The Jackal evades the manhunt as Marty Schulberg

The Jackal evades the manhunt as Marty Schulberg by turning a police raid into an opportunity to shed one false identity and move into another. His escape depends on timing, divided luggage, and a hotel clerk’s failure to check a registration card against a passport. Yet the change is only a temporary reprieve: even as he vanishes into the Latin Quarter, he expects Lebel to uncover the new identity within a day.

The Raid and the Change of Plan

At 8.30, four Black Marias arrived outside the hotel on the Quai des Grands Augustins. The police searched room 37 so thoroughly that it looked as if a tornado had struck it, but the Jackal was already gone. The proprietor told the detective leading the raid that Pastor Jensen had checked out an hour earlier. The search had reached the room after its occupant had left, and the destruction there marked the force of the manhunt without bringing it any closer to its target.

The Jackal had taken a cruising taxi back towards Gare d’Austerlitz, where he had arrived the previous evening. He reasoned that the search would have shifted elsewhere. At the station he deposited the suitcase containing the gun and the military greatcoat and clothes associated with the fictitious Frenchman Andre Martin. He kept separate the suitcase holding Marty Schulberg’s clothes and papers, along with a hand-grip containing his make-up articles. Rather than carry every trace of every identity into the next hotel, he divided the evidence of his successive disguises between left luggage and his immediate possession.

Constructing Marty Schulberg

Still wearing a black suit, the Jackal covered the dog-collar with a polo sweater and checked into a cramped hotel around the corner from the station. The clerk allowed him to fill out his own registration card and was too idle to compare it, as regulations required, with the visitor’s passport. The card was therefore not even made out in the name of Per Jensen. This small lapse gave the Jackal a room without requiring the hotel’s record to expose the identity he was leaving behind.

Once upstairs, he altered both hair and face. He washed out the grey dye with solvent, revealing blond hair, then tinted it chestnut brown to match Marty Schulberg. He kept the blue contact lenses but exchanged gold-rimmed glasses for the American student’s heavy-rimmed executive spectacles. The transformation relied on a combination of changes, not a single distinguishing feature: hair colour, eyewear, clothing, and documents together made the new appearance usable.

He packed the black walking shoes, socks, shirt, bib, and clerical suit with the passport belonging to Pastor Jensen of Copenhagen. In their place he put on the sneakers, socks, jeans, T-shirt, and windcheater of an American college student from Syracuse, New York State. By mid-morning he carried the American’s passport in one breast pocket and French francs in the other. The wardrobe held what remained of Pastor Jensen; the Jackal sent its key down the gush of the bidet, then left by the fire escape. A few minutes later, he deposited the hand-grip at Gare d’Austerlitz and kept both luggage dockets in his back pocket.

Disappearance into the Latin Quarter

From the station, the Jackal took a taxi back to the Left Bank and got out at the corner of Boulevard Saint Michel and Rue de la Huchette. He disappeared among the students and young people of the Latin Quarter. The escape thus ended not with a secure destination but with entry into a crowded district where his student disguise could pass among the surrounding young people. His method was to leave successive identities behind in separate places while moving forward with only the papers, clothes, money, and make-up needed for the next one.

The apparent success was qualified from the outset. At lunch in a smoky, inexpensive dive, the Jackal considered where he would spend the night. He had little doubt that Lebel would by then have exposed Pastor Per Jensen, and he allowed Marty Schulberg no more than twenty-four hours. The assumed name that enabled his immediate disappearance already had an anticipated expiry. His escape therefore buys time rather than safety: each disguise must be replaced before the investigation catches up with it.

Tactical and Narrative Significance

The sequence makes the manhunt a contest over records and material traces as much as physical pursuit. Police arrive at the wrong room; a hotel clerk fails to perform the required passport check; a wardrobe key disappears down a bidet; luggage is divided between two station deposits; and the Jackal carries the dockets that connect the cases. Small administrative and practical details determine whether a false identity can survive scrutiny, while the rapid disposal of clothes and documents prevents one persona from simply following him intact into the next.

The episode also shows the limits of the Jackal’s adaptability. His changes are deliberate and technically exact, but his awareness of Lebel’s progress prevents the new appearance from becoming a stable refuge. He can pass from Pastor Jensen to Marty Schulberg, and he can disappear into the movement of the Latin Quarter, yet he already expects the police to identify the departing persona. The action’s decisive result is consequently an evasion, not a resolution: the Jackal escapes the raid, but the countdown attached to his latest identity has begun.