The Brussels weapons-preparation stop is a staging ground in the Jackal’s campaign against Charles de Gaulle: a place where a carefully managed travel identity, weapons work, and practical preparations converge before he leaves for France. Its importance lies less in any single encounter than in the coordination of separate tasks. The Jackal arrives by train, approaches specialists cautiously, gathers equipment for a change of appearance, and departs with the components of his plan arranged for the next stage.

Arrival and Establishing a Base

The Jackal reaches the Brussels weapons-preparation stop in the last hours of July, after taking the 5.15 express from Gare du Nord. The train journey turns the end of his Paris stay into a quiet transition: he arrives in another country with his schedule intact and without drawing the story’s attention to any public confrontation. Brussels is not presented as a permanent refuge. It is a temporary base from which he can manage several preparations before proceeding toward France.

On the morning he receives a letter, he leaves the Amigo Hotel and takes a taxi to a corner near M. Goossens’s home. He has already telephoned the armourer over breakfast using the name Alexander Duggan, establishing that the assumed identity is in use before the meeting begins. Although the appointment is for eleven, he arrives at half past ten and watches the street from a bench in a small public garden, hiding behind a newspaper. The half-hour wait makes surveillance part of the preparation: he checks the approach before presenting himself at the door at the agreed time.

M. Goossens leads him into a small room off the hallway, then locks the front door and fastens the chain. These precautions give the meeting a controlled, private character. The Jackal asks whether there have been problems; the armourer’s embarrassed response signals that the work has encountered complications, though the available account does not specify them. The scene establishes both the practical dependence of the operation on specialist assistance and the Jackal’s habit of checking each stage directly.

Specialists and Operational Preparation

The Jackal also meets a forger in a bar off Rue Neuve. He arrives shortly after six, chooses a corner seat, and signals the man to join him with a movement of his head. After sitting down and lighting a cigarette, he asks whether the work is finished. The forger says that it is, and praises the result. The exchange is brief, but it marks a distinct piece of the Brussels preparations as complete. The Jackal has used the city to coordinate not only weapons work but also forged documentation.

The practical value of that documentation appears in his later dealings with the hotel staff. Using a new driving licence that matches his passport under the name Alexander Duggan, he arranges to hire a self-drive car for the following morning. The papers therefore do more than furnish a name: they support the ordinary transactions needed to move around without making the assumed identity conspicuous. He also persuades the head reception clerk to find him a single room with a shower and bath at a coastal resort for the weekend. Despite the limited accommodation available in August, the clerk secures a room overlooking the fishing harbour at Zeebrugge.

His shopping extends the same method from identity to appearance and equipment. In a working-class suburb he buys hiking boots, long woollen socks, denim trousers, a checked woollen shirt, and a haversack. He adds thin foam rubber, a string shopping bag, twine, a hunting knife, two fine paintbrushes, and tins of pink and brown paint. Each purchase is concrete and utilitarian: clothing and a bag for a different presentation, packing materials, tools, and paint. He considers buying a large Honeydew melon at an open-air fruit stall, then rejects it because it would probably spoil over the weekend. Even this discarded purchase reflects the forward-looking, practical attention that governs his preparations.

The Rifle, the Disguise, and Departure

At a later appointment with M. Goossens, the Jackal returns for a final fitting. He again arrives half an hour early and surveys the street before going to the door. This time he carries a small attaché case inside an otherwise empty fibre suitcase bought second-hand that morning. M. Goossens admits him, locks the front door, and closes the office door behind them. The repeated advance observation and controlled entry echo the earlier meeting, while the return visit brings the armourer’s work to its final stage.

When the Jackal prepares to leave Brussels, he takes the case containing the rifle from a locked wardrobe. He wraps each component in several layers of foam rubber and ties the bundles with twine, placing them at the bottom of the rucksack. The paint tins and brushes, alternate clothes, socks, and boots go above them; the string shopping bag and a box of bullets occupy the outer pockets. The packed load brings the city’s separate preparations together: specialist work, the disguise supplies, and the equipment are now organized for transport rather than left as disconnected purchases.

He dresses for departure in a striped shirt, a lightweight dove-grey suit, black leather sneakers, and a black knitted tie. With the rucksack in hand, he puts the hired car in motion after collecting a packed lunch from the hotel. By nine he is driving out of Brussels on the old E. 40 highway toward Namur, intending to reach Bastogne and then find a quiet place in the hills and forests to its south. The journey begins as an ordinary road itinerary, but the rifle, clothing, paint, and false identity assembled in Brussels give it a second purpose: to move the Jackal and his preparations onward without exposing the plan.

Place in the Wider Manhunt

Brussels also matters in retrospect because the Jackal’s preparations unfold while the authorities still lack a name and a precise description. In a series of international calls, Claude Lebel presents his request for assistance as a routine tip-off rather than an official enquiry. He says that the police do not yet know whether an offence has been formulated or reached the preparation stage, and that they have neither the suspect’s name nor a good description. He then narrows the search to a very specific profile: a professional political assassin with several successful killings. The disparity between that broad ignorance and the Jackal’s exacting preparations gives the Brussels episodes their tension. The authorities are trying to discover what kind of man they seek; the man himself is already arranging the means to act.

Lebel later explains that the killer has a timetable known only to himself. The police have been investigating for seventy-two hours, but cannot tell where in that timetable they have intervened. Their best chance, Lebel argues, is to identify the fugitive under his new name and locate him under that name. The identity work carried out around Brussels consequently belongs to a larger contest over information: the Jackal’s movements depend on documents and preparation, while the manhunt depends on linking those preparations to a real person.

The investigation eventually considers whether the Jackal was warned that his identity as Alexander Duggan had been discovered. Lebel reasons that if the car had been driven overnight from Gap to Ussel already transformed, the paint may have been bought in Gap, allowing the Jackal to change his escape plan quickly. He suspects the man received a warning, possibly through Valmy, but cannot establish the source of the leak. These deductions concern developments after the Brussels preparations, not proof that Brussels itself was the source of the warning. They nonetheless sharpen the significance of the earlier staging ground: the name, tools, clothes, and transport arranged there form part of a plan that the police must reconstruct from fragments, even as the Jackal continues to keep its timetable to himself.