Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Pursuit

There was no trace of a smile or any other softening of his stolid face. The Saint looked at the card and turned to speak to Vicky.

“Mr Boris Uzdanov of Uncle Sam’s CIA... or so it says,” he told her.

“I would like to come out of the corridor,” Uzdanov said with a trace of uneasiness. “Do you mind? You may search me if you wish. I am not armed.” He lifted the wooden cane he carried in his right hand. “Unless of course you count this.”

Simon nodded and stood aside. He felt sure he could deal with the visitor’s cane, whatever unadvertised qualities it might possess.

Uzdanov stepped into the room and made a perfunctory bow in Vicky’s direction as the door was closed behind him. He produced another identity card.

“Shall I continue with business?” he asked. “Time is not a thing I have much of at the moment.”

“By all means,” the Saint agreed. “None of us is suffering from a surplus.”

“As this card tells you, I am also a member of the local communist organization, which I was able to infiltrate, and an occasional agent of the MVD — luckily for you, Mr Templar.”

The confessed double agent blinked through his spectacles as he awaited a reaction.

“I’m most gratified to hear about my good fortune,” murmured Simon. “Do I need to ask which of those superspy outfits is likely to end up with the honour of paying your old age pension?”

Uzdanov bridled perceptibly, but his rather breathy hushed voice was unaffected.

“I assure you that my loyalty is to the West. My superiors in Washington are perfectly satisfied of that. My family were murdered by the Red Army in the Ukraine.”

Vicky looked reproachfully at Simon, who made a gesture that invited Uzdanov to go on with his explanations.

“Since I am Russian, the CIA has naturally tended to use me for work involving Soviet activities, and in the course of my everyday work I happened to find out that our friends in the Kremlin had heard rumours of the Nazi money Miss Kinian was looking for.”

Vicky was awestricken.

“You mean they heard about me?” she gasped. “In Moscow?”

“That is correct,” said Uzdanov formally. “Just as the American intelligence services knew about you — and just as the ex-Gestapo man Norden knew about you.”

Vicky sank back into her chair as if she might disappear entirely, an event which apparently would not have displeased her in the least.

“I think I’m going to faint,” she croaked.

“It does sound as if you’ve had about as much private Me as a bug under a microscope,” Simon admitted.

“You say the nicest things.”

Uzdanov obviously had no penchant for idle badinage.

“You are fortunate to be alive, indeed, Miss Kinian. It was an MVD man who attacked you tonight...”

Vicky looked at him sharply.

“You know that? How...”

Uzdanov raised an authoritative hand and interrupted.

“Directly it was known that Ruspine had failed to get the funds after his visit to the cemetery tonight, I was ordered to impersonate a Swiss detective, arrest both of you, and take you into a trap.”

“And the Russians would do all that just for... a little money?” Vicky asked.

The Saint met her glance with a warning look which should have reduced her to silence.

“They were interested enough to have ordered me to kill Ruspine if he failed,” Uzdanov told her. “It was an assignment which I found it quite humorous to carry out.”

“You murdered him?” Vicky gulped.

“Why not? The CIA surely couldn’t object to my accommodating the Kremlin by eliminating one of their own agents at their own request.”

“And I suppose Ruspine was expected to find enough loot to repay the effort,” Simon prompted him.

“The Soviets can use funds of that kind to finance their operations abroad,” Uzdanov said. “But I’m afraid I have very little time to explain everything now. I am expected to take you from the hotel, pretending to have you under arrest, and to deliver you to communist agents within the half-hour. Of course I had already had word from Colonel Wade in Lisbon to keep an eye out for you, Mr Templar. So you see, I am now in a most awkward position. I can hardly turn you over to the MVD, but if I do not...”

His stubby hands made a gesture of futility on either side of his paunch.

The Saint was still watching him closely, trying to estimate just how much showed above the water and how much still bobbed below the depths. He had remembered immediately on opening his door that the white-bearded man who stood there was the same one who had been dawdling in the Geneva airport terminal earlier in the day. Uzdanov had said that he had been ordered to keep an eye out for the Saint, but he had only offhandedly admitted being on the Tagus Hotel stairs in Lisbon and had not even mentioned his presence in the Geneva airport lobby — a fact Simon had deliberately avoided bringing up. Nevertheless, the Saint knew better than most people how devious the reticences and evasions of an undercover operator must sometimes be. Now he decided to make a small test.

“I can understand your position,” he said easily. “I just wish you’d been able to get in touch with me when I first got to Geneva before lunch...”

Suddenly the other’s dark eyes were riveted on him. There was almost no interval before Uzdanov spoke.

“You are joking with me?” he challenged in return.

“How?”

“You came to Geneva this afternoon — and you waited for a time in the terminal building. I know. I was there watching you.”

“I know,” Simon said blandly. “I was watching you.”

Uzdanov continued to study him detachedly. Then, with a kind of impatient frustration, he tugged at his white beard.

“You still don’t trust me,” he said.

“I’m more inclined to believe you now than I was before,” the Saint responded. “But if you’re going to suggest that we should play rats to even a CIA Pied Piper, I’m afraid we can’t oblige.”

“Of course not,” Uzdanov said. “It’s obviously out of the question that I turn you over to the communists—”

“Then what’s the problem?” Simon demanded. “Miss Kinian and I were just going to slide out of here in a hurry anyhow. If you tell the comrades we’d already disappeared when you got to the hotel...”

“It is not quite so easy,” Uzdanov interjected. “Like Mischa Ruspine, I too am watched. If you leave now you will be seen, and if I leave without you, everything I have built up for several years will be exploded — even if nothing worse happens to me. The consequences for you could also be violent.” He took a few nervous paces as he talked and then faced the Saint again. “We must leave together, making it look as if I had carried out my orders. Then, after we have shaken off any followers, you will overpower me and escape — perhaps leaving a bump on my skull just to keep the performance convincing.”

Vicky looked at Simon anxiously. His expression was much more solemn than she had ever seen it before. Inside his head arguments and counterarguments traded thrusts with dizzying speed. When all advantages and disadvantages, threats and possible parries had been weighed, one overwhelming fact remained: Boris Uzdanov was on his hands, and there was no really uncomplicated way to get rid of him — whether his story was genuine or not — here at the hotel. Friend or foe, to ditch him now could easily bring on an immediate crisis.

“Okay, we’ll play it your way,” the Saint said at last, with abrupt decisiveness. “It’ll get us out of here — and we can hope it saves blowing your cover.”

Uzdanov’s stocky body relaxed a little and his lips showed, for the first time, that they were capable of flexing into some semblance of a heartfelt smile.