further that he is a personal friend of this Belgian, Beaurain — rumoured to be one of the chiefs of this Telescope outfit. So, while officially Cottel is locating the key personnel of Telescope — ready for the western security services to swoop when the time comes he will really be trying to help the Telescope organisation all he can. We're having him watched — that way he leads us to the whole outfit pretty soon now.'
'Why don't we send this Harvey Sholto you keep recommending — you said Sholto hates the guts of Telescope.'
'Which is well known,' Cody assured the President smoothly, 'so Sholto wouldn't get anywhere near them. Ed Cottel only took this assignment so he could secretly keep the heat off Telescope — and he'll end up leading us to the capture and exposure of the whole goddam underground organisation.'
'I like it, Joel, I like it.' The well-known smile suddenly left his face. 'Haven't you overlooked something? Supposing Cottel digs up information we'd just as soon he didn't such as names of some of the big companies whose chairmen have contributed money to the Syndicate?'
'That's all taken care of,' Joel assured him confidently. 'If Cottel gets out of line we send over Sholto to take care of him. I may even send him in any case.'
'Don't give me those sort of details,' the President said hastily. 'In fact, I don't know anything about this Harvey Sholto. And I don't really understand what you've just said, so let's change the subject.'
Louise Hamilton felt sure she would lose the dark-haired girl. The same girl she and Beaurain had seen outside Bruges station when they took her vacated taxi. Leaving Kellerman with hardly a word, she walked out the back way and got behind the wheel of the hired Citroen.
'I want hired cars waiting for me at Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki and Oslo,' Beaurain had instructed Henderson. Thankful for his foresight, Louise drove round near the main entrance and stopped. Seconds later the dark-haired girl came out, summoned a passing cab and got inside. As Louise followed the cab, keeping a rough check on its route with the aid of the Copenhagen street map open on the seat beside her, she soon began to suspect the girl's destination. The house on Nyhavn Kellerman had described.
Within minutes she knew she had guessed correctly. The cab ahead turned right, the basin of water was there in the middle of the street, the forest of masts above fishing boats tied up to the quays. Louise took a quick decision. Tooting her horn, she speeded up and overtook the cab with inches to spare. It was not the act of someone who wished the cab's passenger to be unaware of her presence — and inside the cab Sonia Karnell hadn't even noticed the Citroen as she felt inside her handbag for the front door key. Coming close to the main waterfront, where the wall of houses ended, Louise pulled in at the kerb and watched the cab coming up behind her in the rear-view mirror.
'If you have guessed wrong, my girl,' she told herself, 'you've had it.' The cab stopped a dozen yards behind where she was parked. She watched while the short-haired girl paid off the cab, went up the steps, inserted a key and went inside, closing the door behind her. The cab drove past her and was turning right along the waterfront on its way back into the centre of Copenhagen.
Louise didn't hesitate. The moment to check on a place is when someone has just arrived. Nobody expects a shadow to have the audacity to approach so close when the person they have followed has just entered a building.
She was walking along the pavement within less than twenty seconds of the door closing. She reached the bottom of the short flight of steps, the smell of brine in her nostrils, saw the engraved plate to the right of the heavy door and tiptoed swiftly up the steps.
Dr. Benny Horn. The same name Max Kellerman had mentioned. This was the house which had swallowed up Serge Litov after his dash from Brussels. Was this journey's end for the Russian? She doubted it very much. Glancing down she saw a squalid-looking basement area, the glass of the windows murky with grime, the steps streaked with dirt. It was in great contrast to the freshly-painted front door and surrounding walls of the house.
She returned to the Citroen at once, climbed behind the wheel, locked all the doors from the inside, took out a peaked cloth cap and rammed it loosely over her head. With her strong jaw-line the cap gave her a masculine appearance; in the bad light — she was midway between two street lamps — she could easily be mistaken for a man. She slumped down behind the wheel as though asleep and waited, her eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror.
Beaurain felt one satisfaction which offset the considerable anxiety he felt about Louise. He sat on his bed and drank more coffee, watching Max Kellerman pace back and forth with the restlessness caused by enforced inaction. Beaurain voiced his satisfaction to try and cheer up the German.
'At least I guessed right when I sent Firestorm into the Kattegat. Serge Litov headed for Copenhagen as soon as he thought he'd shaken himself loose.'
'Where will Firestorm be at this moment?'
Beaurain checked his watch. 'Just after midnight. She'll be just about off Elsinore. It's the narrowest passage between Denmark and Sweden.'
'And Henderson?'
'He and his men from Brussels should by now be aboard her. They caught the flight before us as soon as I heard Litov had alighted from the Stockholm flight here.'
'And how did they get from here to Firestorm?'
'By courtesy of Danish State Railways. They came from Kastrup straight into Copenhagen. From the main station just across the way from this hotel they caught an express to Elsinore, which is less than an hour's journey due north of the city and straight up the coast. I'd told Buckminster by radio what to expect and when. At a remote point on the coast just north of Elsinore, Henderson's party onshore exchanged signals by lamp with Firestorm, which promptly sent a small fleet of inflatable dinghies powered with out-boards to pick them up.'
'How do you manage it?' Kellerman had stopped pacing and was sitting in a chair as he poured them both more coffee.
'I'm lucky,' Beaurain smiled grimly. 'It helps if you have the pieces on the board in the right squares at the right time. In this case particularly Firestorm. Goldschmidt in Bruges was emphatic that a meeting of the Stockholm Syndicate is due to take place in Scandinavia. There was mention of it at Voisin's meeting, the one I had to fight my way into.' He frowned. 'That was the first time they tried to grab Louise. What the hell can have happened to that girl?'
'I'm sorry.' Max spread his hands.
'Shut up! I've already told you it's not your fault. And you both took the right decision.'
They were waiting for the van. Dr. Benny Horn, wearing a dark-coloured raincoat and a soft, wide-brimmed hat, stood once again in the hallway holding the suitcase which contained heroin to the value of forty million Swedish kronor. He had just completed making several phone calls.
'Have you fixed up anything for Beaurain and Co.?' asked Sonia Karnell, who had changed into a different trouser suit.
'Gunther Baum is now in Copenhagen. He will pay them a visit at the appropriate moment.'
She shuddered as always at the mention of Baum. 'I thought he was in Brussels.'
'He was. Guessing that Beaurain would follow Litov to Copenhagen, I instructed him to make himself available here. I have just talked with Baum on the phone. The great thing is to have one's servants available at the right time,' Horn remarked.
'Is it sensible to have our destination Helsingor — painted in large letters across the side of the van?'
'Yes, it merges into the background at Helsingor which,' Horn continued in a contemptuous tone, 'is a provincial town, always feeling that cosmopolitan Copenhagen looks down on it.'
He stopped speaking as the doorbell rang in a particular way, a succession of rings. Karnell had extracted the automatic from her handbag, switched off the hall light and opened the door. The van had arrived — she could see the bloody great name she objected to: Helsingor.
The driver, a short bulky man wearing a blue boiler suit and a beret, handed her the ignition keys and went inside. Out of the corner of her eye Karnell saw Dr. Horn make a brief gesture with his head in the direction of the shuttered room where Litov was still waiting for fresh instructions.
Helsingor. Shakespeare's Elsinore where Kronborg Castle was linked with Hamlet's name. No historical foundation for the myth, but it was very good for Elsinore's tourist industry. Louise saw the van out of the corner of her eye as it passed down Nyhavn, heading for the waterfront where it would turn right or left.
