Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

The prefect stood up, showing no reaction. 'Madame Devaud, I know you don't like television, but I would like you to watch certain programme extracts I had made earlier this evening. They are recorded on what we call cassettes. You will see three men briefly-all of them older than the face you built up on the Identikit. I want you to tell me which-if any-of these three men is the Leopard.'

`He has changed a lot then?'

Grelle didn't reply as he went to the television set and switched on. The first extract showed Roger Danchin broadcasting at the time of the riots a year earlier when he had appealed for calm, warning that mass arrests would follow any further demonstrations. The set went blank and then Alain Blanc appeared, confident and emphatic, telling the nation why more had to be spent on the defence budget.

Madame Devaud said nothing, reaching for her glass of cognac as the image faded, to be replaced by Guy Florian making one of his anti-American speeches. As always, he spoke with panache and sardonic wit, gesturing vigorously occasionally, his expression serious, but smiling the famous smile as he closed.

The screen went blank. Grelle stood up and went over to switch off the set.

`The last man,' Annette Devaud said, 'the man attacking the Americans. He hasn't changed all that much, has he?'

Carel Vanek chose his cab with care, standing on the sidewalk with the tartan hold-all at his feet. He avoided any vehicle with a youngster behind the wheel, but he didn't want an elderly driver either; older people can panic, acting on impulse. He was looking for a middle-aged driver with a family to think of, with the experience to make him cautious. He yelled at an approaching cab, waving his hand.

`It's a place off the Boulevard des Capucines,' he told the driver. 'I'm not sure of the address but I'll recognize the street when I see it. A side-turning off to the left…'

He settled back in the cab with the hold-all on his lap. What he had said to the driver was true: he didn't know the name of the street but he had walked down it several times three years earlier, a street which was narrow, dark and unlit at night. There was very little traffic about at that hour and Capucines, a street of expensive shops, was almost empty on the chilly December evening, despite the closeness of Christmas. The driver went slowly to give his passenger a chance to locate the street.

`Turn here!'

Vanek had opened the window behind the driver wider to speak to him and he stayed leaning forward as the cab turned and entered a narrow, curving street. The walls of the high buildings on either side closed in on them and the street was as deserted as Vanek remembered it. Capucines was only a memory now as the cab cruised deeper inside the dark canyon while the driver waited for further instructions. Vanek was straining his eyes to see beyond the windscreen, one hand inside the hold-all. Soon they would be near to the far end, moving out into a more-frequented area.

`Here we are. Stop!'

The driver pulled up, set his brake and left the engine running.

Vanek pressed the muzzle of the Smith amp; Wesson into the back of the driver's neck.

`Don't move. This is a gun.'

The driver stiffened, sat very still. Vanek shot him once.

It was 10.45 pm. when a patrol-car drew up outside the entrance of the Surete headquarters on the rue des Saussaies. Boisseau himself came out of the building first and looked up and down the quiet street. There was nothing in sight except a lone taxi-cab coming from the direction of the Place Beauvau. Boisseau held up his hand to stop them bringing Madame Devaud out and waited. Two gendarmes stood on the sidewalk with him. The driver was behind the wheel of the waiting patrol-car, his engine ticking over.

Grelle had decided at the last moment to use only one car to take Madame Devaud to a hotel the Surete used for guarding important witnesses; a single car is less conspicuous than a motorcade. Also it would be able to move very fast at this hour when the Paris streets were deserted. Grelle himself; standing back inside the arch with Madame Devaud and three detectives, was waiting to see her departure. The cab came towards the entrance slowly and Boisseau noted it was not for hire. So far as he could see the back was empty; the driver was obviously going off duty.

The cab cruised past and the driver took one hand off the wheel to stifle a yawn.

Watching its tail-light, Boisseau made a beckoning gesture and the small procession emerged from under the archway. The three detectives crowded round Madame Devaud, moving at her deliberate pace. They reached the sidewalk. Inside the archway Grelle lit a cigarette, a walkie-talkie tucked under his arm. He would be in constant touch with the radio-controlled vehicle until it reached its destination in the seventh arrondissement.

Madame Devaud had moved across the sidewalk and was about to enter the car.

`Don't worry-it is only a few minutes' drive,' Boisseau assured her.

`Tell him not to drive too fast. I didn't enjoy the journey from the Gare de l'Est at all.'

`I'll tell him. It will only be a few minutes,' Boisseau repeated.

Vanek, wearing the cab-driver's cap-he had great faith in headgear as a medium of disguise-reached the Place des Saussaies which is around the corner from the entrance to Surete headquarters. He had been cruising past the archway at intervals-many cabs take this short-cut at night-completing the circuit round the large building and coming back again. Now he turned in a tight circle and drove back against the one-way system. Boisseau was about to help Madame Devaud into the car when he saw the cab returning at speed. He shouted a warning but the cab arrived at the worst possible moment-while the huddled group, bunched together, was trapped in the open.

Vanek held the wheel with one hand while he cradled the sub-machine gun under his right arm, his index finger curled inside the trigger-guard. He fired a steady burst, the weapon on automatic, the muzzle held in a fixed position, so he used the movement of the vehicle to create an arc of fire, emptying the whole magazine before he went past them, still driving the wrong way and disappearing into the Place Beauvau.

Grelle, by himself and free from the group, was the only one who even fired at the cab, and one revolver shot smashed the rear window. Then he was using the walkie-talkie, which put him straight through to central control, already organized for the president's motorcade drive to Charles de Gaulle Airport the following day. Via Grelle, the cab's description, including the smashed window and the direction it had taken, was circulated within one minute to every patrol-car within a five- mile radius. Only then did Grelle turn to look at the tragic scene on the sidewalk.

The two gendarmes had run off after the cab. Boisseau, shielded by the open car door, had escaped unscathed, but the three detectives lay on the ground, two of them moaning and gasping, the third very still. They had to lift the two men gently to get at Madame Devaud who lay face down, and when they eased her over they saw where the assassin's bullets had stitched a pattern across her chest.

`Armed and dangerous…

All over Paris patrol-cars leapt forward, moving inwards on a cordon pattern laid down by the commissioner in charge at central control. In a way he welcomed the emergency on the eve of the president's depature: it gave him a chance to check the system. The cordon closed in like a contracting web, its approximate centre-point the Place Beauvau, and with sirens screaming patrol-cars rushed along the big boulevards. The commissioner at control was moving into action his entire force, repeating time and again the warning.

`Armed and dangerous…

They found Vanek quite close to the Surete. His cab was spotted crossing the Place de la Concorde on the Tuileries side. Patrol-cars converged on the vast square, coming in over the Seine bridge, from Champs-Elysees, Rivoli and the Avenue Gabriel. A blaze of lamps, empty only seconds earlier, the Place was suddenly filled with noise and movement, with the high-pitched screams of sirens, the swivel of patrol-car headlights. Vanek braked by the kerb, jumped out with the sub-machine gun and ran for the only possible refuge. The Tuileries gardens.