The Day of the Jackal is a 1971 political thriller novel by English author Frederick Forsyth about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French dissident paramilitary organisation, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the president of France.
The novel received admiring reviews and praise when first published in 1971, and it received a 1972 Best Novel Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The novel remains popular, and in 2003 it was listed on the BBC's survey The Big Read."BBC – The Big Read". BBC. April 2003, Retrieved 31 October 2012
The novel begins as historical fiction; the OAS did exist and conspired to commit the act with which the book opens, giving an accurate depiction of the attempt to assassinate General de Gaulle by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry on 22 August 1962. The subsequent plot is fiction.
Plot Part One: Anatomy of a Plot In 1962, after the failed assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry and other OAS conspirators were arrested in Petit-Clamart by authorities after the Évian Accords granted Algeria independence. The SDECE infiltrated the OAS, seizing and interrogating Antoine Argoud, the operation commander. The failure of the Petit-Clamart attempt, a betrayal of a subsequent plot at the École Militaire, and Bastien-Thiry's execution marked a significant crackdown.
Argoud's deputy Lt-Col Marc Rodin believed success in killing de Gaulle required hiring an unknown mercenary outside the organization. He contacted a British hitman in Vienna, who agreed to kill de Gaulle for US$500,000, half upfront and half after. The assassin chose the code name "The Jackal," and the OAS personnel hid in a guarded hotel in Rome to avoid capture.
The Jackal acquires a legitimate British passport under a fake name, "Alexander Duggan", steals two more passports from foreign tourists visiting London who superficially resemble him for use as contingency identities. Using Duggan's identity, he later travels to Brussels, where he commissions a master gunsmith to build him a special suppressed sniper rifle of extreme slimness with a small supply of mercury-tipped explosive bullets. He also acquires a set of forged French identity papers from a professional forger. The latter makes the mistake of attempting to blackmail him, for which the Jackal kills him. After researching about de Gaulle, the Jackal travels to Paris to reconnoitre the most favourable spot and the best possible day for the assassination.
Following armed robberies in France, the OAS deposits the first half of the Jackal's fee into his Swiss bank account. French authorities, suspicious of Rodin and his subordinates, send a fake letter that lures Viktor Kowalski, a bodyguard, to France, where he's caught and interrogated. His incoherent ramblings help the secret service decipher Rodin's plot and the name "Jackal," but not the assassin. De Gaulle refuses to cancel public appearances and insists that the investigation remain secret.
Roger Frey, the French Minister of the Interior, organises a conference of the heads of the French security authorities. Because Rodin and his men are in a foreign hotel under heavy guard, a Commissioner of the Police Judiciaire reasons that their first and most essential objective is to establish the Jackal's true identity, and he volunteers his own deputy commissioner: Claude Lebel.
Part Two: Anatomy of a Manhunt Granted special emergency powers to conduct his investigation, Lebel does everything possible to uncover the Jackal's identity. He first calls upon his old boy network of foreign intelligence and police contacts to inquire if they have any records of a top-class political assassin. Most of the inquiries are fruitless, but in the United Kingdom, the matter is eventually passed on to the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, and another veteran detective, Superintendent Bryn Thomas.
A routine search through Special Branch's records turns up nothing. However, one of Thomas's subordinates suggests that if the assassin were an Englishman, but primarily operated abroad, he would most probably come to the attention of the Secret Intelligence Service. Thomas makes an informal inquiry with a friend of his on the SIS's staff, who mentions hearing a rumour from an officer stationed in the Dominican Republic at the time of President Trujillo's assassination. The rumour states that a hired assassin stopped Trujillo's car with a rifle shot, allowing a gang of partisans to finish him off. Additionally, Thomas also learns that the assassin was an Englishman, whom he identifies as a man named "Charles Calthrop".
Thomas is then surprised when he receives a summons in person to report to the Prime Minister (unnamed, but most probably intended to represent Harold Macmillan), who informs him that word of his inquiries has reached higher circles in the British government. Despite the general enmity felt by much of the government against France and, more precisely, de Gaulle, the Prime Minister informs Thomas that de Gaulle is his friend, and that the assassin must be identified and stopped, with limitless resources, manpower and expenses at Thomas' disposal. He is handed a commission similar to Lebel's, with temporary powers allowing him to override almost any other authority in the land. Investigating the name of "Charles Calthrop", Thomas finds a match to a man living in London, said to be on holiday. While Thomas confirms that this individual was indeed in the Dominican Republic at the time of Trujillo's death, he does not believe it justifies informing Lebel, until one of his junior detectives realises that the first three letters of his first name and surname (i.e. "CHA-rles CAL-throp") forms "Chacal", the French word for "Jackal".
Unknown to any member of the council in France, there is an OAS mole among them: the mistress of an arrogant Air Force colonel attached to de Gaulle's staff. Through pillow talk, the officer unwittingly feeds her a constant stream of information as to Lebel's progress. The assassin enters France through Italy, driving a rented Alfa Romeo sports car with his disassembled weapon soldered to the chassis. Although he receives word from the OAS agent that the French are on the lookout for him, he assesses that he will succeed whatever happens and decides to take the risk. In London, the Special Branch raids Calthrop's flat, finding his passport, and deduces that he must be travelling on a fake identity. A search for suspicious passport applications reveals one in the name of Duggan. When they discover that the Jackal may be travelling as Duggan, Lebel and a police force almost apprehend him in the south of France, but owing to his OAS contact, he leaves his hotel early and evades them by only an hour. With the police on the lookout for him, the Jackal seeks refuge in the château of a woman whom he encountered and seduced at the hotel. A few days later, after eavesdropping on his morning phone call, she searches his belongings and finds the component parts of his rifle. He then kills her before she can sound the alarm, and flees after disguising himself as the first of his two emergency identities. Before leaving this region, he disposes of Duggan's belongings in a ravine. The woman's body is only discovered hours later, allowing the Jackal to board a train for Paris.
Part Three: Anatomy of a Kill Having failed to capture the Jackal at least twice, and with each imminent arrest happening hours after the conference was informed, Lebel becomes suspicious of what the rest of the council label the killer's apparent "good luck", and orders the telephones of all the members to be tapped, which leads him to discover the leak. The disgraced Air Force officer withdraws from the meeting and subsequently submits his resignation. When Thomas investigates and identifies reports of stolen or missing passports in London in the preceding months, he closes in on the Jackal's remaining secondary identities. Meanwhile, the Jackal slips into a small hotel upon arriving in Paris (narrowly evading a police checkpoint), disposes of his first emergency identity, and masquerades as the owner of the second stolen passport.
During a council meeting on 22 August 1963, Lebel deduces that the killer has decided to target de Gaulle three days later, on 25 August, the anniversary of the liberation of Paris during World War II. It is, he realises, the one day of the year when de Gaulle can definitely be counted on to be in Paris and make a public appearance. Despite his initial intentions to keep the investigation a confidential affair, Charles de Gaulle ultimately authorises Lebel to release the Jackal's most updated picture and name to the newspapers, identifying him as a wanted man after he has killed the woman. Believing the inquiry to be over, Roger Frey similarly orchestrates a massive, citywide manhunt for the foreigner now that he can be publicly reported as a murderer. He dismisses Lebel with hearty congratulations – but the killer eludes them yet again: slipping into a gay bar while posing as his new contingency identity, he gets himself picked up by a local man and taken to his flat, where he kills him after a news reporter mentions that "Martin Schulberg" (whose identity the Englishman is using) is wanted for murder, and waits out the remaining days.
On the 24th, Roger Frey summons Lebel yet again and tells him that the Jackal still cannot be found. The detective listens to the details of Charles de Gaulle's schedule and security arrangements, but can suggest nothing more helpful than that everyone "should keep their eyes open", much to the Interior Minister's dismay. On the 25th itself, the Jackal, pretending to be a one-legged French war veteran, penetrates the security checkpoints carrying his custom gun concealed in the sections of a crutch. He enters an apartment building overlooking the Place du 18 Juin 1940 (in front of the soon-to-be-demolished façade of the Gare Montparnasse), where de Gaulle is present. As the ceremony begins, Lebel is walking around the street, questioning and re-questioning every police checkpoint. When he hears from one CRS guard about a one-legged veteran with a crutch, he realises what the Jackal's plan is and rushes into the apartment building, calling for the patrol to follow him.
Having sneaked into a suitable apartment to shoot from, the Jackal prepares his weapon and takes aim at de Gaulle's head, but his first shot misses by a fraction of an inch when the President unexpectedly leans forward to kiss the cheeks of the veteran he is honouring. Outside the apartment, Lebel and the CRS man arrive on the top floor in time to hear the sound of the first, silenced shot. The guard bursts in as the Jackal is reloading: the Englishman turns and fires, killing the guard. At this point, the detective and the killer, having developed grudging respect for each other during the pursuit, share a brief glance of recognition. The Jackal scrambles to load his third and last bullet while the unarmed Lebel snatches up the dead policeman's sub-machine gun: Lebel is faster and shoots the Jackal, killing him instantly.
Epilogue In London, the Special Branch are searching Calthrop's apartment when the real Charles Calthrop storms in and demands to know what they are doing. Once it is established that Calthrop truly has been on holiday in Scotland and is totally separate from the killer, the British are left to wonder "if the Jackal wasn't Calthrop, then who the hell was he?"
The Jackal is buried in an unmarked grave in a Paris cemetery, officially recorded as "an unknown foreign tourist, killed in a car accident." Aside from a priest, a policeman, registrar and grave-diggers, the only other person attending the burial is Inspector Claude Lebel, who then leaves the cemetery to return home.
Origins