The Saint in Pursuit

by Leslie Charteris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Vicky nodded numbly.

  “Straight,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so—”

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

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

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

  3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I would like to come out of the corridor,” Uzdanov said with a trace of uneasiness. “Do you mind? You may search me if you wish. I am not armed.”

  He lifted the wooden cane he carried in his right hand.

  “Unless of course you count this.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Vicky was awestricken.

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

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

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

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

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

  “You say the nicest things.”

  Uzdanov obviously had no penchant for idle badinage.

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

  Vicky looked at him sharply.

  “You know that? How…”

  Uzdanov raised an authoritative hand and interrupted.

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

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

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

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

  “You murdered him?” Vicky gulped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “How?”

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

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

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

  “You still don’t trust me,” he said.

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

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

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

  “It is not quite so easy,” Uzdanov interjected. “Like Mischa Ruspine, I too am watched. If you leave now you will be seen, and if I leave without you, everything I have built up for several years will be exploded—even if nothing worse happens to me. The consequences for you could also be violent.”

  He took a few nervous paces as he talked and then faced the Saint again.

  “We must leave together, making it look as if I had carried out my orders. Then, after we have shaken off any followers, you will overpower me and escape—perhaps leaving a bump on my skull just to keep the performance convincing.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Where to?”

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

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

  Simon shook his head.

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

  “That would be even better,” said Uzdanov.

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

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

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

  “Quite right,” Simon assented reluctantly.

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

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

  “With a worried expression,” he replied helpfully.

  “I can guarantee that,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  They had reached his hired car.

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

  “Correct procedure again,” the Saint approved.

  A moment later they were all inside the car.

  “So far so good?” Vicky asked.

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

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

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

  “Drive,” Uzdanov suggested simply.

  Simon started the engine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “How do you mean?” Uzdanov asked.

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

  Uzdanov turned and studied the road through the back window.

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

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

  “Continue,” said Uzdanov.

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