The Stone Leopard (24 page)

`Herr Wohl ? Herr Dieter Wohl ? Good evening. This is the Morgenthau Research Institute, a market research organization. We are carrying out research connected with a campaign to increase state pensions. You have been selected . .'

The researcher, a man called Bruckner, checked Wohl's status, noted that he was a widower living alone, that he owned his house, that he never took a holiday, and a number of other pertinent questions. Thanking Wohl profusely, the caller said he might wish to visit Wohl but he would first phone for an appointment. Would any of the next three evenings be convenient? It would? Excellent. . .'

Putting down the phone Wohl went back to his desk in the front living-room and settled down again to the arduous task of completing the introduction to his memoirs. But he found it difficult to concentrate; his suspicious mind kept going back to the telephone call.

Only eight hours earlier Vanek had phoned the special Paris number from Kehl. Each day, since arriving in Munich—with the exception of the Sunday in Colmar—he had phoned the number his trainer, Borisov, had given him from a post office— and each day there had been no new instruction passed over to him. Phoning from Kehl, he had anticipated the same dead call. Hearing the same voice and name—Jurgensen—repeat the number at the other end Vanek identified himself.

`This is Salicetti. . .'

`There is a development,' the voice said quickly. 'At the Freiburg branch you must collect a wartime diary and the manuscript of the customer's memoirs. Understood ?'

`Understood. . .'

`Then you must visit another customer—note the address. A Madame Annette Devaud, Saverne. . .' Jurgensen spelt out the name of the town. 'It is in Alsace. . .

`That's a vague address. . .'

`That's all we have. Good-bye!'

Vanek checked his watch. The call had taken only thirty seconds. Quite calm while he had been making the call, the Czech swore to himself as he looked out of the phone booth to where people were queuing up to buy postage stamps. The new development was not to his liking at all; it meant that when they had made the visit to Freiburg they would have to re-cross the border back into France. And it was now 20 December, which gave them only seventy-two hours to complete the job.

Alan Lennox crossed the border to Kehl on the morning of Tuesday, 21 December. At Strasbourg station the dragnet had been relaxed, although still partly in operation. After the initial burst of activity—which brought no result—the resentment felt by the local police at Paris's interference in their affairs began to surface again, especially since there was a terrorist alert—later proved to be unfounded—at Strasbourg airport. Men were rushed to the airport and the surveillance at the railway station was reduced.

Collecting his bag from the luggage store, Lennox boarded a local train, later passed through the frontier control without incident—no one was looking for a man called Bouvier—and arrived in Kehl. He immediately put through a call to Peter Lanz at the special Bonn number he had been given and—in a roundabout way—told the BND chief everything that had happened. 'The two French witnesses have died suddenly, one might say violently—within twenty-four hours of each other. One of them partially identified our animal impersonator.. . by voice alone, I emphasize . . . Guy Florian.'

Lanz adopted an off-hand tone, as though discussing something of minor importance. 'You would say your witness was reliable ? After all, we do have other depositions. . .'

`It is by no means certain,' Lennox replied.

`And your next move ?'

`Peter, the third witness lives in Freiburg—I didn't mention it before, but I'm going to see him now. Yes, one of your countrymen. No, I'd sooner not mention names.'

`In that case,' Lanz said crisply, 'I will be in Freiburg myself this evening. You will be able to contact me at the Hotel Colombi. Look after yourself. And if that is all, I have to go to a meeting which is urgent. . .'

Franz Hauser, recently elected Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, agreed to see Peter Lanz at the Palais Schaumburg at 11 am, which was only one hour after Lennox had phoned from Kehl. Immersed in work—Hauser seldom got to bed before midnight—he had now asked Lanz to make his temporary headquarters in Bonn instead of at Pullach in Bavaria. 'I need you across the hall from me the way things are shaping up in Europe,' he informed the BND chief.

Small, neat and wiry, Hauser had been elected on a platform of taking the strongest measures against terrorists, the urban guerrillas who were still plaguing Germany. He had also preached the gospel that now the Americans had withdrawn from Europe the continent must protect itself. 'Combining with our friends, France, Great Britain and our other allies we must build up such strength that the commanders of the Red Army will know Europe can only be their graveyard if ever they make the mistake of crossing the frontiers. . .

At eleven o'clock promptly Lanz was ushered into his office and Hauser, a man who hated formality, came round his desk to sit alongside the security chief. 'Is there information from the Englishman, Lennox ?' he inquired. He listened for ten minutes while Lanz explained what had happened, his small alert face puckered in concentration. 'If this links up with the movement of Soviet convoy K.12,' he commented, 'then we may be on the eve of a catastrophe. The Russians are striking before we can build up our strength.'

`You do not really believe it, sir?' Lanz protested. 'I mean that Florian could be this Communist Resistance chief, the Leopard ?'

`No, that is impossible,' Hauser agreed. Tut it is no longer beyond the realms of possibility that one of his key cabinet ministers may be. And then there is the fact that the Leopard was not found when his grave was disinterred near Lyon. How did you hear about that, by the way ?'

`A contact we have across the Rhine. . .'

`All right, keep your secrets. What disturbs me are the growing rumours of a coup d'etat in Paris. Supposing the Leopard is Alain Blanc, Minister of National Defence—might he not be planning to seize power while Florian is away in Moscow ?'

`That hadn't occurred to me,' Lanz admitted.

'Is there some huge conspiracy afoot ?' Hauser murmured. `If Moscow is co-operating with the Leopard might they not have asked Florian to Moscow to get him out of the way while the Leopard takes over in France ? Why is that Soviet convoy proceeding into the Mediterranean at this moment ? Everything seems to be moving towards some climax. We need more information, Lanz. Immediately. . .'

Arriving by train at Freiburg, Lennox left his bag at the station, checked the phone directory to make sure Dieter Wohl was still living at the address given on the list, and then phoned the German. He introduced himself as Jules Jean Bouvier, a reporter on the French newspaper
Le Monde
. His paper was about to embark on a series of the French wartime Resistance, with particular reference to operations in the Lozere. He believed that Herr Wohl had served in this area during the war, so . . .'

Wohl was hesitant at first, trying to decide whether seeing Bouvier would help him with his memoirs, then it struck him that a little advance publicity could do no harm, so he agreed. Lennox took a cab to the ex-Abwehr officer's
 
remote house and Wohl was waiting for him at the door. A cautious man, Wohl sat his visitor down in the living-room and then asked for some identification. Lennox produced his papers. 'Anyone can get a press card printed,' he said easily.

It took half an hour to coax Wohl into a trusting frame of mind, but when Lennox mentioned the Leopard he saw a flicker in the German's eyes. 'This is something I am concentrating on,' Lennox explained. 'I find it excellent copy—the mystery surrounding the Leopard's real identity. It was never cleared up, was it ?'

Wohl went over to his desk where part of a hand-written manuscript lay alongside a worn, leather-bound diary. For fifteen minutes he told Lennox in precise detail all the steps he had taken to track down the Resistance leader during 1944. Lennox had filled a dozen pages of his notebook with shorthand, had decided that the German really had no information of value, when Wohl mentioned the incident when he had almost ambushed the Leopard. At the end of the story he gave the name of the girl who had died in the submerged car. Lucie Devaud.

`It was a shocking business,' Wohl remarked, 'leaving the girl to drown like that. The car was in eighteen feet of water, my men were some distance from where it went over the bridge. I'm convinced he could have saved her had he tried. He didn't try. . . .'

`Lucie Devaud,' Lennox repeated. 'That was the name of the woman who tried to kill Guy Florian. I suppose there's no possible connection ?'

`I wondered about that myself,' Wohl admitted. 'Annette Devaud was very close to the Leopard—she was in charge of his brilliant team of couriers. I understand she went blind soon after the war. . .

Lennox sat very still, saying nothing. Col Rene Lasalle had made a passing reference to Annette Devaud, dismissing her as of no importance because of her blindness. Could the French colonel have slipped up here—if Annette had indeed been so close to the Leopard ?

`I wrote to the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
last week,' Wohl continued, 'and I mentioned the incident of the drowned girl. I also mentioned that another Devaud—Annette—who was involved with the Leopard, might still be alive in France. I even gave her last-known address, which perhaps I should not have done. Here it is. Annette Devaud, Woodcutter's Farm, Saverne, Alsace. It was a long time ago but some French people stay in one place for ever. . .'

Wohl showed Lennox the address at the back of the war diary where he had underlined it several times. 'Living alone as I do,' he said apologetically, 'I get funny ideas. Only last night I thought some people were watching my house. And then there was that peculiar phone call from the market research people. . . .' As he went on talking, Lennox listened.

`. . . in fact, Wohl only mentioned it in passing, but considering what happened in Strasbourg and Colmar, it just made me wonder. . . .' At four in the afternoon Lennox had met Peter Lanz in a bedroom of the Hotel Colombi in Freiburg soon after the BND chief had flown there from Bonn, and now he was telling the German about his meeting with Dieter Wohl. Earlier, Lanz had told the Englishman about the opening up of the Leopard's grave in a forest near Lyon, about how the French police had found only the skeleton of a hound inside the Resistance leader's coffin.

`This is what has turned a vague disquiet into alarm and crisis,' the BND official explained. 'It now seems probable that Lasalle had been right all along—that somewhere in Paris a top Communist is working close to Florian, maybe only waiting for the president to leave the capital for his visit to Moscow. .

`I suppose it's confidential—how you heard about the exhumation of the Leopard's grave ?' Lennox hazarded.

`It's confidential,' the German assured him.

He saw no advantage in revealing to Lennox that it was Col Lasalle who had passed the information to him. And Lanz himself had no inkling of the colonel's source which had passed on the news to Lasalle. Georges Hardy, police prefect of Lyon and Marc Grelle's great friend, had for some time disagreed violently with Guy Florian's policies, and to express this disagreement he had been secretly furnishing Lasalle with information about developments inside France.

Lennox had then reported to Lanz on his interview with Dieter Wohl, ending by describing the curious incidents of the previous day the ex-Abwehr officer had described. 'I gather he was looking out of a bedroom window last night in the dark when he saw this car stop outside,' he went on. 'It just reminded me of the man I saw following Leon Jouvel that night in Strasbourg. I suppose it isn't possible that someone has Dieter Wohl under observation? Then there was the peculiar telephone call. After all, two of the three men on Lasalle's list have already died suddenly. And it's damned lonely where he lives. . .

`If by a long chance you are right,' Lanz suggested, 'this could be a breakthrough. If we grab hold of someone trying to put Wohl out of the way, too, we can find out who is behind this whole business.'

`It's a very slim hope,' Lennox warned.

`What else have we got ?' Lanz demanded. He was well aware he was grasping at straws, but Chancellor Hauser had said he wanted positive information immediately. From the hotel bedroom he phoned the police chief of Freiburg.

The Mercedes SL 230 hired in Kehl pulled in at the kerb close to Freiburg station and Vanek lit a cigarette as he watched people coming off a train. Nearing the end of the Commando's mission, the Czech had become mistrustful of hotels and the previous night the three men had slept in the car at the edge of the Black Forest, muffled up in travelling rugs they had purchased in Freiburg. Puffy-eyed and irritable, both Brunner and Lansky showed the minor ravages of their improvised night's rest. Vanek, on the other hand, who could get by with only catnapping, looked as fresh as on the morning when they had crossed the Czech border at Gmund.