Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

It was not so much the nature of the threat as the off-hand manner in which Vanek made it that thoroughly frightened the BMW owner. The Czech drove off in the same direction- away from the highway. Five minutes later in the middle of a wood, convinced that he had driven beyond the range of police patrols, Vanek stopped the car to check the road map purchased at Strasbourg airport which had guided himself and Lansky to Saverne. He found he could now reach Saverne again by a different route, keeping north of the canal and the highway until he almost reached the town. 'You'd better give me the car's papers,' he said. 'The chauffeur looks after things like that.' The man, who had told Vanek he was driving back to Metz, omitting to mention he was a banker, handed over the papers.

`I'm going to leave you here tied up with a rope.' Vanek patted his pocket to indicate the rope. 'In an hour I shall phone the Saverne police and tell them where to find you. I am a burglar and have no wish that you should die of cold.' Getting out of the car with his prisoner, he shot him by the roadside and concealed the body behind some bushes.

Returning to the BMW, he drove on by the roundabout route towards Saverne.

Boisseau had exerted all his considerable charm and powers of persuasion but he made no impression on Annette Devaud's decision. Yes, she would travel to Paris and see the police prefect if it was all that important-and here Boisseau detected a certain excitement at the prospect. Possibly her nearness to death had made her think she would like to see the capital city once more. But no, she would not fly there in a plane if they paid her a million francs. And no, she would not travel there by road; car travel made her sick. She would only go to Paris if she went there by train.

From police headquarters at Saverne, where they had rushed her by car-and that was enough driving she had informed them fiercely-Boisseau made repeated calls to Marc Grelle, reporting the latest progress, or lack of it. And it was Grelle who took the decision to bring her to the capital by train. 'But you must take the most stringent precautions,' he warned Boisseau. 'Remember that three of the witnesses have been killed already, and they very nearly got Annette Devaud as well. Very special arrangements must be made-since at least one assassin is still at large.' After talking to Boisseau the prefect personally called Strasbourg to put his whole authority behind the operation. If everyone co-operated, Annette Devaud should be safely in Paris by nine in the evening, little more than twelve hours before Guy Florian was due to fly to Russia.

Police headquarters at Saverne was marked on the map Vanek was carrying, so when he reached the town he had no problem finding his way there. Still wearing his chauffeur's cap, he sat erect behind the wheel of the BMW as he drove slowly along the street as though looking for somewhere to park. Four patrol-cars were parked nose to tail outside the station while uniformed policemen strolled up and down, guarding the building. One of them glanced at the BMW and then looked away; as Vanek had once said to Brunner, in the capitalist west the police respect affluence and nothing is more affluent than a chauffeur-driven BMW.

Vanek had another reason for feeling confident: during his conversation with the banker he had later killed he had elicited the information that the Frenchman was driving to Metz, which meant that at least two hours should pass before anyone started worrying about his non-arrival. As he drove on, Vanek was now convinced they were holding Madame Devaud under guard inside police headquarters, that soon they would have to take her somewhere else-perhaps back to her home at Woodcutter's Farm. Pulling into a side street, he reversed the car so he could get away quickly, put a coin in the parking meter and walked back to a near-by bar from where he could observe the police station.

The security operation to protect Annette Devaud's life was organized by Boisseau from inside the Saverne police station. Using the phone, and with the full weight of Grelle's authority behind him-`This concerns the safety of the president of the French Republic'-Boisseau issued a stream of precise instructions. Before the 17.14 Stanislas Trans-European express for Paris left Strasbourg a special coach was linked to the train immediately behind the engine. Stickers were plastered over the windows indicating that this coach was reserve. One minute after the express was due to leave, the ticket barriers were closed and gendarmes, who had previously hidden in the luggage office, filed aboard the sealed coach with automatic weapons.

The express was five minutes away from Saverne, a place it normally flew past at speed, when the gendarmes filed out of the sealed coach and moved along the full length of the train, closing all the window blinds. 'Emergency', the inspector in charge of the detachment explained in a loud voice to a dining-car passenger who had the temerity to ask what the devil was happening. 'We've had a warning of terrorist activity…'

Stanislas was losing speed as it approached Saverne station which had been sealed off by the local police and extra men rushed in from Strasbourg. As the express pulled in to the station the atmosphere was eerie. To stop anyone who might raise a blind-power-operated on the TEE express, it only requires the touch of a button-batteries of lights mounted on trucks were shone on the side of the train as it stopped. Anyone looking out would have been blinded by the glare. In the waiting-room, Boisseau sat with Madame Devaud, muffled in her old-fashioned fur coat, who was still calm and controlled despite all the fuss. 'Is it true I shall be having a whole coach to myself?' she inquired. Boisseau assured her it was true. He personally escorted her to the coach after making her put on a pair of dark glasses-partly as a disguise, partly as protection against the glare of the lights. As she moved along the corridor to her compartment the train also began to move again.

A short distance from the station, out of sight of the convoy of parked patrol-cars, the chauffeur of a BMW was having a little trouble with his engine. With the hood up he stooped over the motor, checking the wiring. The express had just begun to move when he sorted out the problem, closing the hood and getting back behind the wheel. He drove off at speed, accelerating through the darkness as soon as he had left Saverne behind, heading for Strasbourg airport where there is a frequent Air Inter plane service to Paris.

In Paris, Marc Grelle believed he had found out how the list of Lasalle's three witnesses had been passed back to Moscow. As events had unfolded, as information came in showing that a Soviet Commando was eliminating the very people whose names had been on Lasalle's list, the prefect realized that the coincidence was too great. Someone in Paris in addition to himself had seen the list and had then caused it to be transmitted to Russia. The Soviet Commando had then been despatched to the west.

He started his discreet inquiries at the Ministry of the Interior, tracing the route his memo containing the list had followed. Grelle had, of course, sent his memo to Roger Danchin by despatch rider late on the morning of Tuesday, 14 December. Francois Merlin, the Minister's assistant, who liked the prefect, proved helpful. 'We haven't heard from Hugon, our pipeline into Col Lasalle, recently,' Grelle explained, 'so I'm double-checking the security of our arrangements…' It didn't surprise Merlin that the prefect himself was making the inquiry: all Paris knew Grelle's quaint habit of attending to details personally.

Copies of the communications from Hugon were restricted to a very narrow circle: Grelle himself, Boisseau, the Minister and his assistant, Merlin. Pressed to go through the files, Merlin told Grelle that the confidential memo containing the names and addresses of the three witnesses had arrived at the Place Beauvau just before noon on Tuesday, 14 December. 'I was in the office when he read it,' Merlin remarked. 'A few minutes later Ambassador Vorin arrived for a private word with the Minister before going on to the Elysee. By then my chief had dealt with the memo…'