Colin Forbes - The Stockholm syndicate

He was rewarded for his flash of inspiration or so he thought, when he saw a Mercedes with Soviet diplomatic plates pull in at the kerb. A slim man carrying a Danair flight bag appeared, the rear door was opened by the chauffeur, closed, and the limousine glided away, followed by one of Superintendent Marker's 'plain-clothes' cars when Cottel gave the driver a signal. Sweating with the anxiety he had felt, Cottel waited a little longer, watching the departing passengers before he walked rapidly along the airport building front to a parked car which was Marker's control vehicle and equipped with a transceiver. He slid in beside the man behind the wheel.

"I'd like to report to Jules Beaurain."

"Be my guest," the Dane invited, handing him the microphone. "If you can get through it will be a miracle — on a clear day like this the static is bloody murder — what with the high pressure area over Scandinavia."

Talking of high pressure…" Cottel mopped his damp forehead as he called Beaurain. The Belgian replied at once with great clarity.

"The big R.," Cottel began, referring to Viktor Rashkin, 'had a Merc with CD. plates waiting to pick him up. Our friends have followed. Funny thing, when I watched the passengers disembarking earlier I couldn't spot him through the glasses."

It was just one of those throwaway observations you make, particularly when you have been keyed up, when you are short on sleep, when you thought you had blown it and then found you hadn't. The Belgian's reaction was tense, almost explosive.

"Listen to this description, Ed. A grey-haired man of medium build. Probably a snappy dresser, could even be wearing a velvet jacket with gold buttons. Rimless glasses. May be wearing a skull-cap like Orthodox Jews go in for."

Cottel stared at the microphone open-mouthed, then got a grip on himself. "A guy just like that got into a beat-up Volkswagen as the limousine took off. I didn't take much notice of him — and he wasn't carrying a Danair bag."

"He wouldn't be," Beaurain informed him. "You wouldn't recognise him, but Dr. Benny Horn has just arrived in Copenhagen. You're waiting now for the flight bringing in Sonia Karnell from Stockholm? Good. I think we're all going to meet up at the house on Nyhavn. And good luck — no-one has yet located Harvey Sholto,"

"You think he's in the city too?" Cottel asked grimly.

"He has to be."

For the first time in weeks the weather changed as they approached Nyhavn. The sky clouded over, a faint hint of mist drifted in from the sea and, as they arrived at the familiar basin of water, the seamen's bars on the left and tourist shops on the right, it began to drizzle. A fine spray of moisture descended on the tangle of ship's masts in the basin. The stones in the street were moist. The convoy of three cars drove a short distance past the end of the basin, out of sight of Nyhavn, and then parked.

"They may have watchers observing Horn's house," Beaurain warned, 'so our first task is to locate them and take them out."

" May? " Louise queried. "The Syndicate always has watchers."

"That was before this morning."

"But they still had Kastrup airport staked out with men," she objected. "You had to get Marker to send out a whole team to pick them up."

"That was because Rashkin was coming in. He would have phoned Copenhagen from Bornholm and asked for protection — heavy protection — to be laid on after what happened to Kometa. But the Syndicate in Europe is coming to the end of its resources, its power is broken, the leaders went down with the Soviet hydrofoil."

"Then who are we expecting to see at the house on Nyhavn?"

"Hugo."

Palme opened the suitcase from the arms deposit flat in Prinsesse Gade, and handed out weapons and ammunition. All hand-guns were equipped with silencers. He conferred briefly with Max Kellerman.

"There is a man watching from the flat almost opposite — there. I'll take him. Then there is a man on the deck of a fishing vessel making too much of looping up coils of rope. He's moored outside Horn's place. You take him."

It was very quiet in the drizzle as Palme and Kellerman moved off down different sides of the basin, both of them adopting a sailor's way of walking, merging with the odd man who even at that hour came staggering up the steps from one of the basement bars. Palme went into the building and up to the first floor flat where he had spotted his watcher. He kicked the flimsy door in and let the force of his own momentum carry him straight across the sparsely furnished room. In his right hand he held a Luger with a silencer. A man who had been staring out of the open window, sprawled on a sofa, grabbed for the automatic weapon by his side. Palme shot him twice and peered out of the window.

The seaman tending coils of rope had disappeared from the deck of the fishing vessel. In his place crouched Max Kellerman who was now doing the same job. It put him immediately facing the front door leading into Dr. Benny Horn's house.

A few minutes later he signalled to Beaurain and Louise as they stood looking into the window of an antique shop. The area was clean. And, standing on the top step and close to the front door of Horn's house, Palme had found the right skeleton key to open the expensive security lock. He walked in ahead of Beaurain and Louise, Luger extended in front of his body, eyes flickering up the narrow staircase, along the narrow hallway, his acute hearing sensitive to the slightest sound. The place smelt empty to Palme; occupied not so long ago but empty for the moment.

The calm waters of the shipping basin were dappled with drops of fine rain — and Max Kellerman laboriously coiled rope on the deck of the fishing vessel. Louise stepped over the threshold of Dr. Benny Horn's house and Beaurain closed the door.

"The place is clean."

In an astonishingly short space of time Palme had checked the ground floor, run upstairs, checked the first floor, returned to the hallway, vanished down a flight of steps behind a door leading to the basement and reappeared to make his pronouncement. He was a big man, Louise thought, yet he could move with the grace and speed of a gazelle.

"A kind of library room at the front," Palme explained, pointing to a door. "Bookshelves from floor to ceiling, heavy lace curtains masking the window overlooking the front… Kitchen and dining-room at the back with rear door on the first floor opening onto a fire escape down into a small yard. There is an exit into a side street from the yard. One of the gunners found it and stationed himself there. No-one gets in here without us knowing."

"Then the front room to await our guests?" Beaurain suggested.

Outside the drizzle continued to fall and Max

Kellerman ignored the fact that he was getting wetter and wetter.

Sonia Karnell was the first to arrive at Nyhavn. She arrived in a taxi from Kastrup Airport, paid off the driver and climbed the steps, the drizzle forming a web of moisture on her jet black hair. In her left hand she had the key ready; in her right she carried a suitcase and from a strap dangled a shoulder-bag.

It was the shoulder-bag Louise Hamilton was studying as she kept well back inside the library room and watched through the heavy lace curtains. Beau-rain was also inside the room, standing pressed flat against the wall close to the opening edge of the closed door.

"She's suspicious of something," Louise hissed.

The Swedish girl had looked back at the deck of the fishing vessel moored to the quay. She saw the wrong man coiling rope. She saw Max Kellerman.

Kellerman reacted instinctively. From under a fishing net he raised the barrel of his sub-machine gun, one of the weapons Palme had distributed from his arms deposit. No-one else was close enough to see it. Karnell saw it. She turned the key, dived into the hallway, slammed the door shut behind her and leant for a moment against the side wall. Louise walked out of the library room.