It was pure speculation that led the police to ponder that the French for "jackal"- chacal- might be associated with the name, Charles Calthrop. They were actually following the wrong lead. It was only because they found Calthop's unused passport that led them to consider the jackal was using a false one. If Calthrop had been at home, or taken his passport with him, Scotland Yard might never have uncovered the name, Duggan.
Also, the entire investigation was predicated on the scant information provided by Wolenski, while being tortured. Would Wolenski really have broken down? He was willing to die for his cause, so probably not. This is a plot point that bothers me, that torture produces results.
If either of these two leads had failed, the police would have been nowhere near catching the Jackal, and he would have succeeded. It was really just dumb luck that enabled the authorities- and Lebel- to thwart the plot.
This.
It's been a while since I read the book, so I can only comment on the film's depiction of the investigation.
But everything involving the authorities "picking up the scent" always struck me as pretty odd and a bit contrived. Meaning that it didn't really have anything to do with good police-work or mistakes made by the Jackal ... but that it seemed like "cheating" on the part of the story-teller (either Forsyth or the screenwriter).
The authorities more or less seem to stumble upon the Jackal. One of the British investigators even says that Calthrop might just as well be on holiday inside the UK - which, in the end, turns out to be the case. So picking up the Jackal's trail was just a product of speculation ("Cha - Cal") and blind luck. And I'm not saying that luck can't be a factor in this kind of case - but it's a bit of a let-down for the writer to help out the authorities against an antagonist that has been built up to be this super-professional who doesn't really make mistakes.
But wait.. there's more.
The Jackal's behavior once he starts to move towards France is also quite puzzling.
1. We see him getting pulled out of traffic at Ventimiglia for no reason (apparent to him) and inside the customs-house he's confronted with loads of other travelers who fit his own physical description (early/mid 30s, blond hair, 1.75m in height). Shouldn't that set off his alarm-bells and tell him the police are probably onto him and his fake identity?
2. He nonetheless continues from the border to Nice, calls his OAS-contact and is told that "the Jackal is blown". But then continues on to a hotel near Grasse where he still uses his Duggan ID to check in. With all the info he has at this point, he should assume that using this identity will bring the cops to the hotel very quickly.
3. Instead of staying out of sight at the hotel, he mingles with the other guests and even seduces a fellow guest - creating lots of potential witnesses for the police to question once they arrive.
4. Next he causes a traffic accident on a virtually empty road, losing his means of transport in the process. He leaves the car in plain sight on the road and then decides to look up his conquest from the hotel.
5. Instead of using his lover's place as a hide-out, he decides to kill the woman because she suspects that he's up to something fishy. And since she's not living in a one-room flat in Paris but in a nice chateau complete with servants who will detect the body, he has no hope of that killing going unnoticed. Meaning he leaves another easy breadcrumb for police to follow *and* a means for them to potentially track him since he's also taking the woman's car to flee the scene.
6. Only after all of this does he finally decide to dump the Duggan-identity and switch to a new one.
Why did he even have the Danish identity? His Duggan-persona was clearly meant to be his "main" identity, the French veteran was meant for carrying out the assassination and escape from Paris ... so the Dane must've been a fallback identity in case Duggan gets made. So why didn't he switch to the Dane right after the OAS told him that Jackal was blown? If he had done that (and possibly switched cars or at least dumped the Alfa), the authorities would've lost his trail somewhere on the Cote d'Azur.
S.
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bg_mog
8 years ago
1. We see him getting pulled out of traffic at Ventimiglia for no reason (apparent to him) and inside the customs-house he's confronted with loads of other travelers who fit his own physical description (early/mid 30s, blond hair, 1.75m in height). Shouldn't that set off his alarm-bells and tell him the police are probably onto him and his fake identity?
2. He nonetheless continues from the border to Nice, calls his OAS-contact and is told that "the Jackal is blown". But then continues on to a hotel near Grasse where he still uses his Duggan ID to check in. With all the info he has at this point, he should assume that using this identity will bring the cops to the hotel very quickly.
Not really. After the phone call in Nice, he has to make the following assumptions:
Wolenski talked, but Wolenski only knew his codename ("Jackal") and his physical appearance, which perfectly explains the situation with all the blond guys being checked at the border post. The Jackal has to assume that the Duggan papers are not compromised - otherwise he would have been arrested right there. That's why he uses this identity at the hotel.
3. Instead of staying out of sight at the hotel, he mingles with the other guests and even seduces a fellow guest
He needs to avoid hotels and go under the radar, which is the very point of seducing Madame (and later the homo). Once he realizes that the cops are on to her (and Duggan), he switches to Lundquist right away.
You are correct about the mistake of using Madame's car to drive to Tulle, though. This was almost certain to blow his new identity as soon as the car was found and the guards at the station questioned. Maybe he should have gone to Toulouse instead of little Tulle, and in a random car instead of hers.
But remember, nothing really matters because in the end, Lebel randomly appears at the sniper's nest, chats with the gendarme and they storm the building. This would have happened anyway, regardless of the entire plot prior to that.
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