The man in the back pulled the grip towards him, slid back the fastener and plunged his hand in amongst the shirts and socks and underpants and books, before he fastened on the hardness of the Luger pistol. Some of the grip's contents spilled out on to the leather seat-work, snagging on the raised foresight of the gun as he pulled it from the case. The magazine was in position.

'There's your answer,' he said quietly. 'Now we know who we have running with us.'

There was no reply from the front. He cocked the gun.

From his office in police headquarters in St Omer, twenty-five kilometres to the north, the man who had been issuing orders for the last hour could plot exactly the position of the fleeing car. His size, not grotesque but huge, belied the efficiency of his work. The big wall map where an aide continually moved coloured pins demonstrated this. The position of the car, kept up-to-date by the constant radio calls from the pursuing police vehicle, was shown by a yellow marker; his own men, barely separated, by a red one. Stretched out ahead of the path of the three Arabs was a near-continuous line of blue pins, straddling the minor and principal roads that led to the coast and to the port of Boulogne.

He had not expected the car to turn off from the main coast road across which his major force was concentrated, but as a precaution he had placed single police cars, each manned by two officers, on all parallel B routes. It had been his intention that the car that held his interest would be unaware that it was under surveillance before it was stopped by any one of the sixteen blocks now in place.