Rend Montclair

Rend Montclair is a senior OAS associate whom Marc Rodin trusts with the secret plan to hire an outsider to assassinate Charles de Gaulle. His importance lies less in a recorded act of violence than in the hidden machinery of the plot: he is named as its treasurer and paymaster, participates in the decision to recruit the assassin, and belongs to the tightly restricted circle surrounding the Jackal’s identity.

Position in the OAS Plan

Rodin presents the outsider as a necessity. The men already known to be capable of killing de Gaulle are also known to the French authorities, leaving them exposed to police pursuit and betrayal by informers. Montclair and André Casson first react with amazement, then show that they understand Rodin’s proposal. When he explains that secrecy is essential, he says he has summoned the two men because he is convinced of their loyalty and ability to keep a secret. The plan’s design therefore rests not only on finding an assassin, but on limiting knowledge of him to a small, trusted group.

Montclair’s specific responsibility is financial. Rodin says his cooperation as treasurer and paymaster will be needed to meet the fee demanded by a professional assassin. The recruit confirms that the job will cost a great deal, and describes the payment as compensation for a once-in-a-lifetime undertaking with little prospect of remaining undiscovered. Montclair is thus positioned between the OAS’s resources and the hired man’s demands, although the account does not describe him personally negotiating the fee or transferring the money.

Secrecy and the Recruitment

The English assassin tests the security of the arrangement by asking how many people know that the OAS intends to hire an outsider. Rodin answers that only the three men in the room know of the idea. The assassin insists that the circle remain closed: records and dossiers must be destroyed, and his planning and operational details will be disclosed to no one. He intends to disappear, with contact limited to an emergency and a Swiss bank serving as the channel for payment. Montclair’s role is therefore one of trusted access, not operational command; the assassin reserves control of the plan and its timing for himself.

The distinction matters because the OAS can provide money and a small measure of support inside France, but cannot safely supervise the person it hires. The arrangement gives Montclair and the other organizers a crucial financial function while denying them knowledge of the assassin’s methods. When Rodin later writes instructions for Swiss bankers to transfer the first quarter-million dollars to the Jackal, the money makes the contract tangible. The narrative records Rodin writing those instructions, rather than Montclair carrying them out, so Montclair’s contribution remains defined by his assigned role in the financing structure.

The Investigation’s Trail

The police investigation reconstructs a meeting in Vienna from hotel records and a clerk’s recollection. At the Pension Kleist, investigators show photographs of Marc Rodin, Rend Montclair, and André Casson. The clerk recalls Rodin booking a room under the name Schulz on June 15, and remembers a very large, surly companion, identified in the report as Viktor Kowalski. Two men visited them the next morning; the clerk thought they could have been Casson and Montclair, but could not be certain. The recollection places Montclair near the meeting without establishing his presence as fact.

After Kowalski’s death, French officials describe the Jackal’s identity as known to only four men in the world: the assassin himself and three OAS men staying in Rome. In the context of the investigation, Montclair belongs to that surviving inner circle. The authorities reject kidnapping one of the men from Rome as a way to obtain the identity, leaving Montclair beyond their immediate reach. His place in the account is consequently defined by a double constraint: trusted with the conspiracy’s most sensitive secret, he is also one of the few people the investigators might wish to question but cannot simply seize.

Character and Narrative Function

Montclair is portrayed through organizational duties and brief gestures rather than private history or an independent storyline. He listens as Rodin argues for the outsider, joins Casson in agreeing to the proposal, and is entrusted with the financial responsibility needed to recruit a professional assassin. Later, he appears chiefly as a name in records and as a possible visitor recalled by a hotel clerk. This limited presentation makes him a representative of the OAS’s inner apparatus: indispensable to the plot’s money and secrecy, but kept at a distance from the Jackal’s actual operational decisions.