The Saint in Pursuit

by Leslie Charteris

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

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

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

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

  Vicky faced front again.

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

  Uzdanov turned forward.

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

  4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I would not count on his help if I were you, Templar. He also happens to be a member of the Party. He will remember nothing about you or this—” Uzdanov snorted congestively again. “This innocent tourist! Or he will remember whatever I tell him to.”

  Then his voice became more harsh and business-like.

  “Now, I want to see one of those letters that you were preparing to share between you.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “No,” Vicky answered with desperate calm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Templar!” screamed Uzdanov impotently.

  “Oooh,” Vicky moaned.

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

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

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

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

  “What about you?” she cried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER SIX

  HOW SIMON TEMPLAR CONTINUED TO BE HELPFUL

  1

  The Saint had no time to appreciate the devastation his skull had inflicted on Uzdanov’s physiognomy. The sudden grab of the brakes had made the car swerve wildly and had hurled the Russian so violently forward that he might have continued on through the windshield if he had not been brought to a halt by Simon’s head. He went heavily limp across the Saint’s shoulders, his dagger clattering down among the foot controls, one of his forearms thrust between the spokes of the steering wheel, and the Saint struggled for control of the wheel as the car skidded with a scream of scorching rubber. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Vicky still balled on the floor next to his feet, her own eyes squeezed tightly shut. She let out a terrified gasp as she felt the car veer.

  “Stay where you are!” Simon told her.

  Somehow he kept the Volkswagen on the road in a swerving course that allowed no more sharp applications of the brake. It was all he could do to hold the car on the steep downgrade while he used all the leverage of his back to shrug and push the unconscious Uzdanov away, disengaging his fat arm from the steering wheel and dumping him off his shoulders and neck into the rear of the car.