The Stockholm Syndicate (20 page)

"Why Elsinore?" Beaurain asked as he lit a cigarette. Marker took the cigarette off him before he could put it in his own mouth. "Thought you'd given up," the Belgian continued, taking out a fresh cigarette.

The Dane's chubby face was thin-lipped with tension, his eyes icy and hard. He smoked the cigarette while he watched Louise Hamilton and scanned the dock area. A Volvo estate wagon pulled into the kerb a dozen yards behind the Mercedes and Beaurain watched it in his mirror. Marker seemed to be gazing in the opposite direction when he spoke.

"Man behind the wheel of that Volvo is Dr. Benny Horn, rare book dealer with a shop on Nyhavn in Copenhagen. And, as I told you, he's possibly one of the three most powerful men today in the whole of Western Europe. Why has he stopped behind you, I wonder? Sight of my police car or your Mercedes."

"Black Helmet!"

Kellerman said the words almost involuntarily. He had started watching in the wing mirror on his side and she was framed perfectly, the girl he had first seen talking to the receptionist at the Royal Hotel while he watched from the quick-service restaurant.

Black Helmet
. Now the description fitted her beautifully and it occurred to Kellerman she looked as sexy as hell - her helmet of black hair cut close to the head without any covering, and wearing a pair of black slacks and a black windcheater. The same outfit as Louise Hamilton's; she even carried a shoulder-bag and only the colour of the outfits was different.

"What was that, Foxbel?" Marker asked quickly. "Black What? You know the lady?"

"We think she may be closely linked with Benny Horn," he told Marker. "We haven't seen them together but one of our people gave us descriptions of two people who drove north last night to Elsinore with a suitcase."

"Suitcase the size you described in my office?" Marker interjected.

"The very same. The descriptions of the two people fit Benny Horn and the girl passing the Volvo behind us."

"Horn signalled her to keep moving, not to stop by the Volvo," the Dane observed. Not once since the Volvo had pulled in behind them had Marker turned in that direction. He seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. And he was right, Kellerman thought Black Helmet had been about to get into the Volvo when Horn had given her a warning signal - a brief movement of the hand - to keep moving.

Black Helmet had speeded up her pace, passing the parked Mercedes without a glance. Reaching the corner she was able to see the exit from the station, and noticed Louise Hamilton standing there. So, the girl she had followed in the early hours had returned to Elsinore. The obvious assumption was that she had used the booby-trapped Citroën. Louise Hamilton should have been dead. Black Helmet reacted instinctively, and walked rapidly across the front of the station as though on her way into the booking-hall. She swerved, changing direction suddenly, coming up silently behind the English girl.

Her right hand was now held motionless by her side, the hand stiff, the edge hard. Her intention was to brush against the English girl, move past her a few feet, swing round and scream, "Thief! You took my purse!" In the ensuing struggle one swift blow to the side of the neck would render her target unconscious.

"
What the hell is happening?
" exclaimed Marker. He had seen the Volvo move away, gliding off so unexpectedly there was no time to stop it. Seconds later Black Helmet had swivelled towards the station and then changed direction to come up behind Beaurain's girl. Marker was thrown off-balance.

Everyone involved assumed Louise Hamilton was so intent on watching the arriving train ferry that she had not noticed Karnell, who moved with the speed of a cobra. They were wrong. At the very moment Karnell brushed against her side and turned to shout the word "Thief!" Louise Hamilton spun on her heel. "I want you, you bitch!" she hissed. Her right leg snapped forward like a piston, the point of her shoe aimed at Karnell's kneecap. Had the blow fully connected the Swedish girl would never have been able to move once she collapsed on the ground. But Karnell saw the thrust of the shoe and started to spin her own body. The shoe tip cut the side of her leg but she was only hurt, not eliminated.

Staggering back towards the kerb, her right hand scrabbled inside her shoulder-bag for her gun. There was a burst of sound as a motor-bike revved its powerful engine. The machine had been parked close to the ferry point by the kerb, the man sitting on it dressed in helmet, goggles and leather jacket, apparently watching the frenetic activity in the Øresund. Now he sped across the road, over the rail tracks, and towards Karnell.

Louise tried to reach them, to topple the machine over sideways, but Karnell was seconds too fast. Despite her injury she made it to the edge of the sidewalk, swung one leg over the pillion seat of the waiting machine, and grabbed the rider round the waist as he surged off with a roar of power in the direction the Volvo had taken.

Beaurain did not even reach to turn on the ignition: he was watching Louise's reaction. She was staring in a fresh direction - towards the rail line where inter national expresses waited to move along the lines over the road, up the ramp and inside a ferry which would take them to Sweden.

"Bodel, I think they tried a diversion - at least that girl who got away on the motor-bike did. Her reaction was based on alarm - alarm at seeing a colleague of mine, whom she recognised, watching the ferry terminal.We don't go chasing after high-powered motorbikes - that may well be just what they would like."

"Why?" Marker demanded irritably

"Because," Beaurain said grimly, spacing out his words with great deliberation, 'the attempt at a diversion suggests to me that what you're after is under your nose." He got out of the Mercedes and closed the door with a hard clunk.

"They would have guards, watchers," Marker protested.

"They had," Beaurain pointed out. "The big man himself was in the Volvo. His girl was about to patrol round the station. There was a third Syndicate member - the man on the motor-bike. There will be more."

"I get the sensation that I'm already being watched," said Marker, his hands plunged deep inside his jacket pockets.

"You are - I have at least a dozen men within shooting distance of where we're walking now."

"I said earlier that Telescope was the only organisation capable of destroying the Stockholm Syndicate," Marker murmured in an undertone. They stopped as they reached Louise.

"Can I talk?" she asked, covering her mouth with a cupped hand as she lit one of her rare cigarettes. She wasn't even looking at them. Curious, Marker glanced quickly along the axis of her observation. All he could see were two large open-sided goods wagons. Behind them an engine was moving along the line to link up with them. A railway man with a flag guided the engine-driver. It all seemed perfectly normal to Marker.

"This is it," said Louise, once Beaurain had confirmed that she could speak in front of Marker, who was still mystified. He glanced around more carefully, suddenly aware that the previously almost deserted area in front of the station had become populated. Several passengers had drifted out of the reception hall into the open. Tourists with

knapsacks on their backs, two men holding fishing rods. At least Marker
thought
they were fishing rods.

Other men were now wandering across the road towards the ferry terminal. One of them, tall and sandy-haired, carrying a long sports bag, walked with a distinctly military carriage.

Crossing the road, he walked a short distance further on beyond the ferry terminal. Marker's eyes narrowed as he watched him put the bag down on the floor and raise a small compact object like a camera to his eyes while he scanned the harbour with the eagerness of a photographic buff always on the lookout for new subjects. It occurred to Marker that the camera could easily be a camouflaged walkie-talkie. ;, Beaurain's face was expressionless as he also watched ;; Jock Henderson take up the best strategic position for viewing the ferry terminal, its approaches, the railway station and the two wagons waiting to be put aboard the next ferry, which was entering the harbour and |s|| turning slightly to head for the landing. Everything so normal. The sun beating down, radiating warmth out of a perfectly clear sky. The steady thump of the wheels of the engine approaching the two wagons it would push across the road and up inside the bowels of the ferry once the vessel had berthed and was ready for its new cargo.

"You said "this is it". I see nothing out of the ordinary," said Marker.

"You're not supposed to."

"The man with the flag guiding the engine," said Louise. "He's been waiting there for fifteen minutes. He kept looking towards that man on the motor-bike who picked up the girl."

Thunk!
The slow-moving engine hit the rear of the two wagons and the railway man dropped his flag to indicate contact. A shade late, Beaurain noted. The railway man rolled up his flag. Behind them they could hear a massive gushing as the incoming train ferry displaced quantities of harbour water, the vessel's propellers already in reverse to slow her down and ensure a gentle contact with Danish soil. Customs officials and Immigration men holding brief-cases were moving restlessly in the vicinity of the landing point. All perfectly normal.

"Have you any men with you?" Beaurain asked suddenly.

"No," Marker admitted reluctantly. "I'm not supposed to be here, remember?" He glanced at Louise but she was staring in the direction of the shunting yards and apparently not listening. "I couldn't bring a team that would have alerted my chief. So, if the Syndicate is here in strength "

"We'll deal with them and you'll vanish," Beaurain told him crisply. "Officially you were never here."

"I bloody well was - and am! You may need some official backing if it comes to a shoot-out. Where is the dope?"

"The first wagon full of packing materials," said Louise quietly. "Great sheets of it perched on end. That rail guard who flagged down the engine before it arrived he was patrolling up and down beside the first wagon. During the night those two wagons were further down the track behind the house I followed Horn to. Work it out for yourself."

"Packing materials?" Marker repeated.

Chapter Twelve

"Bodel," Beaurain began genially, putting an arm round the Dane's shoulder, 'you said that only Telescope had any chance of defeating the Stockholm Syndicate. I don't want you out of the way in some bar, just maybe standing over here by the kerb so you can help out if the local police arrive."

I'll stay." Marker's chubby face was grim and hard as he remembered his superior invading his office back at Politigarden in Copenhagen, recalled how he had been told to drop this case, remembered what the Syndicate had threatened to do to his wife and son. "And I'm armed," he said.

"So are a lot of people round here," Beaurain assured him.

Startled, Marker looked round the whole area. Before wandering round the back of the station to where the wagons were waiting, Kellerman had made a brief hand signal to Henderson.
Give me back-up
. The Scot had again raised the camera-like walkie-talkie and had given the order.

"Cover Max, surround entire action area immediately."

Fascinated, Marker watched as some of the 'hikers' with packs on their backs drifted back inside the station. He guessed that there would be exits from inside the station into the shunting zone where Foxbel had disappeared. Other 'tourists' closed in round the front of the station between the ferry terminal and the shunting zone. Henderson himself picked up his sports bag and unzipped it. Now he could have his machine-gun in action in seconds. Henderson's main fear was that Syndicate men now concealed might appear in strength at any moment. Everything depended on Kellerman.

The Danish railway man who had guided the engine with his flag was pacing up and down alongside the first wagon when Kellerman appeared. The German realised immediately that the main problem was the engine-driver waiting in his cab to shunt the two wagons aboard the ferry. He was relieved to see two of Henderson's back-up men dressed like hikers appear from the main station beyond the engine. With a swift gesture to them he indicated the engine-driver and continued walking towards the man with the flag, who shouted something in Danish.

"Don't understand the language!" Kellerman called back in English. He was still walking towards him, smiling broadly. It was amazing how a smile threw people off balance, even if only for a few vital seconds. The rail guard spoke again, this time in English.

"You are on private property and must leave at once. Go back! Go back the way you came or I will call the security police!"

"Good idea. You call them. Now! Before these wagons move!"

The back-up team had moved with their accustomed speed. Already one had engaged the engine-driver in conversation while the second man disappeared behind the locomotive, then silently reappeared climbing up into the engine cab behind the driver whose attention was distracted. A hand holding a choloroform-soaked cloth was clasped over the driver's mouth; in less than thirty seconds he was unconscious on the floor of his cab.

"You will get out of this area now!" The thin-faced rail guard slipped his hand inside his jacket and Kellerman leapt forward two paces. His right hand closed over the Dane's wrist, dragging the hand out, a hand which held a pistol. "Danish State Railways issue?" the German enquired. As he spoke he twisted the wrist, broke it and the pistol fell to the ground. The guard's mouth opened to scream and the scream was stifled by Kellerman's other hand. The German was bending the Dane backwards and suddenly he kicked the man's feet from under him. The guard fell backwards and only Kellerman's grip saved him splitting his skull open on the rail. The German lowered him gently until his neck was resting on the rail. He tried to lift his head and something sharp pricked his throat, the tip of Kellerman's knife.

Try shouting and I'll slit your throat," Kellerman hissed.

"The wagon..."

"Will move any moment now," Kellerman assured him. "It will neatly slice off your head like a guillotine. Straight across the neck, leaving your head between the tracks, the rest of your body on this side," he elaborated brutally.

"You wouldn't!"

"I would and will. And if you lift your head to get it off the rail I'll stick you. Comes to the same thing, really, doesn't it? Where's the heroin?"

"What heroin?"

The words were cut off by the prick of Kellerman's knife against his throat. He lay sprawled with the pressure of the iron rail against the back of his neck, and when he looked to the left - the direction from which death would come - he saw the wheel's rim which was now assuming enormous dimensions in his mind.

"The heroin stashed for Sweden," Kellerman said wearily, "I really believe you're stupid enough not to tell me in which case any second now: crunch!"

"They'll kill me if I speak."

The Stockholm Syndicate?"

"For Jesus Christ's sake have mercy!"

"And let all that heroin flood the streets? I'd sooner behead you."

Despite the freezing of his emotions after the murder of his wife, Kellerman was impressed by the man's terror terror of the Stockholm Syndicate even caught in this dreadful position. His gaunt face had almost aged since Kellerman had threatened him; there was the stench of the man's own sweat in the air, the sweat of fear which coursed down his face in rivulets and streamed over his neck, already dirty with rust from the rail. Still he didn't speak and the German was not sure what to do next. A bell began ringing, a steady ding-dong in slow time somewhere in the direction of the ferry terminal.

"The heroin ... just above you ... inside the second wadge ... let me up, the train is moving!"

He jerked his head up violently, staring at the rim of the wheel to his left in gibbering terror. Kellerman withdrew the knife a second before the Dane could impale himself on its point. '... the train is moving!"

Kellerman's reflex action was to grab the man's tie, swing his head to the side away from the wheel and clear of the line. Then, streaming with his own sweat, he realised what had happened.

The steady tolling of the bell continued, warning approaching traffic that a train was on the way. But this train wouldn't be moving because the engine-driver had been knocked out with chloroform, a fact which for a terrible split second Kellerman had forgotten when the bell started its racket. It was no surprise that the Dane had fainted and was lying inert by the track. He heard a rush of feet and hoped they were the feet of friends.

"Did he talk?"

Henderson's voice. Kellerman, his face showing strain, looked up. To his right the two 'hikers' who had dealt with the engine-driver were quietly slipping away to the main station. Gunners disguised as tourists blocked off the approach from the ferry terminal.

"Stop the bell the train isn't going?" he said.

"The heroin?"

Marker's voice. A mixture of eagerness and anxiety. Kellerman used his sleeve to mop the sweat dripping off his forehead. He'd been shaken and he didn't mind admitting it. For a few seconds he'd had a vision of the head rolling free between the rails.

"We've got it," he told them, 'if he told me the truth and I think he did. I would have. In this wagon just above me the second slat back "wadge" I think he called it."

He stood up and stiffened his legs to stop himself swaying. Only Louise saw him surreptitiously wipe the damp palms of his hands on his trousers. He winked at her and she smiled sympathetically. It was at the most unexpected moments that the terrible strain of their work hit them like a sledgehammer, often when they were least prepared for it.

It was being handled with typical Telescope efficiency. Henderson had gone quickly back up the track directing the gunners to form a defensive cordon.

Beaurain had climbed up into the wagon with Marker and called down for the loan of Kellerman's knife which was handed up.

"The guard is in it up to his neck." He paused as the potentially unfortunate phrasing occurred to him, then continued, looking at Louise. "The engine-driver may be in it or he could be completely innocent. At the moment he's..." He made a gesture placing his hand over his mouth indicating he was out of action. Then, in the near distance, growing louder every second they heard the one sound Beaurain did not wish to hear, the sound of a patrol-car's siren screaming.

It was a potentially dangerous situation. Jumping down from the wagon, leaving Beaurain to wrestle with the compressed paper, Marker advanced to meet three uniformed policemen running down by the side of the wagon, waving his identification card in their faces and gesturing for them to get back. The chubby-faced Dane was magnificent in the emergency, talking non-stop in Danish, ushering the three men back towards the ferry terminal like a shepherd driving sheep.

"Get back out of this area! I have the whole place infiltrated with undercover men! Coming in here with your bloody siren wailing - you may have ruined an international operation planned for months! What the hell brought you here in the first place?"

"We received a message that there was terrorist activity in the regionof this ferry terminal."

"And the caller gave you his name and address, of course?" Marker demanded with bitter sarcasm.

"Well ... no, sir," the driver of the car admitted as he continued backing away with his two companions. They had almost reached the road now. "It was the inspector on duty - said we had to get here as fast as we could we were on patrol when he radioed us."

"
The inspector on duty!
" Sometimes a stray shot hit the bull's eye, Marker thought with a tingle of excitement. No such order would normally be transmitted by the station inspector. The Stockholm Syndicate was here in Elsinore, its corrupt fingers reaching into the local police station. Because of one thing Marker was certain: the patrol car had been sent to disperse and interfere with Telescope's search for the huge heroin haul.

"Have you ever received a direct order personally from the inspector before over the radio?" he asked, sure that he was right in his incredible long shot.

"First time it's ever happened in my experience," the man told him, 'and I've been driving a patrol car for five years. I said to my mate it was odd."

I'm now going to tell you exactly what to do," Marker told the driver, his expression grim. "You will carry out my order to the letter or forget about any further career with the police. Wait in your vehicle. If you receive any further orders or questions from this inspector, tell him your car has broken down, that you have found nothing happening at the ferry terminal after a thorough search. And then, in a few minutes, you will drive me to your station," he looked back to where Beaurain was still inside the rail wagon and saw nothing. God he was taking a gamble!

"What is the name of this inspector?" he asked.

The man gave him a name and then the trio of policemen returned to their car. It now all depended on Beaurain finding the heroin. He made his way back to the wagon where the man he knew as Foxbel stood on guard with the girl. At the foot of the wagon he stared up at the Belgian whose head was just visible above a huge sheet of packing material.

"Get up here fast, Bodel," Beaurain called down.

"You haven't... not already?" Marker began.

"I said get up here, for Christ's sake. The timing is everything."

It was so simple Marker was overwhelmed with a mixture of disbelief and relief. In the darkened confines of the rail wagon he stared at what Beaurain's torch beam showed him. Then he was filled with sheer fury when he remembered that less than three hours earlier he had been ordered not to carry his investigations any further by one of the most powerful figures in the Danish police service.

Beaurain had used a nail file borrowed from Louise to pick the locks of the suitcase. Inside the case, which lay in a narrow defile between walls of the packing material, was a collection of transparent bags containing powder. The case was full, the haul enormous.

"Inside there? As simple as that?"

"As simple as that. I was careful not to break the seals."

The hole had been carefully hollowed out of the second wadge of packing material - just where the rail guard had told Kellerman he would find it. Propped against the wadge was the thick panel of the same material which slotted into grooves and was then held firmly in place with transparent sealing material.

"Simple but effective," Beaurain continued. "The sealing material coincides with the labels designating its alleged destination. We have to take a very quick decision, Bodel, my friend. Only you and I and the two people standing guard outside this wagon yet know we have discovered the consignment."

"Which is on its way to Stockholm apparently. If we let it go through, can your people really watch it closely enough?"

"We'll need help from Harry Fondberg, head of Säpo in Stockholm."

Säpo was the Swedish secret police, a department which operated quite apart from the normal law-enforcement agencies. It was becoming stifling inside the wagon and there was a growing stench of something unpleasant like powerful glue. Beaurain assumed it was resin inside the material.

"Who contacts Fondberg - you or me?" Marker asked simply.

It took Beaurain a moment to grasp the significance of what Marker had said. Then he was carefully closing the suitcase, re-locking it and calling for Louise to come up inside the wagon so he could instruct her.