'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.
