The Saint Returns

1

Ordinarily the Saint concerned himself very little with rabbits, considering them — when he considered them at all — happy creatures hopping about fields, reputedly a plague to farmers, but cute subjects for greeting cards and Disney cartoons. He had not even devoted much thought to those bunnies of the nubile human kind who in recent years have established elegant burrows in cities all over the capitalist world.

Maybe it was the novel notion of bunnies in Berlin that brought Simon Templar to the unwonted but not unpleasant surroundings in which he found himself on a particular evening in late June. Three hours remained before the departure of his plane from Tempelhof. Why not sample the undoubtedly unique incongruities of the Berlin Bunny Club?

What Hefner had wrought, the world had bought — or, as in this case, borrowed. This was no franchised Playboy Club, but a free appropriation of some of their most publicized attractions, with local adaptations. Strange are the ways of the spread, and decline, of civilisations.

Ensconced comfortably at the dark bar, with long-limbed, bare-shouldered rabbits scurrying over the shadowy landscape, Simon had to admit that here, indeed, was something to stir the most cynical adventurer’s sense of audacity: it was not just the female forms; invitingly outfitted as they were, they presented nothing particularly novel in the way of human anatomy. It was the idea of the thing — the magnificent impudence of the fact that this harem of lovely but purportedly untouchable hares should be dispensing American steaks, French wines, and voyeuristic enticements far out here on the eastern marches, within the very jaws of Asia, surrounded on every side by hundreds of miles of bleak collectivism.

But for all one could have known in the hermetic dimness of the West Berlin rabbit hutch, it might have been December outside instead of June, the remembered lights of the Kurfürstendamm might have been the neon of Manhattan, and the ugly concrete slabs of The Wall not many yards away might have been among the foothills of Rockefeller Center. Here inside, everything was all sweetness and dark — soft jazz, good whiskey, and mass-produced, sanitized eroticism.

The synthetic aspects were repellent to the Saint, who now that he’d tried the experience could think of approximately eight hundred better ways to spend his rare spare moments than sitting at a bar visually absorbing standardized sexuality which had about as much impact to it as the identical squares of butter set out on the dining tables.

He drained his glass and had just pulled his money from his pocket when his attention was arrested by the approach of a most luxuriantly developed young lady whose display included things of much greater charm than the cellophane-covered packets in the tray at her waist.

“Zigaretten?” she said. “May I you serve?”

Simon handed her a bill and accepted one of the packs.

“You serve very nicely.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, smiling, and moved away.

Such an ordinary event would not be worth recounting, except that it is with such seemingly insignificant encounters that a wait for a plane can turn into an adventure. If the cigarette bunny, in her mammary munificence, had not come along at just that moment, and if Simon had not turned to witness the oscillatory retreat of her pretty little bottom, made rabbit-like by a fascinating caudal appendage somewhat resembling an overgrown powder puff, he would not have noticed the iron-gray stocky man sitting alone at a table on the other side of the dance floor. Alone, at least, except for several bunnies who stood around laughing at some story he was telling.

Simon turned back to the bar and said almost absently to the white-jacketed young man behind it, “Another of the same, please.”

It took surprisingly few seconds for him to isolate from the mass of faces in his memory even so relatively obscure a figure as William Fenton, ex-Royal Navy, more recently with British Intelligence. Simon’s previous contact with him had been brief but friendly, and now he had to decide whether he wanted to — or ought to — renew the acquaintance. There was always the possibility that Fenton was involved incognito in some mission or other, and would not appreciate having his identity heralded all over bunny heaven.

“Here you are, sir.”

The bartender was blond and pale-eyed, and more for friendly efficiency than for lively conversation, which suited Simon fine. But, thanking him, he noticed a sudden change in the man’s expression, a shift to new alertness. The gray eyes followed — as the Saint could see by glancing into the mirror-covered wall — the entrance and transit of a dark unattractive individual in a poorly cut suit.

The newcomer did what most newcomers to clubs do not do: having entered by the front door, he went more or less directly to the rear door, an obscure portal shrouded in black velvet, AUSGANG glowing above it, and disappeared behind the curtains.

Even a person less well versed in the ways of the Ungodly than Simon Templar would have felt some suspicion by now that all was not precisely as it should be in this modern Wonderland. The hasty newcomer was no White Rabbit, but he was most certainly intent on meeting some sort of deadline, and he was choosing a strange route by which to do it.

The Saint had already gone beyond suspicion to active calculation. The eyes of the bartender became his mirror. The Teutonic mixologist had become overly busy polishing glasses, but his narrowing gaze never left the velvet drapes of the exit.

When Simon whirled from his stool it was already almost too late. The dance had just ended, and the departing couples had opened a clear avenue from the exit door to William Fenton’s table. Pushing slowly from between the black curtains was the blunt snout of a silencer.

Until that moment, the wine bunny had inadvertently shielded Fenton. Now she moved around his table to pour champagne, and there was no time for the Saint to call out a warning. In that space of a precious breath or two which an ordinary man would have wasted staring helplessly, Simon acted.

A waitress was passing, carrying on her tray a gigantic platter of flaming shish kebab. In one, swift, fluid movement, like the blurred attack of a hawk, the Saint leaped forward, snatched up one of the long steel spears, dripping blue flame, and hurled it unerringly across the whole width of the room.

Like a blazing arrow it pierced the velvet curtains. A man screamed. Simultaneously the champagne bottle exploded, showering Fenton with foam and glass.

In the ensuing pandemonium, as the would-be assassin fell forward hopelessly entangled in smoldering draperies, Simon moved through panicking masses to the wine-drenched table. But there he found no gratefully uninjured William Fenton. He found no William Fenton at all — which was clearly impossible. So he lifted the edge of the tablecloth, stooped, and found himself looking straight into the unblinking eye of an automatic.

It was natural that the Saint’s fame as a modern buccaneer should have made him vividly remembered by most of those who had had even transient contact with him. William Fenton hesitated only for a split second.

“Simon Templar! Of all people to be rescued by.”

The former naval officer crawled from under the table and put away his weapon.

“I assume it must have been you who put on the spear-throwing exhibition.”

“Who else?” drawled the Saint. “There’s just one infection I couldn’t save you from, even though you seemed in imminent danger of succumbing.”

“What’s that?” Fenton asked as they made their way past hysterically weeping bunnies to the fallen sniper.

“Tularemia.”

“Tularemia?”

“Rabbit fever.”

Three burly policemen had now arrived, and Simon remained at a discreet distance as they extracted the skewer from his victim’s shoulder and the victim from the heavy velvet curtains. Then one of the officers proceeded to haul the wounded man across the room toward what the manager said was the nearest private place: the business office.

The second cop stayed by the exit, while the third blockaded the main entrance, doubtless in an effort to maintain the status quo until the arrival of higher authorities.

The Saint and Fenton went along to the office, having already been implicated by witness, and when the policeman had deposited his groaning burden on the zebra-skin sofa, he turned to them.

“Nun bitte. One of you is the gentleman who threw the shish kebab at this man?”

“Ridiculous though it sounds,” Simon said in fluent German, “Sie haben recht. I did it.”

At that point Fenton interceded, showing a card.

“I am with the British embassy, and this gentleman saved my life. The situation is more involved than I am free to tell you. I would very much appreciate it if you would call Herr Gratz of your Special Branch and request in my name, as you see here on the card, that he come to this club at once.”

The policeman drew himself up with greater respect.

“Jawohl, Herr Fenton. But both of you gentlemen must remain here, please. No one is allowed to leave the building.”

“Of course,” Fenton said. “But would you ask these other people to leave the room? It seems improper...”

“Understood, Herr Fenton. Naturally.”

A few moments later Simon and Fenton were alone with the sniper, who looked at them with understandable moodiness from beneath his weedy black hair.

“What is your name?” the intelligence officer snapped.

“Hahn.”

“Tell us what this is all about. And quickly.”

Hahn closed his eyes and compressed his lips. Fenton glanced around the room, which obviously had been gotten up to conform with certain magazine specifications of the ideal seduction chamber, even down to the drooling red and orange abstract painting over the fireplace.

Fenton took up a poker from the cold hearth.

“I’m not going to play around. Who is doing this, and why?”

Hahn opened his eyes, but did not answer.

“I’ll use this on your shoulder. I’m not in the least squeamish.”

Hahn shrank back and gasped, “Please. No. A man offers a job. I take it.”

“What man?” Fenton asked.

“A man in a bar, no doubt,” said the Saint, “whose face and name you can’t remember.”

“Ja,” Hahn agreed.

“Judging from your inexpert performance out there,” Simon said, “I’m almost inclined to believe you.”

“Their lot have killed thirteen Russian intelligence agents in four months,” Fenton put in. “They’re trained assassins, not casual labor.”

Hahn turned his head away.

“I’ve put him on a skewer already,” said the Saint good-naturedly. “I’d have no compunctions about roasting him. After all, he’s a Hahn, and pretty foul to boot.”

“But let’s pluck him first,” Fenton put in, shamelessly continuing the pun. He grasped the man’s lapels and pulled him wincing to his feet. “If you please, Simon.”

A brief but expert frisk revealed only one thing of interest: a two way transistor radio about the size of a cigarette box.

“Standard Russian equipment,” Fenton said, dropping Hahn back onto the sofa.

“Where’d you get it?” Simon asked.

“The man, he says when I finish the job I report back to him, with that.”

“Where is he?”

“I do not know.”

“Then report,” Fenton said, taking the radio and shoving it into Hahn’s hand. “Tell him I’m dead.”

Hahn was hesitant.

“Go on,” demanded Fenton.

“Neun zu sieben. Neun zu sieben. Antworten Sie, bitte.”

“Now if you’ll excuse me for a second,” Simon murmured, “I want to take a look through the door at a pal out here.”

He had felt sure that the police would not let the bartender wander far, and he was right. Without even leaving the doorway of the office, he could see the blond man occupying himself intently with something just below the counter. Behind Simon, Hahn was still intoning his numerical incantation.

“Neun zu sieben. Neun zu sieben.”

But then, as the bartender continued his operations, the Saint heard a soft electronic whine in the office behind him, rising in pitch and volume like the sound of an irate mosquito. He spun around.

“Fenton, run!”

He could see Hahn, puzzled, holding the radio away from his ear. Fenton was already diving for cover.

“Throw it away, man,” he was yelling. “Into the fireplace! Fast!”

Simon escaped the blast with an agile move which put him just outside the door. The explosion was small in range but noisy and very effective. It had turned the unfortunate Hahn into an abstraction with little more recognizable form than the painting which now sagged at a rakish angle over the mantelpiece.

William Fenton picked his way through the smoke and debris.

“At last I’ve actually seen it happen.”

“Something you’ve been looking forward to?” asked the Saint. “And people say radio’s lost its punch.”

A policeman shoved his way through the newly gathered mob at the door and stared at the wreckage.

“We’re all right,” Fenton said. “But this man is not.”

“I see,” said the policeman, closing the door and hurrying to the body. “What happened?”

“When Herr Gratz comes he will explain.”

“The bartender will already have escaped in the confusion, of course,” Simon said. “But just in case, why don’t you check on it?”

The policeman gave orders to a comrade as Fenton asked, “The bartender?”

“Yes. He seemed to be twiddling with some gadget over at the bar at just about the time Herr Hahn went up in smoke. Now if you’d explain the background of these fireworks...”

“It’s part of a death campaign,” Fenton said. “The organized assassination of intelligence agents.”

“By radio? Sort of a variation on the singing commercial?”

Fenton’s sense of humor was perhaps more limited than the Saint’s.

“Not only radios,” he went on. “Explosive gadgets in general. All Russian espionage equipment.”

“But you said thirteen Russian agents had died. They knocking off their own men?”

“If I knew who was behind it, this might not have happened tonight.”

Fenton stooped and picked up the remnants of the radio, a tangled lump of metal.

“This isn’t a timed device. It had to be triggered. An impulse beamed from outside, probably from very short range.”

“In this case from the bar, I’m sure. Shall we see if our friend left any traces there?”

Predictably, he had not.

“The bar man,” Simon said to the cigarette bunny. “Where is he?”

“He left.”

“What is his name?”

“Klaus. Hans Klaus.”

“I would suggest that you put out a call for him,” Fenton said to the nearest policeman. “All stations. The club will have his address. He certainly knows something about this.”

“Ja, Herr Fenton. I have spoken with Herr Gratz. Er kommt schnell. And he says you are to be allowed complete freedom of action.”

“Very good. When he arrives, tell him I and my friend will be at Dr. Mueller’s laboratory. He knows where that is.”

“Mueller. Jawohl”

Simon became aware that his arm was in the beefy grip of William Fenton, and that he was being towed through the door toward the street.

“I have a plane to catch,” he protested.

“You did,” Fenton said.

2

The laboratory of Dr. Friedrich Mueller was on Wittelsbacherstrasse. It had every appearance of an exceptionally clean radio repair shop. Neatly disemboweled, pocket-sized cases of various shapes and colors spilled their glassy and silvery innards on the counter tops. Manuals the size of telephone directories lay open to esoteric diagrams, and the walls were lined with tools and coils of wire.

But Dr. Mueller, for all the atmosphere of his laboratory, was considerably more enthusiastic about his work than most repairmen of any species. A tall man with keen blue eyes and closely cropped brown hair, he greeted Fenton with a brisk handshake.

“Dr. Mueller,” Fenton said, “this is Simon Templar.”

The scientist’s eyes enlarged with recognition as he extended his hand.

“Ach, the famous Saint. I am honored.”

“Dr. Mueller works primarily with the West Berlin police,” Fenton explained, “but in special cases he co-operates with us undercover people. And this is a special case.”

Mueller turned serious and nodded.

“So,” he said in careful, barely accented English, “you actually have seen one explode? Wunderbar. Our theories facts are becoming. And was it as we thought?”

“Exactly,” said Fenton, “but more powerful.”

“Yes. As it must be. We have ourselves not been idle. Except for the fact that we do not have the explosive, we have the reconstruction of the used-in-the-other-killings-devices managed.”

“Show us, please,” Fenton said.

Mueller picked up a small cigarette lighter from one of the tables.

“This. A little miracle. It will light cigarettes...”

He demonstrated the flame.

“Also will it pictures make. Nine of them. But on the tenth one, the last picture... boom! And the man who uses it is blown to pieces.”

Simon took the small metal case and turned it in his fingers as Mueller pointed out the details of its operation.

“The ideal gift for touring friends who like to show their snapshots,” Simon said. “Amazingly little thing to do much damage.”

“But it does do much damage. The secret is a micro-explosive. Very small amount. Very powerful. We can only approximate it.”

“Which explains our vital interest in the whole thing,” Fenton said. “Aside from the politics, I mean.”

“Have you seen one of these?” Mueller asked, picking up a briefcase.

“I assume it does something more interesting than contain papers,” Simon said.

“Naturally,” Mueller assured him with a broad smile. “And this. A signet ring.”

He offered it to Simon, who politely declined.

“I’ll leave such things to experts.”

“Very sensible,” said Mueller. He slipped the ring onto one of his fingers. “Wearing this, I may the briefcase quite freely handle. The ring neutralizes the proximity fuse in the lock. But not wearing it, the heat of my hand would activate the fuse, and up would go the whole thing, taking me with it.”

“But with all apologies,” the Saint put in, “isn’t that approximately as new in espionage tactics as the old knife in the back?”

“Ah,” said Mueller agreeably, “our friends, the unknown assassins, have a modification introduced. I will demonstrate. Gerda, please.”

Gerda, the Saint decided on seeing her profuse bulk lumber into the room, was not the modification introduced, unless the opposition had descended to the use of lady wrestlers. But while she would have offered no serious competition to a Mata Hari, she was quite useful, apparently, as a pack mule, and probably impervious to explosions.

On Dr. Mueller’s instructions, she donned the signet ring and carried the lethal briefcase into an adjoining room which was separated from the main laboratory by a steel door. Through a small, very thick viewing window, the three men watched Gerda place the briefcase on a table in the center of the bare-walled concrete chamber. She put the signet ring on top of the lock and left it there as she returned to Mueller’s side, closing the heavy door behind her.

“So,” the scientist said, “ordinarily the closeness of the ring to the fuse prevents any possible explosion. The unsuspecting spy goes happily along, little suspecting that anything can happen. Then, somewhere not far away, somebody one of these has.”

He waved what appeared to be a small transistor radio.

“A transmitter with a range of a few hundred yards. It will the neutralizing effect of the ring neutralize. Cancel it. Kaput. You understand?”

“Jawohl, Herr Doktor,” Simon said.

Mueller switched on the transmitter, which began to emit an almost inaudible low pitched whine gradually ascending in pitch and volume, uncomfortably reminiscent of the sound effects immediately preceding Herr Hahn’s messy demise.

There was, of course, an explosion, a good deal less powerful and more smoky than the one at the Bunny Club, but quite satisfactory. It left the table a heap of kindling.

The men withdrew from the window as Gerda went through the steel door to clear away the debris.

“Counterespionage par excellence,” the Saint said thoughtfully. “But if I understand, Russian secret agents are being killed by their own gadgets — and not through any efforts of your people?”

“Right,” Fenton answered. “But they claim that we’re responsible, of course.”

“The next logical question is,” Simon continued, “why aren’t you responsible? I should think you’d be delighted to get rid of a few.”

Fenton looked mildly shocked.

“My dear fellow, if we kill their agents, they kill ours. It just isn’t done. Except in the most extreme circumstances.”

“I see. And you’re afraid that these unexplained explosions are going to lead to a wholesale vendetta.”

“Precisely. We know that Moscow is planning a revenge operation right now. One of the very very high-ups in their secret police is on his way to Berlin this minute.”

“Not the mysterious Colonel Smolenko?”

Fenton looked at the Saint in surprise.

“How could you know?”

“Smolenko seems to reserve himself for pulling the cord after somebody else has cranked up the guillotine. I’ve followed the MGB system a bit — enough to know who’d be most likely to be handling what. Smolenko’s one of those second-generation Commies with a genius for survival no matter how often the leadership gets shuffled. Must be a pretty effective fellow.”

Fenton nodded glumly.

“And the more effective he is, the worse for our chaps.”

“Obviously,” Simon said to Mueller, “it’s very important to know who makes the originals of these devices. They come from Russia?”

“Nein. They do not. On the outside, they could come from anywhere. On the inside — the miniaturization is too fine to be Russian. We believe Russian manufacture is absolutely out of the question.”

“We must find out where it’s from, if not Russia,” Fenton put in, “and I don’t mean next week. Smolenko passes through here in half an hour on the train to Paris.”

“Know what I smell?” asked Simon thoughtfully. “Chop suey.”

Mueller looked baffled.

“Please?”

Simon pulled up the corners of his eyes, oriental style.

“The original inventors of gunpowder. I think they must be tossing a few exploding fortune cookies in your midst. What could suit them better than to have your men and the Russians at one another’s throats?”

“You make sense, my friend,” Mueller said.

A telephone rang, and the scientist answered it.

“Ja. Moment, bitte. Herr Fenton — Herr Gratz is calling.”

“Fenton here. Oh... I see. Well, keep at it, anyway. He has to be involved somehow.”

“Klaus got away?” asked the Saint.

“Yes,” Fenton said, putting down the phone. “They traced him from the club to the railway station and then lost him.”

“Smolenko,” the Saint said matter-of-factly.

Fenton’s eyes flashed.

“My God, yes. And if Klaus is a trained killer — if he gets Smolenko... we’re in for it!”

Simon nodded toward the phone.

“Better put this in the hands of the regular authorities, don’t you think?”

“The police? But nobody knows Smolenko. He’ll be travelling under another name, probably with an escort of red herrings. We’ve got only twenty minutes. Could the police spot Klaus just from your description?”

Simon started to speak, then didn’t. He could picture his hopes of non-involvement lifting even now from the earth of Free Berlin and winging their way west into the night with that plane he’d never catch.

“You’re the only one of us who’s had a good look at Klaus,” Fenton continued. “There’ll likely be two dozen blond men on that train somewhere near his age.”

“Now, Bill...”

“Simon,” the intelligence officer said crisply, “you’ve fifteen minutes to catch the Berlin-Paris Express. I’ll stay behind here covering other eventualities.”

“Like the champagne at the Bunny Club.”

Fenton grinned.

“There are some things there that could stand closer scrutiny.”

“While I’m getting scrutinized by Rasputin’s successor.”

“Come outside.”

Somehow or other Fenton already had a cab waiting at the door with its flag down, and he smiled at Simon’s reaction to his confident efficiency.

“I felt sure you’d choose the proper course,” Fenton said.

The dash for the Hauptbahnhof was efficient too. In spite of screeching turns and roaring spurts down the straightaways, no one was killed, and they arrived at the station just on time. Simon sprinted across the loading area and jumped aboard the Paris-bound express just as it started to creak from its concrete slip.

But by that time any lingering nostalgia he might have felt for his earlier plans had been suppressed by the excitement that had begun to course through his blood. At the Bunny Club he’d been like an idling machine, cooling down between one strenuous trial and the next, but ready to move when the signal came. Now the signal had come, unexpectedly but unmistakably, and he was instantaneously co-ordinated, his senses keen, his nerves calm but alert, his whole body a magnificently operating unit.

The train was picking up speed, passing from under the huge canopy of the station’s roof. The wheels rumbled smoothly underfoot, and the car swayed slightly. The few passengers who had been waving goodbye to friends from the corridor windows went into their compartments, and almost suddenly the entire population of the train seemed to settle into midnight somnolence.

Simon had, even in his haste, taken care to enter the train at the dividing point between the second- and third-class sections of the train. The third-class cars were at the rear, and there the unfortunate passengers would be nodding shoulder-to-shoulder on bare benches amid whimpering infants and greasy lunch bags. It seemed unlikely, however, that the guardians of the proletarian revolution would go quite that far to demonstrate their principles or even to achieve anonymity. The more luxuriantly upholstered and privately compartmented segments of the train were a much better bet. As for Klaus, he could be anywhere, assuming he was on the train at all, and he would most likely be surveying the same territory that Simon now proceeded to cover.

The Saint took on a sleepy, possibly somewhat alcoholic air, and wove his way along the corridor peering through the window of each compartment with the amiably confused expression of a man who’d forgotten the location of his seat. To the few people who were awake enough or alert enough to notice him, he gave an apologetic smile as he passed on.

His task was, of course, complicated by the fact that he had no idea of the appearance of the Russians for whom he was searching. He could only hope that his experience and instincts would serve him as well as they had on many former occasions.

He covered three second-class cars and two first-class cars with no success. The street lights of the Berlin suburbs had long since been left behind, the checkpoint into Eastern Germany had been negotiated. In place of the city’s brightness there was the black rural landscape, marked here and there by the glow of a village or town, blending with the inner reflections of the corridor windows.

Then the opening of the door of the next car forward produced hefty odors of wine, cigars, cigarettes, and beer, along with subdued sounds of revelry. Simon had entered the refreshment lounge, where an exhausted and rumpled waiter was dispensing goodies to a troupe of plump insomniacs in various stages of hilarity, gravity, or asphyxiation from cigar smoke.

At the extreme opposite end of the car was a familiar face whose slate gray eyes were looking startled at Simon through the haze. Simon looked at the face. It belonged to Hans Klaus.

The Saint tried to shove his way through the lounge car before Klaus could lose himself somewhere up ahead, but it was a little like trying to run unhindered through the last three minutes of a football match. First the waiter blocked the aisle, and then an extraordinarily broad-backed man with a size-twenty neck and a determined aversion to being pushed around.

By the time Simon arrived at the next car, a sleeper whose compartments had no windows facing the corridor, Klaus was just disappearing at the other end. In the next car, Simon hurried by two men who apparently, until the rapid passage of Klaus, had been resting their elbows on the lowered windows, enjoying the night air. They watched the Saint as he came to the end of his pursuit. The door at the end of the car was locked, and a sign in three languages told him: PASSENGERS FORBIDDEN: TRAIN CREW ONLY.

The little toilette to the Saint’s left, which might have provided the last publicly available hiding place, was unlocked and empty. Simon looked back toward the two men who were observing him with sharp but controlled interest from their station halfway up the corridor. His main comfort at the moment was that if they were comrades of Klaus’s they’d have been at his neck before this. There was no sign, in fact, that Klaus meant anything to them at all. On their faces — the one broad and red, the other somewhat triangular and pallid — was none of the overt alarm or amusement which might have been normally aroused by the scene they had just witnessed.

They offered no hints or comments. They just watched as if to see whether the so far harmless and mysterious little drama in which the Saint was involved might enlarge to include them — in which case then: interest might become more active.

Their solemnity reminded Simon of the Secret Service men he had seen during appearances of American presidents — aloof, alert, and hair-triggered. He even thought he detected a bulge beneath the broad-faced one’s broad-lapeled unstylish jacket.

No lightning thought processes such as the Saint’s were necessary to draw the essential conclusions. He had on his first quick trip down the corridor decided that these wakeful gentlemen were a very probable tipoff to the whereabouts of the fabled Colonel Smolenko. Neither of them possessed the aura of cleverness which would expectedly emanate from the Colonel himself.

Simon sauntered back along the corridor. When he came abreast of the two sentinels, who made no pretense of not staring at him, he stooped all of a sudden and squinted out the window as if he had seen something startling.

That was sufficient to distract his travelling companions long enough for him to open the compartment door they were guarding, step inside, and instantly throw the bolt.

The Saint did not need to understand much Russian to disentangle the frightened word tovarishtch from the heavy pounding of fists on the door.

He turned to see his prize, and for once even Simon Templar was momentarily at a loss: Colonel Smolenko seemed to be a woman.

3

She looked at him coolly from her seat by the window: lovely Slavic cheekbones, fine lips devoid of make-up, and such large brown eyes that the fact she was pointing a pistol at Simon seemed entirely anticlimactic. If her dark hair had been less tightly pulled to the back of her head, and if she had worn something more fetching than a raincoat which probably had relatives among the nearest circus tents, she could have competed on all points with the distracting rabbits of the Berlin Bunny Club.

“Open the door,” she said in English, gesturing with her automatic.

“I’m here to help you,” said Simon. “Pardon me if I seem to gape, but I wasn’t expecting a woman.”

“Does it matter?”

“It could matter very much under certain circumstances.”

“Keep your hands away from your body and turn and open the door.”

Her English was strongly accented but clearly pronounced, and her determination that Simon should obey her more or less promptly or have his liver ventilated was just as clear.

He unlocked the door and immediately was in the ungentle hands of the Russian Secret Police.

“What you do here?” the big one asked, pinning the Saint’s arms behind him as the other despoiled his pockets of wallet, keys, and even small change.

Simon spoke to the beautiful Colonel.

“I’ve come to warn you that there’s a man aboard this train who very likely intends to see you dead before you reach Paris.”

“There are many men who intended to see me dead and ended up dead themselves,” she said with cold arrogance.

“I don’t doubt that in the least. My compliments.”

Smolenko put down her pistol and lay aside the book which had fallen to her lap when her compartment was invaded. She took the passport which the smaller guard offered her from the Saint’s jacket pocket.

“I think I do not need to look,” she said, with the most frosty trace of a smile. “Simon Templar.”

The Saint responded with a more friendly smile of his own. He bowed his head slightly.

“I’m flattered that news of my infamy has spread as far as the Kremlin.”

“I have a photographic memory, and in our central office we have constantly updated files which inform us of the movements of any persons of interest who are in the area where I am going.”

“It’s nice to be of interest, Colonel.”

The grip which the burly guard kept on Simon’s arms was beginning to become irritatingly uncomfortable. The Saint knew a swift motion which would not only break the hold but send the holder to the hospital for a month, but that did not seem the best strategy for maintaining this temporary thaw in the Cold War.

“Do you mind if I stand up by myself?” he asked mildly. “As you can see, I have no weapons.”

“Ivan,” the Colonel said to the big guard, and continued in Russian.

Simon was freed, and he rubbed circulation back into his muscles. Ivan stationed himself at the door while his smaller, triangular-faced colleague produced a pistol that somehow seemed much too big for him and kept it pointed at the Saint.

“You may not leave,” Smolenko said. “No one is to know who I am.”

“I have no desire to leave,” responded Simon with exaggerated gallantry. “Such congenial company? Such heavy artillery? Besides, now there are enough of us for a rubber or two of bridge.”

“Sit down,” Smolenko said. “Before you are killed, we must talk a little. Ivan, go order some tea.”

Ivan stared dubiously at his chief. Smolenko said something to him in Russian, and he shrugged and left the compartment. The other man took up the watch at the door. Simon was still standing.

“Now,” Smolenko said. “Sit down. Vis-à-vis.”

“I prefer tête-à-tête,” said Simon, “but you’re the hostess.”

He sat down opposite her, crossed his legs, and relaxed. The comely colonel kept her eyes fixed on his face but showed no particularly urgent interest in anything he might have to reveal.

“You could have Raskolnikov there put away his hatchet,” Simon said finally. “As I told you, I’m here for the sole purpose of saving your life.”

“His name is Igor, and I give the orders, and I have no need of anyone to save my life.”

“Apparently not, but don’t you ever consider taking well-intended advice?”

“From bourgeois agents? Hardly.”

Simon looked pained.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones...”

“I do not understand.”

Obviously, she did not like not understanding.

“It’s just a saving. You really speak English very well.”

“Anything it is necessary to do should be done well.”

“A very sound maxim.”

Ivan returned, spoke in Russian to Smolenko, and then — with bear-like pride in his linguistic achievements — addressed Simon in English.

“Tea come.”

“Excellent,” said the Saint. “And well spoken.”

Ivan’s ruddy countenance softened a little.

“Thanks you.”

“You’re quite welcome.”

The four rode in silence for what must have been a mile or two, and all the time Smolenko just looked at him. The first step in some Asiatic method of wearing him down? Or was she searching the files of her photographic memory for information about him?

There was a soft knock at the door.

“Tea,” said Ivan, and reached for the handle.

“Wait,” Smolenko broke in. “We must give a tip, I think.”

She thumbed through her book.

“Despicable bourgeois practice. In lieu of social justice you give measly alms.”

“Measly alms,” Simon repeated admiringly. “That’s very good. But you must get over this thing about the bourgeoisie. They’re really very clean, industrious people. Salt of the earth, and all that jazz. Tipping isn’t their idea of fun — it’s the proletariat that insists on it.”

“The official recommendation is one mark,” the Colonel announced coldly.

She produced a coin purse, inspected both sides of a pfennig, closely examined a big five-mark piece. Simon reached over and selected a silver mark.

“There.”

She flushed slightly, and Igor, who had started forward, relaxed.

“Now,” she said.

Igor opened the door, and a white-coated waiter came in with the tray, bending quickly down to set it on a stand beside the door.

Simon was on him in an instant, one arm like a vise at his throat, the other twisting the man’s wrist behind him.

“Meet Hans Klaus, bartender extraordinary,” the Saint said through grimly clenched teeth. “Lock the door and search him. Hurry.”

“For why?” cried a dumfounded Ivan.

But the urgency in Simon’s voice was unmistakable, and the Russian began to pat down the feebly struggling captive.

“Bartender?” Smolenko said, showing the closest thing to perturbation she had allowed herself since the Saint’s arrival. “What is it you are doing?”

“Klaus is an unusual bartender. He’s probably much more at home mixing Molotov cocktails than martinis.”

Ivan’s search produced a transmitter device exactly like that demonstrated so effectively by Dr. Mueller in his laboratory.

“Quickly,” Simon said. “Check the tea... the tray... inside the pot.”

Ivan obeyed despite his mystification, and within seconds discovered a small cone-shaped object which had been attached by suction under one edge of the tray. Suddenly Klaus darted out his hand and flipped the switch on the transmitter which Igor was holding. It began its now familiar thin crescendo.

“The window!” Simon yelled, twisting Klaus’s arm until he yelped. “Throw it out. Fast.”

Ivan slammed down the window and tossed out the little cone. Igor threw the transmitter. A second later there was an explosion which undoubtedly disturbed the dreams of a number of passengers about one car back.

“See what I mean about this fellow?” Simon said. “Dispenses good cheer wherever he goes.”

Colonel Smolenko, who had been on her feet since the discovery of the bomb, stared at Klaus.

“He is the one you said would kill me?”

“One of the ones, probably.” With his lean strength he evoked a new whimper from Klaus and said to him in German, “Now, tell us all you know, or I shall let these Russians tear you to pieces. Who are you working for?”

“A man... in Paris.”

“His name?”

“Ich weiss nicht. I have him never seen. My orders come by telephone.”

“What orders?”

“Hahn to kill. Then this train to catch and the occupants of this compartment to kill.”

Simon released the erstwhile bartender, who rubbed his aching arm and took a deep breath.

“A nice night’s work,” said the Saint, turning to Smolenko. “Did you get all that?”

She nodded, and at the same moment Klaus grabbed the emergency stop cord. The train gave a tremendous lurch as the air brakes slammed on automatically. All those in the compartment except Klaus, who had prepared himself, went staggering off balance, and Smolenko fell back against the wall and slipped to the floor.

Klaus was out and running down the corridor. Igor and Ivan plunged after him. Their silenced shots were lost in the groans and rattles of the halting train.

The Saint knelt over Smolenko, who was limp on the carpet, her eyes closed. He picked her up to put her on the seat, already assured that she was not more than stunned. Her eyelids fluttered, and she gave a sighing moan through parted lips.

“You look much more sweetly feminine asleep than awake, Colonel,” Simon murmured.

She opened her eyes wide.

“Put me down. Instantly!”

He dropped her ungently onto the seat, flat on her back.

“As you say, Colonel.”

She swung her legs around and stood up, jerking wrinkles out of her coat, trying to overcome dizziness with determined dignity.

“That was not good of you,” she snapped.

“Picking you up or putting you down?”

“Neither. I need no help. You insult me.”

“I’m not particularly flattered myself, Sonya. You couldn’t have looked more horrified if you’d found yourself in the arms of King Kong himself.”

“My name is not Sonya, and I do not understand all your idioms. Please...”

“Please what?” Simon asked politely, after she had hesitated for several seconds.

She was apparently unable to think of any useful orders to give him. He had proven his value and the sincerity of his desire not to see her killed. But there was no trust in her eyes, only a touch of confusion behind the hard glaze of the secret police officer. She was spared having to manufacture a statement by the return of her bodyguards.

“They shot him dead,” she translated for the Saint. “They placed his body in the water of the ditch before the train was fully stopped, and they told that the signal of this rope was a mistake.”

“Very clever,” Simon said with disgust. “Why so quick with the guns? Klaus might have led us to the ringleaders of the whole plot.”

“Whole plot?” asked Smolenko.

“The agents of yours who’ve been killed.” Smolenko looked surprised.

“Our secrecy is apparently not good. You and this Klaus have both found me here, who am supposed to be a cultural exchange representative, and now you know all about the murders of our...”

She stopped herself.

“But you tell me, Mr. Templar. What is your part in all this?”

“I would say, in the first place, that your remark about secrecy is the understatement of the century. You couldn’t have a bigger following if you had hired P. T. Barnum as a publicity agent. Which leads me to believe, as they say in the old films, that this whole deal is an inside job.”

“But what do you know, Mr. Templar? What facts do you have? What is your part in this?”

He told her, and she listened with more and more intense interest.

“So,” he concluded, “these people — whoever they are-have managed to gain control of the production of your miniaturized equipment. You should know considerably more about that than I do. For instance, where do you get all those little toys like cigarette lighters that take pictures?”

“They are purchased in Western Europe by our Paris organization, which is absolutely trustworthy. You are lying. I am trying to think why.”

The Saint gave a weary sigh.

“Okay. Believe what you like. I’m only trying to help. If you get yourself blown into pretty little pieces in Paris, don’t expect any flowers on your grave from me.” He stood up. “Charming as your company is, I’m tired, I didn’t ask for this job in the first place, and if anything happens to you now, you can’t claim it’s my fault.”

“Wrong,” Igor said, speaking English for the first time. “We are blame you.”

“No person in Paris know Colonel Smolenko,” Ivan explained laboriously. “Not what she is looking like...”

“Or that she is woman,” said Igor.

He prodded the Saint’s shoulder with a long, skinny finger.

“Nobody know... but you. So if she dies, it will be through you. But she will not die.”

Ivan looked cheerfully at the Saint and drew his broad peasant face closer.

“You will die.”

“A fall from the train?” Igor asked.

“Da. I am think yes.”

Smolenko’s icy voice sliced Ivan’s grin in half.

“Be silent, both of you.”

She looked thoughtfully at the Saint.

“Of course we could never let you go. Now, you say Smolenko will be killed?”

“I do indeed, unless you take precautions, including some kind of co-operation with Western intelligence.”

“Well, we will see if that is true, without co-operation of bourgeois spy apparatus. With your co-operation only. When we get to Paris in the morning...”

The Saint watched suspiciously as her lips pouted slightly in a smile.

“Yes?”

“We change places,” she said. “I become your secretary, and you... you become Colonel Smolenko.”

4

Simon Templar had seen Paris many times, and in many seasons, but never as a colonel of the Soviet Secret Police, and never in quite such precarious circumstances.

The hotel was not exactly of the class he would have chosen either, but apparently it impressed red travel agents as striking the proper tone between capitalistic extravagance and unbecoming shoddiness. His own taste ran to such palaces as the George V, where he could treat himself to the level of luxury that he felt any self-respecting buccaneer deserved, but he realized that Smolenko might have to conform to a more ascetic expense account.

Of all the more gracious hostelries he had frequented, however, he could not recall one that he had entered with such an entourage. In addition to a pair of bellboys, there were Igor and Ivan lumbering along the thinly carpeted hallway on either side of him like a movie gangster’s bodyguards, and Simon’s new secretary, the former Colonel Smolenko, looking decidedly mussed by the long train journey, but still more attractive than she had any right to be, considering her almost total disdain for the civilized amenities which women ordinarily find indispensable for any sort of decent public appearance.

As the hotel employees opened the unimpressive suite, Igor and Ivan hurried inside and began inspecting the three bedrooms, the baths, and the closets. The porters went away looking surprised at the size of Simon’s tip.

“Please,” Ivan said, dragging two straight chairs to the center of the living room. “Down.”

Colonel Smolenko sat in one of the chairs, half smiling at Simon’s mystification.

“They want us out of the way while they search,” she explained. “What you call, I think, standard operation procedure.”

The Saint watched as the security agents pulled out drawers, looked behind pictures, peered and felt under table tops and rugs.

“Do a thorough job, boys,” he said encouragingly. “From now on practically anything you touch could go bang.”

“They are experts,” Smolenko said frostily. “They need no advice.”

“You forget, darling,” Simon said, “I am in command now. I need no advice from a mere secretary, especially one who probably can’t even take shorthand.”

“Mr. Templar...”

“Colonel to you. You communists carry this equality business much too far.”

Smolenko’s lips tightened for a moment.

“You ask for trouble.”

“I have trouble, and I didn’t ask for it. As a matter of fact, it occurs to me that as long as we’re the same person we may as well be friends. Any objection to that?”

Smolenko simmered for another few moments, breathed deeply, and shook her head.

“I’m glad you’re so understanding,” the Saint continued. “After all, I’m not a philanthropist in any ordinary sense of the word, but what I’m doing is entirely for your own good.”

She gave an uncertain jerk of her head.

“You doubt me?” he asked. “You have good reason to. As a matter of fact I’d have been gone long before this if I could have managed to contact someone to pass the job on to.”

“My men would have stopped you.”

“Don’t tempt me to take that as a dare.”

There was an awkward silence. Simon stretched his long legs and yawned.

“I can’t even think of anything I might be able to steal,” he said gloomily.

“Naturally you would think in terms of the profit motive,” Smolenko said.

He nodded agreeably.

“Of course.”

There was no sound for a while but the pushings and pullings and probings of the security twins.

“Have you been in Paris before?” Simon asked finally.

“No.”

“You’ll be out shopping for clothes, I imagine, while I’m tracking down the manufacturers of those noisy cigarette lighters.”

“Why?”

“Well, women tend to associate Paris with fashions — and you surely can’t be intending to go around this city in that coat.”

She flushed and smoothed the rumpled material.

“In ordinary circumstances a man would not dare to speak to me in that manner.”

“Would you send him to Siberia, or have him shot?”

“You think we are barbarians, don’t you?”

“Not necessarily. I just think you have poor taste in clothes.”

“Clothing I regard as necessary covering to maintain body temperature. That is its only use.”

“Then I’d love to spend a couple of weeks with you on a South Sea island.”

Igor was taking a vase of roses apart, looking inside each blossom. Finding nothing, he threw the whole bouquet out the window.

“Not a nature lover, your friend,” the Saint commented.

“He is trained to distrust all manifestations of bourgeois sentimentality.”

“Here we are back to your favorite subject again.”

“All good, polkovnik,” Igor said, pointedly addressing himself exclusively to Smolenko.

“Fine,” Simon replied. “Now you boys may unpack your suitcases and...”

There was a tap at the door. Simon smiled with anticipation.

“The champagne.”

Smolenko looked horrified.

“Champagne?”

“I ordered it when we checked in.”

Ivan and Igor dashed for the door and stood on either side of it. Ivan yanked it open. The startled waiter blinked, then stepped hesitantly inside. Simon indicated the most convenient table, where the waiter put down the ice bucket and glasses, rattling the crystal when he heard the door slammed and locked behind him.

“Voila, m’sieu,” he said nervously.

“Open it, please,” the Saint said in French.

“Oui, m’sieu.”

The waiter eased the cork toward release, looking more and more uneasy as the other occupants of the room moved several yards away from him.

“If you please, m’sieu, is something wrong?”

“We shall see,” said Simon. “Open the bottle.”

At the pop of the cork everyone in the room except the Saint, who had long ago learned to control such easily anticipated reflexes, gave an undignified jump. The waiter’s forehead was glistening with perspiration. He splashed a little of the Bollinger into a glass and offered it to the Saint. The Saint offered it to Smolenko, who gestured toward Ivan, who yielded to Igor. Simon handed the glass to the waiter.

“You taste it.”

“Moi, m’sieu?” the man asked, astounded.

“Oui. Vous”

“Merci, m’sieu.”

The waiter took a sip and managed a sickly smile.

“All of it,” said Simon, touching the base of the glass with a fingertip.

The waiter drained it, then stood trying to preserve some semblance of nonchalance as four pairs of eyes studied his every twitch.

“That is all,” the Saint told him at last. “You may go now.”

When Ivan opened the door, the waiter hurried out with relief. Simon filled the glasses as Igor gave the tray and the bottom of the bottle a close inspection.

“Cheers.”

Smolenko raised her glass grudgingly.

“This is generous of you.”

“You’re very kind, but I’m not paying for it.”

“Who is?”

“The Kremlin, of course. We’re on an expense account, aren’t we?”

Smolenko glared at him.

“Your file is quite correct. You are nothing but a mercenary adventurer.”

“And one who likes staying alive. While we’re dawdling merrily here, evil wheels are turning in this city. Your rather spectacularly defective electronic equipment is purchased from Paris. Klaus said he was hired here, by a man who knew the number of your compartment. If they were confident enough not to be watching the train when it arrived, they’ll be suspicious when Klaus fails to report — so all in all our best course is to trace them before they trace us.”

“I am ahead of you,” Smolenko said. “Someone will be here soon.”

“Who?”

“One of our best people. And now I take a shower and change clothes.”

“Remember, we’re not in Moscow. You won’t need much to maintain your body temperature.”

The desk called twenty minutes later, and Igor said da, hung up, called to Smolenko in Russian, and said to the Saint, who emerged from his bedroom straightening his tie: “Blagot here.”

Smolenko came from her room and joined them, wearing a most plainly cut brown dress and cumbersomely heeled shoes which in the Western nations would rarely have been inflicted on any woman under sixty-five.

“I must admit,” Simon said, “that for a female with the whole sartorial deck stacked against her, you manage to look amazingly beautiful.”

“I suggest you stay in your room,” she said.

“I suggest that as Colonel Smolenko, I’d better be here to greet our trusted friend. And I also suggest that you fill me in on who he is.”

“He is Blagot, a member of our Paris apparatus. I shall let him know who I am. We need no masquerade for him.”

“You’ve met him?”

“No. Nobody here has seen me.”

“Your naïveté is most affecting. Weren’t you listening to what I said a few minutes ago? Your assassination was planned by someone who knew your entire programme. The higher a man is in your organization the more possible it is that he could be behind the whole thing. Now if you seriously want to relieve me of my starring role in this farce, I’ll slip quietly away down the fire escape and leave you to your fate.”

There was a respectfully soft rap at the door.

“Stay,” Smolenko said to the Saint.

“Then let me handle this. Ivan, open the door.”

Ivan hesitated, looking toward Smolenko for confirmation. She nodded, and the bodyguard released the latch.

“Come in,” Simon said in French.

A rather short thick man, reminiscent of a greasy sausage in a black suit, entered the room and looked obsequiously and searchingly from face to face. But his personal appearance and mannerisms were completely overshadowed for the Saint by the adornment and contents of his right hand. The signet ring he wore, and the briefcase he carried, could have been identical twins of those Simon had seen exploded in Dr. Mueller’s laboratory.

The mere fact that he had the items with him was no proof of murderous intentions. The ring and briefcase were standard equipment. Colonel Smolenko of all people would be aware of that. The teaser was in the question whether or not there was some as yet unknown but highly interested party lurking somewhere within a few hundred yards ready to send a signal which would override the neutralizing power of the ring and blast Suite 502 to kingdom come.

“Colonel Smolenko?” the newcomer asked.

“Comrade Blagot,” said Simon.

Blagot threw his fist up in the communist salute.

“On behalf of us all, welcome, comrade.”

“Thank you,” the Saint responded, pretending a slight difficulty with French pronunciation which ordinarily did not mar his fluent use of the tongue. “My secretary, Comrade Malakov. Our security men...”

Blagot made his obeisances to each.

“And now,” Simon continued, “how goes it?”

“The situation grows worse by the hour, Colonel. Another of our men died yesterday — in Liverpool, England.”

“An explosion?”

“Yes. But the cause...”

Blagot shrugged and distended his thick lips.

“I do not consider that an adequate answer,” Simon snapped with sudden harshness.

“Defective equipment, perhaps...” began Blagot.

The Saint moved threateningly toward him.

“If that remark is meant seriously, it indicates that the most defective equipment is in your brain, my friend.”

Blagot backed away a few paces, looking openly frightened.

“Some have talked of defective equipment, comrade, but I do not believe it. Naturally, the answer must be that British or American agents are planting bombs in the luggage of our people. That much is clear already.”

“One thing is clear to me already,” the Saint said, “and that is that the handling of this affair by your department borders on total incompetence. For example, if you had even the smallest grasp of the true situation you would not have brought one of those briefcases here.”

“But Colonel Smolenko, I have made certain that it is empty of any harmful devices.”

“It contains its own explosive charge, does it not?”

“Naturally, but the ring...”

“The ring is useless against the saboteurs,” Simon said. “Give that to me.”

Blagot set down the leather case and pulled off the ring, which the Saint put on his own finger. Then Simon took the briefcase to a table by the window and worked over it for a moment with a letter opener.

“What are you doing?” Smolenko demanded harshly, and then in reaction to Blagot’s astonished stare she moderated her tone and asked with much more respect, “Do you need help, Colonel? You frighten us.”

“I have finished already,” Simon said. “I have simply broken the connection between the firing device and the explosive. Now we can speak without fear of violent interruption.”

He turned suddenly on Blagot, peering at him with intense eyes that were all blue ice.

“Comrade, tell me. Who in our organization knew the details of my trip to Paris?”

“Me. And of course Claude Molière.”

“Ah, yes. I have read his file. Nobody else?”

“Naturally not, Colonel. Your orders were that we maintain top security.”

“Which was not maintained.”

“It is unpardonable, Colonel, but...”

Blagot gave another of his shrugs and protruded his lips. Simon felt a desire to step on him as he would a cockroach. His moment of bloody fantasy was interrupted, however, by a thin, high-pitched sound — a sound he had expected as surely as he would have expected day to follow dawn.

“Here,” he said quickly, pointing to the table on which the briefcase lay.

They gathered around, all but Simon staring, perplexed. The faint little whine grew higher and louder until its pitch almost rose above human hearing. Then the room was abruptly silent.

“At that moment when the sound stopped,” the Saint explained, “we would all have been blown into small pieces.”

He watched with satisfaction as the effect of his somewhat exaggerated description of the explosive’s power registered on the semicircle of faces. Then he went on to explain the means by which such devastating effects were achieved.

Comrade Blagot mopped his oily brow with an unclean handkerchief.

“But it is impossible that anyone could have tampered with this case. I received it only today from our supplier.”

“No one needed to tamper with it,” the Saint said firmly. “The radio signal receiver was built into it. And the same with the lighter-cameras and the miniature communications equipment. Now I think I shall pay a call on your supplier.”

“But the purchaser is a reliable man. I cannot believe that Molière...”

“Where is this Molière?” asked Simon.

“But, Colonel, you said you had read his file.”

“I read many files.”

“But Claude Molière is Assistant Controller for the whole département.”

“Imbecile! I mean where is he now, at this very moment?”

Blagot was properly abashed.

“I am sorry, my Colonel. I believe he should be at his shop. Let me telephone to make sure.”

“No. I should prefer to pay him a visit unannounced. And if I were you I would not be so quick to defend him. He may be a simple dupe, like yourself. On the other hand it is possible that he was standing somewhere down on the street broadcasting the request that this bomb blast us to our deaths.”

Blagot gulped.

“So now,” Simon announced, “you will take us to your friend, Molière. If you please.”

5

“Oh, brave old world, that hath such creatures in it.” Such was Simon Templar’s reflection on his first view of Molière’s Musique à Go-Go. The small narrow shop was a churning three-dimensional kaleidoscope of squirming and twitching teen-agers in boots, lavishly bell-bottomed trousers, miniskirts, yellow checked jackets, and Edwardian neckwear. Like victims of tarantism, they could not rest even in a place which was not meant for dancing but for the sale of phonograph records. The savage sounds which moved them issued from three auditioning booths in the rear of the store, each screaming out the agony of a different disk. On the walls hung electric guitars, bongos, radios, and television sets. A couple of exhausted female clerks had apparently long ago given up trying to keep any kind of order, and contented themselves with watching the door in an effort to keep anybody from stealing anything.

Blagot shoved his way through the jerking crowd toward an office which looked out on the rest of the shop through a large window. Simon took Smolenko’s hand to pull her up ahead of him when it appeared they would be separated in the crush. It was a surprisingly soft, warm hand, but it abruptly denied him the pleasure of any prolonged contact.

Ivan was so fascinated with the miniskirts that Igor had to be sent back to fetch him through the mob.

“Colonel Smolenko,” Blagot said to Simon, ushering him into the little office, “allow me to present Comrade Claude Molière.”

If Molière had believed that the Smolenko party had been recently despatched by a radio-controlled bomb, he did not betray the fact. Unfortunately, it was most likely that he would have been aware of the failure by now in any case. He was a birdlike man of about thirty-five, with a hooked beak and glittering black eyes, and his twittering nervousness seemed more a permanent characteristic than the result of a surprise confrontation.

“Colonel, Colonel,” he said, jumping to his feet and extending a moist, delicate hand, “what a pleasure. What an honor.”

The Saint shook the hand coolly.

“My secretary, Comrade Malakov.”

“Comrade.”

“Comrade,” said the real Smolenko without enthusiasm.

Simon motioned her to one of the wooden chairs.

“My men will remain outside,” he said with a wry smile, “keeping an eye on the quaint diversions of your country.”

“My apologies, Colonel. At least in here the sound is not deafening.”

“It does not matter. I am a man of few words and good hearing. I am sure you have many more interesting things to tell me than I could possibly tell you.”

Molière almost visibly squirmed before the threatening steel points of the Saint’s eyes.

“Ah, Colonel, no,” he protested deprecatingly, looking as if he would have liked to change the subject entirely.

Simon was kind enough to help him. Glancing around the room, his eyes had settled on a bottle of a curiously spiraled shape which stood on a shelf between piles of catalogues.

“Grand Abrouillac,” Molière said observantly. “A most distinguished liqueur which may be new to you.”

“I know of it,” said Simon, studying the label. “It does not travel. I was not aware that it was ever exported from Switzerland.”

“You are a connoisseur,” Moliere said with approval. “A business friend supplies me. Damaged though it may be from its trip down the Alps, you may be surprised at its quality. May I pour you a glass? And your charming secretary, of course.”

“Thank you, no. We have just had champagne at our hotel.”

“Ah, Colonel,” Molière gushed, winking, “champagne. You know how to live.”

“I try,” said the Saint. “It seems to be increasingly difficult these days.”

Molière, feeling the pressure applied once more, shriveled a bit. His laugh was weak.

“And now,” Simon said brusquely, “to business. In Moscow we were struck — I might almost say shattered — by the excellence of your miniaturized equipment. Do you make it yourself?”

Molière hesitated, almost stammered.

“Uh... no.”

“Who does?”

“Ah... the firm of Grossmeyer, Cardin et Fils. Of Zurich.”

“Zurich. Good.”

Simon turned to Smolenko.

“Malakov, what was that thing we liked so much but had a little difficulty with — the lighter or the...”

“The lighter that takes pictures?” Molière interrupted. “A charming toy. It has given you difficulties?”

“One could hardly call them difficulties.”

Simon waited to see whether his ambiguous statement would bring additional sweat to the shop owner’s brow. It did. Then he went on:

“A tendency to jam temporarily after several exposures. These things are not my field. They are handled on a lower level. But as long as I am here I thought...”

“Colonel, I am sure the difficulties of which you speak must have involved only a single defective item or so. Our tests...”

“We cannot afford even one defective item. I trust you will see to the prevention of such oversights from now on.”

“Certainly, Colonel. Absolutely.”

“May I please have one of the photographic lighters?” the Saint asked.

“Now?” asked Molière with surprise.

“Yes. Now. If you please.”

“But of course,” Molière said with a notable mixture of facial expressions. “One moment.”

He reached into one of the drawers of his desk and fumbled about as Simon turned and watched the display of rocking bodies which crammed the outer room. The Saint’s mind was running in top gear, and his every move was calculated.

“Here, Colonel. With my compliments.”

“Thank you,” Simon said, taking the little burnished steel rectangle. “Is it ready for use?”

“Oh, yes. It is loaded. Ten exposures. You can make a record of your travels.”

“And also test the possibility of faults in the mechanism.”

“Certainly.”

The Saint aimed the camera at Molière and pressed the tiny spring button in the hinge of the lid. Molière fidgeted and laughed.

“But, Colonel, is it wise? Photographs of me and my shop in your camera?”

“I shall not lose it.”

He took a picture of Smolenko, then he turned in his chair and made two shots of the dancing crowd beyond the window. He turned back and clicked the device again in Molière’s direction. Molière blanched.

“The light here is poor,” he said.

“An espionage camera which will not make photographs in ordinary room light?” Simon asked incredulously. “That would be inexcusable. Let us try it out here.”

Molière looked relieved until he discovered that “out there” meant the main room of his shop. Simon snapped Blagot, who seemed to have no fear of the camera and was obviously quite happy to let his comrade, Molière, remain the center of the testy Colonel Smolenko’s attention. The genuine Smolenko appeared bored and vaguely disgusted at the inexplicable antics of her impersonator.

“Anti-capitalist propaganda,” said Simon cheerfully, taking a frame of the dancers. “Fantastique.”

“I have some other equipment to show you,” offered Molière nervously. “Very interesting.”

“Not as interesting as this bizarre spectacle, surely. Just one moment. When I have finished the roll.”

Turning for his next shot, the Saint muttered to Igor in English, pushing him firmly in the direction of the back of the shop.

“Watch that door. Stop Molière if he tries to get away.”

The choreomaniacs were reaching heights of rhythmic abandon rarely seen north of Nigeria. It was quite understandable that a travelling Russian should want to preserve a few images of such exotic native customs with which to regale the folks back home. But Comrade Molière did not seem to sympathize with the desire. His dislike of the whole business became more and more obvious as Simon counted off his photographs.

“Almost finished now. Eight... nine...”

The Saint did not exactly see Molière run for the rear of the shop. Like a startled bird, the terrified man was halfway out of sight before anyone saw him move. Simon watched with calm approval, locking the shutter mechanism of the camera.

“What is happening?” Smolenko asked. “This has gone far enough. You play with us.”

“Apparently our comrade doesn’t feel like playing. But don’t worry. He won’t get away. Igor’s covering the back entrance.”

Smolenko looked with a puzzled expression over the Saint’s shoulder.

“Igor?”

Simon turned. Igor was standing there, beaming complacently.

“Igor covering you, comrade. Not so stupid as you think.”

“You pinheaded baboon — he’s getting away!”

The Saint shoved the man aside and raced toward the back door.

“Halt!” Igor cried, going for his pistol.

Smolenko’s hand darted toward the guard’s wrist, but Simon had already halted. Molière was bouncing out of sight down the alley in an old Renault. The Saint turned on Igor.

“Get Ivan to help you, and catch that man. I don’t care if it takes you the rest of your life... find Molière!”

“I demand to know what is going on,” Smolenko said.

“Okay, I’ll show you. Watch.”

Simon brought out the lighter.

“You see, this has a delayed action adjustment on it. You can press the shutter release button and the shutter won’t actually open for ten seconds. I’ll set it on delayed action. I’ve taken nine pictures. This will be the tenth and last.”

He walked several yards along the alley to a waist-high garbage pail. Setting the delayed-action switch and pressing the shutter button, he dropped the miniature camera into the metal pail and came quickly away.

“Stay over here, now, and in just about three seconds...”

There was a loud, muffled boom, and the walls of the pail bulged fatly outward as the lid took off for housetop level. The Saint’s and Smolenko’s eyes, along with Igor’s and Ivan’s, followed the trajectory of the metal disk until it clattered back to the cobblestones of the alley.

“There but for the grace of God go I,” Simon said soberly.

“Igor,” Smolenko said, her eyes full of fire, her voice like a saber blade slashing air, “go and find that man.”

She slipped into Russian, but it was clear from her tone if nothing else that Comrade Molière could not look forward to a very happy life in the near future, and that that future might not be very extensive.

Smolenko confronted the Saint as Ivan and Igor pounded away on the double.

“Now,” she said. “How do you know this?”

She jerked her head toward the bulging garbage can. Her voice was dangerous, but the Saint was not easily awed.

“I saw the device demonstrated in Berlin, by a gentleman working with Western intelligence: A lighter exactly like that one, exploding on the tenth frame.”

“So,” she said, “it is your people behind this.”

“No. They were merely trying to understand the workings of your equipment — the equipment, I mean, which has developed such a nasty habit of blowing up in your agents’ faces of late. I already explained to you on the train about the British fear of pointless bloodshed among their agents and yours.”

“Very humane. And I am supposed to believe your stories?”

“How many times do I have to save your life before you begin to have a little faith in me?”

“Faith is stupidity.”

“I think it would also be slightly stupid to wait here until some cop who heard the explosion comes looking for what made it.”

She looked at him as he hurried her away from the music shop. When she finally spoke again, her voice was more subdued.

“I thank you. For saving my life.”

“I suppose you’re welcome. I haven’t decided yet.”

They continued on for several minutes through a tangle of back streets.

“I’ll say one thing for you,” Simon remarked. “You’re probably the first woman I’ve ever met who can keep up with my pace when I’m evading the law.”

“I walk three miles every morning.”

“If you’d like to compete,” Simon said, “we could try wrestling.”

Smolenko smiled, and it was the first time the Saint had seen in her expression the vestiges of the child which linger in the faces of most really beautiful women.

“I might injure you,” she said.

“I shudder to think what I might do to you.”

She looked away and slowed her steps as they passed the display window of a parfumerie.

“These goods are very expensive, I suppose,” she said with elaborate casualness.

“I’m surprised you’d notice.”

“Mr. Templar, your insinuations to the contrary, I am not quite a total automaton. I notice the colors of fabrics. I enjoy nice smells. If I were a man I should use shaving lotions, which are pleasant and effective. Since I am a woman I use perfume, on some suitable occasions, and I wear dresses and often stockings. I even have experienced a love life, it may astonish you to learn. We have no need of false inhibitions in the socialist state.”

“And you accept that some love life is necessary for the procreation of the race.”

“Of course, but...” She broke off abruptly. “This is a ridiculous conversation. Are we going to the hotel by this route?”

“Eventually. For the moment we’re probably safer wandering around here than sitting back at the hotel.”

“Safer?” she asked. “But certainly Molière will not think of trying to harm us now that we know about him. He will be too busy trying to save himself.”

“Colonel, I’m surprised at you. Do you seriously think that Molière is the root of the problem, or even the most important part of it? He was much too easy a nut to crack. He gave himself away almost from the instant we walked into that shop. He was inept and practically shaking with fear when the scheme he’d been taking part in at a comfortable distance moved onto his own doorstep. He’s only a piece in the puzzle.”

“Igor and Ivan will find him — and see that he talks.”

“Before that, he may talk to his own associates, and they will reorganize to have another go at us. Probably they have something in the works already, since they know they flunked out on the train. In the meantime, we may as well amuse ourselves. The shops will still be open for another couple of hours, and I need to do a little shopping. I didn’t have time to pack a bag before I caught that train in Berlin.”

“We shall part here then,” Smolenko said.

“For safety’s sake, let’s meet at this spot in two hours and go back to the hotel together. Then I shall have the privilege, I hope, of taking the most beautiful colonel in the world out for one of the most beautiful dinners in the world. Assuming we don’t get our heads blown off over cocktails.”

6

“There is no such company as Grossmeyer, Cardin et Fils,” said Simon, “in Zurich or anywhere near it.”

They had just come back to the suite. The golden light of a setting sun fell directly through the windows, giving a touch of splendor to the otherwise uninspiring rooms.

“So that is why you went to the telegraph office and looked at the directories,” Smolenko said.

His blue eyes opened wide and mocking.

“Do you actually admit that you were following me?”

She smiled.

“Why, of course.”

“I somehow sensed those lovely brown eyes on the back of my neck,” Simon said calmly, “but I figured you were safer toddling along after me than getting yourself lost in the big, bad city. Didn’t I lose you right after the wineshop?”

“Yes, but I picked up your trail again as you came from the clothing store.”

“Which one? The men’s or the women’s?”

“The men’s,” Smolenko said matter-of-factly. “Why would you go to a store for women?”

She hesitated, momentarily flustered as he simply looked at her tolerantly.

“Of course,” she said. “Presents for some friend. But that is not my affair. I am glad I discovered nothing that would make it necessary for me to consider you my enemy. I must admit that I am now inclined to trust you, for the present, and to believe that other elements must have somehow infiltrated my own organization.”

“Brilliant, Colonel. Better late than never. Incidentally, what is your name?”

“You know it.”

“Don’t tell me you have only one. In Russian novels they always have five or six at the very least, and they get called something different on every page.”

She smiled, and again there was that reflection of inner warmth and irrepressible youth the Saint had noticed on the street that afternoon.

“It’s Tanya,” she said. “Very common. Very easy.”

She was standing by one of the tables, and Simon stepped toward her.

“But there’s nothing common about you, tovarishtch,” he said softly.

She took a step backward, turned, and moved to the door of her room. For him the retreat was a form of flattery. If she had been uninterested — as women never seemed to be in a man so almost impossibly handsome as Simon Templar — she would most likely have stood her ground to freeze him off.

“I take a bath now,” she said. “It is very warm here, after Moscow.”

“Please don’t consider my bourgeois sensitivities, any time you feel like undressing accordingly. As you were saying...”

A knock at the door interrupted him, and in an instant his hand was on the lock.

“Who’s there?” he asked,

“Packages for you, m’sieu.”

Simon’s sensitive ears recognized the voice of one of the chasseurs who had brought them to the suite earlier in the day. The man came into the room, both arms supporting a heap of parcels retained by his chin. The Saint sorted through the pile as Tanya watched from the door of her room and the bellhop went happily away with his pourboire.

“You are most generous with my expense account,” Tanya said caustically.

“Don’t talk like a capitalist, Comrade Colonel. I paid for these things personally.”

He turned toward her, holding a large flat box wrapped in white paper and tied with red ribbon.

“Here. A little something for you.”

For a presumably hard-boiled survivor of Soviet political shuffles, Colonel Smolenko blushed somewhat easily. She was openly astonished, and the Saint was a little touched that it should never even have occurred to her that his visit to the ladies’ clothing shop could have been on her behalf.

“You must be wrong,” she said. “Not for me.”

She was shaking her head even as she held out her hands to accept the box.

“I’m quite sure I’m not wrong,” Simon answered. “Who’d know better than the one who picked it out?”

“Well, thank you,” she said quietly.

She put the package on a table next to her bedroom door, then looked at him as her hands touched the red bow. For an instant she brought herself to something like the military posture of attention.

“Thank you,” she repeated with great correctness.

“You’re welcome. Open it please, if you will. One never knows when something is going to explode these days, and I’d just as soon get the suspense over with.”

She pulled the bow loose, apparently being careful to avoid any appearance of excited haste. Before she lifted the cardboard top she looked over at him, questioningly. He nodded. She peered inside.

“Oh, what beautiful...” she began.

She brought out a mass of shimmering pale satin and spread it on the bed.

“A lovely dress,” she whispered. “And shoes. But what shoes.”

She held them up, and she was almost laughing. The slender heels were three inches high, and the tops were almost nonexistent.

“I?” she said. “Wear these?”

She studied Simon’s face for a moment. Her expression became suspicious.

“You make fun of me?”

It was a suggestion rather than an accusation.

“Nothing could be farther from my mind,” the Saint said. “Why would I throw away perfectly good and expensive clothes just for a laugh? There’s more, too.”

“I see.”

But she didn’t inspect the smaller black lacy items while he was watching.

“Thank you very much,” she said awkwardly, but with genuine feeling. “Now I shall go wash and dress myself.”

As she was closing her door she looked back again.

“This is very good of you.”

Simon discovered, after finishing his own shaving, bathing, and changing, that female Soviet colonels are no more prompt in dressing for dinner than most other varieties of female. He called room service for ice and water, inspected the delivery for bombs and other quaint attachments, and poured himself a Peter Dawson. He was standing by the fireplace in his dinner jacket, meditating on the strange whims of whatever Fate it is that decides which lives shall cross, when Tanya came out of her room.

To say that he was overwhelmed at the sight of her would be to underestimate the Saint’s capacity for subtleties of feeling. In addition to the normal elation produced by the close proximity of any exceptionally beautiful woman, he experienced a curious thrill at the thought that, Svengali-like, he was partly responsible for bringing the beauty into open bloom.

He bowed his respects, and Tanya smiled hesitantly. Her self-consciousness, like that of a girl going to her first formal dance, was as charming to an observer as it probably was uncomfortable for her. The brown hair which had been suppressed into a tight wad at the back of her head now fell free and soft around her face to her bare shoulders. Her face, though innocent of makeup except for lipstick, was lovely enough to have graced the cover of any Hollywood magazine — which struck Simon, who momentarily wished he had the time to arrange such a photographic appearance for her, as the perfect joke on both the magazine and the Soviet Secret Police.

“You’re a gorgeous woman,” he said simply, and kissed her hands.

“You are very kind. I still do not understand...”

“Why I’d get you these things?”

“Yes.”

“I like giving presents, especially to attractive young ladies who’re living in hotels in Paris with me. It’s a weakness of mine.”

Tanya underwent another of her incongruous blushes.

“You embarrass me.”

Simon gave her a devilish look as he took the stole she carried and draped it expertly over her shoulders.

“Do I detect a trace of still unviolated bourgeois morality?” he asked.

“You may detect all kinds of strange things. I am suddenly like a fish out of water, in a world I never saw with my own two eyes before, and with a man I...”

Simon looked at her expectantly without interrupting as she paused. Suddenly the old suspicious shadow fell across her face again.

“You think I come here without clothes to wear in the Paris restaurants?”

The Saint took her arm and pressed her hand.

“Tanya, don’t you have any proverb in Russia about gift horses? When I give intimate gifts such as dresses or lacy lingerie to a lady, it’s not because I think she has nothing else to wear. I promise you, my motives weren’t in the least noble or charitable.”

“Well, you would have been right,” she admitted with a sheepish little smile. “I did not have anything proper to wear.”

The telephone rang, and the Saint answered it. He recognized Ivan’s thick voice in the receiver.

“Dascha,” Ivan said tersely.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Dascha,” the MGB man repeated impatiently. “Say her dascha.”

Simon covered the mouthpiece with his hand and turned to Tanya.

“It’s Ivan. He wants me to say you ‘dascha,’ whatever that means.”

“My code name,” she explained, taking the phone. “You don’t expect him to ask for Colonel Smolenko.”

She engaged in some heated Russian interchange which seemed to grow increasingly angry on her part and sparse on Ivan’s. She clamped down the receiver as if hitting the table with her fist.

“Idiots. They traced Molière to a village twenty kilometers from Paris but have not found him yet.”

“Where’s Ivan now?”

“A café in some place called Villeneuve, south of here. They are trying to hire a car. They promise they find Molière by morning. They assure me that they have his location, how do you say it, pinned down? But they will not be back here tonight.”

“Well, that’s very good. I don’t think we need them. With the local boss — who I assume is Molière — on the run it should take the Ungodly at least until tomorrow to conjure up another blast. Let’s see Paris, shall we?”

They did not see all of Paris, but they saw some of the best that Simon knew, which was the best there was. After cocktails in the jam-packed sophistication of the George V, he took her to dinner at the Tour d’Argent, not perhaps so much for its famous canard à la presse as for the entrancing view over the Seine to the floodlit cathedral of Notre Dame. Then when they were full of rich food and beauty and a bottle of ’34 Cheval Blanc settled with ballons of Delamain cognac, the intimacy of a short taxi ride transported them with hardly a perceptible break to one of those impeccably discreet hideaways which still defy the rising din of the discotheques, for those who prefer the Old World trappings of romance, a place of candlelight, soft music for dancing, and an agreeable absence of tourists.

After a few glasses of champagne on top of their earlier libations, Tanya Smolenko was as off guard and mildly giggly as most other women would have been under similar circumstances. The Saint led her onto the minuscule dance floor, whose meager dimensions were designed to foster intimate contact rather than terpsichorean athletics, and took her in his arms.

“I must admit,” he said, “that this is one of the most peculiar experiences of my life.”

Their bodies swayed slowly together to the muted sounds of gypsy violins.

“Bizarre,” she said, “but very nice.”

“There’s no other place like Paris, really.”

“All cities look well at night.”

“Tanya,” he said, “why don’t you relax and enjoy it? Answer me truthfully: doesn’t all this make your heart beat just the tiniest bit faster?”

“My heart? Of course not. What does it have to do with my heart?”

“You must have a heart somewhere.”

He slipped his right hand around and under her breast for a moment.

“There,” he said, “you do have one. And you aren’t telling me the truth. I estimate it’s about twenty beats a minute above normal.”

“My heart rate is always high. It is my metabolism. It has nothing to do with Paris.”

“No? How flattering. Anyway, it’s a beautiful metabolism.”

He drew her closer to him, their eyes meeting in a wordless communication. Then his lips touched hers in a light leisurely way until she turned her head.

When they returned to the hotel, the trucks of fresh vegetables were rumbling through the city toward predawn market, and the streets were wet from their nocturnal washing. It was one of those late hours which are best left indefinite, so as not to evoke exhaustion the next day by their very recollection.

Simon simply avoided looking at his watch, prolonging the blissful timeless state in which he and Tanya had existed since the sun went down. And if he, who had known virtually all the pleasures of the world, was happy, Tanya, who apparently had known very little beyond the comparatively harsh environment of her birthplace, was euphoric. She was also slightly drunk, which the Saint was not.

As they entered the suite and Simon closed the door, she held both his hands and looked him in the face.

“I had a most beautiful time.”

“So did I, Tanya; I think you’d make any night a success — when you were off duty.”

She smiled and slipped her hands to his shoulders, shyly inviting another kiss. But the Saint, moving closer, noticed something on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” he said, stooping to pick up the envelope, “but these days one can’t be too careful. It’s for you, my dear. Feels light and flexible enough. Probably the only thing explosive involved will be me if it turns out to be a billet-doux from a rival admirer.”

She smiled and looked curiously at the envelope.

“From Switzerland.”

“Do all women do that?” Simon asked, going over to the fresh bucket of ice and bottle of Evian he’d requested in advance be sent up to keep his bottle of Peter Dawson company after the witching hour.

“What?”

“Try to figure out who letters are from before they open them. Don’t you have agents in Switzerland?”

She was intent now on slitting the envelope and unfolding the rather heavy paper of the letter. Simon, in order not to seem to pry, devoted his attention to pouring drinks. Tanya’s scream took him by surprise.

“Simon! What...”

He saw the edges of the letter, as if touched by an invisible flame, begin to curl and turn brown.

“Drop it!” he snapped, and reacted faster than a pouncing cat.

By the time the letter reached the floor he was emptying the ice and water from the bucket over it. His aim was so accurate that the paper was completely sodden, and after emitting a few dying wisps of steam it lay harmlessly on the carpet, a wrinkled sheet of scorched brown.

“The envelope,” Tanya said.

Simon had already thought of that and assured himself that it lay inert and inactive where Tanya had let it fall.

“Your friends,” he said, “impress me with the variety of distractions they manage to throw our way. I don’t know if that was supposed to burn us up, blow us up, or gas us, but...”

“When I find who does this...”

“You and me both,” Simon said, admiring the expressively murderous clenching of her fist.

“I crush him like a bedbug.”

“I’ve never had the pleasure of that particular type of violence, but I sympathize completely with your feelings.”

He picked up the envelope and examined it.

“Lined with black inside. Sealed airtight, I’m sure. The paper was obviously some sort of plastic sensitized to go off when it was exposed to light and air.”

Tanya stood directly in front of him and looked into his eyes very seriously.

“Simon Templar, I have come to trust you. For good reasons. This is the third time, at least, that you save my life. And I know that being together like this, and being who we are, we... have a physical attraction. But that could happen even between enemies. A biological thing. I am not ashamed of it.”

“Neither am I.”

“But Simon — who am I to think... After all, consider my position. Who am I to think is behind these things if not the British and Americans? Surely not my own men. Why? Why would they? The whole thing is so pointless. For instance I carry no information or plans in my head on this mission which would make me dangerous to any nation. There is nothing I might reveal. And if I were gone, somebody else would immediately replace me. Yet there have been several attempts on my life already. Can you blame me for suspecting the most obvious enemy?”

“No,” Simon said quietly. “It seems to me there are several possibilities, at least. One, that I’m lying, and I’m really here as a hostile agent — but the silliness of that should be pretty obvious by now. I’ve certainly shown I don’t want you dead. A second possibility is of some kind of upheaval or take-over plot within your own organization, but...”

“I have thought of that many times, of course. But it makes no sense, and I have checked every facet. There is no pattern to the killing, to who is killed.”

“You’d know about that much better than I. Incidentally, I assume that not all these spying devices of yours are booby-trapped. Just one here and one there, enough to do the job without tipping you off as to the cause. You obviously didn’t know it was their own little gadgets that were blowing up your agents until I told you.”

She nodded, too preoccupied to bother defending herself.

“But you see the advantage to the British, for example,” she said. “So no one of the agents killed is especially important... but the constant fear of our equipment exploding would bring about a serious cutback in our activities. We would be forced to recall every piece of apparatus.”

“That makes perfect sense,” said the Saint. “All I can do is say again that to the best of my knowledge our side is as concerned about this as you are. The fact that I’m here with you should be some kind of evidence of that. And another thing: It seems to me that any kind of cutback you’d be forced to make because of these bombs would be so temporary it wouldn’t do us an ounce of good. I think you’ve got to count that out.”

“What do we count in, then?” asked Smolenko.

“One remote possibility would be some individual joker who gets a private kick out of disintegrating Russian agents, but I don’t think any one nut could possibly handle this operation, and the chances of several nuts sharing the same mania and working together are practically infinitesimal. We have to look somewhere else for the answer.”

“Where?”

“You must have thought of it yourself,” he said.

“Of course. China. But it seems so much less likely than...”

“Seemed, I hope,” said Simon. “I thought I was beginning to convince you.”

She smiled and seemed to become a woman again after her reversion to official capacity. She squeezed his hand and kissed him on the cheek.

“I am afraid it is all too easy now for you to convince me of anything. Especially because I’ve had so much to drink.”

She drew back a little, still smiling.

“But let me ask you one thing,” she continued. “Would it not be rather clever of the British or Americans or whoever to make me think it is the Chinese behind this — and in that way putting a bigger split between us and another socialist power?”

“It would be very clever, Tanya,” the Saint said, touching the end of her nose with one finger, “but not half as clever as you. You’re as sharp as a needle even when you’re tipsy. I think the only way we’ll ever convince you — and me — is to go right to the source of the whole thing.”

“Simon, you are not so smart. If we knew the source we would have no problem.”

“Tanya, when you have only fragments to work with, little things become significant. You remember where Molière said the miniaturized equipment comes from?”

“Zurich.”

“Zurich. From Grossmeyer, etc. But of course there is no Grossmeyer. And yet when we were still at that record shop I noticed shipping cartons marked Grossmeyer, Cardin, and so forth, mailed from Altbergen — Altbergen being a tiny village in the mountains in southeast Switzerland.”

He turned to her from the pacing he’d begun.

“Now, do you know how I know about this obscure village of Altbergen, which would hardly be found on anything but a local hiker’s map?”

“Because you have hiked there?”

“No, Altbergen is one spot I’ve never been to. But I’ve heard of it, and this afternoon I was reminded of it by more than the packing cartons. You remember the bottle of liqueur, Grand Abrouillac, that Molière was so kind as to offer us this afternoon?”

“It seems like years ago.”

“Your mind is wandering, sweetheart. You do remember?”

“Of course.”

“Well, Grand Abrouillac is made in only one place in the world — a monastery in Altbergen, Switzerland.”

“Simon, that’s fine, but it still does not mean that we know...”

“Take another look at this, please.”

He handed her the envelope in which the incendiary paper had been mailed.

“The postmark,” she said. “Altbergen.”

She looked at the envelope more closely, and then at him.

“So,” said Simon with the satisfaction that comes of seeing order emerge from chaos, “I think that if Igor and Ivan haven’t come up with Molière and plenty of facts by early morning, you and I should take off for Switzerland.”

“Alone?”

“Don’t shatter all my new illusions, Tanya. You mean you still believe in bourgeois institutions like chaperones? Or don’t you think I’m as good a bodyguard as Ivan or Igor?”

He had poured drinks for both of them, and he put hers in a passive hand.

“Of course, I can leave orders for them to follow us; if we are not here, they will know where to ask for instructions.”

“You aren’t afraid of shocking them?” he mocked her. “You were on a trip with them when I met you, but I didn’t assume they were your lovers. Would such good Soviet Boy Scouts have naughtier minds than mine?”

They were standing close together, and as Tanya sipped her drink her lips moved charmingly into a smile.

“I do not know what is in your mind,” she said, “but if you wish to be my lover I expect you to ask me. In such things men should take the lead.”

7

Simon had called the concierge for a mid-morning flight to Zurich, and just before noon the plane bearing him and Tanya set down at the Zurich airfield. He had arranged in advance for a U-drive car to be waiting, and in a matter of minutes they were on their way into the town, and then driving on through it and out again along the north shore of the lake.

“We’ll have lunch at the Ermitage at Kusnacht — it’s just a few miles farther on,” he said. “There’s a beautiful shady terrace right on the water, and their filets de perche à la mode du fils du pêcheur are something that has to be tasted to be believed.”

The setting and the meal were as perfect as he had promised, and perfectly accompanied by the bottle of ice-cold dry Aigle of Montmollin which he ordered.

“I think you are the most decadent man I have ever personally met,” she remarked thoughtfully.

He grinned with Saintly impudence.

“And aren’t you loving it?”

“We have work to do, and all you think of is what we should eat and drink.”

“For tomorrow we die — maybe. And that’s not all I think of, as you ought to remember.” He held her eyes until she lowered them. “Besides, I’ve never found I could work better for missing a good meal.”

“And while you are enjoying all this, do you never think of the millions in the world who are starving?”

“Sometimes. But I can’t convince myself that if I wasn’t eating it, any of them would get it.”

“You are impossible,” she said, and he laughed.

“What did you expect of a horrible capitalist?”

Nevertheless, no one who had been observing them would have taken them for enemies when they left to drive on towards the mountains just faintly visible in the distance.

From the air the Alps had appeared like a great wall of cloud near the horizon, but after Simon and Tanya crossed the lake and bore away to the south-east the peaks took on their true forms as the car began to climb twisting and steeper roads. The winter snows, now just a fading memory in Paris and even in Zurich, stubbornly clung on even below the timber line, where later in the summer, when the whiteness had withdrawn further, the last venturesome scraggly firs would be seen manning the frontier between the rich verdure of the forests below and the raw gray expanses of stone above.

Altbergen was the kind of place whose existence is announced to the traveller by a minute sign pointing from the highway up something like a glorified cow path. Though Simon had found it on the map, he almost passed the turning, but managed to get his brakes down in time to make the sudden transition from modern highway engineering to rural improvisation.

The car bounded from boulder to pothole with protesting rattles, and it became increasingly obvious as the angle of climb approached something like fifty degrees that what they were on was possibly not a cow path at all, but an occasional river bed gouged out by the torrents of thawing spring.

Luckily for the automobile, as well as its occupants, the distance from highway to Altbergen was only seven kilometers — straight up, it seemed at times. But the drive was invigorating, shaking out any last traces of sluggishness traceable to the previous long and perhaps overindulgent evening.

Altbergen was as surprised to see Tanya and Simon as Tanya and Simon were relieved to see it. Set on the green slope of a tiny plateau, its site constituted the only place within miles where more than three houses together might have clung to the ground. As it was, there were not many buildings, perhaps twenty, including a small inn and a few starkly essential shops.

“It’s beautiful,” Tanya said. “I have seen it only in picture books. Like gingerbread houses.”

“Anyway,” Simon remarked, “if Ivan and Igor get this far, they won’t have much of a search to locate us.”

He parked in front of the inn, joining company with a pair of Volkswagens and a squarish deux chevaux whose natural tendency to look like a corrugated tin lean-to had apparently been well assisted by numerous trips between Altbergen and the nearest paved road.

From across the narrow street, the combined grocer and hardware merchant peered through his display window at the Zurich license plate. The servant girl who had been sweeping the threshold of the Gasthof with no great enthusiasm in the first place came to a complete halt as she gaped curiously at the novelty of city tourists — and rich ones, too, by the looks of them — coming to the Goldener Hirsch and unloading baggage with the apparent intention of making a stay.

Altbergen’s isolation from the conveniences of modern life meant that checking in simply consisted of being led up the steep stairs by the plump proprietress while the servant girl, a slim blond creature, staggered along behind with all the luggage, refusing Simon’s offers of help. There was no surrender of passports for inspection by the police overnight, no filling out of lengthy forms in the usual European manner, whereby one gains entry to sleeping quarters only by confessing in detail a large part of one’s own and one’s relatives’ pasts, and explaining precisely whence one has come and where one is going. There was not even a register to sign, and the proprietress had not asked for names.

“So, bitte,” she said, smiling as she opened the door of what was obviously the best room, “schön, nicht wahr?”

“Sehr schön,” Simon agreed, before Tanya could make any other comment.

The walls were all natural wood, with the lingering smell of fresh-cut lumber about them. There were two beds, huge and solid, with white comforters a foot thick but light as air. Beyond the double doors was an ornate balcony of the kind that fronted the upper floors of almost every house in the village.

“I didn’t want to attract more attention by asking for separate rooms,” Simon explained innocently to Tanya, in English. He went on more wickedly: “The only problem will be if Ivan and Igor get here. Which of them would you rather double up with?”

She turned away quickly, towards the balcony.

“Supper is from six o’clock,” the proprietress said in leaving. “If you want hot water or anything, the bell is there.”

“Oh, Simon, come look.”

Tanya was outside, deeply breathing the sharp clear air. The view she wanted him to see was superb: the snow-covered Alps, the dark green meadows studded with outcroppings of pale stone, the shingled roofs of the houses weighted with chunks of the same rock. There was a peace and timelessness totally unlike any other in the world.

He turned from the view to her, and thought that she looked happier than he had ever seen her. There had been very good moments, but the kind of deep-down contentment that he sensed in her now was something new and different. They seemed a long long way from subterfuge, treachery, and murder.

“You like it here?” he asked her.

“Very much. Yes.”

“There’s a great feeling of freedom, isn’t there?”

She nodded, smiling at the world in general.

“Perhaps.”

“More than you could ever have in Russia?” the Saint said.

Such a challenge had been on his mind for some time, but he had hesitated again and again to put it to her for fear she would assume that his true mission all along had been to tempt her to defect from the communist world. But if ever there was to be a moment to risk disrupting the rapport they had begun to achieve, this might have been it.

He realized his misjudgement instantly, in a silence that could almost be physically felt.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “That wasn’t very subtle... I suppose in your position, especially if one has relatives, even close friends who might... face some unpleasant consequences, it makes it difficult even to think about.”

She stood straighter, slipping her elbows from the broad rail of the balcony.

“I have never thought in such a way. It is not only difficult, it is impossible.”

“Then why are you so touchy about it?” he asked gently.

“I should be. You are hinting at treason, not talking about a... a trip to the seaside.”

He put his hands soothingly on her shoulders.

“All right. We’ll let it pass, okay? This is no time or place to start arguing ideologies. We both have a job to do.”

He could feel the tension begin to fade from her body. She took her lower lip between her teeth for a moment and looked him in the face before she answered.

“Okay,” she said, and she had to start smiling again just because she’d used that American expression.

“See up there?” the Saint said, pointing. “That looks as if it could be the monastery.”

“Where they make the liqueur.”

“Mm-hm. And somewhere around here somebody’s making something else — and I don’t mean that stew and red cabbage you smell.”

“Booby traps, I think you call them.”

“Yes. Well put. Now you can unpack and freshen up and prepare to greet me properly upon my heroic return.”

“Where are you going?”

“Trap shooting, of course.”

She followed him back into the bedroom.

“I go with you.”

He hesitated for a moment, and shrugged.

“Okay, if you like. This is your affair as much as mine. We shouldn’t run into anything on the first reconnaissance where you’d be a liability.”

“Really! You forget who I am. In the Soviet Union we recognize no difference between the sexes.”

“Well, I do,” said Simon, “but then I’ve had my memory refreshed recently.”

“That was not what I meant. My English...”

“Your English is fine, and so are you. Now let’s get going so we can be back here in time for that supper. I have the distinct impression that if we don’t dine here we don’t dine anywhere, unless you’re up to a few unrolled oats from some farmer’s horse trough.”

They went downstairs and accosted the servant girl, who was still reluctantly applying her broomstraws to the smoothly worn wood of the entranceway, and Simon asked her if there were any factories in the area. He might have asked for dinosaurs.

“Factories, sir? Like where they make autos and things?”

“Any kind of factories.”

The girl shook her head.

“No. The only thing we make here is cheese, and there is no factory for that. It is done by the farmers at home.”

“Well,” Simon said, “in that case, thank you very much.”

“Bitte sehr. If you wish to see a factory you must go down to Zurich.”

Tanya turned back as she and Simon started away.

“I have a small radio that does not work. Can someone here fix it?”

“Nein. Es tut mir leid. We have no one to fix anything. If you want things like that, why do you come here?”

“Because I really love peace and quiet,” said the Saint.

He set a course that took them through the inquisitive village, across a little stream covered by a neatly built wooden bridge, and along a path that led straight up the slope of the surrounding meadow.

Tanya looked up ahead of them to the spot on the mountainside where man-made walls of gray stone were half hidden by evergreens.

“I hope you are not taking me on a wild-goose hunt,” she said, avoiding one of the manifold traces which grazing cows had left behind.

“‘Chase,’” Simon corrected her. “I didn’t really expect to find a transistor radio factory bringing prosperity to the peasants up here at the end of nowhere, but there just has to be some link with it.”

“At the monastery?”

“Yes. Think you can make it?”

“Of course. I can still be walking after you have dropped on your face.”

But she underestimated both the distance and Simon’s hard-muscled health. His sense of direction took them briskly on across the remainder of the Alpine meadow, past lovely patches of blue and yellow wild flowers, to the foot of a rocky trail that led through the dense forest that clung to the mountainside. A rustic sign with lettering carved precisely into it said: KLOSTER ¾ St.

“Three-quarters of an hour from here,” he said. “But if you’re in such great shape, we should be able to shave that to a half.”

He set off at a pace that would not have disgraced an energetic chamois. The slope was soon so steep that the path, such as it was, had to zigzag back and forth to maintain a reasonable gradient. Simon went on with springy steps, smiling to himself as he sensed Tanya’s increasing difficulties. He took a makeshift staff from some branches left by woodcutters and began to sing cheerily as they climbed on.

“Stop!” she cried at last; and he stopped and turned, with raised eyebrows.

“Am I that bad? It’s an old Tirolean song — perfectly respectable. I thought it went well with the scenery.”

“I can’t go on... so fast,” she panted shamelessly.

“Must be the thin air at this altitude,” Simon said, with devastating concern. “I should have remembered — it can get the greatest athletes down at first.”

She called him something unkind in Russian and flopped down on a pile of cut wood to rest.

“It can’t be much further now,” he said, after giving her a minute to catch her breath. “When we get there, just don’t say anything till I’ve decided what line to take.”

“Don’t you know what you are going to say?”

He shrugged.

“Only vaguely. It depends on what reception we get. But I have great faith in my ability to improvise. It hasn’t failed me yet.”

They came again to the stream they had crossed down in the meadow; here it had its source, gushing like a miraculous fountain from the rocks. Then, almost without warning, the cold stone of the monastery rose in front of the Saint and Smolenko. Whatever was inside the encircling walls could not be seen from where Simon and Tanya stood. Gates of massive hardwood braced with hand-wrought iron were solidly closed, and the only means of communication with the inside appeared to be a rusty bell with a pull-rope of plaited cowhide.

“Shall we?”

The Saint rang the bell, and for a long time there was no sound but the twittering of birds and the whisper of an afternoon breeze in the pine needles. Then, like something entirely unearthly, the voices of melodiously chanting men came from within the walls.

“They sound like professionals,” Simon said.

Tanya gave him a wry look.

“They are, of course,” she said. “Professional parasites on superstitious ignorance.”

“Oh, dear comrade, let’s not go into that.”

He rang again, vigorously, hoping to make the bell heard over the monkly devotions.

“It might be more polite to wait till they’ve finished, but they’re liable to go on for hours,” he explained.

“From what little I know about this order, they’re extremely hard on themselves. Don’t show their faces or say anything except prayers, except for one brother who has a dispensation to conduct any essential business. Dig their own graves and sleep in coffins and scourge themselves twice a day.”

“Charming,” said Tanya.

There was a rattling sound inside the thick gate, and a sliding board about a foot long and six inches high slid back to show a cowled and black-veiled head. The head said nothing, just hovered there.

“Gruss Gott,” said the Saint. “May we come in?”

The monk pressed his eyes to the opening as if to see whether or not there were others in the party.

“Grass Gott” the head replied in a voice much less sepulchral than its visible source. “There is not much to see.”

“I was told that visitors were always welcome if they made a contribution,” Simon said mendaciously.

“The contribution is always twenty francs. For only two, that would be ten francs each.”

“I should be glad to give it to such a deserving order.”

The open panel slammed shut. There were clanking noises on the other side of the portals, and a moment later one of them creaked partially open. The monk stood with his hand silently extended, palm upwards, until Simon placed the requisite coins in it.

“I am Brother Anton. The Brotherhood are at their devotions in the chapel, as you hear. It will be several hours before they come out, and of course I cannot allow you to disturb their meditations by entering that part of the building. But I will show you what little else I can.”

He gestured for them to follow, and together they crossed the open courtyard, which had a stone well with bucket and pulley in the center, and small but profusely growing vegetable gardens around the sides.

The cloister was built of stone so old that its surface was pitted and often crumbling. Here and there an Alpine flower had found a home in some niche or crevice, and velvety green moss grew on the roof shingles. As Simon saw, led and lectured by Brother Anton, the place was in the shape of a square, with the chapel and library comprising one side, the monks’ cells two sides, and the refectory and kitchen the fourth side. In the center, by the well, was a small inner quadrangle quartered by crossing walkways and possessed of two stone benches and a stagnant birdbath.

Simon and Tanya were allowed a brief look at all areas except the chapel, from which continued to come the sound of harmoniously chanting male voices. In the kitchen a lone monk, cowled and veiled, stood watch over a gigantic pot on the wood-burning stove. He turned to look at the visitors without noticeable reaction and then went back to his cooking. From the pot came a familiar but somehow inappropriate aroma which Simon could not immediately pin down. His mind was busy with other things.

One of the attributes of a supremely alert intelligence such as the Saint’s is the ability to see the relationship between apparently unrelated facts. As he listened politely to Brother Anton’s historical notes and pretended to study the architectural details of the ancient building, his thoughts were hours ahead. He was noticing the interesting but seemingly irrelevant fact that the pump in the kitchen, the well in the courtyard, and the source of the stream outside the walls were in a more or less direct line.

“And so,” Brother Anton was concluding, “for five centuries, for those who joined us here, the world ended at that door through which you entered.”

“But one worldly thing still comes out through it,” Simon said, “but for which we might never have heard of this place. Is it possible to see the manufacture of Grand Abrouillac?”

He was curious to know whether the cenobite was frowning or smiling under his veil in response to that additional request.

“To see the place, but not to see the method,” was the reply. “Therefore, to see very little. But come this way.”

“We must not stay long,” Simon said pointedly, looking at his watch. “We have friends below in the village who will come up looking for us if we do not return for supper. I don’t want them to start worrying about us.”

“It will take only a minute to see what I am permitted to show,” the monk said.

He led the way down stone steps made smoothly concave by scores of years of sandaled treading. Now they were in a basement whose only windows were narrow grated slits near the ceiling at the level of the ground outside. The walls were lined with the spiraled bottles such as Simon had seen in Molèire’s office. Jars of herbs and unidentifiable liquids gathered dust on other shelves. Pungently spiritous casks and vats stood about the floor and were racked in tiers along one wall. There was a big wood-burning stove at one end of the room with a flue extending into the ceiling.

“Central heat?” Simon inquired.

“Yes. It becomes very cold here even in summer. Only a few hundred meters above us is always snow.”

“No point in mortifying the flesh that much,” Simon commented in English.

“Bitte?”

“I suppose it would be bad for the brew to freeze.”

The Saint touched a kind of thick wooden faucet in the wall, from behind which came a faint gurgling sound.

“The mountain spring water which is one of the secret ingredients?”

“Sie haben recht. The water is most important.”

The monk took a bottle from one of the shelves.

“If you wish to take a bottle with you, it is forty francs here, much less than outside.”

Simon took a bill from his pocket and pressed it into the man’s hand.

“Danke sehr, Bruder. For your holy work.”

“Vielen dank.”

“Bitte.”

As they started up the stairs, Simon indicated a large ceiling fan which had been almost invisible from directly below because of a kind of false ceiling hung under it.

“You have installed some other modern comforts, I see.”

“Ach, ja. The fumes, you know. In the old days the brothers used to become quite drunk while working here, merely from breathing.”

“All good things must come to an end, I suppose.”

“All good things and all bad things,” the monk said, and quickly showed them the way out of the cloisters to the main doorway.

Simon had gone with Tanya only a few yards out of sight of the walls when he took her arm and said: “Excuse me just a moment.”

He knelt down and put the bottle of Grand Abrouillac between two rocks and covered it with pine needles.

“As much as I love good liquor, I love life more, and I’m in no mood to be poisoned, exploded, or shot in the head.”

She stared.

“You do not think...”

“I do think. And I wouldn’t take any chances with anything that came out of that crypt. Now let’s go on and make plenty of noise as we recede into the sunset.”

Twenty seconds later he stopped again. From above drifted the singing voices of the Brotherhood.

“Why do we wait?” Tanya whispered.

“To listen. I’m a student of bird calls and other forest noises.”

The vigil produced results more practical than aesthetic. After about two minutes the voices of the choristers stopped abruptly in mid-syllable, even in mid-note, to say nothing of mid-phrase.

The Saint and Tanya looked at one another.

“No wonder our friends sounded so professional,” Simon said. “They were.”

“A gramophone record.”

“Right, my dear. The invisible Brotherhood is just about as genuine as everything else in that joint. Did you notice those vegetable plots? Weeds bigger than the cabbages. Nobody’s bothered to cultivate them for days — or weeks.”

He took Tanya’s hand, and they went on down the path.

“So” she said, “you think they make our equipment there?”

“Seems very likely. There could be all sorts of hidden chambers. I was studying that possibility, too, but we can’t be sure until tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight. When I come back for another look around. I’ve never liked these conducted tours. By the way,” he added with a quizzical frown, “what do you think that was they were cooking in the kitchen?”

“I don’t know,” she answered absently. “Kasha? Rice?”

Suddenly Simon stopped and looked at her.

“Rice,” he said, and threw back his head and laughed.

8

A half-moon was just riding high enough to illuminate the snow on the great peaks above as the Saint began his return climb to the monastery. Everything was silvered, the sky was clear, and the air was keener than it had been in the daytime. The cold wind’s stimulus to his walking speed helped to nullify the reductive effect of his dinner (there was no menu and no choice) of goulash, noodles, and red cabbage.

Tanya had wanted to come, but he had convinced her that it was foolhardy for them both to be committed at the same time. If he had not returned by midnight she would be free to take whatever action she thought best — an old tactic but, like most lasting traditions, a sound one. It was almost ten o’clock now.

There was another logical reason for her to wait at the Gasthof: Igor and Ivan might arrive at any moment, following directions that had been left in Paris, and any news they had of Molière might be vital. Someone should be at the inn to meet them if they did turn up.

As he came closer to the monastery, Simon’s stride slackened and became more stealthy, until the last yards were covered with the silence of a stalking cat. The silence within seemed to be just as complete, and the few leaded windows high up in the walls were dark, but he could not believe that all the inmates would go to sleep at the same time, leaving no one on watch, if his suspicions had any foundation.

He picked up a couple of pebbles in one hand, and stood with his back pressed against the wall to one side of the great doors. In his other hand he held the long branch which he had discarded there on his earlier visit. He reached over and tapped with it on the door. After a pause, he tapped again, insistently. And again.

He heard the spy-slot open, but knew he could not be seen from where he stood. He waited another second or two, and then scratched hard with his stick on the lower part of the far door, where the watcher inside would not possibly see what was doing it.

The panel slid shut, and bolts and bars scraped on the inside. The door gave a faint cautious creak, and the profile of a man came through the opening. But the man was no monk — at least, no monk in the regular accoutrements. He was wearing military style fatigues, boots, and a forage cap. Even more unorthodox was the large pistol he carried, its barrel lengthened by the thick cylinder of a silencer.

Before the sentry’s widening arc of survey could swing around far enough to find him, Simon lobbed one of his pebbles straight ahead. The sound of its landing in the underbrush opposite riveted the guard’s eyes in that direction; the second pebble, tossed the same way, brought the man a step outside the door, his pistol at the ready.

It was as much space as the Saint needed. He stepped across in one long stride, swinging his stick numbingly into the watchman’s larynx, and then bringing him down with one swift karate chop to the back of the neck.

Simon picked up the pistol and checked it quickly. As an afterthought, he also took the guard’s forage cap and put it on — if any others should see him before he saw them, it might in near-darkness be just enough to disguise him for a few seconds that could make vital differences. Then he stepped in through the great doorway and pushed the door shut behind him until it just touched its mate without latching.

The courtyard was dark and deserted, but not all the windows that opened on to the interior were blacked out. The Saint moved on tiptoe towards the nearest one, which he recalled as belonging to the refectory. As soon as he was close enough to look in, he had complete and startling confirmation of what had only been a vague impression when he had glimpsed the doorkeeper’s features in the moonlight.

The sight would undoubtedly have caused the founding father of Kloster Altbergen to sit up in his do-it-yourself grave and demand an entire keg of Grand Abrouillac, for his venerable dining hall was populated by half a dozen Chinese.

They were not dressed in grim woolly habits, but in shirt sleeves or white laboratory coats. They were not engaged in silent meditation, but in gambling games, idle conversation, and cigarette smoking.

On the whole they were not husky or even particularly robust-looking men, which led the Saint to the swift conclusion that they constituted a technical rather than a military task force. If there were other trained soldiers such as the guard probably had been, they were not in sight. And it also appeared that unless egalitarianism in China had gone further than he suspected, there appeared to be no leader among the group. The men had the air of comrades glad to be relaxing at the end of a day’s routine work.

The Saint dragged himself away from that fascinating spectacle and moved around the cloisters until he came to another lighted window.

There he hit the jackpot: a rather overweight Chinese gentleman in a green uniform without insignia was sitting at a table in the library; with him was another man, not Chinese but some variety of European. What language they were speaking could not be heard through the sealed glass. Between them on the table was a pile of gold coins and a sort of record book in which the Chinese — whom Simon immediately christened “the General” — would occasionally write something.

The European, who the Saint now assumed to be “Brother Anton,” was not in black robes either, but in a suede jacket, and he seemed to have just concluded a discussion with the General. He stood and left the room as the Chinese went back to his calculations.

Simon flattened himself behind a pillar; Anton emerged through a narrow passage into the courtyard a few feet away. The erstwhile monk stretched his arms, took a deep breath, and admired the moon.

Then, as his gaze returned earthwards, he seemed to be transfixed by some much less pacifying vision. For three or four seconds he stood frozen in unnatural rigidity, and then he whirled around and rushed back to the entrance from which he had emerged, yelling something shrill and incomprehensible, but the Saint had no need of a literal translation to recognize the strident urgency of the alarm.

Looking around to discover what could have triggered it, he saw that the big door which he had been so careful to almost close was now wide open. The mild force of the wind could not possibly have moved the heavy gate on its hinges, and the guard Simon had disposed of would be out for some time more, if not permanently.

Turning back again the other way, the Saint had a glimpse through the window of the General scraping gold coins into a leather purse which he jammed in his pocket as he jumped to his feet. Anton lunged into the room and pressed a button which set off muted alarm bells throughout the monastery.

Simon stooped low and dashed for the well. Sticking the guard’s automatic into his belt, he swung his legs over the waist-high circular wall, seized the doubled rope which hung from the pulley on the scaffolding above his head, and slid down so that he was just able to see what was happening around him.

He had already been asking himself if Tanya had followed alone, or if Ivan and Igor had arrived after he left and come up to the monastery with her. Then, as the Chinese were hurrying out of the refectory, he saw a shadowy figure dart from near the gate into the passage taken a few moments before by Anton.

He was sure it was Tanya. She had probably seen him in his borrowed cap and mistaken him for a guard. Seconds later he saw her through the lighted window holding a pistol on the General and Anton.

The alarm had roused the refectory, and an influx of shouting, confusedly milling people into the courtyard allowed the Saint no more time to watch Tanya’s progress. He slipped down about two feet, straddled the bucket which swung at one end of the rope, and held himself steady by grasping the other strand. Knocking the forage cap deliberately from his head, he heard it plop into water just a couple of yards underneath him, and then he listened closely in order to follow the events taking place above.

An authoritative voice was calling out in Chinese over the hubbub, and all activity seemed to come to an abrupt halt. The excited shouts died away, and the running feet were still. Simon raised himself so that he could see. The half-dozen civilians, joined by Anton and a pair of men in uniforms like that of the guard who had originally been at the gate, were standing frozen, watching Tanya holding her pistol near the General’s head in one of the archways.

She and her hostage had apparently already discovered that they had a common language in English.

“Tell them to be still and put their guns down, or I shoot you,” she said. “Also, my men are watching and will fire if they resist.”

“Yes,” said the General.

He called something in Chinese, and the guards dropped their weapons.

“Where is that pig, Templar?” Tanya asked.

The General shook his head.

“I do not understand.”

“A man came here before me. Where is he?”

“No man. We see no man.”

Simon might have spoken then, but the uncomplimentary epithet which Tanya had attached to his name made him reticent. Besides, just at that moment one of the Chinese civilians let out a yelp, pointing at the well. The Saint let the taut rope slip quickly through his hands, dropping him from the sight of those above ground. As he descended he could hear Tanya’s voice above the others.

“What is it?”

“Man in well,” the General translated.

Simon could not distinguish any more words in the confusion of sounds that echoed in the depths of the well. He did not particularly care; he was much more interested in avoiding being trapped and possibly shot like a fish in a barrel. He could only hope that a theory he had formed in the afternoon would turn out to be right: He believed that an underground stream ran under the monastery, passing through the well, under the kitchen, and directly beside the liqueur-making vault.

Letting go the rope entirely, he dropped down into the water and found footing on the slippery bottom, bracing himself against the curving wall. To his relief, he felt that the water, which reached above his waist, was flowing and not still. Though his pistol had been submerged and possibly put out of commission, his breast pocket flashlight was in working order.

No rain of bullets was yet descending upon his head, but he moved quickly anyway. His feeble light showed him that his hopes of a tunnel carrying the water were better than confirmed: the channel seemed to have been artificially enlarged, possibly centuries before, at its downstream exit from the well — the direction which led toward the kitchen and the basement he had seen in the afternoon.

Inside the narrow passage the water level was higher than in the well, but there was still room for a man’s head and shoulders above the surface. Undoubtedly the monks of older, more generally dangerous times had used the tunnel for some such purpose as the Saint was using it now, and it seemed likely that in their anxiety and eagerness to escape from irreverent barons or rampaging Protestants they would have provided a more private means of entrance and exit than the well in the middle of their courtyard.

Simon moved on with the flowing water until he saw a glimmer of light. It was not, however, the door he had hoped for. Putting his eye to the glowing chink in the wall he found that he was standing just outside the basement he had visited earlier in the day. He could see the rows of bottles and tiers of casks. Then he saw Tanya and the General coming into the basement from the foot of the steps, Tanya’s pistol still pointed at the nape of the General’s neck. The Saint postulated that either she was pulling a good bluff or that Igor and Ivan had shown themselves and taken control in the courtyard.

“And where are the real monks?” she was asking.

“In heaven, of course,” the General replied, with successful irony in spite of his bad pronunciation. “They were ready. Graves already dug.”

“Where are the devices made?”

The General was not so co-operative in response to that inquiry.

“Speak,” she said, “or I shoot.”

“They are made here,” he said.

“Where?”

The General made a resigned gesture of his shoulders and hands.

“I show you. You see. I push this first.”

Tanya aimed the pistol more carefully and tightened her finger on the trigger.

“Slowly,” she cautioned.

The General nodded and pressed something on which a wooden ladle was hanging. There was an electric humming, then a rumbling sound as the central sections of the two longest walls of the chamber began pivoting. The place was transformed, as the shelves of dusty bottles swung out of sight, into an entirely modern workshop. The newly revealed sides of the walls were lined with work benches and shelves covered with electronic components, chemicals, precision tools — and large numbers of the familiar exploding transistor radios and lighter-cameras.

“Give me samples of the micro-explosive and the formula for it before we destroy this place.”

The General did not move.

“I destroy you also unless you give me the formula,” Tanya said. “You have tried to kill me many times. It would not seem unfair for me to kill you once.”

“I give,” said the General.

He pointed to a large chest.

“There.”

“Get it,” Tanya told him.

As she turned to keep her gun on the General, arms reached suddenly from draperies and grabbed her, knocking aside the gun and throwing her onto the floor out of the Saint’s field of view.

He moved swiftly further down the tunnel, searching for a connection between the passage and the monastery vaults. Within twenty paces he found it: a small door with a circle of pocked iron which served as a handle.

Bracing his feet he put all his strength into the pull. The hinges seemed to be rusted solid, but their fastenings were so old that they gave way and bent soundlessly.

Simon stepped into the dryness and warmth of a small unlighted room crowded with crates and piles of cardboard cartons. He did not need his flashlight, for the door of the room was half open, letting through enough indirect illumination to allow him to find his way quietly around the heaps of boxes. There was a fire extinguisher and an ax on the wall by the door, and overhead like a tangle of snakes ran a thick bundle of electric cables. This was obviously not one of those rooms open to tourists.

He realized immediately, as he got a look into the main basement through dark curtains just slightly parted at the doorway, that he was standing in the exact spot where Tanya’s captor had stood to grab her. The General and two other uniformed Chinese, their backs toward the Saint, held pistols on Tanya.

“Drop your guns,” Simon said, thinking it best to communicate his wishes in the simplest possible English.

At the same time, he stuck his automatic through the curtains. When the Chinese had dropped their pistols to the floor he showed himself.

“If you think you’re surprised, Tanya, dear, you should have seen my face when you showed up.”

Before she could reply, the General let out a desperate shout, and the two other men dove for Simon. It would have been a suicidal move on their part except for one thing: when the Saint pulled the trigger of his automatic it emitted only a sodden click. He was hurled back against the wall, his head glancing against the stones.

When his vision cleared a moment later the Chinese were once more in control, holding their dry pistols on him and Tanya.

“You are interested in our work, and you have seen,” the General said. “Now we take you back upstairs and kill you.”

“Where are Ivan and Igor?” the Saint asked Tanya.

“Quiet,” snapped the General.

But, looking at Tanya, Simon saw her give a kind of answer with an upward roll of her eyes.

The General opened a big refrigerator and checked the contents — rows of small amber bottles.

“You not take anything from here?” he asked Simon.

“No.”

The General went on counting. When he closed the door again he looked satisfied.

“Explosive,” he said. “Fuses must be cold.” He nodded towards the wood-burning heater, which showed orange flame through its grill. “Heat make explosion. Very big.”

Then he set into operation the mechanism that pivoted the walls, and half a minute later the chamber had once more become the dusty home of Grand Abrouillac.

“Now,” the General said, pointing into the side room through which Simon had come. “This way.”

As they went through the curtains and passed the threshold, Simon whispered to Tanya, “Scream your head off. Now!”

She screamed with enough force to frighten a banshee, furnishing an instant of confusion which was all the Saint needed. He toppled a pile of cartons towards the guards, snatched the fire ax from the wall, and sank the heavy blade into the mass of electric cables. The wooden handle insulated him from the spectacular multiplicity of short circuits which resulted. Sparks exploded over the room as the light bulbs went off, and in the weird flashing brilliance Simon was able to see enough to swing his medieval weapon again with deadly accuracy.

Both guards went down, and Tanya, who had crouched to escape the whistling blade, grabbed one of their pistols. The sparks were dying, and the General had plunged back into the pitch darkness of the liqueur-making vault. The fine beam of Simon’s light caught him as he felt his way to the foot of the stairs.

Tanya fired, and the General sprawled heavily forward onto the stone floor. Instantly there was a tremendous fusillade of gunfire at ground level outside.

“Ivan and Igor!” Tanya cried, and bolted up the stairs. “They were guarding the Chinese upstairs.”

“Stay inside!” Simon called after her.

He had stooped by the General’s body. Now he followed her up to the door and stopped her before she could unbolt it. But already the outburst of shots was dwindling. As the Saint pushed Tanya back and opened the door himself he heard only three scattered reports, and then no more.

Igor leaned against the wall a few feet away, clutching a bloody arm. Ivan came running up, automatic in hand, calling anxious questions in Russian.

As Smolenko answered, Simon looked over the moonlit courtyard, where bodies lay scattered over the ancient ground like fallen puppets. It was fairly obvious that Igor and Ivan had been distracted momentarily by Tanya’s shot, and their prisoners had gone for their own guns. The Russians, sheltered by shadows and the stone archways of the cloisters while their enemies were caught in the open, had won the battle, and all the Chinese, with Anton, lay dead.

“I never thought I’d be glad to see you two,” Simon said to Ivan and Igor.

“I’m afraid this will change your mind.”

It was Tanya speaking, and she aimed her pistol at his chest. Calm but puzzled, he looked at her.

“I don’t understand,” he said levelly.

“Molière told them before they killed him — about your real mission.”

“My real mission? I’m sincerely curious to know what that is.”

“To use me until you had found the micro-explosive, and then to dispose of us and steal the formula yourself.”

Simon shook his head.

“Molière was just trying to save his skin.”

Tanya’s voice was louder.

“You used me. Made me a fool. But now it no longer matters. Ivan and Igor received orders from higher — to kill you. Now we shall have the explosive and you shall not have even your life. Ivan, go below and bring up samples. The formula may be in a chest beside the refrigerator.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Colonel,” Simon said, “but nobody gets the formula.”

“What do you mean?”

“No electricity. The movable walls are jammed solid.”

“Ivan. Wait.” She thought for a second. “We repair the wires.”

“No time. Remember the refrigerator full of fuses and explosives? The cooling has stopped, but that wood-burning monster of a stove is still going full blast. It would take several hours to untangle and match up and reconnect all those melted wires, and by that time this place will have been transformed into picturesque ruins.”

“You planned this, so we could not get the formula!”

“I must admit that the thought did pass through my mind. On the other hand, remember that I won’t get it either.”

Tanya’s face twisted into an expression of hatred. She lowered the pistol and slapped him again and again. He did not flinch, but his eyes narrowed.

“I dare you to do that without your army around.”

“You swine! You lied — cheated me.”

Igor raised his pistol.

“We have orders. I kill him.”

“No,” Tanya said. “He is mine. Go.”

The men hesitated.

“Go, I say. Have Igor’s arm attended to. Prepare the car and my luggage.”

Ivan and Igor left the courtyard by the main gates. Simon leaned back against the wall and waited as Tanya turned to confront him. Even in the moonlight he could not make out the nuances of her expression.

“Isn’t the condemned man allowed a last request?” he asked lightly.

Tanya did not answer, only waited, holding the gun on him as the ponderous footsteps of Ivan and Igor receded down the path.

“It’s usually a cigarette,” the Saint said, “but since I’ve given up smoking, how about a kiss? In memory of old times.”

“I could never come so close,” she said slowly. “I understand that it would be deadly to touch with my gun anybody so skilled in the arts of self-defence as you.”

“You never can tell,” he said.

For several seconds they faced one another without speaking as clouds scudded across the face of the moon, and rising winds gave a voice to the forest.

Then Tanya stepped forward and placed the barrel of her pistol against his chest.

He pushed the cold steel aside and pulled her body close, kissing her deeply.

“You will have to make it seem real,” she whispered. “Hit me hard, and then run. They may be waiting near. Can you go over the wall?”

“There’s a door from the kitchen to the outside. I saw it this afternoon. I’ll take your gun and shoot the lock if necessary.”

He took her face in his hands and forced her to look him in the eyes.

“The door’s big enough for two, and there’s a big world on the other side of it.”

“I... I’m afraid that is quite impossible. Maybe...”

“Later?”

“Later. Perhaps. But now... hit me after I fire one shot.”

“Goodbye, comrade.”

“Goodbye”

She fired the pistol into one of the crumbling arches. Simon hit her, just hard enough, and caught her in his arms as her knees buckled and her gun dropped to the ground. He lowered her gently, smoothed the soft brown hair from her face, and walked swiftly from the courtyard into the kitchen. The outer door was padlocked, but a single shot freed it.

Striding and sliding down the pathless mountainside, he felt a bittersweet mixture of sadness and relief. He paused and looked back up at the hulk of old stone almost lost to his sight among the moon-touched firs. Then he turned, measured the weight of the General’s purse of gold coins, which had by some mysterious means found its way into his Saintly pocket, and went on down once more for a while to the world of ordinary things.