Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

`So he wants us to complete the investigation that he started…

`He has this list of three witnesses who worked closely with the original Leopard during the war…

`A list he wouldn't give you,' MacLeish snapped.

`I'm not sure I blame him for that,' Nash countered. 'He's very security-conscious and that I like. He'll only hand over the list to the agent we provide to go inside France to meet these people…

`What the hell can these three so-called witnesses tell us?' MacLeish demanded irritably. 'If the original Leopard is dead I don't see the connection…

`Lasalle believes someone who was in the Leopard's wartime Resistance group cleverly took over his name as the code-name the Russians would know him by. So to find this top Communist agent we have to dig back into the past, to find who could fit. Find out who he was in 1944 and we'll know who he is today.'

MacLeish, whose other strong point was his ability to take a quick decision, drummed his thick fingers on the table like a man playing a piano. 'So the deadline is 23 December when Florian takes off for Moscow, which gives us exactly eleven days. You're going to have to move damned fast..

`So I can send someone in?' Nash interjected.

`You can send someone in,' MacLeish decided, 'but not an American. If Florian's security apparatus got hold of him the French would have a field day. I can hear Florian's next anti- American speech now-Yankee agent discovered trying to smear Paris cabinet minister.. .. That we can't risk. An agent yes, but not an American,' he repeated.

'But not an American…'

It was still Saturday morning when Nash gave the instruction to his assistant, Ward Fischer, in the suite of offices on the third floor which housed his staff. Normally everyone except Fischer would have been at home on a Saturday; but before boarding his New York flight to Washington, Nash had phoned ahead and the suite was now occupied by men recalled hastily while Nash was airborne.

`Kind of narrows the field,' Fischer remarked.

`Narrow it to zero. Find the man,' Nash snapped. 'Inside two hours,' he added.

Fischer went into the next office and within five minutes his staff was searching through the files, looking for a name. The specification for the man who would go into France to interview Lasalle's witnesses was stringent. He had to have top security clearance; to be fluent enough in the language to pass as a Frenchman; to be experienced in the security field; and he must be a man of cold and careful temperament who could be relied on in an emergency, operating entirely on his own. As to nationality, he must not be an American, nor must he be a Frenchman.

It was Nash himself who added this final qualification which caused Fischer to swear colourfully the moment he left his boss's office. 'The God-damned specification screams for a Frenchman,' he complained to one of his staff, 'so now you've got to find a Frenchman who isn't a Frenchman. Get on with it…

Nash, however, had a very good reason for adding this qualification. Because France is a very special place and many of its people are highly political, Nash felt it would be dangerous to choose a Frenchman to spy on the French. He also felt pretty sure Col Lasalle would have the same doubts.

While Fischer and his staff were searching, Nash went over the file in his mind of people he had known-or known of. One name came to him quickly, but he rejected it: he could never persuade this man to do the job. Sitting at his desk, his chubby hands clasped behind his neck, he checked back in his mind, rejecting candidate after candidate. As Fischer had said, the specification certainly restricted the field. In the end he came back to the man he had first thought of.

At 1.30 in the afternoon Fischer came into his office carrying two files. 'These are the only two people who fit,' he said wearily. 'We ate at our desks and we've been working since I left you. Cancelling out the French made it that much tougher…' Nash looked at the two files. One of the names was Jules Beaurain, a Belgian. 'Belgium isn't France,' Fischer said hopefully. The other was the name Nash himself had thought of.

`It will take pressure to get this man,' Nash said reflectively. `I may have just hit on how the pressure could be applied. Get me details of all overseas bids for security contracts inside the States. Get them now…

`It's Saturday…

`So the calendar tells me. Phone people at their homes, get them behind their desks fast. Tell them it's an emergency- and give them my compliments…

`They're going to appreciate that,' Fischer said and went out of the office to phone his wife. She also was going to appreciate it, he felt sure.

Left alone in his office, Nash took a ballpoint out of his pocket and indulged in his liking for doodling portraits. He drew from memory a head-and-shoulders sketch of a man he had once known well, a man he had liked and respected despite disagreements. When he had finished the sketch he added a caption underneath. Alan Lennox. Security expert. British.

Three thousand miles across the Atlantic in London it was Saturday evening as Alan Lennox turned the key in the double- lock Chubb, checked the handle of the door to his office, and stood for a moment staring at the plate on the wall. Lennox Security Company Limited. On the stock exchange the shares had climbed to? 3.50 and it looked as though they were going higher; security companies were enjoying a minor boom. God knew why, but recently they had become a City cult. Probably because they were 'export-orientated' as the little wise men who sent out brokers' recommendations phrased it. All over the world large industrial concerns were employing Britons to organize their security because, it was alleged, they were incorruptible. Another cult. Lennox thought maybe it was a good time to sell out-once he had obtained the big American oil combine contract he was bidding for. With that under his belt the shares should go through the roof.

The only man in the building-managing directors worked alone on Saturdays-he went down in the lift to Leadenhall Street and out into the storm which had broken over London. Collecting his Citroen DS 23 from the underground garage, he drove home through sheets of blinding rain to his flat in St James's Place, reflecting that it wasn't a Saturday night to encourage a man on his own to dine out. Arriving inside the flat, which he had furnished with antiques, Lennox took off his two-hundred-guinea coat and poured himself a large Scotch. The next problem was to decide whether to eat out or grill himself a steak from the fridge.

Thirty-five years old, managing director of the most successful international security company based in London, Lennox was a well-built man of medium height who moved with a deceptive slowness; in an emergency he could react with the speed of a fox. Dark-haired, the hair cut shorter than the normal fashion, his thick eyebrows were also dark. The eyes were his most arresting feature; brown and slow-moving, they looked out on the world warily, taking nothing for granted. `It's in the nature of my job to be suspicious,' he once said. 'A man called Marc Grelle told me in Marseilles that I had the mind of a policeman; I suppose he was right…

Born in Paris, Lennox's mother had been French, his father a minor official at the British Embassy in the Faubourg St Honore. The first ten years of his life had been spent in France and Lennox was fluent in French long before he mastered English at school. Disliking his father's idea that he enter the diplomatic service-`after eighteen I found we had nothing to say to each other'-he joined a large international oil company. Because of his fluency in English, French, German and Spanish he was attached to the security department. Five years later he was directing it.

`I was lucky,' Lennox recalled. 'The timing was right. Security had become the key to survival. You can buy tankers, drill new oilfields-but where's the profit if people keep dynamiting them?'