London serves The Jackal as both a private refuge and an operational base: it is where he returns after completing preparations in Brussels, where he can draw on friends for money, and where he marks the end of his preparations before departing again. His movements through the city place ordinary comforts beside concealed weapons and false identities, making the capital a threshold between the operation’s careful planning and its next stage.

Home Base and Financial Contacts

In Brussels, a forger deduces that the Englishman passing as the middle-aged French worker André Martin must be involved in a profitable business. He proposes that The Jackal contact his friends in London and have them cable one thousand pounds to a Belgian bank. London thus figures not merely as a place of residence but as a source of financial support reachable across borders.

After finishing his preparations in Brussels, The Jackal returns to London by plane. A perfunctory search of one of his bags at London Airport finds nothing, and by seven that evening he is showering in his own flat before going out to dinner in the West End. The return to familiar domestic routine is notably brief: the concealed operation has travelled with him, undetected.

Concealment and Departure Preparations

Before leaving the Brussels hotel, The Jackal avoids being seen by its staff with a cheap fibre suitcase. Though late for lunch, he takes a taxi directly to the mainline station and deposits the case in the left-luggage office, keeping the ticket inside his slim lizard-skin wallet. The rifle is safely stored there while his visible luggage and clothes preserve a different impression: he leaves the hotel in a finely cut check suit, wrap-around dark glasses, and with two Vuitton suitcases carried by a porter.

The contrast between display and concealment is exact. The Jackal is one thousand six hundred pounds poorer after the preparations, but the rifle remains out of sight in the station and three finely forged cards are tucked into his suit. His passage through London Airport does not expose what the luggage search fails to find. The city is therefore part of a logistical chain in which public respectability, hidden equipment, and false credentials are kept carefully separate.

The Last London Lunch

Later, at twenty to four, The Jackal emerges from Cunningham’s in Curzon Street after an exceptionally expensive seafood lunch. As he walks into South Audley Street, he considers it probably his last lunch in London for some time and has reason to celebrate: the planning and preparation stage in France and Belgium is complete. The meal gives the preparations a polished, almost ceremonial close, while its location fixes London as the point from which he is about to move on.

At the same moment, a black saloon leaves the French Interior Ministry and turns toward the Élysée Palace, where guards and traffic control clear its approach. The parallel movement places The Jackal’s private departure preparations against the official world surrounding his target. London is not the scene of the planned attack, but it is the setting for the final pause before his mission proceeds beyond Britain.