The Stockholm Syndicate

by Colin Forbes

  He was talking to Sonia Karnell who had just returned to his room in his new Elsinore headquarters, the Hotel Skandia. Black Helmet was dressed like a man, and wore a white nautical cap. From a paper carrier bag she took out a railway man cap and threw it on the bed. She was dressed entirely in black.

  "That damned thing gave me a headache - it's too tight. Do you think I'd be here if I hadn't evaded the railway police, for God's sake? As for the consignment, all the heroin is now packed inside the wagon containing packing material."

  "No need to get upset, my dear," Horn replied mildly. I was only..."

  "You were only sitting in this hotel room drinking coffee and generally relaxing while I risked a prison sentence of Christ knows how many years carting that suitcase round the rail yard and secreting it aboard the right wagon. Here's the number."

  She unzipped her breast pocket, took out a folded piece of paper and threw it at Horn. As she turned away he grasped her by the elbow, spun her round and threw her backwards onto the bed. Then Horn was on top of her, his eyes remote and devoid of all expression as he stared down at her like a specimen from his collection of rare editions which he suspected was a fake.

  "You will never speak to me in that way again or I will arrange for a certain Gunther Baum to break your neck."

  "Drive like hell to Elsinore. The main station. Use the siren to shove other traffic into the ditch!"

  The uniformed policeman who drove Bodel Marker, Chief of Intelligence, dived behind the wheel of the car he had brought to the front of Politigarden. Marker had already settled himself in the back and his chubby face was still flushed with fury. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, the driver caught the expression in Marker's eyes, a look of sheer blue murder. He concentrated on getting out of Copenhagen and onto the motorway where he could make speed to Elsinore.

  It had happened as soon as Marker had returned to his office. To his intense annoyance he found his superior had let himself into his private sanctum with the master key. Marker had walked round his desk, sat in his own chair and stared at the man waiting in the visitor's seat. Marker said not a word, forcing the other to take the initiative.

  "Sorry to break in here, so to speak, Marker."

  "Well, now you're here..." A deliberate absence of sir.

  "This huge consignment of heroin which it is rumoured is passing through here on its way to Sweden. You know what I'm talking about, Marker?"

  "I will in a minute, I expect," retorted the normally amiable Intelligence chief.

  "Forget you ever heard about it, Marker."

  "I need that in writing. At once. I'll call my secretary."

  "Hold on a moment." The thin man with the curled lips and supercilious manner held out a restraining hand. Marker's own hand was half-way towards the intercom which would summon his secretary. "This isn't something we want on record, if you understand me."

  "I don't understand you. Where does this instruction emanate from? I want the original source."

  "That is hardly your business, Marker." Sharply, an attempt to wrest the initiative back from his subordinate.

  "Come to think of it, my secretary isn't necessary." Marker leaned back in his chair and smiled for the first time since he had entered his office, the soul of amiability. "You see when I sat down I automatically pressed the button which set in motion my cassette recorder."

  "You!" Uncontrollable rage or a shattering reaction of terror? Marker, despite the closeness with which he had watched his superior's reaction, could not decide which emotion was uppermost. Of one thing he was sure; it was a whole minute before his visitor could bring himself to speak. He pulled out a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and openly mopped his forehead which was beaded with sweat.

  "I cannot persuade you ..."

  To erase the tapes, to use a well-known phrase?" Marker completed for him. "On the contrary, my first action will be to hand the cassette to a certain person with instructions that in the event of a third attempt on my life being successful it will be handed immediately to a journalist working for the German publication, Der Spiegel. I doubt whether the Stockholm Syndicate yet controls that particular magazine," Marker added.

  "I don't understand you, Marker. I must go now. As far as I am concerned this conversation never took place," he ended stiffly and left the office.

  Within seven minutes Marker had also left the office and was on his way to the car he had summoned. No tape existed; no machine had been activated. But Marker would never forget the look on his superior's face when he had bluffed him that such was the case.

  Arriving by train, all passengers alight at Elsinore unless aboard an international express bound for Sweden - because there the rail line ends. Its only extension is to the water's edge - across a road and up an elevated ramp inside the bowels of one of the giant train ferries which constantly ply back and forth across the Øresund.

  In June the channel neck of the Øresund - at this narrowest point no more than four miles across to the Swedish port of Halsingborg - is alive with the monster train and car ferries which have several different landing points round Elsinore harbour. On the morning Beaurain and Kellerman arrived in the Mercedes, the channel was enlivened further by yachts nimbly sailing and turning to keep out of the passage of the lumbering ferries.

  Beaurain's 280E, without which he always felt lost, had been driven from Brussels to Copenhagen by the English driver, Albert, who always arrived at his destination in the nick of time. He reached the Royal Hotel fifteen minutes before Beaurain was due to depart for Elsinore. "Why Elsinore?" Albert had asked as he drank his third cup of tea supplied by room service in Beaurain's room. "Isn't that Hamlet's castle?"

  "Because," Beaurain explained as he completed his packing, "one of the key Danish police chiefs we have just seen has confirmed a huge Syndicate consignment of heroin is passing along the usual route on its way to Stockholm. The route? Amsterdam to Copenhagen to Elsinore - where it crosses the water to Sweden."

  "A vulnerable link in the chain," Albert observed between gulps of the dark tea, 'that bit where it crosses water. Means it has to go on a boat, and where do they put the consignment aboard the train?"

  "Albert has put his finger on the key factor as usual," Beaurain observed. He told the Englishman briefly about the suitcase Louise Hamilton had seen driven through the night to a house in Elsinore which backed onto the railway line.

  Albert Brown, a small, wiry man of forty-two with a face permanently screwed up in an expression of concentration, was an ex-racing driver, a Londoner, and a man who never took anything at face value. He had joined Telescope when his wife had been killed brutally by a murderer released from Broadmoor lunatic asylum.

  "So," he concluded after listening to Beaurain, 'the Syndicate may still have to put this whopping great consignment aboard one of the international expresses crossing these straits to Sweden?"

  "If the heroin really is in that suitcase," Beaurain pointed out.

  "And if it is and we can locate it, we deal the Syndicate a good jab in the jugular."

  "We do more than that," Beaurain said as he prepared to leave the room. "We create such havoc we'll provoke a major reaction against Telescope by the Syndicate which is what I want. A head-on collision, as Goldschmidt phrased it. The aim is to wipe out this evil thing."

  "We may be the only ones who can do it," Albert said soberly, so soberly that Beaurain stopped picking up his case and stared at him because he had never known Albert, normally chirpy, adopt such a grim tone. 'I had a word with Monique before I started my mad dash here," Albert continued. "She gave me a message she said she'd sooner not trust to a telephone conversation. The chap who she spoke to was a Dr. Goldschmidt from Bruges. Chap who controls the Syndicate answers to name of Hugo."

  "Goldschmidt told me about Hugo he's one of the three-man directorate running the Syndicate," "That seems to be the point. I gathered Goldschmidt has only just come up with this piece of information - -Monique said he seemed to be working l
ike a beaver trying to dig up data for you. This Hugo nobody has a clue as to who he is – may, according to Goldschmidt's latest information, not be one of the three-man directorate at all. He thinks there could be a fourth man."

  With Beaurain behind the wheel, Kellerman by his side and Albert sleeping in the back, they overtook the police car containing Bodel Marker on the motorway to Elsinore.

  Marker had heard about Beaurain's 280E and the way he drove it in an emergency; half the police chiefs of Europe had heard about it. Nervous about a third attempt on his life, he looked back at Beaurain who waved to him through the windscreen. Astounded, the Danish Chief of Intelligence relaxed back in his seat.

  "What's Marker doing on the same road as us?" Kellerman asked.

  "Something must have occurred to him later after he went back to his office - or something happened. This way we get to Elsinore much earlier. Just sit back and relax."

  It was the last attitude Kellerman felt like adopting. The police car containing Marker surged ahead, its siren screaming non-stop. Beaurain pressed his foot down and followed in the wake of Marker's vehicle, using it as a trail-blazer.

  They passed traffic which had pulled into the slow lane on hearing the approaching siren. Marker's car sailed along the cleared highway, far exceeding the speed limit, and behind him sailed Beaurain's Mercedes, forming a convoy of two vehicles, and when Marker kept glancing back through his rear window Beaurain met the glances with an expression of imperturbable confidence.

  Both vehicles arrived at the open space in front of the entrance to Elsinore's railway station with a screech of tyres as their drivers jammed on the brakes. Beaurain had just switched off his engine when Marker jumped out of the rear of his car and strode back to the Mercedes with a grim expression. The Belgian pressed the button which automatically lowered his window and smiled up at Marker.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Marker demanded. "I could have you booked for dangerous driving."

  "Along with your own driver?"

  "Dammit! This is an emergency."

  "If it's the heroin, we may be able to help. Don't look behind you, Bodel. Not obviously, anyway. Standing at the entrance to the station is a dark-haired girl called Louise staring watching the ferry coming into the harbour. She's wearing blue and carrying a shoulder-bag. She might just know the present whereabouts of the heroin. Incidentally, while we're asking questions, what made you suddenly decide to take a lively interest in the beautiful old port of Elsinore?"

  "Heroin," Marker replied tersely, his lips scarcely moving. He leant both elbows on the edge of the Mercedes window and glanced casually at Louise Hamilton who stood watching the bucket chain of giant ferries plying back and forth across the Øresund with brightly-coloured yachts like toys sailing between the giants. Sweden was a distant stretch of flat coast, a row of miniature oil storage tanks and a plume of smoke.

  "Why Elsinore?" Beaurain asked as he lit a cigarette. Marker took the cigarette off him before he could put it in his own mouth. "Thought you'd given up," the Belgian continued, taking out a fresh cigarette.

  The Dane's chubby face was thin-lipped with tension, his eyes icy and hard. He smoked the cigarette while he watched Louise Hamilton and scanned the dock area. A Volvo estate wagon pulled into the kerb a dozen yards behind the Mercedes and Beaurain watched it in his mirror. Marker seemed to be gazing in the opposite direction when he spoke.

  "Man behind the wheel of that Volvo is Dr. Benny Horn, rare book dealer with a shop on Nyhavn in Copenhagen. And, as I told you, he's possibly one of the three most powerful men today in the whole of Western Europe. Why has he stopped behind you, I wonder? Sight of my police car or your Mercedes."

  "Black Helmet!"

  Kellerman said the words almost involuntarily. He had started watching in the wing mirror on his side and she was framed perfectly, the girl he had first seen talking to the receptionist at the Royal Hotel while he watched from the quick-service restaurant.

  Black Helmet. Now the description fitted her beautifully and it occurred to Kellerman she looked as sexy as hell - her helmet of black hair cut close to the head without any covering, and wearing a pair of black slacks and a black windcheater. The same outfit as Louise Hamilton's; she even carried a shoulder-bag and only the colour of the outfits was different.

  "What was that, Foxbel?" Marker asked quickly. "Black What? You know the lady?"

  "We think she may be closely linked with Benny Horn," he told Marker. "We haven't seen them together but one of our people gave us descriptions of two people who drove north last night to Elsinore with a suitcase."

  "Suitcase the size you described in my office?" Marker interjected.

  "The very same. The descriptions of the two people fit Benny Horn and the girl passing the Volvo behind us."

  "Horn signalled her to keep moving, not to stop by the Volvo," the Dane observed. Not once since the Volvo had pulled in behind them had Marker turned in that direction. He seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. And he was right, Kellerman thought Black Helmet had been about to get into the Volvo when Horn had given her a warning signal - a brief movement of the hand - to keep moving.

  Black Helmet had speeded up her pace, passing the parked Mercedes without a glance. Reaching the corner she was able to see the exit from the station, and noticed Louise Hamilton standing there. So, the girl she had followed in the early hours had returned to Elsinore. The obvious assumption was that she had used the booby-trapped Citroën. Louise Hamilton should have been dead. Black Helmet reacted instinctively, and walked rapidly across the front of the station as though on her way into the booking-hall. She swerved, changing direction suddenly, coming up silently behind the English girl.

  Her right hand was now held motionless by her side, the hand stiff, the edge hard. Her intention was to brush against the English girl, move past her a few feet, swing round and scream, "Thief! You took my purse!" In the ensuing struggle one swift blow to the side of the neck would render her target unconscious.

  "What the hell is happening?" exclaimed Marker. He had seen the Volvo move away, gliding off so unexpectedly there was no time to stop it. Seconds later Black Helmet had swivelled towards the station and then changed direction to come up behind Beaurain's girl. Marker was thrown off-balance.

  Everyone involved assumed Louise Hamilton was so intent on watching the arriving train ferry that she had not noticed Karnell, who moved with the speed of a cobra. They were wrong. At the very moment Karnell brushed against her side and turned to shout the word "Thief!" Louise Hamilton spun on her heel. "I want you, you bitch!" she hissed. Her right leg snapped forward like a piston, the point of her shoe aimed at Karnell's kneecap. Had the blow fully connected the Swedish girl would never have been able to move once she collapsed on the ground. But Karnell saw the thrust of the shoe and started to spin her own body. The shoe tip cut the side of her leg but she was only hurt, not eliminated.

  Staggering back towards the kerb, her right hand scrabbled inside her shoulder-bag for her gun. There was a burst of sound as a motor-bike revved its powerful engine. The machine had been parked close to the ferry point by the kerb, the man sitting on it dressed in helmet, goggles and leather jacket, apparently watching the frenetic activity in the Øresund. Now he sped across the road, over the rail tracks, and towards Karnell.

  Louise tried to reach them, to topple the machine over sideways, but Karnell was seconds too fast. Despite her injury she made it to the edge of the sidewalk, swung one leg over the pillion seat of the waiting machine, and grabbed the rider round the waist as he surged off with a roar of power in the direction the Volvo had taken.

  Beaurain did not even reach to turn on the ignition: he was watching Louise's reaction. She was staring in a fresh direction - towards the rail line where inter national expresses waited to move along the lines over the road, up the ramp and inside a ferry which would take them to Sweden.

  "Bodel, I think they tried a diversion - at least that girl who got aw
ay on the motor-bike did. Her reaction was based on alarm - alarm at seeing a colleague of mine, whom she recognised, watching the ferry terminal.We don't go chasing after high-powered motorbikes - that may well be just what they would like."

  "Why?" Marker demanded irritably

  "Because," Beaurain said grimly, spacing out his words with great deliberation, 'the attempt at a diversion suggests to me that what you're after is under your nose." He got out of the Mercedes and closed the door with a hard clunk.

  "They would have guards, watchers," Marker protested.

  "They had," Beaurain pointed out. "The big man himself was in the Volvo. His girl was about to patrol round the station. There was a third Syndicate member - the man on the motor-bike. There will be more."

  "I get the sensation that I'm already being watched," said Marker, his hands plunged deep inside his jacket pockets.

  "You are - I have at least a dozen men within shooting distance of where we're walking now."

  "I said earlier that Telescope was the only organisation capable of destroying the Stockholm Syndicate," Marker murmured in an undertone. They stopped as they reached Louise.

  "Can I talk?" she asked, covering her mouth with a cupped hand as she lit one of her rare cigarettes. She wasn't even looking at them. Curious, Marker glanced quickly along the axis of her observation. All he could see were two large open-sided goods wagons. Behind them an engine was moving along the line to link up with them. A railway man with a flag guided the engine-driver. It all seemed perfectly normal to Marker.

  "This is it," said Louise, once Beaurain had confirmed that she could speak in front of Marker, who was still mystified. He glanced around more carefully, suddenly aware that the previously almost deserted area in front of the station had become populated. Several passengers had drifted out of the reception hall into the open. Tourists with

  knapsacks on their backs, two men holding fishing rods. At least Marker thought they were fishing rods.