Linate Airport is where the Jackal’s elaborate preparations first face routine inspection. Shortly after six, his plane lands in Milan; amid the ordinary flow from aircraft steps to terminal and customs bench, the parts of a sniper’s rifle travel close to discovery without attracting suspicion.

Arrival and Concealment

The Jackal is helped down to the tarmac by an attentive hostess and escorted into the main terminal by a ground hostess. At customs, the formal passport check presents no difficulty. The greater risk lies in his luggage: he has already moved the gun’s component parts out of the suitcases and into a less suspicious means of carriage, but the cases still contain disguises and false identity papers that could expose his preparations if searched thoroughly.

The Customs Inspection

A porter arranges three large suitcases side by side and sets down the Jackal’s handgrip. When a customs officer asks whether all the baggage is his, the Jackal opens one of the cases. It contains clothes for his fictitious Danish pastor and American student identities: a dark-grey suit, underwear, a white shirt, sneakers, black walking shoes, a windcheater and socks. A Danish book bearing a coloured plate of Chartres Cathedral also looks unremarkable to the officer. The carefully resewn slit in the lining—and the false identity papers concealed there—goes unnoticed.

The inspection is perfunctory, not a search capable of uncovering the whole scheme. The rifle’s component parts are only three feet from the officer, across the customs desk, yet he suspects nothing. He closes the case, has the Jackal lock it again and chalks all four cases. The danger passes through an omission in ordinary procedure: nothing suspicious prompts the closer examination that might have revealed what the baggage concealed.

Narrative Significance

Linate Airport stages a close, controlled near-discovery rather than an open confrontation. The Jackal’s safety depends on the gap between what is physically present—the rifle parts, the altered luggage and the hidden papers—and what a routine inspection actually notices. Once customs releases the cases, he takes a taxi into Milan and proceeds to the Central Station, carrying forward the disguises and equipment on which his plan depends.