Лесли Чартерис - The Saint

“Let me take you to dinner, Frankie. And I mean the fanciest restaurant in all of Moscow.”

“Oh, I am so sure of that! I could not. Not me.”

Templar laughed and his breath made warm clouds in the air. “Why not?”

“I might like it or think I deserved it, for one thing,” she explained. “Or you may think you get more than friendship and justice, no?”

“No,” clarified Templar, “my motives are pure, really. Besides, my appetite is coming back.”

She looked at him in a way that caught him off guard, for her eyes seemed to read his very soul.

She took his hand. “I think you are a very rich man, like you say. And maybe that’s more than a million American dollars, or two million—”

“Or fifty million plus mounting compound interest.”

“Wow! Fifty million. Plus interest mounting. Well, no matter,” continued Frankie. “I believe you because you don’t know, or maybe forgot, about being poor.”

“I’ve been poor, Frankie. I was raised in a Hong Kong orphanage until I was thirteen.”

“You Chinese? Part, at least I think, yes?”

“I think, yes. Some. I don’t look very Chinese, but you’ve heard of Mendel’s Law?”

“I probably broke that one, too,” said Frankie, and Templar suppressed a smile. “But the point, Mr. Templar Rich Man is this: For what you spend on two meals at fancy place in Moscow, I could feed the famines in this building. You buy me big meal, I would choke on it thinking of the people here. You understand?”

“Let’s order out,” chirped Templar.

“Order what?”

Templar stood with an expansive gesture. “I hear that in Russia, everything is unavailable. Unless you have money. Then, everything is very available. True?”

Frankie rolled her eyes. It was too true.

“I provide the money, you go shopping. We’ll have a big meal and invite the neighbors — we feed them all. If you can find an electric space heater, buy a few of those, too.”

Frankie’s eyes grew larger and larger. “You’re not kidding?”

Templar tossed an absurd amount of cash in her lap. “I trust you, Frankie. Let’s eat.”

Simon Templar knew he was fumbling at friendship. At worst, he was buying it. At best, he was practicing it.

The thick flakes fell in hefty blankets over the city of Moscow, and it was not long after Templar extended his offer that they returned to her apartment building from a thrill-packed visit to a decidedly clandestine supermarket.

Bag after bag of groceries and goodies were hauled in, much to the delight of the many invited guests.

Doors between apartments were propped ajar, and soon the heady aroma of sizzling meat, cooking cabbage, and sautéed onions blended with the laughter and camaraderie of the about-to-be well fed.

Samovars were heated, tea was brewed, and Templar basked in a warmth beyond coal or oil. He had not allowed himself the luxury of honest companionship in decades, and the pleasure of its simplicity ignited a spark within him.

Frankie resisted showing off her rich friend as one would a carnival prize, and instead introduced him as a long-time acquaintance and occasional business partner. She said that they made a lucrative sale to a busload of wealthy tourists.

The resultant feast was, according to Frankie, a celebration of capitalistic family values.

“I hear that phrase from jerk Tretiak when he gave big speech in Red Square,” she said with a wink.

Templar was joyously introduced to a wide array of lower-middle-class apartment dwellers, most of them exceptionally pleasant and delightfully hospitable.

He played a few hands of gin rummy with the enchanting Olya from Chelyabinsk, a natural beauty who was on her way to becoming a consummate cardsharp.

“Watch out for that one,” warned Frankie with a giddy laugh. “She graduated with honors from Language Lycee ninety-three, and someday she will marry my cousin!”

“Gin!” exclaimed Olya.

“Warn your cousin,” advised Templar.

They ate, they laughed, they sipped tea and enjoyed each other’s company. For those few brief hours Simon Templar allowed himself to escape into a world he had only seen from the outside — a world of honest friends and unselfish sharing.

When the last members of the impromptu dinner party had eaten their fill and returned to their own subdivided cubicles, Frankie finished her tea and eyed Templar quizzically.

“Okay, we all ate. Now what?”

Templar chuckled and sat down opposite her. “I had a marvelous time.”

“Yeah. Me, too. When do you see the president?”

Back to business.

“Oh, that’s easy,” replied Templar. “When I break into the Kremlin.”

“You’d have to be world’s best burglar to do that...”

“True,” agreed Templar.

Frankie narrowed her eyes and stared at him.

“What exactly do you do?”

“Let me put it this way, Frankie: Scotland Yard says I can break into anywhere. They don’t like me much. They don’t know my name, but they call me the Saint.”

Frankie smirked. “I don’t see halo over your head,” she said. “The police are looking for you everywhere, this is true?”

“They won’t find me here, now, will they?”

“Scotland Yard doesn’t come here very often,” she said with a nonchalant shrug. “Besides, you don’t seem like criminal to me. Tretiak is criminal.”

“Well, Frankie, I guess I was a criminal. I’ve had somewhat of a change of heart, or modification of career, or reorientation of identity.” He laughed aloud as if he was enjoying a marvelous joke.

She looked at him curiously.

“Someone tell a funny story and I missed it?”

“Yes,” continued Templar enthusiastically, “it’s the funniest story of my life, a grand and glorious adventure. Consider me a finely tempered sword slowly becoming unsheathed.”

“No unsheathing around me, please,” admonished Frankie with a wag of her finger. “We just friends. Now, you plan to stop Tretiak’s takeover or you going to have more dessert?”

The Saint had more dessert. Frankie stared at him.

“I don’t rush into things, Frankie. I plan, and I plan well. And you are a very lucky woman.”

“I am?”

“Indeed,” replied Templar happily. “You are about to see a world-class expert at the top of his form.”

“Hoo-boychic,” she said wearily. “I hope you as wonderful as you think.”

Any doubts lingering in Frankie’s mind concerning Simon Templar’s abilities evaporated in the heat of first-hand experience. The next several hours were the busiest and most memorable of her life.

It was Frankie who emptied Templar’s locker at the train station, and she managed to suppress an audible gasp when she saw the quantity of cash, diversity of passports, and high-tech toys stashed therein.

It was Frankie who then sought out the self-sacrificing Sofiya. Perched on her high-heels and eyeing the street for her next cash customer, the plucky teenager’s first response to Frankie’s approach was polite but firm.

“No ladies,” she said with a shake of her head.

“That’s not what this is about,” Frankie assured her and handed over an envelope.

“Take this upstairs before you open it, and don’t tell anyone how you got it.”

Sofiya accepted it with curiosity, took it to her apartment, and tore open the clasp.

Inside was more money than she had ever seen in her life and a small scrap of paper containing two words: thank you.

“Mama,” called out Sofiya, “I just retired!”

It was Frankie who nervously drove the mirror-windowed minivan — she didn’t have the nerve to ask Templar where it came from — while the Saint snapped photos of the Kremlin through the silvered panes.