Death on the Pont Noir - By Adrian Magson Page 0,22

had been on Adolf Hitler. Unless you counted the efforts of British Bomber Command; that would increase the numbers a fair bit.

Massin sighed. ‘Perhaps it would be simpler if you read the summary yourself.’ He passed a sheet of paper across to Rocco and stood up, taking a walk around the room.

There wasn’t much to it, culled, no doubt from an official release which would be going out sooner or later. What there was did not vary much from some of the other abortive attempts on the life of de Gaulle. One of the fleet of official Government cars had been heading south-east from Paris on the N19 near Guignes, some forty kilometres from the city centre, accompanied by two Garde Mobile outriders, when men with automatic weapons had opened fire from a belt of trees at the side of the road. The car had been slowing down for some roadworks – fake, as it had turned out – and the attackers had used the opportunity to hose it down with bullets. A classic ambush technique.

Fortunately, one of the outriders had been thrown from his bike into a culvert and, although wounded, had been able to draw his weapon and give covering fire. After several minutes, the gunmen had abandoned their attempt and driven away in a stolen Simca Ariane, later found abandoned. They had left behind one of their number dead, identified as a renegade former NCO dismissed from the French military some years before.

To Rocco, it was disturbingly familiar. In August 1962, in Le Petit-Clamart, a south-western suburb of Paris, an attempt had been made on de Gaulle’s life by men from the OAS – the Organisation Armée Secrète – a group opposed to any idea of Algerian independence and formed by a mix of military and civilians, colonists and students. The man said to be the driving force behind the attempt, Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, a former lieutenant colonel and weapons engineer, had since been convicted and executed just months ago, in March. It had become a landmark event, stirring up old hatreds and enmities and polarising further the extremes on all sides.

Rocco put the paper down. Nothing much had changed, then.

‘They’re still trying.’ And pretty desperate, he figured, to use a Simca Ariane as a getaway car. Hardly a powerful vehicle – unless they’d been trying to blend in to the background – it was never going to win any races pursued by vengeful security personnel.

‘It would seem so.’ Massin returned to his seat and steepled his fingers. ‘Fortunately, the attackers had been misinformed. The car was not carrying General de Gaulle, but a junior member of cabinet taking important documents out to the president’s residence in Colombey-les-deux-Églises.’

Rocco let a few seconds go by while assessing the implications, during which he could hear a clock ticking on the wall behind him. ‘Misinformed?’ It was an odd choice of word to use. ‘Did they have someone on the inside?’

Massin waved a hand. ‘Clearly they knew about a car. But not the correct one.’

Rocco let it go. ‘It’s a long way to take important documents by car.’ Colombey was over two hundred kilometres from the centre of Paris. As far as he knew, the president normally flew down by helicopter. Clearly the same courtesy wasn’t extended to official documents … or to members of his staff.

‘I agree. But it is not our place to comment on that.’

‘What about the passenger?’

‘Dead. Although an official vehicle, the car was not armoured. The driver was seriously wounded and not expected to live. It was a salutary lesson that the President’s enemies have not given up.’

Rocco said nothing. Another one to add to the lengthening list of assassination attempts on the country’s leader. He was ambivalent about many things de Gaulle had achieved, but he didn’t discount the man’s utter commitment to his country. If it had been him in the hot seat, he’d have given up the job long ago and taken up knitting. Maybe de Gaulle hadn’t yet got the message that someone didn’t like him – although that wasn’t a thought he could share with Massin; the man had a broomstick up his back about anyone in power and lacked the ability to see the occasional absurdities in life.

‘Is that anything to do with why the colonel was here?’

Massin threw him a sharp look. ‘You know Saint-Cloud?’

‘Not personally. But I know what he does for a living.’

Massin looked slightly peeved, as if he had had his thunder stolen. ‘The colonel and