The Saint Returns (25 page)

Tanya had wanted to come, but he had convinced
her
that it was foolhardy for them both to be committed at
the same
time. If he had not returned by midnight she
would be free to take
whatever action she thought best—
an old tactic but, like most lasting traditions, a sound
one.
It was almost ten o’clock now.

There was another logical reason for her to
wait at the
Gasthof:
Igor and Ivan might arrive at any
moment, fol
lowing directions that had been left in Paris, and any
news they
had of Moli
è
re might be vital. Someone
should
be at the inn to meet them if they did turn up.

As he came closer to the monastery, Simon’s
stride slackened and became more stealthy, until the last yards
were
covered with the silence of a stalking cat. The si
lence within seemed
to be just as complete, and the few
leaded windows high up in the walls
were dark, but he
could not believe that all the inmates would go to sleep
at the same
time, leaving no one on watch, if his suspi
cions had any
foundation.

He picked up a couple of pebbles in one hand,
and
stood with his back pressed against the wall to one side
of the
great doors. In his other hand he held the long
branch which he had
discarded there on his earlier visit. He reached over and tapped with it on the
door. After a pause, he tapped again, insistently. And again.

He heard the spy-slot open, but knew he could
not be seen from where he stood. He waited another second or two, and then
scratched hard with his stick on the lower
part of the far door,
where the watcher inside would not
possibly see what was doing it.

The panel slid shut, and bolts and bars
scraped on the
inside. The door gave a faint cautious creak, and the pro
file of a
man came through the opening. But the man
was no monk—at least,
no monk in the regular accoutre
ments. He was wearing military style fatigues,
boots, and a forage cap. Even more unorthodox was the large pistol
he carried, its barrel
lengthened by the thick cylinder of a
silencer.

Before the sentry’s widening arc of survey could swing
around far enough to find him, Simon lobbed one
of his
pebbles straight ahead. The
sound of its landing in the
underbrush
opposite riveted the guard’s eyes in that di
rection; the second pebble, tossed the same way, brought
the man a step outside the door, his pistol at the
ready.

It was as much space as the Saint needed. He
stepped across in one long stride, swinging his stick numbingly
into the
watchman’s larynx, and then bringing him down
with one swift karate
chop to the back of the neck.

Simon picked up the pistol and checked it
quickly. As
an afterthought, he also took the guard’s forage cap and
put it
on—if any others should see him before he saw them, it might in near-darkness
be just enough to dis
guise him for a few seconds that could make vital differ
ences. Then he stepped in through the great doorway
and pushed the door shut behind him
until it just touched
its mate
without latching.

The courtyard was dark and deserted, but not
all the
windows that opened on to the interior were blacked out.
The Saint moved on tiptoe
towards the nearest one, which
he recalled
as belonging to the refectory. As soon as he was close enough to look in, he
had complete and star
tling confirmation of what had only been a vague
impres
sion when he had glimpsed the
doorkeeper’s features in
the moonlight.

The sight would undoubtedly have caused the
found
ing father of Kloster Altbergen to sit up in his do-it-
yourself
grave and demand an entire keg of Grand
Abrouillac, for his
venerable dining hall was populated
by half a dozen Chinese.

They were not dressed in grim woolly habits,
but in
shirt sleeves or white laboratory coats. They were not
engaged in silent meditation,
but in gambling games, idle
conversation,
and cigarette smoking.

On the whole they were not husky or even
particularly
robust-looking men, which led the Saint to the swift con
clusion
that they constituted a technical rather than a military task force. If there
were other trained soldiers such as the guard probably had been, they were not
in
sight. And it also appeared that unless egalitarianism in
China had
gone further than he suspected, there ap
peared to be no leader
among the group. The men had
the air of comrades glad to be relaxing at
the end of a
day’s routine work.

The Saint dragged himself away from that
fascinating
spectacle and moved around the cloisters until he came
to another
lighted window.

There he hit the jackpot: a rather overweight
Chinese
gentleman in a green uniform without insignia was sit
ting at a
table in the library; with him was another man,
not Chinese but some
variety of European. What lan
guage they were speaking could not be heard
through
the sealed glass. Between them on the table was a pile of
gold coins and a sort of record
book in which the Chinese
—whom Simon
immediately christened “the General”—
would occasionally write
something.

The European, who the Saint now assumed to be
“Brother Anton,” was not in black robes either, but in a
suede jacket, and he seemed to
have just concluded a dis
cussion with the
General. He stood and left the room as
the
Chinese went back to his calculations.

Simon flattened himself behind a pillar;
Anton emerged
through a narrow passage into the courtyard a few feet
away. The erstwhile monk
stretched his arms, took a deep
breath, and
admired the moon.

Then, as his gaze returned earthwards, he seemed to be
transfixed by some much less pacifying vision. For
three or four seconds he stood frozen in unnatural rigidity, and
then he whirled around and rushed back to the
entrance
from which he had emerged,
yelling something shrill and incomprehensible, but the Saint had no need of a
literal
translation to recognize the
strident urgency of the
alarm.

Looking around to discover what could have
triggered
it, he saw that the big door which he had been so careful
to almost close was now wide open. The mild force of
the wind
could not possibly have moved the heavy gate
on its hinges, and the
guard Simon had disposed of would
be out for some time more, if not
permanently.

Turning back again the other way, the Saint
had a
glimpse through the window of the General scraping gold
coins into
a leather purse which he jammed in his pocket
as he jumped to his
feet. Anton lunged into the room
and pressed a button which set off muted
alarm bells
throughout the monastery.

Simon stooped low and dashed for the well.
Sticking
the guard’s automatic into his belt, he swung his legs
over
the waist-high circular wall, seized the doubled rope
which hung from
the pulley on the scaffolding above his
head, and slid down so
that he was just able to see what
was happening around him.

He had already been asking himself if Tanya
had fol
lowed alone, or if Ivan and Igor had arrived after he left
and come up
to the monastery with her. Then, as the Chi
nese were hurrying
out of the refectory, he saw a shad
owy figure dart from near the gate into
the passage taken a few moments before by Anton.

He was sure it was Tanya. She had probably
seen him
in his borrowed cap and mistaken him for a guard. Sec
onds later
he saw her through the lighted window holding
a pistol on the
General and Anton.

The alarm had roused the refectory, and an influx of
shouting, confusedly milling people into the
courtyard
allowed the Saint no more
time to watch Tanya’s prog
ress. He
slipped down about two feet, straddled the
bucket which swung at one end of the rope, and held
himself steady by grasping the other strand.
Knocking
the forage cap deliberately
from his head, he heard it
plop into
water just a couple of yards underneath him,
and then he listened
closely in order to follow the events
taking
place above.

An authoritative voice was calling out in
Chinese over
the hubbub, and all activity seemed to come to an abrupt
halt. The excited shouts died away, and the running feet
were still. Simon raised
himself so that he could see. The
half-dozen
civilians, joined by Anton and a pair of men
in uniforms like that of
the guard who had originally been
at the
gate, were standing frozen, watching Tanya hold
ing her pistol near the General’s head in one of the arch
ways.

She and her hostage had apparently already discovered
that they had a common language in English.

“Tell them to be still and put their
guns down, or I
shoot you,” she said. “Also, my men are
watching and will
fire
if they resist.”

“Yes,” said the General.

He called something in Chinese, and the
guards
dropped their weapons.

“Where is that pig, Templar?” Tanya
asked.

The General shook his head.

“I do not understand.”

“A man came here before me. Where is
he?”

“No man. We see no man.”

Simon might have spoken then, but the
uncomplimentary epithet which Tanya had attached to his name made
him reticent. Besides, just at
that moment one of the Chi
nese civilians
let out a yelp, pointing at the well. The
Saint let the taut rope slip quickly through his hands,
dropping him from the sight of those above ground.
As
he descended he could hear Tanya’s
voice above the
others.

“What is it?”

“Man in well,” the General
translated.

Simon could not distinguish any more words
in the con
fusion
of sounds that echoed in the depths of the well. He
did not particularly care; he was much more interested in
avoiding being trapped and possibly shot like a
fish in a
barrel. He could only hope
that a theory he had formed
in the
afternoon would turn out to be right: He believed
that an underground stream ran under the monastery,
passing through the well, under the
kitchen, and directly
beside the
liqueur-making vault.

Letting go the rope entirely, he dropped down
into the water and found footing on the slippery bottom, bracing
himself against the curving
wall. To his relief, he felt that
the water,
which reached above his waist, was flowing
and not still. Though his pistol had been submerged and
possibly put out of commission, his breast pocket
flashlight was in working order.

No rain of bullets was yet descending upon
his head, but he moved quickly anyway. His feeble light showed him that his
hopes of a tunnel carrying the water were
better than confirmed:
the channel seemed to have been artificially enlarged, possibly centuries
before, at its
downstream exit from the well—the direction which led
toward the
kitchen and the basement he had seen in the
afternoon.

Inside the narrow passage the water level was
higher
than in the
well, but there was still room for a man’s head
and shoulders above the surface. Undoubtedly the monks
of older, more generally dangerous times had used
the
tunnel for some such purpose as
the Saint was using it
now, and it
seemed likely that in their anxiety and eager
ness to escape from
irreverent barons or rampaging Prot
estants
they would have provided a more private means
of entrance and exit than the well in the middle of their
courtyard.

Simon moved on with the flowing water until he saw a
glimmer of light. It was not, however, the door he
had
hoped for. Putting his eye to the
glowing chink in the
wall he found
that he was standing just outside the base
ment he had visited earlier in the day. He could see the
rows of
bottles and tiers of casks. Then he saw Tanya and
the General coming into the basement from the foot of
the steps, Tanya’s pistol still pointed at the
nape of the General’s neck. The Saint postulated that either she was
pulling a good bluff or that Igor and Ivan had
shown
themselves and taken control in
the courtyard.