Leslie Charteris - The Saint Returns

“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. Incidentally, 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 herself.

“But you see the advantage to the British, for example,” 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 cutback 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 evidence 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 Russian 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 practically 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 beginning 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 whoever to make me think it is the Chinese behind this — and in that way putting a bigger split between us and another socialist power?”

“It would be very clever, Tanya,” the Saint said, touching 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 Molière 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 Grossmeyer, Cardin, and so forth, mailed from Altbergen — Altbergen being a tiny village in the mountains in southeast 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 Molière was so kind as to offer us this afternoon?”

“It seems like years ago.”

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

“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 Molière and plenty of facts by early morning, you and I should take off for Switzerland.”

“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.”

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 below and the raw gray expanses of stone above.