A Spy's Guide to Spy Thrillers: The Day of the Jackal
(Note: This is second in a series on how a spy reads spy thrillers. The first was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. To get the next one by email, sign up at the bottom of this page.)
In the summer of 1962, Reuters gave its youngest reporter in Paris the job nobody else wanted: Follow President Charles de Gaulle.
That August, a secret group of French officers called the OAS ambushed de Gaulle's car with machine guns. De Gaulle survived.
The Reuters reporter watched the events unfold. He saw that the French police knew almost every attacker by name. They had informants inside.
So he decided an attack on de Gaulle could only be done by an outsider. A man the French police had never heard of.
Eight years later that Reuters reporter was broke. And when reporters are broke, they write novels.
The broke reporter wrote what he knew about de Gaulle and assassination attempts into The Day of the Jackal. His name was Frederick Forsyth.
But it's more than a novel about assassination attempts.
It's about DADA Chains on two sides:
The hunter and the hunted.
In the novel, an Englishman is hired by the OAS to assassinate de Gaulle.
His code name: The Jackal.
The Jackal starts with data. He takes in all he can find written by or about de Gaulle. Where de Gaulle goes. When de Gaulle goes.
Which days he never misses.
He analyzes the data.
He decides on one day and one place and the action he’ll take: a rifle shot from a high window.
He goes to a gunsmith in Brussels. Who builds him a rifle thin enough to come apart into tubes.
Then he builds a way into France. A British passport in a dead child's name. Two more passports, stolen from foreign tourists in London.
And French identity papers from a forger.
The OAS gives him something else: a phone number in Paris. A man code-named Valmy, who will tell him what the police know.
So he’ll have insight into the other side’s DADA Chain.
The French police learn of the Jackal’s plot.
But they don’t know much. Just a code name: the Jackal. That he’s a foreigner. And he’s been hired to kill de Gaulle.
De Gaulle refuses to change his schedule. And he wants the hunt for the Jackal kept secret.
The hunt for the Jackal is led by Claude Lebel, deputy commissioner of the Police Judiciaire.
Lebel gathers data.
He gathers hotel registration cards from all over France. And he calls police friends in other countries, off the record. Is there a top-class political assassin in your files?
Then every night, Lebel briefs a committee of France's top security men.
In London, a detective named Thomas shares the name of a suspect: Charles Calthrop. Cha-Cal. Chacal is French for jackal.
Calthrop's passport is still in his flat. So Thomas looks for a passport issued under another name. He finds the passport in the dead child's name: Duggan.
Lebel closes in. Twice. Each time, the Jackal is gone before the police arrive.
Because Lebel's chain has a leak. A colonel on the committee tells his mistress what Lebel reports each night.
She works for the OAS. She calls Valmy. Valmy tells the Jackal.
Which means the hunted knows what the hunter knows, hours after he knows it.
Two chains, racing.
From data to action.
Then back to data.
Moving fast, like the fighter pilots in John Boyd’s OODA Loop.
Taking in the data. Analyzing it. Making the decision. And taking the action.
Whichever pilot gets through that chain quickest takes the action first.
And usually wins.
Whichever side of a hunt gets through that chain quickest takes the action first.
And usually wins.
Lebel taps the phone of every man on the committee.
The colonel's line leads to the mistress. The mistress leads to the OAS contact. Lebel makes the arrest, and the Jackal's data source is cut off.
From then on, the Jackal has no data on the police.
He can’t adjust anymore.
He goes ahead anyway.
Because he thinks he has all the data he needs for the assassination.
But there’s one piece of data he’s missing.
August 25, 1963. Liberation Day. The one day of the year de Gaulle is sure to be in Paris, in public.
De Gaulle pins medals on veterans of the Resistance in front of the Montparnasse station. High above the square, a window is open.
The Jackal is inside. He walked through the police lines as a one-legged old veteran with French papers. The rifle was in his crutch.
Down in the street, a police guard tells Lebel about an old man with a crutch. Lebel runs for the building.
The Jackal lines up on de Gaulle's head. He fires.
At that instant, de Gaulle leans forward and kisses the veteran in front of him. On both cheeks. The bullet misses by a fraction of an inch.
The Jackal reloads.
Lebel runs up the stairs. The guard bursts into the room first, and the Jackal kills him.
Lebel picks up the dead guard's submachine gun.
As the Jackal is reloading, Lebel kills him.
The Jackal had missed one piece of data.
A piece of data he didn’t even think to look for: what will de Gaulle do after he pins a medal?
After an Englishman pins a medal, he shakes hands.
After a Frenchman pins a medal, he kisses both cheeks.
And de Gaulle was taller than the veteran, so he had to bend down to do it.
The Jackal studied de Gaulle for weeks.
But he missed a key piece of data.
And at the moment of action, that data is what mattered most.
Frederick Forsyth saw both sides up close in 1962. He followed de Gaulle and got to know his bodyguards. He also listened to the OAS.
So he gave the hunted man a chain that was complete, except for one piece of data. The piece any Frenchman already knew.
But an Englishman might not.
(If you want the Spy's Guide frameworks applied to what's happening in the world right now, that's The Spy's Guide Briefing. Twice a week.)
The Day of the Jackal is here.
The DADA Chain is in A Spy's Guide to Thinking.
-John Braddock
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