The Saint in Pursuit

1

The Saint could stop a man’s fist with comparative ease, but the problem of stopping a woman’s tongue was another matter, beside which the raising of the Tower of Babel to stratospheric levels would have seemed a casual recreation.

His face, however, betrayed none of the unhappy thoughts which flashfired through his brain when Vicky announced to Inspector Edval her intention of making a statement. He looked at her with the mild resignation of a disinterested teacher to some weakwitted pupil.

Then someone knocked at the door.

“Party-crashers,” Simon said with very genuine cheerfulness.

He went to the door and opened it, revealing an excited-looking policeman — not the one he had first seen, who was still standing guard nearby — with a folded piece of paper in his hand.

“A message on the car radio, Inspector!” he said in rapid French. “It concerns the identification of the dead man.”

The policeman knew the message, and as he handed the paper to Inspector Edval he babbled a resume of its contents. Vicky, who did not understand French, looked blank, while the Saint felt — if he did not actually look — positively beatified.

“Would you mind letting us foreigners in on the secret, Inspector?” Simon asked with halting humility. “After all, you’re using my rather expensive room for your festivities.”

Edval thought for a few seconds before answering. It was already obvious from a scorching glare he had shot at his uniformed subordinate that he had no faith whatever in the Saint’s supposed lack of linguistic ability.

“Jaeger is not Jaeger,” he said, seeming to take an unofficial poetic pleasure in the lilt of the words. Perhaps he was the sort of man who read Baudelaire secretly in bed. “Or perhaps I should say, he was both Jaeger and someone else — a former Gestapo agent named Norden who operated secretly in this country during the ’39 war. We have rather complete files on such people, including dental charts and scars.”

A transformation was taking place in Vicky’s expression that was subtle but movingly complete. She met the police inspector’s probing eyes directly as he turned to her.

“But you were about to tell me something, mademoiselle,” he said. “And this further identification of the victim certainly does not decrease the chance that he might have been pushed out of a window.”

“I can tell you that he wasn’t pushed out of this window,” Vicky replied in a completely confident voice. “At least not by Mr Templar. Mr Templar and I went out together, and there certainly wasn’t any sign then that anybody had fallen anywhere.”

“And when was that, mademoiselle?” Edval inquired.

“About a quarter to eight,” Simon answered helpfully.

“I would prefer that the lady answer my questions,” Edval said.

“About a quarter to eight,” said Vicky.

Edval sighed.

“May I see your passport, please?”

Vicky opened her purse and produced the booklet. Edval bowed slightly as he took it. He looked at each page closely before speaking again.

“Very good, Mademoiselle Kinian. I suppose you are a good friend of Monsieur Templar?”

“I’ve only seen him once before in my life. We met in Lisbon when I first got there and found out we were both coming here — so we made a date.”

She paused, and the Saint nodded acknowledgement.

“I’m a very lucky man, as you can see, Inspector,” he said gallantly.

“I have heard of your remarkable luck,” the inspector replied with some irony. “And this absence of yours this evening — this was because of your date?”

He spoke “date” with quotation marks around it, as a foreign word he found faintly distasteful and amusing.

“That’s right,” said Vicky.

Edval looked at his watch.

“It was not a very long date, was it?”

There was an edge of sarcasm on Simon’s voice as he interrupted.

“I was aware of Swiss efficiency,” he said, “but I never knew that it extended to timing the social engagements of tourists.”

Inspector Edval compressed his lips and exercised self-control.

“My excuses if I have offended anyone.” He handed the passport back to Vicky. “Thank you, mademoiselle. I do not see how I can doubt the testimony of a young lady with such a fresh new passport and such a charming and honest face.”

“Thank you,” she said, a little uncomfortably.

“I hope you will forgive me, too, for any insinuations, Monsieur Templar, but when the Saint is in the vicinity of any unusual happening it must be routine to make sure he is not connected with it.”

“You are absolved,” said the Saint benevolently. “Go, and my blessings be with you.”

The inspector almost smiled, but covered his embarrassment at that near slip by mumbling a few final words about Jaeger as he went to the door.

“It is possible,” he said, “that he was attempting to steal something, and fell to his death while trying to climb from one room to another outside the hotel.”

“Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” Simon said with admiration. “I’m sure that if you follow up that theory you’ll have the case closed in no time.”

“Merci,” said Inspector Edval, and left.

Vicky collapsed into a chair and closed her eyes as Simon moved back from closing the door.

“Wonderful to watch the professional police mind at work, isn’t it?” he commented.

“To think you’ve been going through this all your life,” Vicky said. “I couldn’t even take another day of it.”

“And now I suppose you expect to be paid off for your part in this little drama we’ve just been through,” the Saint said.

Vicky looked up at him.

“You don’t have to be nasty about it,” she said.

“I’m not being nasty,” he replied. “I’m being practical.”

Vicky got up from the chair, and as she talked she meandered with conspicuous inconspicuousness to the general area of the door through which Edval had made his exit.

“You think nobody does anything without an angle, don’t you?” she asked huffily.

“Well, darling,” Simon answered, “I’m much too modest to kid myself that you lied to that rather trusting Swiss Sherlock because you just suddenly fell in love with me.”

“I should say not!” Vicky responded indignantly. “I guess it wouldn’t occur to you that I might have felt an obligation to you — because even if you did knock Jaeger or Norden or whoever he was out of the window, it was only what I’d have wanted to do if I’d known who he really was.”

“Maybe so,” said the Saint. “But I’m also sure you realized you couldn’t let me be pinched while I had this little package in my pocket.”

She gave him credit for accurate divination by a moment of stymied silence.

“But anyway,” she said belligerently, “you admit I got you out of a jam, so how about your obligation?”

The Saint was now lounging casually on the sofa with his long legs crossed in front of him, while the girl was still standing next to the closed door.

“First,” he said, “may I ask why you’re loitering over there on the threshold?”

“So I can get out in case you take it into your head to throw me out of the window!”

She tried to say it with the same sting that she had summoned a few seconds before.

“You forget what a mercenary pirate’s mind I have,” Simon said impudently. “I’d never toss a prize like you overboard — I’d sell you to the slave traders.” As an afterthought he added, “Or keep you for myself.”

Her eyes met Simon’s roguish blue ones, and in the next moment she blushed, but looked completely reassured.

“You changed the subject,” she said. “I’ve told you why I was standing by the door. Now you tell me what you intend to do about that stuff my father told me how to get.”

“Ill take some convincing before I’m ready to admit that it belongs to either one of us. But first let’s see what it is.”

He pulled the thin packet from inside his coat and put it on the polished mahogany surface of the coffee table in front of the sofa where he was sitting. Vicky had lost her fear so completely that she came and sat next to him.

“I don’t care who it belonged to,” she said, “or what it is. I think I’ve earned a share of it.”

“And so have I,” he asserted. “So let’s find out if there’s enough in it for both of us — or if this is just one more of your father’s boyish pranks.”

He peeled off the adhesive tapes which secured the oilcloth package and then began to unfold the black wrapping itself. Beside him, Vicky perched on the edge of her sofa cushion and clenched her hands together in tense excitement. Simon laid back the last fold of oilcloth. There in the middle lay a slightly oversized white envelope.

“Oh no!” Vicky groaned. “Not another one!”

She let herself flop back in the sofa, and her hands fell in limp despair at her sides.

“Next stop Bangkok or Tel Aviv,” agreed the Saint. “It looks as if Dad has an almost inexhaustible sense of suspense — or maybe he figured that if he made the puzzle long enough anybody but a devoted blood-relative would give up long before he got to the end of the line.”

“You won’t want it, then,” said Vicky.

As she spoke she moved with a suddenness and speed that would have given a jaguar twinges of envy. She pounced on the envelope, snatched it up, turned the coffee table over against the Saint’s legs, and bolted for the door.

2

Before Vicky could get the door open the Saint had disengaged himself from the coffee-table obstacle she had thrown in his path and was halfway across the room after her. While she was still fumbling desperately with the lock he caught her, pinned her arms more or less at her sides with one of his arms, and tried to get the envelope out of her hand.

She struggled furiously, holding the envelope out of his reach behind her for as long as she could. Then his patiently applied superior strength paid off, and the envelope was once more in his possession.

“Trusting little soul, aren’t you?” he remarked, still gripping her firmly. “Trustworthy, too.”

Vicky squirmed helplessly and winced with rage.

“Anybody would be crazy to trust you, you... you rattlesnake!”

Simon clucked sadly and released his hold on her.

“It pains me to think that you could turn on your friend, counsellor, and protector like this, at a moment which I’d have thought would be marked by joyful gratitude and adoring thanks.”

“You’ll keep it all for yourself!” she said accusingly, rubbing her arm where he had gripped it.

“I gather you have some advance dope on the contents of this little prize package that you haven’t shared with your faithful comrade. In that case you may not be inquisitive enough to want to stick around for the grand opening — so please feel free to leave.”

“No!” she snapped. “It’s more mine than anybody’s, and I’m going to get it, no matter what you say!”

Simon was strolling back towards the sofa again, tapping the bulging sealed envelope against the palm of one hand, and then suddenly he turned and took a threatening step towards her.

“You may get a quick trip through that window after all if you don’t mind your manners,” he said ferociously.

She gave a terrified squeak and jumped back towards the door. But she turned again at bay, clinging to the handle.

“You come one step closer and I’ll start screaming. I bet Edval’s still got a man outside. And you know whose word they’ll take when I start talking.”

The Saint dissolved into helpless laughter.

“We really should take this act on the road,” he chortled. “However, to play it straight for a minute, let’s pretend that we each have the other over a barrel, which is not a state of affairs conducive to progress in any direction. Shall we declare a truce and get on with our nefarious huddle?”

She relaxed a little but did not step forward at once.

“You’re not getting me anywhere near that window,” she insisted defensively.

“And I’m not letting you anywhere near this table or any other flingable furniture,” he told her. “Maybe well have to meet from now on in a padded cell.”

He righted the table with the toe of his shoe and stripped open the envelope. It yielded a thick wad of papers. Unfolding them, he saw that there were six sheets, each almost identical to the others, but each addressed — in German — to a different bank. The names of the different cities in which the banks were located first caught his eye: Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Madrid, Zurich, Johannesburg. Then something else attracted his attention: the sum of money held in each bank to which the letters of credit in his hand pertained. The amounts were expressed in various currencies, but quick mental calculation reduced each of them to approximately the same astonishing sum.

The Saint was accustomed to cash in large figures, having a useful quantity of it stashed away in his own accounts, so the fact that he blinked, looked in amazement at Vicky, and then stared reverently down again at the papers was a high tribute to the grandeur of their contents.

“Do you know what we’ve got here?” he said.

“Letters of credit,” Vicky replied, still a little coldly. “My father’s letter told me that, but he never saw them and didn’t know how much they were worth.”

“They are worth,” Simon said, “ten million dollars each.”

“Ten... million... dollars?”

To render typographically the awesome quality Vicky gave to each of her next words would require a surface tile size of the north face of the Eiger and the labor of a few hundred sign painters working all summer with no time off.

“Yes,” Simon confirmed simply.

“Each?” she squealed.

“Yes.”

She forgot all about the possibility of an enforced exit through the window and rushed to his side, gaping at the documents over his shoulder.

“How many are there?”

“Six,” he answered. “Six worth ten million bucks each, no questions asked, to anyone who fills in his name and signature and takes it to the bank it’s addressed to.”

Vicky absorbed the information in silence for a while, and then sighed in a masterpiece of inadequacy: “My goodness!”

“Mine too,” said the Saint. “Virtue is about to be rewarded once more, it seems, thanks to pluck, perseverance, and all the other old-fashioned nobilities — not to mention greed and your father.”

He shuffled the letters about on the table, arranging and re-arranging them in random geometrical patterns, while he continued to digest the full flavor of the prize with ripening rapture. Seldom in the history of buccaneering could any pirate have doodled with such precious playthings: never had he himself held so much concentrated capital in his hands all at once.

And besides the pure crass opulence of the booty, there were its artistic implications to enjoy: the inspiration which had hit upon such a supremely simple method of caching a Golconda so that anyone who knew the secret could claim it without revealing any past names or identifications, the ingenuity which had devised such an improbable safe deposit for the claim checks, even the macabre humour which had selected for the ultimate depository a miniature casket bearing such a name as Josef Meier. And to top that, the fact that the evil men who had put away such an insurance policy for their own uncertain future had never survived to cash it, whereas one of their victims had been able to ensure that it was at least not lost for ever.

Vicky Kinian said: “My father was risking his life for his country as a soldier, and I know he wouldn’t have betrayed it for any amount of money. But this must have seemed like something quite apart from winning the war. Whoever got this money, so long as it wasn’t the Nazis, it wouldn’t have hurt our side. Somehow, he found out about it and had a chance to leave it to me instead of getting it turned over to the Government. I honestly can’t blame him for being tempted.”

“You shouldn’t blame me either, then,” Simon averred.

She looked worried.

“Any more than I should blame you,” he concluded.

She seemed a little relieved.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“I propose to keep one of these for my services — and please don’t embarrass both of us by telling me you can’t spare it.”

He separated the Johannesburg letter from the stack and handed the other five sheets to Vicky. Her face was white and her fingers trembled so much that the papers rustled loudly. She sank down on the sofa, gazed uncomprehendingly at the typed text of the documentary forms, and hugged them close against her body.

She looked up at Simon, hardly able to speak.

“So you think I’m entitled to this money?”

The Saint had already tucked his personal dividend into his pocket.

“Maybe,” he said thoughtfully. “But unfortunately I’m not the one who’ll decide whether to let you keep it. One can assume that the happy Aryans who stashed it away got it by some unsavory or illegitimate means, but where did they embezzle it or which individuals did they rob? That could keep an army of lawyers busy for another twenty years.” He sat down in a chair facing her, rested his elbows on the arms, and folded his hands underneath his chin as he considered the problem. “Remember, I’m in on this hunt because some lads in the Pentagon asked me to solve the mystery of your father and report what I could find out. If Washington releases the information, there are going to be more claimants for this dough than bees in a clover patch.”

Vicky was beginning to look more defiant than worried.

“I don’t see how any of them could prove they’ve any right to it!” she said. “How could anybody else have found it?”

“I doubt that anybody could, but both of us would be far beyond caring by the time the legal weasels finish gnawing the bones.”

“So you mean I’ve got a choice between being a sort of thief and being broke for the rest of my life,” Vicky said sulkily. “Assuming you give me any choice at all. I notice you’ve already got your share safely tucked away. I’m the only one who’ll be sitting around waiting for my reward for the next eighty years.”

Simon picked up the remaining five letters of credit and spread them like playing cards in his hands.

“Well, just in case the authorities aren’t properly grateful, I guess it’s only fair that you should have a little something to tide you over while they embroider the red tape.” He selected the letter addressed to the Zurich bank and passed it to her. “There. Sweets for the sweet. We can say there were only four letters — which, as anybody can plainly see, there are.”

He placed the four sheets of paper back on the table and noted the ambivalent look Vicky was giving them.

“Don’t be so sad,” he said. “Ten million dollars is more than you’re ever likely to spend, and if you had the rest you could only bequeath it to the care of indigent wombats or the restoration of ancient Egyptian outhouses.”

“I’d still rather decide what happens to it than let a lot of bureaucrats get their hands on it!” she protested.

“I’d rather you did too, but I’ve got to maintain a few of my personally tailored ethics or I’d never get invited to nice people’s homes.”

He folded the four papers and put them in one of his pockets separate from the letter he had reserved for himself.

“And how do I know what you’ll do with those?” Vicky asked suspiciously.

“Come with me to the American Embassy, if you like, and watch me hand them in,” he answered without hesitation. “In fact, you’d better stick to me like a burr till tomorrow. If there are any other treasure-hunters left, they may realize they’ve got to get us before the banks open in the morning. In fact, any life insurance that’ll do us any good will only take effect when the Ungodly are convinced that all the loot is out of our hands.”

Vicky, who had been in the process of putting her own letter in her purse, suddenly stopped and looked up again at Simon.

“I never thought of that,” she said in a hushed voice. “Do you really think there might be others? I just assumed we’d finished with them.”

“Well, your boyfriend Jaeger didn’t strike me as the type to share his toys with his friends, but it’s possible that he wasn’t working alone. And assuming that Graveyard Mischa isn’t a free-lance ghoul, he may have been working with Jaeger or with some equally unwholesome party — perhaps Soviet in origin, judging by his name. I don’t want to make you nervous, but if we live to eat lunch tomorrow that in itself will be something to celebrate.”

Vicky snapped her bag shut and stared at the Saint’s calm face with wide eyes.

“Oh, no, you don’t make me nervous,” she said shakily. “You just make me petrified.”

“A little dose of caution wouldn’t hurt you a bit,” he said. “And a little dose of strong drink wouldn’t hurt either of us. Scotch is all I’ve got in stock. Is that all right?”

Vicky nodded numbly.

“Straight,” she said.

Simon poured each of them a dollop of Peter Dawson and added ice from the melting supply in a bucket on his dressing table.

“I think you must have cat blood,” he said over his shoulder to his subdued guest. “Even so, you must be down to your seventh or eighth life by now. I’d suggest a long and pleasure-rich retirement far from scenes of international intrigue and strife.”

“You’d never believe it,” she said, “but in Des Moines I’d have been scared to take a bus alone at night. I don’t know what came over me to give me the nerve to do what I’ve done on this trip.”

Simon handed her a glass and raised his to her in a casual toast.

“Whatever it is, here’s to it,” he said. “And if you’ll pardon the analogy, since there’s no resemblance to you whatsoever in shape, here’s to all the broomstraws who’ve found they can drive straight through a solid oak door in a strong wind.”

Vicky smiled and drank, meeting his eyes with really human warmth for the first time since they had met.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so—”

Her sentence was cut off by a series of precisely spaced knocks at the door. Vicky blanched, and Simon got to his feet.

“Just stay where you are,” he said quietly.

He was ready for anything when he unlocked the door and partially opened it, but he was not called upon to resist any violent onslaughts. There in the hallway, looking as harmless as an overfed guinea pig, stood only a shortish plump man with a bald head and a white Vandyke beard.

3

“And what can we do for you?” inquired the Saint courteously.

He stood blocking the door, and his bespectacled caller, dressed in a slightly rumpled dove-grey suit of vaguely outmoded cut, held out an identity card encased in clear plastic.

“I hope you recognize this,” the man said quietly. “It is not often shown.”

“As a matter of fact,” Simon said with equal smoothness before looking at the card, “I recognize you. Didn’t we bump into one another on the stairs of a hotel in Lisbon?”

“It is more than possible,” the stranger said.

There was no trace of a smile or any other softening of his stolid face. The Saint looked at the card and turned to speak to Vicky.

“Mr Boris Uzdanov of Uncle Sam’s CIA... or so it says,” he told her.

“I would like to come out of the corridor,” Uzdanov said with a trace of uneasiness. “Do you mind? You may search me if you wish. I am not armed.” He lifted the wooden cane he carried in his right hand. “Unless of course you count this.”

Simon nodded and stood aside. He felt sure he could deal with the visitor’s cane, whatever unadvertised qualities it might possess.

Uzdanov stepped into the room and made a perfunctory bow in Vicky’s direction as the door was closed behind him. He produced another identity card.

“Shall I continue with business?” he asked. “Time is not a thing I have much of at the moment.”

“By all means,” the Saint agreed. “None of us is suffering from a surplus.”

“As this card tells you, I am also a member of the local communist organization, which I was able to infiltrate, and an occasional agent of the MVD — luckily for you, Mr Templar.”

The confessed double agent blinked through his spectacles as he awaited a reaction.

“I’m most gratified to hear about my good fortune,” murmured Simon. “Do I need to ask which of those superspy outfits is likely to end up with the honour of paying your old age pension?”

Uzdanov bridled perceptibly, but his rather breathy hushed voice was unaffected.

“I assure you that my loyalty is to the West. My superiors in Washington are perfectly satisfied of that. My family were murdered by the Red Army in the Ukraine.”

Vicky looked reproachfully at Simon, who made a gesture that invited Uzdanov to go on with his explanations.

“Since I am Russian, the CIA has naturally tended to use me for work involving Soviet activities, and in the course of my everyday work I happened to find out that our friends in the Kremlin had heard rumours of the Nazi money Miss Kinian was looking for.”

Vicky was awestricken.

“You mean they heard about me?” she gasped. “In Moscow?”

“That is correct,” said Uzdanov formally. “Just as the American intelligence services knew about you — and just as the ex-Gestapo man Norden knew about you.”

Vicky sank back into her chair as if she might disappear entirely, an event which apparently would not have displeased her in the least.

“I think I’m going to faint,” she croaked.

“It does sound as if you’ve had about as much private Me as a bug under a microscope,” Simon admitted.

“You say the nicest things.”

Uzdanov obviously had no penchant for idle badinage.

“You are fortunate to be alive, indeed, Miss Kinian. It was an MVD man who attacked you tonight...”

Vicky looked at him sharply.

“You know that? How...”

Uzdanov raised an authoritative hand and interrupted.

“Directly it was known that Ruspine had failed to get the funds after his visit to the cemetery tonight, I was ordered to impersonate a Swiss detective, arrest both of you, and take you into a trap.”

“And the Russians would do all that just for... a little money?” Vicky asked.

The Saint met her glance with a warning look which should have reduced her to silence.

“They were interested enough to have ordered me to kill Ruspine if he failed,” Uzdanov told her. “It was an assignment which I found it quite humorous to carry out.”

“You murdered him?” Vicky gulped.

“Why not? The CIA surely couldn’t object to my accommodating the Kremlin by eliminating one of their own agents at their own request.”

“And I suppose Ruspine was expected to find enough loot to repay the effort,” Simon prompted him.

“The Soviets can use funds of that kind to finance their operations abroad,” Uzdanov said. “But I’m afraid I have very little time to explain everything now. I am expected to take you from the hotel, pretending to have you under arrest, and to deliver you to communist agents within the half-hour. Of course I had already had word from Colonel Wade in Lisbon to keep an eye out for you, Mr Templar. So you see, I am now in a most awkward position. I can hardly turn you over to the MVD, but if I do not...”

His stubby hands made a gesture of futility on either side of his paunch.

The Saint was still watching him closely, trying to estimate just how much showed above the water and how much still bobbed below the depths. He had remembered immediately on opening his door that the white-bearded man who stood there was the same one who had been dawdling in the Geneva airport terminal earlier in the day. Uzdanov had said that he had been ordered to keep an eye out for the Saint, but he had only offhandedly admitted being on the Tagus Hotel stairs in Lisbon and had not even mentioned his presence in the Geneva airport lobby — a fact Simon had deliberately avoided bringing up. Nevertheless, the Saint knew better than most people how devious the reticences and evasions of an undercover operator must sometimes be. Now he decided to make a small test.

“I can understand your position,” he said easily. “I just wish you’d been able to get in touch with me when I first got to Geneva before lunch...”

Suddenly the other’s dark eyes were riveted on him. There was almost no interval before Uzdanov spoke.

“You are joking with me?” he challenged in return.

“How?”

“You came to Geneva this afternoon — and you waited for a time in the terminal building. I know. I was there watching you.”

“I know,” Simon said blandly. “I was watching you.”

Uzdanov continued to study him detachedly. Then, with a kind of impatient frustration, he tugged at his white beard.

“You still don’t trust me,” he said.

“I’m more inclined to believe you now than I was before,” the Saint responded. “But if you’re going to suggest that we should play rats to even a CIA Pied Piper, I’m afraid we can’t oblige.”

“Of course not,” Uzdanov said. “It’s obviously out of the question that I turn you over to the communists—”

“Then what’s the problem?” Simon demanded. “Miss Kinian and I were just going to slide out of here in a hurry anyhow. If you tell the comrades we’d already disappeared when you got to the hotel...”

“It is not quite so easy,” Uzdanov interjected. “Like Mischa Ruspine, I too am watched. If you leave now you will be seen, and if I leave without you, everything I have built up for several years will be exploded — even if nothing worse happens to me. The consequences for you could also be violent.” He took a few nervous paces as he talked and then faced the Saint again. “We must leave together, making it look as if I had carried out my orders. Then, after we have shaken off any followers, you will overpower me and escape — perhaps leaving a bump on my skull just to keep the performance convincing.”

Vicky looked at Simon anxiously. His expression was much more solemn than she had ever seen it before. Inside his head arguments and counterarguments traded thrusts with dizzying speed. When all advantages and disadvantages, threats and possible parries had been weighed, one overwhelming fact remained: Boris Uzdanov was on his hands, and there was no really uncomplicated way to get rid of him — whether his story was genuine or not — here at the hotel. Friend or foe, to ditch him now could easily bring on an immediate crisis.

“Okay, we’ll play it your way,” the Saint said at last, with abrupt decisiveness. “It’ll get us out of here — and we can hope it saves blowing your cover.”

Uzdanov’s stocky body relaxed a little and his lips showed, for the first time, that they were capable of flexing into some semblance of a heartfelt smile.

“I’m delighted,” he said. “It is by far the best way to handle this business. I shall now escort you out the front door of the hotel, according to my instructions.”

“And into a waiting Black Maria supplied by the same firm that made your Swiss police identity card?” Simon asked.

“One must improvise.” Uzdanov shrugged. “We can take a taxi.”

“Where to?”

They were all on their feet now, and Uzdanov looked at his pocket watch.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We can think of a way to shake off anyone who is following me once we are out of the hotel.”

Simon shook his head.

“It might be easier if we take my car. It’s parked in front of the hotel already.”

“That would be even better,” said Uzdanov.

“Fine. Let’s get the chain gang on the road, then.”

The Saint opened the door of his room cautiously, saw that there was nobody in the hall, and motioned for Uzdanov and Vicky to go out ahead of him.

“You must go first,” Uzdanov said. “An arresting officer cannot walk in front of the parties he is arresting.”

“Quite right,” Simon assented reluctantly.

He put his arm around Vicky’s waist and ushered her into the corridor ahead of him.

“And how does an arrested party walk?” she whispered.

“With a worried expression,” he replied helpfully.

“I can guarantee that,” she said.

“There is no need to be nervous,” Uzdanov assured them. “I am the one who will end up with a lump on the head. It is better than a bullet in the back of the neck, which is what I would get if my idealistic and peace-loving comrades knew what I was doing.”

They had reached the elevator, which responded quickly to the Saint’s push of the down button. The cabin, like the corridor, was unoccupied, and the swift ride to ground level took place in silence.

“Now,” Simon said as the door slid open. “Look possessive, Detective Uzdanov, and Miss Kinian and I will look obedient.”

He took Vicky’s arm, and the two of them preceded the Russian across the lobby and through the main doors without attracting any attention among the few other people in the area. Outside, the sidewalk was deserted. The doorman had retired for the night, and the taxi drivers who earlier in the evening had waited in their cabs outside the hotel had now either gone off duty or moved to more lively parts of town.

“My car’s over there,” Simon said, taking Vicky’s arm.

“I don’t see anybody watching us,” she said in a low voice.

“In that doorway,” the Saint indicated, in a similar undertone.

Vicky’s eyes followed the direction of his glance and picked out the shadowy forms of two men, one in a beret, conversing on the steps of a building across the street.

“They don’t seem at all interested in us,” she said.

“And maybe they aren’t,” Simon conceded noncommittally. “But they may be a couple of little droplets in the Wave of the Future.”

They had reached his hired car.

“I will get in the back,” Uzdanov said. “I suggest that Mr Templar drive and you sit next to him, Miss Kinian.”

“Correct procedure again,” the Saint approved.

A moment later they were all inside the car.

“So far so good?” Vicky asked.

Uzdanov darted a look in the direction of the men in the doorway.

“Yes,” he said. “It should look as if I have been able to follow my instructions exactly. This, of course, is how we would sit if I were trying to control two possibly dangerous prisoners.”

“A thoroughly professional job, up to this point,” the Saint said. “Now what?”

“Drive,” Uzdanov suggested simply.

Simon started the engine.

“I don’t suppose anybody cares which way I go?” he inquired.

“How about Iowa?” Vicky proposed with a nervous shiver.

“Straight ahead,” Uzdanov said. “We must make it appear that we are going to the rendezvous where I was told to bring you.”

“Clear enough,” said Simon. “Straight ahead it is.”

He put the car into gear and accelerated away from the curb. He was so quickly out of the circle in front of the Hotel Portal that he had no chance to see whether the ostensible loafers in the doorway had moved or not.

“Which of your nursemaids is likely to follow us?” he asked.

“I would like to know that myself,” Uzdanov answered.

He was leaning forward, looking between Vicky and Simon at the road ahead.

“If I keep on going straight ahead well end up in the lake,” the Saint said mildly. “Are your pals in a submarine?”

“Turn left at the next corner,” Uzdanov said humourlessly. “Then take the next fork on the left and follow that road for some time.”

Simon obeyed the instructions. They merged into a major thoroughfare leading out of town, but at that hour of the night there was little concentrated traffic, and as far as he could tell in the rear-view mirror there were no cars within a hundred yards or more behind him.

“Your chums don’t seem to be very efficient,” he remarked to the Russian in the back seat.

“How do you mean?” Uzdanov asked.

“That was the easiest job of losing a tail I’ve ever been through.”

Uzdanov turned and studied the road through the back window.

“Perhaps we have lost them. Perhaps not. Perhaps they are now satisfied that we are going to the place where I was ordered to take you. In any case, I would never underestimate them. By letting a man know that he may be watched all the time they can afford to cut corners occasionally and let fear do the job for them.”

“It does save on petrol,” Simon acknowledged. “What now?”

“Continue,” said Uzdanov.

After another eight or ten minutes, while he was still turned away from the front seat of the car pretending to watch the road for followers, he surreptitiously closed the strong short fingers of his right hand around the curved handle of his cane and gave it a twist. With an almost imperceptible click it loosened, and with deliberate precaution against any rasp of metal he drew the handle away from the cane. The slim metal shaft of the hidden dagger emerged, inch by inch, its polished steel flaring in the light of street lamps passing overhead.

Vicky Kinian suddenly turned and looked back over her shoulder, and Uzdanov hunched to hide the detached dagger below the back of the front seat.

“Is there anybody behind us that you can see?” she asked.

To Uzdanov’s relief she was looking past his head and through the rear window at the road, where traffic was becoming more and more sparse as the Volkswagen moved out of the city towards the hill country to the northeast.

“I see nobody,” Uzdanov said. He pretended to scrutinize the receding highway, all the while huddling over the hollow and the lethal halves of his cane. “I think we can assume we are alone. In a minute we will make another turn.”

Vicky faced front again.

“Now all we have to do is think of how we overpower you,” she said.

Uzdanov turned forward.

“That will not be a problem,” he said comfortably. He raised his needle-pointed stiletto to the level of the nape of Vicky’s neck. “I have changed my mind about being overpowered.”

4

“You will continue to obey my orders,” Uzdanov said, “or I shall be forced to cut Miss Kinian’s throat.”

He suddenly leaned a little farther forward, and Vicky screamed and automatically jerked away from the point of the knife that touched her neck, shrinking against the door on her side. The Saint, steering a small car that was zipping along a dark highway at seventy miles an hour, could only continue to keep a steady hold on the wheel and try desperately from the corners of his eyes to see what was happening beside and behind him.

Uzdanov’s hand guided the edge of his dagger around the skin of Vicky’s throat without once giving her a serious chance of escaping it. In the circumstances it was a tribute to his skill in the use of his favorite weapon that he managed to keep her under direct threat without accidentally stabbing into her jugular vein.

“Do not move any more!” he commanded her sternly. “Absolutely do not move!”

She froze, rigid with terror, and only her eyes disobeyed the Russian, rolling to stare pleadingly at Simon, who cursed himself for having relaxed his guard enough to let such a thing happen. His fault was not so much that he had trusted Uzdanov — the amount of trust he had felt could have been measured in fractions of a grain — but that he had trusted himself too completely. In this case, self-assurance had been a more dangerous enemy than any cleverness on Uzdanov’s part.

Uzdanov, however, did not see it that way. He gloated as he held the knife to Vicky’s throat and the car hurtled on through the darkness.

“It was so obliging of you to fall for the very story which I thought was most likely to disarm your suspicions! Now—”

He cut himself short as they rounded a curve in the road and began to overtake a policeman on a motorcycle.

“Hullo!” Simon said cheerfully. “An escort.”

“Do not stop!” the Russian warned. “Keep up a normal speed until I tell you to turn. If you try anything at all, Templar, this girl is dead!”

The Volkswagen sped around the motorcycle policeman, who was cruising along at about forty-five miles an hour. Very gradually, Simon eased the pressure of his foot on his car’s accelerator pedal, keeping the cyclops-light of the motorcycle in view behind him; but the subterfuge was more mechanical than optimistic.

“You are slowing down!” Uzdanov said implacably. “Get back up to a hundred kilometres. Soon we come to a crossroad. Take the right-hand road, where the signpost says Lausanne.”

Ahead was a cluster of houses, only two or three with lights in their windows, grouped around the dividing point of the highway. The Saint followed the instructions, and Uzdanov grunted with satisfaction as the car moved out into more uninhabited countryside.

The terrain became much more mountainous, and the road curved around the contours of wooded slopes. There were few lights within sight of the highway, and no traffic.

“Now,” the Russian said, “before I tell you what to do next, let me warn you not to try to throw me off balance with any sudden turns. You would be much more likely to cause damage to Miss Kinian than to me.”

Uzdanov’s breath was on the Saint’s neck, and the fist that held the dagger against Vicky’s throat was tantalizingly near Simon’s shoulder. Slowly the Saint slid his own right hand to a point on the steering wheel that would give him the best angle for a surprise attack on the Russian, but Uzdanov was a well-trained and observant man.

“If you try to grab for my hand you can be sure Miss Kinian will be very badly hurt,” he said unemotionally.

The Saint was forming a plan, the first stage of which was to use the Russian’s strategy in reverse — to throw the man off his guard with a pretence of surrender. Obviously any sort of desperate lunge had to be ruled out.

“Well, congratulations, chum,” he said with a sigh of resignation. “I thought I was too old to buy any of the standard cock-and-bull stories, but you certainly sold one.”

“You need not feel too foolish, Templar. It is an axiom of the Party that any man can be duped if the right psychology is applied.”

“And I suppose you really are a Party member in good standing.”

“Of course. But by admitting it from the start, while at the same time presenting myself as a CIA agent, I disarmed your suspicions before they could form.”

“Thank you, teacher,” said the Saint. “And what’s the next dazzling move you have in mind? I’d suggest something fairly brilliant, since the head porter saw us leave the hotel together. If anything funny happens to this innocent American tourist and me he’s sure to give the police your description.”

Uzdanov either chuckled or choked slightly, producing an unmusical nasal sound which for him conceivably had connotations of mirth.

“I would not count on his help if I were you, Templar. He also happens to be a member of the Party. He will remember nothing about you or this—” Uzdanov snorted congestively again. “This innocent tourist! Or he will remember whatever I tell him to.” Then his voice became more harsh and business-like. “Now, I want to see one of those letters that you were preparing to share between you.”

“Letters?” Simon repeated innocently. “The only thing we were preparing to share was a bottle of Peter Dawson.”

Suddenly Vicky gave a little wincing sort of cry. With sickness deep in his stomach, the Saint knew that Uzdanov had used his knife.

“I only hurt her a little that time, Templar, but if you joke with me I won’t be so lenient again. Put on the overhead light, Miss Kinian, take the letter from your purse, open it, and hold it up so I can see it over your shoulder.”

Vicky moved with terrorized slowness to obey his commands. As she switched on the light above her door Simon could see a tiny trickle of blood beside her chin, like a dark fracture in the otherwise flawless moulding of her face. The car was moving up a steep hill. On one side was a wall of rock rising directly up from the side of the pavement, and on the other side was a sheer precipice dropping away into the darkness of the valley below, where a feeble constellation of lights showed the location of some sleeping village.

“Are you hurt much?” Simon asked over the deepening drone of the straining engine.

“No,” Vicky answered with desperate calm.

“Do exactly as he says from now on,” the Saint told her quietly. “He’s got us, I’m afraid. Apparently the Party also furnishes X-ray eyes for its higher-echelon agents.”

“X-ray ears, you might say,” Uzdanov amended. “I overheard your discussion with a listening device just before I knocked on your door. Now, Miss Kinian, hold the letter up... Yes. Good.”

Uzdanov scanned the sheet in silence as the Volkswagen labored on towards the top of the steep grade up which it had been laboring for the past five minutes; then without warning his free hand darted forward and snatched the letter of credit out of Vicky’s fingers.

“Thank you,” he said. “I see that my search is finished.”

“And so are we if your plans continue on schedule — is that right, Mr Ooze-enough?” Simon asked.

The Russian re-asserted his domination over them by pressing the point of his stiletto close against the side of Vicky’s neck. He ignored the Saint’s question.

“I heard you discussing five other letters before I knocked on your door, Templar. Pass them to me, please, but continue to drive at the same speed.”

“And what happens if we go on tamely doing what you tell us, commissar?”

“Nothing worse, eventually, than a long walk back to town. You will be of no further importance, and I shall be on my way.”

“But that’s only what applied psychology tells you to say,” Simon argued evenly. “If we knew we’d be killed anyhow, which I suspect is to be the high point of this conducted promenade, we wouldn’t have any reason to obey you at all, would we?”

“Your only hope is that I may not hurt either of you if you give me no trouble. You must simply cling to that. Now, give me the letters I”

“I’m sorry, Vicky,” said the Saint wearily. “You might have done better if I’d let you alone.”

His uncharacteristic modesty was one more attempt to relax Uzdanov’s guard; but whether there was really any chance of swinging the balance away from the Russian was a question that only the next agonizing minutes could decide.

“Hurry up!” Uzdanov snapped as Simon took his time pulling the letters from inside his jacket. “And why are you slowing down?”

“The horses are getting tired,” Simon explained. “But we’ll try to oblige you. I think the rest of the trip will be downhill.”

The car had reached the crest, and a road sign indicated a steep curvaceous descent for the next several kilometres. As Simon produced the letters, but still being careful to keep them out of Uzdanov’s reach, the Volkswagen began to purr with relief as it built up speed on the first downhill stretch.

“Two can play the carrot-and-the-stick game, comrade,” Simon said in a tone that had new firmness in it. “Don’t do anything hasty — and cling to the hope that I won’t drop these.” He thrust the letters out the window, clutching them at arm’s length, as he steered the car with his right hand only. “If I let them go, that’s fifty million dollars that may not land this side of Lake Como.”

Uzdanov was considerably less calm than he had been a few seconds before, and his voice shifted into a new hysterical key that made the extent of his discomfiture pleasantly unmistakeable.

“Bring those letters inside or I’ll kill her!” he yowled.

The Saint’s voice was more placid in precisely inverse ratio to the raised pitch of Uzdanov’s.

“You’d better not hurt her, because then I wouldn’t care what I did.”

The car’s speed was up to sixty now, and the wind tore at the papers in the Saint’s hand. They seemed alive and fighting to be free. Uzdanov ground his teeth audibly and switched the aim of his stiletto from Vicky’s throat to the back of the Saint’s neck.

“I think you must care what happens to yourself!” he shouted. “Bring those letters inside!”

“Don’t make me nervous, pal, or I might run over a cliff. In this kind of country the man at the wheel has to keep his mind on the road, and of all the back-seat drivers I’ve ever had the misfortune to travel with, you’re the most distracting.”

Simon could feel the point of Uzdanov’s knife against his skin, squarely in the centre of the back of his neck. One slip and the blade could plunge forward through flesh and bone, severing the connection of spinal cord and brain stem. But at least he felt sure that his enemy would not sink the dagger into him on purpose at the moment, since the consequences for the Russian would have been as disastrous as for himself.

The car was careening down into the darkness at a hundred and twenty kilometres on a narrow road that seemed to writhe like a living reptile around the side of the mountain. Rubber shrieked against paving as the tires skidded through turn after turn. Simon dreaded the possibility of a curve so tight that he would be forced to slow down enough to allow Uzdanov to risk driving the knife into his neck and grabbing for the wheel himself.

But so far luck was on the Saint’s side. The curves were hair-raising but banked enough to let him keep up a good speed, and as long as that lasted Uzdanov would be forced to wait.

Simon pulled the Volkswagen out of a particularly stomach-twirling loop, and said breezily: “We could all sing songs, I suppose. Anything to while away a dull trip. Why don’t you teach us the Internationale?”

“Templar!” screamed Uzdanov impotently.

“Oooh,” Vicky moaned.

She was leaning forward, clutching the handgrip on the dashboard as if to brace herself in case of a crash.

“Vicky, get down on the floor where he can’t reach you!” Simon told her in a suddenly sharp voice. “Now!”

She scrambled off her seat and huddled in the narrow space under the dashboard on her side of the car, ready to fend off Uzdanov with her leather purse if he tried to lean over and take a jab at her.

“Don’t try anything,” the Saint ordered her. “Just keep away from that pig-sticker of his.”

“What about you?” she cried.

“I’ve got him in the palm of my hand — can’t you see?” Simon replied brightly. “I think he may be ready to make a deal. Is that right, Boris?”

To increase the impact of his words he jammed his foot down on the accelerator with a vehemence that seemed certain to send the car shooting straight out into space.

“Slow down!” Uzdanov screeched in a panic as the Volkswagen lurched into another bend.

“I thought you were the one who got such a kick out of speed,” drawled the Saint.

Uzdanov’s face must have achieved an expression of particular ferocity at that moment; Vicky, looking back at him, whimpered: “Hell kill you, Simon!”

“If he tries making shish kebab out of me he’ll end up in the sauce himself, because we’ll all three be taking a half-mile short-cut — straight down!”

Uzdanov cleared his throat as the car sailed down a relatively straight stretch. The needle-sharp point of his stiletto was as firmly as ever against Simon’s neck.

“Perhaps... we can bargain,” he said hoarsely.

“For a start you can throw that bodkin out of the window,” the Saint told him. “Somehow I don’t enjoy talking business when a strip of steel may be poking between my vertebrae at any second.”

“No!” Uzdanov retorted. “You think I’m crazy? Slow down first, and then I will throw away the knife.”

“In that case, I can see the three of us meandering along the road of life like this for ever,” Simon said unconcernedly.

Wind whistled through the windows as the car zoomed on down the mountainside. The Russian grunted, obviously at a loss for any new form of persuasion. But while the deadlock was complete, it was becoming apparent that it could only be temporary.

“Sooner or later you will have to slow down, Templar,” he said, with a gradual recovery of much of his former composure. “In the meantime, there is nothing you can do — and I can wait.”

The Saint riposted with a blase insouciance that was deliberately meant to be infuriating.

“When I do have to slow down, chum, it’ll probably be because of traffic or a village cop — which’ll be no time for you to start slaughtering your fellow-passengers. The dome light will still be on, remember, which will give you about as much privacy for your butchering as a goldfish in a public aquarium.”

Uzdanov was not a man to be easily discouraged, nor to let trivia stand in his way.

“The light does not have to be on,” he said.

As he leaned to one side and reached for the switch, to clinch his argument, Simon could feel the welcome detachment of the dagger’s point from direct contact with his flesh.

This was the moment he had planned for, to which all his verbal sparring had been subtly directed.

Now he suddenly shifted his foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal. He could only hope that the knife was not poised directly behind him.

“Thanks, sucker,” he said simultaneously. “Now I will slow down!”

He jammed his foot down, virtually freezing the rear wheels of the automobile on the spot. Uzdanov, off balance and without his unarmed hand to brace himself, was catapulted forward, his dagger stabbing past the Saint’s head. Simon ducked as the sliver of steel shot past his jaw, and then he straightened galvanically up again like a released spring, smashing the back of his head into Uzdanov’s face with something very close to the force and effect of a cannon ball.