Colin Forbes - The Stockholm syndicate

Most of the rest of the thirty people present stayed well away from the doors and pressed their faces against the windows. They were staring at the flashing lamp of the lighthouse above The Hammer of Bornholm. Ironically, the arbiters of blackmail, murder and wholesale intimidation were stricken with indecision.

On the bridge Henderson left the ship following the route the others had taken, but under rather different circumstances. The Kometa was now reared up on its giant foils. The vessel was moving at its top speed of thirty knots. The hydrofoil was on a fixed course plotted by the Scot and was working on automatic pilot. He climbed out of one of the smashed windows and made for the rail as the wind hit him. Holding on to an upright, he flexed both legs, waiting for the ship to ride on an even keel if only for a few seconds. Now!

He dived outwards and downwards, passing well clear of the foil and plunging vertically into the Baltic — far enough away, he hoped, and deep enough down to clear the lethal clawing suction from the propeller. As he surfaced he was amazed to see how far Kometa had travelled, a receding cluster of lights. He pressed down the switch which turned on the red light attached to his head-gear. Recovering from the impact of the deep dive he saw close by the power-boat despatched from Firestorm with the sole purpose of rescuing Henderson.

The vertical cliffs of The Hammer are protected by isolated pinnacles of rock which rise up out of the sea like immense rocky daggers. Round the base of these leviathans of nature the sea swirled gently, hardly moving, so still was the Baltic on that night and at that hour. Kometa hurtled on like a projectile, reared up on its foils, approaching The Hammer at right angles. The last moments must have been a terrifying experience for the men who had planned to weld all the evil in the West into one huge crime syndicate. Then Kometa struck.

The collision between flying metal hull and immovable rocky bastion was shattering and thunderous. But fractions of a second later it was followed by the detonation of the explosives Henderson had attached to the foil — explosives which were timed to go off within fifteen minutes, but which also detonated on any major impact. The meeting between Kometa and The Hammer was a major impact. The ship fragmented instantly. The explosion hurled one of the foils high in the air before it crashed back into the sea. The hull actually telescoped, squashing like a concertina before the bow sank, so, for a few moments, the stern hung in the air.

A plume of black smoke rose from the base of The Hammer, dispersed by a gentle breeze which was now blowing. Then there was nothing. No trace that Kometa had ever existed. And only the sound of the power-boat's engine as it sped back towards Firestorm.

Sitting motionless in the stern Beaurain was unusually silent. He pointed out to no-one what he had also seen the cotton-thin wake of a power-boat proceeding south of them at a measured pace towards the west coast of Bornholm. When he later heard that one power-boat had mysteriously not returned he knew that Viktor Rashkin had escaped.

The signals went out from Firestorm at midnight. Beaurain sent them in prearranged codes to Fondberg waiting in Stockholm, to Marker waiting at the strangely-shaped police headquarters in Copenhagen, and also to Chief Inspector Willy Flamen in Brussels.

By ten minutes after midnight the biggest dragnet ever launched on the continent was under way as detector vans and fleets of patrol cars waited for a spate of Syndicate transmissions. They started at exactly three in the morning. Fondberg phoned Beaurain over the ship's radio-telephone shortly afterwards.

"What was the significance of your timing?" the Swede asked.

"Because someone must have reached Bornholm about midnight. His first task would be to send a message warning what is left of the Syndicate of the catastrophe."

"What catastrophe?"

"Wait for news from Bornholm tomorrow morning."

"Anyway you were right! It's working!"

Fondberg sounded excited. All over Europe the detector vans were homing in on the sources of the mysterious transmissions — because for the first time they were not looking on the roads. They were concentrating on the waterways. And due to the emergency the transmissions were prolonged.

In Belgium, France and Holland, barges were being boarded as the Syndicate's radio operators were caught in the middle of transmitting. In Denmark, ships in the Oresund were being boarded. In Sweden, launches and cruisers on the waterways inside Stockholm were being raided. In Germany the barges were on the Rhine. And by launching synchronised attacks at precisely the same moment there was no opportunity for one section of the Syndicate to warn another. At one sweeping blow the entire communications system — without which the Syndicate could not operate — was wiped out.

"A fair-haired girl left the apartment at Radmansgatan 490 and took the airline bus to Arlanda. She is expected to arrive in Copenhagen at…"

Fondberg called Beaurain again on Firestorm as the vessel raced westward away from Bornholm, heading for the Oresund and Copenhagen. As arranged with Beaurain earlier, Fondberg had mounted a round-the-clock surveillance on the Radmansgatan apartment. Two of his men had followed her and, on arrival at Arlanda, they had watched her check in at the Scandinavian Airlines counter for the next flight to Copenhagen.

'… 08.30," Fondberg continued. "And the first Danair flight out of Bnne on Bornholm is Flight SK 262 departing Bonne at 08.10 and arriving Copenhagen at 08.40. Who do you expect to be aboard that aircraft?"

"Better you don't know, Harry," Beaurain had replied. "And thanks for the information on the blonde girl. Be in touch."

He broke the connection on the radio-telephone and looked at Louise who had been listening in. She was frowning with perplexity.

"Blonde?" Louise queried. "Can that be Sonia Karnell?"

"It can be — and it is," Beaurain assured her as he rubbed his bloodshot eyes. When had he last slept? He couldn't be sure. "A blonde wig," he explained.

"Of course. God, I must be losing my grip. But I'm completely shattered. What did you mean by saying we must break the American connection before Harry Fondberg phoned? And who is flying into Copenhagen from Bornholm?"

"Answer both your questions when I'm sure." Beau-rain took one of his sudden decisions.

"I think we'll get to Kastrup Airport ahead of everyone — we'll get Anderson to fly us there in the Sikorsky. And we'll take some back-up, including Stig."

He checked his watch. Four o'clock in the morning. It had been daylight for over an hour and the sky had all the appearance of yet another glorious, cloudless day of mounting heat. They should be at Kastrup by five o'clock; there would be very little activity at that hour and — with a little luck — no-one to observe their arrival in the Danish capital.

They had passed perfunctorily through Customs and Immigration and were moving into the main reception hall when Louise stopped and gripped Beaurain's arm. Gently she pulled him back behind a pillar, then gestured with her head towards a closed bookstall. Beaurain peered cautiously round the pillar while Palme and the other three men froze behind them. Beaurain studied a man standing in profile by the bookstall, holding a magazine which he appeared to be reading.

"Ed Cottel," he murmured.

The American connection," Louise said.

They retreated out of the reception hall and deeper inside the airport buildings. Palme conducted his reconnaissance and returned with the news.

"They have troops all round the airport," he reported. "All possible exits are covered and we're heavily outnumbered. Men in cars apparently waiting for passengers. Men in taxis. There are two men out on the highway pretending to deal with a defective street lamp."