The Saint in Trouble (14 page)

“Think nothing of it,” Simon said cheerfully.

He folded the map and slipped it into his pocket. From a corner cabinet he took a powerful pair of binoculars.

“Okay, let’s go.”

“Go?” she echoed. “Go where?”

The Saint smiled.

“I’m taking you to church,” he said.

3

Leaving Yakovitz to take any calls, the Saint and Leila drove back towards Hyde Park Comer, turning down Constitution Hill and onto the broad red carpet of the Mall.

The rain had stopped, and a watery afternoon sun was managing to break through the clouds. Leila’s head was turned towards the Saint, but her gaze travelled past him as she took in the splendour of Buckingham Palace and its scarlet-tunicked guardsmen, and the elegant lines of the Mall’s Georgian terraces with their tall windows and stately white columns. Ahead of them, Admiralty Arch straddled the road, and through its gateway she could see the lions and fountains grouped at the foot of Nelson’s Column.

As they became enmeshed in the traffic clogging Trafalgar Square, she turned to the Saint and smiled.

“You live in a beautiful city, Simon.”

There was a new warmth to her voice, and he was glad to note that another barrier had been broken down by the use of his first name.

“Yes, it is beautiful. But London isn’t just imposing buildings and monuments, it’s people. I hope you get the chance to meet some of them.”

“So do I. Now please, Simon, just where are we going?”

They were cruising past the Law Courts and entering Fleet Street and he pointed straight ahead.

“There,” he said. “St. Paul’s Cathedral.”

For a while she was silent as she looked up at the black dome with its golden cross that soared above the surrounding offices and shops.

“But why?”

“For the finest view in London. We’ve narrowed the location of that picture down to a fairly small area, but it’s still big enough for a person like Hakim to lose himself in. We can’t simply wander around the streets hoping he’s going to pop out for a packet of cigarets just as we drive by. I’m hoping that by getting a bird’s-eye view we can draw a finer bead on that rooftop.”

He left the car near Ludgate Hill, and as they walked up towards the cathedral he pointed out the balconies that encircle the bottom and top of the dome.

“We’ll start at the Golden Gallery, that’s the one immediately below the cross, and try to get a general fix with the binoculars,” he said. “Then we can go down to the Stone Gallery and use the telescopes there to try and pinpoint it more exactly.”

Side by side they climbed the sweeping flight of stone steps and entered through the main doors. Leila stopped as she passed beyond the shadows of the portico and was suddenly confronted by the spacious grandeur of the white and gold interior.

“It’s magnificent!” she said.

Simon took her arm and led her past the tombs and monuments until they reached the foot of a curving stone staircase cut into the south wall.

“The view is even better from the Whispering Gallery,” he said. “But I’m afraid we really can’t spend too long looking around.”

Leila nodded, but there was genuine regret in her voice.

“No, I suppose not.”

St. Paul’s is 365 feet high and there are 528 steps to the top. The Saint took them two at a time as far as the Whispering Gallery. From there the spiral stone stairway becomes narrower at each turn, and he was forced to bend almost double under the low ceiling. When they finally emerged into the sunlight, even his superbly trained muscles were beginning to protest.

Far below them the streets of London stretched into the distance like the strands of a giant spider’s web. The Saint walked slowly around the north side and leant on the stone balustrade as he adjusted the focus of the binoculars. Leila held out the map and photograph so that he could see them without moving the glasses.

“It has to be somewhere between Grays Inn Road and Kings Cross Road. Beyond the Royal Free Hospital and to the east of the church, but not as far as Bryant Street, or the tower would appear much larger.”

He was talking more to himself than to Leila, and as he spoke he shaded in more of the map, gradually making the triangle smaller and smaller until only three or four streets remained. Finally he lowered the glasses and rubbed the water from his eyes.

“We’re getting closer,” he told her. “The trouble is that from this height all the blocks of houses look roughly the same size, but you can see from the photograph that behind the roof they were standing on there’s a street of buildings a storey taller. If we can use the telescope to locate one of these roads where the houses are lower than those they back onto, then we’ve scored a bull’s-eye.”

Leila was staring out across the skyline, concentrating on the area the Saint had been scanning a few moments before. Her eyes were half closed against the sun, and he could almost feel the tautness of her body. She reminded him of an eagle hover ing in the air before swooping on its prey. Her fist clenched, but without crumpling the photograph.

“We must find it,” she said. “There is no time to lose.”

She turned and led the way back down the stairs, walking around the Whispering Gallery without stopping to admire the view it offered. He followed more slowly, and she was already standing beside the telescopes by the time he again came out into the daylight.

A rapid change had come over her with the prospect of getting closer to her quarry. The sharpness had returned to her voice, and the light he had found so unsettling at their first meeting shone again from her eyes. On the drive from his home, she had mellowed from being a soldier to being a woman; now, just as quickly and unpredictably, she had switched back again. He sensed that there was something more behind her dedication than mere patriotism and a hatred of her country’s enemies, something that verged on the fanatical. He had hunted many men, but only a few of them had he truly hated; more than most men he understood the subtle difference between crusade and personal vendetta. At that moment he found Captain Leila Zabin a more interesting enigma than the man they were pursuing.

He angled the telescope and pressed a coin into the slot. The lens cleared to give a needle-sharp view over the rooftops. He was aware of Leila pacing impatiently behind him as he moved the telescope by fractions of a degree until he had studied every inch of the unshaded area on the map.

“Not Caxton Street,” he said, letting her share his thoughts as they came to him, “because they’re five-storey tenements. And it can’t be Swans Court, because they are only two. All the buildings in Alma Street have pitched roofs, so therefore that only leaves Little Claymore or one of the alleys running from it. Yes, that’s it, Little Claymore Street. It’s got to be.”

He straightened and stretched away the cramp from his shoulders. Leila took the map and located the street for herself.

“Are you sure?” she insisted.

The Saint shrugged.

“No, I’m not absolutely sure, but I’d lay odds on it.”

“Good. Let us see if you would win your bet,” she said briskly, and tamed on her heel to lead the way back.

While it may appear on the map as a sprawling metropolis with no clear-cut boundaries except the river that divides north from south, London is really only a collection of villages that have been squashed together. Like a giant amoeba the city has flowed around and absorbed them but never quite managed to crush their separate identities. Although to the visitor it may seem that only the names remain-Kensington, Camberwell, Hackney, Hampstead and the rest-something of the original still exists in each. Consequently extremes are never far apart, with streets of tenements running into avenues of mansions. Only the villagers are aware of the dividing lines, although they are as real as any national frontier.

Clerkenwell lies on the northern doorstep of the City. It begins less than a mile from the Bank of England, yet for all the resemblance the two districts bear to each other they might as well be on opposite sides of the country.

It is an area of back streets, of small shops and factories. Little Claymore Street is the same as the roads that surround it, a narrow backwater running between banks of decaying terraces. The Victorian villas designed for large middle-class families and their maids have long since been converted into warrens of tiny bed-sitters that mainly provide a cheap roof for the ever shifting population of students and immigrants. The iron railings that line the front steps are rusted and bent, the plaster cracked, and the paint peeling from windows and doors.

“The other face of London,” Simon observed as they turned Into the street and he slowed the car to a crawl.

Leila made no reply. She was sitting eagerly forward in her seat, her eyes sweeping the buildings on either side. They were halfway along the street when she grabbed his arm.

“Look!” she exclaimed.

At the far end, a group of men and women were staring up at a third-floor window. Most were Pakistanis, a few West Indians, and whatever was going on behind the drawn curtains had obviously upset them.

“Don’t raise your hopes, Leila,” he cautioned her. “Lots of things happen every day in an area like this. It could just be an eviction. And if it’s not, we may already be too late.”

She turned to him, her eyes blazing with irrational anger.

“Can you think of a better place to start?”

“No,” he admitted, and eased the car into the kerb.

He had come to find the scene in the photograph and was quite prepared to force his way into every house if necessary. At least this one had its front door already open.

The group of bystanders fell silent and backed away as he and Leila climbed out of the car and ran up the steps and into the hall. The Saint leapt nimbly up the uncarpeted stairs with Leila at his heels. From outside came the prolonged sound of a car horn, and he remembered the new station wagon that had been parked farther along the street and wondered.

As they gained the top landing a woman screamed. Simon reached the door in a single stride and did not bother trying the handle but launched his whole body forward, twisting as he did so. His shoulder smashed into the worm-eaten wood, shattering the lock and sending the door crashing open. His momentum carried him a yard into the room before he could recover his balance. He straightened and stopped in his tracks, his arms held out from his sides to prevent Leila from passing.

A girl sat facing him. Her long black hair was dishevelled, her eyes wide with fear. On her cheek the dark skin still showed the imprint of the hand that had slapped it, and there was an ugly swelling on the side of her chin.

Two dark-skinned men stood on either side of her. Both wore roll-necked jumpers and jeans, army flak jackets stretched tight across their shoulders. If it came to a fight they would each concede him a couple of inches in height and reach, but would be at no obvious disadvantage as far as weight and muscle were concerned. The Saint looked down the muzzles of the two automatics levelled at his chest and seemed to find something amusing there.

“If you use those popguns,” he said calmly, “you’ll have to shoot your way out floor by floor. My men are on every landing.”

With no way of checking the bluff, the two men hesitated. And then, as if to underline his warning, came the tramp of feet on the stairs as some of the crowd from outside summoned enough courage to find out what was happening.

The smaller and heavier of the two jerked his head towards an open door at the far end of the room, through which the Saint could see the flat rooftop pictured in the photograph. Still keeping their guns trained on the Saint and Leila, they backed towards it. Simon waited until they had reached the roof and disappeared from view around the corner of the house before moving.

He turned to Leila.

“Look after the girl and get rid of the sightseers,” he ordered.

“Simon, be careful.”

The words followed him without effect as he went through the door by which the two Arabs had departed.

The narrow frontage of the house belied its depth. The girl’s room was a former attic directly beneath the pitched roof which was the only one visible from the road. The flat area onto which the two men had run and where the picture had been taken was the top of the remainder of the house, which stretched back until it almost joined the rear of the buildings in the next street.

As the Saint stepped outside, he was all too aware of the perfect target he offered. A flicker of movement on his left caught his eye, and he sank to a crouch as he turned, perfectly balanced on his toes and ready to dive for cover at the first sign that the two men had decided to fight it out. The roofs of the adjoining houses were separated only by low brick walls from each of which rose a cluster of chimney pots.

Four houses away, the two terrorists were standing obviously uncertain of their next move. The Saint sprinted for the first dividing wall and cleared it in a flying leap that brought him safely behind the chimney stack of the house next door. The men spun around at the noise, but he was already hidden. Exposing only as much of his head as he needed to peer around the sheltering brickwork, he saw the smaller of the two point to the alley separating Little Claymore Street from the next road, and as his companion headed for a drainpipe, the smaller man ran on towards the end of the terrace.

The Saint flipped a mental coin that landed in favor of the man remaining on the roof. He swung over the next wall and then the one following that, darting from chimney to chimney as he went, without taking his eyes off the man he was pursuing, relying on his speed and sense of timing to ensure that every time the Arab turned he was already out of sight. He held the advantage of not having to worry where the chase led, while the other was constantly searching for a way of escape.

Gradually the gap narrowed until he was only a house away from his quarry.

The terrorist was kneeling at bay in the shadow of the next dividing wall no more than six yards away. The Saint ducked back behind his protective chimney stack, unable to make another move without inviting a bullet. He cursed himself for not bringing a gun, as he scanned the immediate area for anything that might serve as a weapon.