Лесли Чартерис - The Saint

She pushed the bike full throttle, and the wind lashed them with invisible whips. The iced air stung Templar’s cheeks and almost froze his lungs. Holding his two-way communicator close to his lips, he shouted a warning to Botvin.

“I’m on my way. Watch out for Tretiak!”

He had no way of knowing if Botvin could hear him or understand him over the engine’s roar and the whipping wind, but he at least owed him the effort.

Botvin could hear him, but making out every word was more than difficult. He sat at his computer, fogged glasses in his lap, downloading the cold fusion formula onto disk.

He turned when he heard the door creak.

“Mr. Templar,” said Botvin to the blurry silhouette, “I make a disk for you, of full cold fusion formula.”

“Templar? You said Templar?! ”

Tretiak was enraged.

Botvin put on his glasses. A lump rose in his throat and his stomach sank.

“You traitor!” Tretiak screamed as he pulled out his gun.

“No, I’m not a traitor,” insisted Botvin proudly. “I have given my talents for the future of Russia.”

“You’ve also given your life,” snarled Tretiak, and he shot Botvin point blank in the forehead. The scientist pitched backward in his chair, then slumped lifeless to the floor.

Tretiak pocketed his gun, sat down in the bloodstained chair, and swiveled toward the computer. The formula was almost finished downloading.

“I may have lost the Kremlin,” said Tretiak triumphantly to Botvin’s dead body, “but to control cold fusion gives me more power than the president of any country.”

He ejected the priceless disk and spun the chair away from the computer. As the chair swiveled, he found himself facing Ilya. His son was pointing a gun at him.

“Gee, Dad, I was just thinking the same thing.”

Tretiak laughed nervously. “What an absurd situation! My own son holding a gun on me! Don’t be ridiculous, Ilya, put that away.”

He did not put it away.

“A son must annihilate a father, one way or another,” stated Ilya dispassionately, “if he’s to be a man...”

Tretiak attempted looking deeply into his son’s eyes. They were not that deep. All Tretiak saw was madness fueled by Methadrine.

The universe seemed to tilt out of kilter, and the floor rumbled from approaching loyalist tanks — heavy firepower under the direction of returned turncoat General Sklarov.

As the first tank rolled up catty-corner to the mansion, Frankie’s motorcycle skidded to the main gate.

The Saint leaped from the sidecar.

“Wait here, and keep the motor running.”

Two gunshots rang out from inside the mansion.

Templar and Frankie exchanged looks, and he was immediately sprinting for the front door. He was almost there when Vlad and Igor, eager to escape, erupted from the entrance.

The tank gunner opened fire. Vlad and Igor died in a hail of bullets, and another salvo of shells chased Templar into the vestibule. He slammed the massive door behind him as more bullets splintered the entrance frame, but he was already well inside.

He sidestepped Vereshagin’s body and ascended the stairs to the mezzanine. Resting atop an expensive antique end table was Ilya’s meth vial and the deadly walking stick.

Templar crept to Botvin’s office. The door ajar, he stole a silent glimpse.

Two men lay dead — Botvin and Tretiak.

Ilya was bent over his father’s corpse, straining to pry the diskette from Tretiak’s death grip — a grip so unrelenting that Ilya had to set down his precious gun and pull on the disk with both hands.

“C’mon Pop, give it up,” growled Ilya. “Even with a bullet in the brain, you still want the world.”

With a firm yank, he finally pulled the disk free.

“Sorry, Dad. You can’t be a billionaire and a Communist at the same time.”

“Or a rap star and Russian tsar,” commented the Saint, “Fine way for a son to talk to his departed father.”

Ilya’s face flushed with surprise. He turned, knowing he would dread the sight of Simon Templar alive, unforgiving, and armed with Ilya’s own gun.

“Hey, have pity on me,” said Ilya, smiling stupidly. “I’m an orphan.”

“That’s the only thing we have in common,” answered Templar coldly.

The arriving tanks’ low frequency rumble vibrated the mansion’s steel bones and timber sinews. No less taut was the tension between Ilya and Templar as Simon backed him out onto the beautifully appointed mezzanine.

The men could feel the artillery-generated vibrations increasing in intensity.

“You shouldn’t be messin’ with me. Templar,” Ilya spat as if he were in a position to make threats. The mad Russian then stood firm as if his boots were Super-Glued to the highly polished parquet floor. He threw back his head and laughed.

“I could be runnin’ this country by morning.”

“You’re standing on shaky ground. Sonny Boy,” drawled Templar casually. He pointed the massive Smith & Wesson at Ilya’s chest. “Simon says: ‘Give me the disk.’ ”

Ilya brayed like an ass and squared his shoulders.

“You’re good with those cute little Santa’s Workshop sort of gadgets, but that’s not one of your high-tech electronic toys, Templar, that’s my goddam Smith and Wesson — a man’s gun — no modems, no microchips. You can’t handle it.”

Simon understood he was in the presence of a lunatic.

Gunfire from the courtyard suddenly shattered the window, and both men dived to the floor. Glass shards shredded the velvet curtains as the bullets drilled smoking pockmarks into the wall.

When the shooting stopped, Ilya cautiously raised his eyes. Templar was aiming the weapon’s gleaming steel barrel directly at his forehead.

“I can handle this better than you can handle cold fusion,” insisted Templar evenly.

“They’re shooting at us, for God’s sake!” Ilya barked.

Templar’s grip tightened on the trigger.

“Perhaps killing scoundrels has replaced freezing to death as the national pastime.”

Ilya’s eyes banged back and forth in their sockets as if seeking some overlooked avenue of escape.

“The disk,” hissed Ilya through clenched teeth, his voice dripping with desperation. “I’ll slide you the damn disk, you slide me the gun, we’ll both get the hell out of here. A promise, a pact, a treaty.”

He held the blue plastic nervously between his fingers, placed it on the floor, and prepared to propel it toward Templar.

“On the count of three?” He was almost begging.

Templar nodded agreement

“One, two...”

The Smith & Wesson clattered across the floor as the disk did the same. Both men were on their feet in an instant.

Several more shots screamed in from outside, but Ilya ignored them. He pointed his weapon directly at the Saint.

“The disk, Templar. Give back the disk.”

All things considered. Templar shouldn’t have been surprised.

“But we traded,” he objected, “disk for gun. A treaty, a pact, a promise.”

“A Magnum outweighs promises,” insisted Ilya, “especially when I’m the one holding it.”

Templar shrugged and twirled the disk between his fingers. “An empty weapon makes for an equally empty threat,” he noted coolly. “You said that was a six-shooter. I may not be a college graduate, but my math skills are adequate. You fired four times in Red Square, two here.”

Ilya swore.

“I have cold fusion,” said Templar, tucking the blue disk into his shirt pocket. “Your future is all used up.”

A high-pitched wail sliced the air, and both men froze where they stood, disbelieving but decoding the sound’s source: the metallic scream of incoming artillery.

The massive concussion as the first missile broad-sided the steel dome rocked the mansion into a dizzying maelstrom of falling plaster and raining crystal. Molten shards splattered onto the freshly varnished parquet, transforming it into a lake of fire. Long sheets of flame swept greedily over the draperies while smaller flames leaped with fierce eagerness up the blackening banisters of the wide spiral staircase rising from the mezzanine toward the scaffolding above.