The Saint

1

Simon Templar derived no pleasure from stealing Emma’s cards, and the prospect of Tretiak’s $3 million arriving in his bank account did not minimize his sense of shame.

His rationalization, his only rationalization, was that he had agreed to the job. He was obligated to deliver.

Templar digitized her cards and transferred their images to his laptop. In a matter of moments Emma Russell’s life work was e-mailed to Moscow.

The reaction to its arrival was both enthusiastic and lethal.

Tretiak had arranged for Russian physicist Lev Botvin to study Emma’s work immediately upon delivery, and the scene at Tretiak’s mansion was one of elated exuberance

“It’s revolutionary, sir!” exclaimed Botvin, excitedly wiping his glasses with his shirttail. “She’s boldly cast aside a slew of stale ideas... but it will take months of trials and experimentation before I can confirm—”

“That won’t do,” insisted Tretiak. “Now that the people are nicely beginning to freeze, Tretiak must sweep in from the wings with a miracle to save them!”

The wings of Tretiak’s mansion were themselves in the midst of transformation. He enjoyed displaying his wealth in forms of conspicuous overstatement.

He led Botvin across a dropcloth-covered parquet floor awaiting a fifth coat of varnish, and passed between twin towers of wood scaffolding. Above them an extraordinary crystal chandelier hung from a pulley welded into the underside of the domed cupola. The chandelier’s two massive wedding-cake tiers were stabilized by concentric rings of steel.

A workman shouted down from the scaffold.

“How high do you want this, Mr. Tretiak?”

“Not now, not now!” He waved impatiently at the workman, who shrugged and signaled his coworkers to secure it to a cleat bolted in the wall.

“Lovely chandelier, sir,” commented Botvin with admiration.

“Screw the chandelier!”

“I think they did, sir,” offered Botvin seriously as he peddled behind his leader.

Tretiak led him up to a fully stocked physics lab where Botvin began to nervously assemble the apparatus needed to bear out Emma’s formula.

“Perhaps I can confirm the formula’s validity more quickly if I dispense with certain protocols,” began Botvin.

“Dispense with whatever you want,” agreed Tretiak. “You will make cold fusion a Russian innovation, then Russia will command and the West will cringe!”

Botvin’s glasses began to fog up again, and he looked askance at his leader in the process of wiping them. This did not go unnoticed.

“How long. Dr. Botvin, since your last salary check from Moscow University?”

“Ukrainian Independence Day,” answered the physicist wistfully, “last August.”

Tretiak chortled and threw an arm around Botvin’s shoulders.

“Well, I don’t foresee any problem in raising money for a man whose name will be synonymous with modem physics. The Lev Botvin Institute of Nuclear Fusion will be the greatest research facility any superpower’s ever seen.”

Had Botvin’s chest swelled any greater, the little man would have either exploded or levitated.

The lab door swung open, and one of Tretiak’s security men delivered a terse, yet important message.

“He’s on-line, sir. Your Mr. Fly is on-line.”

Indeed he was.

Simon Templar sat impatiently in his London hotel room, staring at his bank account balance on the laptop screen.

“C’mon, Tretiak,” he murmured to himself. “Time for Boris to pay the fly.”

The balance did not increase. Templar typed an urgent e-mail message to Boris the Spider.

Boris was sending Simon a message of his own:

Templar’s jaw clenched. He banged out his reply.

Three blocks from the Belgravia-Copeland, Ilya Tretiak edged his way through traffic. He drove another in his ever-expanding collection of imported American 4X4 all-terrain vehicles. The fact that he had never driven one on any surface other than well-maintained pavement was irrelevant. To Ilya, appearances were everything.

Accompanying him were two henchmen with high foreheads and low morals — Vlad and Igor. Each was ill-tempered, high-strung, and augmented by chemicals best described as violent stimulants to the central nervous system.

The three thugs were not in the U.K. simply to test drive Range Rovers or Jeep Grand Cherokees. They carried an electronic triangulator keyed to the transmission signal of Templar’s modem.

“How we doin’?” asked Ilya.

“Gettin’ hot,” Vlad replied. “We’re almost on him.”

“Good. If dear old Dad can keep him on-line long enough, Mr. Fly will get the ultimate swat.”

Igor choked out something resembling a laugh. “Does that make us a swat team?”

“Yeah, an unofficial one, but a damn good one.”

As Templar typed his next response to Ivan Tretiak, Ilya and his two thugs further confirmed their coordinates.

“There!” snapped Ilya. “Belgravia-Copeland! Armor-up! Let’s go!”

The three toughs screeched their 4X4 to an abrupt halt outside the hotel, threw open the car doors, and marched toward the ornate entrance.

The Jamaican woman glanced out the window at their arrival and momentarily froze when she caught sight of ill-concealed automatic weapons.

Ilya led the way, stomping roughly into the lobby. Reanimated by the Russians’ militaristic entrance, the woman reached for the silent alarm.

Ilya abruptly raised his silencer-equipped Sig-Sauer and squeezed off the one round that smashed through her forehead and terminated her life. He didn’t bother watching her fall.

The bellboy descending the stairs was no more fortunate. Vlad finished him with a quick burst to the heart while Igor took control of the hotel switchboard. There were five lines in use, and he quickly monitored each one. Only room 17 gave him the distinctive whistle of a modem in use.

“Room seventeen,” barked Igor, “there’s a fax/modem on-line in room seventeen.”

They took the stairs three at a time, raced to room 17, and kicked down the door.

Empty. Almost empty — a small transmitter sat on the floor, relaying Templar’s modem signal from anther room.

Outraged and outwitted, Tretiak’s three stooges spread out. They kicked open every door in the hotel. Terrified guests in various stages of undress screamed and shouted in fear and panic.

As Igor was about to knock down the door to Templar’s actual suite, Simon was already on the ledge outside his second-story window. Below, a stately Bentley was moving past.

The driver. Dr. Terry Mannering, was lighting a Spur cigarette when he heard the thump of Simon Templar landing on his roof. He raised an eyebrow and paused his carcinogenic inhalations. That was the extent of his reaction. He kept driving.

As Mannering turned the corner, Templar rolled off the Bentley and blended with the crowd surging across Sloane Square.

Ilya, Igor, and Vlad were compelled to admit failure. The Fly had flown.

As for Dr. Emma Russell, she could only cry for so long.

Her eyes were still red and wet when she related her tale of woe to Inspector Rabineau at Scotland Yard. Halfway through her tearful, rambling explanation, Rabineau abruptly interrupted her.

“Wait, wait, wait. He used the named of a what?”

Emma sniffled before answering. “Saint. He called himself—”

“Excuse me,” interjected Rabineau. “I think Inspector Teal needs to hear this.”

When the pretty blond American first arrived at Scotland Yard ranting about Shelley, a South African sketch artist, and a secret formula, Rabineau didn’t consider the matter urgent nor Dr. Russell’s story credible. When she mentioned the artist’s alias, Rabineau’s interest was significantly piqued.

When alerted by Rabineau, Teal lazily suggested that Dr. Russell be escorted to his private office. With both detectives in attendance, Emma began her story from the beginning. Teal insisted on hearing every detail, especially about the man who claimed he was named for a saint.

Emma revealed each embarrassing, humiliating particular, and dampened half a box of tissue in the process.

Her story completed, Teal and Rabineau exchanged glances. A nod from her superior encouraged Rabineau to begin.

“This man has more names than the phone book,” asserted Rabineau. “We’ve confirmed a handful of false identities used on visas, passports, leases...”

She picked up a computer printout.

“Nicholas Owen, Louis Guanella, Peter Damian, Paul M. James, Charles Borromeo, Ian Dickerson...”

Emma leaned back and laughed ruefully.

“Of course, like ‘Thomas More,’ all names of saints or hagiographers.”

“Hagiographers?” Rabineau squinted when she asked questions.

“Saint experts,” explained Emma.

Teal cleared his throat and plopped another piece of chewing gum into his mouth.

“That’s why we’ve named him the Saint,” stated the detective flatly. “We have a name for him, and a criminal signature.”

He spread out the numerous computer composite portraits and enhanced surveillance camera photographs.

“The Saint around the world,” intoned Teal, “one crime after another, each in a different clever disguise.”

He encouraged Dr. Russell to examine the 8x10 glossies of the Saint in action.

Emma surveyed the photos and her stomach sank.

“The Saint in New York, the Saint in London, the Saint in Miami...” Teal recited the captions in a droning litany.

Emma turned the last one on its side, hoping for improved clarity.

“I can’t see the resemblance in this one at all.”

Rabineau tossed down one from Heathrow. “Is this more like it?”

It was him, all right. No doubt.

Emma offered Teal the young poet’s sketchbook.

“I doubt there’s anything worthwhile in here. The poetry’s not that great — well, there is one I like — but at least you have a handwriting sample and perhaps some fingerprints. I’m surprised he forgot to take it with him.”

Teal flipped through a few pages, stopped chewing, and read aloud:

“ ‘To give light to them that sit in darkness...’ ”

Emma blushed.

Teal rolled his tired eyes and handed the journal back to her.

“He has multiple identities, steals millions of dollars, absconds with your life’s research, and leaves behind his poetry. As evidence of anything, it’s useless. I’m sure he knew that when he left it. You can keep it as a souvenir if you like, Dr. Russell. He may be a poet, but the Saint is no saint.”

A sudden tingle raced along Emma’s arms, and her eyes brightened.

“Excuse me,” Emma said with an assertiveness that surprised even herself, “but could you ascertain the passenger list of every plane that left Heathrow in the last six hours?”

Teal sighed. “We’ll be waiting for him if he ever attempts to reenter the U.K.,” the detective assured her. “We’ll have plenty of questions for him.”

“No, I want that list, and I want it now.” She was insistent. “Trust me. My objective is the same as yours — capture the Saint.”

Teal complied with Emma’s wishes and did not bother to mention that the odds of actually pinning any charges on the Saint were beyond remote.

The fingerprints left behind would match nothing in Interpol’s database, nor would there be any way to prove that her sticky-fingered poet was an international criminal.

Dr. Emma Russell, armed with a passenger list for every flight from Heathrow, exited Scotland Yard and piloted her VW Bug back to the scene of the crime.

Teal masticated pensively as Rabineau paced.

“We don’t have a damn bit more than we had before,” mumbled the portly detective. “We have one more crime, if you can call taking notecards from the nightstand a crime fit for Scotland Yard. We have a suspect we can’t identify, about whom we know absolutely nothing, and upon whom we can pin even less.”

Rabineau stopped pacing, shuffled through the photographs of the Saint at large, and waited for Teal to add something to his negative assessment of the situation.

“Of course,” added Inspector Teal, “we’ll catch him, prosecute him, and see him sentenced to Wormwood Scrubs by year’s end.”

Rabineau doubted it, and Teal knew it.

“Defrock the Saint,” said Inspector Teal while attempting to smile, “that’s my ambition: defrock the Saint.”

“Saint, my arse!” Rabineau blurted.

Teal adjusted his tie and cleared his throat.

“Beg pardon, Inspector.” Rabineau pulled an imaginary wrinkle from her freshly pressed skirt. “A Saint he ain’t. He’s just another rat. A tricky rat, but a rat nonetheless.”

2

“May the best rat win!” bellowed an inebriated Tretiak, and a dozen large rats began racing on a neon-lit mini-track in Tretiak’s private club.

Rat racing had not yet become the rage in Russia, but it was the entertainment of choice in Tretiak’s lair. American-style cheerleaders shook pompoms under flashing lights while well-fed rodents scrambled in a frenzied dash. Money flowed like wine, and wine flowed like wine as well.

Tretiak, always able to either pick a winning rat or create one, pocketed more hard currency as his guests drank up booze and felt up dancing girls.

“How is it you always win, Ivan?” asked a jovial General Leo Sklarov as he tasted the perfume behind a Georgian beauty’s ear.

“It’s simple!” exclaimed Tretiak. “I back the biggest rat!”

Everyone within earshot laughed as if it were the funniest remark since his previous remark. It wasn’t, but he was rich.

Even the wealthy, rude, and powerful must surrender to certain inevitable weaknesses. Tretiak’s well-lubricated digestive system was under more pressure than the second-run rat.

He excused himself, stumbled across the dance floor, and entered the rest room as the maître d’ distastefully herded rats into a burlap sack and carried them back to the service entrance.

A nondescript man awaited the rats.

“Bring these filthy vermin back tomorrow night at ten,” instructed the maître d’, “and you’re welcome to them.”

Simon Templar took the rats and nodded compliantly.

Tretiak, looking a bit flushed, emerged refreshed from the rest room and stumbled happily toward his table.

“General Sklarov,” called out Tretiak, “have I proved to you my brilliant theory that two singles don’t make a double?”

“What theory is this?” The uniformed lecher laughed as he squeezed the Georgian’s proprietary padding. “K it involves alcohol, it must be very important.”

It was, as theories go, an easily demonstrated lesson in modem marketing. Tretiak had been drinking doubles, Sklarov had been downing singles while matching Tretiak drink for drink. Both men were thoroughly polluted in body as well as in morals.

Tretiak tossed his bottom down into the chair and wagged one finger at the glasses in front of him.

“You just watch and see,” he slurred with authority and summoned a waiter.

“Pour two singles into that double’s glass!”

The waiter complied, and the excess liquid ran down the side of the glass and soaked into the tablecloth.

“See!” Tretiak laughed and pointed. “Two singles don’t make a double!”

Confused, Sklarov insisted the experiment be repeated.

It was, several more times for everyone at the table. Each round, Tretiak’s party drained their glasses before the waiter renewed the experiment. Soon, everything was soaked and everyone was sloshed.

“C’mon, my little latka,” called the drunken would-be dictator to his sozzled female companion. “Now I will show you a very special rat!” He laughed as if obscenity and wit were synonymous.

She giggled her most obligatory giggle and, gathering up her imported purse, joined her powerful lover. Sklarov, unconscious in his chair, did not even wave good-bye. His date was in the ladies’ room hugging a toilet.

Tretiak steered his young lovely through the crowd, out the door, and toward his black BMW. They crawled inside, shut the door, and sat back to await their driver.

A large gray rat leaped into Tretiak’s lap as two more yellow-toothed rodents jumped on his screeching and screaming girlfriend. Rats were everywhere, swarming over the seats and headrests, scampering over their bodies, and sniffing at their private parts.

Tretiak gasped and flailed his arms wildly. His panic-stricken date violently kicked her high heels at the swarming vermin.

Kicking, screaming, stomping, shouting humans and squealing rats rebelled at one another’s behavior in a moment of madness and mayhem. The street-side door was suddenly thrown open, and the two terrified passengers erupted into the street.

Immediately upon exiting the BMW, Tretiak was slammed against the vehicle by Simon Templar.

The Saint thrust a cellular phone in front of Ivan’s face.

“Your accountant’s on the line,” hissed Templar. “Have him deposit my three million in Geneva.”

Tretiak’s first impulse was to balk, but a pointed pressure between his ribs altered his reluctant attitude.

“I’ll cut you into sticky little bits with my carbon steel machete,” Templar threatened.

Ivan swallowed his rage. Watching his girlfriend and several rats running off into the distance, he began barking instructions into the phone.

Templar smiled.

“Oh, yes, and tell him to add two days’ interest at current mutual fund rates, estimated travel expenses from London to Moscow, and funeral costs for the two innocent people your stooges killed this morning.”

Ivan glared. Templar pressed the blade harder. Tretiak complied.

“Thank you so much,” said the Saint pleasantly. “Now I will be able to treasure my memories of Moscow. Get back in the car.”

Not wishing to be impaled on Templar’s machete, and unaware that it was nothing more than a pocket-knife, Tretiak slid into the BMW. He was immediately welcomed by an exceptionally large and ill-tempered rodent.

He angrily slammed his fist into the vermin’s twitching little face and burst back out of the car. The rodent, unconscious, did not pursue the relationship. The Saint was gone.

Templar’s taxi arrived predawn at a remarkably shabby inner-city hotel. Even at this odd hour a ragtag band of women stood by the front door. They offered to sell either themselves or their possessions.

Templar approached the front desk. “Mr. Farrar, checking out.”

They began to prepare his bill amid numerous distractions. Sensing it would be a while, Templar crossed the lobby toward the bar. He peered inside and was dissuaded from entering by the cluster of Party hacks turned dealmakers, pimps, and miniskirted “models.”

He opted for the coffee shop. After escaping from Ilya, tracking down Tretiak, and playing with numerous rats, Simon Templar had a headache that would only increase if exposed to more mindless mayhem.

He ordered a cup of something resembling coffee and pulled a small aspirin bottle out of his pocket. He dumped two tiny pills into his hand.

“Aspirin and caffeine,” said the female behind him. “A heady combination.”

Emma.

Templar whirled to face her.

There was one moment of penetrating silence, followed by the unmistakable sound of a woman’s hand slapping a man’s face. Emma’s hand, Simon’s face.

Somewhere, in the distance, a Doberman barked.

He tried to pretend the slap never occurred, speaking to her as if they were at a church social. “I’m rather surprised that you found me, or bothered to.”

“It wasn’t difficult,” enunciated Emma precisely. “Two men with Saint’s names flew from London to Moscow yesterday — one was named Isadore Bakanja. He was short, bald, and African. Not even you could manage that disguise.”

Templar seemed to give the concept careful consideration.

“Vincent Farrar,” continued Emma with set jaw and iron eyes, “seemed far more likely to be your current ahas.”

Templar offered a rueful grin. “Named after a saint who betrayed his best friend. You’re right. So what?”

“I want my cards back. The ones you stole.”

“Oh, those.” He turned unconcerned back to his coffee.

She slapped the cup and saucer away with the back of her hand and slapped his face again on the upswing.

“Bastard!”

The waitress pretended not to notice anything.

“I’m a thief, Emma, I steal things,” explained Templar. “If it makes you feel better, you can slap me again.”

He didn’t actually expect her to, but she did. Harder.

None of this was helping his headache.

They stood there then at the coffee counter. His face red, her hand sore, the counter wet with spilled coffee and littered with pieces of cracked saucer.

“I’ll pick up the tab for this,” said Templar to the waitress. She hurriedly brought him a can of Tab and a glass of ice. Both he and Emma involuntarily laughed.

“Who the hell are you anyway?” asked Emma, and the question seemed not the least bit rhetorical.

“Nobody has a clue — least of all me,” Templar answered.

“Why did you steal cold fusion when it was free? If you would have simply asked me, I would have given it to you! You are so damn stupid.”

Simon did not bother formulating a witty rejoinder. She was absolutely accurate and correct. He had been stupid and cruel.

“Whoever the hell you are, I saw something good in you. I felt happy when I was with you,” insisted Emma as if attempting to process her disappointment and dismay, “and you are a liar and a fraud. Give me one good reason why you should steal from me!”

“I can give you three million reasons, all of them recently deposited to my bank account.”

“So, you lied to me for three million.”

“You lied to me, too.”

Emma was stunned. “I did what?”

“You almost got me killed. The guy I stole the stuff for says it won’t work.”

“Fuck him!” shouted Emma angrily.

“I don’t think you’d enjoy that,” offered the Saint.

She eyed him through a mist of outrage. “You’re right, I’d rather it was you!”

Emma made a signal, and three Russian police were suddenly all over him, snapping on handcuffs.

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with, Dr. Russell,” insisted Templar.

“The tables have turned,” declared Emma triumphantly.

Her triumph was short-lived. In the next second the cops handcuffed her as well.

“Yes, they have,” concurred Templar. They were dragged from the coffee bar, through the lobby, and out to an awaiting paddywagon.

Separated from her purse, Emma begged for her medications.

“My heart pills, please. You must leave me my pills!”

They ignored her and tossed them both into the wagon.

The door slammed shut and the van roared off.

“They didn’t give me my pills,” lamented Emma in the dark.

“They didn’t have them, I do,” stated Templar softly. “I palmed them in the bar, pocketed them while they frisked you.”

The van took a corner and the two prisoners collided into each other.

“Oh, God!” cried Emma. “My heart...”

“Which pills? Which pills?”

“The little ones in the vial, the nitros...”

Templar painfully repositioned himself, contorted, and plucked the small brown bottle from his pocket.

“I’m getting out a nitro, take it easy....”

Emma was not taking it easy.

“Just turn around, you’ll be fine. Kneel, eat it from my hand.”

The van swerved and Emma toppled to the floor.

She sobbed. Her chest hurt.

“Emma! For God’s sake, find me! Take it!”

She crawled on the cold steel floor toward his outstretched palms. She wrapped an arm around his well-trousered leg and put her open mouth into his hand as if giving it the kiss of life. Her tongue found the tiny nitro tablet and she took it.

She allowed herself to loosen her grip on Simon’s leg, feeling the distinctive nitro rush move up through the top of her head, taking her chest pain with it.

The paddywagon hit a bump, and she fell backward on the floor. Templar threw himself down next to her. The light flashed in through slanted vents as the van swerved around another corner, and she saw Templar tearing at his shirt with his teeth.

“What are you...”

“Emma... can you see under my arm... a tiny pouch of scar tissue...”

Awkward with the handcuffs, but he raised his left arm.

“Inside is a rod, about three centimeters long. Can you see it?”

Not easy in the dark, but she could just make it out — a smooth, hairless ridge just beneath the hollow of his underarm.

“Pull it out with your teeth.”

“I’m so sure,” objected Emma.

“They’re taking us to Ivan Tretiak. His ambitions fill cemeteries. Trust me: You’d rather put your nose in my armpit.”

She didn’t trust him, but she believed him. She buried her pert nose in his perspiring pit.

The paddywagon accelerated, swerved, spun around several more corners, entered the compound of Ivan Tretiak, and pulled up on a ramp leading below the mansion.

It was Ilya who awaited the van, eager to take custody of the prisoners. He impatiently tapped his walking stick as the first cop climbed out of the cab.

“The two came very quietly,” said the cop. He grappled with his keys and prepared to open the van.

Tretiak joined them, beaming.

“Open the door, quickly. I want to see the prize catch of the day!”

The door opened. Empty. Almost empty — two sets of open handcuffs and a length of chain.

Tretiak grabbed Ilya’s walking stick and whacked the cop over the head. The sound of cracking skull was loud, wet, and unpleasant. The cop did not hear it. He was dead before the first splatters of blood stained the van door.

The second cop froze where he stood, and Ilya looked in admiration at his father. Dad was always a man of decisive action.

“Close the city!” yelled Ivan Tretiak. “Kill him and bring her to me!”

“Yeah,” added Ilya, and he felt powerful saying it.

3

Templar and Emma ran down the walkway of an ice-slick tunnel. The walls were plastered with posters of Tretiak as a Christ-like messiah. A police car streaked by, and Templar dragged the bedraggled Emma into an alcove, where he pressed against her as if they were lovers.

When their lips parted, she spoke. “Kiss me again.”

Another cop car approached from the opposite direction and slowed to watch them kiss.

“Why are they after me?” she asked, her breath merging with his.

Templar held her close. “Tretiak, the guy who hired me to steal your formula, owns this city — cops and all. We’re going to have to convince him he’s got everything he wants from you.”

Emma pressed against him with unexpected assertiveness. “What do you want from me?”

He kissed her again.

“Are the cards everything?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And the formula will work?”

“No.”

“Make up your mind.”

She broke the embrace and leaned against the tunnel wall.

“I still have to figure out the right order. But I am not going to give it to him.”

“Emma, he’ll find you — he found me and that’s a hard thing to do.”

She looked him over. She was attracted, but not trusting. Not yet.

“I found you, too. It wasn’t difficult, don’t fool yourself. You have what Inspector Teal called ‘criminal pride,’ and it’s what makes criminals get caught — they get sloppy or egotistical or both.”

He put his arm around her. “Am I that sloppy?”

“You left behind a sketchbook filled with your poetry and drawings.”

Templar felt an authentic smile light up across his face. “I did that on purpose, that wasn’t sloppy.”

“Oh? What was it, then?”

“Ego,” admitted the Saint, and she actually laughed.

Together, they made it quickly to Moscow’s massive railroad station. Fifteen tracks served this travel center, and thousands of Russians passed through daily. While waiting to board, travelers could purchase Peach Vodka in a can and chocolate bars from numerous competing vendors.

Considering the early hour, Templar and Emma found the station surprisingly busy.

“Where are all these people going?” asked Emma.

“Probably to their country cousins’ where they can chop wood to stay warm,” ventured Templar, and he was probably right.

Vlad, the third leg of the triad death squad, was assigned this venue. He saw Templar and Emma enter, and made a quick call on his cellular phone.

While Vlad informed Ilya of the couple’s location, Templar opened a storage locker and pulled out passports and money.

“How much time do you need to finish your formula?”

“I need a kiss,” replied the nervous Emma.

“Concentrate. Concentrate. How long?”

“I can’t say for sure,” she stammered, “anywhere from two hours to—”

“Good,” interrupted Templar. “Just enough time for me to get the passports together for us to get married.”

Emma was incredulous. “Married?”

“Yes, I want you to be Mrs. Martin de Porres.” He showed her a passport featuring a photo of him in disguise as de Porres.

“Are you Martin?”

“I was named for a Saint who could cure the sick by the laying on of hands.”

He touched her cheek.

“You’re not Martin?”

“No.”

“Who are you?”

“I don’t have a name.” Templar turned back toward his locker.

“Will you have one when we get home?”

“I don’t have a home. You do the science, Emma, and I’ll do the math. We’ll sell the formula to the highest bidder and get rich. Then we’ll see...”

Simon Templar, a man who was already $50 million to the good, suddenly felt poverty stricken — when he looked back, Emma was gone.

His eyes frantically searched the crowd. There she was — racing across the ticket office, pushing through the morning travelers.

He ran.

Emma sprinted into the foyer toward the open door. As she passed a pillar, Vlad grabbed her by the neck. Her feet kicked at the air, Vlad’s strong fingers gripping her white windpipe. Her heart pounded wildly, and a red mist surrounded her eyes.

Vlad pulled out his flick knife and twirled it toward her face. His thin lips pulled back to reveal several rotting yellow teeth. Emma was amazed to see those same teeth explode out of Vlad’s mouth from the impact of Simon Templar’s fist.

The force of the blow sent Vlad sprawling like a stunned rat, his knife clattering across the floor.

“Never leave my side again, Emma,” insisted the Saint. She nodded dutifully, popped another nitro, and ran with him toward the side door as Ilya and Igor jumped from their Range Rover and stormed through the front.

The chase was on.

Emma and Templar smashed their way out the side door, veered left, and discovered they were on a dead-end street that terminated at a canal. In moments Ilya and Igor would be joining them.

“Oh, God!” cried Emma. “There’s nowhere to go!”

“Yes, there is, and if you don’t see it, neither will they!”

When the two Russian henchmen hit the street, the fugitives had vanished.

Igor and Ilya prowled up and down the sidewalk, peering into alcoves and alleyways. Nothing. Ilya stopped and sniffed the air as if he were a dog.

Directly beneath his feet, on a foot-wide ledge of ice, Emma and Simon perched precariously above the rushing arctic water. They inched along carefully, silently, dangerously.

The couple’s movements were tentative, awkward, and each sliding step was fraught with fear. Emma’s hand trembled, and her little brown bottle of heart pills slipped from her grip and rolled toward the water.

Templar snatched it, retrieved it, and tossed it to her. Then, in a moment’s fraction, the traction disappeared beneath him. He fought for balance, but the effort was doomed.

Emma watched in terror as Simon Templar vanished into the ice-filled water. It took massive willpower to keep from screaming.

Ilya stopped when he heard the splash, hastened to the ledge, and looked over the side. All he saw was water and ice.

Emma jammed herself into a crevice where the old stone had eroded away. Her body shivered with cold terror. Her left ankle seemed clutched by death itself, and a quick glance confirmed Simon’s deathly white hand wrapped around her like a strange claw.

The Saint, using Emma as anchor, stayed submerged in the frigid canal. With each passing second, his body seemed to fade away in terminal numbness. The only sensation he had of his chest was that of his lungs about to burst. Looking up through the murky water, he could make out Ilya’s distorted features.

Ilya saw nothing, but noticed his foot soldiers in the distance. They were across a bridge, scouring the far side of the canal.

“They must have run in the other direction,” growled Igor. “I’ll get the Range Rover.”

The Russian swore in English and hastened after Igor. No one was going to drive that car but him.

Emma moved out of the crevice, giving herself enough footing to bend down and help Templar get his head above water.

Breathless and blue. Templar gulped air and tried to send signals to his unresponsive body. With great effort Emma maneuvered him toward the canal ladder. He took each rung as if he weighed a thousand pounds, agonizing over each movement.

Out of the water. Templar shivered. Waves of delirium swept over him, and he fought to remain conscious.

“C’mon, gotta get you warm.”

Emma watched Ilya’s Range Rover cross the vehicular bridge. There was no way she and Templar could be seen from the bridge. She piloted her wet and wobbly companion toward an apartment house across the road.

“I know it’s hard to move... but try, quickly, before they circle back.”

The Range Rover was beginning to circle back.

Emma hustled Templar into the building’s grimy lobby. Lime-green paint smeared over concrete and sparse remnants of wallpaper established the decor, while the thick odor of mold and mildew attested to a history of benign neglect.

The front door, on a cheap, heavy spring, slammed loudly behind them.

Emma jumped.

Outside, Ilya’s head snapped to attention: What was that noise? He squinted through the driver’s side window at the row of dilapidated buildings, allowing a presumptive sneer to crawl across his lips.

Templar, shivering and dripping ice water, waited with Emma in front of the elevator.

“You’ll wait till Christ comes to Moscow,” said a voice behind them.

The bedraggled couple turned and stared at a teenage tenant outfitted in miniskirt and heels. Her makeup was excessive, garish, and ill-applied. She looked fourteen at best.

“Elevator was made of mahogany. We used it for firewood. This was a nice place once, before I was born,” she explained.

Templar forced himself to speak.

“We need to hide. We’re not criminals...”

Emma attempted to clarify the situation.

“Just people who...”

The girl shook her head. “You’re not just people, you’re Americans. He’s soaked.”

The squeal of brakes added a sense of urgency, and the young girl saw desperation in Emma’s eyes.

“Mafiya trouble, right? They must have seen you come inside...”

Shivering, Templar pulled a handful of soaked dollars from his pocket. “Money, I have money. I Please...”

Her eyes darted from the forlorn pair to the front door. She battled her instincts for survival and made a gut-level decision.

“I’m Sofiya,” she said, and her tone was considerably kinder. “Follow me. Forget about the money... at least for now.”

She herded them to the stairwell and encouraged them to start climbing. She and Emma helped Simon navigate the nine tiring flights to Sofiya’s huge communal apartment.

One massive room, it had been cheaply subdivided with thin plasterboard to accommodate several separate families.

Despite his mounting delirium, or perhaps because of it, Templar could clearly discern the distinctive smell of stale coal smoke, the residual redolence of burned wood, and the pungent scent of laundry soap.

Sofiya tiptoed inside, trying to sneak the two Americans through the door unnoticed. No such luck.

A haggard woman with sharp features, deep-set eyes, and long dark hair tied back in a bun confronted the trio.

Emma quickly extended her hand in a polite gesture, but the woman ignored her. Her attention was focused solely on Sofiya, the immediate recipient of an emotional outburst.

Templar, trembling in his soaked clothing, understood every word. Emma, although not fluent in Russian, sensed the essence of the diatribe.

“Meet my mother,” said the teenager, ignoring the woman’s verbal barrage and expressive hand gestures. “She doesn’t approve of what I do, but she eats the bread it buys. Too bad it can’t buy more heat.”

With Sofiya’s mother muttering behind them, they continued on into the cluttered and chaotic kitchen. A riot of tattered clothes were hanging on makeshift clotheslines; one half of the double sink was filled with laundry, the other with dishes. The minimal heat came from one source — an old oven’s open door.

A potbellied man sat at a 1950s-style kitchen table sipping kvass from a jar. A tiny ancient lady at a samovar — an authentic animated matrushka doll — looked up from stirring strawberry jam into a glass of black tea.

The man, seeing Templar drenched to the skin, let out a low whistle and a gruff laugh.

“Look at the polar bear! Took a dunk in the Moscow River on a bet?”

“Hush, Uncle Fyodor,” admonished Sofiya, “he needs our help.”

The old woman clucked her tongue in sympathy, and offered tea.

“Chai?” she trilled.

To Simon Templar, the entire environment seemed surreal and hallucinatory. The room appeared to alternately expand and contract, distances were inconsistent, and the reality of his own physical existence seemed questionable.

The elderly woman handed him the glass, but his shaking hands and feeble grip made the warm liquid spill out over his fingers. She wagged her head in disapproval, took it back, and began drinking it herself.

Sofiya hurriedly plucked clothes and towels off the line and handed them to Emma. Then, smiling sheepishly, she removed a hundred-thousand ruble note from her bra — the monetary rewards of her unfortunate vocation — and hung it on the line as payment for the items. Her mother looked the other way and crossed herself.

“The bra is a good place to keep valuables,” said Sofiya.

“I know exactly what you mean,” concurred Emma.

“I’ll show you another good place,” added Sofiya. “Follow me.”

They did.

4

Emma urged on the trembling Templar as they passed a maze of rooms, each crowded with three or four sleeping men, women, and children. The diverse ages and genders huddled together under blankets, taking full advantage of their combined body heat.

Led by Sofiya, Emma and Templar sidestepped the sleeping forms and continued on to what appeared to be a dead end.

“Where are we?” Emma asked. She was trying to visualize where they were relative to the rest of the building.

The teen pointed back from where they came.

“Kitchen that way.”

She then pointed to a narrow hallway entrance on the other side of the room.

“That leads to stairs — not the big stairs from the lobby, but short stairs from here to roof.”

Sofiya then moved away an old highboy and slid open a false wall. Behind it was a cramped but clean cubicle.

“You can hide here,” she said. “Built during Stalin Terror. They say five scientists hid for six months.”

Emma thought of Anne Frank hiding from the Nazis. When she heard the squawk of walkie-talkies, she remembered Anne died in captivity.

Sofiya heard it, also, raced to the closest window, pulled back a tattered bit of sheeting, and nervously glanced outside.

The original Range Rover had multiplied to a fleet. Jeeps and other 4X4s formed a heavy-treaded fist around the building.

Ilya was in the street, flanked by footsoldiers, barking orders at Igor.

“Seal every exit. If they’re still in there, there’ll be no way out. We’ll search every apartment!”

He turned abruptly, snapped his fingers, and a cadre of uniformed militia followed him into the building.

Sofiya hurried the wet Templar and the dry-mouthed Emma inside the cubicle.

“They can search all they want,” insisted Sofiya, “they will never find you. You very safe.”

“What about you?” asked Emma.

“I take care of me, you hide.”

Sofiya replaced the false wall and the highboy, and the two sequestered fugitives heard her footsteps as she left the room.

The cramped space was spottily illumined by thin light shafts entering through tiny breathing holes. Emma felt like a boxed hamster.

She looked at the drained and pasty face of the man she knew as Thomas More. She knew his name wasn’t Thomas More. She also knew she was going to undress him.

“This isn’t quite the way I imagined this happening,” admitted Emma with feigned joviality, “but I have to take your clothes off and get you warm before your body shuts down. You have hypothermia, my drowned poet... or drowned rat.”

She tugged, pulled, unbuttoned, unzipped, and removed every soaked item of clothing clinging to Templar’s pale frame. She towel dried him, and held him close to her own warmth.

“Do you feel anything? Talk to me, tell me you feel warm.”

To Simon Templar, the tiny pinpoints of light seemed to sparkle and dance like bright stars in a clear night sky — a night sky in another time, another land, another life.

“Agnes, my love...”

Emma’s eyebrows arched in the dark.

“Your kiss, Agnes...”

Whoever this Agnes was, she must be one hot number.

Emma sighed.

There’s nothing like hypothermia-induced delirium to bring out the naked truth, she thought.

And then she saw something that took her breath away.

His eyes brimmed with tears.

She held him tight, then tighter, rocking him as a mother would a feverish child.

“Tell me,” her voice was soft as cotton, “tell me all about it...”

And he did.

Cradled in her arms, it was as if he were a child of tender years nourished from the breast of mercy. He spoke to her warmth, and if the narrative lacked elements of cohesion, it was unmistakably authentic.

It was all there — St. Ignatius, the boys and girls, nuns and priests, dogs, danger, and death in the moonlight. The long-withheld tears broke through the mesh of cold emotion and poured as a torrent down the mountainside of his cheeks.

He did not sob, nor did he cry. It was rather as if the sadness and pain of a quarter century had risen to the surface of his life and, having reached the deep blue pools of his eyes, overflowed for once and forever.

Emma held him closer, kissing the corners of his beautiful eyes.

“I’ve never felt quite like this before,” admitted Templar.

“What do you mean?” asked Emma hopefully.

“I’m freezing, what do you think I mean?”

She giggled, and the fact that she giggled in this most repressive and traumatic of environments, and under such life-threatening conditions, amused them both.

Emma knew she couldn’t allow Templar to lose consciousness. She had to keep him alert and conversational.

“What’s your name? Who are you, really?”

“My name is Simon, Simon Templar...” His answer was almost unconvincing.

“So, were you really named for a saint?”

He laughed a wet but honest laugh.

“No, I was named after a character in a paperback book — Knight Templar.”

“The hero of a thousand adventures?” Emma knew the book, the character.

Templar’s eyes brightened.

“You’ve heard of Knight Templar?”

She smiled. “Sure. My father had tons of that sort of stuff,” replied Emma, doing her best to sound nonchalant. “If you would’ve spent more time in my apartment, you would have found an entire cardboard box filled with back issues of Thriller — The Paper of a Thousand Thrills.”

“You’re the woman of my dreams.” He said it as if it were a joke, but he meant it.

“In case you haven’t noticed,” said Emma, “I’m not quite as buxom as the women on the covers of those old blood-and-thunder adventures.”

Templar eyed her bosom as best he could.

“Yeah, but you’ve had things in your brassiere they could never dream of.”

She kissed him, held him to her as if they were one, and they both became conscious of his nakedness.

“There’s nothing wrong with you now, that’s for sure. As long as you’re up,” quipped Emma, “you might as well get dressed.”

She handed him the oddball selection of Russian fashion from the kitchen clothesline and pressed her ear against the false wall to listen for sounds of danger. She heard nothing.

“Maybe we won’t be in here long,” she said hopefully. “Sofiya said we were safe. If the coast is clear...”

The coast was far from clear.

Ilya and his men worked their way through the building, sniffing out the trail of the teenage trollop named Sofiya. The welcome afforded him by the lower floors’ residents was cold and unconcerned. They suggested he try one floor up.

He did. And the next floor above that as well. Each successive floor held more people, and more contradictory advice as to Sofiya’s whereabouts.

Between the fifth and sixth floor, Ilya made an astonishing discovery — a small puddle of water similar to other puddles of water he’d encountered on the stairs. Without giving it serious consideration, he assumed the roof leaked.

He now gave it serious consideration, and a sly grin crept across his face.

“Oh, we’ve got you now,” he said, and they followed the wet trail to the ninth floor. Within minutes Ilya was holding court in the communal apartment’s crowded kitchen. In one hand was his Smith & Wesson, in the other, a large wad of American bills.

“Five hundred bucks reward, all in American currency, to whoever hands over the two foreigners. I don’t care about the little slut who brought ’em here,” declared Ilya offensively, “I just want the damn foreigners.”

He turned to the potbellied man who held a mop in one hand and his bottle of kvass in the other.

“How ’bout you. Tubby, seen any Americans or Brits?”

“No, but I did see one polar bear. Do I get two-fifty?”

The foot soldiers snickered.

Ilya smiled. Then he calmly shot the old man through the heart. The foot soldiers stopped snickering. Sofiya’s mother sobbed uncontrollably.

The gunshot echoed through the ninth floor, awaking the huddled residents and penetrating the false wall. Emma and Templar pulled each other tight in silence.

Ilya crossed over to the old woman, took her hand, and kissed it. She looked as if she wanted to vomit. She abruptly turned and ran out of the room.

“Was it something I said?” called out Ilya mockingly.

Templar and Emma pressed their ears against the wall. They heard one person’s rapidly approaching footsteps.

“Maybe it’s Sofiya,” whispered Emma hopefully.

“Don’t count on it,” said Templar. He stood with determination, bracing himself for whatever came next.

“Here! Here! The foreigners are here! Help! Help!”

It was the old crone turned traitor, cawing out a summons to Ilya and his militia. Her nostrils flared and her lips twitched as she cried out.

For an instant Templar and Emma were too stupefied to move. Then, as if launched by a rocket, the Saint threw himself against the false wall. The plaster smashed to a thousand dusty pieces; the highboy slammed against the floor. The woman screamed and flailed her arms like a human pinwheel.

They were out.

Templar and Emma raced down the narrow corridor toward the short flight to the roof.

“The stairs! The stairs!” screeched the old woman.

Ilya and his men crashed out of the kitchen, and Vlad momentarily became entangled in the makeshift clothesline.

“C’mon, dammit!” barked Ilya. He stumbled through the apartment to the only stairs he knew — the winding concrete stairwell reaching from lobby to rooftop.

Templar and Emma quickly ascended the narrow wooden stairs. At the top of the short flight was a trapdoor. Emma pushed it, but its ice-encrusted frame wouldn’t budge.

“No!” she cried out in anguish. She was becoming desperate.

Templar added his muscle to her efforts, and the ice around the wooden trap broke free with a loud snap. He pushed Emma out ahead of him onto the broad, flat rooftop and scrambled after her.

They desperately scanned the wind-whipped roof, seeking an avenue of escape.

“Can we jump to the next building?” Emma asked, astonished that she would even think of doing it.

There was a building within jumping distance, but the roof was a sheet of ice beneath their feet.

Templar’s mind raced; his eyes seeking another solution. “There!”

“Where?”

Templar grabbed her under the elbow and yanked her toward a sheet-metal utility shed in the middle of the roof. A swift kick to the door shattered away all ice around the frame and gave them entry.

“We can’t hide in there,” objected Emma incredulously.

“Who’s hiding?” Templar pulled her inside. “We’re leaving!”

He pushed past random tools and tar paper to the cluster of utility pipes arising from a wide shaft.

“Oh, God,” exclaimed Emma, “you’re not think-mg of...”

He was.

When Ilya and his cadre of thugs charged up the concrete stairwell and banged out through the metal fire door onto the roof, he should have expected what he saw. Nothing. Again. Almost nothing — a utility shed with ice broken around the doorframe.

“There!” yelled Ilya, slapping Igor on the arm and pointing. “The shed!”

Igor impulsively pumped several shells into either side before kicking open the door. Vlad, his shoes devoid of his compatriots’ off-road tread, slid stupidly around in a circle before falling on his rear.

Templar and Emma had not cowered in the shed awaiting inevitable perforation. They had wrapped their coats around the utility pipes and slid down the hundred-foot shaft.

Had it been a carnival ride, Emma might have enjoyed it. Probably not; she was not the carnival type. Fearing for her life every inch of the speedy, perilous descent, she was too terrified to scream.

Igor, better intentioned than bred, sprayed a deafening hail of hot lead down the shaft just as Emma and Simon touched bottom and exploded out into the basement.

Fuming with anger and frustration, Ilya whacked the automatic off target. Then he whacked Igor.

“We want her alive! Him you can kill; her you can wound. But don’t kill her! Idyot!”

Ten floors below, Emma, overwhelmed, leaned against the dark basement’s empty oil tank. She gulped air and popped a heart pill. “I can’t believe I did that,” she gasped.

Templar, finding the adrenaline rush curative, had already found the light switch. A yellow bulb on a long cord dangled above them, providing minimal illumination.

“No time to relax now,” he said seriously. “The American Embassy is east of here. They can’t touch us there.”

“East? How can you tell which way is east?”

He held up his penknife. “There’s a compass built in.”

“Do you have a blowtorch in that thing, too?”

“I’ve told you too many secrets already,” said the Saint, and he began searching the basement for direct access to Moscow’s extensive underground.

The American Embassy’s location was no secret, and Ilya could see the Stars and Stripes proudly waving from his position on the rooftop.

“Damn! They’ll be heading for the embassy! Let’s go!”

Heading for the embassy, indeed, but not by the most direct route. Instead of emerging at street level and attempting to outrun and outwit Tretiak’s team. Templar sought out the dank basement’s sewer outlet and service tunnel — primary indicators of access to the underground world of black market deal making, clandestine retail outlets, and dissident hideouts.

Having discovered the opening, he yanked out the metal grate and pulled Emma after him into the maze of subterranean Moscow.

Cringing from the dirt, darkness, and disorientation, Emma demanded to know where they were.

“We are under the street, under the buildings,” explained Templar. “This isn’t unusual, it’s simply that most people never think about the city under the city.”

“I don’t,” confirmed Emma without the slightest trace of humor.

Templar glanced again at his compass, then led his wary companion around another dark corner.

“Most major cities, especially old ones — even American ones like New York and Seattle — have an entire subterranean culture,” he continued. “It used to be that the lower-class workers couldn’t be seen above ground except on the job.”

Emma was not interested in social history. “Are we there yet? I see lights.”

She also heard voices. One of them was decidedly female.

Templar stopped when he saw an attractive woman in her mid-twenties coming toward them, gesturing wildly.

“Hurry, in here! You’re the Americans?!”

5

Emma looked at Templar; Templar looked at Emma. They both looked at the slender, curly-haired woman who seemed overly enthusiastic to see them.

“Expecting us?” asked Templar.

The girl laughed and motioned for them to follow her.

Emma wished she were home with her fish.

Dark, cramped, and as dismal as an air-raid shelter was the subterranean depot into which they were summoned. But propped against the dirt walls, lit by oil lamps, were gilt-edged embroidery. The room was filled with silver chalices and various authentic or replicated Russian Orthodox sacramental objects.

In the corner a nerdy young man was polishing a pendant.

“That’s Toli, my curator, and I’m Alexa Frankievitch, but since you’re Americans, you can call me Frankie.”

“How did you know...?”

“Oh, I’ve been expecting a happy American couple looking for valuable religious relics. In fact, I was expecting you an hour ago. I thought you got lost.”

Frankie turned to her vast display of items for sale.

“I can sell you all manner of religious relics and semiauthentic antiques,” she insisted.

Templar leaned over and whispered in Emma’s ear.

“She thinks we’re somebody else.”

“No kidding,” hissed Emma. “Let’s get going.”

When Frankie turned back around, Simon attempted to confront the situation directly.

“Frankie, listen, all we want is—”

“I know, I know,” interrupted the energetic young woman, “the icon of the Virgin of the Don. I need thirty-thousand dollars American up-front.”

“No, no...” Emma tried to intercede and explain.

“Okay, twenty thousand, not a penny less,” Frankie relented, unaware that no one was bargaining with her. “C’mon. It’s the very icon Prince Donskoy carried into battle against the Tatars, who retreated, was a miracle—”

“I don’t believe in miracles,” Templar cut in brusquely. He picked up a jewel encrusted chalice and spun it in the air. “Whadya do, Frankie, stamp these replicas out by the dozens?”

Frankie stomped a small boot and shook her curly hair in agitation and mock anger.

“That’s authentic. Everything here is authentic.”

Simon set the glass decorated chalice down as if it were valuable and grabbed Emma by the hand. “Let’s go.”

Frankie swiftly interposed herself in the doorway.

“Five thousand for the icon. Final offer. Not including cost to smuggle it through tunnels out of town.”

Templar’s eyes lit up when he realized she was gesturing at maps which detailed Moscow’s extensive underground.

He was about to speak when they heard the pounding of boots in the distance.

“Bastards!” hissed Frankie. “You’ve brought the police!”

“No, they’re not police,” countered Templar emphatically. “They’re ‘comrade criminals’ — Tretiak’s goon squad.”

Frankie’s eyes widened at the sound of Tretiak’s name. She unleashed a stream of Russian expletives and grabbed an oil lamp off the wall as Toli extinguished the rest. Frankie then gestured Templar and Emma back into the labyrinth, and Toli expertly sealed up the relic-packed depot.

“Please help us,” entreated Emma. “We’re just trying to get to the American Embassy.”

They all saw the faint glow of approaching firelight. They didn’t need to know exactly who was coming — the phrase Tretiak’s goons said it all.

It was Vlad, sans teeth, and several Tretiak Security stalking through the maze, armed with torches and guns like a lynch mob.

If Frankie and Toli consulted on an agreed course of action, they did it telepathically.

“Follow me,” ordered Frankie. “We’ll have to go the long way, but we won’t let them get you. There is exit hatch just under Embassy bomb shelter.”

The Saint was skeptical; Emma was impressed.

“How do you know the underground of Moscow so well?”

“We are the underground of Moscow,” answered Frankie dryly.

It seemed like hours, and perhaps it was, as the tired and filthy foursome stumbled around another bend. Frankie, much to Templar’s consternation, seemed to be having trouble getting her bearings.

“Are we lost?”

“You’re in Russia, sir,” explained the gregarious Frankie. “Its tunnels are mysterious and illogical as... well... the Motherland herself!”

Templar’s eyes narrowed. “But you do know the way...”

“Of course,” insisted Frankie, “like I know the face of a stainless-steel Bulgari Chronograph.”

She was staring at Templar’s five-thousand dollar wristwatch.

He pulled it off with a faint growl and handed it over.

Frankie, infatuated with her new timepiece, had a sudden refreshment of memory. “This way!”

Hunched low. Templar and Emma followed Frankie and Toli to a walkway leading to a compression hatchwheel.

“The water main,” explained their energetic guide, “because of rationing, they shut it down each afternoon.”

“And they turn it back on...?” asked Templar.

Frankie checked her new Chronograph.

“Hmmm, ’bout five minutes, plus or minus.”

No time to lose.

Templar was already at the hatch, melting the rusted lock mechanism with a tiny-but-mighty blowtorch attachment to his penknife. Emma, surprised by technological breakthrough, shook her head.

“That damn thing does have a blowtorch!”

Frankie offered Simon a few nuggets of further guidance.

“The third hatchwheel is under your embassy. Make it to number three and you’re home free.”

She gave poor distraught Emma a good-luck embrace. Then, seized with transports of conscience, she took off Templar’s watch and handed it to Emma.

“Here. Take it. Honest. I’ve got one just like it at home.”

Frankie and Toli hurried off as the hatchwheel opened. Templar climbed in and extended a hand to Emma.

The tunnels of Moscow’s underground labyrinth were as fun as Chutes & Ladders compared to the pitch-black metallic universe of the large pipe in which Emma and Templar now found themselves.

The Saint pulled out his penknife — the one that had been a blowtorch only moments before — and stuck it between his teeth. A powerful high-intensity bulb burned at its tip, shining a shaft of light ahead of them.

“I’m an idiot, Simon,” noted Dr. Emma Russell. “I’m wasting my time with cold fusion.”

“Huh?” Templar couldn’t articulate too well with a light in his teeth.

“I should market that penknife of yours and retire.”

At least Emma was loosening up.

“I hate to think what you do with that thing when you’re alone,” she muttered.

The two fugitives crawled as quickly as they could along the cold pathway of pipe. Progress was tedious but constant.

Templar shone his penknife light at an exit hatch above them.

“ ‘Hatch Number Two,’ ” he read the attached tag. “Novinsky Street. I figure we have two more minutes, unless our plus is a minus.”

Plus or minus. Emma shuddered at the implications.

Soon his penlight found the embassy exit hatch. No hatchwheel; no exit.

“Oh, my God...” Emma gasped. “We’ve got to go all the way back! We’ve been three minutes, ten seconds...”

Templar gaped at the sight of his watch.

“You stole that back from her?”

“No. I’m not a thief,” snapped Emma testily. “She returned it.”

Templar, astounded, grabbed the watch back and strapped it on.

“Crawl backward,” he commanded, “till we get to that second hatch. Hurry!”

In the distance the sound of whooshing water signaled the oncoming rush of wet death.

They scurried for their lives, scraping their hands and knees on the pipe’s rough metal. Soon they reached the Novinsky Street hatch. Simon attempted spinning the hatchwheel. It wouldn’t budge.

The whooshing increased in volume, and the pipe began to vibrate. Simon put his ear to the hatchwheel.

“What are you doing?” demanded Emma.

“Pretending I’m George Sanders,” he murmured.

He listened, he felt, he hauled off and whacked the hatchwheel as hard as he could. It spun beneath his grip.

The hatch opened and he pulled himself up into the service vent, then he reached down for Emma. She grasped his strong grip and he yanked her up just as water roared through the pipe below. It geysered through the hatch, soaking them both.

Templar slammed the hatch shut, but the pressure was too intense. The water erupted into the vent, rising rapidly to waist level.

“Help me!” he shouted. “Stand on it!”

Emma added her efforts to his, forcing the hatch against the mounting pressure. It closed, and he spun the wheel shut

They stood there, stressed but safe, wet and momentarily silent.

At length, perhaps it was a few seconds, Emma spoke.

“I’d have heart failure, but it would take too much effort.”

Templar kissed her cheek impulsively, gestured for her to stay put, and clambered up the ladder to the manhole lid.

He popped his head up, and out of the darkness came the headlights of Ilya’s Range Rover searing straight toward him. He ducked back down as the 4X4 parked directly over the manhole cover.

The Saint, flashing an optimistic grin, scurried down the ladder.

“Uh-oh,” remarked Emma. “When a man smiles in a sewer, I get worried.”

“They’re right above us,” announced Templar pleasantly.

Emma coughed out a jittery laugh.

Templar began tapping a pipe running through the service vent.

“You know why it’s not cold in the American Embassy?” he asked.

She looked at the pipe and understood. It was a gas line. A gas line into which Simon Templar was plunging the blade of his versatile penknife. When he pulled it free, she heard the distinctive hiss of escaping gas.

Emma blinked in disbelief.

“For a suicide pact, you need my permission.” Her voice trembled.

“Not suicide,” explained Simon, “survival.”

He started up the ladder, motioning her to follow. She balked.

“Would you rather suffocate?”

It was an easy decision. In the next second they were both hurrying up the ladder. He lifted the manhole cover again, and they slithered out under Ilya’s vehicle.

They lay there gulping fresh air, as a pair of black paraboots jumped down to the pavement. Soon several pair of loafers and Nikes appeared.

The American Embassy was one hundred yards away, and with the foot soldiers right above them, it felt like a hundred miles.

Emma was in despair; the Saint was in control.

“Trust me on this,” he whispered. “They’ll open the gate when they see you coming.”

“They’ll open fire when they see you coming,” said Emma, referring to Ilya and the thugs.

“It will take less than ten seconds for you to get to safety,” insisted Templar.

“Me? What about you?” Emma was starting to panic. She popped another little pill.

“Consider me one of life’s little distractions,” he said, and before she could protest, he rolled out from under the vehicle. Simon sprang to his feet and strolled pleasantly past Ilya as if trying to brazen his way to freedom.

Stunned by this gambit, Ilya yelped like a wounded Pomeranian. Vlad and Igor jumped for Templar, and he allowed them to take him down.

Emma realized that she would never have a better moment to break cover, took a breath, and ran like hell for the embassy gates.

Ilya immediately realized what was happening and took off furiously after her.

The on-duty Marines behind the embassy gate helplessly watched as Ilya gained on Emma.

“American!” yelled Emma. “Open up!”

She was almost at the gate; Ilya was almost at her back.

The Marines did all they were allowed to do. They swung open the gate.

Emma’s legs pumped furiously as she ran fast, then faster, but Ilya’s outstretched arm was on her. He clutched her coat, pulling her back.

And Emma threw herself forward, arms back like an Olympic diver, and the coat peeled off in his grasp. She passed through the gate as if it were the finish line, triumphantly ringed by Marines.

“I’m an American citizen,” panted Emma breathlessly.

The Marines assured her of full protection and threw malevolent glares at Ilya.

“Back off from the gate — now!”

Ilya obeyed, but his eyes bored holes through the Marines’ uniform.

Emma had escaped, but Ilya had a consolation prize — the Saint.

Igor and Vlad held the battered, bruised, but exultant captive. Templar was about to prick Ilya with a witty insult, but a quick gun butt to the head canceled the remark and sent him sprawling to the pavement.

The trip was worth the pain — from this vantage point he could see the escaping gas cause visible ripples in the air as it billowed out of the open manhole beneath the Range Rover.

Ilya straddled him triumphantly. Concealing his gun with the flap of his open coat, he pressed the barrel to Templar’s temple and leaned down into his face.

“One shot left,” stated Ilya, his foul breath stinging Simon’s nostrils. “You can’t come all the way to Russia and not play Russian roulette.”

Templar felt the cold steel pressing against his head as he looked Ilya in the eye. Without knowing how quick the other was on the trigger, he estimated that he had a sporting chance of knocking the gun aside and landing an iron fist where it would obliterate Ilya’s nose. But there were still the other men to reckon with.

That moment’s swift and instinctive reckoning of his chances was probably what helped to save him. And in that time he also forced himself to realize that the fleeting pleasure of pushing Ilya’s front teeth through the back of his neck would ring down the curtain on his only hope of getaway. Besides, he had already initiated his preferred plan of escape. All he needed was a little more time.

Emma, safe but helpless behind the embassy gate, watched through a veil of tears.

As Ilya spun the cylinder. Templar’s hand moved slowly toward his bootheel.

“Before you shoot me, don’t you want to know where all the money is hidden?”

Ilya’s finger was already exerting pressure on the trigger. As Templar removed the penknife from his heel, the cylinder rolled and the hammer came down.

Click!

Empty chamber.

Ilya spun it again. There was no bullet visible. This was it.

“What money?” Ilya asked.

“Tretiak’s. Daddy’s. Your father’s got billions stashed and I know where it is,” lied Templar. “Let’s make a deal.”

Ilya didn’t trust him. They locked eyes, and Templar triggered the tiny hidden blowtorch into operation.

“Here’s your deal...” said Ilya with a sick sneer. He pressed the barrel tighter against Templar’s head.

Templar flicked the blowtorch under the Range Rover, and Ilya saw him do it. Before he could process the implications or pull the trigger, his world violently erupted in a searing fireball of flame.

The Range Rover was airborne in one direction, Ilya was thrown in the other, and Simon Templar was on his feet.

The Saint threw Emma one last look through the inferno and vanished behind the billowing smoke and crashing, incinerated auto parts.

6

The warmth and security of the American Embassy was, after the series of life-threatening episodes, haven of rest for Dr. Emma Russell.

Cleaned up and changed into loaned clothes a size too big, she was soon politely escorted through formalities by a few good Marines.

“You just have to fill out a form before we put you on a flight home,” explained her courteous, uniformed attendant as they passed the impressive embassy seal, flanked by flags. “Any medical conditions, that sort of thing.”

“Actually, my heart, I...” Emma paused and smiled at a sudden realization. “I haven’t taken a pill hours. I ran for my life and my heart wasn’t pounding. You’d think I would have dropped dead before I got to the gate.”

“Sometimes our bodies surprise us,” agreed the Marine. “We often underestimate our own survival skills.”

“No kidding,” Emma said with a laugh, “if you would have told me two days ago what I was going to go through, I never would have believed it.”

Her escort gestured at a processing center at the end of the corridor. It was crowded with other Americans also eager to leave Moscow’s mounting social turbulence.

“Get your form at window five,” he advised. “We’ll be back for you at nineteen-hundred hours — a full Marine escort to the airport.”

Before Emma could thank them, the two Marines crisply peeled off to the right. She continued toward processing, past numerous embassy officials aiding other travelers. As she approached window five, an affable bearded official came up beside her. He spoke in a strong Southern accent.

“Straubing.”

“I beg your pardon?” Emma didn’t understand.

He smiled and held out his hand. “Straubing.”

“What’s a straubing?”

“I am. That’s my name. Harold Straubing.”

Emma, embarrassed, blushed and felt foolish. “I’m sorry, Mr. Straubing, I’m a bit flustered. I’ve been through a lot in the last few days.”

“So, where does a nice little lady like you think she’s going?”

“Back to London...”

Straubing gently clasped his hand above her elbow and guided her away from window five.

“I don’t think that’s a wise idea,” he said, and his accent disappeared. She recognized the voice, and blinked at him in disbelief.

“Simon! Are you crazy? I’m safe. I’m on the next flight...”

Templar stopped in front of a heavily barred window.

“Look out there.”

Through the bars, Emma saw a gaggle of demonstrators on the plaza. Among them were Ilya’s goons, Vlad and Igor, patiently waiting.

“If you make it to the airport, they’ll get you on the plane,” stated Simon flatly, and Emma shuddered.

“What do I do?” Her voice trembled. Her feelings of safety and security were quickly evaporating.

“As long as you’re here, you’re safe. Tell the Marines you’ve developed a sudden fear of flying — post traumatic stress and all that. They’ll believe you, you’re a doctor. Then find a computer and a quiet room, finish the formula, and fax it to me.”

“Just like that?” Emma was incredulous. “Finish the formula and fax it to you?”

He handed her a number.

“This is your Moscow office?” Her tone was tinged with sarcasm.

“Portable fax, one international number that works anywhere,” responded the Saint cheerfully. “Modem technology at its most compassionate.”

She peered hard at his face.

“Speaking of compassion, are you sure this is about my safety and not your retirement fund? How do I know you’re not going to sell the formula — again?”

“Again, you’ll have to trust me.”

He resumed striding, and she walked at his side as if he were giving her an official tour.

“Of course I trust you, Mr. Straubing. I mean Mr. More, uh, Mr. Farrar, I mean Mr. de Porres... after all, you’re my personal saint.”

Simon smiled.

“To be a saint, you’ve got to be linked to three miracles. Don’t ruin my reputation, Emma.”

With that, he turned off down a hallway and blended in with busy embassy bureaucrats. She watched him go, still wondering if he were truly trustworthy or if she was about to be burned.

The burns inflicted upon Ilya in the Range Rover explosion were, according to his doctor, healing nicely with no sign of infection.

Ilya allowed a nurse to apply salve to his blisters while the house-call physician completed his follow-up exam. The doctor was more concerned with the decor of Ilya’s room — swastikas and Nazi flags — than he was with the thug’s injuries.

Tretiak, impatient and fed up with his son’s self-centered whining, paced nervously around the room.

“All in all,” remarked the doctor, “I’d say your son is a lucky boy.”

“Lucky? Look at me,” objected Ilya, “my cheek is singed! I look like a refugee from hell!”

“No, I mean you’re lucky because hundreds of thousands of Russians gave their lives to defeat the Nazis in World War II,” blurted out the angry physician. “You’re lucky some patriot hasn’t killed you for being a goddam Nazi yourself.”

Ilya brayed like an ass. “That stupid war was over years before I was born, Doc. Nobody remembers and nobody cares.”

The doctor remembered; the doctor cared.

Ilya’s exasperated father stalked from the room and almost collided with Botvin, who had been nervously awaiting an audience.

“I’ve run every test on Russell’s cold fusion formula,” stammered the little scientist, “and I’ve concluded that her formula is not incomplete — it’s impossible!”

This was not a good time to bring discouraging words.

Tretiak erupted with almost as much incendiary power as Ilya’s 4X4.

“I invest millions and you can’t make it work?”

Botvin had a sudden mental image of imminent death.

“But I’ve been working on it without sleep for nearly two weeks,” stammered Botvin, backtracking to a positive perspective. “At first blush the theorem appears quite impressive...”

Tretiak stopped midstride and turned slowly to face Botvin. The scientist took two wary steps back and held his breath. The face of Ivan Tretiak was no longer distorted by anger; rather, it was wreathed in what could be mistaken for a warm smile.

“You did just say ‘quite impressive,’ didn’t you?”

Botvin rattled his head up and down.

“Good! Stay impressed! Good man! We can use it to destroy our enemies.”

Tretiak strode to the banister and bellowed down to the foyer, summoning his chief operating officer.

“Vereshagin, arrange a meeting!”

“With whom, Mr. Tretiak?”

“The President of Russia! I want Botvin and me to see him tomorrow night at the Kremlin!”

Botvin blinked rapidly and moved closer to ask a question of penultimate importance.

“Me? Meet with the President? But why?”

Tretiak threw a large arm around the small man’s shoulders. “As the capitalists say: You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle. We’re going to sell Karpov ten billion dollars’ worth of sizzle.”

Vereshagin called the Kremlin, carefully wording Tretiak’s demand as a polite, respectful request. The message’s essence was immediately relayed to Nikolai Korshunov, the president’s chief of staff, who delivered it personally to his superior.

President Karpov was well aware of two dreadful facts of life: (1) Ivan Tretiak was his most volatile and powerful opponent, and (2) Ivan Tretiak was undoubtedly behind the inexplicable energy crisis.

If Tretiak wanted to meet with him, Karpov would be a fool to resist and a fool to comply. He chose the lesser foolishness and scheduled the meeting.

The following evening Ivan Tretiak, trailed by Vereshagin, Ilya, and Botvin, was escorted through the Kremlin’s impressive corridors by uniformed guards. He stopped to admire and covet the ceremonial sabers, Fabergé eggs, and priceless tapestries. The guards, well aware of their guest’s identity and reputation, regarded Tretiak and his associates with deserved suspicion.

Botvin, perspiring terribly, girded himself for the upcoming deception while father and son conferred.

“Only that scientist can spoil my plan,” Tretiak whispered urgently to Ilya, “if she gets back to London and talks to the press...”

“Don’t worry,” Ilya replied smugly. “Dr. Russell’s plane won’t leave the runway — at least not in one piece.”

The three charlatans were officiously directed into a heavily secured Kremlin meeting room. Awaiting them at an impressive hardwood conference table were a wary and careworn President Karpov and Nikolai Korshunov.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” said Karpov coolly, and he motioned for them to sit opposite him.

Tretiak and Botvin sat, but Ilya lingered at the door like a sulking guard dog.

Ivan Tretiak shivered with theatrical gusto. “Chilly in here, Mr. President.”

“As long as the heating crisis persists, we keep our thermostat quite low.” The president spoke with presidential politeness.

“Yes, let us discuss the heating crisis, Mr. President,” Tretiak leaned forward, fixing his gaze on Karpov. “As former minister of energy and power, I hear all manner of schemes to provide cheaper power.. ”

“I’m sure you have,” offered Karpov with a hint of cynicism.

Tretiak continued as if the remark had not been made.

“Our countrymen are freezing to death, Mr. President, but I have become aware of a marvelous new technology about which I am hopelessly out of my league from a scientific viewpoint. That’s why I’ve brought our eminent physicist here, Lev Botvin, from the University of Moscow.”

Documents, charts, graphs, and assorted impressive pieces of paper were shuffled and handed, as a matter of protocol, to Korshunov.

He began flipping through the pages while Karpov looked on.

“Before we’re dazzled by the good news,” offered Korshunov, “let’s dispense with the bad. What’s the price of this ‘marvel’?”

Vereshagin leaned across the table, finding the relevant page.

“Here. Right here are the research and development costs. Those are the only costs — I repeat — the only costs you’re asked to defray.”

Karpov leaned over and cast an interested glance at the figures. When he saw the total, he almost fell off his presidential chair.

“Ten billion?! My God! You must be mad!”

Tretiak started to rise. Vereshagin and Botvin followed his lead.

Karpov motioned them back down.

“Wait, wait,” he said with forced joviality, “I thought we’d drink some Kremlyovakaya to get a bit warmer and discuss all this in more detail.”

Tretiak smiled.

Korshunov arose from the table and moved to a bookcase shelf. Hidden behind was a crystal decanter of vodka and some tumblers.

“Mr. President,” began Tretiak as he sat back down, “in all candor, I’m tired of these silly partisan political struggles. You ask the average Russian and he or she will tell you that politicians are boring, fighting is a waste of time, and that what we need is more comfort and less speeches.”

Karpov nodded. He wanted to know where Tretiak was going with this.

“If a major scientific breakthrough such as the one we are asking you to fund would bring warmth and happiness to the people, I would gladly devote my time and my life to my family business and... my dear family.” He threw an almost believable sentimental look at Ilya.

Karpov wasn’t gullible. He knew Tretiak was as sentimental as a rabid Doberman.

“In other words,” clarified the president, “you would withdraw your opposition?”

Tretiak showed his teeth in an approximation of a sincere smile. “It is my sweetest dream.”

The message was clear. Karpov looked at Korshunov. The latter poured the vodka.

“Without making any sort of commitment,” said Karpov officiously, “we wish to study these documents. Dr. Botvin, will you kindly explain, in layman’s terms, this cold fusion?”

Botvin cleared his throat, repositioned his fogged lenses, and began his elaborate, yet simple, explanation — an explanation not intended to make cold fusion any more understandable, but to make the ten billion in hard currency more obtainable.

He was, in effect, drawing a verbal map from Karpov’s wallet to Tretiak’s pocket.