Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

`My imagination is running away with me,' he murmured.

Below him in the road one of the men left the car and made his way into a field alongside the house, his hand at his flies.

He's just gone for a pee, Wohl decided. Leaving the front bedroom, still moving around in the dark, he went into the side bedroom where the curtains had not been drawn; keeping to the back of the room, he watched the man perform against a hedge. It was all perfectly innocent, except that the man relieving himself kept glancing at the back garden and up at the side of the house. Well hidden in the shadows, Wohl waited until the man had finished and returned to the car. A moment later the two men closed the hood as Wohl watched from the front bedroom, climbed back inside the Mercedes and the driver tried the engine. It sparked first time and drove off towards Freiburg. I must be getting old, Wohl thought, seeing sinister things where none exist. He went downstairs to continue work on his memoirs. Half an hour later the phone rang.

`Herr Wohl? Herr Dieter Wohl? Good evening. This is the Morgenthau Research Institute, a market research organization. We are carrying out research connected with a campaign to increase state pensions. You have been selected..'

The researcher, a man called Bruckner, checked Wohl's status, noted that he was a widower living alone, that he owned his house, that he never took a holiday, and a number of other pertinent questions. Thanking Wohl profusely, the caller said he might wish to visit Wohl but he would first phone for an appointment. Would any of the next three evenings be convenient? It would? Excellent…'

Putting down the phone Wohl went back to his desk in the front living-room and settled down again to the arduous task of completing the introduction to his memoirs. But he found it difficult to concentrate; his suspicious mind kept going back to the telephone call.

Only eight hours earlier Vanek had phoned the special Paris number from Kehl. Each day, since arriving in Munich-with the exception of the Sunday in Colmar-he had phoned the number his trainer, Borisov, had given him from a post office- and each day there had been no new instruction passed over to him. Phoning from Kehl, he had anticipated the same dead call. Hearing the same voice and name-Jurgensen-repeat the number at the other end Vanek identified himself.

`This is Salicetti…'

`There is a development,' the voice said quickly. 'At the Freiburg branch you must collect a wartime diary and the manuscript of the customer's memoirs. Understood?'

`Understood…'

`Then you must visit another customer-note the address. A Madame Annette Devaud, Saverne…' Jurgensen spelt out the name of the town. 'It is in Alsace…

`That's a vague address…'

`That's all we have. Good-bye!'

Vanek checked his watch. The call had taken only thirty seconds. Quite calm while he had been making the call, the Czech swore to himself as he looked out of the phone booth to where people were queuing up to buy postage stamps. The new development was not to his liking at all; it meant that when they had made the visit to Freiburg they would have to re-cross the border back into France. And it was now 20 December, which gave them only seventy-two hours to complete the job.

Alan Lennox crossed the border to Kehl on the morning of Tuesday, 21 December. At Strasbourg station the dragnet had been relaxed, although still partly in operation. After the initial burst of activity-which brought no result-the resentment felt by the local police at Paris's interference in their affairs began to surface again, especially since there was a terrorist alert-later proved to be unfounded-at Strasbourg airport. Men were rushed to the airport and the surveillance at the railway station was reduced.

Collecting his bag from the luggage store, Lennox boarded a local train, later passed through the frontier control without incident-no one was looking for a man called Bouvier-and arrived in Kehl. He immediately put through a call to Peter Lanz at the special Bonn number he had been given and-in a roundabout way-told the BND chief everything that had happened. 'The two French witnesses have died suddenly, one might say violently-within twenty-four hours of each other. One of them partially identified our animal impersonator… by voice alone, I emphasize… Guy Florian.'

Lanz adopted an off-hand tone, as though discussing something of minor importance. 'You would say your witness was reliable? After all, we do have other depositions…'

`It is by no means certain,' Lennox replied.

`And your next move?'

`Peter, the third witness lives in Freiburg-I didn't mention it before, but I'm going to see him now. Yes, one of your countrymen. No, I'd sooner not mention names.'

`In that case,' Lanz said crisply, 'I will be in Freiburg myself this evening. You will be able to contact me at the Hotel Colombi. Look after yourself. And if that is all, I have to go to a meeting which is urgent…'

Franz Hauser, recently elected Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, agreed to see Peter Lanz at the Palais Schaumburg at 11 am, which was only one hour after Lennox had phoned from Kehl. Immersed in work-Hauser seldom got to bed before midnight-he had now asked Lanz to make his temporary headquarters in Bonn instead of at Pullach in Bavaria. 'I need you across the hall from me the way things are shaping up in Europe,' he informed the BND chief.

Small, neat and wiry, Hauser had been elected on a platform of taking the strongest measures against terrorists, the urban guerrillas who were still plaguing Germany. He had also preached the gospel that now the Americans had withdrawn from Europe the continent must protect itself. 'Combining with our friends, France, Great Britain and our other allies we must build up such strength that the commanders of the Red Army will know Europe can only be their graveyard if ever they make the mistake of crossing the frontiers…

At eleven o'clock promptly Lanz was ushered into his office and Hauser, a man who hated formality, came round his desk to sit alongside the security chief. 'Is there information from the Englishman, Lennox?' he inquired. He listened for ten minutes while Lanz explained what had happened, his small alert face puckered in concentration. 'If this links up with the movement of Soviet convoy K. 12,' he commented, 'then we may be on the eve of a catastrophe. The Russians are striking before we can build up our strength.'

`You do not really believe it, sir?' Lanz protested. 'I mean that Florian could be this Communist Resistance chief, the Leopard?'

`No, that is impossible,' Hauser agreed. Tut it is no longer beyond the realms of possibility that one of his key cabinet ministers may be. And then there is the fact that the Leopard was not found when his grave was disinterred near Lyon. How did you hear about that, by the way?'

`A contact we have across the Rhine…'

`All right, keep your secrets. What disturbs me are the growing rumours of a coup d'etat in Paris. Supposing the Leopard is Alain Blanc, Minister of National Defence-might he not be planning to seize power while Florian is away in Moscow?'

`That hadn't occurred to me,' Lanz admitted.

'Is there some huge conspiracy afoot?' Hauser murmured. `If Moscow is co-operating with the Leopard might they not have asked Florian to Moscow to get him out of the way while the Leopard takes over in France? Why is that Soviet convoy proceeding into the Mediterranean at this moment? Everything seems to be moving towards some climax. We need more information, Lanz. Immediately…'

Arriving by train at Freiburg, Lennox left his bag at the station, checked the phone directory to make sure Dieter Wohl was still living at the address given on the list, and then phoned the German. He introduced himself as Jules Jean Bouvier, a reporter on the French newspaper Le Monde. His paper was about to embark on a series of the French wartime Resistance, with particular reference to operations in the Lozere. He believed that Herr Wohl had served in this area during the war, so…'