Лесли Чартерис - The Saint

“Saint Uniatz the Inebriate,” replied Simon pleasantly, giving Ilya an obvious looking-over, “Patron Saint of the fashion impaired. You must be my next case.”

Caught off guard by the burglar’s attitude, Ilya was momentarily confused. He clenched his jaw and stared intently, extending his empty hand. “The microchip, please.”

Templar noticed something telltale in the Russian’s movements, the twitch of his facial muscles and, most of all, his pupils.

“Listen,” said the burglar reasonably, “I give this back to you. Daddy locks it up again, what do you get? Not even a Christmas bonus. On the other hand, you go fifty-fifty with me, a half million dollars in hard currency, you could buy all the Methadrine in Moscow.”

Ilya, surprised, ignored the accurate reference to his drug of choice.

“You’ve got nothing to bargain with,” he countered, and waved the pistol as if handguns settled everything. “Why don’t you just give me the microchip before I shoot you?”

“As opposed to?”

“Shooting you first and then taking the microchip.”

Templar reached into his breast pocket, pulled out the precious item, and began toying with it. He rolled it between his fingers as a magician would a coin.

“Give it here!” Ilya barked.

“You’ll get it, don’t worry, but first you can answer one quick question.”

Ilya cocked his head in disbelief.

“You’re gonna ask me a question?”

A crooked smile distorted the burglar’s twisted visage.

“What did Simon Magus do in Sumaria?”

As the words were spoken, Simon flipped the chip into the air toward Ilya. The thug’s eyes searched in desperation, and his weapon wavered. In that split millisecond. Templar moved with the force of a compressed steel spring, kicking Ilya full in the head.

Ilya reeled from the impact, falling, his Smith & Wesson clattering to the floor. He was quick to retaliate with an expert leg sweep, bringing Templar down. As Ilya scrambled to retrieve his gun. Templar pulled a radio transmitter from his pocket. Closing his eyes, he pressed the button just as Ilya’s hand closed on the gun butt.

The explosive cap planted in the corner burst forth in a hot-white phosphor flare, filling the room with blinding light.

Templar ran like hell.

He raced back through the corridor toward the stairwell, violating the heat-seeking light beams, setting off alarms, and triggering a succession of unflattering photographs from a series of closed-circuit cameras. Ilya followed, cursing, blinking away the flare’s retinal afterburn.

As for the man who would never again be called John Rossi, there was nowhere to go but up. Fighting blustery winds on the rooftop, Templar sprinted to the balustrade.

As he gripped the rail, a blast from Ilya’s Smith & Wesson blew away a chunk from beneath his fingers.

“Give it up,” ordered Ilya. “It’s either that or fall ten floors.”

“Easy choice,” responded Templar, and he vaulted over the edge.

Shocked, Ilya rushed to the stone railing.

Peering over the edge, the stunned Russian saw the ugly intruder free-falling through space to certain death. Ilya didn’t wait to see the impact. He ran back for the microchip.

Ever efficient, Templar used the free-fall time to discard the padding from inside his cheeks, spit out the teeth, pull off his mustache, and discard the putty appliqués before hitting the bed of a truck parked at the curb. He bounced as if from a trampoline and landed feet-first on the sidewalk.

Templar’s truck; Templar’s giant air bag on the truck bed.

Restored to his natural look, Simon reached into the truck’s cab and pulled out a ragged knee-length overcoat and peasant headgear.

While the escaping Saint was altering his identity, Ilya was on his knees in the safe room searching for the flipped microchip. His fingers found it, but a closer look revealed it was nothing but a button from the burglar’s bodysuit.

The stream of expletives unleashed by Ilya would, if printed herein, offend even the most sophisticated reader. Suffice it to say, the man was overwhelmed by anger.

Below, a cadre of security emerged from the building alerted by the numerous alarms. Rather than run, Templar lurched at them, palm outreached as if for a handout. The guards rudely pushed him aside.

Ilya, now accompanied by two other henchmen, blasted out the door of Tretiak Industries with his mind on fire. Fueled by adrenaline and Methadrine, he nervously snapped at the men from lobby security.

“Where’s the body?”

The security guard had no idea what Ilya was talking about.

“Body? All I’ve seen is some guy in rags.”

Ilya’s peripheral vision captured a scraggly bum rounding the corner at the end of the block. Alarm bells rang in Ilya’s head, and he took off after him.

Templar hurried through an archway and passed a convoy of Russian troops. Directly ahead of him were thirty pro-Tretiak demonstrators proudly marching and waving placards. He immediately joined their ranks, shouting slogans and working his way to the front of the parade.

Ilya and his men ran faster than the procession marched. When they saw the bum moving to the parade’s head, they increased their speed even more.

Templar dodged out of line and into the Red Square crowd. He pulled a vodka bottle from his overcoat and quickly linked arms with a genuine bum who was more than surprised to find himself suddenly joined in generous, jubilant camaraderie.

Searching for the illusive lone bum, Ilya raced past the two joyous drunks. Templar then gifted the vodka to his grateful acquaintance, ducked into a doorway, and reversed his coat. He now appeared attired in a brightly colored parka. Then, from the right-hand pocket, he retrieved a cap fitted with long hair.

Ilya’s eyes scanned the crowd of demonstrators and sightseers. Typical tourists snapped photos of St. Basil’s cathedral. And then he saw him — a lone bum moving hurriedly toward Ilyinski Street.

With lightning-quick strides, Ilya caught up with him and spun him around. The ragged man clutched a half-empty vodka bottle as if it were his baby.

“It’s mine! You can’t have it!”

Wrong bum.

Infuriated, Ilya stomped off. He paid no notice to the tourist in the loud blue parka snapping pictures of the CNN correspondent and her crew broadcasting live from Red Square.

Ilya looked up at the giant video screens. There was his father, Ivan Tretiak, larger than life and twice as loud.

“Russia is riddled with criminals, hoodlums, and bandits,” ranted Tretiak via video projection to the enraptured crowd, “shake-down artists, exploiters, carpetbaggers, and sports-car-driving capitalist opportunists! Where does this come from? Hollywood! And you know what hes beneath the fake tinsel and glitter of Hollywood? Real tinsel and glitter! But is Hollywood your enemy?”

Half the crowd yelled “Da!” Half the crowd played it safe and waited.

“No!” yelled Tretiak. “Your enemy is inside the Kremlin taking orders from the West to perpetuate the heating crisis!”

The international news cameras sent Tretiak’s message around the world.

“President Karpov sits in the Kremlin, a silly puppet of Western Imperialism and... and...” he searched for an appropriate cultural buzzword, “capitalistic family values!”

The mob stamped their feet. They were very cold.

“Yes, stamp your feet! Stamp your frostbitten feet!”

The thunder of a thousand feet filled the frosty air.

“Now, if you can stop stomping your feet and chattering your teeth, you can throw President Karpov out of the Kremlin!”

Overwhelmed by Tretiak’s manifest logic, the crowd stomped even louder.

Simon Templar did not remain in Red Square long enough to enjoy the conclusion of Tretiak’s speech, but he watched it replayed on the first-class video screen aboard his British Airway’s flight to London.