"Forsyth, Frederick - The Day of the Jackal" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forsyth Frederick)

FBP10: V1.0. The Day of The Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

A classic British thriller. Produced an excellent film. You know what the ending must be, Forsyth himself tells you early in the book that De Gaulle lived on, yet the sheer drive of the narrative keeps you reading. Enjoy...AFB

Charles de Gaulle had always scorned the threat of death from an assassin's bullet. Indeed at times he seemed, almost as a point of honour, to present himself as one of the most readily available targets for a gunman. But on Sunday, August 25th 1963 the President of France came closer to death than he ever knew.

In this electrifyingly exciting story the security and police forces of Europe are joined in a grim struggle against a meticulously efficient, cold-blooded and utterly ruthless killer.

At 32 Frederick Forsyth has had a life that reads like an adventure story. While a scholar at Tonbridge he developed two passions, flying and bullfighting. A few days after his seventeenth birthday he qualified for a pilot's licence. Three months later he left school for southern Spain, spending months frequenting the bullrings and practising capework in the arenas. Returning to England he signed on as a pilot in the RAF, gaining his wings at 19, then the youngest pilot in the Air Force.

Later he chose journalism because `it was the only job I could think of that might enable me to write, travel and keep more or less my own house.'

It did all three. He joined Reuters News Agency and spent four years in Europe as a foreign correspondent. In 1965 he joined the BBC, becoming at 28 the Assistant Diplomatic Correspondent. He left in February 1968 to go freelance and vanished to Biafra, emerging eighteen months later to publish the highly controversial The Biafra Story.

Frederick Forsyth speaks fluent French and German, some Italian, Spanish and Russian, and knows nearly forty countries of Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Frederick Forsyth THE DAY OF THE JACKAL BOOK CLUB ASSOCIATES LONDON THIS EDITION PUBLISHED 1972 BY BOOK CLUB ASSOCIATES BY ARRANGEMENT WITH HUTCHINSON 8L CO LTD (c) FREDERICK FORSYTH 1971 Reprinted 1979 Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk

CONTENTS

PART ONE Anatomy of a plot
PART TWO Anatomy of a manhunt
PART THREE Anatomy of a kill

To my Mother and Father

PART ONE Anatomy of a plot

ONE

IT is cold at six-forty in the morning of a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad. At that hour on March 11th, 1963, in the main courtyard of the Fort d'Ivry, a French Air Force colonel stood before a stake driven into the chilly gravel as his hands were bound behind the post, and stared with slowly diminishing disbelief at the squad of soldiers facing him twenty metres away.

A foot scuffed the grit, a tiny release from tension, as the blindfold was wrapped around the eyes of Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, blotting out the light for the last time. The mumbling of the priest was a helpless counterpoint to the crackling of twenty rifle bolts as the soldiers charged and cocked their carbines.

Beyond the walls a Berliet truck blared for a passage as some smaller vehicle crossed its path towards the centre of the city; the sound died away, masking the `Take your aim' order from the officer in charge of the squad. The crash of rifle fire, when it came, caused no ripple on the surface of the waking city, other than to send a flutter of pigeons skywards for a few moments. The single `whack' seconds later of the coup-de-grace was lost in the rising din of traffic from beyond the walls.

The death of the officer, leader of a gang of Secret Army Organisation killers who had sought to shoot the President of France, was to have been an end-an end to further attempts on the President's life. By a quirk of fate it marked a beginning, and to explain why it must first be necessary to explain why a riddled body came to hang from its ropes in the courtyard of the military prison outside Paris on that March morning ....

The sun had dropped at last behind the palace wall and long shadows rippled across the courtyard bringing a welcome relief. Even at seven in the evening of the hottest day of the year the temperature was still 23 degrees centigrade. Across the sweltering city the Parisians piled querulous wives and yelling children, into cars and trains to leave for the weekend in the country. It was August 22nd, 1962, the day a few men waiting beyond the city boundaries had decided that the President, General Charles de Gaulle, should die.

While the city's population prepared to flee the heat for the relative cool of the rivers and beaches the Cabinet meeting behind the ornate facade of the Elysee Palace continued. Across the tan gravel of the front courtyard, now cooling in welcome shadow, sixteen black Citroen DS saloons were drawn up nose to tail, forming a circle round three-quarters of the area.

The drivers, lurking in the deepest shade close to the west wall where the shadows had arrived first, exchanged the inconsequential banter of those who spend most of their working days waiting on their masters' whims.

There was more desultory grumbling at the unusual length of the Cabinet's deliberations until a moment before 7.30 a chained and be-medalled usher appeared behind the plate-glass doors at the top of the six steps of the palace and gestured towards the guards. Among the drivers half-smoked Gaulloises were dropped and ground into the gravel. The security men and guards stiffened in their boxes beside the front gate and the massive iron grilles were swung open.

The chauffeurs were at the wheels of their limousines when the first group of Ministers appeared behind the plate glass. The usher opened the doors and the members of the Cabinet straggled down the steps exchanging a few last-minute pleasantries for a restful weekend. In order of precedence the saloons eased up to the base of the steps, the usher opened the rear door with a bow, the Ministers climbed into their respective cars and were driven away past the salutes of the Garde Republicaine and out into the Faubourg St Honor.

Within ten minutes they were gone. Two long black DS 19 Citroens remained in the yard, and each slowly cruised to the base of the steps. The first, flying the pennant of the President of the French Republic, was driven by Francis Marroux, a police driver from the training and headquarters camp of the Gendarmerie Nationale at Satory. His silent temperament had kept him apart from the joking of the ministerial drivers in the courtyard; his ice-cold nerves and ability to drive fast and safely kept him De Gaulle's personal driver. Apart from Marroux the car was empty. Behind it the second DS 19 was also driven by a gendarme from Satory.