The Day of the Jackal is an international political thriller by British writer Frederick Forsyth, the earliest translated version introduced by China Film Press in November 1979, and the May 2012 edition of Nova Press.
Forsyth is a very interesting person, and his experience is also somewhat legendary, in short, he has five Chinese words, coming from the Iron Curtain era, and his knowledge is far above that of ordinary people. Because he was too familiar with the political propositions, economic situation, folk customs, military structure, espionage agencies, espionage methods, weapons and equipment, ordnance performance, etc. of Western countries, the work was very realistic and vivid.
It is said that the fictional plots he made in the novels have even been repeatedly imitated by terrorist organizations, and some of them have been used to assassinate the Queen of England, which shows that he still has a certain uniqueness in writing.
This "Day of the Jackal" is not as famous as his "Afghan", but the police reasoning process in the book is worth learning, so we take it out and share it with you.
This book was lent to me by my mentor at the beginning of my work, after reading it I have been holding it back, many years ago I wanted to make a PPT of the cat and mouse game between the police and the bandits in case of emergency, and I have not finished it until now, but the 390-plus page book has been combed out more than 320 pages, only this point to talk about masturbation.
The background of the story in the book is that in the 1960s, the French "secret army organization" concocted a series of assassinations of French President Charles de Gaulle, all of which ended in failure, but their organizational identities were exposed and strongly attacked by the French police and security departments, and there was little hope of sneaking back to France to do things, so they could only continue to "do big things" by hiring professional killers.
There are two main lines in the book:
One is the main line where the killer jackal sets up a good outfit and tools to infiltrate France to approach de Gaulle's assassination.
The other is the main line of the French police and security services that use the clues in their hands to investigate the case and finally successfully thwart the plot a second before the killer carries out the assassination.
The two story lines are intertwined in a circle, has been seducing people's curiosity, due to objective or subjective reasons, the jackal is always one step ahead of the police, even if it is only an hour's gap, and when the police arrive, the jackal has disappeared without a trace, until the end of the thousand guns when officer Lebel killed the jackal, bringing people great pleasure of reading.
In Forsyth's narrative, the details of the story are handled extremely realistically, because he restores all the subjective motives and various accidental factors in the fictional case as if he were in reality.
For example, when the secret army organization studied the assassination schedule, it checked the calendar incorrectly, because the sunset time they grasped was completely wrong.
For example, the police got the first clue entirely by chance, but during the routine inspection, a police officer made an inadvertent joke, and the Foreign Legion deserters who had not yet been included in the suspected object helplessly confided in the facts of the crime.
The course of Forsyth's story does not change with the attitude of any character, even the reader, and the characters serve the needs of the plot and never override the plot — everyone has to go through a hard trek to reach the end.
In the story, the process of the killer's crime and the police's action have a lot to learn from.
Let's start with the Jackal's actions:
He did not hurry to leave, but began to collect and read all the articles about de Gaulle and the articles written by de Gaulle himself, and wrote to various well-known bookstores with false names and false addresses, and mail-ordered the reference books needed. From this, the characteristics of de Gaulle's behavior are grasped and the time of the crime is determined.
Before entering France, he found a professional who made false documents to tailor a 25-year-old American college student, a 50-year-old Danish priest, and a 40-year-old British gentleman with a triple false identity, and found a professional "gunner" to customize a breech short breech, no stock, disassemblyable gun body, easy to carry, and powerful special sniper rifle to complete the task, which played a proper role in his later actions.
He traveled to Paris to "travel", buy maps, mark the places of interest, spend 3 days at the Arc de Triomphe, and look at the monuments around the Elysée Café and the roofs of tall buildings around the Elysée Café, just to calculate the angle of shooting, the distance between the upper floors of the building and the long open fire under the Arc de Triomphe, and the possibility of a person escaping from the Taiping Ladder behind the building and unknowingly blending into the crowd.
……
Look at the police's countermeasures:
The Operations Sub-Bureau carried out secret arrests and tortures against the bodyguards of the leaders of the secret army organizations. From this:
1) The three chiefs are in Rome, and they don't want to be kidnapped because they know a secret.
2) A foreigner, sometimes using bon, meaning "good", sometimes using facheur, refers to annoying people. Further analysis, not good, but blond, flax-colored hair, annoying people are faucheur death, killers. Codenamed Jackal.
The General Directorate of the French Police takes over:
1. Privately contact the person in charge of the homicide department of the criminal police in seven countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, West Germany, and South Africa, in the name of an individual to understand whether there are special circumstances.
2. Combing through the foreign political assassins who have tried to do something in France in the past decade: 4 died, 3 were arrested, and 1 political prisoner served a prison sentence in Africa, and all of them were gangster killers, and they did not have the ability to assassinate the president.
3. Go to the Central Archives Bureau to investigate: there is no such person, or such a person.
Meanwhile: Scotland Yard's criminal police consulted the entire surviving archives of the country's surviving professional Assassins (17 known hired killers, 10 in prison, and 7 on the run, but all were gangster killers) and referred the matter to the Political Department, which turned out to be absent from the Political Department's archives.
One inspector: "If there is such a person, he has British nationality, but most likely does not operate in the UK. I mean, even people like that have to have a place to stay. A hiding place, a destination. It is quite possible that he is a law-abiding citizen in his own country. The Political Superintendent used his personal connections, and his rugby club players are MI6 staff. He knew a British gunman, a rumored man. His name was found, Charles Keslopp.
1. The Superintendent went to the passport office to find 6 Application Forms for Charles Keslope. 5 identity checks and 1 no result.
2. Ask the IRS to look up the address of a personal named Charles Harold Keslope on his tax refund record. In particular, note who hired him and who hired him in the last three years. It was found that the investigation was mainly employed by one of the largest small arms companies in the country. It was found that his trajectory matched the rumors and that he had been sent to the Dominican Republic.
3, address investigation: neighbors reflected that the check a few days ago left, said to travel, the back of the car saw a set of fishing rods and other things.
4, the superintendent has a flash, the Jackal's French word is Chacal, C-H-A-C-A-L, Charles Calthrop Jackal is the first three letters of his name plus the first three of his own name. Inform the French Police Directorate of the name of the inspectorate.
5. Carry out in-depth investigation and verification. Divided into 4 directions:
Juvenile age: parental situation, education, military school shooting results, other notable features.
Youth: Recording and shooting performance during military service, employment after retirement.
Action record of the past 3 years: focus on the detection of known and recent photos, fingerprints.
Now whereabouts: search for apartments, find fingerprints, buy cars, check driver's license issuance records, track his car (brand, age, color, registration number), retrieve all scheduled flights, ferry tickets, no matter where the destination is.
Result: Passport found in Dominican Republic, entry in December 1960. Make sure that this person is the intended reconnaissance target. But his passport is at home, so whose passport did he use to travel?
6. Go to the passport office to check the photos of all the people who applied for passports within 50 days, and if not, push forward for another 50 days.
Method: Don't just look at the birth certificate, but take the list of passport applicants to the birth, marriage, and death registration offices, and compare them with the death certificate. An application submitted by a deceased person is most likely the person being sought. Work on 8,041 passports.
7. On August 14, the problematic passport of Alexander Duggan was identified
8. The United Kingdom began to look for records of airline ticket offices and ferry crossings in various straits.
9. It was found that Duggan had entered France by train from Brussels on July 22. July 31 from Paris to Brussels. Stay in a small hotel near Piazza Madeland from 22 to 30 July.
The police recognized this as a reconnaissance operation by the Jackal.
The Jackal was identified from London to Brussels on August 12 and from Brussels to Milan in the afternoon. On the 13th, we entered France at the Ventimiglia immigration checkpoint.
Simultaneous with point 4: The name of the Jackal is fed back to the General Directorate of the French Police. The Intelligence Service began searching the archives, trying to find his entry cards and hotel check-in records. Border checkpoints, ports, ports and airports conduct focused checks on names and physical features.
Simultaneous with point 7: The fake passport is notified to the General Directorate of the French Police. France secretly hunted down Dugan across the country.
On August 15, at 7 a.m., the gendarmerie mounted police collected a check-in card. At 8:00 a.m., we returned to the Gendarmerie Police Station in the Gorge Area. Master the Jackal Alfa Romeo sports car registration number MI-61741. Check-in at The Gap Hotel before noon (2 days). Inform the regional affairs headquarters of the Lyon Judicial Police to deploy police forces to arrest people. But the Jackal had left early.
Police issued a warning at 5:15 p.m.: all police stations and checkpoints in the Lyon region entered the first level of security, tracking the white Alfa Romeo car, made in Italy, with license plate number MI-61741. The driver is armed with a weapon and is highly dangerous. It is not allowed to disclose it to the media, and the suspect may not know that he is suspected and cannot use the radio or the press to publicize it publicly.
At that time, the jackal had quietly changed the color and license plate of the car, and was already on the way to Paris
I won't say more about what happened next, this is the big ending of the book, the most wonderful part, if I tell it, you will not be interesting to read.
By the way, the story of this book was brought to the big screen in 1973 by director Fred Kinnemann in the form of the same name, and if you don't have time to read it, you can also find an old movie to see.
In addition, Forsyth's profound knowledge can also bring us a lot of things that are not written in the history books, which is of great reference value for us to restore the style of the times at that time and place.
Like what:
In the underworld of Paris and Marseille, corsicans had an overwhelming dominance, as did the sub-bureaus of operations. In 1944, the Corsicans helped the Allies land in the south of France, and in return they later monopolized Corte d'Azur (near Cannes, a famous seaside retreat in France).
In the early 1960s, Brussels was a base for mercenaries before the advent of French Congo, and then British territories such as South Africa monopolized the business. With the loss of Katanga, more than three hundred military advisers employed by the old Chong Bo (politician of the Republic of the Congo) regime were unemployed, hanging out in bars in the Red Light District, many with several sets of identity cards.
Two or three small pieces of gunpowder, chewed up and swallowed, can make you nauseous and vomit in half an hour, uncomfortable but not fatal. It can also make your skin gray, pale, and sweaty, and we used to use this method in the army to pretend to be sick, or to avoid hard labor and daily training.
France was once the suzerainty of Algeria, and Algeria was part of France in the eyes of many French, where three million French lived at the time.
In June 1958, de Gaulle returned to power as Prime Minister of France. He overthrew the crumbling and corrupt Fourth Republic and established the Fifth Republic. He used the term "Algeria of France" and returned to the Elysées in January 1959.
—— At 16:19 on January 10, 2021
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