'Where are the others?' Tweed asked.
'Touring round the place. Especially Blade and Newman. That colleague of yours, Blade, wants to see everything. Even had a look at the toilets. Some kind of specialist?'
'He does my leg work.' Tweed kept his voice low. 'Sea-mines. Thirty of them, as I mentioned. What do they suggest to you?'
'A plan to block the Maas. I have men swarming among those docks and basins – looking for the unusual. And we're watching the oil installations you saw. Nothing so far. I'd know.' He picked up his heavy raincoat, pulled something a short way out of the pocket. A walkie-talkie.
'So still we wait,' Tweed ruminated.
'When the others get back we'll take a drive along the Maas – see if anything's stirring. Ah, here they come.'
Tweed swallowed his second large cup of coffee. The experience of his recent battle with vertigo had dehydrated him. He felt parched as the Sahara, refilled the cup as Blade and Newman arrived, followed by Benoit.
'They had coffee before you came down,' Van Gorp explained. He seemed restless, anxious to move on. 'All except Mr Blade.' he continued. 'Care for some coffee before we go?'
'Not for me, thank you.'
Tweed glanced at Blade sharply. The SAS leader's mind seemed far away; instead of sitting down he stood by the window, staring down.
They descended in the elevator, walked to the parked cars and got inside. Tweed sat alongside Butler in the rear seat of the vehicle driven by Van Gorp. An orange-coloured helicopter was flying downriver, a hundred feet or so above the Maas.
'We ought to be able to work out how Klein will launch an assault,' Tweed said, worrying away at the problem. 'How would we launch it? Remembering he has a team of scuba divers.'
'As I said earlier,' Van Gorp replied, 'by using the mines in the Maas – blocking the entry to all shipping. See that chopper which just flew over? No police markings – but it has my men aboard. We are watching from the land, from the air.'
'But not underwater?' queried Paula who sat beside Van Corp.
'We can hardly have skin-divers permanently swimming around under the Maas,' he told her gently.
'But what I don't understand,' she persisted, 'is they will have to change into wet suits before they plant the mines. Where on earth can they do that – without risk of being seen?'
'No idea.' He started the engine. 'Let's cruise around -this time, Tweed, along the north bank towards the Hook of Holland.' He glanced in the mirror. 'You look thoughtful.'
It was something Paula had said. Tweed suddenly realized the police chief had spoken to him. 'Nothing,' he replied. 'The Hook of Holland, you said. While I was in the Space Tower I saw a dot on the horizon, could have been the Sealink ferry.'
Van Gorp checked his watch, switched on his headlights. 'It would be. She's due to dock soon. Always on time.'
As he pulled away from the kerb Butler turned in his seat to look at Euromast through the rear window. The car containing Newman and the others was following. Tweed also turned in his seat, gazing up at the immense structure.
'Something about that place that worries me,' Butler remarked. 'What it is I can't pin down.'
'It worries me, too,' said Tweed.
44
The Dutch fishing vessel, Utrecht, which should have reached its home port, was stationary. A quarter of a mile astern of the stately floating glow-worm which was the Adenauer.
The huge liner was almost stationary on the dark sheen of the smooth sea, waiting for the lighters to come out with passengers. Two large dinghies with outboard motors slid across the water, midway between the Utrecht and the Adenauer. Painted black, they were invisible.
One dinghy was directly astern of the liner – less than four hundred yards away. The second dinghy, launched from the Utrecht earlier, was approximately a quarter-mile ahead of the liner, its motor turned off, drifting gently with the current.
Four scuba divers slipped over the side of the first dinghy, paddled water as two specially-constructed nets were handed down to them. Each net was grasped by two men who then went under the surface, hauling a net between them.
Each net contained two sea-mines with the switches tuned to a specific radio band. They swam on under water with ease – the contents of the nets were light in weight, shaped like large eggs, painted a dull metallic non- reflecting grey colour, with squat clamps like suckers protruding.
The first team reached the liner, swam deeper under the vast hull, and paddled on until they were just beyond amidships. Here they stopped paddling, bobbing up and down beneath the dark shape above them. With practised hands they opened the net, released the mines which floated upwards, attracted by the fumes inside the engine room.
The swimmers followed their cargo upwards, each man attending to one mine, swivelling it until the suckers contacted the hull. He pressed a switch. Metal legs shot out, thudded into the hull. The mines were attached. Immovable.
The second team swam in under the enormous twin propellers, performed the same actions at a point half way between the propellers and the location where the other mines had been attached.
Their mission completed, the two scuba divers swam on under the hull of the Adenauer. Clad in wet suits, face masks and feet flippers with oxygen cylinders strapped to their backs, they glided through the water, their deft movements almost balletic in their grace.
Emerging beyond the massive bow, the lead man checked the compass attached to his wrist, changing direction by a few degrees. Like his comrades ahead of him he was making for the second dinghy.
He surfaced briefly, looked swiftly round in the night. A pinpoint green light – visible only at sea-level – located the waiting dinghy. He dived under and swam on. Ten minutes later both teams had been hauled aboard the dinghy. They had left behind four sea-mines – armed with enough explosive power to destroy the 50,000-ton liner.
Once Klein pressed a certain button on his control box the four mines would detonate simultaneously. Most of the fifteen hundred souls aboard would die in the first tremendous blast wave – a thousand passengers and five hundred crew. The blast would rip open the hull, surge upwards through the engine room, the explosive wave continuing through the five decks above. Those who survived the blast would be immolated in a sheet of flame with a temperature of over one thousand degrees.
**
On the curving bridge of the Adenauer Captain Brunner stood at the port side, surveying the drifting fishing vessel in his high-powered glasses. His First Officer was – as per his instructions – using a signalling lamp to convey Brunner's message to the Utrecht.
'What is wrong? You are too close to my ship. Please make way'. Reply immediately.'
Aboard the Utrecht its skipper, Captain Sailer, stood immobile on his own bridge. Behind him stood Grand- Pierre, a Uzi machine pistol aimed at the skipper's back. On the deck of the small bridge Sailer's wife, Ansje, a small slim woman with long dark hair, lay with her ankles and wrists trussed with rope. A man wearing a Balaclava helmet knelt beside her, holding a knife at her throat.
They had come aboard from the dinghies just after the nets had been hauled in, the catch stored. Grand-
