The Saint

1

The St. Ignatius Home for Foundling Boys was once a warmhearted orphanage dedicated to improving the lives and saving the souls of Hong Kong’s illegitimate offspring. By the seventh decade of the twentieth century, however, it had become as cold and unpleasant as its bleak, stony exterior.

Some one hundred boys, ranging from seven to twelve years of age, could call St. Ignatius “home.” They didn’t. They called it “The Prison,” “God’s Tomb,” and most appropriate, “Brennan’s Hell.”

Father Brennan, a cruel and domineering discredit to the cross, lorded over the youths with harsh tones, severe punishments, and sadistic glee. His only kind words were reserved for his pack of high-strung Doberman pinscers — sinister, slavering creatures who shared his bed and personality.

Both dogs and boys jumped at the sound of Brennan’s voice, and all offered instant, exact, and complete obedience to the priest’s shrill and insistent commands. All except one boy, the youngest and skinniest of Brennan’s hapless charges. He was not intentionally rude and rebellious, he was merely mischievous and adventurous. Playful, outgoing, and possessed of a ready wit, his many talents derived from the unique pairing of his biological parents.

His mother was a versatile British actress best remembered for her lead role in the late sixties revival of Homer Quarterstone’s famous play. Love, the Redeemer.

His Anglo-Asian father, a former bishop turned high-tech entrepreneur, created and implemented the Hong Kong production’s dazzling special effects.

The couple’s only offspring spent the first three years of his life immersed in a make-believe world where identities and locales changed with the application of makeup and the altering of backdrops. As with most theater families, they lived out of trunks and suitcases, called no man boss and nowhere home.

The child’s world of endless make-believe ended in the famous Hong Kong Theatre Fire of 1967. Hundreds of patrons died that night, as did most of the cast and crew. The child, entrusted to a dedicated Catholic baby-sitter for the evening, was orphaned.

Devoid of kin, the thirty-six-month-old boy was shuffled from foster care to foster care before being secured permanent residence at the St. Ignatius Home for Foundling Boys.

His outgoing and entertaining nature earned him immediate friendships with not only the other lads, but with the young girls at the St. Patricia Home for Girls, the orphanage’s female resident adjunct.

The likable scamp was blessed with limitless energy and a core of steely toughness that bolstered his resolve. Fueling his overactive imagination was the decidedly unorthodox reading matter he managed to sneak into the orphanage — tattered action-hero comic books, dog-eared paperbacks with lurid covers, and yellowed editions of Thriller — The Paper of a Thousand Thrills!

While the other boys studied Church history and memorized Bible passages, he delighted in blood-and-thunder adventures. The dreary reality of St. Ignatius happily evaporated as he escaped into a world of primitive chivalry, battle, murder, sudden death, damsels in distress, and valiant crusades for justice.

One particular and memorable morning, not dissimilar from any other in the seemingly endless chain of miserable mornings at St. Ignatius, the little rascal bravely smuggled his favorite paperback into Brennan’s classroom, secured it behind his open Bible, and became completely absorbed in the action-packed adventure classic. Knight Templar.

He became so engrossed in the swashbuckling derring-do of its hell-for-leather hero that the numbing drone of Father Brennan’s lecture never reached his ears. The high ceilings echoed back Brennan’s boring discourse, but the avid young reader’s mind and senses were far away from the cramped wooden desks and dusty stained-glass windows.

Wide eyed and grinning, he was knee-deep in adventure, neck-high in danger, and moments away from a real-life crisis.

The students were arranged in three rows of ten, with the St. Ignatius boys on one side of the room and the St. Patricia girls on the other. The youth sitting two rows over was called Bartolo. He would never have called himself Bartolo, but Brennan gave each charge a new name upon admittance to St. Ignatius.

“The answer, Bartolo,” demanded Brennan, “what is the answer? What happened to Simon Magus in Sumeria?”

The boy hazarded a glance at the well-thumbed Bible on his scarred, wooden desk.

“Jesus’ disciples performed miracles,” began Bartolo haltingly, waiting for his fear to recede and his memory to surface. “When Simon Magus saw them, he offered Peter gold for God’s powers.”

Bartolo held his breath. Something resembling a smile distorted Brennan’s face. The answer accepted, Bartolo cautiously exhaled.

Brennan’s piggy eyes scanned the classroom, seeking another student upon whom to pounce. He found the perfect prey in a surprisingly happy youngster staring intently at an open Bible.

“And how did Peter respond...” Brennan looked directly at the reading child. “John Rossi?”

The boy behind the Bible did not respond.

“John Rossi.” Brennan repeated the name slowly, ominously. The boy, immersed in an alliterative paragraph packed with adjectives and adverbs, ignored him.

Twenty-nine students cringed in their seats as Father Brennan crept up on the youngster and yanked away the Bible, revealing the gaudy cover of Knight Templar — a garish full-color rendering of mayhem featuring the semi-exposed bosom of a distraught female and an equally artistic representation of her manly hero.

Muffled giggles lost themselves in the rafters; perspiration dripped from Brennan’s twisted upper lip. The boy threw a quick glance across the room to a darling, doe-eyed ten-year-old girl named Agnes. She enjoyed his antics, and her sweet giggle was music to his ears.

“What’s this?” barked Father Brennan, grabbing the paperback and shaking it violently. The yellowed pages fluttered in the priest’s grip like a sparrow captured in a falcon’s talons.

Twenty-nine small hearts pounded in tiny chests. One heart remained calm — the one beating in the diminutive frame of the boy called John Rossi.

“It is,” offered the lad helpfully, “quite an impressive adventure.”

The response brought the desired reaction — the priest rocked back on his heels in affronted disbelief. Numerous small mouths gasped in astonishment.

“Adventure? How dare you speak of adventure! How dare you read this... this...” he sneered with disgust at Knight Templar and equal revulsion at the well-endowed jeopardized ingenue whose feminine charms seemed about to spill out over the binding, “... trash!”

Father Brennan angrily hurled the book across the room. It sailed in a flailing arc over Bartolo’s head and smacked into the wall. The spine snapped and pages exploded in a flurry of falling pulp. Like a broken-winged bird, Knight Templar’s greatest crusade lay lifeless on the ground.

Little Agnes jumped in her seat. Somewhere in the back of the room, a child began to cry. Brennan whirled and glared.

“Stop that this instant!”

He turned his attention back to the impertinent boy.

“Now that we have removed your distraction, perhaps you will recall that we were discussing Simon Magus of Sumeria,” Brennan spit out each word as if an insult. “Now tell us, John Rossi, how did Peter respond to the magician Simon Magus?”

The youth looked Brennan directly in the eye.

“My name is not John Rossi, has never been John Rossi, and never will be John Rossi.”

The child in back continued softly sobbing.

Brennan slammed his hands down on the boy’s desk and hissed into his high-spirited charge’s face.

“You and every other bastard lucky enough to be here... children of sin, spawn of the damned... are all named for saints — saints who were disciplined, saints who were chaste.”

The boy’s eyes were unflinching chips of iced lapis, never wavering from the priest’s heated glare.

“You were named for John Baptist Rossi,” spat Brennan, “a Capuchin priest who gave away his possessions... a man who had nothing, like you!”

The back row sobbing increased in volume. Brennan turned sharply and demanded silence. In that brief moment the boy who refused to be called John Rossi adroitly lifted a cruciform stickpin from the distracted priest’s hem and quickly palmed it.

Brennan’s attention was back on him in a heartbeat.

“Now, John Rossi who has nothing,” sneered the triumphant headmaster, “what lesson have you learned today?”

The boy cast a casual glance at the scattered remnants of Knight Templar.

“Hardbound books are a wiser investment?”

The room erupted in gales of laughter, and Brennan exploded in anger.

“My cane!” yelled Brennan, grabbing the witty boy by the scruff of his neck and pulling him from his seat. “Someone get my cane!”

Brennan scrunched his fingers harder into the boy’s neck and shook him as he had done the paperback book.

The remaining youths sat frozen in fear as Brennan’s red-rimmed eyes scorched across the rows of blanched faces.

“Bartolo,” Brennan snapped impatiently, “fetch me my cane, now!”

Reluctant and torn, the boy squirmed and stared pleadingly at his classmate. The captive child managed an accepting glance, and Bartolo hastily did as he was told.

He scrambled from his seat, left the classroom, and hurried down the hall to the headmaster’s private office.

Brennan’s stiff bamboo rod rested on the bookcase behind a cluttered, heavy oak desk. Bartolo reached up and grabbed the cane, spun on his heels, and raced out of the office.

Panting and breathless, the unhappy errand boy delivered the stiff bamboo rod. Brennan snatched it and thrashed it several times in the air. Bartolo, trembling, returned to his seat.

“Perhaps, John Rossi, you would prefer being bastinadoed,” growled the unrelenting headmaster, and the students gasped. They knew the pain and terror of the bastinado — tiny feet beaten bloody with stiff bamboo.

Even Brennan knew he could not bastinado the boy with any degree of justification, but a good caning was well within his rights.

The terrified child in the back of the room was now wailing like a banshee. Agnes’s face flushed, and tears rolled slowly down her cheeks.

“For God’s sake, stop that childish crying!” yelled Brennan. “He’s the one about to get a whipping, not you.”

To escape the irritation of incessant sobbing. Father Brennan yanked his captive out into the corridor.

“Stand straight!”

The boy complied.

The class gathered to watch through a stained-glass window as Father Brennan swung back the cane and whipped the boy’s backside. With each stinging slap of the cane, Brennan demanded the boy admit to the name John Rossi. Each demand was met by silence more confrontal than verbal rebellion.

No cry came from the boy because he was digging the stolen stickpin into the palm of his hand. The self-inflicted pain negated that administered by Father Brennan.

Twenty lashes later, with aching wrist and exhausted arm, the weary priest lowered the switch to his side.

“Really, Father Brennan,” spoke the boy evenly, as if asking a pertinent theological question, “do you honestly believe I deserve such painful punishment?”

The priest instinctively raised the cane for another strike, paused, and seemed to give the question serious consideration before bringing the stinging switch down harder than ever. The child dug the pin in deeper, and warm blood seeped through his clenched fist.

“The name is Templar,” whispered the boy defiantly to himself, “Simon Templar.”

The headmaster, more frustrated than defeated, tossed the cane aside in anger.

“I’m not done with you yet,” he snarled. “There are other ways of convincing you. Go to your bed and don’t come down until you hear the lunch bell!”

Experienced in the art of manipulation and humiliation, Brennan decided to utilize the most effective way of controlling a child’s behavior — peer pressure.

That noon, when all hundred male residents of St. Ignatius were gathered in the dining hall for lunch, an empty plate was placed before each boy. John Rossi had, as instructed, joined the others at the sound of the bell. He sat next to Bartolo at a long wooden table.

The prepared food was displayed before them in an alcove cleared especially for the occasion, padlocked behind a wall of steel mesh.

Brennan stood between the first row of boys and the object of their desire.

“No meal will be served to any lad until he” — Brennan pointed to John Rossi — “acknowledges his namesake. Not one of you will be fed until he says his name, John Rossi, loud and clear.”

Two hundred eyes turned to the skinny boy in hungry anticipation. The food at St. Ignatius was nothing to write home about, but these boys had no other home.

The youngster remained silent.

“C’mon. Just say it and get it over with,” whispered Bartolo.

“I’ll see him in hell first,” the boy insisted pleasantly under his breath.

Despite the glare of his classmates and fellow prisoners, he remained mum. True to himself, he would not allow Brennan to define his identity; true to his word, Brennan left all plates empty at lunch and again at supper.

By lights-out that evening, ninety-nine boys harbored understandable resentment toward their smallest compatriot. Whatever admiration they felt for his bravery was outweighed by the hollow sensation in their bellies. If they could not eat, they could at least derive pleasure from pummeling the cause of their discomfort.

The skinny kid with the punctured palm reclined on his cot. He was thoughtfully examining the purloined stickpin. He was attaching it as an accessory to his crude, wood handled penknife when he noticed an ominous cluster of scowling classmates surrounding him. Before they could strike, John Rossi sat up brightly and spoke.

“Well, me hearty pirates, do you want supper or not?”

Surprised, they nodded.

“C’mon then!” He leaped from the cot as if on a mission from God. “Follow me to the free feast of the night!”

And follow him they did. They crept full of hunger and curiosity out of their sleeping quarters, descended the dark wooden stairs, and sneaked silently into the dining hall.

With hushed tones and soft steps, the boys approached the steel mesh. Behind it were loaves of bread and plates of biscuits, butter, and bowls of cold soup.

The wall of mesh was secured on one side by an old-fashioned padlock, which John Rossi gleefully attacked with the stolen stickpin. Working with intense concentration and near-psychic precision, it was only moments before his efforts released the lock.

The ravenous youths pushed aside the wire mesh and helped themselves to a late-night meal, happily filling their stomachs and heaping admiration on their adventurous and courageous leader.

Forty-five minutes later most of the well-fed orphans were fast asleep when a single window on the top floor of St. Ignatius slid open high above the courtyard. Slowly, secretively, a long white snake of bedsheets slithered out into the cool night air. Behind the window, John Rossi and ten co-conspirators fed their thin escape route down the wall.

One by one they slid down, suppressing giggles of delight at their own bravery. John Rossi passed Father Brennan’s open window on the way down. He paused, still smarting from the priest’s whipping, and peeked inside. He could make out the huddled form of the snoring priest and the pack of slumbering Dobermans.

“Never again,” whispered the boy softly as he continued his downward climb. “Never again.”

With all his fellow escapees safely on the ground, John led the way to an identical building located catty-corner on the courtyard — St. Patricia’s Home for Girls — which was also locked up for the night.

John began working the priest’s stickpin into the front door lock. His pal, Bartolo, watched in admiration.

“They should name you Simon Magus, for the magician...”

The little lockpick flaunted the heroic white cloak he’d fashioned from a sheet, with its red cross drawn in red marker on the left shoulder.

“Simon Templar,” insisted John, “crusading Saint and—”

The lock popped open. Proud delight cut short his recitation. The young knights crept stealthily into St. Patricia’s, sneaking silently down the corridor. They flattened themselves against a dark wall when the exceptionally large Sister Teresa waddled down the opposite hall. As her flapping black habit disappeared around the corner, the ragtag crusaders continued on their quest. They climbed the stairs to the second floor, but on the landing their progress came to an abrupt halt — a heavy mesh partition, fit for a high-security prison, extended from wall to banister, floor to ceiling.

Bartolo looked eagerly at his leader but saw only an expression of disappointment.

“Someday I’ll get in... anywhere,” insisted Rossi defiantly. He eyed the door to the girls’ dormitory, a few short yards beyond the barricade.

He shook the mesh and called out “Agnes!”

The girl awoke with a start and a quick gasp, sat up, and glanced around. The room’s tiny cruciform night-lights revealed several other girls were also awakened by this unexpected late-night visit.

Trailed by curious girlfriends and rubbing sleep from her eyes, Agnes left her tiny bed and walked barefoot out into the hall toward the landing.

“John Rossi?”

She saw him through the grim partition. Delighted and disbelieving, she ran straight to the mesh barrier.

Equally happy, he drew a golden strand of Agnes’s hair through the mesh and began stroking it.

Although moved, she still managed to admonish him.

“You realize that when they catch you, they’ll cane you.”

Her hero would have no such doomsaying.

“It will never happen, dear Agnes, because tonight this hearty brotherhood is leaving” — his eyes danced with lively mischief and joyous self-assurance — “on a Crusade!”

A delighted smile brightened Agnes’s face. She not only believed him, she believed in him.

“Oh, John Rossi!” she exclaimed happily.

“I am no longer John Rossi,” declared the boy with a triumphant wave of his cape. “My name is Templar, Simon Templar, crusading Saint and hero of a thousand adventures!”

He took her warm hand in his through the cold metal mesh. At that moment, he became the embodiment of all things altruistic and romantic. It was as if the fictionalized Knight Templar from the colorful paperback had come to life.

“I have risked everything, Agnes my love, to bid you farewell. I can’t leave you without a kiss, can I?”

The boy was in his glory; Agnes’s eyes misted in adoration.

“And where do you go? What will you do?”

The Saint errant tossed back his head, striking a piratical stance on the stairs.

“Why, we will go out and find more and more adventures! We will swagger and swashbuckle, and boast and sing and throw our weight around!”

Agnes giggled, her feet prancing on the landing.

“You don’t weigh that much!”

The other children laughed aloud, forgetting the lateness of the hour and the danger of discovery.

Sister Teresa was returning from the bathroom when she heard children’s happy voices — a rare occurrence at any hour. Worse, she heard boys’ voices. The waddling nun ran fast, then faster, to the scene of the disaster. When she saw the unauthorized midnight conclave of underage children in their nightclothes, she screamed as if Satan himself had erupted from Hell.

Her high-pitched wail echoed through the courtyard like the screeching whine of incoming artillery. Father Brennan was awake in an instant, and so were his dogs.

Sister Teresa, arms flapping, turned in florid agitation, propelling her massive frame toward the main entrance in an overheated rush to summon Father Brennan from St. Ignatius.

Taking the sudden commotion as an exit cue, Simon Templar waved farewell with an exaggerated flourish. As the boys began their hasty departure, Agnes’s voice sliced through the air.

“Wait! John Rossi. My kiss...”

He stopped, enchanted by the proposition. The other boys ran, but Rossi returned to the impenetrable barricade. There was only one way to do it — if the two heroic lovebirds leaned over the banister and around the partition, and if they both stretched, their lips would touch.

He, taller than she, leaned out over the twenty-foot drop, his lips at the ready.

She, substantially shorter, sweetly puckered in anticipation as her cold little toes left the floor. She balanced precariously on the banister, her lips brushing his, as the furious barking of dogs began echoing up from the stairwell.

When Brennan and his Dobermans arrived on the second-floor stairs, the unamused headmaster discovered the two in mid-kiss. A shaft of moonlight shimmered through the window, bathing the precious couple in serene, beatific illumination.

If hearts were touched by their innocence and appearance, Father Brennan’s was not among them. A sadistic grin twisted his unpleasant features. The dogs snarled.

“Sic the boy!” the headmaster hissed.

Agnes’s eyes opened wide in terror. The dogs leaped from behind John Rossi, barking and snapping viciously, and she involuntarily recoiled. Agnes’ arms flailed desperately as she tried to regain her balance, but only her eyes caught Simon’s before she disappeared over the banister.

Brennan called off the dogs and hastened to the edge. He and Templar stood side by side, looking down at the lifeless body of innocent Agnes crumpled on the cold marble floor.

Father Brennan turned in rage to the stunned and speechless boy.

“Bastard!” yelled Brennan, slapping the child across the face. “Who the hell do you think you are?” He slapped him again, and the boy’s soul recoiled. Ice poured through his veins, and when he spoke his voice was steel on chilled steel.

“My name is Templar, Simon Templar.” He tried to force the words out, but his faith had fallen with Agnes. A third slap silenced his youthful impertinence, and his once bright eyes became dark stones in a well of tears.

2

CNN correspondent Jan Sharp’s nose had been cold and numb for so long, she almost doubted its existence. Bundled against the freezing Moscow wind, she stood before the familiar backdrop of St. Basil’s cathedral while her cameraman, Lloyd Swain, prepared for broadcast.

“This is what I get for majoring in Slavic languages and broadcast journalism,” quipped Sharp. “I could have majored in Romance Languages and we’d be doing a lifestyle feature on the pleasure resorts of Spain.”

Swain’s laugh formed warm breath clouds around his large, gregarious face. He, too, was encased in thermal underwear, quilted parka, and heavy gloves.

“Been there; done that,” replied Swain as he adjusted the camera’s white balance. “Besides, if we don’t cover this Tretiak story, Chet Rogers at UPN will get all the glory.”

A sudden gust of iced wind compelled Sharp to tug her fur-rimmed hood tighter around her face. She shivered and looked over to her left for a quick glimpse of her primary competitor. Chet Rogers’s UPN crew was also in Red Square, as were the folks from ITN and the big four American broadcast networks.

After a few more interminable minutes of wet, stinging air and last-minute technical adjustments, Swain was ready.

As the seasoned newscaster was about to begin, she noticed a long-haired tourist wearing a bright blue parka point his 35mm camera in her direction. She smiled her best professional smile, and he clicked the shutter moments before she went on the air.

“The Cold War may be over,” intoned Sharp, “but the war against the cold is heating up with dangerous political implications. Ivan Tretiak, the ultra-Nationalist former Soviet minister of energy turned Moscow entrepreneur — the former National Oil Company is now Tretiak Industries — is about to give a highly publicized address projected here, in Red Square, on giant video screens. If he has his way, he will take control of the former Soviet Union, playing the current crisis into an opportunity for another Russian revolution.”

The correspondent continued detailing the background of the crisis as thousands of Muscovites filled Red Square, huddling together in rapt anticipation.

“Moscow’s National Oil Company building was, during the era of Stalinist Russia, the singular source of reliable physical warmth during a reign of icy terror. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, the demise of Soviet Communism and resultant rise of capitalistic entrepreneurism has brought another chill to the Russian people — a coal and oil shortage of numbing proportions.”

The crowd stood shoulder to shoulder, cheering, stomping, and flicking their imported childproof lighters as an enthusiastic ovation for the dynamic leader who would soon address them from the heart of Tretiak Industries.

Giant video screens on either side of a double-headed eagle banner were filled with full-color images of Tretiak’s October Party banner — a rising sun, and a Russian girl and boy gazing on a glorious tomorrow.

The image dissolved into the energetic, fortyish, and victorious-looking visage of Ivan Tretiak being broadcast from the dramatically lit conference room of Tretiak Industries.

He delivered his impassioned, articulate, and inflammatory speech as much to the cameras as to the cold crowd huddled in the streets.

“For eight centuries Moscow, our Moscow, has been the seat of true civilization,” declared Tretiak, his voice echoing back from the cold stone buildings, “but now, what do I see? A Wild West town from some American movie!”

The crowd, familiar with American movies, cheered.

“If this is the Wild West, then make me your sheriff,” he exclaimed. “Let me wear a star... a red star!”

Pandemonium. The crowd, predisposed to agree, chanted his name in wild affirmation.

The long-haired tourist in the bright blue parka squeezed his way through the crowd as Tretiak continued his diatribe against the current Kremlin leadership and the evil influences of American motion pictures. The bitter cold and equally bitter mob meant nothing to him. He casually exited Red Square, returned to his budget-priced hotel room, gathered his belongings, and secured cab transportation to the airport.

The man entering the taxi, however, did not have long hair, nor did he look American. The name on his passport did not match the name under which he rented the Moscow room, nor did it share any similarity to the appellative used upon entering Russia.

Neither the flight attendants in first class nor the well-endowed matron sitting across from him could ever imagine that this handsome and well-mannered young man had, only a few hours before, been pulling off one of the most daring robberies in Russian history.

Simon Templar had done exactly that, and accomplished it by thorough planning, precision timing, and unwavering confidence. Templar’s confidence was well deserved. He had come to Moscow to do what he did best — steal. No longer a small, skinny lad, this handsome man had been self-reliant and self-supporting since his final escape from St. Ignatius at the age of thirteen.

The scene of the daring daylight robbery was the aforementioned Tretiak Industries building. Templar had acquired a small rented room not far from the target, and within days the walls were decorated with numerous telephoto images of the building from various angles, close-ups of specific individuals, and detailed floor plans.

A dedicated professional. Templar prepared for the caper with consummate skill. In addition to an astonishing collection of high-tech tools, he possessed total mastery of the art of disguise. His assortment of false mustaches, wigs, cheek pads, and mouth prosthetics rivaled the collection of any member of the Hollywood makeup artists’ union.

Simon Templar was, after all these years, still determined to be the only one to define his identity — an identity he could change at will.

By the time he left his rented room for Tretiak Industries, he was a moon-faced, chunky, mustachioed ruffian enwrapped in a heavy quilted overcoat.

He was not the only ruffian in a quilted overcoat entering Tretiak Industries that afternoon. Several such men acted as bodyguard escorts for a cadre of tuxedoed Japanese and Russian businessmen attending a high-level business conference preceding one of Ivan Tretiak’s polished media events.

Templar easily blended into the procession.

As they passed the formal security desk on the way to a bank of elevators, he quickly attached a tiny video camera, no bigger than a watch face, to a pillar directly facing the security system’s single video monitor.

Once inside the elevator. Templar hid his face by murmuring officiously into a walkie-talkie tucked deep in his shoulder. The others paid no attention to him, but one man seemed to project an air of suspicious unease. His name was Ilya, and it was his job to be suspicious and uneasy. In his hip Nike attire and Doc Martens, he was exported American excess personified.

No mere bodyguard, Ilya was the worst of Russia’s new breed of immoral toughs providing personal security to Russia’s capitalist elite. He was on Tretiak’s personal payroll and under specific instructions that absolutely nothing was to mar this most important meeting.

The elevator reached its destination. The well-dressed occupants and their beefy bodyguards poured out into the hallway. Templar, staying inside the advance guards’ blind spot, slid back to the service stairs.

As the entourage entered the conference room, everyone became swept up in welcomes, handshakes, and obligatory bows. Even Ilya initially failed to notice the bodyguard count was down by one.

Alone on the stairs Simon Templar removed his overcoat. The bulk underneath was not padding, but gear and paraphernalia which he transferred into a large backpack before beginning the climb to his final destination — the top floor of Tretiak Industries.

Meanwhile, one floor below, the businessmen gathered around a detailed scale model of a planned petroleum project. Champagne poured and toasts were made to the linkage of Japanese business to the New Russia.

Two of the more serious Japanese executives, politely wary, turned toward the window and surveyed the scene of potential turmoil in Red Square.

“The New Russia appears desperately unorganized,” commented the shorter and more dour of the two.

“Who will keep order? Chaos does not bode well for business.”

A sudden back slap caught both men’s attention. Draping his arms over their shoulders was an outgoing Russian displaying a predatory grin — Yuri Vereshagin, chief operating officer of Tretiak Industries. He, too, looked at the clamor in Red Square.

“A time of tumult is also a time of opportunity for men of courage and vision,” insisted the smiling Russian. “We have a word for it — bespredel. It means, ‘no limits.’ All of us at Tretiak Industries are dedicated to progress, guided by the all-embracing vision of Ivan Tretiak. Ah, if only he was in charge instead of President Karpov! Believe me, all around us are unlimited opportunities.”

Several stories above them, Simon Templar’s attempt to exploit opportunities of his own came to an abrupt halt. For security purposes, the final flight of service stairs was sealed off by a cement wall.

Undaunted, he backtracked to the previous landing and forced open the window. He reached into his backpack and extracted a foot-long sectional aluminum-alloy hook ladder which telescoped to twenty-five feet. In moments Templar was scaling the next two stories, clinging to the ultralight rungs in the pitiless winter wind.

By the time the two Japanese executives had been drawn into the formal proceedings, the efficient burglar had reached the rooftop. The only remaining obstacle was a standard door and a simple lock.

He chuckled softly to himself as he pulled a sleek penknife from his bootheel and began picking the lock. In an instant the door opened, and he stood at the entrance of an empty, undefended corridor.

From his bag of techno-toys came a pair of infrared goggles. Once in place, they allowed him to see the wall of horizontal light beams shining from floor to ceiling.

Under normal circumstances, any attempt to bypass these heat-sensing beams would be futile. Simon Templar was most adept at dealing with normal circumstances by abnormal and inventive means. He knew in advance of the light beams’ existence, and he came well-prepared to deal with them.

The thermal bodysuit he wore under his overcoat and the matching hood pulled over his head were not intended as fashion statements, and the probe wired to it served a singular and important purpose. He passed the probe under the lowest bar and noted the digital reading off his wristwatch as the probe tracked his rising body temperature. At the exact instant his temperature matched that of the corridor, his watch emitted a delicate beep. He then took one well-measured breath and passed undetected through the beams of light.

Five minutes later Simon Templar was enjoying one of the more outstanding elements of his outlaw artistry — safecracking. In his earlier days Templar relied on tactile sensitivity and an amplified microphone placed near the dial on the safe door. He would listen to the distinctive clicks of the inner mechanisms, translate the sounds into numbers, and simply dial in the proper combination.

Today, however, he used a technological marvel built to his own exacting specifications — the Safecracker. Digital in design and battery-powered, its tiny arm worked the combination lock while an internal processor analyzed myriad sequences in rapid succession.

Templar set a small explosive cap in the corner and checked his watch. He glanced at the wall-mounted security camera, then at a Watchman receiving transmission from the small video camera he had planted in the lobby. It clearly showed the images appearing on the lobby’s security monitor: a steady succession of fish-eye views of the Tretiak building corridors, stairwells, and offices. If he had gauged the video sequence correctly, he had six seconds before the safe room would be flashed on-screen.

“Precision timing,” Simon whispered to himself through cheek pads and false teeth. He removed the Safecracker and hugged it to his chest, moving directly under the security camera. When the safe appeared on the lobby monitors, everything looked secure. Moments later Templar and his high-tech assistant were back at work.

As the Safecracker whirred and clicked, the downstairs business conference was building in intensity. Ivan Tretiak himself was glad-handing the attendees while Yuri Vereshagin prepared the lighting and atmosphere for his boss’s important address.

Ilya paced impatiently. He had heard it all before, seen it all before. Ivan Tretiak was his father. Ilya didn’t feel overshadowed; he felt eclipsed. Besides, he had an important meeting of his own nagging for attention. He headed for the door, but Vereshagin intercepted him.

“It is poor manners to walk out on our guests,” hissed the fiercely loyal Vereshagin.

“Would you prefer that our leader’s son pissed his pants in public?” countered Ilya. He pushed his way out and strode purposefully down the empty hallway as if he were an important young man late for a big meeting.

The young Russian skulked into the service stairwell. His big meeting was with a vial of methamphetamine. He spread the noxious powder on the back of his hand and sniffed.

His head rocked back as if he had been pleasantly punched, his eyes squinted, and he shook away the burning pain in his sinuses. He laid out another line, but just as he leaned down to snort it, a gust of wind blew it away.

Aggravated, Ilya complained under his breath.

“Why the hell is there wind in a stairwell?”

He looked up. The landing’s window had been forced open. Ilya growled and took a closer look.

On the top floor the Safecracker finished its concerto of metallic whirs and clicks. The safe popped open, and Templar reached within and removed a black box the size of a cuff-link keeper. Inside, cushioned on velvet as if it were a precious stone, rested a gleaming microchip.

He slid the chip into his breast pocket as an unexpected outburst of angry Russian sliced through the silence.

“Stoyat! Ruki za golovu!”

“Sorry, mate,” said Templar in his best Australian accent, “I don’t speak the language.”

“In that case: Freeze. Put your hands behind your head.”

Templar complied.

“Turn around, slowly.”

Templar swiveled to face his adversary — Ilya, armed with a Smith & Wesson 66.

The high-strung Russian gestured toward the dark hood covering Templar’s face.

“Wrong place for a condom. Peel it off.”

The burglar obliged.

The armed henchman took a good look at the intruder’s face — a creative combination of technically augmented putty and prosthetics.

“God, you are one butt-ugly bastard.” Ilya laughed with a cruel bark. “Who the hell are you?”

“Saint Uniatz the Inebriate,” replied Simon pleasantly, giving Ilya an obvious looking-over, “Patron Saint of the fashion impaired. You must be my next case.”

Caught off guard by the burglar’s attitude, Ilya was momentarily confused. He clenched his jaw and stared intently, extending his empty hand. “The microchip, please.”

Templar noticed something telltale in the Russian’s movements, the twitch of his facial muscles and, most of all, his pupils.

“Listen,” said the burglar reasonably, “I give this back to you. Daddy locks it up again, what do you get? Not even a Christmas bonus. On the other hand, you go fifty-fifty with me, a half million dollars in hard currency, you could buy all the Methadrine in Moscow.”

Ilya, surprised, ignored the accurate reference to his drug of choice.

“You’ve got nothing to bargain with,” he countered, and waved the pistol as if handguns settled everything. “Why don’t you just give me the microchip before I shoot you?”

“As opposed to?”

“Shooting you first and then taking the microchip.”

Templar reached into his breast pocket, pulled out the precious item, and began toying with it. He rolled it between his fingers as a magician would a coin.

“Give it here!” Ilya barked.

“You’ll get it, don’t worry, but first you can answer one quick question.”

Ilya cocked his head in disbelief.

“You’re gonna ask me a question?”

A crooked smile distorted the burglar’s twisted visage.

“What did Simon Magus do in Sumaria?”

As the words were spoken, Simon flipped the chip into the air toward Ilya. The thug’s eyes searched in desperation, and his weapon wavered. In that split millisecond. Templar moved with the force of a compressed steel spring, kicking Ilya full in the head.

Ilya reeled from the impact, falling, his Smith & Wesson clattering to the floor. He was quick to retaliate with an expert leg sweep, bringing Templar down. As Ilya scrambled to retrieve his gun. Templar pulled a radio transmitter from his pocket. Closing his eyes, he pressed the button just as Ilya’s hand closed on the gun butt.

The explosive cap planted in the corner burst forth in a hot-white phosphor flare, filling the room with blinding light.

Templar ran like hell.

He raced back through the corridor toward the stairwell, violating the heat-seeking light beams, setting off alarms, and triggering a succession of unflattering photographs from a series of closed-circuit cameras. Ilya followed, cursing, blinking away the flare’s retinal afterburn.

As for the man who would never again be called John Rossi, there was nowhere to go but up. Fighting blustery winds on the rooftop, Templar sprinted to the balustrade.

As he gripped the rail, a blast from Ilya’s Smith & Wesson blew away a chunk from beneath his fingers.

“Give it up,” ordered Ilya. “It’s either that or fall ten floors.”

“Easy choice,” responded Templar, and he vaulted over the edge.

Shocked, Ilya rushed to the stone railing.

Peering over the edge, the stunned Russian saw the ugly intruder free-falling through space to certain death. Ilya didn’t wait to see the impact. He ran back for the microchip.

Ever efficient, Templar used the free-fall time to discard the padding from inside his cheeks, spit out the teeth, pull off his mustache, and discard the putty appliqués before hitting the bed of a truck parked at the curb. He bounced as if from a trampoline and landed feet-first on the sidewalk.

Templar’s truck; Templar’s giant air bag on the truck bed.

Restored to his natural look, Simon reached into the truck’s cab and pulled out a ragged knee-length overcoat and peasant headgear.

While the escaping Saint was altering his identity, Ilya was on his knees in the safe room searching for the flipped microchip. His fingers found it, but a closer look revealed it was nothing but a button from the burglar’s bodysuit.

The stream of expletives unleashed by Ilya would, if printed herein, offend even the most sophisticated reader. Suffice it to say, the man was overwhelmed by anger.

Below, a cadre of security emerged from the building alerted by the numerous alarms. Rather than run, Templar lurched at them, palm outreached as if for a handout. The guards rudely pushed him aside.

Ilya, now accompanied by two other henchmen, blasted out the door of Tretiak Industries with his mind on fire. Fueled by adrenaline and Methadrine, he nervously snapped at the men from lobby security.

“Where’s the body?”

The security guard had no idea what Ilya was talking about.

“Body? All I’ve seen is some guy in rags.”

Ilya’s peripheral vision captured a scraggly bum rounding the corner at the end of the block. Alarm bells rang in Ilya’s head, and he took off after him.

Templar hurried through an archway and passed a convoy of Russian troops. Directly ahead of him were thirty pro-Tretiak demonstrators proudly marching and waving placards. He immediately joined their ranks, shouting slogans and working his way to the front of the parade.

Ilya and his men ran faster than the procession marched. When they saw the bum moving to the parade’s head, they increased their speed even more.

Templar dodged out of line and into the Red Square crowd. He pulled a vodka bottle from his overcoat and quickly linked arms with a genuine bum who was more than surprised to find himself suddenly joined in generous, jubilant camaraderie.

Searching for the illusive lone bum, Ilya raced past the two joyous drunks. Templar then gifted the vodka to his grateful acquaintance, ducked into a doorway, and reversed his coat. He now appeared attired in a brightly colored parka. Then, from the right-hand pocket, he retrieved a cap fitted with long hair.

Ilya’s eyes scanned the crowd of demonstrators and sightseers. Typical tourists snapped photos of St. Basil’s cathedral. And then he saw him — a lone bum moving hurriedly toward Ilyinski Street.

With lightning-quick strides, Ilya caught up with him and spun him around. The ragged man clutched a half-empty vodka bottle as if it were his baby.

“It’s mine! You can’t have it!”

Wrong bum.

Infuriated, Ilya stomped off. He paid no notice to the tourist in the loud blue parka snapping pictures of the CNN correspondent and her crew broadcasting live from Red Square.

Ilya looked up at the giant video screens. There was his father, Ivan Tretiak, larger than life and twice as loud.

“Russia is riddled with criminals, hoodlums, and bandits,” ranted Tretiak via video projection to the enraptured crowd, “shake-down artists, exploiters, carpetbaggers, and sports-car-driving capitalist opportunists! Where does this come from? Hollywood! And you know what hes beneath the fake tinsel and glitter of Hollywood? Real tinsel and glitter! But is Hollywood your enemy?”

Half the crowd yelled “Da!” Half the crowd played it safe and waited.

“No!” yelled Tretiak. “Your enemy is inside the Kremlin taking orders from the West to perpetuate the heating crisis!”

The international news cameras sent Tretiak’s message around the world.

“President Karpov sits in the Kremlin, a silly puppet of Western Imperialism and... and...” he searched for an appropriate cultural buzzword, “capitalistic family values!”

The mob stamped their feet. They were very cold.

“Yes, stamp your feet! Stamp your frostbitten feet!”

The thunder of a thousand feet filled the frosty air.

“Now, if you can stop stomping your feet and chattering your teeth, you can throw President Karpov out of the Kremlin!”

Overwhelmed by Tretiak’s manifest logic, the crowd stomped even louder.

Simon Templar did not remain in Red Square long enough to enjoy the conclusion of Tretiak’s speech, but he watched it replayed on the first-class video screen aboard his British Airway’s flight to London.

The in-flight recap of international news featured a disturbing montage of Russian unrest, frozen bodies being removed from buildings. President Karpov ducking rocks and bottles, and a point-counterpoint exchange between Ivan Tretiak and Russia’s elected democratic leader.

“How can NATO talk so boldly of expansion to the East?” asked Tretiak from the front steps of his elaborate Moscow mansion. “They must have a secret understanding with Mr. Karpov. Whereas it is we Russians who should be expanding — rebuilding our great Soviet empire, by force if necessary.”

“If Mr. Tretiak persists in accusing me of collusion with the West,” countered President Karpov from his Kremlin office, “he must produce proof of his scurrilous claim — documents, correspondence, hard evidence. If he cannot, then I demand that he stop the demagoguery and call off the dogs!”

The broadcast completed, other passengers then tilted back their seats, pulled little blue blankets up under their chins, and availed themselves of tight black eyeshades. The elegant young man in the luxuriously tailored suit, however, sat idly swinging a gold chain with an antique locket in front of his face. It was as if he were trying to relax by hypnosis.

The well-tended matron sitting across from him couldn’t resist initiating conversation.

“For a special someone?”

He handed her the locket, offering an inviting smile to go with it.

“Ah, cloisonné,” she said coyly, “made by Byzantine monks, I suppose. My husband says that men only buy their wives jewelry when they’re cheating... so I say... cheat, cheat, cheat!”

They both laughed as if her remark was a joke rather than a blatant invitation.

“I’m Irena.”

Templar admired her warmly before speaking in an authentic Central American accent.

“Martin. Martin de Porres. I was named for a Panamanian saint who could instill new life by the laying on of hands.”

“Really?”

3

Scotland Yard was the name given to the first headquarters building of London’s police force in 1829 because the rear entrance of the building was on the site of a 12th-century palace used for visiting Scottish royalty.

The headquarters was moved in 1890, again in 1967, and was now officially New Scotland Yard, although most people continued calling it by its original name.

Scotland Yard maintained criminal records for the entire United Kingdom and had a Special Branch, akin to the Secret Service. It also maintained close links with Interpol.

The Yard was famed for its detectives, including the portly, phlegmatic investigator known for his demeanor of perpetual boredom — Chief Inspector Claude Eustace Teal.

Inspector Teal came from a long line of short detectives with boring features. He joined the force in his early twenties, pounded a beat like any young copper, and earned a reputation for plodding efficiency, if nothing else.

But there was something else. Perhaps because of the plodding, perhaps due to dedication. Inspector Teal always got his man. Hence, his promotion to chief inspector.

Teal had none of the theoretical scientific training in criminology with which the new graduates of the Police College were pumped to offensive overflowing, but he had a background of thirty years’ hard-won experience.

The droopy-eyed detective’s reputation was the stuff of legend. Any criminal learning Teal was on his trail cringed at the prospect of certain incarceration — any criminal, that is, except one.

As a general rule. Inspector Teal was not concerned with matters of international diplomacy. The squabbles of world leaders, in-fighting of revolutionaries, and tiffs between terrorists were seldom issues of professional concern unless such misbehavior took place within the confines of London.

He was always willing to offer complete cooperation to Interpol, or any other such agency, when directed to do so by his superiors. He was especially prone to add an extra measure of dedication when personally prompted by Sir Hamilton Dorn of Special Branch, or the commissioner of Scotland Yard himself.

It was precisely such a situation that found Inspector Teal standing in the commissioner’s office, clasping a bowler hat over his protruding stomach.

“Have you been following this Russian situation. Teal?”

“I watch the news,” replied the detective. “Seems they’re having a spot of trouble.”

The commissioner plucked at his mustache.

“A spot of trouble, indeed. Sit down.”

Teal sat.

“I don’t need to tell you that Her Majesty’s government is, in the most official manner, supportive of President Karpov’s democratic reforms. The situation there is unstable at best, and should Tretiak and his October Party take over...”

He let the sentence hang before tossing several surveillance photos across the desk.

“MI5 has been watching Tretiak like a hawk, and it seems there was a rather daring and very peculiar robbery at Tretiak Industries — and the M-O is all too familiar. They think it’s your boy.”

The expression “your boy” was one Teal had grown to resent. It signified a particularly aggravating individual whom Teal had, without success, been intent on capturing for more than eighteen months.

“I wish you wouldn’t use that expression, sir,” said Teal wearily. “The name on his file is The Saint.”

“That’s why they think he’s your boy,” continued Teal’s superior. “He identified himself as Saint somebody or other when Tretiak’s security tried to nail him.”

“He always does that,” added Teal, “and then he escapes.”

“Of course,” confirmed the commissioner, “he always escapes, he always uses cutting-edge technology, he always...”

Teal didn’t need to hear the rest. He knew it by heart. There was only one uncaptured criminal in the world who fit the description being delineated point by point.

The dour detective examined the photographs of a heavily disguised Simon Templar racing down the halls of Tretiak Industries. He placed the photos on the commissioner’s desk and began rotating his hat between his fingers.

“And what did our Saint make off with this time?”

“Some fancy microchip, but that’s not the point. British Intelligence believes he’s operating out of the U.K., and I don’t mind telling you that we’re suddenly under a great deal of pressure to bring him in so Special Branch can” — he pulled harder on the mustache — “have a word with him.”

“A word with him, sir?” Teal looked bored, but he was keenly interested.

The commissioner leaned back and continued pulling. A small bare patch was beginning to manifest itself above his lip.

“As long as he was stealing diamonds, paintings, corporate secrets, and other such nonsense, it was a different matter—”

“Excuse me,” Teal interrupted, “what’s different now?”

“Politics, Teal. It’s one thing to lift an authentic Van Gogh from a Netherlands museum, but quite another to rob that crackpot Ivan Tretiak himself, right in Tretiak’s own building, right in the heart of Moscow. That means your boy has been in contact with prominent players in this Russian situation. What he knows, who he knows, could be of significant value to British Intelligence.”

Teal considered the implications with thoughtful intensity.

“Well, Her Majesty’s government doesn’t like Tretiak,” observed the detective, “the Yanks don’t like Tretiak, and every other democracy in the West doesn’t like Tretiak. For all we know, British Intelligence hired the Saint just to make Tretiak’s life as miserable as he’s made mine.”

The commissioner let out a long laborious sigh.

“Sir Hamilton Dorn rang up just a few minutes ago. He thought maybe the CIA was behind it, but it turns out they thought we were behind it. I just got off the phone with Interpol as well.”

Teal rotated his hat three more times before speaking.

“I’ve had it out with Interpol about the Saint on several occasions. Believe me, sir, we all want to catch the Saint, or at least find out exactly who he is and who he works for, although my impression is that he works for himself.”

“Precisely,” agreed the commissioner. “Tell me, Teal. Do you have any solid leads, any real suspects, or...”

Inspector Teal slowly unwrapped a stick of spearmint gum, folded it into his mouth, and began working it slowly.

At length, before the commissioner could become impatient, he shared his closely held personal opinion.

“I’ve seen every type of thief you can think of, from the small-time hood to the big-time operator, but I’ve never before come up against anyone like the Saint,” admitted Teal.

“Obviously,” said the commissioner.

Teal ignored the negative implication.

“Most criminals have egos so big you almost have to reserve a separate cell for their self-image,” explained the detective. “They love to sign their crimes just as if they were artists painting a masterpiece. Same with the Saint. Except...”

“Except what, Teal?”

“Except there is something off-kilter about him, I mean as far as criminals go.” Teal’s cheeks turned pink. “He is incredibly impudent.”

“Impudent, you say?”

Teal nodded.

“I almost had him once, you know,” insisted the detective, becoming almost animated. “I was face-to-face with him within minutes after the Prince of Cherkesia incident I admit I didn’t realize it was him at the time, but he actually had the nerve to take his index finger and poke me repeatedly in the stomach!”

The commissioner stopped pulling his mustache and stared at Inspector Teal.

“He poked your stomach?”

Teal realized how ridiculous he sounded, and his cheeks almost glowed from chagrin.

“Well, let’s leave my stomach out of this,” offered Teal.

“Please,” urged the commissioner.

“That episode gave me my only direct contact with the Saint — at least as far as I know,” the detective explained. “He checked into the fanciest hotel in all of London, wore the most convincing disguise you ever saw in your life, and proceeded to run a multimillion dollar scam on one of the biggest insurance companies in the U.K.”

The commissioner squinted, as if scrunching his eyes would aid his memory.

“Oh, I recall, I recall,” intoned the silver-haired official, “the one we later indicted for denying beneficiaries their rightful claims.”

“Exactly, sir. That’s what I’m getting at. Every so often he pulls some stunt entirely criminal but...”

“Justified?”

Teal would have squirmed were he the squirming type, which he was not.

“I wouldn’t go that far. Crime is crime.”

The commissioner thumbed through a file on his desk. A particular notation caught his attention, and he tapped the page with his forefinger.

“Tell me about the phone call.”

Teal did not like discussing the phone call because it required him to say something nice about Inspector Rabineau, and Teal would rather not mention Rabineau at all.

“The Saint — and we’re sure it was him — rang up Scotland Yard about six months ago, right after he looted the Essenden Estate. Half the county constables were hot on his trail...”

“Quite a merry chase from what I hear.”

“Merry, indeed,” Teal elaborated. “He jumped right off a rooftop into empty space and disappeared.”

“The phone call.” He put the detective back on topic.

“Oh. Yes.” Teal cleared his throat and chewed with renewed vigor. “Apparently, while he was doing his best to elude the police, he crept by a flat, peeked in the window, and saw some fellow mistreating a child in a most cruel manner. He actually called Scotland Yard and reported it. Inspector Rabineau did the follow-up, and she managed to rescue that child from a most tragic situation.”

“Sounds like your boy should be up for citizen of the year,” mumbled the commissioner sarcastically.

Teal drummed his fingers on the top of his bowler.

“The point I’m getting at, sir, is this: We don’t know who the Saint is, and I don’t think he knows, either. He doesn’t act like any sort of felon I’ve ever encountered before. But I will capture the Saint. He’s bound to slip up because, sooner or later, they all do.”

The commissioner stood from his desk and walked over to the window. He pulled a tiny comb from his pocket and began smoothing the wild hairs on his upper lip.

“It’s not so much prosecution that we’re after at this point, Teal,” he said vaguely. “As I mentioned, there are international political implications involved. Your boy may have information that could be... invaluable. In truth, according to Sir Hamilton Dorn, the entire Tretiak theft smells fishier than a boatload of kippers.”

“Sir?”

“No one messes with Ivan Tretiak and lives. No one even tries. In other words, either someone or some nation is exceptionally daring and inventive — the Japanese perhaps — or it was an inside job. Either way, the Saint is in the middle of some pretty nasty business.”

Teal looked at the clock. As a rule, meetings with the commissioner seldom lasted this long.

“I’m assigning Rabineau to work with you on this one, Teal.”

The detective almost choked on his gum.

“Rabineau?”

“She’s the best of the new breed...”

“So she says...” Teal mumbled under his spearmint-scented breath.

“There’s a fresh batch of composite sketches of the Saint in action around the world from Interpol, plus that latest one from Russia. If he’s on his way back to London from Moscow, you have ample time to make it to Heathrow.”

The commissioner turned from the window and put away the comb.

“We want to intercept the microchip, bring him in with it, and turn them both over to MI5. Don’t detain a likely suspect simply for a questionable passport. We want him, with the chip, dead to rights. Is that clear, Teal?”

It was clear. Too clear.

“About Rabineau, sir. Have you briefed her on—”

“The political aspect? No. You’re a chief inspector, she’s not. I think you two will make an excellent team.”

And that was that.

When the door behind him closed, and he made his way to his tiny, cluttered office, Chief Inspector Claude Eustace Teal of Scotland Yard sat down and deposited a fresh stick of spearmint gum into his mouth.

“Politics and Rabineau,” muttered the detective, “two good reasons to take early retirement.”

Simon Templar was not surprised when diligent customs officers at Heathrow Airport thoroughly ransacked his bag. They also compared his piratical profile to the recently transmitted images of a certain fleeing burglar audacious enough to violate top-level Russian security.

“Nothing personal,” offered an officer, “but this is the first flight from Moscow since the ‘incident,’ and you’re about the same height as this gent.”

Simon examined the fuzzy photo of himself in hasty retreat through the corridors of Tretiak Industries.

“He does look a bit like me... in the advanced stages of demonic possession.”

Bored, Templar turned to a mirror which he knew was one-way glass. He could easily guess who was watching from the other side. His guess was, of course, accurate.

Chief Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard stared at Templar’s face, and almost believed that Templar was staring back. Which, in a way, he was.

Teal turned his attention to a row of computer-generated composite sketches. Each sketch showed a different man, yet there was something naggingly familiar about all of them.

The detective’s pudgy finger poked at a sketch from last year’s heist of the Perrigo diamonds. The mere fact that the Perrigo diamonds were illicit to begin with, and Perrigo himself a notorious diamond smuggler, didn’t alter the illegality of the heist.

“Same chin structure, you notice that?”

He spoke to Inspector Rabineau who, by her own assertion, was one of Scotland Yard’s best trained and most astute detectives. She carefully considered Teal’s observation, then offered one of her own.

“And look at the sketch from the Reuban Graner incident in Tenerife—”

“I thought that was Haiti.”

“No. Tenerife, Canary Islands... same eyes.”

On the opposite side of the glass, Junior Inspector Desmond Pryke arrived in customs with a fresh X ray of the detained traveler’s innards. He held it up to the light.

“If this is the culprit,” said Pryke, “he didn’t swallow the microchip.”

Simon shrugged and stole a glance at the high-contrast display of his gastrointestinal system.

“The salmon mousse looked so much lighter during dinner. Have you quite finished?”

A furrow-browed functionary examined Simon’s authentic-looking but completely fabricated British passport.

“Ian Dickerson...?”

“Yes,” affirmed Simon cheerily. “I was named for the Canadian saint who first imported peanuts to France.”

“That so?” The official, unimpressed, returned the passport.

“Indeed, he eluded the British authorities for decades.” Templar added the irrelevant detail as if attempting to earn extra points on a quiz program.

The three custom officials stared blankly.

Behind the glass, Teal and Rabineau continued consulting their panoply of criminal portraits.

“You know, Teal, this fellow is a dead ringer for the perpetrator behind the Brass Buddha theft, except for the hair and the nose...”

“Did you say ‘and the nose’ or ‘in’?”

The droll Chief Inspector, his round pink face set in its habitual mask of weary patience, transferred a wad of gum from one side of his mouth to the other.

He leaned over to take a closer look at the portrait in question.

“Could be, could be. Also a resemblance to the Count of Cristamonte. Damn. Hard to tell.”

Teal unwrapped a fresh stick of spearmint gum.

“I want to be absolutely certain,” he insisted. “We can’t afford to make a mistake, not now. If he’s our man, criminal pride will catch up with him. He’ll think he is immune to capture, get sloppy, give himself away, it always happens sooner or later. It’s as predictable as liturgy... except...”

“Except what?”

Teal frowned gloomily.

“Except right this minute we have absolutely nothing we can pin on him, nothing at all.”

Rabineau, not having the benefit of the commissioner’s briefing, became impatient.

“We could detain him for investigation,” she asserted with insistent passion. “He looks suspect to me, and he could be traveling on a forged or fraudulent passport!”

“I’m not going to endanger potential prosecution by playing a weak card like that,” stated Teal succinctly. “If he doesn’t have the microchip, we can’t take him in.”

She scrunched her nose as if Teal were emitting an unsavory odor.

“Besides,” added the detective for justification, “I’ve received directives from our superiors regarding handling of this matter.”

Rabineau’s jaw tightened and she leaned into her superior’s personal space.

“Am I out of the loop on something here, Inspector?”

Teal sighed. He answered without looking at her.

“Afraid so. Higher-ups sparring with other higher-ups. You’ll get used to it before you get over it.”

He could sense her resentment at being excluded. His attitude softened, for he was, above all, a good man.

“Politics, Rabineau. The commissioner. Sir Hamilton Dorn, Special Branch, MI5...”

He said plenty without really saying anything.

Rabineau smirked.

“Oh,” she said flatly, “I guess that settles that.”

On the other side of the glass, Simon Templar smiled, lifted his luggage, and watched his fellow departing passengers strolling unmolested toward the exit. Among them was the ripe and willing Irena. Bouncing above her ample bosom was the Byzantine locket.

4

Simon Templar saw both the bosom and the locket again less than an hour later in a plush, deluxe, and dimly lit hotel suite.

Martin de Porres, alias Ian Dickerson, had fully demonstrated the Saint’s technique of hands-on rejuvenation, and Irena was not disappointed. She reclined in repose as Simon gently stroked her shoulders.

“We know you have a choice when you fly,” he murmured affectionately. “So, we thank you for choosing... us.”

Irena laughed easily, and the locket bounced like a tuppence on a trampoline. Templar took it in his hand.

“The locket hangs a bit low. It calls undue attention...”

“To my ‘generous bust’?”

“Generous indeed,” acknowledged Simon.

“Are they out of date? My husband says only small breasts are in these days.”

He examined the bosom objectively.

“Like fins on a Cadillac, a classic style is always appreciated.”

Simon pulled a small penknife from his pants pocket and motioned toward the locket.

“Let me remove a few links for you.”

She obligingly unclasped the necklace and handed it to him before starting toward the bathroom.

“Don’t be long,” called out Irena with a wink, “and I won’t be, either. I’m just going to slip into something less visible.”

When Irena reappeared from the bathroom, she was wrapped in a thick terry-cloth towel showing a perfectly modem hint of cleavage. The man she knew as Martin was not there to appreciate her ample charms. He and the locket were gone.

“Cheat, cheat, cheat,” said Simon Templar to himself as he exited the elevator in the hotel lobby, pried open the locket, and removed the microchip.

He unsentimentally tossed the broken locket into a nearby wastebasket and placed the microchip in an envelope.

It may be said that our Saint of multiple personalities was a man of singular purpose. Having achieved his goal of securing the microchip, all that remained was delivery and payment.

It had been two and a half weeks since the staff of London’s elite Belgravia-Copeland Residence Hotel had seen Mr. Orseolo Bodenheimer. A shy Italian of mixed ancestry, he was an exemplary tenant and true gentleman who paid his rent in advance and never caused trouble.

The moment he stepped from the large black taxi outside the hotel’s beveled glass doors, the lovely Jamaican night manager recognized the shuffling gait of the slightly stooped and studious-looking man who maintained a simple suite on the second floor.

“Mr. Bodenheimer,” she called warmly, “always a delight to see you, sir. I trust you’re well.”

Speaking with a slight Italian lilt, he handed her an envelope.

“Would you please overnight it to Mr. Miyaki at this address in Tokyo?”

She nodded pleasantly as an eager bellhop, new to the hotel, bustled over to grab the resident’s bag. The night manager, knowing their guest’s habits and wants, subtly restrained him and offered a whispered explanation.

“Mr. Bodenheimer was named for a sainted Santa Cruz bibliophile who left his family to pursue a life of solitary contemplation.”

She put the emphasis on solitary, and the bellhop understood her to mean “leave him alone.”

The respected recluse spoke generalized evening greetings in idiomatic Italian, and the bellhop watched his potential tip disappear up the stairs.

Inside his understated Georgian-style suite, Orseolo Bodenheimer’s shuffling gait and stooped posture miraculously disappeared. A few moments later, gone also were the fake eyelids, false nose, and wig-hat. Simon Templar was now simply himself, the one identity with which he was not completely comfortable.

When he applied makeup and costume, he was a man of his own design — limited in purpose, disposable as the lighters flicked in Moscow’s Red Square.

There had been a time when he defined himself as a joyous, swashbuckhng crusader for justice, but that heroic self-perception died in a Hong Kong orphanage a quarter century ago.

The hero of his reckless youth. Knight Templar, had bequeathed to him only a name — one name among many — and a bravado exterior polished and refined through practice.

Having removed his disguise, Templar checked his awaiting phone messages. As with his other high-tech toys, the answering machine stored messages originally received by numerous phones in diverse countries, and intended for several distinct identities.

“This is Galbraith Stride calling,” began one angry caller, “and I’ll be hanged if you think—”

Simon pressed the delete key.

“I think; you should be hanged,” muttered Templar.

Countess Anusia Marova called to complain that she couldn’t find her yacht, and Simon smiled knowingly before deleting her as well.

Templar raised an eyebrow at the sound of George Kestry of the NYPD calling to confirm tickets to the Detective Endowments Association’s annual fund-raiser, and he laughed aloud at an entrepreneur’s enthusiastic request for several million dollars to bankroll a “Conquest of America” tour for Grand Theft, a has-been rock band from the 1970s.

The balance of the messages were couched in tones either seductive or vindictive, depending on the caller’s gender and how recently they had discovered a sudden absence of family heirlooms, precious stones, or negotiable bearer-bonds.

He glanced around at his DBS television system, infrared remote controls. Power Pentium laptop PC, and a wardrobe of astonishingly expensive suits. If his boyhood hero wore chain mail and steel, this Knight Templar preferred armor forged of cashmere and silk.

Simon Templar had no illusions of altruism, romance, or selfless service. Too brave and mighty to be merely a rebel without a cause, he was a Templar devoid of king or crusade.

He was also without regrets.

“I may not know who I am,” admitted Templar to the mirror, “but I know what I am — the first great outlaw of the twenty-first century.”

He spun from the mirror and grabbed the television remote, wielding it as one would a pistol. He surfed through fifty channels in half that number of seconds, pausing briefly to watch a scene from an old black-and-white detective movie starring George Sanders. The debonair cad was cracking a safe by using only deft touch and focused concentration.

“My, my,” murmured Simon, “this must be the educational channel.”

The TV went dark in favor of a turbo-powered laptop with wireless modem. Within moments Templar was accessing the National Bank of Geneva’s private accounts site.

The laptop’s screen filled with detailed information of his personal Swiss bank account. A long column of deposits, each in the range of one to three million, gave him a combined total of slightly over $47,000,000.

He drummed his fingers impatiently on the keyboard and glanced at the sweep-second hand on his custom-crafted watch. It was time to be paid.

He waited.

The figures suddenly rearranged, and the screen reflected a new deposit and a revised total: $49,000,000.

“Can’t seem to break fifty million,” said Templar aloud as he shut down the laptop. He punched a button on his universal remote. A CD changer automatically selected something by Mahler as Simon stripped for a quick shower.

Towel-dried and freshly scrubbed, Simon slid into black silk pajamas and returned to his laptop.

Too tired to sleep. Templar began browsing cyberspace for his next high-yield heist.

“When I reach fifty million,” he once promised himself, “I’ll retire right out of sight.”

The area of the Internet habitually visited by Simon Templar was not one usually glimpsed by the casual web-surfer. The access numbers to many of these bulletin board, ftp, html, and http sites were far from common knowledge.

Speeding along the Criminal Infobahn, he suddenly hit the brakes and pulled over. There was a single item on a page all its own. Simon leaned closer and read slowly.

Russians?

Templar logged on as “Human Fly” and began to respond.

IF YOU LEAVE ONE MILLION DOLLARS ON DEPOSIT, THEN I KNOW A ROMANTIC LITTLE SPOT IN BERLIN CALLED ‘TEMPLEHOPF’ WHICH HAS A COZY LITTLE TRANSIT LOUNGE.

In reality, the Communist bloc architecture of Templehopf airport was stark and devoid of inviting ambiance. To get inside, everyone had to walk through metal detectors. It was, therefore, cozy only from the standpoint of personal safety.

Simon Templar, dressed as an aristocratic young German, passed easily through the detectors to mingle with international business types, cut-rate tour groups, and a bevy of Nordic beauty queens on their way back to Bergen.

He scanned the crowd for signs of “Boris the Spider.” He saw nothing. On guard, his jaw was tight.

Then he heard something.

Laughter.

It was the laugh of one small, curly-haired girl whose innocent giggle was as bright and crisp as summer morning wind chimes. For that moment, Simon was far away. His face softened, the jaw relaxed, and an honest smile almost touched his lips.

The little girl’s mother grabbed her hand, reprimanding her in some foreign tongue. As the child was dragged from view. Templar instinctively turned away.

He was face-to-face with Ilya.

The Russian looked him over carefully, trying to decide if this aristocrat was the same man who eluded him in Moscow. Simon helped him out by making a face and puffing out his cheeks.

Had they been in a cartoon, Ilya’s jaw would have clanged noisily to the floor while his eyeballs shot rocketlike from their sockets. Instead, he merely gulped and, clacking a walking stick, briskly backed up several steps to where another man sat reading the comic section of The International Herald Tribune.

The man admiring the funny pages was Tretiak, the megalomaniac orator and would-be ruler of the New Russia.

Tretiak folded the funnies, set them on the table, and stood to greet Templar.

His handshake was firm, but quick to release.

“It’s always a pleasure to meet a man so skilled in any profession. But tell me, Mr.... uh... Fly, for whom do you work? CIA or MI6? Some multinational corporation, or a terrorist state perhaps?”

The response was curt but accurate.

“I work for me.”

“Good,” said Tretiak with a thin smile. “Then no one will complain if I kill you?”

“Well, my investment broker will be devastated,” admitted Templar, and Tretiak chuckled.

“We could kill you and stroll away, even here in this transit lounge... but” — the Russian pretended to weigh options — “today, I wish to hire you instead. Allow me to buy you coffee?”

Simon allowed. Ilya followed behind like a trained Doberman as they strolled to the food service.

Templar allowed Tretiak to buy the coffee, and he also allowed him to do the talking.

“That’s a marvelous microchip you stole from me. It could regulate oil flow, pressure, which pipeline...”

“Everything except artificially inflate the prices?”

“The human element is, as you note, required for certain specifics,” continued Tretiak. “The Japanese are miffed at having to build a new prototype. I mean really miffed — you’d think we invaded Manchuria again.”

“What do you mean ‘we,’ Boris?” asked Simon, reinforcing any emotional distance between them.

Tretiak laughed like a wheezing pig.

“My name, as you know, is not Boris. I am Tretiak, but I assume you are familiar with my face.”

“I’ve seen it on television. You were in Red Square saying rude things about Hollywood.”

“Yes, a terrible corruption of the arts...” Tretiak stopped, pondering perhaps whether he was being teased. “But enough talk of degenerate American influences.”

Simon cast a glance at Ilya. “Speaking of which...”

Tretiak suppressed a wince. “Ilya is my son, a good son. He follows orders. Hence, I love him dearly.”

“How totalitarian of you.” Templar smiled. “I wish you much happiness.”

Ilya paced and glared. He clutched his tapered walking stick, tapping out an irritating tattoo on the pavement.

Templar eyed him casually. The young Russian walked gingerly — too gingerly — and free from limp or other infirmity requiring cane support. As Ilya’s fashion sense was no more highly evolved than his critical thinking abilities, Templar rightly regarded the stick as a deadly weapon rather than style accessory.

Tretiak renewed the conversation.

“I assume you saw today’s newspaper.”

“The headlines or the comic section?”

Tretiak forced a grin.

“The headlines were all about me, my call to Russian rearmament, and my new nationalist movement.”

Templar shrugged. “Politicians bore me.”

“Very well. We will get down to business. Do you know what cold fusion is?”

“Of course,” replied Simon. “It’s an imaginary form of nuclear fusion at room temperature. Cheap, free energy forever.”

“Exactly,” Tretiak confirmed, and this time his smile was genuine.

Templar shook his head. “As science, cold fusion ranks right up there with astrology. Those who claim to have achieved it have never seen their experiments duplicated.”

Tretiak’s face took on an air of triumph. “Until now, my daring friend, until now. There is a Dr. Russell working at Oxford... a woman... very difficult. She has made a breakthrough. Your job will be to obtain her formula.”

Templar allowed his eyes to look off into the distance as if pondering a price. He knew his price before he passed through security.

“Three million dollars.”

“Ridiculous!” Tretiak balked.

“Really? A monopoly on the world’s energy? It’s less than a nickel for every million you’ll make.”

Tretiak pretended to reconsider. He knew he would agree to the price before he left home for Templehopf.

“This is not for us,” said Tretiak. “It is for Mother Russia.”

“My bank account is in Mother Zurich,” countered Templar.

The game completed, Simon provided Tretiak with an account number for deposit. The Russian handed Templar three pages of sparse typewritten notes about Dr. Russell of Oxford.

“This woman,” added Tretiak, “is not going to be easy to get close to. Many of our best agents have repeatedly tried to befriend her. They all failed. She is very cagey.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Simon as he prepared to leave, “she simply has immaculate taste.”

He started to stroll away, but stopped and turned back.

“Oh — the chip I was hired to steal from you. It’s in the possession of a Mr. Miyaki... supposedly.”

Tretiak lifted his hand. Between his fingers was an identical chip.

Templar smiled. “I assume I passed my audition.”

“Sayõnara,” replied Tretiak, and Simon Templar vanished into the crowd.

Ilya stomped over to his father, demanding an explanation. “What if I had killed him in Moscow?”

“I would hire someone you couldn’t kill,” answered Tretiak dispassionately.

Ilya’s face reddened. “What if he had killed me?”

Tretiak put an arm around his wayward son. “He was instructed not to kill you; it was part of the job.”

The boy didn’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed.

“Come, Ilya,” instructed Tretiak. “Our thief has gone to work, and so must we.”

5

The mid-twelfth-century university town of Oxford, a city of 115,000, was situated fifty-five miles northwest of London in the heart of Oxfordshire, England, where the River Thames joins the Cherwell River.

Students and townsfolk co-existed in contemporary ease, but clashes between town and gown killed many students in the fourteenth century. In the sixteenth century, three students were burned at the stake for their opposition to the Roman Catholic church. None of them, of course, were made Saints.

While Oxford was no longer infamous for violence and disorder, campus events continued to generate significant media coverage by journals and magazines catering to a wide spectrum of specialized interests.

Displaying credentials from Scientific American, eccentric investigative reporter Roger Conway ventured from London to Oxfordshire for the singular purpose of investigating Dr. Emma Russell’s controversial claims regarding cold fusion.

The balding journalist was running slightly behind schedule when he nervously arrived at the Oxford science building. Well-dressed researchers and a handful of scientists sat informally around a room which was half laboratory and half lecture hall. They listened in rapt attention to an academic woman of sixty drone on about matters scientific and obscure.

Conway, doing his best to not disturb the proceedings, quickly sat down behind an exceptionally attractive young woman.

As he seated himself, she took a small pill from a bottle and swallowed it.

“Excuth me mith,” lisped Conway softly, “can I have one of thothe?”

“They’re for my heart. I don’t suggest eating them like candy.” She was, at least, courteous.

He took her hand and the bottle to check the label. He was lucky she didn’t slap him.

“You’re a very pretty lady,” Conway said as if it would be news to her. It wasn’t.

Her nose crinkled in mild, ill-concealed disdain.

“Who are you... exactly?”

For a moment, the “exactly” almost threw him.

“I’m Roger Conway, a writer for Thientific American, I have to interview Dr. Ruthell — expothe her for the fraud thee ith.”

The woman looked quizzical. “Thee ith?”

“Yeth.”

She blinked, shook her head, and turned away.

The journalist pulled a pencil and small notepad from his pocket.

“You don’t buy any of thith cold futhion mumbo jumbo, do you?” The pencil was poised to record her response.

She ran her eyes over him as if he were gravel and she was a monster truck.

“Actually, I do.”

The boring academian at the podium ground her introductory remarks to a much anticipated climax.

“It is, therefore, my privilege to introduce our guest today — our visiting research fellow and the foremost expert in the field — Dr. Emma Russell.”

Conway nudged his reluctant acquaintance. “You ever theen Ruthell before?”

“Every day, first thing in the morning,” replied Emma Russell, and she stood up to take the stage.

Despite being in disguise, Simon was mortified. Thankfully, no one noticed that the sudden blush of his cheeks did not spread to his fake bald head. Everyone’s eyes were riveted on Emma Russell’s simple, exquisite beauty. Everyone’s, including Simon’s.

Emma began quietly, awkwardly.

“I didn’t really prepare any special remarks. Maybe I should just take questions.”

A student put up his hand. She nodded at him.

“Dr. Russell, can you please explain the actual process of fusion — the theory of it?”

“Sure.” Emma smiled, warming to the subject. “Thermonuclear fusion usually depends on high energies, but the possibility of low-energy, low-temperature nuclear fusion is, I believe, about to become a reality. Back in 1989 Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton first described their cold fusion experiments...”

An enthusiastic student couldn’t contain himself.

“Isn’t that when they immersed palladium and platinum electrodes in deuterium?”

“Yes, exactly,” confirmed Dr. Russell. “When positively charged deuterons in seawater are attracted to a palladium cathode, they cram together — millions of them, inside the cathode, clustering with no place to go until... they fuse, creating energy in the form of helium. Lightning in a bottle.”

Simon Templar had little or no interest in cramming deuterons. Emma, however, was a different matter.

Another student spoke up.

“Various laboratories around the world have tried to duplicate the process, but with generally negative results. If the experiments can’t be replicated, how do we know it works?”

“We don’t,” admitted Emma. “Not yet. But Einstein knew relativity to be true long before he could prove it. He saw the vision of it — saw its truth. Some of us feel that way about cold fusion because it’s there in nature. The raw natural power, waiting to be harnessed. More energy in one cubic mile of seawater than in all the known oil reserves on earth.”

Templar was enthralled, and not with the subject matter.

“And when we finally ignite that cold fusion fire — imagine!” Emma’s mounting enthusiasm was contagious. “You could drive your car fifty-five million miles on one gallon of heavy water. It would be the end of pollution. Healing for the wounded earth.”

She turned to the blackboard.

“Here, let me demonstrate why others have been so unsuccessful in the past.”

As Emma Russell began expository drawings, the bald man in the back slipped out the door.

Outside, Simon Templar laughed aloud at his own foolishness. He seldom made embarrassing mistakes, but he readily acknowledged this one. A minor consolation was knowledge that Oxford’s history was replete with people who had acted foolishly. Among them was famed poet Percy Shelley, expelled in 1811 for publishing The Necessity of Atheism.

While Templar did not share Russell’s near religious zeal for cold fusion, he did share her dedication to thorough investigation. He returned to his car, slipped on a pair of coveralls, and searched out Emma Russell’s personal office.

“I’m Tony Hubbins from Tech Support,” said the working-class Brit to Russell’s distracted collegiate assistant, Trish, as he walked through the doorway, “named after the patron saint of quality footwear.”

“Good,” she replied without looking up. “You know where I can find shoes on sale?”

He walked directly over to the office computer and stared at it as if he could see into its inner workings.

“This baby has a short in the motherboard, I hear.”

The assistant checked her fingernails for any new chips from excessive keyboarding.

“It was working an hour ago — I used it myself.”

Templar began disconnecting the tower drive.

“Dr. Russell ’erself called,” he explained as he lifted the tower and started for the door. “You’ll have it back by the weekend.”

“Take your time.” The assistant yawned. “There’s nothing on it ’cept the first chapter of her book on exotic piscapology.”

“Erotic who?”

She rolled her eyes. “Fish.”

“Oh.”

The patron saint of quality footwear put one foot in front of the other, exited the office, and took the tower with him to a nearby Oxfordshire inn, where a rented room awaited him.

Trish was absolutely right — there was nothing on the hard drive concerning cold fusion, but plenty about fish.

Tony Hubbins promptly returned the tower, offering Trish his assurances that everything now worked perfectly.

Later the same day Templar easily and illegally entered Emma Russell’s mid-Victorian faculty-row apartment. His intentions were less than honorable, and even he felt a slight twinge of regret that even $3 million could not completely buy off.

Before a man can steal, he must lie — lie to himself that what he is doing is justified. At this stage of his lawless career, Simon Templar was a master of justification.

If Tretiak wanted cold fusion to reheat Russia for his own political ends, at least there would be heat. Didn’t Dr. Russell want her theories validated, the world benefited? An easy justification, indeed. If he said these things to himself often enough, he could almost see himself as the patron saint of energy.

Browsing her apartment, he noticed books, plants, and candles were everywhere. There were Post-it notes plastered on the walls, and even a few on the ceiling.

He pressed the Playback button on her answering machine.

“You have no new messages,” said the machine in a fair approximation of human intonation.

“She may be cute, but she’s obviously not popular,” murmured Simon as he picked up a postcard from the Shelley monument.

He moved to the crowded bookcase and thumbed through her extensive, eclectic collection. Scientific journals shared space with compendiums of poetry and a few literary surprises. The Tao of Physics rested against The Promulgation of Universal Peace, while The Purpose of Physical Reality was crowned by a worn, first-edition copy of The Hidden Words of Baha’u’llah.

He picked it up, opened to a random page, and read aloud softly. “ ‘The best beloved of all things in my sight is justice.’ ”

A small tingle crept up from the base of his spine, and he did his best to ignore it. He replaced the book, then continued on to the bathroom, bedroom, and sitting room.

In the latter a huge fish tank filled with exotic multicolored fish dominated a corner. It was attached to a glass vessel identical to the lab apparatus Emma used when explaining cold fusion to the students. It buzzed quietly and appeared to be the tank’s only source of energy.

Simon stopped his investigations to admire the beauty of Emma’s exotic fish.

“I could watch you guys all day,” asserted Templar honestly.

He moved into the kitchen where he found an improvised lab spilling liquid into the sink. Dr. Russell had adapted every kitchen implement to another task: weight scales, the garlic press, and the percolator had all been pressed into service to manufacture little brown granules which stood in a peculiar pile. The pile continued to grow because it was continually added to, drop by drop, from the spout of a teakettle.

Whatever it was, it was most unusual.

Templar walked to her desk and powered up her laptop computer. There was a bottle of Inderol lying by the keyboard.

Prepared to break her password code, Simon was astonished to discover that she didn’t have one.

“No password? Emma, you are bold, refreshing, and a first-class nut.”

He entered a few basic commands, and the backlit screen soon filled with equations, equations, and still more equations, interspersed with snippets of art and poetry.

He slipped in a computer disk and began backing up her hard drive. While files were transferring, he noticed receipts from the Trout Inn on her desk. Opening a drawer, Templar discovered her journal. Two photographs from the Shelley monument fell out, and he carefully replaced them before shamelessly reading her most personal thoughts.

Templar turned the page.

Simon replaced the journal, his clever mind analyzing Russell data as if preparing to crack a safe.

Next to her bed was a photo of a young Emma with a tall man, obviously her father. He wore long hair and a cardigan sweater. Templar could almost inhale the fragrance of musk- or herb-based cologne.

“Not a citrus sort,” reasoned Simon, “but perhaps Gray Flannel.”

He slipped a tiny camera from his pocket and snapped the father-daughter photo.

“Tretiak’s wrong,” Templar said to the fish. “She’s not cagey, just innocent and eccentric. Those secret-agent types would strike out in a heartbeat.”

He examined more of the Post-it notes on the walls. Most were snatches of poetry.

He sat down and attempted to soak up the atmosphere of her life, her environment, her identity. Despite being a scientist, she was a poetic sensitive with mystical yearnings.

A smile touched the corner of Simon’s lips.

“Low-tech.” Templar chuckled to himself. “This is a low-tech job.”

Were Emma Russell a building to be burgled, a safe to be cracked, or a security system to override, it would not be accomplished by electronic gadgets and gizmos.

The road to Russell’s research was through her heart.

Templar thought of George Sanders’ safecracking scene in that old movie. He listened, he touched, he was sensitive to the subtle nuances.

Templar would listen with sensitivity, and gently turn her affections until all emotional tumblers were aligned. She would open; he would steal. Simple.

A sudden sound from outside sliced through his concentration and drew him to the window. Dr. Emma Russell had exited her car and was heading directly toward the apartment.

Simon ejected his disk from the laptop. There was no time to leave, only to hide.

A key rattled in the door, footsteps entered, and an answering machine said there were no new messages.

Emma Russell walked past her fish tank while removing her blouse.

“I could watch you guys all day.”

With mounting curiosity, Templar watched as Dr. Russell reached inside her bra and removed several business-size cards and placed them on the table.

She moved into the kitchen, pulling on a handy lab coat. She lit a scented candle, put on some music, then simply sat down in the corner chair with her eyes closed.

As for Simon Templar, had he not been well-trained in the art of silent movement, she would have spotted him long ago. She didn’t even sense his presence.

He watched, he waited. A few minutes later she retrieved the cards from the table, opened her journal, and began to make notations.

In time Emma set her work aside and left the room. When Templar heard the shower running, he took advantage of the opportunity to vanish as if he had never been there. In truth, he didn’t want to leave.

6

The following day Templar prepared for ms next encounter with Emma Russell. With his usual professional detachment, he selected a cardigan sweater similar to the one worn by Emma’s father, dabbed a small amount of rugged-scented cologne behind his ears, and filled his head with poetry.

“If one is going to catch fish,” Simon Templar once remarked, “you must place the perfect lure in the perfect spot.”

The perfect spot was the Shelley Monument; the perfect lure was Templar himself. Having read her journal, he knew how often she visited, and when.

He, a romantic figure with long, flowing hair, reclined on a bench, highlighted by sunlight. Purposefully languid and inviting, he began sketching Shelley’s statue.

When Emma arrived, she noticed him immediately. After one look she could not pull her eyes away. She was simply and openly attracted. He was, after all, exceptionally handsome. He also reminded her of her father.

It was not out of her way to approach him, and he spoke to her without looking up. His accent was South African.

“Do you like it?”

Emma was momentarily taken aback. Was he speaking of the statue, himself or...?

“The sculpture,” clarified Simon. “Do you like it?”

She swallowed and did her best not to sound self-conscious.

“Yeah.” She meant to say it nonchalantly, but it came out with a sort of squeak as if someone had stepped on a rubber duck.

Templar suppressed a laugh.

“What do you like about it?”

On this topic Emma could speak with confidence.

“The way it glows, the way the light holds him in silence, as if caring for him.”

Her answer was beyond what Simon expected. He stood from the bench and said nothing.

Emma edged for an opening to continued conversation.

“That’s what I like about it. Are you an artist?”

Templar smiled at the question, and his smile was authentic. Her directness and simplicity were having an unexpected influence on his attitude.

“There are no artists anymore,” he asserted. “You must be pure, like Shelley. No, I’m nothing — just a traveler — but I do search for purity.” He paused, but only slightly for effect. “What do you search for?”

“Energy.”

It was such an immediate response that the word was out of her mouth before she had an opportunity to consider the question.

The young man projected an air of enticing, controlled enthusiasm.

“You must experience the energy of where life began — Africa. Have you ever been on a long journey?”

Emma looked down briefly.

“No,” she admitted, “not ever, really.”

Simon walked toward her with easy confidence and familiarity, as if he could sweep her up in his arms and cradle her like a child.

“Would you like to?” He stepped closer as he asked.

She stepped back, but not out of fear. Perhaps it was propriety.

“Yeah,” she squeaked again, and a slight blush filled her cheeks.

“Perhaps I’ll take you on an adventure to my home in Africa.” He was moving closer still, but not in a threatening manner. Emma decided not to step back. Templar was close enough to kiss her. Wisely, he did not.

“I’m sorry if I am too familiar,” said Simon shyly. “I apologize. I’m not very good with people.” And with that bit of fabricated self-disclosure, he was gone.

Emma stood, breathless. His scent was intoxicating. Her senses seemed to tingle, and her heart — often an object of concern — seemed to be beating in perfect health.

She allowed herself to exhale slowly and turned to notice that the wondrous young man had left behind his sketchpad/journal.

“The lovely little fish,” stated Simon to himself as he sat in the ergonomic comfort of his Volvo C70, “has taken the bait.”

As a man who planned things perfectly, his selection of the C70 was no more haphazard than his approach to Emma. Simon’s first car had been the famous Volvo 1800E. Hence, his purchase of the C70 was inevitable. His appreciation of fine automobiles was longstanding, especially those of distinctive style, legendary heritage, peak performance, or unparalleled safety. The C70 was all of the above.

He owned other vehicles as well, some of them nondescript and purely functional, placed strategically around the world. He also held title to several vintage classics, including a 1933 Hirondel, a Bugatti ’41 Royale, and one of the last known Furilacs in existence.

Dr. Emma Russell, however, had no passion for fine cars. She bought her VW Bug because it was inexpensive and got her where she was going.

The little Volkswagen pulled up to her apartment. Emma exited and, lost in her own thoughts, walked to the entrance. She stopped, fished in her briefcase for a notepad, and began furiously jotting.

Drops of standard-issue U.K. rain began to fall, but Emma continued to scribble. The drops became a light shower. Having completed her sudden burst of note-jotting, Emma turned her open mouth to the sky and allowed nature to fill it with water.

Simon, watching, sighed.

Dusk dropped its backcloth behind Emma’s apartment. Inside, she studied the young man’s journal. Dr. Russell was fascinated by the drawings, the poems, the mind.

She searched for an indication of his identity, but there was no name, no address.

The following afternoon, beside the Thames, Emma sat at her usual table at the Trout Inn. The river view did not captivate her; ’twas the journal that held her enthralled.

Templar, of course, was there as well. Positioned where he would not immediately be noticed, he studiously avoided looking in her direction.

When Emma saw Simon, she snapped the notebook shut. Convinced that he had not seen her, she debated returning it. She opened it again and found something that caught her attention — a poem.

As poems go, it was not publishable material. Publication was not Templar’s intention. It was verse aimed at the fragile, vulnerable heart of Dr. Emma Russell.

“And, when the showers of pure light dance in her clear eyes...” it began, and continued on its way to an awkward but well-intentioned conclusion.

Simon, choosing the moment, picked up his plate and approached her, reciting the poem aloud as he walked.

“We, purified by our kisses,” he concluded romantically, “are eternally healed.”

Emma, a bit flustered and curious about the impurity afflicting the poem’s kissers, told him it was beautiful and should be funded by National Health.

“Are you following me, or is it destiny?” asked Simon. “Either way, it’s weird.”

“Weird as in ‘fate,’ or weird as in plain old weird?” Emma made space for him to sit, pushing his journal into the corner.

“Destiny. Pass the salt.”

She complied and began the conversation.

“I can’t believe I ran into you again. I can go weeks and weeks and never run into my friends.”

Simon gave her a doubtful look.

“Well, I have two friends. Actually, one,” confessed Emma. “I guess she’s a friend — she knows who I am.”

“A lucky woman,” commented Simon.

Emma realized that the young man and she had never introduced themselves.

“My name is Emma, Emma Russell.” She offered an exceptionally attractive hand.

“Thomas More.”

“After the saint?”

“Sounds like a book title. Yes, Thomas More died for his faith. You know him?”

Emma hedged. She didn’t want to offend her new acquaintance’s religious sentiments.

“Not personally, I’m not that old. I’ve heard of him, though,” remarked Emma in half jest. “As a kid I was bullied by nuns.”

Simon’s face involuntarily flushed, stinging as if Father Brennan had slapped it only moments ago.

“The nuns I knew were kind, thankfully,” he honestly responded, “but Father Brennan...”

He stopped himself, disbelieving his own hears. He had not uttered one word about his experience at St. Ignatius since he was thirteen years old. Why now? Why here? In the middle of what should be a smooth, simple, well-rehearsed deception, truth was an unwelcome intruder.

Sensing discomfort, Emma changed the topic by pulling three or four cards out of her clothing. Templar recognized them as the cards she previously extracted from her crowded brassiere.

“Crib sheets for the Rosary?”

“No, silly, it’s something I’m working on. A formula for creating energy.”

“Try eating chocolate and drinking coffee,” suggested Simon helpfully.

“Not that kind of energy. Are you teasing me?”

He nodded in playful affirmation.

“Are you a student, then, Emma?”

“I was a student, once, Thomas,” answered Dr. Russell. “I am a research scientist.”

Templar had palmed two of her cards. He laid them out with a slight flourish.

“Hey, how did you do that?”

“Magic.”

Emma laughed, but disappearing cards were no joke.

“Give them back, please.”

He passed them to her, along with his warm, wonderful smile.

“I just wanted to watch you put them away again. What else do you keep in there?”

“Nothing anyone has been particularly interested in,” said Emma honestly.

“You know that’s not true.”

The moment was saved from embarrassment by the welcome intrusion of the Trout Inn’s waiter.

“May I get you anything else?”

“The Latour ’57,” answered the romantic poet.

The waiter cleared his throat.

“The Latour ’57, sir, is four hundred pounds.”

“Per bottle or per glass,” asked Templar without smiling.

“Bottle.”

“Good price! We’ll take two,” he enthused and pulled a handful of crumpled bills out of his coat pocket.

The waiter ambled off to fill the order, and Templar turned to Emma with a slight shrug.

She shook her head in amused disbelief.

“Perhaps I should have ordered the Latour ’58?”

Emma laughed.

“No, I’m sure the ’57 is best, but you’d better be very thirsty.”

He realized he should have consulted her before ordering.

“You don’t...”

“Drink? No. Not often. Hardly ever, actually.” Her cheeks flushed with self-consciousness. She didn’t enjoy discussing her medical problems. “I take medication for... for my heart, to tell the truth. As a chemist, I am quite familiar with drug interaction precaution number 101. Inderol and alcohol don’t really mix. Besides, Allah forbids it.”

Templar, alias Thomas More, apologized.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were Moslem. I wouldn’t have offered—”

Emma laughed sweetly and touched his hand, held his hand.

“I’m not really Moslem, although I could be. I know as much Koran as Catechism. My father was an orientalist much along the lines of E. G. Brown of Cambridge. You’ve heard of—”

“Cambridge? Of course,” replied Simon with charm.

“No, I meant Edward Granville Brown, author of A Year Amongst the Persians.” Emma was trying not to giggle, and succeeded by her next sentence.

“Anyway, my father and I were very close. He died — his heart — actually, he was struck by a car, but the heart attack killed him, although I blame the drunk behind the wheel. I was in my teens when it happened. I don’t know if you have ever lost anyone close to you...”

Simon thought of Agnes reaching for him, falling...

He discarded his plans to ply her with expensive wine. He was, for the first time, feeling somewhat ashamed of himself.

When the wine arrived, he drank; she politely sipped. Even in measured moderation, Emma deemed the Latour ’57 remarkably intoxicating. Perhaps the effect was more attributable to the ever-increasing charisma of her romantic companion. Either way, they were soon holding hands across the table.

Both pretended not to be thinking of kissing.

“Can I tell you something?” Emma asked.

“Will it embarrass me?” He was already feeling chagrined.

“No. Unless you don’t like to be trusted. My energy research: It’s done. Well, sort of, almost, nearly.”

“Marvelous,” said Simon. “I have no idea what your energy research is, but I’m pleased for you.”

“Someone should be,” commented Emma, “considering I was practically run out of America for pursuing this project.”

Simon’s expression prompted an explanation.

“The concept is called cold fusion. The entire idea is not taken too seriously back home in the good ol’ USA, and it reached the point where I couldn’t get any more research funding.”

“So?”

“So, I still don’t have any sort of fund or trust or grant paying to develop my research. But I do have a little lab in my apartment, a supportive staff at Oxford, and I give several lectures a week — that pays the bills. Plus,” she added, “I love England.”

He knew she was minimizing and being modest. He liked that.

He eyed her and she eyed him.

It was as if there were searchlights behind her eyes, and he was trapped in their illumination with no dark corners to melt into, no false-identity alleyways to dart down.

He felt vulnerable and exposed, but stayed in character.

“Thomas More?” She pondered his name.

“Yes?”

“That’s not your real name, is it?”

The room seemed to shift beneath him. Her next words echoed as if bouncing from the high ceilings of St. Ignatius.

“I think you didn’t like your name, so you made one up.”

He was incapable of immediate response.

“You were an orphan, maybe?”

She may as well have hit Templar with a baseball bat. He was astonished, but kept his reaction in check. The expression in his eyes, however, confirmed the accuracy of her assessment.

Emma Russell leaned dangerously close to him and squeezed his hand.

“It’s okay. I’m an orphan, too. Mom died when I was three, and then Dad. I’ve been pretty much on my own since my teens. I’m just damn lucky I was born with brains and instilled with morals. Otherwise, who knows?”

Simon knew the otherwise.

It was difficult for Templar to recall that he had initially approached this job with heartless, cynical materialism.

“Have you done any research,” asked Simon, deftly changing the subject, “on the romantic effects of warm chocolate?”

His phrasing was almost erotic. Emma’s pulse quickened.

“Is it safe,” she asked in jest, “to mix cocoa and Latour ’57?”

He smiled a conspiratorial smile and ordered them each a steaming cup of hot cocoa topped with a dollop of real whipped cream.

“You look lovely with a mustache,” intoned Templar.

Twenty-five minutes later she was almost dragging him into her apartment. When Emma applied herself to a project, she saw it through to consummation. She hadn’t had a boyfriend, a lover, an anything, in ages.

“Welcome to the new age,” said Emma cryptically as she led Simon into her apartment. He pretended he had never seen it before.

She set the mood, lit the candles, and put on music as if she were preparing for a scientific demonstration.

“Now what?” asked Templar with a touch of innocent curiosity.

“Trust me, I’m a doctor,” advised Emma, and she told him to take off his shirt.

As he complied, she began to unbutton her blouse.

“What, exactly, are we going to do. Doctor?”

Emma tossed aside her blouse.

“First things first, Mr. More. I suggest we lay our cards on the table.”

She removed the cards from her bra and placed them on the table.

“I’m not wearing a bra, and I have no cards,” said Simon with the sweetest smile.

“But you have something up your sleeve just the same, Mr. More,” responded Emma playfully. “Besides, I just want to look at you.”

“Look to your heart’s content.”

Emma’s eyes suddenly widened as if remembering something important.

“Oh! Thanks for reminding me.” She grabbed her purse and dug inside for a small medicine bottle. “Hold that pose and hold that thought.”

She moved to the refrigerator, opened it, and took out what appeared to be a beer bottle. She twisted off the top.

Standing there, bathed in the refrigerator light, she was a vision of eccentric, individualistic beauty, unpretentious, and thoroughly herself.

“Inderol and root beer,” explained Emma wickedly, “a heady combination.”

“I’ll pass on the Inderol, but if you have two straws, we can sip it together in front of the fireplace.”

Emma laughed, searched her cupboards, and found two straws. She placed them in the bottle.

“Light the fire, Mr. More, I’m feeling a chill.”

“Shut the refrigerator,” suggested Simon, and he built the fire.

As the dry logs began to ignite, Templar’s eyes drifted to the cards resting on the coffee table. He was genuinely attracted to Emma and distracted by his primary objective — stealing the prized contents of her bra.

Together in front of the fireplace, sharing one root beer with two straws, the fake Thomas More romanced the real Emma Russell.

“I’m not the kind of woman who brings strange poets home on a regular basis,” said Emma as she seriously considered kissing him passionately on the mouth.

“Am I that strange a poet?”

She spared him an honest critique of his journal entries.

“I don’t date much,” confided Emma. “Most men aren’t comfortable dating a research scientist who keeps file cards in her bra.”

“You’re my first scientist,” said Simon comfortingly, “and the only woman I’ve ever known who used her brassiere as a file cabinet.”

She leaned closer, setting the root beer aside.

“I’m not sure what it is about you, but you’re different... I mean, I’m different, too...” Emma was becoming tongue-tied, and Simon helped her untie it with a kiss.

When their lips parted, she fanned herself with her hand.

“Whew! That’s some fire you’ve built here, Mr. More.”

They laughed, intertwined, disarmed.

More than anything, Simon wished he could level with her. “I wish I could tell you my story, everything about me.”

“You could... you can. You don’t have to hide. Really, it’s very safe here in this little apartment. No one will know, except me and the fish.”

“It’s not as safe here as you think,” stated Simon honestly. “In fact, it’s very dangerous.”

She snuggled closer.

“Oh, tell me about the danger,” she teased.

“I might take from you what’s most precious.”

“A football player did that my senior year in high school,” recalled Emma sardonically.

Simon looked at her lovely face. She was an authentic beauty.

“You are an authentic beauty,” he said, as if having read the previous paragraph, “and I will treasure this night—”

“Till morning?”

He looked down with a penitent expression. “I’m not that kind of man.”

There was a moment of tentative silence, augmented by the crackling fire and bursting bubbles of carbonation from the root beer bottle.

“Do you want to sleep with me, Mr. More?”

She was, at times, exceptionally direct.

“Exactly that,” answered Simon, “I want to hold you close to me, and together we will sleep.”

He wasn’t kidding. She pressed her cheek against his. “You are a saint.”

The warmth of her face increased the cold shame of his deception. He forced himself to ignore the unexpected feelings of regret and remorse rising within him, and pretended to sleep.

The following morning, Emma awoke and turned to kiss her saintly, chaste, and poetic lover. He was gone. Instinctively she raced to her cards on the table. They were not her originals. Each of the five cards read: “Pm sorry.”

Dr. Emma Russell brought her hand to her heart, felt it torn apart, and dropped devastated to her knees. Tears flowed through her fingers and dropped in tiny splatters on the floor.

She felt more alone and betrayed at that moment than she had in her entire life. She sobbed and sobbed, and sobbed harder still, knowing that no one knew, and no one cared.

In the kitchen her makeshift laboratory spit out another pellet. In the fish tank her exotic pets swam in aimless circles. On the floor Dr. Russell continued to cry.