The Stone Leopard Read Free Page B

moustache, he was still standing there at 8.30 pm, when, as if in a daze, he suddenly stepped into the street without looking. The car coming at speed only a few metres away had no time to pull up; the man must have loomed in front of the driver's windscreen without warning. The vehicle hit the pedestrian a terrible blow, drove on over him and accelerated down the street, disappearing in the direction of Madeleine. Fifteen minutes later an ambulance with siren screaming rushed him to the Hotel-Dieu on the Ile de la Cite. On arrival a doctor examined the patient and said he would be lucky to last the night.

    On Thursday, g December, having got rid of his visitors from Washington, David Nash consulted a road map of western Europe, checked distances and promptly decided to fly across the Atlantic the same night. If he caught Pan Am flight 92 leaving New York at 5.45 pm, he could be in Brussels early next day, which should give him time to drive to Luxembourg —where he had arranged to meet Lasalle—and back again to catch another night flight from Brussels to New York. He boarded flight 92 by the skin of his teeth and then relaxed in his first-class seat as the Boeing 707 climbed steadily towards thirty thousand feet above the Long Island coast.
    Nash had a tight schedule ahead of him, He was not only going to meet Lasalle on the neutral ground of Luxembourg; he had also arranged to meet his German counterpart, Peter Lanz, with whom he maintained a close and cordial relationship. After all, the French fugitive colonel was residing in Germany and it had been one of Lanz's more delicate duties to keep an eye on his electric visitor who had fled from the territory of Germany's closest ally.

    The German authorities had very mixed feelings about the arrival of Col Lasalle in their midst. They gave him refuge— no specific charges had ever been levelled against him by Paris —and the local police chief in Saarbrucken was instructed to maintain a distant surveillance on the fugitive. Lasalle himself, fearing an attempt to kidnap him, had asked for police protection, and this was granted on the understanding that it was never referred to publicly. With the passage of time— Lasalle had now been in Germany for six months—the surveillance was relaxed.
    Peter Lanz had visited Lasalle several times, requesting him to tone down his broadcasts, and always Lasalle received the German courteously and said he would consider the request. Then he would get into his car, drive to the radio station and blast Florian all over again with a fresh series of innuendoes. Since he was breaking no law, Lanz would shrug his shoulders and then sit down to read carefully a transcript of the latest outburst.
    Lanz, at thirty-two, was exceptionally young to occupy the post of vice-president of the Bundesnachrichtendienst , the West German Federal Intelligence Service. He owed his rapid promotion to his ability, and to the fact that a large number of older men were suddenly swept out of the organization when the new Chancellor, Franz Hauser, was elected three months after Guy Florian's own rise to power. 'I don't want intriguers,' Hauser had snapped, 'I want young and energetic men who can do the damned job. . .
    This very young second-in-command of the BND was a man of medium height, slim build and thinning brown hair. 'In this job I shall be bald at forty,' he was fond of saying. 'Is it true that women go wild over bald men ?' Normally serious-faced, he had one quality in common with Guy Florian: when he smiled he could charm almost anyone into agreeing with him. His job was to try and foresee any potentially explosive situation which might harm the Federal Republic politically—to foresee and defuse in advance. The arrival of Lasalle on German soil was a classic case. 'Not one of my outstanding successes,' he once admitted, 'but then we don't know where it's going to lead, do we ? Lasalle knows something—maybe one day he will tell me what he knows.