CRS

CRS is a French security force deployed across the Jackal manhunt, from high-level operational planning to street-level searches and armed intervention. Its officers help enforce the security perimeter around Charles de Gaulle’s public appearances, but their readiness also exposes the strain of the operation: a lost identification badge can trigger an arrest, while a young officer at a railway station is left to assess a disguised suspect whose papers he cannot read.

Place in the security apparatus

A senior CRS representative attends the Interior Minister’s briefing to Claude Lebel, sitting among the officials whose organizations are placed at the detective’s disposal. The meeting gives Lebel broad authority and resources, but it does not dissolve the distinct roles of the forces involved. CRS appears as one component in a coordinated response, represented at the table and later present at the ceremonies and checkpoints where the threat must be contained.

The force operates in a political climate already marked by restrictions and resentment. The government’s public-order measures include barriers in streets, identity checks at major road junctions, and roadblocks on main roads. The press has dubbed Alexandre Sanguinetti Monsieur Anti-OAS, while many ordinary people dislike the measures affecting daily life. Against that background, CRS is associated with visible state security: the same system that must protect the President also makes surveillance and crowd control conspicuous.

Mobilization and manhunt duties

The operation’s need for secrecy shapes how the police can use uniformed personnel. Lebel tells foreign police contacts that the investigation is not yet being presented as a formal international enquiry, because the authorities are still establishing whether the threat has advanced beyond intention. He is seeking a professional political assassin, but has little identifying information to offer. Within France, the government likewise forbids publicity and a nationwide search while the evidence remains uncertain and the President refuses to appear to be hiding from a foreigner.

As evidence points toward the countryside, Lebel orders a team to Ussel to begin a square search centered on the place where the car was found. Officers are to question farmers, village shops and cafés, hotels, and isolated woodcutter’s shelters. The man they seek is described as tall and blond, English-born but fluent in French, carrying three suitcases and a handgrip. To keep the search from attracting press attention, local officers are instructed to offer a cover story about a car crash and a possibly disoriented occupant. If they locate the suspect, they are to surround him and hold the area rather than approach him. The instructions show how containment, information control, and officer safety are treated as parts of the same task.

Security at public ceremonies

For the Paris Liberation Day ceremonies, the security plan extends well beyond the immediate crowd. Steel barriers are to be erected hours in advance, and the enclosed areas searched, including the sewers. Nearby houses and flats are to be checked; armed observers are assigned to rooftops; and only officials and ceremony participants may pass the barriers. Police are also placed in the cornices and spires of Notre-Dame de Paris, while clergy and choirboys are searched for concealed weapons. CRS personnel receive special lapel badges so that the Jackal cannot simply impersonate a security officer.

The badge system turns into a revealing incident of its own. During the ceremonies, officers check one another to confirm that each has the required badge. A CRS man who has lost his is arrested on the spot, disarmed, and taken away in a van. He is not released until the evening, after twenty colleagues personally recognize him and vouch for his identity. The precaution is meant to close a route for disguise, but this episode shows its cost: under pressure, the system can treat one of its own officers as a possible infiltrator, and restoring certainty requires personal recognition rather than the badge alone.

Encounters on the ground

At a railway station, a young CRS officer stops the Jackal, who is carrying luggage and presents a Danish passport. The officer asks whether he is Danish, but cannot understand the document. The encounter illustrates the limits of a checkpoint based on inspection: the uniformed guard can demand papers and delay a traveler, yet the passport’s unfamiliar language leaves him unable to establish the bearer’s identity. The scene places the disguised assassin inside the everyday machinery of security without making the check itself decisive.

Later, when the CRS man from Tulle is offered as a possible source of further information, Lebel declines. He has already heard what the officer can tell him and says that the suspect is now in Lebel’s territory. The exchange distinguishes field contact from investigative control: CRS personnel can supply observations from a station, while Lebel decides how those observations fit into the pursuit and where responsibility for the next stage lies.

Armed intervention and narrative significance

At the climax, Lebel reaches the sixth floor of a building with a CRS officer carrying a submachine carbine. When Lebel hears a quiet sound behind one of two doors, he orders the officer to shoot off the lock. The officer braces and fires, forcing the door inward; Pierre Valremy enters first, with Lebel close behind. The Jackal fires from behind his rifle and kills Valremy. The CRS officer’s intervention makes entry possible, but it does not prevent the fatal shot or end the danger without cost.

Across these scenes, CRS is neither an all-seeing shield nor a mere background presence. Its officers help search, guard, identify, and breach; their work depends on coordinated orders and on small practical devices such as badges and checkpoints. The mistaken arrest and the failed passport assessment expose the vulnerabilities of those procedures, while the final armed entry shows their immediate physical stakes. The organization’s role in the novel is therefore both operational and dramatic: it gives the manhunt a collective force, yet keeps its uncertainty visible at the level of the individual officer.