Colin Forbes - The Stockholm syndicate

"And Frans himself?"

"He worried me even more. I think he's losing his grip. I'm sure he was going to operate his transmitter while the barge was stationary."

"That was the point which struck me," Berlin said thoughtfully. Turn on the engine now."

"You think we should cut the Darrases out of the network?" she asked as she started the car up the track towards the road.

"It is more serious than that," Berlin decided.

"I think we shall have to send a visitor."

When Serge Litov was manhandled into the butcher's van and the doors slammed shut, he was already in pain from the arm Henderson had broken.

But in his grim life one of the qualities he had been trained in was to endure pain and his mind was still clear as the van moved off.

He had been placed on a stretcher on a flat leather couch bolted to the floor on the left side of the van which was equipped rather like a crude ambulance inside. A man wearing a doctor's face-mask loomed over Litov and by the aid of an overhead light examined the arm and then spoke in English.

"I am going to inject you with morphine to relieve the pain. Do you understand me?"

Litov glanced at the two other men in the van, sitting against the other side. They wore Balaclava masks, dark blue open-necked shirts and blue denim trousers. One of them held a machine-pistol across his lap. Two pairs of eyes stared coldly at Litov, who spoke English fluently, as he considered whether to reply in the same language, a decision which might influence his future vitally. It would conceal his true nationality.

"How do I know there is morphine in that hypodermic?" he asked.

"You are worried it is sodium pentothal to make you talk? As a professional man I would not do that — not to a man in your condition."

The Englishman's voice was gentle and there was something in the steady eyes watching him above the mask which made Litov against all his training trust the man.

"Also," the doctor continued, 'you have a flight ahead of you. Why not travel in comfort?"

As soon as he had been flopped onto the stretcher Litov's undamaged left arm had been handcuffed at the wrist to one of the lifting poles.

Both ankles were similarly manacled and a leather strap bound his chest. He was quite helpless and waves of pain were threatening to send him under.

"I'll take the needle," Litov agreed, exaggerating the hoarseness in his voice. The doctor waited until the van paused, presumably at traffic lights, then swiftly dabbed the broken arm with antiseptic and inserted the hypodermic. When the van moved on again he waited for a smooth stretch of road and then set Litov's arm and affixed splints.

Time went by, the van continued on its journey, speeding up now as though it had left the outskirts of the city behind. Litov was trying to estimate two factors as accurately as he could: the general direction the van was taking and its speed, which would allow him roughly to calculate the distance it covered.

Earlier there had been several stops, traffic light stops, but now they kept moving as along a major highway. He chose his moment carefully when the van paused and the trio on the opposite couch looked towards the front of the van as though there might be trouble. He glanced quickly down at his wrist-watch; something they had overlooked. Two o'clock.

As the vehicle started up again and his three captors relaxed, Litov half-closed his eyes and calculated they had roughly travelled two hundred kilometres, allowing for the van's speed and twelve pauses.

They had to be a long way outside Brussels. West towards the coast?

They would have reached it long ago. South towards France? They would have crossed the border long before now which would have meant passing through a frontier control post and there had been nothing like that.

North towards Holland? The same objection. The frontier was too close for the distance travelled. Same applied to Germany which left only one direction and one area to account for the distance covered. South-east: deep into the Ardennes.

Following the same route, Beaurain had long since overtaken the van. He had by now passed through Namur where vertical cliffs fell to the banks of the river Meuse. At this hour there was hardly any other traffic and they seemed to glide through the darkness. Beyond Namur he drove through Marche-en-Famenne and Bastogne where the Germans and Americans had fought an epic battle during World War Two. The country they were travelling through now was remote, an area of high limestone ridges, gorges and dense forests.

"Jock," Beaurain said as he slowed down to negotiate the winding road, 'on the surface I was lucky back there in Brussels. Had Litov been just a second or two faster it would have been me you'd have carried inside that van."

"We had it well-organised. You were quick yourself."

"That motor-cycle, was it difficult to locate?"

"Not really, although we were looking for something like that. It was propped against an alley wall very close to that intersection."

"I see." Beaurain glanced at Henderson's profile. His sandy hair was trimmed short, he was clean-shaven and his bone structure was strong. A firm mouth, a strong jaw and watchful eyes which took nothing for granted. Beaurain thought he had been lucky to recruit him when he had resigned from the SAS — although really it was the other way round since Henderson had left the Special Air Service to join Telescope. The bomb in Belfast which had killed the Scot's fiancee had decided him to change the course of his life. He was by background, by training, the perfect man to control the key section they called The Gunners.

The radio-telephone buzzed and Beaurain picked up the receiver, driving with one hand. The telephone crackled and cleared.

"Alex Carder here," a soft deliberate voice reported in French.

"Any news re delivery?"

"Benedict speaking," Beaurain replied.

"Expect the cargo in thirty minutes. Have you the manifests ready?"

"Yes, sir," Carder replied.

"We can despatch the cargo immediately on arrival. Especially now we have the time schedule. Goodbye."

Beaurain replaced the receiver.

"The chopper's ready as soon as Litov arrives. To make it work we need a swift, continuous movement."

"I have been thinking about what you said in the rue des Bouchers. I think you're right the Syndicate would leave someone close by."

"Which means that by now they know we have Litov, so we have to work out how they will react to that news."

"Something else worries me." The Scot stirred restlessly in his seat.

"I didn't mention it to you at the time because everything was happening so fast."

"What is it?"

"The safety catch was still on when we took the Luger away from Litov."

They were now well inside the Ardennes forest. The full moon oscillated like a giant torch between the palisade of pines lining the road. They hadn't met another vehicle in twenty kilometres. Ahead, at a bend, the headlights shone on stone pillars, huge wrought-iron gates were thrown open. The scrolled lettering on a metal plaque attached to the left hand pillar read Chateau Wardin.

The Chateau Wardin this was where it had all started, Beaurain reflected, as he drove up the winding drive. The formation of Telescope. For three days after the burial of his wife he had remained inside his Brussels apartment, refusing to answer the doorbell or the phone, eating nothing, drinking only mineral water. At the end of the three days he had emerged, handed in his resignation as chief of the anti-terrorist squad and asked the owner of the Chateau Wardin for financial backing.

The Baron de Graer, president of the Banque du Nord and one of the richest men in Europe, had provided Beaurain with the equivalent of one million pounds. His late wife's father, a London merchant banker, supplied the second million. But it was de Graer's gift of the Chateau Wardin as well, which had provided the training ground for the gunners whom Henderson trained as Europe's deadliest fighters.