Лесли Чартерис - The Saint

“Kremlin no savings bank or museum like you usually rob. Famous Templar,” advised Frankie. “The word Kremlin means ‘fortified stronghold.’ ”

“I’ve done my homework,” murmured Templar as he snapped more photos. “Karpov’s Kremlin is ninety acres enclosed by a 1.4-mile brick wall built during the reign of Grand Duke Ivan the Third back in the mid 1400s. The Kremlin stopped being a fortress in the seventeenth century.”

“Tell that to the guards, motion sensors, and surveillance cameras,” suggested Frankie. “I like that Karpov,” she added seriously. “He tried to do good things. Too bad politics such dirty business.”

“A universal problem. Partisan politics is, by its very nature, divisive. Tretiak wants to divide it all into his pocket, his power, and he doesn’t care who freezes in the process.”

The van’s windshield wipers sloshed aside a fresh layer of icy snow.

“Why you taking all these pictures when you can buy postcards like any other tourist?”

“A mental exercise,” explained Templar. “I always take pictures of the target.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have a map of Stalin’s bunker?”

Simon stopped his index finger in mid-snap.

“Did you say...?”

Frankie smiled.

“I told you before, I am the Russian underground.”

Within the Kremlin walls, the oldest ensemble was centered around the Cathedral Square. It consisted of the Assumption Cathedral, where rulers were crowned, the Annunciation Cathedral, private church of the tsars, the Archangel Cathedral, burial place of the royal family until Tsar Peter I, the Hall of the Facets with a magnificent vaulted throne room, and the 266-foot Bell Tower of Ivan III.

None of these astonishing structures, rich in history and packed with priceless artifacts, were of significant interest to Simon Templar. He was far more concerned with the labyrinth of tunnels below ground — tunnels detailed in the dozens of maps spread out in Frankie’s underground art lair.

The authentic replicas, fabricated artifacts, and other bits of fakery were shoved out of the way. One hundred percent of their concentration was focused on finding a way into Stalin’s bunker.

“Look. Lead-lined door reinforced with eight feet of concrete,” explained Frankie, poking her finger at a particular illustration. “Maybe you take nuclear weapon with you in tunnel and blow yourself up inside?”

“Not a practical solution.” Simon Templar sighed. “But if there is a door, that means there is a way for the door to open.”

“Sure. See that sensor on the entrance hatch?”

Templar squinted in the yellow light from the lair’s oil lamps. “More or less.”

“It’s a radiation detector. It will only open the door after dissipation of nuclear fallout,” she explained, as if such details were common knowledge. “It’s very sophisticated, very intelligent. It was updated during Gorbachev’s time. The idea is that if you hide in there during nuclear war, when fallout goes away, the door opens.”

Templar marveled at the concept.

“Put this in a penny-dreadful pot-boiler and no one would swallow it for a second.”

Frankie had no idea what Templar was talking about.

“That means you’re cooked? You giving up this crazy idea?”

He smiled his most seraphic and illuminating smile. “Of course not. If this system is intelligent, that means it can think. If it can think, it can be fooled.”

“Well, you have me fooled,” agreed Frankie, and took a peek at Simon’s Bulgari Chronograph. “Can you trick the door of Stalin’s bunker, get into the Kremlin, and warn Karpov before General Sklarov’s Special Forces help Tretiak take over?”

A serious question.

“That has been a primary concern,” acknowledged the Saint.

“Maybe you should just call Karpov on the telephone. That be easier.”

Templar laughed and ran his hands through his hair. “Why Frankie, what adventure is there in that? Besides, President Karpov has an unlisted number. Crawling around under the Kremlin will be good exercise for both of us.”

Frankie gulped.

“Both...?”

“Of course, I treasure your companionship.”

“Am I supposed to say thank you?”

“You’re supposed to brew some warm tea while I perform high-tech miracles and assemble my wardrobe.”

“Wardrobe?”

“The play’s the thing, Frankie,” said Templar happily, pulling digital toys out of a knapsack, “and I have a costume for every occasion.”

She put a kettle on the small propane stove and shook her head in amazement. She had already seen the rather astonishing contents of his garment bag.

“You’re a different kind of man, all right. Maybe you should go into politics.”

“Heaven forbid,” admonished Templar playfully as he scanned portions of the Kremlin ground-plan onto a three-inch square card. “Besides, Tretiak might hear you, and you know what he thinks of competition.”

She shrugged and poured the hot water. “Tretiak big rat. Sklarov big rat. Karpov... I don’t know... maybe a mouse — a democratic mouse. But up there, outside, the people getting more mad; army getting more scary.”

She paused as if remembering something, then reached under the counter and lifted up a tiny black-and-white portable television.

“Runs on handful of D batteries,” Frankie explained, switching it on. “Reception not great, but...”

She stood in the lamplight, shadows of concern casting lines across her face, listening to the news report of another of Tretiak’s Oktober Party rallies.

General Sklarov’s voice crackled over the small speaker while the on-screen image wavered back and forth.

“... three great empires have dominated the world: Rome, Constantinople, and Russia. All three have fallen. Only one can be restored, and only one man can restore it — Ivan Tretiak!”

A thunderous response of stamping feet drowned out Sklarov’s shouted repetition of Tretiak’s name.

“When the world going to learn?” asked Frankie. “One more crook. One more dictator. One more liar. How many people die to make one more rich man even more rich?”

The crowd cheered as Tretiak himself took the microphone.

“You know me, I am Ivan Tretiak — a lunatic, a dreamer, a poet — a lunatic because I’m haunted by the fantasy of an empire that reclaims her former might, a dreamer beset by nightmares of the West cackling as it castrates us in the name of democracy, a poet spinning rhymes of Russia not cut off at the knees, but armed to the teeth! Not ridiculed, but revered!”

The crowd erupted in abject cacophonia.

“No, more than revered,” shouted Tretiak, “feared!”

Pandemonium. Tretiak continued, speaking over the clamor, his voice rising steadily.

“President Karpov will hand you over, weak and frozen, to the Western liberals, foreigners, and one-worlders, but it is not too late. We do not need to recreate Russia, we need to re-arm Russia! Russia is not a sweet old babushka who’s seen better days. No! Soon the babushka will rip off her rags, rear up, and reveal that she is Mother Russia, roaring bear!”

The crowd was in a frenzy.

“The world had better cringe from her claws!”

The hoarse, frenzied howl rising from the maddened crowd seemed to throb with a horrible blood lust.

Then came the music, the rhythm, and the synchronized juggernaut tramp of marching men.

Frankie shuddered and turned down the volume.

“It’s horrible,” she said sadly, “horrible.”

Templar set his jaw for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was curiously low. Frankie could almost hear the rumble of iron on the streets above.

“You understand, Frankie, but millions don’t. Whole nations that call themselves intelligent human beings are perfectly willing to exchange their brains for a brass band and tax themselves to starvation to buy bigger and better bombs. Were that not the case, criminals like Tretiak would never get anywhere. Brass and drums, Frankie, brass and drums and the thunder of marching feet — that’s what this country is about to succumb to, and that’s a fate colder and more deadly than any oil shortage.”