He placed the four sheets of paper back on the table and noted the ambivalent look Vicky was giving them.
“Don’t be so sad,” he said. “Ten million dollars is more than you’re ever likely to spend, and if you had the rest you could only bequeath it to the care of indigent wombats or the restoration of ancient Egyptian outhouses.”
“I’d still rather decide what happens to it than let a lot of bureaucrats get their hands on it!” she protested.
“I’d rather you did too, but I’ve got to maintain a few of my personally tailored ethics or I’d never get invited to nice people’s homes.”
He folded the four papers and put them in one of his pockets separate from the letter he had reserved for himself.
“And how do I know what you’ll do with those?” Vicky asked suspiciously.
“Come with me to the American Embassy, if you like, and watch me hand them in,” he answered without hesitation. “In fact, you’d better stick to me like a burr till tomorrow. If there are any other treasure-hunters left, they may realize they’ve got to get us before the banks open in the morning. In fact, any life insurance that’ll do us any good will only take effect when the Ungodly are convinced that all the loot is out of our hands.”
Vicky, who had been in the process of putting her own letter in her purse, suddenly stopped and looked up again at Simon.
“I never thought of that,” she said in a hushed voice. “Do you really think there might be others? I just assumed we’d finished with them.”
“Well, your boyfriend Jaeger didn’t strike me as the type to share his toys with his friends, but it’s possible that he wasn’t working alone. And assuming that Graveyard Mischa isn’t a free-lance ghoul, he may have been working with Jaeger or with some equally unwholesome party — perhaps Soviet in origin, judging by his name. I don’t want to make you nervous, but if we live to eat lunch tomorrow that in itself will be something to celebrate.”
Vicky snapped her bag shut and stared at the Saint’s calm face with wide eyes.
“Oh, no, you don’t make me nervous,” she said shakily. “You just make me petrified.”
“A little dose of caution wouldn’t hurt you a bit,” he said. “And a little dose of strong drink wouldn’t hurt either of us. Scotch is all I’ve got in stock. Is that all right?”
Vicky nodded numbly.
“Straight,” she said.
Simon poured each of them a dollop of Peter Dawson and added ice from the melting supply in a bucket on his dressing table.
“I think you must have cat blood,” he said over his shoulder to his subdued guest. “Even so, you must be down to your seventh or eighth life by now. I’d suggest a long and pleasure-rich retirement far from scenes of international intrigue and strife.”
“You’d never believe it,” she said, “but in Des Moines I’d have been scared to take a bus alone at night. I don’t know what came over me to give me the nerve to do what I’ve done on this trip.”
Simon handed her a glass and raised his to her in a casual toast.
“Whatever it is, here’s to it,” he said. “And if you’ll pardon the analogy, since there’s no resemblance to you whatsoever in shape, here’s to all the broomstraws who’ve found they can drive straight through a solid oak door in a strong wind.”
Vicky smiled and drank, meeting his eyes with really human warmth for the first time since they had met.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so—”
Her sentence was cut off by a series of precisely spaced knocks at the door. Vicky blanched, and Simon got to his feet.
“Just stay where you are,” he said quietly.
He was ready for anything when he unlocked the door and partially opened it, but he was not called upon to resist any violent onslaughts. There in the hallway, looking as harmless as an overfed guinea pig, stood only a shortish plump man with a bald head and a white Vandyke beard.
3
“And what can we do for you?” inquired the Saint courteously.
He stood blocking the door, and his bespectacled caller, dressed in a slightly rumpled dove-grey suit of vaguely outmoded cut, held out an identity card encased in clear plastic.
“I hope you recognize this,” the man said quietly. “It is not often shown.”
“As a matter of fact,” Simon said with equal smoothness before looking at the card, “I recognize you. Didn’t we bump into one another on the stairs of a hotel in Lisbon?”
“It is more than possible,” the stranger said.
There was no trace of a smile or any other softening of his stolid face. The Saint looked at the card and turned to speak to Vicky.
“Mr Boris Uzdanov of Uncle Sam’s CIA... or so it says,” he told her.
“I would like to come out of the corridor,” Uzdanov said with a trace of uneasiness. “Do you mind? You may search me if you wish. I am not armed.” He lifted the wooden cane he carried in his right hand. “Unless of course you count this.”
Simon nodded and stood aside. He felt sure he could deal with the visitor’s cane, whatever unadvertised qualities it might possess.
Uzdanov stepped into the room and made a perfunctory bow in Vicky’s direction as the door was closed behind him. He produced another identity card.
“Shall I continue with business?” he asked. “Time is not a thing I have much of at the moment.”
“By all means,” the Saint agreed. “None of us is suffering from a surplus.”
“As this card tells you, I am also a member of the local communist organization, which I was able to infiltrate, and an occasional agent of the MVD — luckily for you, Mr Templar.”
The confessed double agent blinked through his spectacles as he awaited a reaction.
“I’m most gratified to hear about my good fortune,” murmured Simon. “Do I need to ask which of those superspy outfits is likely to end up with the honour of paying your old age pension?”
Uzdanov bridled perceptibly, but his rather breathy hushed voice was unaffected.
“I assure you that my loyalty is to the West. My superiors in Washington are perfectly satisfied of that. My family were murdered by the Red Army in the Ukraine.”
Vicky looked reproachfully at Simon, who made a gesture that invited Uzdanov to go on with his explanations.
“Since I am Russian, the CIA has naturally tended to use me for work involving Soviet activities, and in the course of my everyday work I happened to find out that our friends in the Kremlin had heard rumours of the Nazi money Miss Kinian was looking for.”
Vicky was awestricken.
“You mean they heard about me?” she gasped. “In Moscow?”
“That is correct,” said Uzdanov formally. “Just as the American intelligence services knew about you — and just as the ex-Gestapo man Norden knew about you.”
Vicky sank back into her chair as if she might disappear entirely, an event which apparently would not have displeased her in the least.
“I think I’m going to faint,” she croaked.
“It does sound as if you’ve had about as much private Me as a bug under a microscope,” Simon admitted.
“You say the nicest things.”
Uzdanov obviously had no penchant for idle badinage.
“You are fortunate to be alive, indeed, Miss Kinian. It was an MVD man who attacked you tonight...”
Vicky looked at him sharply.
“You know that? How...”
Uzdanov raised an authoritative hand and interrupted.