The Jackal infiltrates the ceremony perimeter disguised as a disabled veteran

The Jackal infiltrates the ceremony perimeter disguised as a disabled veteran, exploiting the pity his performance inspires to pass a security barrier and reach a firing position overlooking the station forecourt. The disguise is not merely a costume: false identity papers, a concealed rifle, and a convincing simulation of a missing leg let him move through the guarded streets as someone the sentries believe they have already checked.

Preparation and Disguise

In Jules Bernard’s bedroom, The Jackal lays out the clothes of Andre Martin, a French war veteran: scuffed black shoes, grey socks, an open-necked shirt, a long military greatcoat bearing campaign ribbons, and a black beret. He adds forged Brussels papers establishing the assumed identity. The details are chosen to make the disguise legible at a glance as age, military service, and bodily injury, rather than as a suspiciously elaborate disguise.

His equipment is organized alongside the clothes. A light webbing harness and five steel tubes, made to look like aluminium, conceal the components of his rifle. The rubber stud of the crutch holds five explosive bullets. He removes two bullets, extracts their cordite, and discards their now-useless cases, leaving three cartridges for the planned attack. He has also washed out the chestnut-brown hair tint associated with his Marty Schulberg identity, cut his blond hair into an untidy brush cut, and prepared grey tint and solvent. These alterations allow him to abandon one identity for another while preserving the appearance of a tired, unwell veteran.

The apparent disability depends on a physical deception as well as visual detail. The Jackal has strapped his right leg beneath his buttocks and supports himself with an aluminium crutch. When he later releases the leg, he must wait for the cramped muscles and restricted blood flow to recover before putting weight on it. The performance therefore costs him time and causes pain, but it gives the sentry a ready explanation for his slow, uneven progress through the crowd-control line.

Passing the Barrier

The deception succeeds at the point where a routine identity check meets the appearance of vulnerability. Along the barriers, Pierre Valremy sees the limping veteran approaching in a sweat-stained black beret and long greatcoat, medals hanging from his chest. The man moves as though each step costs effort; spectators glance at him with pity, and Valremy reads the crutch and medals as the remnants of an old soldier’s life rather than as parts of a disguise.

At the barrier, The Jackal produces two cards identifying him as Andre Martin, a fifty-three-year-old French citizen born in Colmar and resident in Paris. One card also identifies him as a war invalid. Valremy compares the photographs with the face before him and asks him to remove his beret. The cuts from a poor shave, the greyed, sweaty face, and the disordered hair help the false identity withstand this close inspection. When Martin says he lives nearby, retired on a pension and occupying an attic, Valremy checks the address—154 Rue de Rennes—against the building numbers. Finding no reason to stop him, he lets him through, warning him not to cause trouble before the President arrives. The Jackal nearly stumbles as he passes, and Valremy reaches out to steady him: the guard himself briefly assists the performance that has defeated his scrutiny.

The passage through the barrier is only the first opening. The Jackal enters a doorway beside the square, where Madame Berthe has returned to knitting after police searches of the rooms in her building. She has little interest in the ceremony and sees only a tired old man asking for water in the heat. As she goes to fetch a glass, he strikes her from behind, leaving her unconscious on the floor. He then binds her hands and feet with a clothesline, covers her mouth with sticking plaster, and confines her in the scullery. The episode turns the sympathy that secured his passage into a means of gaining access to a private building, while removing the witness who might have raised an alarm.

Securing the Firing Position

After confining Madame Berthe in the scullery, The Jackal uses the keys he has found in her parlour to enter an empty sixth-floor flat. No one answers at Mademoiselle Beranger’s door or at the neighboring apartment, and he lets himself in and locks the door. Across the road, police watchers are moving onto the opposite rooftops; the timing leaves him little margin. He opens both halves of the living-room window inward, then keeps clear of the bright square of light cast onto the carpet, where the men across the street might see him.

From the shadow beside the window, he can look down and sideways into the station forecourt, about 130 metres away. He shifts a table eight feet back from the window and sets two armchair cushions on it as a rest for the rifle. The position offers a view of the ceremony ground while keeping him away from the exposed patch of light. It is a carefully measured compromise: he needs a clear line of sight, but the watchers’ presence makes even approaching the window a risk.

The crutch that helped carry his disguise now supplies the concealed weapon. He unscrews its sections and removes the silencer, telescopic sight, breech, barrel, steel stock rods, and padded shoulder support, which also conceals the trigger. The pieces are not loose parts improvised at the last moment: they have been fitted into the crutch so that, assembled, they form a complete rifle. He puts the weapon together with painstaking care, attaches the telescopic sight, and tests the view from behind the table, tracking a man’s head as it crosses the forecourt. The sight brings the distant figure sharply into focus.

The Jackal has three cartridges left after extracting cordite from two others; eating the cordite has left him nauseated and sweating, and its effects have only begun to wear off. He lines up the three remaining rounds, loads one into the rifle, and keeps two in reserve. With the rifle resting among the cushions, his passage through the barrier has become a concealed firing position inside the secured area. The disguise has carried him past the sentry; the hidden weapon and the empty flat now place him within range of the ceremony.

Security and the Limits of Recognition

The preparations around the ceremony were designed to close off nearly every conventional route to the President. Steel barriers would hold spectators back; the enclosed areas and nearby buildings were to be searched, armed watchers placed on surrounding rooftops, and even clergy and choirboys inspected. Police and CRS officers would wear special lapel badges to expose anyone impersonating security personnel. The Citroën carrying Charles de Gaulle had secretly been fitted with bullet-proof windows, while a group of unusually tall officers and officials was to surround him without attracting his attention. Yet these measures could not guarantee that a disguised attacker would be identified before reaching a useful position.

Lebel understood the gap between tightening security and recognizing the man it was meant to stop. Despite betrayal, pursuit by two police forces, and the precautions already put in place, The Jackal had reached Paris with a weapon and another possible identity. Lebel could offer no further physical barrier that would solve the problem; the remaining task was to keep watch and recognize the threat when it appeared. The disguised veteran’s passage exposes the vulnerability in that last requirement: the guard examined his papers and face, but the signs that might have prompted suspicion instead made him seem ordinary, pitiable, and entitled to pass.