Colin Forbes - The Stockholm syndicate

At the head of the table, as befitted his status, was the American industrialist, Leo Gehn, occasionally drinking mineral water, while the rest of the guests consumed ever larger quantities of champagne, encouraged by Viktor Rashkin who made frequent visits from the bridge to soothe his guests.

"A little local difficulty… concerning some officious Danish coast guard Doubtless he knows who we have aboard… it is his brief hour of glory… briefly to detain with his minor authority such a distinguished gathering…"

Then the mine detonated.

From this moment on the terror started terror for those who had themselves used their money and their power to terrorise so many in different countries to do their bidding.

" Explode the mine! "

Aboard the coast guard vessel Regula, its captain, Johnson, was still holding his wrist-watch in his hand when he gave the order. He spoke into the small microphone slung round his neck so the message reached not only the man who detonated the mine let loose to float with the current but was also transmitted to the members of the crew operating the mobile searchlight and the swivel-mounted machine-gun.

The trio receiving the order knew precisely the sequence of events they must bring about. First, the man with the searchlight swung its beam to light on the mine itself; not too difficult a feat since he was wearing infrared glasses.

The moment that happened the second man — controlling the swivel-mounted machine-gun — swung its muzzle, being careful not to aim his gunsight at the mine but only in its general direction, and opened fire. He was using tracer bullets and the Baltic was suddenly illuminated with a miniature fireworks display.

The man whose job was to set off the detonation by remote radio control waited for the first two events to take place. Only when the mine was visible in the searchlight beam, only when a curve of tracer bullets was streaming through the night did he operate the switch. The result was spectacular.

The mine exploded with a dull resounding boom suggesting enormous power. An eruption of water like the Yellowstone Park geyser was superbly illuminated in the searchlight beam. The machine-gun ceased firing. The searchlight went out. Aboard Kometa everyone was temporarily stunned. At that moment — on schedule — Sergeant Jock Henderson passed under the hull of the still-stationary hydrofoil.

Kometa was a 'surface-piercing hydrofoil' — a kind of craft invented in Messina, Sicily, a fact not advertised inside Soviet Russia. A large vessel of 2,000 tons, its top speed was thirty knots, which could only be achieved when it was skimming over the surface of the water so that no 'drag' factor any longer applied. Basically the entire vessel, at the pull of a single lever on the bridge, reared up out of the water on what were really massive steel wings.

By careful checking of his waterproof watch Henderson had timed the boarding of Kometa to coincide with Johnson's detonation of his mine the moment of maximum distraction for those aboard the Soviet vessel. A large number of his underwater team were still in the sea, concealed now beneath Kometa 's hull, when the mine exploded. They felt a sharp push in the back as the shock wave of the blast reached them. By now Henderson was perched on the starboard surface-piercing foil at the stern.

Half out of the water and just behind him Palme stared upwards at the overhang of the ship's rail, holding a harpoon-gun in his right hand. Using the rope and drag-hook like a lasso, Henderson had swung it round his head until the momentum was strong enough, then hurled it upwards and heard the gentle thunk as the rubber-covered hooks took a firm hold on the rail.

It was very bad luck — but in Henderson's view they had used up their share of luck — that one of Gunther Baum's East German security men happened to be patrolling the stern as the ladder took hold. He was taken aback for a few seconds when the grapple appeared out of nowhere, then he unlooped his automatic weapon from his shoulder and peered over the rail. Henderson was a perfect target, silhouetted in his frogman's suit. The security man raised his weapon and took swift aim.

There was a hiss of compressed air, no other sound at all, as the spear released from Palme's harpoon-gun thudded into the German's chest. He slumped forward over the rail, dropping his weapon into the sea. Henderson climbed the ladder, reached the rail, glanced along the deserted deck. Using one hand, he tumbled the man over the side. Palme had already climbed the ladder and a file of men were appearing, their heads bobbing in the water like sea-monsters. Henderson, now over the rail and standing on the deck with Palme, glanced at his watch.

"Less than two minutes before Johnson signals the Russian captain he can get moving."

"We have just made it."

Before the engines of Kometa began throbbing underfoot, all the twenty men were aboard the hydrofoil. Advance scouts had been sent a short distance forward to deal with any fresh patrols. And Henderson had been very explicit in his instructions regarding this stage.

"According to Sobieski, the Polish sonar controller aboard, we'll be out-numbered by the East German security guards — and those johnnies are trained to prime condition. There are thirty of them. So for as long as possible we use the silent kill."

The advance scouts — under Palme's command on the port side, under Max Kellerman's command to starboard — were armed with knives and wire garottes. Their instructions were to use firearms and grenades only as a last resort — and preferably not until one of the two section commanders gave permission.

On the port side a second security guard in a leather jacket took a step forward and then stopped, staring in disbelief. He was still trying to decide whether he had seen the outline of men in frog suits when one of them stepped out behind him from between two lifeboats and plunged a razor-edged stiletto with a savage upward thrust just below the left shoulder-blade. The East German grunted. He was dead before he hit the deck.

His executioner reported the incident and then cautiously moved again towards the bridge. The head count of guards eliminated was important: it told both Palme and Kellerman how many of the opposition were still alive. As the hydrofoil began to get under way Henderson's task was quite different and exceptionally hazardous.

Several times Jules Beaurain had emphasised the danger of the mission Henderson had suggested for himself. "You could be very exposed," the Belgian had warned, 'if they start the vessel up while you're still working on the main foil."

"I have allowed for that," Henderson had assured his chief. "It is a chance I have to take. It is the only way I can attach timer-and-impact explosives to the most vulnerable part of Kometa."

Timer-and-impact explosives were a new device which the mild-mannered boffins at Chateau Wardin had recently invented. The device worked initially like time-bombs. But the refinement covered the possibility that the timing mechanism might not work.

Independent of the timer, the explosive detonated instantaneously on impact with another object, and the force of the impact needed for detonation could be varied by setting a meter which was an essential part of the device.

Henderson's objective was now to reach the bow of Kometa in the shortest possible time, attach the special explosives to the giant foils in the shortest possible time, and, assuming he survived what Beaurain had called 'a real Russian-roulette risk', he would then make himself available for the final assault against the bridge.

The Sikorsky had been lifted high into the night. In his float-plane the pilot, Smithy, had suddenly adopted more sober behaviour and was flying across the Baltic away from the Soviet ship prior to taking off — leaving the sea clear for Captain Livanov to resume his course. On the bridge the Russian had received the signal from the coast guard vessel informing him that the floating mine had been destroyed, that it was safe to proceed.