French National Police

The French National Police is the principal law-enforcement institution through which the novel’s manhunt for the assassin threatening Charles de Gaulle is organized. Its effectiveness depends not on a single clue or officer, but on Claude Lebel’s ability to mobilize police resources, connect scattered records, and direct field searches while the target changes identities and adapts to what the authorities discover.

Mandate and Command

The investigation begins as an extraordinary state directive rather than an ordinary consultation. After reading Colonel Rolland’s report in a conference room, Lebel is briefed by the Minister of the Interior and told to establish his own office. The resources of the organizations represented at the meeting are placed at his disposal, with no limit on the costs incurred. The scale of that authority reflects the stakes: the authorities know of a plot against the President, but do not yet know the assassin’s name or when he intends to act.

Lebel translates the directive into an operating structure. He orders his usual secretary transferred or placed on paid leave so that no one outside the confidential operation can enter the office. Lucien Caron is to serve as both assistant and secretary. The office is equipped for continuous work: a camp bed, washing and shaving supplies, a coffee percolator, and ten outside telephone lines, with one operator permanently assigned. A circular gives Caron authority to request from departmental chiefs whatever facilities Lebel himself could have requested. These practical arrangements turn exceptional powers into a functioning command post.

Intelligence and Police Cooperation

The organization’s first difficulty is informational: it is searching for a man whose identity is not yet known. Lebel reaches out to senior crime investigators abroad, but carefully avoids presenting the approach as a formal enquiry between police forces. He describes it as a routine response to a tip-off, explains that no offence may yet have progressed beyond intention or preparation, and admits that the investigators have neither a name nor more than a poor description.

He then defines the kind of person the police must identify: not a gangland gunman, but a political contract assassin with successful killings behind him. That distinction gives foreign investigators a usable search criterion even in the absence of ordinary identifying details. The telephone conversations carry the threat indirectly; Lebel does not need to name the President for his counterparts to understand why the enquiry matters. Police cooperation here begins with a carefully limited disclosure, calibrated to obtain help without exposing more than the investigation can safely reveal.

Records, Inference, and Field Searches

The manhunt makes routine records newly consequential. During a renewed examination of the archives, investigators find an entry for Alexander James Quentin Duggan, who entered France aboard the Brabant Express from Brussels on July 22 and was recorded leaving Paris for Brussels on the Etoile du Nord Express on July 31. A hotel registration under Duggan’s name, with a passport number matching information received from London, places him near the Place de la Madeleine from July 22 through July 30. Rather than order a conspicuous raid, Lebel visits the hotel proprietor quietly and learns that the man was already gone by August 15. The records establish a past presence, but do not themselves locate the fugitive.

As the investigation shifts to the countryside, Lebel orders Commissaire Valentin to send the strongest available team to Ussel and organize a square search centered on the place where the car was found. The enquiry is deliberately broad: farms, regular road users, village shops and cafes, hotels, and woodcutters’ huts may all hold fragments of the fugitive’s movements. Officers are told to look for a tall, fair-haired Englishman who speaks good French, has three suitcases and a handgrip, carries substantial cash, and may look as though he has slept rough. Press attention is to be diverted with a fabricated account of a car accident and a missing, dazed occupant; if the man is found, police are to surround him rather than approach him.

Lebel also uses physical evidence to test competing explanations. He reasons that the car must have been repainted and that, if it was driven overnight from Gap to Ussel, the transformation had probably occurred before the journey. If enquiries show that the paint was bought in Gap, the timing would suggest the assassin had received warning that Duggan’s identity had been uncovered. Lebel does not treat the leak’s source as proven: the information might have passed through a switchboard or telex operator, a junior employee, or an OAS agent embedded in the chain of communication. He suspects the known contact Valmy, but presents that as an inference rather than a settled fact.

Pressures and Limits of the Manhunt

The pursuit is shaped by a fundamental imbalance: the police know that a plot exists, but the assassin controls his own timetable. After seventy-two hours of investigation, Lebel explains that the authorities cannot tell where they have intervened in the plan. They may have a chance to arrest the killer unaware once they identify and locate him under his assumed name, but they cannot assume that exposing the plot has stopped it. That uncertainty drives the investigation forward even as it increases the danger of acting on incomplete information.

Lebel’s eventual recognition that the assassin has selected a particular day changes the meaning of the fugitive’s earlier delay. He asks why the man did not immediately take the identity of Pastor Jensen, travel from Valence to Paris, and strike at once. The week spent apparently killing time was not evidence that the plan had been abandoned; Lebel concludes that the assassin was waiting for his chosen opportunity. The police response thus depends on interpreting the gaps in the fugitive’s movements, not merely collecting positive sightings.

The authorities’ own procedures also leave openings. During a security cordon, a guard reports allowing an old, visibly ill cripple through a gap because he produced an identity card and a Mutile de Guerre card, and gave an address on Rue de Rennes. The encounter shows how official credentials and a plausible appearance can defeat a checkpoint’s ordinary scrutiny. Across the investigation, the French National Police’s strength lies in joining records, communications, and field reports; its vulnerability lies in the delays and human judgments through which that information must pass. The resulting manhunt is a contest between an institution trying to make an unknown man visible and an assassin using paperwork, disguise, and timing to remain beyond its grasp.