Colin Forbes - By Stealth

When Newman arrived in his room he found Pete Nield seated on a couch, staring out of the window at the lights of Brussels, a blaze of cheap neon on the far side of the Boulevard de Waterloo. Benoit was sitting at a desk, a large sheet of paper in front of him covered in his neat handwriting. Paula sat beside him.

`We have been working,' Benoit said with an impish grin, 'while you go off with the first curvy blonde who catches your eye. Why, I can't imagine, when you have the delightful Paula in your room.'

`I thought I'd leave you to enjoy her company for a while,' Newman retorted. 'What work?'

`She has been making a statement about what she saw in the Parc d'Egmont, about her earlier lunch with the victim. Now I want one from you…'

Ten minutes later Newman signed his own statement. Benoit countersigned it, as he had done after Paula's signature.

`Strictly speaking,' he explained, 'I should have asked one of my men to witness these statements. But I am, after all, the chief of police. Anyone who questions the procedure will get my boot up a tender part of his anatomy.'

`You had news for me,' Newman reminded him. 'Grim, you said.'

`Would you like the good or the bad to start with?' The bad.'

`Then I think I'll give you the good first. I phoned Tweed recently, told him we'd traced this Dr Hyde to a boarding house here in Brussels. But the bird had flown. So now we are concentrating on Liege. A team is checking every low-down dump in that beautiful city.' He looked at his watch. 'They will be starting about now.'

'I can't make out why Mordaunt was murdered,' Newman ruminated. 'And just after lunching with Paula – so if by chance he was leading up to luring her away to be kidnapped… Although that's a pretty wild theory.'

`Maybe not so wild,' Paula said quietly. She sat down next to Nield, looking depressed. 'He was playing up to me to start with, turning on the charm. Then, during lunch, his attitude changed. He' – she searched for a wording which would not sound conceited – 'seemed to genuinely like me. Was going a bit overboard, I thought. Supposing he decided not to go through with it?'

`Then, remembering our interview with Dr Wand, I'm sure he became expendable. If that is what happened it really is alarming – the speed with which Wand moved.'

`No proof.' Benoit threw up both hands. 'And Dr Wand is a man of great influence in high places. I would need a cast-iron case before I dared approach him.'

`So what is the bad news?' Newman asked.

`They dragged the dead body of Lucie Delvaux out of the Meuse. Killed by a cyanide injection. Gaston Delvaux has gone to pieces.'

Tweed travelled to catch his flight at London Airport by taxi. At his suggestion, Butler had taken a different taxi and would not sit anywhere near Tweed on the plane. It did no harm to conceal from the opposition the team he was building up against them.

He was walking towards Passport Control when he saw Jim Corcoran, Chief Security Officer and his old friend. To his surprise Corcoran looked away, started walking in a different direction. Tweed caught up with him.

`Something on your mind, Jim? You looked right through me.'

`Sorry. I was miles away. You're off somewhere again?' `Brussels.'

`Have a good flight…'

`Thank you.'

Tweed moved on, holding his boarding pass. Corcoran had seemed distinctly uncomfortable. Three-quarters of an hour later he was in his seat aboard the aircraft. Butler sat two rows behind him.

As the plane took off and climbed, Tweed settled back to think. He preferred travelling on his own: no phone calls to interrupt his flow of thought. Refusing all refreshment, he concentrated on the pattern of events now taking definite shape in his mind.

His last act before leaving Park Crescent had been to get in touch with a powerful contact at Special Branch. He'd given them specific instructions – to be put on hold – about Moor's Landing. He'd emphasized they mustn't go near the place. Not until they received his signal.

Vulcan. His brain had switched to another tack. Philip Cardon had been very confident that the unknown Vulcan existed, that he was an Englishman, that he had long ago left Hong Kong for Britain. Vulcan – a key figure in the elaborate preparations for Operation Long Reach. Who was most likely to be Vulcan? Because Tweed was convinced he had already met him.

The executioner. The killer of Hilary Vane, the American woman who had been murdered at London Airport when Cord Dillon had arrived. It had been a woman who'd done the job. Cyanide poisoning. Paula had seen her bump into Vane just before the victim died so unpleasantly. A woman in a wide-brimmed hat which hid her face.

Then there was the cab driver found dead inside his own vehicle in Marolles. After it had been driven to Liege where the woman using the cab had driven down – killed – Sir Gerald Andover. Paula had sworn that had been a woman. It was a new and deadly idea – a woman who was a professional assassin.

Stealth. Tweed began to think about all that involved, and fell fast asleep.

Latitude 37.50N. Longitude 21.50W. The Mao III, with its sister ship, Yenan, was sailing at thirty knots – over nine hundred miles west of the Straits of Gibraltar.

The sea was an oily calm and another heavy mist was forming. Captain Welensky was relieved to be alone on the bridge. Kim had gone below decks to check something. As he stared at the radar screen, about to issue an order, Kim suddenly appeared, padding silently in his cloth shoes. He took Welensky by the arm with an iron grip and shook him.

`There is a small fishing vessel…'

`I know. Dead ahead…'

`Dead. Ram it! Now!'

`I was about to alter course to avoid-'

`I said ram it! I have just returned from the radio room. That vessel is beginning to send out a Mayday…'

`It's cold-blooded murder.'

Welensky regretted the outburst the moment after he had uttered the words. Kim's grip tightened.

`I am beginning to think your efficiency is impaired, Captain. Do I have to give the order myself?' he purred.

Welensky was frightened. Kim's voice had shown no sign of emotion. But he was quite capable of thrusting his knife into Welensky, weighting the body, and throwing it overboard. Welensky gave the order.

It was a small vessel. Proceeding on the same course, Welensky watched the radar. He hardly felt the tremble as the Mao sliced clean through the fishing vessel amidships. Kim, his night glasses raised to his eyes, went first to port.

He saw two men flailing in the water. One raised his arms as though in a desperate plea for mercy, then the arms vanished under the waves with the head. The other fisherman had already disappeared. Kim walked swiftly to starboard, raised his glasses again. The bow of the fishing vessel had already sunk. He watched the stern slide below the waves. No heads floated on the surface of the ice-cold sea. No survivors. He went back to stand alongside Welensky. think you require a lesson in seamanship, Captain. If a vessel sends out a repeated Mayday signal the chances are other vessels will detect it, will change course to hurry to the scene. The object of this voyage is to avoid any risk whatsoever that our presence will be discovered. Do you grasp the meaning of my little lecture, Captain?'

`It is quite clear,' Welensky replied, staring ahead.

`Good. We are on course. We are on schedule. Now we shall proceed west of the British Isles and Ireland. We shall then turn south between the Shetland Islands and Norway and descend on the west coast of Denmark. To be precise, on Jutland.'

`I studied geography at school,' Welensky remarked. Kim made no reply, but by now Welensky had realized he had no sense of humour.

Tweed had asked Monica to leave a message at Benoit's HQ giving him his flight number and ETA. He didn't expect the police chief to be waiting for him but, as he walked out of Zaventem Airport, Benoit appeared, smiling with pleasure as they shook hands.