The Jackal is a fictional character, the principal antagonist of the novel The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. He is an assassin who is contracted by the OAS French terrorist group of the early 1960s to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France. The book was published on 7 June 1971, in the year following de Gaulle's death, and became an instant bestseller. In the 1973 original film adaptation, he is portrayed by Edward Fox. A revised version of the character was portrayed by Bruce Willis in the 1997 remake adaptation of the original film, having a divergent storyline and set in the U.S., with a fictional First Lady of the United States as the target of the assassination.
Biographical summary
Main novel plot
As the story opens, the Jackal plans to continue working as an assassin until he has enough money to retire. The money paid him for assassinating two German engineers, thus delaying the development of Gamal Abdel Nasser's Al Zarifa rocket, had been enough to keep him in luxury for several years, but the offer of US$500,000 (about US$3.5 million in 2021 dollars) from the OAS to kill de Gaulle gives him the opportunity to retire early. Despite his concern over the "security slackness of the OAS", he finds the job too tempting to turn down. However, he insists that the OAS commanders in charge of the plot must not disclose the matter to anybody, and suggests they stay somewhere under heavy guard until the assassination is complete.
The assassin invents the codename of "the Jackal" after he is hired by the OAS conspirators. When asked for his choice of codename in the novel, the Jackal replies: "Since we have been speaking of hunting, what about the Jackal? Will that do?".
Taking elaborate precautions, the Jackal applies for a passport (based on an infant whose birthday is very close to his own but who died at a young age) and seeks out forged identity documents to get him into France to get him close to de Gaulle. He also steals two passports as contingent identities and purchases disguises to match, as well as a specially made sniper rifle. He kills the forger, who attempts to blackmail him for more money. He later goes to France to reconnoitre the best location and does research about de Gaulle, before concluding that the best time to kill him is on Liberation Day.
The French Action Service is able to capture and interrogate Wolenski (in the film, Kowalski), a bodyguard for a plotter and one of the few men who has knowledge of the assassination, if not the actual details. Through Wolenski, the Action Service learns of the plot as well the Jackal's code name and a rough description. Roger Frey, the Minister of the Interior of France, convenes a meeting of all the heads of the department of state security, but all the men are at a loss as to how to proceed, until a Commissioner of the Police Judiciare suggests that the first and most important objective is to establish the true identity of the Jackal, which is something that only pure detective work can accomplish. When the Minister of the Interior asks him for the best detective in France, he suggests to the committee that the best detective is his own deputy, Claude Lebel.
Using OAS agent "Valmy" as a cut-out, the Jackal is kept fully informed of the French police's pursuit of him. Meanwhile, Lebel relies on his old boy network of police departments in several foreign countries to instigate a search for the Jackal. The Special Branch of England investigate and finds out there was a man named Charles Calthrop who was rumoured to have killed Rafael Trujillo some years ago using a precision sniper rifle. They find six men named 'Charles Calthrop', with one individual in particular raising some suspicion when it is discovered he has gone on holiday, leaving his passport in his house in the process. This passport, together with the fact that Jackal in French is 'Chacal' (the first three letters of his first name and last name respectively), causes the English to assume that this specific Charles Calthrop is the assassin.
On two occasions when the police get too close, the Jackal hides out in the home of a stranger he has seduced; once with a wealthy woman and again with a gay man he meets in a bar. He kills the former when she finds the components of his weapon, and the latter after the man watches a news report displaying the Jackal's photograph and describing him as a fugitive murderer.