The Stockholm Syndicate (9 page)

Kellerman glanced over his shoulder before climbing inside the next cab which drew up. Joel Wilde was close behind him. You never heard the bastard until it was too late. Kellerman lowered the window and looked up at him.

"Thanks for everything. I'm going to make the airport in good time."

"You're welcome. Our love to Sharon. A smooth flight."

Joel watched the cab pull away and turned round to face the station exits. No-one else was coming for a cab. No-one was heading for a private car. But during the next few hours the Syndicate would send someone to take out any man they detected following Litov.

I'll chew his balls off."

At the headquarters of Operation Leper, Henderson put down the phone, caught Louise Hamilton's amused eye and clapped a hand over his mouth.

"That was Joel Wilde from Nord station. The Leper left the express – as you thought he might - and has taken a cab to the airport. More to the point, Max Kellerman is running his own railway again. He got off too and he's followed the Leper in another cab to the airport."

"Max is a good man, one of our best," Beaurain commented.

"Where is the Leper heading for?"

Henderson stood up and went over to study the air routes marked on his wall-map. He moved a blue pin - Max Kellerman - to a position on the road to the airport. Just ahead of this he placed the red pin representing Serge Litov.

Beaurain joined him and checked his watch against the wall-clock. "You'll hear soon enough. Get someone to look up all the airline flights taking off within the next two hours. I don't think the Leper will linger longer than he need. You mind the shop till we get back, Jock. We're going to take a train to Bruges and have a word with my old friend, Dr. Goldschmidt. It's just conceivable he can tell us the name of the man who is running the Syndicate."

Chapter Six

Gunther Baum sat perfectly still in the passenger seat of the Renault, which had been driven by the lean-faced man beside him. On his companion's lap lay the brief-case containing the loaded Luger. Baum had not yet requested the weapon.

As during his visit to Pierre Florin he was proceeding with caution. Again he wore a straw hat and tinted glasses. In his left hand he held a photo of Frans Darras and his wife, Rosa. It was best to proceed in a methodical manner.

"I trust they are both on board," Baum said. "And at least we have found the barge where it was supposed to be you can see the aerial."

He held out his gloved hand. His companion had not replied, knowing Baum often thought aloud to make sure there was nothing he had overlooked before he completed a job. When it involved two people at once it always required a little more finesse.

Baum took the gun, made sure the silencer was screwed on tight and opened the door with his other gloved hand. "You follow with your tool-kit in three minutes counting from now." His companion checked his own watch quickly. In Baum's world seconds counted.

Baum climbed deliberately and slowly. Reaching the towpath he held the Luger behind his back and looked around. The barge was moored and its deck was deserted but he heard voices from the cabin below. There was no-one on the tow-path. The one feature Baum missed was a small boy perched in the branches of an apple tree. Baum stepped aboard and pocketed the photo.

Frans and Rosa Darras were arguing so loudly they did not hear Baum descend the steps into the cabin. They would not have heard him anyway. Coming out of the daylight it was difficult to see clearly in the cabin and behind his tinted glasses Baum blinked.

"I have a message and some money for Frans and Rosa Darras," he said.

Startled, the bargee turned quic kly. "That's us. Who are you?"

"Both of you will turn and face the wall."

Baum had produced the Luger from behind his back and aimed it at a position between them. I have come to remove your transceiver," he continued in his sing-song French. "Face the wall until we have completed the work. Behave yourselves in an orderly manner and you can rest assured no harm ..."

They had both turned together to face the wall. Instinctively Frans grasped Rosa's hand to reassure her. Baum was still talking when he pressed the muzzle against the base of Frans Darras' neck and fired once. Darras was falling when the muzzle pressed into the neck of Rosa who, frozen with terror, was unable to move. Baum pressed the trigger a second time.

His companion appeared with his brief-case and tool-kit. Baum handed the Luger to him at once and the weapon w as returned to the brief-case. He stood quite still while his companion swiftly removed the transceiver and its power-operated aerial. On the canal bank above them the little boy in the apple tree had remained in its branches. He was sucking an orange as Baum reappeared at the top of the steps, and it slipped from his fingers, hitting the tow-path with a clunk. Baum turned and scanned the area.

Hidden amid the branches no more than twenty feet away, the boy watched the sunlight flashing off the tinted lenses as Baum continued searching while his companion also reappeared on deck, the brief-case in one hand, the transceiver and aerial awkwardly held under his arm. He was sweating with the effort.

"You heard something?" he asked.

Time to get back to the car," said Baum.

They were driving along the main highway, heading for Brussels, when a train passed in the opposite direction. Inside a first-class compartment Beaurain and Louise sat facing each other, gazing out of the window. They had a glimpse of a canal, of several barges moored close to a lock, barges with clotheslines hung along the decks, TV masts and radio aerials projecting into the sunlight.

"Those people must lead a life of their own they even have TV," Louise remarked.

Beaurain was staring out without seeing anything, his mind on Goldschmidt. He nodded automatically, but registered what she had said to him.

"Shot in the back of the neck? Pierre Florin?"

Chief Inspector Flamen of Homicide sighed inwardly. Voisin had a habit of repeating statements you made.

"Chief Superintendent Beaurain had requested to see him as soon as he returned from sick leave," Flamen continued and then waited for the expected reaction.

"Ex-Chief Superintendent Beaurain, you mean. Is it not peculiar that the policeman Beaurain wished to see should be murdered before he saw him?" demanded Voisin.

"It could have significance," Flamen agreed.

"Had I better see Beaurain?"

"As you wish, sir - but it might be better if I saw him first. That way you won't find yourself in any embarrassing situation, if I may so phrase it."

"You may indeed, Flamen." Voisin smirked. Clearly Willy Flamen understood the delicacy of his position, the political importance of never having to take a decision that might backfire.

"Found in his apartment," Flamen continued. "No sign of a break-in."

"So he knew his murderer," Voisin jumped in.

"It would seem so," Flamen agreed tactfully, although he knew it didn't necessarily follow. "Shot in the back of the neck," he repeated. "Reminds me of something nasty but I just can't recall what it is."

"You ha d better leave for Brussels now, before Bruges is flooded with police," Dr. Berlin told Sonia Karnell inside the tiny house in the Hoogste van Brugge.

"Something is going to happen?"

"A couple of loose ends are being tidied up by Gunther Baum - Frans and Rosa Darras aboard the barge. They were getting slack it was you who warned me when you delivered the
Zenith
signal about Beaurain."

Karnell had stood up to leave. Her brow was crinkled with apprehension.

"What have I been responsible for? I thought you were only going to warn them."

"It is a warning!" Berlin raised his voice and used the fingers of one hand to stroke the curved ends of his moustache. "A warning to the other people running our communications. But that's why there may be police activity round this area soon. Also because I have decided to teach Dr. Goldschmidt a lesson for spying on me with that photographer in the house opposite."

"Not Baum again?" she asked quietly.

"You are too soft-hearted."

"You are getting more brutal and I don't really like it."

He relented and decided to tell her. "Dirk is going to deliver one of his toys. He is a gentle soul. Now run along and I'll meet you later at the Brussels apartment before we go to the airport together."

She nodded and left to find a cab for the station. Dirk Mondy ran the Bruges office when Berlin was not there. What toy could he be presenting to Goldschmidt?

As she left the house and headed down the narrow cobbled street she was relieved that it was not Baum who was calling. Even the mention of Baum, whom she had never met, terrified her.
I wouldn't know him if he came up my own stairs in Stockholm
, she thought.

At Bruges station Louise and Beaurain had to wait several minutes until a cab arrived, bringing a passenger to the station. The door opened, a girl wearing a windcheater stepped out, reached into her handbag for her purse and caught sight of Beaurain. For a fraction of a second she froze, then recovered, paid the fare and hurried into the station.

"Holiday Inn," Beaurain told the driver. It was easier than explaining how to get to Dr. Goldschmidt's address in a nearby side street. "This is one of the most beautiful towns in Europe," Beaurain remarked as the cab moved off. "There's an area with canals and ancient bridges with willows dripping branches in the water. It is just the sort of place I'd hide up in if I were running some shady outfit."

"You noticed that girl who got out of this cab at the station?" Louise asked in a low voice.

"Vaguely. Quite a looker." Beaurain lit a cigarette.

"She was staring at you as though you scared her stiff. Have you ever seen her before?"

"Never in my life. Ah, here we are. I'm looking forward to seeing my old friend."

The Holiday Inn was on the corner of an ancient square the T'Zand. Down the side street where Dr. Goldschmidt lived were old houses, steep-roofed and white. The atmosphere was so peaceful Louise felt ridiculous carrying a pistol.

"Here we are."

Beaurain stopped outside one of the houses which carried an engraved plate on the wall by the door. Avocat. Lawyer. No name. He pressed the bell and glanced down the street. Forty yards away a Volkswagen was parked. A man sat behind the wheel. Impossible to see his face at that distance. The door opened on a chain.

"Your card, please."

"Here, Henri. It is Jules."

"Cautious, isn' t he?" Louise whispered.

A slim-fingered hand took the card, the chain was removed and they stepped into a hallway. The door closed and Dr. Goldschmidt regarded them both, a tall, stooped man with a silver mane of hair and a hawk-like nose. He wore a business suit which could only have been cut in Savile Row and peered at them through a pair of gold-rimmed glasses.

He said mildly: "You are both carrying guns. Correct, Miss Hamilton? No, don't look at Jules for your cue. Am I right?"

"Yes-but how...?"

"Because he's a good bluffer," Beaurain put in. "When we entered the doorway we passed through a metal detector set into the door-frame and the bulb down here in the wall lights up faintly when metal is detected on a visitor. The bluff is he had no way of knowing the metal was a gun so he challenged you with an accusation which threw you off balance. He used to be one of Belgium's most e minent lawyers before he took up ... the collection of rare coins."

"Any more of my secrets you wish to reveal?" Goldschmidt asked with mock waspishness.

"Not at the moment but please don't play games with my best girl."

"Mamsele, a thousand apologies. And such a beautiful assistant."

He ushered them through a doorway into a small but comfortably furnished room overlooking the street. The walls were lined with bookcases, a blue deep-pile carpet covered the floor. Goldschmidt pulled forward a leather armchair for Louise and fussed about her courteously. She looked straight at his penetrating grey eyes and decided she must establish herself or be dismissed as second-rate.

"You are afraid someone is coming to kill you, Dr. Goldschmidt?"

"All the time in my b usiness." He turned to Beaurain who was staring through the window at the parked Volkswagen. "You said on the phone I could speak to Miss Hamilton as though I were talking to you."

"That's true." Beaurain sat down in a second armchair and Goldschmidt took a high-backed chair behind a large antique desk which meant he was looking down at them. He used the technique of intimidation with so many people he even continued it with his friends.

"First things first," said Beaurain in a business-like manner, and took out a long, fat envelope containing 20,000 in Deutschmarks of high-denomination notes. He dropped it on the desk. "My contribution towards your favourite charity."

Goldschmidt picked up the envelope, locked it in a desk drawer without opening it and inclined his head. "Thank you. How can I help you?"