Лесли Чартерис - The Saint

“Will you try to make it work?”

“Every hour of every day!” insisted the scientist. “To think, a future free from the tyranny of winter!” He quickly turned to his computer, his mind racing. “I’ll need some time alone...”

“Work well and work fast,” advised the Saint. “Your boss plans to discredit Karpov with cold fusion’s failure at a Red Square rally.”

Both men heard the noise of someone ascending the staircase.

Templar quickly handed Botvin a two-way transmitter-receiver not much larger than the bug he left on Tretiak’s bookshelf.

“Now that we’re friends,” asserted Templar, “let’s stay in touch.”

Botvin nodded and placed it in his pocket just as the door opened and Ilya entered. He barely noticed the busy painter slipping past, calling out details of paint requirements in a deep Russian baritone.

“Botvin, you useless intellectual,” snapped Ilya, “have you seen a filthy old babushka?”

“It is not my job to keep track of your women. Little Ilya,” remarked Botvin coldly. “Now, please, I have had enough interruptions for one day. I am doing important work for your father, for Russia.”

Ilya’s Doc Martens stomped out of the room and back down the stairs.

Tretiak continued his conspiratorial conversation in the library, unaware that every incriminating morsel of conversation was being clearly transmitted and recorded, including an unexpected telephone call from President Karpov.

Informed by Vereshagin that Karpov was on the line, Tretiak began to gloat.

“I can almost feel my bank account straining under the weight of all those billions,” he joked before picking up the receiver.

“Because you came to me with these cold fusion plans as a patriot,” began Karpov warmly, “and because you have the best interests of Russia at heart...”

Tretiak smiled broadly, cradled the phone against his shoulder, and spread himself a caviar-covered celebratory cracker.

“Yes, true, true,” agreed Tretiak before taking a bite.

“I propose, as a patriot, also,” continued the president, “that you sell your cold fusion to the Chinese — it would be good fun to watch those old farts lose eighty-two billion yen!”

Tretiak stopped chewing mid-bite.

“According to my experts who’ve reviewed your data,” continued Karpov in the same tone, “I’d do as well to buy blueprints for a perpetual-motion machine. Or better yet, a skyhook!”

Tretiak spit his mouthfull of cracker and caviar into a napkin.

“Your experts lead you down a path of weakness, of feminine submission,” countered Tretiak angrily. “Soon Mother Russia will be gang-raped by Western Europe while America looks on, giggling... her corpse picked cleaner than by Napoleon and Hitler combined!”

Karpov, unruffled, replied.

“You have a gift for the mixed malign metaphor, but as a salesman, you’re a failure.”

“History is littered with would-be leaders who failed to act at the decisive moment...” Tretiak ranted.

“Oh, I’m decisive,” interrupted President Karpov. “I’ve decided to terminate this conversation.”

Tretiak was left holding a silent telephone.

He hung up, shrugged, and poured himself a fresh drink.

“No matter,” he said with a smile. “After the coup, the billions will be ours anyway.”

Vereshagin, Sklarov, and Tretiak raised their glasses in a toast to their glorious, victorious future.

Simultaneously Templar, appearing no different than any number of painters and workmen swarming over the mansion, took the liberty of exploration. He cheerfully let himself into every room of Tretiak’s domicile, and contented himself that he had cased the joint with thoroughness and professionalism.

Then, in Tretiak’s private master suite, he was struck by inspiration. Unlike other Russians, Tretiak had heat. He also had hot water.

He actually did it — he walked casually into the master bath and turned on the tap. Ten minutes later, while Tretiak and his co-conspirators were revealing all to a hidden microphone, Simon Templar was stretched full length in a steaming bathtub, innocently playing submarine with the sponge and a bar of soap.

Later, towel dried and freshly scrubbed, the paint crew’s extra man simply exited the mansion and rendezvoused with Frankie. Together, they listened to the recorded conversation crackling over a cheap tape recorder speaker in her sparse, barracks-like apartment, to Tretiak’s voice:

“Karpov is such a fool. No one’s guessed the simple truth of where the heating oil went.” Tretiak laughed as he clinked fresh ice into his drink. “Those ‘in the know’ think I sold it abroad. The liberal press has been hunting for a paper trail that doesn’t exist.”

The gloating distorted laughter was too much for even the Templar to stomach. He reached past Frankie and flicked off the machine.

“Tretiak’s morals are lamentably defective from whatever angle they’re viewed,” muttered Templar. “I need a moment with President Karpov. The old KGB must’ve built tunnels under the president’s home, and I bet someone as clever as you would have the map.”

Frankie emitted a harsh laugh, then crossed to the window where she’s stuffed fresh, dry newspaper into the cracks to keep out the bitter Russian wind. She uncrumpled page one of Ekho Moskvy and translated the headline. “ ‘Embattled President Retreats Behind Kremlin Walls. Under siege from critics and freezing populace, Karpov has moved today from his home to a sanctuary behind barricades.’ ”

Templar seemed unconcerned.

“Then I’ll break into the Kremlin.”

Frankie’s jaw dropped in stunned incredulity.

“That’s crazy! You kid, yes?”

“I have a highly refined sense of humor,” he acknowledged, “but I kid you not.”

Frankie gulped and shook her head.

“You amaze me. I don’t know if you brave or crazy or both.”

“Probably both,” said Templar pleasantly. “You drive, yes?”

“Better than any cabbie,” she bragged. “I even have a classic Zhiguli motorcycle complete with sidecar.”

“Sounds a bit chilly for this weather.”

“So, you got a car?”

“Frankie, my dear,” said Templar as he placed a warm hand on her shoulder, “I’m the man who has everything.”

“You rich or something?”

Simon sat down at her worn table. They could see their breath in the air.

“Sit down, Frankie. I have something to tell you.”

She regarded him warily.

“No, really it’s fine, sit down.”

She sat.

“I’m rich. Very rich. Ridiculously rich.”

Frankie’s smile increased in expansion with each repetition of the word rich .

“How very very ridiculous rich?”

“How rich is rich to you, Frankie?”

She looked around the simple and frigid apartment.

“With all my hustle, all my icons and replicas and tourists, this is the best I can do. And I don’t do it all for me, you know. And not just Toll, may God rest his soul, but...”

The smile in her eyes was betrayed by the tear in her voice.

“There are others in this building we care, I mean... without Toll... I care for...”

She became shy at the topic of her own generosity.

“I’m not such a big tough cookie as I pretend sometimes, yes?”

Templar recalled her returning the Bulgari Chronograph.

“So, you ask me how rich is rich to me,” she said thoughtfully. Frankie stroked her chin as if she had a beard, which she certainly did not.

“A million dollars American money would be more than anyone I know could imagine. You have that much?” The lilt in her voice was admittedly hopeful.

Templar smiled, for Frankie had only a veneer of guile, a slick outer coating of opportunism. She was, by her own reluctant admission, selfless.