Zeebrugge is the coastal town where the Jackal stages a weekend of leisure as part of his preparations for the assassination plot. Staying under the identity Alexander Duggan, he occupies a small hotel overlooking the fishing harbour and moves through the town as an apparently unremarkable visitor. The seaside interlude gives his activities a holiday setting, but its calm surface is part of the practical cover surrounding his movements.

Lodging and Cover

After shopping in Brussels, the Jackal uses a driving licence matching his passport in the name Alexander Duggan to arrange a self-drive hire car. He also persuades a hotel clerk to find him a room for the weekend, no easy matter during August, when accommodation is scarce. The clerk secures a room in a small hotel overlooking Zeebrugge’s picturesque fishing harbour and wishes him a pleasant stay by the sea.

The booking places the Jackal at a recognizable holiday destination rather than leaving him visibly tied to his preparations in Brussels. His assumed identity is supported by ordinary travel arrangements: a hired car, a hotel room, and the manner of someone taking a weekend break. The hotel’s position above the harbour also locates his stay within the town’s everyday maritime scenery.

The Weekend at the Coast

On Saturday, the Jackal buys swimming trunks, sunbathes on the beach, swims several times in the North Sea, and wanders through the harbour town. He also walks along the mole, where old men sit fishing for sea bass. The narrative sets the present-day beachgoers—English families watching their children in the surf—against the mole’s history: British sailors and soldiers had fought and died there forty-six years earlier. The Jackal does not ask the old fishermen whether they remember those events; the past remains present in the landscape without interrupting his holiday routine.

On Sunday morning he packs and drives through the Flemish countryside, stopping to stroll through the narrow streets of Ghent and Bruges. After lunch at the Siphon restaurant at Datum, he turns the car back toward Brussels. These excursions extend the appearance of an unhurried tourist itinerary while marking the end of his coastal stay.

Narrative Significance

Zeebrugge is a temporary pause in the Jackal’s preparations, not their destination. Before turning in on Sunday, he asks the hotel desk for an early call, breakfast in bed, and a packed lunch, saying he intends to drive into the Ardennes the next day to visit the grave of an elder brother who died in the Battle of the Bulge between Bastogne and Malmedy. The requested arrangements and the account of the pilgrimage give his departure a plausible personal explanation; the episode establishes what he tells the clerk, not whether the claimed brother or visit is genuine.

The town’s seaside leisure contrasts with the methodical identity management that makes the stay possible. The Jackal swims, walks, eats, and travels like a holidaymaker, while his passport, driving licence, and planned movements remain components of his cover. Zeebrugge therefore serves both as a concrete coastal setting and as a brief performance of normal life within the larger manhunt.