The Day of the Jackal (1973)
Alan Badel: The Minister
Quotes
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Lebel : The following conversation was recorded at 6:15 this morning. The number being dialed was identified as Molitor 5901.
[plays a tape recorder for the council]
Denise : Hello.
Valmy : Yes?
Denise : Denise.
Valmy : Valmy here.
Denise : They know he's a Danish schoolteacher. They're visiting every hotel in Paris.
[Lebel switches off the recorder]
Lebel : The contact was arrested an hour ago. Unfortunately, the information came from this room.
Minister : Whose voice was that?
St. Clair : [slowly rises] I regret to have to inform you, Minister, that it was the voice of a friend of mine... she is staying with me at the moment... excuse me.
[leaves]
Minister : I feel we owe you an apology, Commissioner.
Lebel : Thank you.
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Minister : Commissioner Berthier, any suggestions?
Berthier : We're in trouble on this one. Our agents inside the OAS can't pin him down, since not even the OAS knows who he is. Action Service can't destroy him; they don't know who to destroy. The gendarmes, all forty-eight thousand of them, can't pursue him; they don't know who to pursue. The police can't arrest him. How can they? They don't know who to arrest. Without a name, all other proposals are meaningless. The first task, then, is to find it. We get a name, we get a passport and a face. And with a face, we get an arrest. But to find his name, and to do it in secret, is a job of pure detective work.
Minister : Commissioner, who is the best detective on the force?
Berthier : The best detective is my own deputy commissioner, Claude Lebel.
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Minister : [to Lebel] Remember, Commissioner, you have full powers in this investigation, and the resources of every department represented here are entirely at your disposal. My instructions are simply: no publicity, and do not fail.
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Lebel : It's obvious that the Jackal has been tipped off all along, and yet he's decided to go ahead, regardless. He's simply challenged the whole lot of us.
Minister : Are you really suggesting that there's a leak from inside this room?
Lebel : I can't say. But we think that the Jackal is now in Paris with a new name and a new face, probably masquerading as a Danish schoolteacher.
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Lebel : Excuse me, but it has just occurred to me that we have forty-eight hours in which to find this Jackal
[There is a chorus of "What?" and "How do you know?" from the committee members]
Lebel : Am I right in assuming that the President has no engagements outside the Elysee Palace today, tomorrow and Saturday ?
Minister : None.
Lebel : And what is Sunday, August the twenty-fifth?
Minister : [Slaps forehead] Of course! Liberation Day!
Lebel : That's what he's been waiting for.
Minister : We must have been blind.
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[On the eve of Liberation Day]
Minister : We can't find him. He's vanished, just disappeared off the face of the earth. I don't think we really ever had any idea what kind of a man you've been pursuing for the last two weeks.
Lebel : What about tomorrow?
Minister : The President rekindles the Eternal Flame at ten. High Mass is at eleven. There's only one public ceremony in the afternoon, at four o'clock: he will present Liberation medals to veterans of the Resistance.
Lebel : What about crowd control?
Minister : Crowds will be kept back from the ceremony further than ever before. Steel barriers go up several hours before each ceremony. Every house inside the barrier ring is searched from top to bottom, including the sewers. The police will be issued with special lapel badges at the last moment, in case he tries to masquerade as a security man. There'll be marksmen inside Notre Dame, even among the congregation. The priests celebrating Mass will be searched for concealed weapons. We'll have firemen and marksmen on every rooftop along the procession route. Dumont has drafted a number of specially tall officers to hedge around the President without him noticing.
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Minister : The President must be told.
