“Directly it was known that Ruspine had failed to get the funds after his visit to the cemetery tonight, I was ordered to impersonate a Swiss detective, arrest both of you, and take you into a trap.”
“And the Russians would do all that just for... a little money?” Vicky asked.
The Saint met her glance with a warning look which should have reduced her to silence.
“They were interested enough to have ordered me to kill Ruspine if he failed,” Uzdanov told her. “It was an assignment which I found it quite humorous to carry out.”
“You murdered him?” Vicky gulped.
“Why not? The CIA surely couldn’t object to my accommodating the Kremlin by eliminating one of their own agents at their own request.”
“And I suppose Ruspine was expected to find enough loot to repay the effort,” Simon prompted him.
“The Soviets can use funds of that kind to finance their operations abroad,” Uzdanov said. “But I’m afraid I have very little time to explain everything now. I am expected to take you from the hotel, pretending to have you under arrest, and to deliver you to communist agents within the half-hour. Of course I had already had word from Colonel Wade in Lisbon to keep an eye out for you, Mr Templar. So you see, I am now in a most awkward position. I can hardly turn you over to the MVD, but if I do not...”
His stubby hands made a gesture of futility on either side of his paunch.
The Saint was still watching him closely, trying to estimate just how much showed above the water and how much still bobbed below the depths. He had remembered immediately on opening his door that the white-bearded man who stood there was the same one who had been dawdling in the Geneva airport terminal earlier in the day. Uzdanov had said that he had been ordered to keep an eye out for the Saint, but he had only offhandedly admitted being on the Tagus Hotel stairs in Lisbon and had not even mentioned his presence in the Geneva airport lobby — a fact Simon had deliberately avoided bringing up. Nevertheless, the Saint knew better than most people how devious the reticences and evasions of an undercover operator must sometimes be. Now he decided to make a small test.
“I can understand your position,” he said easily. “I just wish you’d been able to get in touch with me when I first got to Geneva before lunch...”
Suddenly the other’s dark eyes were riveted on him. There was almost no interval before Uzdanov spoke.
“You are joking with me?” he challenged in return.
“How?”
“You came to Geneva this afternoon — and you waited for a time in the terminal building. I know. I was there watching you.”
“I know,” Simon said blandly. “I was watching you.”
Uzdanov continued to study him detachedly. Then, with a kind of impatient frustration, he tugged at his white beard.
“You still don’t trust me,” he said.
“I’m more inclined to believe you now than I was before,” the Saint responded. “But if you’re going to suggest that we should play rats to even a CIA Pied Piper, I’m afraid we can’t oblige.”
“Of course not,” Uzdanov said. “It’s obviously out of the question that I turn you over to the communists—”
“Then what’s the problem?” Simon demanded. “Miss Kinian and I were just going to slide out of here in a hurry anyhow. If you tell the comrades we’d already disappeared when you got to the hotel...”
“It is not quite so easy,” Uzdanov interjected. “Like Mischa Ruspine, I too am watched. If you leave now you will be seen, and if I leave without you, everything I have built up for several years will be exploded — even if nothing worse happens to me. The consequences for you could also be violent.” He took a few nervous paces as he talked and then faced the Saint again. “We must leave together, making it look as if I had carried out my orders. Then, after we have shaken off any followers, you will overpower me and escape — perhaps leaving a bump on my skull just to keep the performance convincing.”
Vicky looked at Simon anxiously. His expression was much more solemn than she had ever seen it before. Inside his head arguments and counterarguments traded thrusts with dizzying speed. When all advantages and disadvantages, threats and possible parries had been weighed, one overwhelming fact remained: Boris Uzdanov was on his hands, and there was no really uncomplicated way to get rid of him — whether his story was genuine or not — here at the hotel. Friend or foe, to ditch him now could easily bring on an immediate crisis.
“Okay, we’ll play it your way,” the Saint said at last, with abrupt decisiveness. “It’ll get us out of here — and we can hope it saves blowing your cover.”
Uzdanov’s stocky body relaxed a little and his lips showed, for the first time, that they were capable of flexing into some semblance of a heartfelt smile.
“I’m delighted,” he said. “It is by far the best way to handle this business. I shall now escort you out the front door of the hotel, according to my instructions.”
“And into a waiting Black Maria supplied by the same firm that made your Swiss police identity card?” Simon asked.
“One must improvise.” Uzdanov shrugged. “We can take a taxi.”
“Where to?”
They were all on their feet now, and Uzdanov looked at his pocket watch.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We can think of a way to shake off anyone who is following me once we are out of the hotel.”
Simon shook his head.
“It might be easier if we take my car. It’s parked in front of the hotel already.”
“That would be even better,” said Uzdanov.
“Fine. Let’s get the chain gang on the road, then.”
The Saint opened the door of his room cautiously, saw that there was nobody in the hall, and motioned for Uzdanov and Vicky to go out ahead of him.
“You must go first,” Uzdanov said. “An arresting officer cannot walk in front of the parties he is arresting.”
“Quite right,” Simon assented reluctantly.
He put his arm around Vicky’s waist and ushered her into the corridor ahead of him.
“And how does an arrested party walk?” she whispered.
“With a worried expression,” he replied helpfully.
“I can guarantee that,” she said.
“There is no need to be nervous,” Uzdanov assured them. “I am the one who will end up with a lump on the head. It is better than a bullet in the back of the neck, which is what I would get if my idealistic and peace-loving comrades knew what I was doing.”
They had reached the elevator, which responded quickly to the Saint’s push of the down button. The cabin, like the corridor, was unoccupied, and the swift ride to ground level took place in silence.
“Now,” Simon said as the door slid open. “Look possessive, Detective Uzdanov, and Miss Kinian and I will look obedient.”
He took Vicky’s arm, and the two of them preceded the Russian across the lobby and through the main doors without attracting any attention among the few other people in the area. Outside, the sidewalk was deserted. The doorman had retired for the night, and the taxi drivers who earlier in the evening had waited in their cabs outside the hotel had now either gone off duty or moved to more lively parts of town.
“My car’s over there,” Simon said, taking Vicky’s arm.
“I don’t see anybody watching us,” she said in a low voice.
“In that doorway,” the Saint indicated, in a similar undertone.
Vicky’s eyes followed the direction of his glance and picked out the shadowy forms of two men, one in a beret, conversing on the steps of a building across the street.
“They don’t seem at all interested in us,” she said.
“And maybe they aren’t,” Simon conceded noncommittally. “But they may be a couple of little droplets in the Wave of the Future.”