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The tall charcoal-grey-suited figure had come round the edge of the great desk behind which he normally sat, hand outstretched in greeting.
‘Monsieur le President, mes respects.’ He shook the proffered hand. At least Le Vieux seemed to be in a good mood. He found himself ushered to one of the two upright chairs covered in First Empire Beauvais tapestry in front of the desk. Charles de Gaulle, his hostly duty done, returned to his side and sat down, back to the wall. He leaned back, placing the fingertips of both hands on the polished wood in front of him.
‘I am told, my dear Frey, that you wished to see me on a matter of urgency. Well, what have you to say to me?’
Roger Frey breathed in deeply once and began. He explained briefly and succinctly what had brought him, aware that De Gaulle did not appreciate long-winded oratory except his own, and then only for public speaking. In private he appreciated brevity, as several of his more verbose subordinates had discovered to their embarrassment.
While he talked, the man across the desk from him stiffened perceptibly. Leaning back further and further, seeming to grow all the while, he gazed down the commanding promontory of his nose at the Minister as if an unpleasant substance had been introduced into his study by a hitherto trusted servant. Roger Frey, however, was aware that at five yards range his face could be no more than a blur to the President, whose shortsightedness he concealed on all public occasions by never wearing glasses except to read speeches.
The Interior Minister finished his monologue, which had lasted barely more than one minute, by mentioning the comments of Rolland and Ducret, and finishing, ‘I have the Rolland report in my case.’
Without a word the presidential hand stretched out across the desk. M. Frey slid the report out of the briefcase and handed it over.
From the top pocket of his jacket Charles de Gaulle took his reading glasses, put them on, spread the folder on his desk and started to read. The pigeon had stopped cooing as if appreciating that this was not the moment. Roger Frey stared out at the trees, then at the brass reading lamp on the desk next to the blotter. It was a beautifully turned Flambeau de Vermeil from the Restoration, fitted with an electric light, and in the five years of the presidency it had spent thousands of hours illuminating the documents of state that passed during the night across the blotter over which it stood.
General de Gaulle was a quick reader. He finished the Rolland report in three minutes, folded it carefully on the blotter, crossed his hands over it and asked:
‘Well, my dear Frey, what do you want of me?’
For the second time Roger Frey took a deep breath and launched into a succinct recitation of the steps he wished to take. Twice he used the phrase ‘in my judgement, Monsieur le President, it will be necessary if we are to avert this menace …’ In the thirty-third second of his discourse he used the phrase ‘The interest of France …’
It was as far as he got. The President cut across him, the sonorous voice rolling the word France into that of a deity in a way no other French voice before or since has known how to do.
‘The interest of France, my dear Frey, is that the President of France is not seen to be cowering before the menace of a miserable hireling, and …’ he paused while the contempt for his unknown assailant hung heavy in the room … ‘of a foreigner.’
Roger Frey realised that he had lost. The General did not lose his temper as the Interior Minister feared he might. He began to speak clearly and precisely, as one who has no intention that his wishes shall be in any way unclear to his listener. As he spoke some of the phrases drifted through the window and were heard by Colonel Tesseire.
‘La France ne saurait accepter … la dignité et la grandeur assujetties aux misérables menaces d’un … d’un CHACAL….’
Two minutes later Roger Frey left the President’s presence. He nodded soberly at Colonel Tesseire, walked out through the door of the Salon des Ordonnances and down the stairs to the vestibule.
‘There,’ thought the chief usher as he escorted the Minister down the stone steps to the waiting Citroën, and watched him drive away, ‘goes a man with one hell of a problem, if I ever saw one. Wonder what the Old Man had to say to him.’ But being the chief usher, his face retained the immobile calm of the façade of the palace he had served for twenty years.
‘No, it cannot be done that way. The President was absolutely formal on that point.’
Roger Frey turned from the window of his office and surveyed the man to whom he had addressed the remark. Within minutes of returning from the Elysée he had summoned his chef de cabinet, or chief of personal staff. Alexandré Sanguinetti was a Corsican. As the man to whom the Interior Minister had delegated over the past two years much of the detailed work of master-minding the French state security forces, Sanguinetti had established a renown and a reputation that varied widely according to the beholder’s personal political affiliations or concept of civil rights.
By the extreme left he was hated and feared for his unhesitating mobilisation of the CRS anti-riot squads and the no-nonsense tactics these forty-five thousand para-military bruisers used when confronted with a street demonstration from either the left or the right.
The Communists called him a Fascist, perhaps because some of his methods of keeping public order were reminiscent of the means used in the workers’ paradises beyond the Iron Curtain. The extreme right, also called Fascists by the Communists, loathed him equally, quoting the same arguments of the suppression of democracy and civil rights, but more probably because the ruthless efficiency of his public order measures had gone a long way to preventing the complete breakdown of order that would have helped precipitate a right-wing coup ostensibly aimed at restoring that very order.
And many ordinary people disliked him, because the draconian decrees that stemmed from his office affected them all, with barriers in the streets, examinations of identity cards at most major road junctions, roadblocks on all main roads, and the much-publicised photographs of young demonstrators being bludgeoned to the ground by the truncheons of the CRS. The Press had already dubbed him ‘Monsieur Anti-OAS’ and, apart from the relatively small Gaullist Press, reviled him roundly. If the odium of being the most criticised man in France affected him at all, he managed to hide it. The deity of his private religion was ensconced in an office in the Elysée Palace, and within that religion Alexandre Sanguinetti was the head of the Curia. He glowered at the blotter in front of him, on which lay the buff folder containing the Rolland report.
‘It’s impossible. Impossible. He is impossible. We have to protect his life, but he won’t let us. I could have this man, this Jackal. But you say we are allowed to take no counter-measures. What do we do? Just wait for him to strike? Just sit around and wait?’
The Minister sighed. He had expected no les
s from his chef de cabinet, but it still made his task no easier. He seated himself behind his desk again.
‘Alexandre, listen. Firstly, the position is that we are not yet absolutely certain that the Rolland report is true. It is his own analysis of the ramblings of this … Kowalski, who has since died. Perhaps Rolland is wrong. Enquiries in Vienna are still being conducted. I have been in touch with Guibaud and he expects to have the answer by this evening. But one must agree that, at this stage, to launch a nationwide hunt for a foreigner only known to us by a code-name is hardly a realistic proposition. To that extent, I must agree with the President.
‘Beyond that, these are his instructions … no, his absolutely formal orders. I repeat them so that there will be no mistake in any of our minds. There is to be no publicity, no nationwide search, no indication to anyone outside a small circle around us that anything is amiss. The President feels that if the secret were out the Press would have a field day, the foreign nations would jeer, and any extra security precautions taken by us would be interpreted both here and abroad as the spectacle of the President of France hiding from a single man, a foreigner at that.
‘This he will not, I repeat, will not tolerate. In fact …’ the Minister emphasised his point with pointed forefinger … ‘he made quite plain to me that if in our handling of the affair the details, or even the general impression, became public knowledge, heads would roll. Believe me, cher ami, I have never seen him so adamant.’
‘But the public programme,’ expostulated the Corsican civil servant, ‘it must inevitably be changed. There must be no more public appearances until the man is caught. He must surely …’
‘He will cancel nothing. There will be no changes, not by an hour or a minute. The whole thing has got to be done in complete secrecy.’
