Jackal: The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist, Carlos the Jackal by John Follain

Author:John Follain [Follain, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Biography, History, Terrorism, Espionage, True Crime, Politics
ISBN: 9781611450262
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 1998-10-11T13:00:00+00:00

NINE

Licensed to Kill

...............

I authorise you to kill only Carlos and Abu Nidal.

–President Frangois Mitterrand to DGSE head Pierre Marion

Given the revolving-door mechanism that usually prevailed at the top of the French secret service, the extrovert Count Alexandre de Marenches was an exceptional figure in postwar intelligence who endured as many as eleven years, from 1970 to 1981, at the head of the SDECE. His longevity remains unmatched by his successors.1 It was de Marenches who first set the SDECE on Carlos's tail. De Marenches's gregariousness had come near to costing him not only his career but also his life in more youthful days. After escaping from wartime France, he had struck up a conversation with a well-dressed gentleman on a train bound for Madrid. Flush with success, the eighteen-year-old de Marenches related to the stranger how he had crossed the Pyrénées alone in driving snow, then kept silent under torture by Spanish Civil Guards, and would now enlist with General de Gaulle's Free French. ‘Oh! Really? How interesting! That must have been difficult,’ sympathised his courteous acquaintance. It was only when the train pulled into Madrid that de Marenches found out that he had recounted his triumphs to Baron von Stohrer, Hitler's ambassador to Spain. Fortunately the baron never did trouble the would-be Resistance fighter.2

Picked to lead the SDECE, the aristocrat, who was dubbed ‘Porthos’ after one of the Three Musketeers because of his tall stature and robust girth, found himself at the head of what he likened to a gangsters’ racket: ‘Some agents were running drugs and guns; others were engaged in kidnapping, murder, and the settling of the most bloody scores.’3 His purge of the SDECE weeded out most of the top brass and hundreds of lesser officers who were suspected of anti-Americanism, tainted by the scandals of the Algerian war of independence, or were simply deemed unworthy of his trust.

A unit in which de Marenches had complete confidence was the Action Service, the SDECE's clandestine operations arm. It was ordered to hunt Carlos. In late 1975, only a few months after his triple murder of the two DST secret servicemen and Moukharbal in Paris, Carlos was spotted in Algiers at his favourite nightclub, the chic Dar Salem. There the Action Service's Philippe Rondot watched him from a distance as, surrounded by female companions, Carlos sank into a drunken stupor. After consultation with the Action Service's chief, Count de Marolles, de Marenches suggested taking advantage of one of Carlos's drinking bouts to ‘neutralise him’.

The nightclub was deemed an unsuitable venue for a kidnapping as it would have upset delicate diplomatic relations, given that the Dar Salem's owner was the brother of Algerian President Boumedienne. The Action Service rushed to make alternative arrangements. But by the time a team had assembled, the quarry described by de Marenches as ‘an excellent young man, born of the champagne left and who always had primed grenades in his pocket’ had disappeared.4

In 1976 Rondot managed again to track down Carlos, to the Eden Beach Hotel in Malta.

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