our desks and we've been working since I left you. Cancelling out the French made it that much tougher…' Nash looked at the two files. One of the names was Jules Beaurain, a Belgian. 'Belgium isn't France,' Fischer said hopefully. The other was the name Nash himself had thought of.
`It will take pressure to get this man,' Nash said reflectively. `I may have just hit on how the pressure could be applied. Get me details of all overseas bids for security contracts inside the States. Get them now…
`It's Saturday…
`So the calendar tells me. Phone people at their homes, get them behind their desks fast. Tell them it's an emergency- and give them my compliments…
`They're going to appreciate that,' Fischer said and went out of the office to phone his wife. She also was going to appreciate it, he felt sure.
Left alone in his office, Nash took a ballpoint out of his pocket and indulged in his liking for doodling portraits. He drew from memory a head-and-shoulders sketch of a man he had once known well, a man he had liked and respected despite disagreements. When he had finished the sketch he added a caption underneath. Alan Lennox. Security expert. British.
Three thousand miles across the Atlantic in London it was Saturday evening as Alan Lennox turned the key in the double- lock Chubb, checked the handle of the door to his office, and stood for a moment staring at the plate on the wall. Lennox Security Company Limited. On the stock exchange the shares had climbed to? 3.50 and it looked as though they were going higher; security companies were enjoying a minor boom. God knew why, but recently they had become a City cult. Probably because they were 'export-orientated' as the little wise men who sent out brokers' recommendations phrased it. All over the world large industrial concerns were employing Britons to organize their security because, it was alleged, they were incorruptible. Another cult. Lennox thought maybe it was a good time to sell out-once he had obtained the big American oil combine contract he was bidding for. With that under his belt the shares should go through the roof.
The only man in the building-managing directors worked alone on Saturdays-he went down in the lift to Leadenhall Street and out into the storm which had broken over London. Collecting his Citroen DS 23 from the underground garage, he drove home through sheets of blinding rain to his flat in St James's Place, reflecting that it wasn't a Saturday night to encourage a man on his own to dine out. Arriving inside the flat, which he had furnished with antiques, Lennox took off his two-hundred-guinea coat and poured himself a large Scotch. The next problem was to decide whether to eat out or grill himself a steak from the fridge.
Thirty-five years old, managing director of the most successful international security company based in London, Lennox was a well-built man of medium height who moved with a deceptive slowness; in an emergency he could react with the speed of a fox. Dark-haired, the hair cut shorter than the normal fashion, his thick eyebrows were also dark. The eyes were his most arresting feature; brown and slow-moving, they looked out on the world warily, taking nothing for granted. `It's in the nature of my job to be suspicious,' he once said. 'A man called Marc Grelle told me in Marseilles that I had the mind of a policeman; I suppose he was right…
Born in Paris, Lennox's mother had been French, his father a minor official at the British Embassy in the Faubourg St Honore. The first ten years of his life had been spent in France and Lennox was fluent in French long before he mastered English at school. Disliking his father's idea that he enter the diplomatic service-`after eighteen I found we had nothing to say to each other'-he joined a large international oil company. Because of his fluency in English, French, German and Spanish he was attached to the security department. Five years later he was directing it.
`I was lucky,' Lennox recalled. 'The timing was right. Security had become the key to survival. You can buy tankers, drill new oilfields-but where's the profit if people keep dynamiting them?'
Lennox's career soared at the time when Arab terrorists were turning their attention to blowing up non-Arab oilfields-to increase the economic power of the Middle East fields. In an emergency, boards of directors turn to the man who can save them; they turned to Lennox. Travelling widely, he organized new systems to protect oilfields, tankers and refineries in four continents. He soon decided that defensive measures were not enough; if you are to win you must carry the war into enemy territory.
Disappearing into the twilight world of counter-espionage, often for months at a time, Lennox penetrated the terrorist groups, locating their camps in the Lebanon and farther back in Syria. At this time he was employing all sorts of dubious people, paying them large sums in tax-free cash-which drove prim accountants at headquarters crazy. One of his most successful anti-terrorist teams was recruited from the Union Corse-the French Mafia- who were annoyed because Arab money had bought up certain Parisian protection rackets they had previously controlled. 'The Red Night of July 14' was splashed across the world's headlines.
Lennox waited until he was ready, waited patiently for months while he built up an intimate knowledge of the terrorist gangs. On 4. July he struck. The Union Corse team-speaking French, the second language in Lebanon- landed by helicopters and came ashore from boats on isolated beaches. In eight hours they wiped out three major terrorist gangs, killing over two hundred men. Only Corsicans could have killed so swiftly and mercilessly. From that night the sabotage of oil installations dropped to five per cent of its previous volume.
It was during these years that Lennox came into contact with leading security and police chiefs from Tokyo to Washington, including men like David Nash and Peter Lanz, and organizations like the FBI and the Surete Nationale, all of whom provided discreet and unofficial help to a man who could take the ultimate measures they were not empowered to employ. At a later period he spent four years with an American company, including hazardous months along the Mexican border where terrorists were infiltrating with Mexican peasants coming into the United States to find work. Then, without warning, he resigned to set up his own outfit.
His private life was less successful. Married twice, he lost both wives to other men who came home each night. 'To my home,' he said sardonically. In both cases he divorced his wife despite the urgent plea of one that he assume the role of guilty party. 'You knew what my life was like before we married,' he said bluntly. 'I warned you time and again-and the one thing I can't stand is people who break contracts… At the moment Lennox was consoling himself with his third girl friend without too much enthusiasm. He knew what the trouble was: three years after the foundation of his own company he felt that once again he had done what he had set out to do, so he was losing interest. 'I'm bloody bored,' he told himself as he drank his Scotch. 'I need something new… He raised his glass to the telephone. 'Ring,' he told it, 'ring from some faraway place…
He had finished his Scotch and was taking the steak out of the fridge when the phone rang. Knowing it had to be a wrong number, he picked up the receiver. The international telephone operator had a seductive voice. 'Mr Alan Lennox?' she inquired. 'Overseas call for you. Person-to-person. From Washington…'
Two men stood talking in the walled Paris garden, their overcoat collars turned up against the chill December wind. One of them was tall and slim, the other short and powerfully-built, and the language they conversed in was French. The Leopard, tall and slim, shook his head doubtfully as his companion repeated the same argument forcefully.
`We believe it is essential to eliminate Col Lasalle. We have people who can make it look like an accident, people waiting at this moment for the order to proceed…
`It could be a mistake…
`It could be a mistake to do nothing, not to take action. These people who would deal with the matter ate competent, I assure you…
They went on discussing the problem as darkness fell and beyond the walls the Paris rush-hour traffic built up to a peak. Not a score of metres from where the two men stood, the life of the capital proceeded in its normal mundane way and some people were even buying presents for Christmas.
CHAPTER THREE
Carel Vanek drove the Citroen DS 21 forward at high speed, heading for the bulky figure standing in the middle of the concrete track. The light was bad; it was late in the afternoon of 11December, just before dark. Through the windscreen Vanek saw the figure rush towards him, blur as the car hit it at 90 kph, elevate under the impact, then the whole vehicle wobbled as he drove on, passing over the body. A dozen metres beyond he pulled up
