«Now,» resumed the Minister, «I think I may ask for your ideas on the subject. Colonel Rolland, have you had any success with your enquiries in Vienna?»

The head of the Action Service glanced up from his own report, cast a sideways look at the general who led the SDECE, but received neither encouragement nor a frown.

General Guibaud, remembering that he had spent half the day sobering down the head of R.3. Section over Rolland's early-morning decision to use the Viennese office for his own enquiries, stared straight ahead of him.

«Yes,» said the Colonel. Enquiries were made this morning and afternoon by operatives in Vienna at the Pension Kleist, a small private hotel in the Brucknerallee. They carried with them photographs of Marc Rodin, Rend Montclair and Andre Casson. There was no time to transmit to them photographs of Viktor Kowalski, which were not on file in Vienna.

«The desk clerk at the hotel stated that he recognised at least two of the men. But he could not place them. Some money changed hands, and he was asked to search the hotel register for the days between June 12th and 18th, the latter being the day the three OAS chiefs took up residence together in Rome.

«Eventually he claimed to have remembered the face of Rodin as a man who booked a room in the name of Schulz on June 15th. The clerk said he had a form of business conference in the afternoon, spent the night in that room and left the next day.

«He remembered that Schulz had had a companion, a very big man with a surly manner, which was why he remembered Schulz. He was visited by two men in the morning and they had a conference. The two visitors could have been Casson and Montclair. He could not be sure, but he thought he had seen at least one of them before.

«The clerk said the men remained in their room all day, apart from one occasion in the late morning when Schulz and the giant, as he called Kowalski, left for half an hour. None of them had any lunch, nor did they come down to eat.»

«Were they visited at all by a fifth man?» asked Sanguinetti impatiently. Rolland continued his report as before, in flat tones.

«During the evening another man joined them for half an hour. The clerk said he remembered because the visitor entered the hotel so quickly and headed straight up the stairs, that the clerk did not get a chance to see him. He thought he must be one of the guests, who had retained his key. But he saw the tail of the man's coat going up the stairs. A few seconds later the man was back in the hall. The clerk was sure it was the same man because of the coat.

«The man used the desk phone and asked to be put through to Schulz's room, number 64. He spoke two sentences in French, then replaced the phone and went back up the stairs. He spent half an hour there, then left without saying another word. About an hour after that, the other two who had visited Schulz left separately. Schulz and the giant stayed for the night, then left after breakfast in the morning.

«The only description the clerk could give of the evening visitor was: tall, age uncertain, features apparently regular but he wore wraparound dark glasses, spoke fluent French and had blond hair left rather long and swept back from the forehead.»

«Is there any chance of getting the man to help make up an Identikit picture of the blond?» asked the Prefect of police, Papon.

Rolland shook his head.

«My… our agents were posing as Viennese plain-clothes police. Fortunately one of them could pass for a Viennese. But that is a masquerade that could not be sustained indefinitely. The man had to be interviewed at the hotel desk.»

«We must get a better description than that,» protested the head of the Records Office. «Was any name mentioned?»

«No,» said Rolland. «What you have just heard is the outcome of three hours spent interrogating the clerk. Every point was gone over time and time again. There is nothing else he can remember. Short of an Identikit picture, that's the best description he could give.»

«Could you not snatch him like Argoud, so that he could make up a picture of this assassin here in Paris?» queried Colonel Saint-Clair.

The Minister interjected. «There can be no more snatches. We are still at daggers drawn with the German Foreign Ministry over the Argoud snatch. That kind of thing can work once, but not again.»

«Surely in a matter of this seriousness, the disappearance of a desk clerk can be done more discreetly than the Argoud affair?» suggested the head of the DST.

«It is in any case doubtful,» said Max Fernet quietly, «whether an Identikit picture of a man wearing wrap-round dark glasses would be very helpful. Very few Identikit pictures made up on the basis of an unremarkable incident lasting twenty seconds two months before ever seem to look like the criminal when he is eventually caught. Most such pictures could be of half a million people and some are actually misleading.»

«So apart from Kowalski, who is dead, and who told everything he knew, which was not much, there are only four men in the world who know the identity of this Jackal,» said Commissaire Ducret. «One is the man himself, and the other three are in a hotel in Rome. How about trying to get one of them back here?»

Again the Minister shook his head.

«My instructions on that are formal. Kidnappings are out. The Italian Government would go out of its mind if this kind of thing happened a few yards from the Via Condotti. Besides there are some doubts as to its feasibility. General?»

General Guibaud lifted his eyes to the assembly.

«The extent and quality of the protective screen Rodin and his two henchmen have built round themselves, according to the reports of my agents who have them under permanent surveillance, rule this out from the practical standpoint also,» he said. «There are eight topclass ex-Legion gunmen round them, or seven if Kowalski has not been replaced. All the lifts, stairs, fire-escape and roof are guarded. It would involve a major gun battle, probably with gas grenades and submachine guns to get one of them alive. Even then, the chances of getting the man out of the country and five hundred kilometres north to France, with the Italians on the rampage would be very slight indeed. We have men who are some of the world's top experts in this kind of thing, and they say it would be just about impossible short of a commando-style military operation.»

Silence descended on the room again.

«Well, gentlemen,» said the Minister, «any more suggestions?»

«This Jackal must be found. That much is clear,» replied Colonel Saint-Clair. Several of the others round the table glanced at each other and an eyebrow or two was raised.

«That much certainly is clear,» murmured the Minister at the head of the table. «What we are trying to devise is a way in which that can be done, within the limits imposed upon us, and on that basis perhaps we can best decide which of the departments here represented would be best suited for the job.»

'The protection of the President of the Republic,» announced Saint-Clair grandiosely, «must depend in the last resort when all others have failed on the Presidential Security Corps and the President's personal staff. We, I can assure you, Minister, will do our duty. ' Some of the hard-core professionals closed their eyes in unfeigned weariness. Commissaire Ducret shot the Colonel a glance which, if looks could kill, would have dropped Saint-Clair in his tracks.

Doesn't he know the Old Man's not listening?» growled Guibaud under his breath to Rolland.

Roger Frey raised his eyes to meet those of the Elysee Palace courtier and demonstrated why he was a minister.

«The Colonel Saint-Clair is perfectly right, of course,» he purred. «We shall all do our duty. And I am sure it has occurred to the Colonel that should a certain department undertake the responsibility for the destruction of this plot, and fail to achieve it, or even employ methods inadvertently capable of bringing publicity contrary to the wishes of the President, certain disapprobation would inevitably descend upon the head of him who had failed.»