"Why Elsinore?" Beaurain asked as he lit a cigarette. Marker took the cigarette off him before he could put it in his own mouth. "Thought you'd given up," the Belgian continued, taking out a fresh cigarette.
The Dane's chubby face was thin-lipped with tension, his eyes icy and hard. He smoked the cigarette while he watched Louise Hamilton and scanned the dock area. A Volvo estate wagon pulled into the kerb a dozen yards behind the Mercedes and Beaurain watched it in his mirror. Marker seemed to be gazing in the opposite direction when he spoke.
"Man behind the wheel of that Volvo is Dr. Benny Horn, rare book dealer with a shop on Nyhavn in Copenhagen. And, as I told you, he's possibly one of the three most powerful men today in the whole of Western Europe. Why has he stopped behind you, I wonder? Sight of my police car or your Mercedes."
"Black Helmet!"
Kellerman said the words almost involuntarily. He had started watching in the wing mirror on his side and she was framed perfectly, the girl he had first seen talking to the receptionist at the Royal Hotel while he watched from the quick-service restaurant.
Black Helmet. Now the description fitted her beautifully and it occurred to Kellerman she looked as sexy as hell — her helmet of black hair cut close to the head without any covering, and wearing a pair of black slacks and a black windcheater. The same outfit as Louise Hamilton's; she even carried a shoulder-bag and only the colour of the outfits was different.
"What was that, Foxbel?" Marker asked quickly. "Black What? You know the lady?"
"We think she may be closely linked with Benny Horn," he told Marker. "We haven't seen them together but one of our people gave us descriptions of two people who drove north last night to Elsinore with a suitcase."
"Suitcase the size you described in my office?" Marker interjected.
"The very same. The descriptions of the two people fit Benny Horn and the girl passing the Volvo behind us."
"Horn signalled her to keep moving, not to stop by the Volvo," the Dane observed. Not once since the Volvo had pulled in behind them had Marker turned in that direction. He seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. And he was right, Kellerman thought Black Helmet had been about to get into the Volvo when Horn had given her a warning signal — a brief movement of the hand — to keep moving.
Black Helmet had speeded up her pace, passing the parked Mercedes without a glance. Reaching the corner she was able to see the exit from the station, and noticed Louise Hamilton standing there. So, the girl she had followed in the early hours had returned to Elsinore. The obvious assumption was that she had used the booby-trapped Citroen. Louise Hamilton should have been dead. Black Helmet reacted instinctively, and walked rapidly across the front of the station as though on her way into the booking-hall. She swerved, changing direction suddenly, coming up silently behind the English girl.
Her right hand was now held motionless by her side, the hand stiff, the edge hard. Her intention was to brush against the English girl, move past her a few feet, swing round and scream, "Thief! You took my purse!" In the ensuing struggle one swift blow to the side of the neck would render her target unconscious.
" What the hell is happening? " exclaimed Marker. He had seen the Volvo move away, gliding off so unexpectedly there was no time to stop it. Seconds later Black Helmet had swivelled towards the station and then changed direction to come up behind Beaurain's girl. Marker was thrown off-balance.
Everyone involved assumed Louise Hamilton was so intent on watching the arriving train ferry that she had not noticed Karnell, who moved with the speed of a cobra. They were wrong. At the very moment Karnell brushed against her side and turned to shout the word "Thief!" Louise Hamilton spun on her heel. "I want you, you bitch!" she hissed. Her right leg snapped forward like a piston, the point of her shoe aimed at Karnell's kneecap. Had the blow fully connected the Swedish girl would never have been able to move once she collapsed on the ground. But Karnell saw the thrust of the shoe and started to spin her own body. The shoe tip cut the side of her leg but she was only hurt, not eliminated.
Staggering back towards the kerb, her right hand scrabbled inside her shoulder-bag for her gun. There was a burst of sound as a motor-bike revved its powerful engine. The machine had been parked close to the ferry point by the kerb, the man sitting on it dressed in helmet, goggles and leather jacket, apparently watching the frenetic activity in the Oresund. Now he sped across the road, over the rail tracks, and towards Karnell.
Louise tried to reach them, to topple the machine over sideways, but Karnell was seconds too fast. Despite her injury she made it to the edge of the sidewalk, swung one leg over the pillion seat of the waiting machine, and grabbed the rider round the waist as he surged off with a roar of power in the direction the Volvo had taken.
Beaurain did not even reach to turn on the ignition: he was watching Louise's reaction. She was staring in a fresh direction — towards the rail line where inter national expresses waited to move along the lines over the road, up the ramp and inside a ferry which would take them to Sweden.
"Bodel, I think they tried a diversion — at least that girl who got away on the motor-bike did. Her reaction was based on alarm — alarm at seeing a colleague of mine, whom she recognised, watching the ferry terminal. We don't go chasing after high-powered motorbikes — that may well be just what they would like."
"Why?" Marker demanded irritably
"Because," Beaurain said grimly, spacing out his words with great deliberation, 'the attempt at a diversion suggests to me that what you're after is under your nose." He got out of the Mercedes and closed the door with a hard clunk.
"They would have guards, watchers," Marker protested.
"They had," Beaurain pointed out. "The big man himself was in the Volvo. His girl was about to patrol round the station. There was a third Syndicate member — the man on the motor-bike. There will be more."
"I get the sensation that I'm already being watched," said Marker, his hands plunged deep inside his jacket pockets.
"You are — I have at least a dozen men within shooting distance of where we're walking now."
"I said earlier that Telescope was the only organisation capable of destroying the Stockholm Syndicate," Marker murmured in an undertone. They stopped as they reached Louise.
"Can I talk?" she asked, covering her mouth with a cupped hand as she lit one of her rare cigarettes. She wasn't even looking at them. Curious, Marker glanced quickly along the axis of her observation. All he could see were two large open-sided goods wagons. Behind them an engine was moving along the line to link up with them. A railway man with a flag guided the engine-driver. It all seemed perfectly normal to Marker.
"This is it," said Louise, once Beaurain had confirmed that she could speak in front of Marker, who was still mystified. He glanced around more carefully, suddenly aware that the previously almost deserted area in front of the station had become populated. Several passengers had drifted out of the reception hall into the open. Tourists with knapsacks on their backs, two men holding fishing rods. At least Marker thought they were fishing rods.
Other men were now wandering across the road towards the ferry terminal. One of them, tall and sandy-haired, carrying a long sports bag, walked with a distinctly military carriage.
Crossing the road, he walked a short distance further on beyond the ferry terminal. Marker's eyes narrowed as he watched him put the bag down on the floor and raise a small compact object like a camera to his eyes while he scanned the harbour with the eagerness of a photographic buff always on the lookout for new subjects. It occurred to Marker that the camera could easily be a camouflaged walkie-talkie.;, Beaurain's face was expressionless as he also watched;; Jock Henderson take up the best strategic position for viewing the ferry terminal, its approaches, the railway station and the two wagons waiting to be put aboard the next ferry, which was entering the harbour and |s|| turning slightly to head for the landing. Everything so normal. The sun beating down, radiating warmth out of a perfectly clear sky. The steady thump of the wheels of the engine approaching the two wagons it would push across the road and up inside the bowels of the ferry once the vessel had berthed and was ready for its new cargo.