The Stockholm Syndicate

by Colin Forbes

  "Then I must hope for emergencies!"

  On the bridge of the motor vessel Captain Buck-minster watched his radar screen as Beaurain walked a few paces to the huge bridge window and peered into the night. They had picked up speed as soon as Anderson had taken off and he thought he could just discern the lights of the Soviet hydrofoil.

  "You think it's going to work?" Buckminster enquired.

  "If I was in command of Kometa I would be as confused as hell within the next fifteen minutes. And we need only about ten minutes for Henderson and his underwater team to hit Kometa."

  "Let's hope to God it doesn't start moving and rear up on its foils. Henderson will never board her if that happens."

  "Which is why Phase One concerns a convincing-looking Danish coast guard launch," Beaurain replied.

  Captain Andréi Livanov swore silently as Viktor Rashkin appeared. The latter wore a dark blue naval blazer ornamented with gold buttons and pale grey slacks. His step was springy, his manner brisk. He established a sense of his supreme authority with his opening words.

  "Our guests are now comfortable in the main dining-room, so our meeting is about to start. Please proceed at full speed round Bornholm as planned. Get this thing up onto its skis or whatever you call them."

  "Surface piercing foils."

  Livanov, a thin-faced man of fifty who hated having so many Germans aboard, was staring out to the port side where his First Officer, Glasov, was making notes on a pad. Rashkin glanced in the same direction and then his look riveted on what he saw in the distance. The lights of another vessel, and the flashing of a signal lamp.

  "What the hell is that?" he demanded.

  "Danish coast guard vessel," Livanov replied, keeping his words to a minimum. It was one safe way he could express his intense dislike.

  Tell it to go away."

  "You do not tell coast guard vessels to go away," "Why Danish?" rasped Rashkin irritably.

  "Because the island of Bornholm, which we are approaching, happens to belong to Denmark. What is the signal, Glasov?"

  "We are to heave to and identify ourselves,"

  Without referring to Rashkin, the captain gave the order and the former only realised what was happening when he felt the vessel slowing down, noticed the absence of vibrations beneath his feet and realised Kometa was now stationary. Glasov was using a lamp to signal their reply when Viktor Rashkin blew his top.

  "Who gave the order to stop the engines? I shall report this act of sabotage to Moscow,"

  "Report away!" Livanov snapped. "If you want our brief voyage to attract no attention we must adhere to international law, we are already in Danish territorial waters, we must comply with the coast guard requests,"

  He broke off and walked rapidly to the window on the port side. Out of nowhere a float-plane had appeared, had landed on the calm black sea between the Soviet vessel and the coast guard ship. With its navigation lights on it had the appearance of a firefly and its actions were extraordinary. And now that Glasov had completed his reply to the Danish coast guard the lamp was flashing again, sending Kometa a new signal.

  "What's that thing out there?" Rashkin asked.

  "A sea-plane. I think the pilot must be drunk. Let's just hope he doesn't head our way."

  The tiny plane did indeed appear to be in the control - if that was the word - of someone who had imbibed too generously. The machine, scudding over the dark sheet of water, was now zigzagging. It was crazy, quite crazy. And so many things were beginning to happen at once.

  That was the moment when Anderson lowered his Sikorsky over the bridge of Kometa. His arrival was heralded by a steadily increasing roar. Livanov pressed his face against the glass and stared up into the night. What he saw astounded him.

  "Look above us, for God's sake!" he shouted at Rashkin.

  The belly of the chopper, which seemed enormous in the night, was almost touching the top of the bridge. Livanov couldn't see any sign of how many men might be aboard the machine. Livanov could only see that if the pilot came down a few feet more there was going to be a holocaust on his bridge. To add to his agitation the din churned up by the Sikorsky's rotors was deafening. A hand grasped his arm; his First Officer, Glasov, was pulling him gently towards the rear of the bridge so he could get a better view of the Danish coast guard vessel. A searchlight slowly began to sweep the sea from aboard the coast guard ship. Glasov shouted in his captain's ear.

  "That searchlight from the coast guard vessel is searching for a floating mine."

  "Oh, my God!"

  Another voice shouted in his other ear, the voice of Viktor Rashkin, but Livanov detected for the first time a note of uncertainty in the Russian's voice. "Start up the engines! Immediately!"

  "You have seen what is happening just ahead of us and directly in our way?"

  Rashkin followed the line of Livanov's stabbing finger. For the first time he noticed the fresh tactics of the drunken pilot with his bloody float-plane. The machine was crisscrossing over the course Kometa would be taking if the ship did start moving, moving at right-angles to the Soviet hydrofoil.

  "And," Livanov took great delight in informing this swine of a party boss, 'that searchlight is looking for a floating mine. You wish us to move before they have located it? You look forward to the outcome? BOOM,"

  Rashkin was suspicious. Too much was happening at once. But he found the appalling din of the chopper's rotors made it hard to think straight. What was happening? He watched the probing finger of light, fighting to detach himself from his present surroundings, from the noise and the activity which was overwhelming his brain. Never permit the enemy to disorientate you. During the time when he had trained with the KGB his mentor, a veteran, had drilled the advice into his brain. But where was the enemy?

  *

  On the 'coast guard' vessel Regula there were very few lights - no more than the orthodox navigation lights. Harry Johnson, who had monitored the arrival of the KGB security squads in Trelleborg aboard the ferries from Sassnitz in East Germany, commanded Regula.

  A lean, tense man of thirty, his face had a scowl of concentration as he stood close to the helmsman inside the wheelhouse and held his wrist-watch in his right hand. The chronometer on the bridge of Regula was accurate, God knew but it was his wrist-watch he had used to synchronise with all the other timepieces before he had left Firestorm.

  Alongside him stood Jock Henderson clad in his wet suit, oxygen cylinder on his back, face-mask pulled up on his forehead, his automatic weapon clasped in its waterproof sheath. The explosives were inside a separate container strapped to his lower back.

  "You'll be leaving soon, Jock," Johnson said.

  "I know." Henderson was watching the sweep hand of his waterproof watch. He glanced up and checked again: the lights of the Sikorsky which appeared to be sitting on Kometa's bridge; the flitting back and forth of Smithy in his float-plane across the path of the Soviet vessel to discourage any movement. Then the searchlight beam shone out from Regula's stern.

  "Go!" said Johnson.

  Henderson led the twenty-man team over the port side of Regula. Once in the water, his face-mask in position, he passed under the keel of Regula before swimming underwater direct for the hydrofoil. The magnetic compass attached to his left wrist showed him the precise course to follow and this was very important considering what Johnson was going to activate in the near future. It was also the aspect of the assault that had most worried Johnson when discussing it with Henderson earlier.

  "The underwater vibrations will be terrific," he had warned.

  "So we make sure we're far enough away, we get the timing right and we don't feel a thing - or very little," Henderson had replied.

  "Bloody tricky. I wouldn't like to be coming with you."

  "You'd manage."

  "Then there are the bubbles from your breathing apparatus - from the apparatus of twenty men. Those damned bubbles could easily be spotted by lookouts aboard that Soviet hydrofoil."

  "Which is where J
ules Beaurain's scenario comes in - to make them look in the wrong place - or places - at the crucial moment of our approach."

  "There's always the unexpected factor," the dour Johnson had replied. "Like the sonar room on the Soviet vessel."

  Alone inside the sonar room aboard Kometa the Pole, Peter Sobieski, who had agreed to co-operate with Telescope, was studying the screen which clearly showed the approach of Henderson's assault team. On such a calm night it was impossible that they should not show up on one of the screens.

  Peter Sobieski, a thin, nervous but intelligent man in his early forties, was worried. He had taken all possible precautions. The door behind him was locked so no-one could walk in and surprise him. As he continued staring at the screen, one thing above all else preyed on his nerves. The presence of Gunther Baum aboard as head of security. Sobieski knew he could turn a dial which would fog the scanner, obliterating all tell-tale trace of what was moving steadily closer to the hydrofoil second by second. But, try as he might, he was unable to stifle his anxiety about Gunther Baum.

  Gunther Baum was suspicious. As he patrolled the open deck on the port side he tried to work it out: the combination of that ridiculous float-plane, the Danish coast guard ship and the large helicopter hanging over the bridge like a time-bomb. He had suggested to Viktor Rashkin that six of his men riddled the machine with automatic fire.

  "Very clever," Rashkin had commented. "Positively brilliant."

  Baum had basked in the glow of apparent approval. He was totally unprepared for Rashkin's next statement. "Suppose the chopper is also Danish coast guard which seems likely since there is an airfield on Bornholm. We don't want an international incident with the guests we have below! And if I had said, yes, where would the chopper have crashed? Right on top of our bridge! So could you please return to your duties of patrolling the ship and overseeing its defences

  All this had been taken into account when Beaurain worked out his original plan: if the helicopter hovered low enough no-one aboard would dare open fire for fear of causing a conflagration to break out on Kometa. And Baum returned to the open deck fuming, with his companion at his heels, still carrying the brief-case holding the silenced Luger.

  Checking that his men were on the alert, he wandered slowly along the port side staring at the inky blackness of the water. Standing by the rail he found First Officer Glasov, a mean-faced man whose every action was based on how it would advance potential promotion.

  "Everything does not seem to go according to plan," Baum said.

  "If you had been at sea as long as I have that is what you would expect," Glasov replied rudely.

  Baum was under the distinct impression that the rudeness was calculated, that Glasov wished to get rid of him. Shrugging his shoulders he moved over to the starboard side to check the position there. Glasov watched him go and then turned back to stare at the sea. In the distance a searchlight aboard the coast guard ship was probing for something, but immediately underneath where he stood Glasov saw the light from a porthole reflecting on the water. Glasov clenched the rail tight with both hands and stared again to make sure his eyes had not played him a trick. Then he saw it again. A circle of bubbles...

  First Officer Glasov practically threw open the door into the sonar room - at least that was his intention. Unexpectedly the door, locked from the inside, refused to budge and he slammed into what felt like a brick wall. When he had recovered he began hammering his clenched fist against the upper panel. Sobieski took his time about unlocking the door quietly, turning the handle and opening it suddenly. He confronted Glasov, fist raised in mid-air for a fresh onslaught.

  "Have you gone mad?" Sobieski enquired calmly.

  Glasov stared at him in sheer disbelief. He outranked the controller of the sonar room and Sobieski was a Pole which, in Glasov's view, made him a member of an inferior race.

  "You cannot speak to me like that!" Glasov snapped and pushed past the Pole who closed the door and quietly locked it again. Glasov swung round. "Why was the door locked?"

  "Security," Sobieski replied with a wooden expression. "On the instructions of Gunther Baum," he lied.

  To hell with Baum. I think skin-divers are at this very moment approaching us and you should have detected them on the sonar by now."

  Sobieski had returned to his seat in front of his screens and controls and he folded his arms over a half-closed drawer. He had to play for time.

  "These skin-divers," the Pole replied in a flippant tone, 'you have seen them riding across the sea blowing trumpets?"

  "I have seen the bubbles which rise to the surface from their breathing apparatus," Glasov told him between clenched teeth. "So you also must have seen them on your sonar." He stared for the first time at the screen. "What is wrong with the sonar screen?"

  It was the question the Pole had been waiting for and had been dreading. Since he had deliberately fogged the reception with a turn of a switch nothing showed but static. The Russian walked a few paces further and stood in front of the equipment, the corners of his mouth turned down as he glared at the meaningless image. And Glasov knew enough to work the switches - Sobieski surreptitiously checked the time. This was the very moment when the screen must not be clear. And still the ship vibrated with the roar of the Sikorsky's rotors.

  "It is interference," Sobieski explained.

  "We are being jammed? Enemy interference!"

  "Nothing of the sort." Sobieski sounded weary. "No machine is perfect and they all develop bugs. It is likely that there is a ..."

  But then Glasov turned the switch, the static vanished and a clear image showed of an unknown number of swimmers approaching Kometa.

  "You bloody traitor! You will be shot! And your family will be ..."

  Sobieski raised his right hand out of the half-open drawer holding a Walther PPK and fired two shots at point-blank range. Glasov staggered, spun round in a semi-circle and crashed to the deck. The Pole dragged Glasov by the ankles across the planks and bundled him into a huddled heap which fitted the inside of the bottom of a cupboard. Fetching Glasov's cap, which had fallen off, he crammed it over his slumped head, closed both doors and locked the cupboard, then ran to the sonar screen and turned the switch again in case of fresh visitors. The invading force would be aboard within minutes or less provided they were not sported by Gunther Baum's security patrols.

  In the large dining-room of Kometa many small tables had been brought together to create one huge and impressive table around which were seated the guests from so many nations. Even aboard the Titanic there was less power and influence than was gathered that night aboard the Soviet hydrofoil in the Baltic.

  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.