Colin Forbes - The Stockholm syndicate

"There has been a tragedy," the Swede said with a wooden face. "The Karnell woman tried to get away via the fire escape. She was in a hurry — somehow she lost her balance on the top step and went all the way down. I am afraid she is dead. Her neck is broken. What is happening to Benny Horn?"

"I don't know." The words were hardly out of Beaurain's mouth before he jerked his head round to stare at the house opposite.

Inside the house, Viktor Rashkin, whose whole success in life had hinged on his supreme self-confidence, his conviction that he was capable of out manoeuvring any opponent on earth, had run up the stairs with his springy step. He reached the door leading into the room, pushed it wide open and stood framed in the doorway.

Harvey Sholto was not dead, although he had taken terrible punishment from the fusillade of bullets Max Kellerman had fired up at the window. Since then, as more blood seeped onto the sofa onto which he dragged himself, he had been waiting with the Armalite rifle propped in readiness, the muzzle aimed at the door, his finger inside the trigger guard.

The door flew open, a man stood there, a blurred silhouette, the silhouette of the man on the fishing vessel who had emptied half a magazine into him. He pressed the trigger. The bullet struck Viktor Rashkin in the chest. He reeled backwards, broke through the flimsy banister rail and toppled all the way down to the hall below. He was dead before he was half-way down.

Later

The Baron de Graer, president of the Banque du Nord of Brussels, arrived in Copenhagen by plane the same afternoon as the events just described took place in Nyhavn. He met Jules Beaurain, Louise Hamilton and Ed Cottel in a suite at the Royal Hotel. At the request of Beaurain he handed to Cottel photocopies of a whole series of bank statements, many emanating from highly-respected establishments in the Bahamas, Brussels and Luxembourg City. They showed in detail the movements of millions of dollars transferred via complex routes from certain American conglomerates to the Stockholm Syndicate.

"I'll take these at once, if I may," Cottel said, and left for another part of the hotel. The reporter he had earlier contacted from the Washington Post had just arrived and wished to fly back to Washington the same night with the photocopies.

"People are impressed with documents, Jules," the Baron said as he drank the black coffee Louise had poured.

"Documents can be concocted to say anything you want them to say. But print them in a newspaper and they are taken for gospel."

"It's the end result that counts," Beaurain agreed.

Ed Cottel also returned to Washington the same evening. In addition to the incriminating bank statements, he had handed the reporter photocopies of the contents of the red file Viktor Rashkin had dropped from his brief-case when disguised as Norling he had fled in his float-plane from the devastated house outside the Swedish capital. The file named names — the company executives of American and European conglomerates who had approved the contributions to the Stockholm Syndicate. Unfortunately many were financial supporters of the President of the United States.

In Copenhagen Superintendent Marker was spared any hint of an international incident since the dead body of Viktor Rashkin was in due course buried as that of an unknown Frenchman, Louis Garnet, identified by the passport found on him. The same neat solution also was applied to the man armed with the Armalite rifle. Marker did later hint to an exceptionally inquisitive reporter that information from Paris led him to believe the deaths of the two Frenchmen were a gangland killing, something to do with the Union Corse. The reporter filed his story but it never appeared; a plane crash with a high casualty rate took over the space instead.

On 4 November in the United States the incumbent president was defeated in a landslide victory by his opponent. Much of the credit for the victory was laid at the door of the Post reporter who had, after a relentless search, come up with evidence suggesting the holier-than-thou occupant of the White House had not lived up to his image.