Jackal (The Day of the Jackal)

The Jackal
The Day of the Jackal character
The Jackal (Edward Fox) practising with his newly customised sniper rifle.
Created by	Frederick Forsyth
Portrayed by	Edward Fox (The Day of the Jackal) Bruce Willis (The Jackal)
Information
Nickname(s)	Jackal, or Chacal 'The Englishman'
Aliases	Alexander James Quentin Duggan Per Jensen Marty Schulberg Andre Martin
Occupation	Assassin

The Jackal is a fictional character, the villain 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 original 1973 film adaptation, he is portrayed by Edward Fox. A revised version of the character was portrayed by Bruce Willis in the 1997 remake, The Jackal, having a divergent storyline and set in the U.S., with the First Lady as target of the assassination.

At the beginning of the novel, the Jackal plans to continue working as an assassin until he has enough money to retire. The money paid to the Jackal for the Egyptian kill had been enough to keep him in luxury for several years, but the offer of US$500,000 (about US$ 4 million in 2017 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.

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 his usual elaborate precautions, the Jackal arranges a false passport to get him into France and forges identity papers to get him close to de Gaulle. He also steals two passports as contingent identities and buys disguises to match. Unfortunately, France's Action Service is able to kidnap and interrogate an OAS bodyguard, one of the few men who is broadly aware of a plot, if not the actual details.