‘Good. Now for the question of your expenses and fee,’ said the Englishman. ‘Have you an idea how much they will be?’
The Belgian thought for a while. ‘For this kind of job, with all the work it entails, for the facilities available here and my own specialised knowledge, I must ask a fee of one thousand English pounds. I concede that is above the rate for a simple rifle. But this is not a simple rifle. It must be a work of art. I believe I am the only man in Europe capable of doing it justice, of making a perfect job of it. Like yourself, monsieur, I am in my field the best. For the best one pays. Then on top there would be the purchasing price of the weapon, bullets, telescope and raw materials … say, the equivalent of another two hundred pounds.’
‘Done,’ replied the Englishman without argument. He reached into his breast pocket again and extracted a bundle of five-pound notes. They were bound in lots of twenty. He counted out five wads of twenty notes each.
‘I would suggest,’ he went on evenly, ‘that in order to establish my bona fides I make you a down payment as an advance and to cover costs of five hundred pounds. I shall bring the remaining seven hundred pounds on my return in eleven days. Is that agreeable to you?’
‘Monsieur,’ said the Belgian skilfully pocketing the notes, ‘it is a pleasure to do business both with a professional and a gentleman.’
‘There is a littl
e more,’ went on his visitor, as though he had not been interrupted. ‘You will make no attempt further to contact Louis, nor to ask him or anyone else who I am, nor what is my true identity. Nor will you seek to enquire for whom I am working, nor against whom. In the event that you should try to do so it is certain I shall hear about the enquiries. In that eventuality you will die. On my return here, if there has been any attempt to contact the police or to lay a trap, you will die. Is that understood?’
M. Goossens was pained. Standing in the hallway he looked up at the Englishman, and an eel of fear wriggled in his bowels. He had faced many of the tough men of the Belgian underworld when they came to him to ask for special or unusual weapons, or simply a run-of-the-mill snub-nosed Colt Special. These were hard men. But there was something distant and implacable about the visitor from across the Channel who intended to kill an important and well-protected figure. Not another gangland boss, but a big man, perhaps a politician. He thought of protesting or expostulating, then decided better.
‘Monsieur,’ he said quietly, ‘I do not want to know about you, anything about you. The gun you will receive will bear no serial number. You see, it is of more importance to me that nothing you do should ever be traced back to me than that I should seek to know more than I do about you. Bonjour, monsieur.’
The Jackal walked away into the bright sunshine and two streets away found a cruising taxi to take him back to the city centre and the Hotel Amigo.
He suspected that in order to acquire guns Goossens would have to have a forger in his employ somewhere, but preferred to find and use one of his own. Again Louis, his contact from the old days in Katanga, helped him. Not that it was difficult. Brussels has a long tradition as the centre of the forged identity-card industry and many foreigners appreciate the lack of formalities with which assistance in this field can be obtained. In the early sixties Brussels had also become the operations base of the mercenary soldier, for this was before the emergence in the Congo of the French and South African/British units who later came to dominate the business. With Katanga gone, over three hundred out-of-work ‘military advisers’ from the old Tshombe regime were hanging around the bars of the red-light quarter, many of them in possession of several sets of identity papers.
The Jackal found his man in a bar off the Rue Neuve after Louis had arranged the appointment. He introduced himself and the pair retired to a corner alcove. The Jackal produced his driving licence, which was in his own name, issued by the London County Council two years earlier and with some months still to run.
‘This,’ he told the Belgian, ‘belonged to a man now dead. As I am banned from driving in Britain, I need a new front page in my own name.’
He put the passport in the name of Duggan in front of the forger. The man opposite glanced at the passport first, took in the newness of the passport, the fact that it had been issued three days earlier, and glanced shrewdly at the Englishman.
‘En effet,’ he murmured, then flicked open the little red driving licence. After a few minutes he looked up.
‘Not difficult, monsieur. The English authorities are gentlemen. They do not seem to expect that official documents might perhaps be forged, therefore they take few precautions. This paper …’ he flicked the small sheet gummed on to the first page of the licence, which carried the licence number and the full name of the holder … ‘could be printed by a child’s printing set. The watermark is easy. This presents no problems. Was that all you wanted?’
‘No, there are two other papers.’
‘Ah. If you will permit my saying so, it appeared strange that you should wish to contact me for such a simple task. There must be men in your own London who could do this within a few hours. What are the other papers?’
The Jackal described them to the last detail. The Belgian’s eyes narrowed in thought. He took out a packet of Bastos, offered one to the Englishman, who declined, and lit one for himself.
‘That is not so easy. The French identity card, not too bad. There are plenty about from which one can work. You understand, one must work from an original to achieve the best results. But the other one. I do not think I have seen such a one. It is a most unusual requirement.’
He paused while the Jackal ordered a passing waiter to refill their glasses. When the waiter had gone he resumed.
‘And then the photograph. That will not be easy. You say there must be a difference in age, in hair colouring and length. Most of those wishing for a false document intend that their own photograph shall be on the document, but with the personal details falsified. But to devise a new photograph which does not even look like you as you now appear, this complicates things.’
He drank off half of his beer, still eyeing the Englishman opposite him. ‘To achieve this it will be necessary to seek out a man of the approximate age of the bearer of the cards, and who also bears a reasonable similarity to yourself, at least as far as the head and face is concerned, and cut his hair to the length you require. Then a photograph of this man would be put on to the cards. From that point on it would be up to you to model your subsequent disguise on this man’s true appearance, rather than the reverse. You follow me?’
‘Yes,’ replied the Jackal.
‘This will take some time. How long can you stay in Brussels?’
‘Not long,’ said the Jackal. ‘I must leave fairly soon, but I could be back on August 1st. From then I could stay another three days. I have to be returning to London on the fourth.’
The Belgian thought again for a while, staring at the photograph in the passport in front of him. At last he folded it closed and passed it back to the Englishman after copying on to a piece of paper from his pocket the name Alexander James Quentin Duggan. He pocketed both the piece of paper and the driving licence.
‘All right. It can be done. But I have to have a good portrait photograph of yourself as you are now, full-face and profile. This will take time. And money. There are extra expenses involved … it may be necessary to undertake an operation into France itself with a colleague adept in picking pockets in order to acquire the second of these cards you mention. Obviously, I shall ask around Brussels first, but it may be necessary to go to these lengths …’
‘How much?’ cut in the Englishman.
‘Twenty thousand Belgian francs.’