“If you try to grab for my hand you can be sure Miss Kinian will be very badly hurt,” he said unemotionally.
The Saint was forming a plan, the first stage of which was to use the Russian’s strategy in reverse — to throw the man off his guard with a pretence of surrender. Obviously any sort of desperate lunge had to be ruled out.
“Well, congratulations, chum,” he said with a sigh of resignation. “I thought I was too old to buy any of the standard cock-and-bull stories, but you certainly sold one.”
“You need not feel too foolish, Templar. It is an axiom of the Party that any man can be duped if the right psychology is applied.”
“And I suppose you really are a Party member in good standing.”
“Of course. But by admitting it from the start, while at the same time presenting myself as a CIA agent, I disarmed your suspicions before they could form.”
“Thank you, teacher,” said the Saint. “And what’s the next dazzling move you have in mind? I’d suggest something fairly brilliant, since the head porter saw us leave the hotel together. If anything funny happens to this innocent American tourist and me he’s sure to give the police your description.”
Uzdanov either chuckled or choked slightly, producing an unmusical nasal sound which for him conceivably had connotations of mirth.
“I would not count on his help if I were you, Templar. He also happens to be a member of the Party. He will remember nothing about you or this—” Uzdanov snorted congestively again. “This innocent tourist! Or he will remember whatever I tell him to.” Then his voice became more harsh and business-like. “Now, I want to see one of those letters that you were preparing to share between you.”
“Letters?” Simon repeated innocently. “The only thing we were preparing to share was a bottle of Peter Dawson.”
Suddenly Vicky gave a little wincing sort of cry. With sickness deep in his stomach, the Saint knew that Uzdanov had used his knife.
“I only hurt her a little that time, Templar, but if you joke with me I won’t be so lenient again. Put on the overhead light, Miss Kinian, take the letter from your purse, open it, and hold it up so I can see it over your shoulder.”
Vicky moved with terrorized slowness to obey his commands. As she switched on the light above her door Simon could see a tiny trickle of blood beside her chin, like a dark fracture in the otherwise flawless moulding of her face. The car was moving up a steep hill. On one side was a wall of rock rising directly up from the side of the pavement, and on the other side was a sheer precipice dropping away into the darkness of the valley below, where a feeble constellation of lights showed the location of some sleeping village.
“Are you hurt much?” Simon asked over the deepening drone of the straining engine.
“No,” Vicky answered with desperate calm.
“Do exactly as he says from now on,” the Saint told her quietly. “He’s got us, I’m afraid. Apparently the Party also furnishes X-ray eyes for its higher-echelon agents.”
“X-ray ears, you might say,” Uzdanov amended. “I overheard your discussion with a listening device just before I knocked on your door. Now, Miss Kinian, hold the letter up... Yes. Good.”
Uzdanov scanned the sheet in silence as the Volkswagen labored on towards the top of the steep grade up which it had been laboring for the past five minutes; then without warning his free hand darted forward and snatched the letter of credit out of Vicky’s fingers.
“Thank you,” he said. “I see that my search is finished.”
“And so are we if your plans continue on schedule — is that right, Mr Ooze-enough?” Simon asked.
The Russian re-asserted his domination over them by pressing the point of his stiletto close against the side of Vicky’s neck. He ignored the Saint’s question.
“I heard you discussing five other letters before I knocked on your door, Templar. Pass them to me, please, but continue to drive at the same speed.”
“And what happens if we go on tamely doing what you tell us, commissar?”
“Nothing worse, eventually, than a long walk back to town. You will be of no further importance, and I shall be on my way.”
“But that’s only what applied psychology tells you to say,” Simon argued evenly. “If we knew we’d be killed anyhow, which I suspect is to be the high point of this conducted promenade, we wouldn’t have any reason to obey you at all, would we?”
“Your only hope is that I may not hurt either of you if you give me no trouble. You must simply cling to that. Now, give me the letters I”
“I’m sorry, Vicky,” said the Saint wearily. “You might have done better if I’d let you alone.”
His uncharacteristic modesty was one more attempt to relax Uzdanov’s guard; but whether there was really any chance of swinging the balance away from the Russian was a question that only the next agonizing minutes could decide.
“Hurry up!” Uzdanov snapped as Simon took his time pulling the letters from inside his jacket. “And why are you slowing down?”
“The horses are getting tired,” Simon explained. “But we’ll try to oblige you. I think the rest of the trip will be downhill.”
The car had reached the crest, and a road sign indicated a steep curvaceous descent for the next several kilometres. As Simon produced the letters, but still being careful to keep them out of Uzdanov’s reach, the Volkswagen began to purr with relief as it built up speed on the first downhill stretch.
“Two can play the carrot-and-the-stick game, comrade,” Simon said in a tone that had new firmness in it. “Don’t do anything hasty — and cling to the hope that I won’t drop these.” He thrust the letters out the window, clutching them at arm’s length, as he steered the car with his right hand only. “If I let them go, that’s fifty million dollars that may not land this side of Lake Como.”
Uzdanov was considerably less calm than he had been a few seconds before, and his voice shifted into a new hysterical key that made the extent of his discomfiture pleasantly unmistakeable.
“Bring those letters inside or I’ll kill her!” he yowled.
The Saint’s voice was more placid in precisely inverse ratio to the raised pitch of Uzdanov’s.
“You’d better not hurt her, because then I wouldn’t care what I did.”
The car’s speed was up to sixty now, and the wind tore at the papers in the Saint’s hand. They seemed alive and fighting to be free. Uzdanov ground his teeth audibly and switched the aim of his stiletto from Vicky’s throat to the back of the Saint’s neck.
“I think you must care what happens to yourself!” he shouted. “Bring those letters inside!”
“Don’t make me nervous, pal, or I might run over a cliff. In this kind of country the man at the wheel has to keep his mind on the road, and of all the back-seat drivers I’ve ever had the misfortune to travel with, you’re the most distracting.”
Simon could feel the point of Uzdanov’s knife against his skin, squarely in the centre of the back of his neck. One slip and the blade could plunge forward through flesh and bone, severing the connection of spinal cord and brain stem. But at least he felt sure that his enemy would not sink the dagger into him on purpose at the moment, since the consequences for the Russian would have been as disastrous as for himself.
The car was careening down into the darkness at a hundred and twenty kilometres on a narrow road that seemed to writhe like a living reptile around the side of the mountain. Rubber shrieked against paving as the tires skidded through turn after turn. Simon dreaded the possibility of a curve so tight that he would be forced to slow down enough to allow Uzdanov to risk driving the knife into his neck and grabbing for the wheel himself.