The Stockholm Syndicate (6 page)

"Of course it exists. We all know it," Cottel said with disgust, 'but we don't like admitting it. We do know that millions of dollars have moved to Western Europe to help finance it. We suspect that several American multi-national corporations have transferred vast sums to the Syndicate. Furthermore ..." He raised his voice at Voisin again, who closed his mouth. "Furthermore," he repeated, 'the sums of money at the Syndicate's disposal are so enormous that whoever controls it wields power almost without precedent. Gentlemen, I suggest the first priority of this meeting is not Telescope it is to co-operate in tracking down and destroying the Syndicate." He looked at the Commissioner. "I have finished, M. Voisin for the moment at any rate."

"I agree with Mr. Cottel," said Peter Hausen.

"Commissioner Voisin, I agree with my colleague, Peter Hausen, and, therefore, with Mr. Cottel," the French counter-espionage representative added crisply.

"Shall we have a show of hands?" enquired Beaurain gently.

"That will not be necessary," Voisin snapped, anxious to avoid any further demonstration of the united front against him. "The first requirement, surely, is to prove the Syndicate exists."

"Assume it exists and go on from there," growled Cottel and lit a cigarette.

"Who is behind it then?" demanded Voisin.

"The Kremlin," replied Cottel.

It was 7.30 p.m. when Louise Hamilton arrived at Beaurain's apartment off the Boulevard Waterloo. Confident she had not been followed, she parked the Mercedes in the ancient garage and let herself inside the first-floor apartment.

The living-room was expensively furnished, the kind of place you would expect a widower to live in - except that it was tidy and organised. After her experience at police headquarters she didn't feel hungry, so she slipped off her shoes and flopped onto a couch. The reaction was setting in. She could hear the voice of the detective in her mind:
I'm shooting - she resisted arrest!

The entire Brussels police force knew Jules Beaurain. He had always been popular because he treated his men fairly and was incorruptible. Since his resignation many of them especially at headquarters where he was a frequent visitor had come to know Louise as "Jules' friend'. They knew nothing about her work for Telescope. The phone rang. She lifted the receiver and said, "
Oui
?"

"Louise Hamilton,
n'est-ce pas
? You had better get back to your own country by the first plane."

"Who is this? I love callers without the guts to identify themselves," Louise said coolly.

The voice was a woman's, probably in her early thirties. Her command of English was good but there was an accent Louise couldn't place. Let the little bitch chatter on a while longer, she thought.

"If you hang around we have people expert in breaking legs. Then they go on to the hands. You are left-handed,
n'est-ce pas
?"

"Why not come and deliver the message yourself?" Louise suggested. "I'd love to meet you face to face."

"When your face has been ruined you will not talk in this way, I am sure of that!" The voice ended with a note of venom, and the connection was broken.

Louise replaced the receiver slowly, automatically noting the time the call had ended. Beaurain had an unlisted number - how had the woman managed to obtain it?

The second - more alarming - thought was how the caller had known that she would find Louise in the apartment. It was the first time for over a week she had entered the place. She might have been trailed from police headquarters but she had taken great pains to see that she was
not
followed. That left only one other equally unsettling solution. The apartment was being watched on a round-the-clock basis.

She went over to the window and peered through the net curtain. Below she saw the narrow, deserted road. She stared at the first-floor windows opposite but they were also masked. Were there watchers behind the net curtains?

Louise went into the kitchen to calm herself by preparing dinner. Somewhere in the same city another woman was probably sitting down to her meal after making a phone call.

"Did she sound scared?" enquired Dr. Berlin as he scooped a generous helping of melon.

"No!" Sonia Karnell had paused before reluctantly deciding that - as always - it was much safer to tell the truth to Berlin. He always knew when you shaded a meaning. Outright lying she would not have considered. "She sounded like a woman who was expecting just such a warning and had worked out what her reply would be."

"Like you, she is tough, ruthless - and well-trained. A pity she has to be the sacrificial goat."

Sonia Karnell, dark-haired, five feet six tall, and thirty-two years old, was Swedish by birth, a native of Stockholm and fluent in six languages, including English. Despite the heat of the evening, Berlin wore his normal black suit across his ample form. As he spoke he looked frequently at Karnell across the table to gauge her reactions. He was always watching the people around him, especially those closest and none was closer than Sonia Karnell like a man whose greatest fear in life is betrayal.

"We flew here today just so I could phone her?" she asked.

"Eat your melon - it helps replace moisture. Yes, we flew here partly to make a phone call. Had Beaurain answered, you would have made the same menacing noises about Hamilton - but this may be more effective. When he hears what happened."

"A sacrificial goat. What does that mean, Otto?"

"Let me eat. The plan is based on the fact that the first complete meeting of the Syndicate takes place near Sweden in two weeks' time. We have a problem because Telescope has as its objective our destruction."

"How does my phone call fit in? I don't understand."

"Patience!" The eyes behind the thick pebble glasses studied her. "I have contacts inside the European police - high-level informers. There is a discreet understanding between Beaurain and certain of his old colleagues who agree with his methods. It was a police contact who informed me Beaurain is Telescope's chief, and determined to wipe out the Stockholm Syndicate. So we must destroy them first before the meeting, otherwise there could be a catastrophe. Beaurain is getting too close."

Sonia Karnell, her white face framed by her close-cut hair, started eating her melon to please Berlin. The heat was appalling! "Why threaten Beaurain's tart?"

To distract him. One thing is needed before our soldiers can attack – we must know the location of Telescope's main base, which we should learn soon from Serge Litov."

"What's going to happen to her?"

"Gunther Baum will deal with her. That will shake Beaurain's nerve."

She stopped eating, unable to swallow. "You are going to use that animal on her?"

"He will produce the necessary effect - fury on the part of Beaurain. This may well cause him to make a mistake. Terrify those you can. Those you can't: upset their balance."

"And are we going back to Bruges?"

"For a short time, yes. Until Litov returns with the location of Telescope's base. After all, I have to attend to my rare book business if we are to make a living!"

"So this woman threatened you?" Beaurain said as he paced round his living-room. It was ten o'clock: as usual, Voisin's meeting had gone on for hours. Beau-rain was very disturbed by the fact that the caller had been able to obtain his phone number; by the fact that it was Louise who had been threatened; above all by the bizarre incident at police headquarters.

"She gabbled on about having my legs and hands broken," Louise said calmly, 'as well as cutting my face. A regular little madam. I'd like five minutes alone with her. Oh, and none of this would take place if I caught the first plane back to England. She was trying to rattle
you
, Jules."

"I wonder who the hell it was," he said.

"The Syndicate, of course. They're stepping up the pressure."

"They're certainly doing that - to get into the meeting this evening I had to push aside a guard who had been put on the door to keep me out. That can only have come from the Syndicate."

She sat up straight. "Surely you don't think Commissioner Voisin could have been got at?"

"That does seem unlikely but someone at that meeting must have asked to keep me away. As you can imagine, Voisin would be glad to oblige he's too lazy to take any initiative himself. I don't know. It should have been impossible for the Syndicate to penetrate Brussels police headquarters - but they managed. Those two men were certainly not detectives. What's getting me is how they ensured the reception desk was unmanned."

"Just before they came in I heard the policeman on duty take a call. When they arrived he had disappeared."

Beaurain crashed his fist into his palm. "That was Pierre Florin behind the counter when I arrived."

"Has he been with the force for some time?"

"Only twenty bloody years. I'll have a few questions to ask him!"

"That woman is succeeding in rattling you."

"What's rattling me," he snapped, 'is the penetration this criminal organisation has apparently achieved. We shall have to release Serge Litov immediately - and see where he leads us."

"You were going to keep him longer," she objected, gripping his arms tightly. "Now they are making you react to their timing."

"Don't forget what Henderson noticed the night Litov tried to shoot me - the safety catch still on his Luger. With a professional like that! They took the opportunity I gave them in order to exploit it themselves. We are using Litov to find the source of the Syndicate. They're hoping Litov will escape and tell them where we're based. Litov is in the middle and probably knows it. After today's happenings I'm going to speed up the process and release Litov."

Beaurain broke off as the doorbell rang repeatedly. Louise tensed and let go of his arms. "Who could that be?" she asked quietly.

"It's the special ring I arranged with Ed Cottel. He said he'd call round."

"You hope it's Ed," she said, extracting her pistol from her handbag.

"You're right - from now on we don't make any assumptions. And, by the way, he's here on a double mission - to help track down the Syndicate, which he is convinced exists and also to wipe out Telescope."

It was indeed Ed Cottel outside and when Beaurain had re-locked the door, the American, who knew Louise Hamilton well, hugged her, nodding his acceptance of a large Scotch.

"This new Syndicate scares the guts out of me," he said. "I've been talking to Washington - someone I can trust - since that for-ever-and-a-day meeting. The fragments we keep picking up frighten me more each time."

"Why did you say at the meeting you thought the Kremlin were behind the Syndicate?"

"Because I can tap a computer."

Ed Cottel was a slim man in his early fifties. His most outstanding characteristics were his hooked nose, his West Coast accent and his restrained manner reflected in the Brooks Brothers suits he invariably wore. He reminded Beaurain more of an Englishman than an American. He was so independent-minded that the Belgian was surprised Washington had chosen him to come to Europe to collaborate with its security services.

Tap a computer, Ed? What are you driving at?"

"It's just about the biggest computer in the world, and it contains records on every person of prominence in politics and industry, including the top Russians. You've heard of Viktor Rashkin?"

"The Kissinger of the Kremlin - but so much quieter that the international press doesn't know he exists," Beaurain replied.

"At the moment he is First Secretary at the Russian Embassy in Stockholm." Cottel peered at the bottom of his glass. "First Secretary that's a laugh. Leonid Brezhnev's wonder boy and top trouble-shooter - and trouble-maker - and he's only a First Secretary. It's the usual cover, of course. Moves about a lot, does our Viktor," he said thoughtfully.

"You said you can tap a computer," Beaurain reminded him. "How does this link up with Rashkin?"

"At Voisin's comic meeting I mentioned the money transferred from the States to finance Syndicate operations over here. I got a tip while I was in Washington, and I went to the computer and found out about a recent transfer of five million dollars from an Arizona bank to one here in Brussels. The recipient at this end, I'm pretty sure, was Viktor Rashkin. Did you know," he enquired casually, 'that Rashkin is in Brussels right now? Flew in with some other people aboard his private jet from Stockholm. It's now under observation at Brussels airport."

"And where did he go in Brussels? You seem to know more about my own back yard than I do."

"Only because of the computer. We lost Rashkin the moment he left the airport with his friends."

"Friends?"

"A man and a woman and before you ask, we don't know who they are and we have no description. So we're not always that smart, Jules." He stared up at the ceiling, carefully not looking at them. "One thing you might find interesting. Voisin kept me back after the meeting had closed. I had said in a written report on Telescope that we might just be able to identify its personnel or at least the leaders. Want to hear the damn fool mistake I made?"

"Up to you, Ed," Beaurain said, with a show of indifference. Curled up again on the sofa Louise looked tense. "I could do with some more coffee if you have the strength."

"Of course."

She walked to the kitchen, able to hear the conversation through the door. Cottel's reference to identifying the people in Telescope had shaken her. How the hell could he possibly do that?

"Have another drink, Ed." Beaurain sat in Louise's place on the sofa where he could study the American without appearing too interested. He folded his arms. "You stayed behind with Voisin. That must have been entertaining."

"In my report I suggested that the key men and women running Telescope might have suffered personal losses from terrorism. Wives, sisters, husbands, girlfriends. I suggested we made a list of all those who had recently suffered personal loss through criminal and terrorist action. Among that list we may spot likely candidates because I'm sure that was the motive for starting up Telescope. Disgust with the incompetence of governments. Dammit, Jules, the motive is one of mankind's most powerful - revenge."

"That list would take years to build up."

"Not using that computer I have access to."

"Oh, I see. And you told Voisin?"