The Saint Abroad: The Art Collectors/ the Persistent Patriots (15 page)

He had felt like going to Nagawiland for two
primary
reasons. In the first place, it was one of the few places left
where one
could see certain African animals in an almost
completely natural
state. Thanks to Liskard’s predecessors, a
hugh preserve had
been cordoned off and kept free from
poachers. Simon had stayed in the
guest house of the game
park and thoroughly enjoyed himself for
several days, luxuriat
ing in the total absence of pressure. It was
fascinating to be
able to watch the animals in the park, whose lives were
as
direct, as cleanly instinctive and sometimes as deadly, as his
own had always been.

The second reason for the Saint’s choice of
Nagawiland as
a place to spend those few days involved a more
practical kind
of interest. He wanted to see for himself one of those
newly
emergent countries whose teething troubles provided so much
grist for
the world’s press mills. Nagawiland had in recent
months occupied
considerably more space in newsprint than it
did in geographical area, and much of the
journalistic ex
panses dedicated to it were
thronged with inky armies of reporters and editors marching forth in a sort of
new Chil
dren’s Crusade against
colonialism, restricted suffrage, and
Thomas
Liskard. Simon Templar, on the other hand, had
developed a great admiration for Thomas Liskard, without
of course having had any personal contact with him.
It
seemed to him that Liskard was
one of the few politicians in
the
world who was more interested in the job he was doing
for his country than in his own career. His whole
life reflected
his ability and
integrity—and it was in fact his completely
unblemished reputation among the British public as well as
his own people which gave him his great personal
power as a
statesman, and which kept
his land from catastrophe.

So Simon Templar had a chance, in going to
Liskard’s
country, not only to relax in the tropics while the world
to the north shivered in wintry slush, but also to verify his positive
opinions
about Nagawiland’s good government. It seemed to
him more than ever obvious that—contrary
to the strictly
liberal, rigidly democratic
doctrines expressed in most of the newspapers—it was slightly better that a
country be governed
well by a few
people than that it be governed poorly by a
great many.

It was not one of the Saint’s intentions to
take a look at
Thomas Liskard himself, but the fact that he did see the
Prime
Minister was no great coincidence. There was only one
direct flight to
London each week from Nagawiland’s just
created jet-sized
airfield, so everybody going to London in any
given seven-day
period would naturally collect at the terminal
on the same morning.

The Saint, tall and lean and tanned, in a
middleweight
blue suit that tried to take into account the fact what
while it was 98 degrees Fahrenheit here it would be 42 degrees in
London
when he got off the plane, gratefully left the sweltering glare of the asphalt
drive where his taxi had dropped him, and entered the air-conditioned coolness
of the terminal build
ing. The place was not large by European standards, but it
was white and clean and new, and it possessed a
small
restaurant which supplied him a
late breakfast

When he came out into the waiting room he
immediately noticed an atmosphere of expectancy among the airport per
sonnel
and the two dozen or so waiting passengers and their
friends. Simon, having read in the papers
that the Prime
Minister would be traveling
on the same flight that he was
taking,
realized what the anticipation was all about. He
stationed himself in a comfortable chair alongside a row of
tropical flowers in colorful ceramic pots. There
he could have a farewell view of the Nagawiland countryside, get a look at
the Prime Minister when he arrived, and read the
morning
paper in detail.

The front page carried reports of threats
against the Prime
Minister’s life by “nationalist groups,” and
the reassuring
news that the jetliner and its passengers would be
thoroughly
searched for bombs and weapons before Liskard got aboard.
The small but vociferous Popular Front party (which
amounted
to the disloyal opposition to Liskard’s United Re
form party, and which took a much more
“liberal” line)
deplored such
extremist excesses as assassination attempts,
but sympathized with their motives and called for Liskard’s
resignation and “return” of the
government to the hands of
“the
people.”

There are certain species of birds which are
said to detect
the approach of a hurricane several days before its
arrival, and
to abandon the threatened area while the air is still
mild and sunny. Simon Templar had the same facility for sensing with
great
precision when some explosive event was about to take
place in his presence.
Without that sixth sense he would
never have survived and prospered as
long as he had. In this
case he had a distinct feeling that an attempt
to kill the
Prime
Minister would actually be made, and that if it were not made in the capital,
or on the road the Prime Minister
would be
traveling, it would very possibly be here at Nagawiland’s
National
Airport.

The Saint did not shrug such intuitions off lightly, but at
the same time he did not regard himself as an
infallible
prophet. His premonition—which he was quite ready to laugh
off when it proved to be wrong—took a practical
form only in
that it made him more alert and gave his nerves and muscles
a
pleasant ready tension.

“Here he comes,” one of the baggage
clerks said.

The people in the waiting room watched as
several auto
mobiles
pulled up in the asphalt circular drive and discharged their passengers. Simon
saw the tall Prime Minister’s shaggy
thatch
of brown hair above the other heads. Policemen
entered the waiting room.
Some obvious secret service types
already
there began to look even more obvious. Then came
half a dozen photographers walking backwards, and walking
toward them came Thomas Liskard, his blonde wife,
and his
associates and aides.

A section of the waiting room had been roped
off in
advance, and now it was occupied by the government group.
Simon, not
standing and craning his neck as most of the
others in the place
had done, caught only glimpses of
Liskard’s rather rumpled gray suit in
the crowd. At the same
time, he saw the jet which was to take them
to London
swooping smoothly down on to the runway.

The photographers had just about exhausted the
possi
bilities for pictures in the waiting room. They drifted away
from the
official party, most of them going out to the loading area. Some of the police
went in the same direction. The pack
around the Prime Minister began to
break up and disperse.
Liskard, his wife, and several of their group took seats in the
roped-off section. The whining roar of the jetliner
grew
louder as the plane taxied toward
the terminal building. Just
before it stopped, its engines generated so
much noise, even in the more or less soundproofed waiting room, that
conversation
came to a virtual halt.

That was when Simon Templar suddenly seemed
to go mad. One moment he was lounging peaceably in his chair.
The next
instant he sprang to his feet with a yell, snatched up
a blue ceramic pot
containing a crimson tropical blossom, and
hurled it across the
airport waiting room at the Prime
Minister of Nagawiland.

3

Within two seconds, two more ceramic pots were flying
through the air from Simon Templar’s side of the
room toward
the Prime Minister and
his party. Liskard, his wife, and his
associates
were diving for cover, and the Saint was throwing
himself down to avoid gunfire that might
understandably be
sent in his
direction by the official party’s guards. But the
only gunfire came from the ceiling, and it was
directed at
Thomas Liskard.

Along the ceiling were a series of
grid-covered air-condition
ing ducts, and it was through the grating of
one of those two-
foot-square
holes that the Saint had seen—just before he
jumped
to his feet, and began to throw things—the head and
shoulders of a man,
and a rifle barrel. Merely shouting a
warning
at the Prime Minister would probably have resulted
in nothing more, at least for the first precious
few seconds, than startled stares—even if the shout were heard at all. So
the Saint threw the pots, and even before the
third had
smashed against the floor
beside the Prime Minister’s sofa,
rifle
shots thudded harmlessly into the sofa and shattered
the plate glass window just behind it.

Before the police and the secret service men
could so much
as
turn toward the Saint, their attention was caught by the
crack of the rifle above their heads. The pistols
which might have been directed at Simon were quickly aimed at the grat
ing, and bullets clanged against the metal and
plunked holes
in the plaster around
the hole.

There was no answering fire from the
rifleman. Men dashed out of the doors of the waiting room to surround the build
ing.
Others crouched with drawn pistols behind chairs, gazing up at the row of
gratings in the ceiling, waiting for more shots.

“Everybody stay down,” somebody
was shouting.

“Is Tom all right?” one of
Liskard’s aides called from the
shelter of an alcove.

“I’m fine,” Liskard boomed back.

His rumbling resonant voice was suited to
the size of his
body. He was crouched behind the sofa. His wife had dis
appeared
entirely behind it.

“Look there!”

Since the walls of the whole waiting room
were almost
entirely glass, the last phase of the attempted
assassination
was visible to everyone inside the building. A white man
in a
soiled tan suit appeared on the edge of the low roof which
covered
the unloading area of the driveway. He fired his rifle
wildly without
taking real aim at any of the security men
around the terminal
building, then jumped to the ground. He
fell forward on his hands and knees when
he hit the grass,
and then snatched up his
rifle and ran. The guards had no
choice
but to shoot him down. Their weapons crackled in a sudden fusillade. The
would-be assassin leaped twisting into
the
air, throwing his rifle above his head. Then he crashed
down on the earth and moved no more.

A civilian-dressed security man and a
uniformed policeman
were already standing over Simon, their guns drawn. It
was
by no means obvious to them whether he was an accomplice
of the
gunman or not. The Saint got to his feet with the
utmost casualness and
dusted his coat sleeves and the knees of
his trousers. The
secret service man looked around, not quite
sure what to do with
him.

“I believe this gentleman saved my
life,” a deep voice said.

Thomas Liskard was walking across the room
toward the
Saint, much to the discomfort of his bodyguard, who
thought
he should stay under cover until the area was declared en
tirely
safe. The other non-official persons in the waiting room
were being
gently herded into one small section of the place
so that they could be
easily watched over and questioned.
The Saint, as a man long inured to
life’s more spectacular
possible crises, had only one really pressing
thought:
  
Now
we’ll be
hours late on the takeoff.

Prime Minister Liskard strode easily up to him and offered
his huge hand. He was the kind of bulky bearish
man whose
very clumsiness had a
politically valuable magnetism to it, and
whose craggily handsome face
had an obvious substratum of
keen
intelligence.