Milan

Milan is a key preparation site in The Jackal’s journey, where an apparently routine stay becomes a carefully organized operation. The city’s station, hotel, garages, shops, and insurance offices give him the means to change his appearance, manage his funds, and hide the rifle components in a car; from there, he prepares to cross into France.

Arrival and concealment

After leaving a porter’s office, The Jackal travels into Milan and heads for the Central Station. He deposits a hand-grip and two suitcases in left luggage, retaining the case that holds a long French military overcoat and has room to spare. In a men’s toilet, he waits until the other occupant has left before entering a cubicle. There, he clips away the plaster on his foot, exposing cotton-wool pads that had made it appear to be a fractured ankle. The station is thus more than a transit point: it is where he begins to dismantle a disguise while separating the baggage he will need from what he can leave behind.

Money, equipment, and a garage

On a later morning in Milan, The Jackal takes one thousand pounds from the lining of his suitcase and spends two hours changing it at different banks. He converts two hundred pounds into lire and the remaining eight hundred into French francs, arranging his funds for the next stage of his journey. After a coffee, he searches for a lockup garage in the working-class streets near Porta Garibaldi. He pays ten thousand lire for two days’ hire, a high price for a short rental, and deposits a canvas grip there with overalls, metal clippers, steel wire, a soldering iron, and solder rod bought at a local hardware store.

He also obtains extra insurance for travel in France through a firm recommended by the Automobil Club Italiano. The cover is accepted through the firm’s relationship with a French insurer. These practical transactions—currency exchange, a brief garage lease, equipment purchases, and insurance—give the Milan episode the texture of routine administration while assembling the essentials of a clandestine journey.

The Alfa Romeo and the city’s role

The Jackal returns to the hotel for the suitcase containing the sniper-rifle components, then brings the Alfa Romeo to the rented garage. With the door shut, a soldering iron plugged into an overhead light socket, and a high-powered torch illuminating the underside, he works for two hours. He welds thin steel tubes containing the rifle parts into the inner flange of the car’s chassis, using steel wire to hold them in place and spot-welding where the wire touches the chassis. The tubes are wrapped in sacking; once concealed beneath the car, they are difficult to detect without a close inspection and are expected to gather dust and mud.

Milan’s importance lies in the way these separate preparations converge. The concealed weapon, the car insured for travel into France, the exchanged currency, and the stripped-back disguise turn the city into a temporary workshop for the assassination plan. The Jackal leaves no single conspicuous preparation to explain his purpose; the danger emerges from the coordinated use of ordinary urban facilities.