Days with the Jackal

TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH By David Yallop (Jonathan Cape, $195) THIS author specialises in blockbusters: a load of Yallop like this runs to nearly 600 pages. The book is sub-titled The Hunt for the Jackal. It consists chiefly of three, long interviews with - allegedly - Carlos: terrorist, murderer and anything else unpleasant you can think of.

Although he is chiefly associated with atrocities in Europe and the Middle East he was, apparently, born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1949. His father was a prosperous lawyer and at the same time, a fervent Marxist. So the future Carlos was named Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. Successive brothers were named Lenin and Vladimir.

Father must have been a very successful lawyer and like all good Marxists from the movement's founder onwards, settled in a bijou house in a select part of London. Father Sanchez had enough money to subsidise a rich lifestyle for his sons. Not that Carlos needed daddy's hand-outs for very long, according to this book.

Perhaps the most sensational exploit attributed to Carlos was the kidnapping, at the headquarters of OPEC in Vienna when he held the oil ministers of OPEC hostage ''at the behest of the Libyan ruler, Mu'Ammar Qathafi [sic]'' in December 1975.

It is reported that long before the OPEC spectacular, Carlos had been a busy boy. You can take your pick of what you believe. ''At the age of 14, Carlos was head of the Communist youth movement in Caracas, Venezuela. He was recruited into the KGB before his 15th birthday.

''No man in the entire history of the KGB has apparently achieved a more successful record of spreading death and terror throughout the entire world.'' He went to university in Moscow, where it is reasonable to assume he received intensive KGB training. But after that he seems to have been simply a gun for hire, available to anyone.

Writes the author: ''By mid-1975 counter-terrorist experts were publicly asking, with increasing urgency: 'Is Carlos the Jackal a Moscow-trained terrorist who has broken out of control'? '' Consider the following: ''May 30, 1972. Twenty-seven people are killed and 69 injured when three members of the United Red Army of Japan open fire with automatic weapons at Lod Airport near Tel Aviv. The attack was organised and planned by Carlos. . .