The next day, Friday, he spent shopping in one of the working class suburbs of Brussels. From a shop specialising in camping equipment he bought a pair of hiking boots, long woollen socks, denim trousers, check woollen shirt and a haversack. Among his other purchases were several sheets of thin foam rubber, a string shopping bag, a ball of twine, a hunting knife, two thin paint brushes, a tin of pink paint and another of brown. He thought of buying a large Honeydew melon from an open fruit stall, but decided not to, as it would probably go rotten over the weekend.

Back at the hotel he used his new driving licence, now matching his passport in the name of Alexander Duggan, to order a self-drive hire car for the following morning, and prevailed on the head reception clerk to book him a single room with a shower/bath for the weekend at one of the resorts along the sea coast. Despite the lack of accommodation available in August, the clerk managed to find him a room in a small hotel overlooking the picturesque fishing harbour of Zeebrugge, and wished him a pleasant weekend by the sea.

WHILE the Jackal was doing his shopping in Brussels, Viktor Kowalski was wrestling with the intricacies of international telephone enquiries from Rome's main post office.

Not speaking Italian, he had sought the aid of the counter clerks, and eventually one of them had agreed that he spoke a little French. Laboriously Kowalski explained to him that he wished to telephone a man in Marseilles, France, but that he did not know the man's telephone number.

Yes, he knew the name and address. The name was Grzybowski. That baked the Italian, who asked Kowalski to write it down. This Kowalski did, but the Italian, unable to believe that any name could start «Grzyb…» spelt it out to the operator at the international exchange as «Grib…»

Thinking that Kowalski's written «z' had to be an «i'. No name Josef Gribowski existed in the Marseilles telephone directory, the operator informed the Italian at the other end of the phone. The clerk turned to Kowalski and explained that there was no such person.

Purely by chance, because he was a conscientious man anxious to please a foreigner, the clerk spelt the name out to underline that he had got it right.

«Il n'existe pas, monsieur. Voyons… jay, air, eee…»

«Non, jay, air, zed…-' cut in Kowalski.

The clerk looked perplexed.

«Excusez moi, monsieur. day, air, Zed?? Jay, air, zed, yqrec, bay?»

«Oui,» insisted Kowalski, «G.R.Z.Y.B.O.W.S.K.L' The Italian shrugged and presented himself to the switchboard operator once again.

«Get me international enquiries, please.»

Within ten minutes Kowalski had JoJo's telephone number and half an hour later he was through. At the end of the line the ex legionnaire's voice was distorted by crackling and he seemed hesitant to confirm the bad news in Kovac's letter. Yes, he was glad Kowalski had rung, he had been trying to trace him for three months.

Unfortunately, yes, it was true about the illness of little Sylvie. She had been getting weaker and thinner, and when finally a doctor had diagnosed the illness, it had already been time to put her to bed. She was in the next bedroom at the flat from which JoJo was speaking. No it was not the same flat, they had taken a newer and larger one. What? The address? JoJo gave it slowly, while Kowalski, tongue between pursed lips, slowly wrote it down.

«How long do the quacks give her?» he roared down the line. He got his meaning over to JoJo at the fourth time of trying. There was a long pause.

«Alto? Allo?» he shouted when there was no reply. JoJo's voice came back.

«It could be a week, maybe two or three,» said JoJo.

Disbelievingly, Kowalski stared at the mouthpiece in his hand. Without a word he replaced it on the cradle and blundered out of the cabin. After paying the cost of the call he collected the mail, snapped the steel case on his wrist tight shut and walked back to the hotel. For the first time in many years his thoughts were in a turmoil and there was no one to whom he could turn for orders how to solve the problem by violence.

In his flat in Marseilles, the same one he had always lived in, JoJo also put down the receiver when he realised Kowalski had hung up. He turned to find the two men from the Action Service still where they had been, each with his Colt.45 Police Special in his hand. One was trained on JoJo, the other on his wife who sat ashen-faced in the corner of the sofa. «Bastards,» said JoJo with venom. «Shits.»

«Is he coming?» asked one of the men.

«He didn't say. He just hung up on me,» said the Pole.

The black flat eyes of the Corsican stared back at him.

«He must come. Those are the orders.»

«Well, you heard me, I said what you wanted. He must have been shocked. He just hung up. I couldn't prevent him doing that.»

«He had better come, for your sake JoJo,» repeated the Corsican.

«He will come,» said JoJo resignedly. «If he can, he will come. For the girl's sake.»

«Good. Then your part is done.»

«Then get out of here,» shouted JoJo. «Leave us alone: The Corsican rose, the gun still in his hand. The other man remained seated, looking at the woman.

«We'll be going,» said the Corsican, «but you two will come with us. We can't have you talking around the place, or ringing Rome, now can we, JoJo?»

«Where are you taking us?»

«A little holiday. A nice pleasant hotel in the mountains. Plenty of sun and fresh air. Good for you JoJo.»

«For how long?» asked the Pole dully.

«For as long as it takes.»

The Pole stared out of the window at the tangle of alleys and fish stalls that crouch behind the picture postcard frontage of the Old Port.

«It is the height of the tourist season. The trains are full these days. In August we make more than all the winter. It will ruin us for several years.»

The Corsican laughed as if the idea amused him.

«You must consider it rather a gain than a loss, JoJo. After all, it is for France, your adopted country.»

The Pole spun round. «I don't give a shit about politics. I don't care who is in power, what party wants to make a balls-up of everything. But I know people like you. I have been meeting them all my life. You would serve Hitler, your type. Or Mussolini, or the OAS if it suited you. Or anybody. Regimes may change, but bastards like you never change…»

He was shouting limping towards the man with the gun whose snout had not quivered a millimetre in the hand that held it.

'JoJo' screamed the woman from the sofa. «JoJo, Le Pen prie. Laisse-le.»

The Pole stopped and stared at his wife as if he had forgotten she were there. He looked round the room and at the figures in it one by one. They all looked back at him, his wife imploring, the two Secret Service toughs without noticeable expression. They were used to reproaches which had no effect on the inevitable. The leader of the pair nodded towards the bedroom.

«Get packed. You first, then the wife.»

«What about Sylvie? She will be home from school at four. There will be no one to meet her,» said the woman.

The Corsican still stared at her husband.

«She will be picked up by us on the way past the school. Arrangements have been made. The headmistress has been told her granny is dying and the whole family has been summoned to her death-bed It's all very discreet. Now move.»

JoJo shrugged, gave a last glance at his wife and went into the bedroom to pack, followed by the Corsican. His wife continued to twist her handkerchief between her hands. After a while she looked up at the other agent on the end of the sofa. He was younger than the Corsican, a Gascon.

«What… what will they do to him?»

«Kowalski?»

'Viktor.»

«Some gentlemen want to talk to him. That is all.»