Jackal—Raoul Rodin

The relationship between The Jackal and Marc Rodin is a contract strained to breaking point when the assassination plot is exposed. Marc Rodin has hired The Jackal to kill Charles de Gaulle, but the discovery that Viktor Kowalski has talked forces the employer to reconsider the mission. Marc Rodin wants to prevent an operation he believes can no longer succeed; The Jackal is left to judge the danger for himself, beyond his employer’s reach. Their arrangement thus shifts from command and payment to a struggle over who can decide when the contract is over.

A Contract Under Pressure

The evidence presents Marc Rodin as The Jackal’s employer and the assassination as a personally planned operation. The financial stakes are substantial: The Jackal has a quarter of a million dollars in a Zurich account, while abandoning the job would bring a dispute over how much of that sum must be returned. Marc Rodin considers asking for the money back, less expenses and a retainer for the time and trouble. The payment is not incidental to their relationship; it is the leverage that makes withdrawal costly to both sides.

When news arrives that Kowalski has confessed, Marc Rodin’s first response is a silent, furious curse. For the first two days after Kowalski disappeared, he had believed the man deserted. Defections from the Secret Army Organisation had become more common as its members lost faith in its ability to kill Charles de Gaulle and overthrow the French Government. Marc Rodin had nevertheless expected Kowalski to remain loyal to the last. The discovery that he may have been abducted and made to talk turns a missing subordinate into a direct threat to the contract.

Marc Rodin reconstructs how the leak may have exposed The Jackal’s code-name. Kowalski could not have known the killer’s real name, which only Marc Rodin, Montclair, and Casson knew. But at their parting, Marc Rodin had greeted the Englishman in Kowalski’s hearing as Mr Jackal. The detail clarifies both the limits and the reach of the breach: the confession need not identify The Jackal by his real name to give investigators a name, a meeting, a hotel, and a description to pursue. Marc Rodin concludes that the net around de Gaulle will tighten and that the opportunity for an assassin may disappear.

Marc Rodin’s Attempt to Stop the Operation

Marc Rodin decides that The Jackal must be urgently warned to halt. His response reflects the authority of a former commanding officer: he will not knowingly send a man on a mission whose success has become impossible. He briefs a bodyguard, who goes to the main post office to make a call to London. Yet the urgency of Marc Rodin’s decision does not give him a reliable way to reach his employee. The attempt proceeds through intermediaries and a telephone connection rather than through direct contact.

The limits become explicit when Montclair and Casson urge Marc Rodin to recall The Jackal. Marc Rodin reasons that a tall blond foreigner is not, by itself, enough to identify a suspect among the more than one million foreigners in France in August. Investigators have no name, face, or passport, as far as he knows; he assumes a professional would be travelling on false documents. If The Jackal contacts Valmy, he may be warned and still have a chance to leave the country. But Valmy’s instructions are only to receive information from the girl and pass it on when The Jackal calls. Valmy has no authority to order the assassination abandoned.

That boundary leaves Marc Rodin caught between responsibility and control. He believes The Jackal should recognize for himself that the operation is compromised and withdraw, but knows that returning would mean returning the money. He admits that he sees little chance of success, yet understands the professional reluctance to stand down a personally planned operation. His attempt to stop the mission therefore fails not because he has changed his assessment, but because the contract’s chain of communication gives him no safe, direct command over the man carrying it out. Calling Valmy to issue an unauthorized order could expose the intermediary as well.

The Jackal’s Independence

When Valmy advises him to quit and go home, The Jackal understands that the message does not carry direct authority from Marc Rodin. The distinction matters: the warning conveys the employer’s concern but does not compel obedience. The Jackal also sees the exposure as evidence of the Secret Army Organisation’s lax security. Kowalski’s confession has endangered the mission, but the failure to control the consequences has further weakened his confidence in the people who hired him.

The Jackal assesses the information available to investigators against the protections he has prepared. He is travelling under an assumed name with a legitimate passport in that name, while carrying three additional sets of false papers, including two foreign passports and matching disguises. The police are searching for a man carrying Charles Calthrop’s passport, whereas The Jackal is travelling as Alexander Duggan and can prove that identity. Kowalski’s death means that neither Marc Rodin nor his associates know where The Jackal is. The loss of contact that frustrates the employer is also the independence The Jackal has wanted.

That independence does not make the choice easy. Continuing means facing a security system now alert to an assassination attempt, with the danger increasing as the date approaches. Returning means a likely dispute with Marc Rodin and his associates over the Zurich money; The Jackal fears that if he refuses to return most of it, they could track him down, torture him for the signed paper needed to release the funds, and kill him. He also considers that staying ahead of them could consume everything he has. The contract binds him, then, not only through the original agreement but through the danger he expects if he breaks it.

A Contract Neither Side Can Control

The relationship reaches its crisis when Marc Rodin knows the operation should be stopped but cannot recall The Jackal, while The Jackal receives a warning without an order and weighs retreat against the financial and physical risks of returning. Marc Rodin’s authority has limits: he cannot safely use Valmy to transmit a command, and he no longer knows the assassin’s location. The Jackal’s professional confidence and layered identities make it possible for him to act independently, but they cannot erase the consequences of a failed contract.

The contrast is central to the relation’s change. Marc Rodin’s conduct is driven by the judgment that success has become impossible and by a residual sense of command responsibility. The Jackal’s decision belongs to a different calculation, in which the exposed plot, his preparations, his money, and his freedom from supervision all bear on whether to continue. The employer can hire him and try to warn him; once the operation is exposed and communication breaks down, he cannot make him stop. Their arrangement has become a separation of interests: Marc Rodin seeks to limit the damage, while The Jackal alone must decide whether the mission is still worth its cost.