Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

Grelle consulted a notepad. 'Emile Bonnard,' he replied. `And I do not expect we shall ever see the other two men- Duval and Lambert. They have done their job. They will never return to France.'

Carel Vanek and Antonin Lansky approached the checkpoint to cross back into France the following morning, Wednesday, 22 December, which was the deadline day Borisov had given them in Tabor to complete their mission. They were on their way to visit Annette Devaud. They came up to the passport control counter separately with half a dozen people between them and Vanek presented himself for inspection first.

`Papers…'

The passport officer took the document Vanek handed him, opened it after studying the Czech's face and then compared it with the photograph. The name he had already noted. Vanek waited with a bored look on his face, chewing a piece of chocolate while he studied the extremely attractive girl waiting next in line. He grinned at her engagingly and after a moment's hesitation she smiled back at him.

`You have been to Germany on business?' the passport official inquired.

`Yes.'

The official returned the passport and Vanek moved on, to be joined a few minutes later by Lansky. Vanek had presented the third set of papers he had brought from Tabor, papers made out in the name of Lucien Segard, papers which carried a photograph of him without a moustache. Only the previous night in Kehl he had shaved off the moustache in the station wash-room before accompanying Lansky to a small hotel where they had spent the night. Lansky had also used his third set of papers which carried the name Yves Gandouin. When frontier control officials have been asked to look out for men travelling under the names of Duval and Lambert it is only human for them to concentrate on people of those names, and to be anything but suspicious of different names.

Without having the least idea that their previous identities had been blown, Vanek had taken his decision the previous night after they had abandoned the Mercedes. 'Twice we have crossed the French border using our present papers,' he had told Lansky, 'and twice is enough.' He had then proceeded to burn the papers carrying the names Duval and Lambert before they walked to the nearest village and independently boarded a bus crowded with Christmas shoppers for Kehl. Inside Germany they were really in no danger: the only people who knew their names were inside France, and on the phone Marc Grelle had been reluctant to give Peter Lanz such information because of the delicacy of the investigation he was conducting.

Arriving back in Strasbourg, Vanek kept well away from the Hertz car-hire branch in the Boulevard de Nancy. 'Never go back,' was one of his favourite maxims. Instead, the two men took a cab to the airport where Vanek hired a Renault 17 from the Avis car-hire branch in the name of Lucien Segard. By 2 pm they were on their way to Saverne, which is only twenty- five miles from Strasbourg.

Alan Lennox had stayed up half the night at the Hotel Colombi in Freiburg talking to Peter Lanz. The German, who had been handed a copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung containing Dieter Wohl's letter just before he left Bonn-`I should have been shown it days earlier, but no one thought to read the correspondence columns'-was dubious as to whether Annette Devaud would still be alive.

`From what Wohl said to you,' he remarked, 'she would be a very old lady now-and if she is blind how could she recognize anyone? Even assuming she ever knew what the Leopard looked like.. .'

`There's nothing else left,' Lennox said obstinately. 'No one else left, perhaps I should say. What Leon Jouvel told me is very inconclusive-although he was convincing at the time. In any case, the poor devil is dead. I'm going back across the Rhine tomorrow to try and find Annette Devaud.'

`Going back again over the frontier for the third time on false papers? I'm not asking you to do that…

`Call it British bloody-mindedness-we're known for it. I just want to get to the bottom of this thing and find out who the Leopard really is. Wish me luck.'

`I have a feeling you're going to need more than luck,' Lanz replied gravely.

Remembering the atmosphere of intense police activity at Strasbourg station only thirty-six hours earlier, it took a certain amount of will-power for Lennox to hand his papers across the counter to French passport control and then wait while they were inspected. They were examined only cursorily and handed straight back; no one was interested in a man called Jean Bouvier. Probably the easiest way to pass through a checkpoint is to choose a time when someone else is being watched for.

Obtaining the address from Bottin, the telephone directory, Lennox left Strasbourg station and went straight to Hertz car-hire in the Boulevard de Nancy where he chose a Mercedes 350 SE. It was expensive but he wanted some power under the bonnet. By noon he was leaving Strasbourg, driving west for Saverne in the Vosges mountains. He had, of course, no idea that for the first time since he had embarked on this trip at the behest of David Nash of New York he was two hours ahead of the Soviet Commando.

It was Boisseau who heard about the newspaper cutting of Dieter Wohl's letter to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung sent to Paris by the French Secret Service agent in Bonn. Oddly enough he was shown the photostat of the cutting by Commissioner Suchet of counter-intelligence whom he had made it his business to cultivate. Suchet was under the impression that this gave him a private pipeline into the prefecture, whereas the reverse was true; the only information given to him by Boisseau had first been vetted by Marc Grelle. It was late in the morning of Wednesday, 22 December, when Boisseau showed the photostat to his chief.

`So there could just be a witness who never appeared on Lasalle's list,' Grelle mused. 'That is, assuming she is still alive, after all these years…'

`She is. I phoned the police station at Saverne. She's living at a remote farmhouse quite a distance from Saverne itself- high up in the Vosges mountains. This letter made me go through the files again and there is one we overlooked. Annette Devaud was in charge of the Leopard's courier network. The really interesting thing could be the name…'

`Annette Devaud-Lucie Devaud…' The prefect clasped his hands behind his neck and looked shrewdly at his deputy. `All avenues closed, I said. I wonder. All right, Boisseau, fly to Saverne. Yes, this afternoon, I agree. In view of what has happened to the other witnesses should you not call Saverne and ask them to send out a police guard?'

`She must be old-they might frighten her. And in any case, since she was not on Lasalle's list why should she be on the Commando's? Both Lasalle and the Commando must have been working from the same list-in view of what happened. So where is the danger?'

`I leave it to you,' the prefect said.

Driving across the flat plain of Alsace which lies between Strasbourg and the Vosges mountains, Lennox soon ran into atrocious weather. Curtains of rain swept across the empty road, adding even more water to the already flooded fields, and in the distance heavy mist blotted out the Vosges completely. He drove on as water poured down his windscreen and then the engine began knocking badly, which made him swear because he knew the mountain roads ahead could be difficult. It was his own fault: the Hertz people had been reluctant to let him have this car, the only Mercedes 350 on the premises for hire. `It has not been serviced, sir,' the girl had protested. 'I am not permitted…' Lennox had impatiently overridden her objections because he liked the car, and now he was paying for it.

Driving on across the lonely plain, the knocking became worse and he knew he had been foolish. Squinting through the windscreen, he saw a sign. Auberge des Vosges and petrol five hundred metres ahead. He wanted in any case to check Annette Devaud's address-and to find out whether anyone knew if she was still alive. Through the pouring rain a small hotel with a garage attached came into view. Pulling up in front of the pumps, he lowered the window and asked the mechanic to check the vehicle. A few minutes later the mechanic came into the hotel bar with the bad news. He had found the defect: it would take a couple of hours to put it right.