"Which department?"
"Now, Mr. Fondberg, I'm sure you have found that unfortunately the telephone is not, in the world we live in, the safe instrument we all wish that it might be. May I suggest that Harvey calls you up on arrival and arranges a mutually advantageous meeting, say at the American Embassy in Stockholm?"
"He can phone and make an appointment to see me here. Please let me have the flight number and ETA of this Mr. Sholto."
"All I can say is that he will be landing in Stockholm during the course of the next three days and I will pass on to him your message to call you as soon as he has settled in. Now, if you'll excuse me, Mr. Fondberg, a certain light is flashing on my desk and I'm sure you'll understand when I say it's the one light I cannot ignore."
Fondberg thought for several minutes before he asked for an urgent call to be put through to the man he knew best at Interpol. While waiting for the call he alerted security at Arlanda Airport to be on the lookout for a passenger travelling on an American passport in the name of Harvey Sholto. When asked how quickly to activate the surveillance Fondberg replied, "At once," It was just like the Codys of this world to play it clever, to inform him only an hour or so before Sholto landed.
When the Interpol call came through he gave his contact the name Sholto, Harvey, and was promised any data before the day ended: Fondberg stared at the wall-map showing the progress of the express carrying the heroin consignment. He suddenly wondered if there could be a link between the train and the unsettling news about Harvey Sholto.
Harry Fondberg's Interpol contact phoned back from Paris at ten that night. The Swedish chief of Sapo was still waiting in his office, convinced that something was bound to happen, that it would happen soon and, pray to God, it would give him the lever he had been desperately searching for to break into the Stockholm Syndicate.
"Harvey Sholto," the Frenchman informed the Swede laconically, 'is a highly-trained killer. The Americans give him an X-l rating. It means I personally would not like to be in the sights of his high-powered rifle,
" "If you have a description… just a moment, I will take this down." Fondberg deliberately had not activated the recording machine because it was understood that each would ask the other before any mechanical record was made. In this case Fondberg did not want any record existing which someone else might get hold of and play back. He scribbled down Sholto's description in a scrawl legible only to himself.
"There is more about this Sholto," the Frenchman continued. "Washington has used him for assassination in Vietnam, Africa and Central America, but we have not been able to discover that he is assigned to any particular agency. He carries very great influence in high places in Washington which has helped him carry out his assassinations."
"Thank you," said Fondberg. He exchanged the normal pleasantries automatically, then replaced the receiver and cuddled his chin in his hand, gazing into the distance with a grim expression. It was always the same problem: too much was happening at once. But what worried Fondberg most of all was a question which kept hammering away at his brain.
Who was Harvey Sholto's new target?
Chapter Thirteen
"Send an immediate Nadir signal on the police inspector and the railway guard,"
Nadir. Even more than Zenith, this signal caused sweating palms among the men who transmitted the message. They could not get out of their minds the thought that one day the Syndicate might send out a Nadir signal which included their own personal details. And once the word went out there was nowhere to flee to, nowhere safe from the octopus-like reach of Stockholm.
The order had been given by Benny Horn to Sonia Karnell as they sat side by side in a BMW saloon. They had changed cars within minutes of driving away from Elsinore station in the Volvo. It was a policy of Horn's never to stay inside the same vehicle for more than two hours. The BMW was parked by the waterfront in an area quite remote from the ferry terminal and the railway station. She walked across the plank linking the quay to a large fishing boat. For a vessel which could hardly be described as modern it carried some surprisingly up-to-date equipment.
The latest radar device was poised on the bridge, and concealed inside the cabin to which she was descending by a flight of wooden steps was a powerful transceiver. The manner of concealment behind a panel was very similar to the one which Frans Darras had used aboard his barge outside Bruges.
"You want something, lady? This is private property."
Arnold Barfred, the Danish owner of the vessel, deliberately spoke in a loud voice, using the English language, in case a passer-by was listening.
His eyes went blank as Sonia passed on the signal to him in a low voice and told him to hurry. "It is a Nadir signal. None of us wastes a minute transmitting a Nadir. We just wish to get rid of it — and forget it."
She didn't reply and hurried ashore. Behind her she heard the hatch cover close, sealing off entry into the cabin, the bolt snap home. Barfred was doing exactly what he said he would.
And in another way he had obeyed orders precisely. He had waited below deck for the car to arrive — so that just as the Darras' on their barge had never seen Dr. Otto Berlin in Bruges, so Barfred had no idea of the appearance of Dr. Benny Horn.
Sonia Karnell settled into the BMW and switched on the ignition, anxious to get away as soon as possible. Beside her Horn looked back at the fishing vessel, doubtless to make sure Barfred did not appear until after they had gone.
"We will just make sure that Beaurain's man from Stockholm is dealt with and then you can drive me back to Nyhavn. We will pick up a few things and fly straight to Stockholm."
"Lindahl? He is coming here?"
"Yes, my dear, he is coming to Elsinore and hopes to arrive here shortly. He is fleeing Sweden by fast car as though all the hounds of hell were behind him. What he doesn't know is that they are in front of him."
The huge motor ferry hardly moved in the gentle swell of the Oresund as it lay moored to the Swedish shore at Halsingborg. A steady stream of cars bound for Elsinore drove up the ramp and vanished inside Delfin II 's open maw.
Aboard, the passengers were already taking up position on the upper deck which gave them a good view of Denmark only a short distance miles across the sea channel. Through a pair of high-powered glasses a Swedish tourist gazed at Kronborg Castle which rose up on the far shore, and children clung to the ship's rail.
It was difficult to imagine a more peaceful scene, an atmosphere more removed from violence. Dancing across the sparkling crests of the blue, sunlit waves were innumerable yachts, their coloured sails twinkling triangles flapping in the mid-channel breeze.
A grey Volvo disappeared inside the vast loading deck, and Beaurain's agent guided his vehicle to the position indicated by the ferry loader. Switching off the ignition, Lindahl sank back in his seat and automatically reached for a cigarette until he saw the No Smoking notice staring straight at him.
He didn't really mind. For the first time in days he could relax. Within minutes he would have left Sweden. In less than an hour he would be talking to Jules Beaurain in Elsinore.
Lindahl climbed out of his car, locked it carefully, made sure all the windows were closed, and then began to climb the staircases leading to the higher decks. Yes, thank God, it would soon all be over — once the deadly information he carried inside his memory was transmitted to Beaurain. He would be safe again.
Underneath the keel of the motor-ferry Delfin II Karl Woltz and his team of three frogmen worked swiftly and skilfully. They had left the large steam-launch, rocking at anchor a few hundred yards away from the ferry, ten minutes earlier. As Woltz had impressed on his three subordinates, Timing is vital, the crossing is short and the action must occur shortly before landfall."