Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

This was the nub of the training at the abandoned racetrack outside the medieval town of Tabor; here the three Czechs who made up the Commando perfected the skill of arranging 'accidental' deaths. Death by running someone down with a car was trainer Borisov's favourite method. The research section, housed in a separate cabin and which worked closely with the Commando, had studied the statistics: more people in western Europe died on the roads than from any other cause. Accidents in the home came next. Hence Brunner's special attention to drowning in the bath, which had been practised in a third concrete cabin with an iron bath-tub and live 'models'.

A fact largely unknown to the outside world is that an assassination Commando never leaves Russian-controlled territory without the express sanction of three members (who make up a quorum) of the Politburo in Moscow. Even in 1952 -when the power of the Committee for State Security was at its height-the Commando sent to West Berlin to kidnap (or kill, if necessary) Dr Lime, had to be approved by Stalin himself and two other Politburo members (one of whom was Molotov).

The reasoning behind this policy is sound. If a Commando's actions are ever detected the international image of Soviet Russia becomes smeared-because one thing the western public does know is that nothing happens inside Russia without government approval. The Politburo is aware of this, so a Commando is only despatched when there is no other alternative. Vanek's Commando had been fully approved by the First Secretary and two other Politburo members; now it only awaited the signal to proceed, travelling on French papers which would easily pass inspection inside Germany. Brunner had just completed his inspection of the identity cards when Borisov came into the cabin with the news.

`The execution of Lasalle has been postponed…

`Damn it!' Brunner was furious. 'And just when we were all geared up…

`Have patience, my impetuous Czech,' Borisov told him. `You have to stand by for a fresh signal. You may be departing at any time now.'

On the morning of Monday, 13 December, when Marc Grelle received his telex from Guiana about Gaston Martin, Alan Lennox was flying to Brussels. Travelling aboard Sabena flight 602 he landed in the Belgian city at 10.30 am. Earlier, from Heathrow Airport, he had phoned his personal assistant at home to say an urgent inquiry had come in from Europe and he was flying there to get the contract specification. During the brief conversation he made a vague reference to Denmark. `You'll be back when, if ever?' Miss Thompson asked him gaily.

`When you see me, I'm back…

It was time to sell out Lennox thought as he boarded the Sabena flight. He had organized the company so well that now he could go away for long periods and the machine ran itself. So I've worked myself out of a job again he told himself as the Boeing 707 climbed up through the murk and broke through into a world of brilliant sunshine which was always there, even over England, if only the inhabitants could see it. The reference to Denmark was a precaution; if anyone inquired for him at the office Judith Thompson would be close-mouthed, but if someone clever did make her slip up, then they were welcome to search for him in Copenhagen

At Brussels airport he hired a Mercedes SL 230. Offered a cream model, he chose a black car instead; black is less conspicuous, less easy to follow. Driving first to Liege, Lennox kept a careful eye on his rear-view mirror, watching for any sign of a car or truck keeping persistently behind him. It was unlikely but not impossible; since David Nash had walked from the Ritz to his flat in St James's Place and back again he could have been followed, and the follower might then have turned his attention to the man Nash had crossed the Atlantic to meet.

At Liege, where only three days earlier Nash had twice met Peter Lanz of the BND in one day, Lennox took a further precaution. Visiting the local Hertz car-hire branch, he invented a complaint about the performance of the Mercedes and exchanged it for a blue Citroen DS 2I, his favourite car. Then lie turned south-east, heading for the Ardennes, which is not the direct route into Germany. Sometimes it is possible to follow a man by remote control-observing the route he is taking and then phoning ahead. It takes a team of men to carry out the operation, but at the last count Lennox had heard the French Secret Service were employing over one hundred full- and part-time operatives in Belgium. If the main routes out of Liege were now being checked for a black Mercedes the watchers were hardly likely to take much notice of a blue Citroen.

Eating a sandwich lunch on the way while he drove, Lennox arrived in Saarbrucken as a cloudburst broke over the German city. The windscreen wipers almost gave up the job as hopeless while he was threading his way through the traffic. Rain cascaded down the glass, beat a tattoo on the car roof while he went on searching for the main post office. On the continent, post offices provide the most useful means of making a call you don't wish to be overheard.

From the post office he called Col Lasalle's number which had been given to him by Nash. When Lennox asked for the colonel the man who answered the phone in French said he would take a message.

`You won't,' Lennox snapped. 'Put me through to the colonel. Edmond calling…'

`Edmond who?'

`Just Edmond. And hurry it up. He's expecting the call.'

The man at the other end-probably Captain Paul Moreau whom Nash had mentioned as Lasalle's assistant-obviously did not know about all the colonel's activities, which was reassuring. It suggested the ex-chief of military counter-intelligence had not lost his touch. The code-name Edmond, provided by Nash, put him through to Lasalle and the Frenchman said he could come at once.

`I will be waiting for you,' he replied crisply and put down the receiver. No waste of words, no questions, and the voice had been sharp and decisive.

It took him an hour, driving through rain squalls, to find the remote farmhouse, and it was dark as his headlights picked out an old lodge beside a closed gate. There had been lights inside the lodge when he first saw it, but now the place was in darkness. He kept the engine running and waited, then got out cautiously when no one appeared. He was walking past his own headlights when a shutter in the lodge banged open.

The muzzle of a Le Mat sub-machine gun poked out of the aperture.

`Stay where you are-in the lights,' a voice shouted in German

`You're expecting me,' Lennox shouted back in French. 'I rang you from Saarbrucken. For God's sake open the bloody gate before I get soaked…

`Come in on foot…' The voice had switched to French. `Come through the gate…

Opening the gate, Lennox went up to the lodge, tried the door, opened it, stepped inside and stopped. A man in civilian clothes faced him, still holding the sub-machine gun which he aimed point-blank at the Englishman's stomach. A smooth- faced individual with a smear of moustache, a man in his late forties, Lennox assumed this must be Capt. Paul Moreau. 'I'm Edmond,' Lennox said after a moment. 'Do you have to keep pointing that thing at me?'

`Some identification-on the table…'

`The colonel is going to be happy about this?'

`On the table…'

Lennox extracted his passport carefully from inside his dripping raincoat and then threw it casually on the table. To reach for the document with his right hand the man with the gun had to cradle the wire stock under his left arm; as he did so Lennox suddenly knocked the muzzle aside, grasped the barrel and wrenched the weapon out of the man's grip. 'I don't know who you are,' he remarked as the Frenchman recovered his balance and glared, 'but you could be someone who just knocked out the real lodge-keeper…'