Raoul Saint-Clair de Villauban

Raoul Saint-Clair de Villauban is a colonel in the presidential secretariat whose work includes arranging Charles de Gaulle’s public appearances and routes. When the Jackal’s assassination plot comes to light, Saint-Clair becomes an internal observer of the investigation, intent on demonstrating that the presidential secretariat is alert to the danger. Yet his professional investment in the security system also narrows his judgment: he regards it as nearly impregnable and concludes, wrongly, that the exposed assassin will give up.

Position and Priorities

Saint-Clair’s influence comes from his place within the presidential secretariat and his knowledge of how the President’s appearances are organized. He is responsible for devising the public schedule and routes, and considers the resulting security screen the most efficient in the world. From that position, he has little anxiety that a foreign gunman could penetrate the carefully planned arrangements. His confidence is not simply a general faith in security: it is bound to a system he helps devise and whose effectiveness reflects upon his own professional standing.

The investigation gives him a chance to reinforce that standing. After the Interior Ministry meeting, he spends three hours preparing a report for the Secretary-General of the presidential secretariat. He rejects two drafts before typing a final copy himself, both to keep the secret from a secretary and to have the document ready early. The care he gives its phrasing serves more than accuracy. He wants the report to register his reservations about placing the safety of the head of state in the hands of a police commissaire, while stopping short of openly opposing a decision already agreed by the meeting.

Watching the Investigation

Saint-Clair decides that his best course is to monitor Claude Lebel’s operation on behalf of the presidential secretariat and identify its inefficiencies as they arise. His report characterizes Lebel in deliberately diminishing terms, allowing Saint-Clair to preserve a record of his doubts without taking responsibility for obstructing the appointment. He is prepared to let the investigation proceed, in part because Lebel might succeed; if it fails, Saint-Clair can point to his earlier reservations.

A decision by the Minister to hold nightly progress meetings gives him a regular platform. Saint-Clair welcomes the arrangement because daytime preparation will let him ask forceful questions and display the secretariat’s vigilance. His attention therefore moves on two tracks: the threat to Charles de Gaulle and the institutional contest over who appears competent to address it. He does not command the investigation, but works to ensure that its progress is visible to those who might judge his own performance.

That posture turns sharp when the authorities miss Valmy at a post office. Saint-Clair calls the failure evidence of inefficiency, but General Guibaud responds that the investigators are working largely in the dark against an unknown adversary and invites the colonel to assume the operation and its responsibilities. Saint-Clair studies his folders rather than taking up the challenge, recognizing that his criticism has overreached. The exchange exposes the difference between questioning the work from the safety of the presidential secretariat and carrying the burden of directing a pursuit with incomplete information.

Confidence and Misjudgment

Saint-Clair’s central error is to treat exposure of the plot as proof that the Jackal cannot continue. He argues that the assassin must have been warned off and that Marc Rodin and his associates will demand their money back and cancel the operation. For Saint-Clair, the strengthened security around Charles de Gaulle makes the conclusion seem self-evident: the assassin can no longer get close enough to succeed, so the threat should be regarded as ended.

Lebel refuses to make that assumption. He acknowledges the uncertainty of the available information but insists on continuing his enquiries. The contrast is consequential: Lebel treats the Jackal’s possible withdrawal as a hypothesis to test, whereas Saint-Clair treats it as a reassuring certainty. When the chase later establishes that the assassin is still in France, armed and concealed under yet another face and identity, Lebel’s caution is vindicated. The Jackal’s continued presence makes Saint-Clair’s confidence in the security system look less like a reliable assessment than a blind spot shaped by his own institutional perspective.

Private Disclosure and Narrative Role

Saint-Clair’s private relationship with Jacqueline brings the supposedly contained plot into an intimate setting. He tells her that the OAS is still targeting the President, that the plot has been discovered, and that the authorities are dealing with it. Jacqueline dismisses the danger, believing the OAS finished long ago. The conversation shows Saint-Clair carrying confidential political knowledge into his personal life even as he presents himself as an attentive guardian of presidential security. Their affair is also tied to the disclosure of information to Valmy, making private intimacy a channel through which the investigation’s secrecy is compromised.

As a character, Saint-Clair is neither the investigator pursuing the Jackal nor the assassin adapting to the hunt. His role lies inside the machinery of protection: he represents the officials who design security, assess the police response, and must decide whether apparent control is real. His ambition to be seen as alert and his faith in a highly planned security screen repeatedly pull in the same direction, encouraging him to judge the investigation by institutional appearance rather than by the adversary’s demonstrated persistence. The narrative uses his mistaken certainty to sharpen the distinction between an elaborate protective apparatus and the practical problem Lebel faces: finding a concealed man whose next move cannot safely be ruled out.