Bastogne is a town in the Ardennes whose wartime devastation gives it a place in the history invoked by The Jackal, and whose roads and surrounding forests become part of his covert journey. In the novel, he approaches from Brussels under the cover of a pilgrimage to a brother’s grave, passes through the town, and heads south toward a secluded place to change clothes and assemble his rifle.

Setting and wartime history

The Jackal’s route places Bastogne amid the Ardennes’ hills and forests. The town itself carries a violent historical imprint: as he drives through, the narration recalls that it was torn apart in the winter of 1944 by the guns of Hasso von Manteuffel’s King Tiger tanks. His intended destination lies beyond the town, where the road winds into increasingly dense woodland, shaded by elms and beeches.

Bastogne also anchors the Jackal’s account of a family loss. The previous evening in Brussels, he tells the hotel clerk that he plans to visit the grave of his elder brother, who, he says, died in the Battle of the Bulge between Bastogne and Malmedy. The story gives his next day’s drive an apparently personal purpose; the narration presents it as what he tells the clerk, not as independent confirmation of the brother or grave.

The Jackal’s passage through the town

On Monday morning, the Jackal leaves Brussels with a packed lunch and drives along the old E. 40 highway toward Namur. His map gives the distance to Bastogne as ninety-four miles, and he allows for additional travel to find a quiet spot in the hills and forests south of the town. He expects to cover the hundred miles by noon and continues eastward across the Walloon plain in a Simca Aronde.

Before the sun reaches its zenith, he has passed through Namur and Marche and reaches Bastogne. He does not linger in the town: he takes the road south, where the route grows more winding and the forest closes around it. Five miles beyond Bastogne, he turns onto a narrow track, then follows a second trail farther into the trees and hides the car behind undergrowth.

Narrative significance

Bastogne marks the shift from the Jackal’s public, plausible journey to the secluded preparations that follow it. The pilgrimage story connects his passage to the town’s wartime past, while the actual route carries him out of sight, away from the main road and into woodland. There he changes from his dove-grey suit into denim and a check shirt, replaces town shoes with hiking boots, and assembles the rifle he has transported in pieces. Bastogne is therefore not the scene of the preparations themselves, but the threshold on the road to them: a familiar town gives way to terrain chosen for concealment.