Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

The German authorities had very mixed feelings about the arrival of Col Lasalle in their midst. They gave him refuge- no specific charges had ever been levelled against him by Paris -and the local police chief in Saarbrucken was instructed to maintain a distant surveillance on the fugitive. Lasalle himself, fearing an attempt to kidnap him, had asked for police protection, and this was granted on the understanding that it was never referred to publicly. With the passage of time- Lasalle had now been in Germany for six months-the surveillance was relaxed.

Peter Lanz had visited Lasalle several times, requesting him to tone down his broadcasts, and always Lasalle received the German courteously and said he would consider the request. Then he would get into his car, drive to the radio station and blast Florian all over again with a fresh series of innuendoes. Since he was breaking no law, Lanz would shrug his shoulders and then sit down to read carefully a transcript of the latest outburst.

Lanz, at thirty-two, was exceptionally young to occupy the post of vice-president of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the West German Federal Intelligence Service. He owed his rapid promotion to his ability, and to the fact that a large number of older men were suddenly swept out of the organization when the new Chancellor, Franz Hauser, was elected three months after Guy Florian's own rise to power. 'I don't want intriguers,' Hauser had snapped, 'I want young and energetic men who can do the damned job…

This very young second-in-command of the BND was a man of medium height, slim build and thinning brown hair. 'In this job I shall be bald at forty,' he was fond of saying. 'Is it true that women go wild over bald men?' Normally serious-faced, he had one quality in common with Guy Florian: when he smiled he could charm almost anyone into agreeing with him. His job was to try and foresee any potentially explosive situation which might harm the Federal Republic politically-to foresee and defuse in advance. The arrival of Lasalle on German soil was a classic case. 'Not one of my outstanding successes,' he once admitted, 'but then we don't know where it's going to lead, do we? Lasalle knows something-maybe one day he will tell me what he knows…

Nash met Lanz at Liege in Belgium. Earlier in the morning, landing at Brussels at 8.30 am, the American had hired a car at the airport in the name of Charles Wade, the pseudonym under which he was travelling. Arriving in Liege, Nash spent half an hour with Lanz in the anonymous surroundings of the railway station restaurant, then he drove on south to Clervaux in the Ardennes. The secret rendezvous with Col Lasalle had been chosen carefully-Clervaux is neither in Germany nor in Belgium. This little-known town is high up in the hills of northern Luxembourg.

The secrecy surrounding Nash's visit was essential to the survival of Lasalle as a credible public figure; once Paris could prove he was in touch with the Americans he could so easily be discredited as a tool of Washington. At the quiet Hotel Claravallis in Clervaux, inside a room booked in the name of Charles Wade, Nash and Lasalle talked in absolute secrecy for two hours. Afterwards, Lasalle left immediately and drove back to Germany. Nash had a quick lunch at the hotel and then drove straight back to Belgium where he reported to Peter Lanz who had waited for him in Liege. Half an hour later Nash was on his way back to Brussels where he caught the night plane to New York. During his lightning dash to Europe, travelling under a pseudonym, Nash had gone nowhere near the American Embassy in Brussels. He was eating dinner on the plane while he doodled animal pictures and then erased them. Pictures of the head of a leopard.

David Nash was somewhere on the road between Brussels and Liege, driving to keep his first appointment with Peter Lanz, when Marc Grelle in Paris received what appeared to be a routine phone call. The large office of the police prefect is on the second floor of the prefecture; its walls are panelled, its windows overlook the Boulevard du Palais; and to ensure privacy the windows are masked by net curtains. As usual, Grelle was wearing a pair of slacks and a polo-necked sweater as he sat behind his desk, going through the morning's paperwork, which he disliked.

Grelle, born in the city of Metz, was a man of Lorraine. In France the Lorrainers are known as the least French of the French. Sturdy physically, not at all excitable, they have a reputation for being level-headed and dependable in an emergency. Grelle had travelled a long way to reach Paris from Metz. At the time of Florian's election as president eighteen months earlier, Marc Grelle had been police prefect of Marseilles and would have been quite content to complete his career in that raffish seaport. 'Look where ambition gets you,' he had a habit of saying. 'Look at any cabinet minister. They take pills to help them sleep, they take stimulants to keep them awake at the Wednesday cabinet meetings. They marry rich wives to further their ambitions, then spend their wives' money on mistresses to keep themselves sane. What is the point of it all?'

It was only with the greatest reluctance that Grelle accepted Florian's strong plea for him to come to Paris. 'I need one honest man close to me,' Florian had urged. His face had creased into the famous smile. 'If you won't accept I shall have to leave the post vacant l' So, Grelle had come to Paris. Sighing, he initialled a paper and was turning to another document when the phone rang. The call was from Andre Boisseau, his deputy.

`I'm at the Hotel-Dieu, chief, just round the corner. I think you ought to get over here right away. A man is dying and there's something very odd about him…

`Dying?'

`He was knocked down by a hit-and-run driver in the Faubourg St Honore yesterday evening opposite the Elysee at the very spot where Lucie Devaud died…

Boisseau didn't want to say any more on the phone, so putting on his leather raincoat, Grelle left the building and walked the short distance to the large hospital which overlooks the right bank of the Seine. It was pouring with rain but he hated driving short distances-`Soon, babies will be born with wheels instead of legs,' was one of his favourite sayings. Boisseau was waiting for him on the first floor of the gloomy building. 'Sorry to get you wet through, chief, but he won't speak to anyone except the police prefect. The man's name is Gaston Martin. He's just back from Guiana-for the first time in thirty years, for God's sake…

Later, Grelle pieced together the bizarre story. Guiana is the only overseas department in South America which still belongs to France. Known once to the public mainly because this is where the notorious penal settlement, Devil's Island, was situated, it had remained for years out of the world's headlines, one of the sleepier areas in the vast Latin-American continent.

Gaston Martin, a man in his late sixties, had spent all of his life since the Second World War in this outlandish place. Then, for the first time in over thirty years, he had returned home aboard a freighter which docked at Le Havre on 9 December, less than twenty-four hours after the attempted assassination of Guy Florian. Travelling to Paris by train, he dumped his small bag at the Cecile, a seedy Left Bank hotel, and went out for a walk. Eventually he turned up outside the Elysee where, at exactly 8.30 pm, he had been run down by a car as he stepped off the sidewalk. Grelle knew nothing of this as he followed Boisseau into a room occupied by only one patient. The prefect's nose wrinkled as he smelt antiseptic. A fit man, he detested hospital odours.

Gaston Martin lay in the single bed attended by a nurse and a doctor who shook his head when Grelle asked how the patient was. 'I give him one hour,' he whispered. 'Maybe less. The car went right over him… lungs are pierced. No, it makes no difference if you question him, but he may not respond. I'll leave you for a few minutes…' He frowned when Boisseau made his own request. 'The nurse, too?' 'As you wish…'