Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

Grelle received the shock after Boisseau had gone home to his wife and two children. At the end of the file he found a worn and tattered envelope with a photograph inside of the Leopard's deputy, Petit-Louis. At first he couldn't be sure, so he took the faded sepia print over to his desk and examined it under the lamp. The print was better preserved than he had feared and out of it stared a face, a face recorded over thirty years earlier. Age changes a man, especially if his life has been hard, but if the bone structure is strong it sometimes only makes clearer features which always existed. The face of Petit- Louis was the face of Gaston Martin, the man from Guiana.

For the second time in less than seventy-two hours David Nash had crossed the Atlantic. Disembarking from Pan Am flight 100 at Heathrow Airport at 9.40 pm on Sunday night, 12 December, only ten days before Guy Florian was due to fly to Moscow, Nash took a cab to the Ritz, left his bag in his room and walked to Lennox's flat in St James's Place. On arrival he presented the Englishman with a bottle of Moet amp; Chandon.

`When the Greeks come bearing gifts…' Lennox greeted him cynically as he slipped the bottle inside the fridge. 'We'll open that later on-I presume we're going to be up half the night?'

`At the very least,' the American assured him. 'We're up against a deadline which is ten days from now…

`You are up against a deadline,' Lennox corrected him. 'I warned you on the phone-your kind of business is something I can do without. ..

They talked until 3 am, while Nash used up two packs of cigarettes, telling the Englishman about his recent visit to Peter Lanz and Col Lasalle, about the enormous anxiety in Washington that some great Communist coup was imminent, that Rene Lasalle might possibly-just possibly-be able to provide the key which would unlock the identity of the unknown Soviet agent in Paris. 'He's convinced the crunch is coming when Florian flies off to Moscow,' Nash said at midnight as he sipped his champagne. 'So we have no time at all to check out these three people inside France who, Lasalle believes, may come up with the answer…'

`I had the quaint idea that Washington hates the guts of President Guy Florian,' Lennox observed.

Nash's mouth tightened. 'That's as maybe. The hell of it is we're stuck with him-just as we were stuck with de Gaulle. In politics you may not like your bedmate, but you have to sleep with her all the same. President Florian of France and Chancellor Hauser of Germany are all that stand between Soviet Russia and the Channel coast now that Congress has opted out of Europe-your Channel coast, too,' he added.

`So where does the Leopard come into it? None of what you say makes much sense,' Lennox remarked bluntly. 'The Leopard is dead-he was shot in Lyon in 1944. I think Lasalle is just trying to stir up some muck, hoping it will stick to his old enemy, Guy Florian. Your French colonel is a fanatic.'

`Even fanatics get to know things,' Nash persisted. 'We don't entirely go along with his Leopard story but we do think he stumbled on something six months ago just before Florian threw him out of France. He got a sniff of some highly placed underground link with the Soviets-and don't forget that Lasalle was the best army counter-intelligence chief the French ever had…'

'But he won't give you this list of so-called witnesses, if it exists…'

`I'm certain it exists,' Nash flared. 'He's very security- minded so he only gives that to the man who goes into France to interview them…

`So why come to me?'

Nash swallowed the rest of his champagne, taking his time over replying. 'Because of who you are,' he said quietly. 'These witnesses may well only speak to a Frenchman. Lanz has agreed to supply cover papers. To avoid the security apparatus the man who goes in must merge with the landscape. You qualify, Alan. You were born and grew up in Paris. We gave you top security clearance while you were in the States. You're experienced in underground work, God knows. The Red Night in Syria proved that. You're made for the job,' the American went on. 'We need you. You need us…'

`And just why do I need you?' Lennox asked quietly.

`Because you need American government approval of that bid you put in for a major security contract with an American company, a company which, incidentally, handles certain Defence Department projects. Confidentially, I understand your bid was the lowest and is acceptable-providing you get Washington's rubber stamp…'

It was at this point that the explosion came, that Lennox started talking non-stop, refusing to allow Nash to interrupt while he told him what he thought about politics and politicians. 'Your own people do the same thing…' Nash interjected and then subsided under the torrent of Lennox's words. 'It's pressure,' Lennox told him savagely, 'bloody pressure tactics, and you know how I react to that…' The verbal battle went on until close to three in the morning as the atmosphere thickened with smoke, as they drank Scotch, as Nash, tie-less and in his shirt-sleeves now, fought back against Lennox's onslaught. Then, without warning, the Englishman switched his viewpoint.

`All right,' he said as he refilled the glasses, 'I'll go and see Lasalle and talk to him-but on the clear understanding that I make up my mind when I get there whether it's worth going into France…'

`That's great…

`Wait a minute, there are conditions. If I go in, you'll personally guarantee my American contract is approved. You'll also guarantee that only MacLeish will know I've agreed-the security on this thing has to be ironclad tight. Finally, you'll pay me a service fee of twenty thousand dollars…

`For God's sake,' Nash protested, 'you'll be getting the contract. ..'

`Which is the least I deserve since my bid is lowest. The twenty thousand dollars is danger money. You think it's going to be a picnic going undercover into France now?' Lennox demanded. 'For Christ's sake, before you arrived I was listening to the news bulletin-since the attempt on Florian's life French security is buzzing like a beehive. I'll risk tripping up over Grelle's mob, the counter-espionage gang, maybe even the CRS thugs. MacLeish is getting himself a non-American messenger boy on the cheap at twenty thousand.'

`Who said anything about a non-American?' Nash inquired mildly.

`You did when you phoned from Washington and then flew over here by the seat of your pants…

Shortly after three in the morning they came to their agreement, Nash swallowed a final gulp of neat Scotch, checked over certain details with Lennox and then walked back through the rain to the Ritz, quite satisfied and grimly amused at Lennox's insistence on the service fee. MacLeish could damn well shell out the twenty thousand and trim his budget elsewhere. Back in his flat Lennox washed dirty glasses and then started packing. Like Nash he was a night bird, and like Nash he was satisfied. From the moment the proposition had been put to him he had been interested because it suited him. It gave him something new and interesting to poke his nose into; it made the American contract secure; and he had just concluded a hard-fought deal. Extracting the twenty thousand from MacLeish was a bonus which lived up to his main principle: never do anything for nothing.

In Paris on Monday morning, 13 December, Grelle and Boisseau were no nearer clearing up the mystery surrounding Gaston Martin's strangely coincidental arrival only hours after the attempt on Florian's life. Detectives had visited the Hotel Cecile where Martin had dumped his bag after getting off the boat train from Le Havre, and his few miserable possessions had been brought to the prefecture. They consisted of one small suitcase of clothes. 'And this is all he had to show for sixty years of living,' the prefect commented. 'It's pathetic, the way some people live-and die…