Claude Lebel—Bryn Thomas

Claude Lebel and Bryn Thomas form the British-French investigative link in the hunt for a professional assassin believed to be targeting Charles de Gaulle. Their cooperation turns an initially vague request for help into a working exchange of names, passport records, and assessments of the suspect’s movements. Neither begins with a complete picture: Lebel is ordered to lead an immense French inquiry, while Thomas must test an old and uncertain British rumor before he can responsibly add it to the case.

Separate investigations, connected by a request

Lebel enters the investigation under pressure from the top of the French Government. After reading Colonel Rolland’s report in a room crowded with senior officials, he learns that the Minister of the Interior has not invited him to advise on the case but directed him to take charge. He is promised access to the assembled agencies’ resources and authority to spend without limit. The scale of the mandate contrasts with the thinness of the evidence: the police do not yet know the suspect’s name, and even his description is poor.

Lebel immediately makes the investigation operational. He establishes a restricted office, makes Caron his sole assistant, and has a camp bed, washing equipment, coffee, and dedicated telephone lines brought in. These arrangements are not incidental comforts; they allow the two men to work through the night while keeping the secret contained. His first approach to foreign police is correspondingly guarded. He explains that France is not yet making a formal inter-police inquiry because the authorities cannot be certain that a crime has reached the stage of preparation. What he can ask for is information about a rare kind of suspect: a political contract assassin with successful killings behind him. The target is left unstated, but Lebel knows that an inquiry of this kind can point only to Charles de Gaulle.

Thomas enters the chain from the British side. The French request reaches him as a request for assistance from a senior detective of the French Judicial Police, but it does not explain the French authorities’ underlying fear. When the British Prime Minister questions him, Thomas is careful to distinguish what has been communicated from what he can infer: the French want suggestions about a possible professional assassin, not an explanation of the alleged target or mission. Their relationship therefore begins as cooperation across an information gap, rather than as a shared briefing in which either officer possesses the whole case.

Testing the Calthrop lead

Thomas’s contribution is to pursue the possible identity behind the French description without treating suspicion as proof. He reports the trail from Criminal Records to British Special Branch, including the information supplied by Barrie Lloyd and the appearance of a man named Charles Calthrop. The possible connection rests on a rumor, two and a half years old, linking Calthrop to the affair of Rafael Trujillo. Thomas also acknowledges that the British inquiry has not yet established whether the Calthrop they have been trying to trace is the same man who was in the Caribbean in January 1961.

The Prime Minister insists on that distinction. He warns Thomas not to burden the French with suggestions resting on an unsubstantiated rumor, but instructs him to keep investigating and to inform the French as soon as the evidence concerning Calthrop gains substance. He also orders that the man be tracked down wherever he is. Thomas responds by assembling six of Special Branch’s best detective inspectors, drawing them from leave and other assignments. The instruction gives the British inquiry a practical threshold: continue the search immediately, but do not convert an old report into a firm identification prematurely.

A more concrete lead comes from a false passport. Thomas directs an inspector to investigate the address to which the passport was sent and to obtain both the details of the supposed Alexander Duggan and the photograph submitted with the application. The address proves to be a tobacconist and newsagent in Paddington whose owner accepts mail for people without fixed addresses. He cannot confidently identify Duggan, and his recollection that the applicant may have worn dark glasses does not settle whether the man was Calthrop. The lead sharpens the disguise question without resolving it: the assumed identity has a traceable paper trail, but the person behind it remains uncertain.

Sharing records and reassessing the danger

French records turn the Duggan lead into a chronology. An archive card shows Alexander James Quentin Duggan entering France from Brussels on the Brabant Express on July 22. A separate frontier report places him on the Etoile du Nord Express travelling from Paris to Brussels on July 31. A hotel registration card records a stay near the Place de la Madeleine from July 22 through July 30, with a passport number matching the information from London. Lebel chooses to visit the hotel proprietor discreetly rather than order a conspicuous raid; he establishes that the suspect was no longer there by August 15.

These records help the two inquiries converge, but they do not tell Lebel where the assassin is now or when he intends to act. At a French conference, he explains that the suspect knows his own timetable and may have been interrupted at any point in it. The police know that the plot exists, but cannot tell how much the suspect knows about their progress. Lebel’s reasoning is therefore conditional: once the man is identified under a new name and located under that name, the police may still have a chance to catch him unaware. The concern among the officials is the other side of the same uncertainty: the killer could already be close to Paris, and his intended date could be imminent.

Direct contact and the limits of cooperation

The relationship becomes explicit when Thomas phones Lebel’s office and asks that the search be called off, saying he is fairly certain the suspect has gone. Lebel is asleep on the camp bed in the round-the-clock office; Caron wakes him and translates because of the language barrier. Thomas’s call thus passes through both the investigation’s improvised working arrangements and its practical linguistic limits. Lebel replies through Caron that the French will handle the Belgian inquiry from that point, thanks Thomas for his help, and promises to notify him if the killer can be traced to continental Europe rather than Britain. That answer both acknowledges the British contribution and defines the handover: Thomas’s men can stand down from one branch of the search, while Lebel retains responsibility for the continental investigation.

The exchange is not a simple transfer of a solved case. Later, after the discovery of the transformed car near Ussel, Lebel reasons that the suspect may have learned that the Duggan identity had been exposed and escaped before the police could close in. He considers the possibility of a leak and suspects that the contact known as Valmy may have warned the assassin. The possibility that the suspect has repeatedly received warnings makes the value of timely inter-agency communication especially clear, while also exposing its limits: cooperation can move information across borders, but cannot guarantee that it reaches the right officer before the suspect adapts.

Lebel eventually recognizes that the week the assassin spent apparently killing time in France was deliberate: he had selected the day on which he meant to strike. That conclusion recasts the earlier work of both officers. The passport trail, cautious testing of the Calthrop rumor, and cross-border calls are not merely steps toward a fixed identity; they are attempts to infer a plan whose schedule is known only to the man carrying it out. Their partnership gives the manhunt reach beyond one national force, but its central difficulty remains the interval between a clue being found and its meaning becoming clear.