The Saint Returns (22 page)

“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 un
folding the rather heavy paper of the letter. Simon, in
order not
to seem to pry, devoted his attention to pour
ing 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 empty
ing 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
him
self 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 ex
pressively
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 attrac
tion. 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 al
ready. 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. Inciden
tally, 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 her
self.

“But you see the advantage to the
British, for ex
ample,” 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 cut
back 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 evi
dence 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 Rus
sian
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 prac
tically 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 be
ginning 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 who
ever to make me
think
it is the Chinese behind
this—and
in that way putting a bigger split between us and an
other socialist power?”

“It would be very clever, Tanya,” the Saint said, touch
ing 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
Moli
è
re 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 Gross
meyer, Cardin, and so forth, mailed from
Altbergen—
Altbergen being a tiny village in
the mountains in south
east 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 Moli
è
re was so kind as
to offer us this afternoon?”

“It seems like years ago.”

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

“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 Moli
è
re and plenty of facts
by early morning, you and I should take off for Switzer
land.”

“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 be
low and the raw gray
expanses of stone above.