The Saint in Persuit (18 page)

“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 noncommit-tally. “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.

“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 humour-lessly. “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.

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 any more!” 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 con-gestively 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 we 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”

“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.