The Saint

Epilogue

The St. Ignatius Home for Boys was neither as large nor as foreboding as Simon Templar remembered it from his childhood.

Viewed from an adult perspective, the rooms were small, the desks were tiny, and the hallways narrow.

He arrived without appointment one sunny spring day and simply asked to see the headmaster. The nun who greeted him was warm and personable. She bade him be seated.

Memories flooded his senses, bringing to the fore every emotion associated with his years at St. Ignatius.

He looked out the window and saw something he did not expect — children playing happily on an elaborate outdoor swing-set. He heard laughter and giggles, shouts of glee and delight. A smile began to light his eyes and spread to the corners of his mouth.

“The Father will see you now.”

Simon smiled pleasantly at the friendly Sister and stepped inside the headmaster’s office.

It was not Father Brennan whose face he saw, but the big bearded visage of a joyous, barrel-chested priest with a bearlike build.

His handshake was firm and his demeanor gregarious.

“Welcome, welcome to St. Ignatius,” he began. “I’m the headmaster. What can I do for you?”

“I’m... I’m a graduate, or former student, or former...”

“Inmate?”

The blunt but accurate noun came as a surprise.

“Well, yes, honestly...”

“What’s your name, son?”

Simon Templar looked the priest square in the eye and played a hunch.

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

A thunderclap of recognition flashed across the priest’s face. “Simon! Simon Templar!”

The Saint was swept up in the manly hug of a lifetime.

“Don’t you see who’s behind this fuzzy beard? It’s me, Bartolo!”

“I thought so, but I wasn’t sure — the beard!”

“ ’Tis I, indeed, my Saintly crusader — hey, still breaking and entering?”

“Old habits... no pun intended,” said Templar, and he recalled their friendship from years gone by.

The man who was Bartolo gave Templar the complete tour of the new and improved facility, ending at a small garden in the courtyard — a garden named in memory of Agnes.

“I never expected this,” admitted Templar.

“Nothing stays the same forever, and neither do people. We all form our lives and build our futures on the experiences of the past. Take us, for example: You ran away and became a thief. I stayed and became a priest.”

“I saw a movie like that once,” joked Simon Templar. “You were Pat O’Brian and I was James Cagney.”

“Pat O’Brian, indeed.” Bartolo laughed. “You’re too debonair for Cagney.”

Templar looked at his old friend with heartfelt admiration. It was as if the years between them melted away. He could have sworn it was just last night that they raided the pantry.

“Brennan?” said Templar, and he needn’t have said more.

Father Bartolo shrugged and cocked his head. “If I told you” — he smiled coyly — “you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Now you must tell me,” insisted Templar.

Bartolo began walking around the garden. “One day, not long after you... you left, he became enraged about something... or nothing... it doesn’t matter.”

He stopped.

“The dogs turned on him. They almost ripped him to shreds. It was horrible.”

“Dead?”

“No. And I’m sure he’d like to see you.”

There was a sudden sinking feeling in Templar’s stomach. “Like to see me?”

Bartolo motioned toward a simple bench at the edge of the garden and checked his watch. “Let’s sit. He’ll be along shortly.”

The two childhood pals sat down in the sun. Laughter of boys and girls at play echoed off the high stone walls. In a few minutes a tiny man came shuffling toward the garden carrying a pink plastic watering can.

“Is that him?”

A nod.

Templar stood.

He walked toward the garden, coming to a stop beside Father Brennan.

How small he seemed, barely reaching the mid-most part of Simon’s chest.

The old man’s eyes crinkled above the long-healed scars of what must have been a most vicious and ferocious attack. He poured water on the budding flowers and smiled up at Simon Templar. “Hello.”

“Hello.”

Simon stared at Brennan. Gone was the evil tyrant. Here was only an aged, infirm gardener.

“You’re Father Brennan, aren’t you?”

He stopped watering, and a gracious smile illumined his hard-bitten features.

“Yes, yes, I am. Do I know you?”

“Yes. I was a student of yours, years ago. I’m afraid we gave each other some rather unpleasant memories.”

Templar’s gaze turned involuntarily to the garden. He still wanted to punch Brennan in the nose.

Brennan searched Simon’s face. “Your name?”

What the hell.

“My name is Templar, Simon Templar...”

The pink plastic watering can dropped from Brennan’s hand. And then, to Simon’s eternal surprise, Father Brennan wrapped his arms around him, rested his head on his chest, and cried.

After a moment the wet-eyed priest lifted his head and apologized.

“I’ve prayed for you... and for her, every night...”

He could say no more; Templar could hear no more.

In time he rejoined Bartolo on the bench.

“Whew,” Templar exhaled. “That was different than I expected.” He gave Bartolo a mischievous grin.

“I couldn’t exactly punch him in the nose, even though the thought crossed my mind. He’s old, frail, small, and it just wouldn’t be right.”

Father Bartolo slapped him on the back.

“C’mon, I have something for you before you go.”

It was back inside St. Ignatius that the big-bearded priest began digging through an odd collection of artifacts and literature.

“I know it’s here, because I keep coming across it when I’m not looking for it,” mumbled Bartolo, “and I can’t imagine why Brennan didn’t toss it out. Or, for that matter, why I didn’t. Maybe it was... ahh, here it is — a little memento of our reunion.”

Knight Templar.

“It’s missing a few pages — the spine broke when he threw it, remember?”

“Almost beaned you, if I recall.” Templar laughed, and he held the tattered paperback as if it were an authentic religious relic. “I can keep this?”

“Sure,” said Bartolo. “With that buxom beauty on the cover, I think it’s much better that you have it. After all, it is yours, isn’t it? Or did you steal that, too?”

Simon looked down, mock-penitent. “No, I must confess that I didn’t steal it.”

He looked back up. “Thanks... do I call you ‘Father’?”

“Brother to you, Simon.”

“The Saint has a brother who’s a priest — makes sense to me.”

They both laughed.

Bartolo walked Templar out.

“When you’re back in London, and if you’re looking to do a good deed...”

“Good deeds are my stock and trade,” confirmed the Saint.

“... I have a friend who runs the Arbour Youth Centre on Shandy Street in Stepney. You know, providing entertainment and activities to keep kids from becoming... well...”

“Like me?”

“No, like Tretiak and Ilya.”

Templar was caught up short. “You know about that?”

Bartolo laughed.

“We get CNN, UPN, ITN, CCI — there’s a satellite dish on the roof.”

“Modem technology at its most compassionate,” affirmed the Saint.

Bartolo looked silently at Templar for a moment. “What now, my friend? From what I can tell from the news, not everyone is willing to leave you alone about your ‘alleged’ past. Where do you go, what do you do?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about my prospects,” began Templar cheerfully, “and I’ve discerned that I’m a pirate or philanthropist as the occasion demands.”

“Go on,” encouraged Bartolo.

“When you and I were first at St. Ignatius, we were told that some day we would lose our youthful impetuosity and impatience, and settle down to a normal life.”

“Yes, that’s usually the pattern,” agreed his friend.

“Not for me,” insisted Templar happily. “This rubbing off of corners, this settling down, this normal life... can you picture me with the snug office, the regular hours, the respectable weekends?”

Bartolo couldn’t picture that at all.

“Are you going to stay on the right side of the law?”

The Saint laughed. “When laws are outlawed, only outlaws will have laws,” he quipped. “In fact, a certain Sir Hamilton Dorn of British Intelligence actually had the nerve to track me down via the Internet and offer me a job.” The Saint intoned the word job as if it were an irritating rash or dysenteric symptom of dyspepsia.

“Well, did you at least consider it?”

“Yes,” responded Templar. “I considered it foolish.”

Bartolo shook his head in amusement. His childhood chum was as irreverent and impudent as ever.

“I’ve formulated the idea of making my life’s work to register myself in the popular eye as something akin to a public institution.”

“Meaning?”

“You read the paper, you watch the news — there are millions of people out there who don’t have lives any better than mine was when I was a kid. Five-year-olds working in sweat shops to make soccer balls, young girls sewing fourteen-hour shifts for less than forty cents a day, and the list goes on. I figure they have things rough enough without crackpots, dictators, and other crooks robbing them Wind or making it worse.”

“So, you going to save the world?”

“You’re not the first person to ask me that,” said the Saint, and he thought of Frankie.

“The answer?”

“Well, actually, after I return to London and take a certain Scotland Yard detective to tea, I’m going to Las Vegas.”

“To gamble?”

“Never. Gamblers die broke. There’s a right-wing fascist arms manufacturer I read about in the paper who can’t resist easy money. I plan on meeting him there and relieving him of several million dollars. A man such as I can do a lot of good with that kind of loot.”

“An interesting career choice,” noted Bartolo. “You’ll be the Robin Hood of modem crime.”

“Catchy phrase,” agreed the Saint, “and while I’m at it, I might just punch him in the nose.”

They shook hands, smiled, and then Father Bartolo watched Simon Templar walk away in the sunlight.

Halfway down the block, merging into the bustling Hong Kong crowd. Templar turned to wave again.

That was how Bartolo would always remember him — tall and smiling and debonair, one closed hand resting on his hip, his other raised in farewell.

Bartolo turned back toward the courtyard. Several energetic youngsters skipped along beside him.

“Who ya wavin’ at, Father?”

“The Twenty-First Century’s Brightest Buccaneer,” he answered dramatically, “the most astonishing combination of heroism and terrorism ever to leap from the pages of ace pulp fiction!”

The children laughed.

They thought he was kidding.