He had expected a reaction, but nothing quite as heated as the one he evoked. Leila looked up, her face flushed, and she almost bit out her reply through clenched white teeth.
“How dare you!”
“I dare because I’m not afraid to face facts, even if you are,” he said imperturbably. “You’ve been so long with the boys that you’ve forgotten they’re boys and that you’re a beautiful woman.”
He watched the anger drain away from her face, but her voice was still sharp.
“I’ve forgotten nothing. What I look like... what I am — boy, girl, or mutant — is unimportant. I am...”
“I know, you’re a soldier,” he said. “And it’s a shame that that’s all there is to your life.”
He waited for another angry outburst, but it never came. Leila stared at the tablecloth for a long time, and when she raised her head and looked at him he saw that there were tears in her eyes.
“There is something else to it, Simon. Something more important than dining in a fine restaurant and a night in bed with you. There’s my family and the memory of how they died. Mowed down with machine guns at Fiumicino airport. Father, mother, brother. I was eighteen.”
Her voice had sunk to a whisper and was on the verge of breaking. He was angry with himself for having forced the declaration out of her when he had already half guessed her background that afternoon at the cathedral.
Simon reached across and gently took her hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Forgive me. But I had to know. If we’re to work well together, it was important to know.”
She drank her coffee and smiled back at him across the rim of the empty cup.
“It’s all right. Perhaps I should have told you straight away. And you are right, there is nothing more we can do until the morning.”
He called for the bill and paid it and did not speak again until they were back in the car.
“Actually, you misheard me,” he said. “I didn’t say there was nothing more we could do tonight. I said there was nothing more you could do. As fax as I’m concerned, the night is still young.”
“What do you mean?”
Simon smiled as he engaged the gears and turned the Hirondel towards Knightsbridge.
“Remember my friend who talks in code? Well, I have an appointment with him at ten of the clock, which is in precisely half an hour’s time.”
“And you don’t intend to take me with you?”
“I didn’t intend to,” answered the Saint carefully. “I don’t want to be specially noticed, and a gal with your looks is about as inconspicuous as a baked ham at a bar mitzvah.”
He sensed that she was trying to be angry with him again but somehow couldn’t quite take him seriously enough.
“You will take me with you,” she commanded, with a delightful assumption of authority. “I refuse to be left behind.”
The Saint laughed and placed an arm around her shoulders, drawing her slim body closer as he snaked the Hirondel through the traffic with one hand, which is not an example for other drivers to follow. He pushed his foot nearer the floor, and the big car surged forward towards the lights of Piccadilly.
He felt totally relaxed, but as alert and awake as if he had just slid from between the sheets after a good night’s sleep.
“You just talked me into it,” he said. “How could I disobey the orders of such a lovely officer? Of course you can come along. After all, I did promise to introduce you to some Londoners, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I hope you’re feeling fit, because we’re likely to run into a spot of mayhem before morning.”
5
The crowded streets and flashing neon of Leicester Square and the Strand were soon left behind, and with the assurance of a captain in familiar waters the Saint plotted a course through the sleeping backwaters of the City until the solid dignified shapes of the banks and insurance offices had disappeared behind them, to be replaced by a bewildering maze of dimly lit side roads lined by darkened shops and warehouses.
Leila watched the changing scenery without comment. She had hardly spoken for some time, and he could feel her tenseness returning.
“What’s worrying you now?” he asked.
She straightened away from him and eyed his profile searchingly.
“It’s just that there are so many questions we don’t know the answers to,” she said restively.
“Such as?”
“We had the picture and your knowledge of London to help us, but how did Masrouf and his men find Yasmina so quickly?”
Simon shrugged.
“Hakim and Masrouf were buddies in arms, remember? So it’s quite possible that Hakim talked about her. Even if Masrouf didn’t already have her address, the Arab community in London is a pretty small one, and he’d know where to go for information.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” she admitted. “But that only makes our task more difficult. We always seem to be one step behind.”
“But Masrouf and Co. won’t see it like that,” explained the Saint patiently, “because they can’t know how far we’ve got already. Masrouf didn’t look surprised to see you, but he didn’t know who I was, and it’s my guess that that’s worrying him. Right now, he’s trying to find out who I am and what my part is — which promises well for future fun and games. Also it’s a complication for him, and the longer we can distract him the more the odds swing in our favour.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said, but she didn’t sound Convinced.
Simon smiled and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze before changing down through the gears.
“So do I,” he said optimistically.
As the car slowed, he spun the wheel in a right turn that took them through an alley between two warehouses and out into a narrow lane running parallel to the major road they had just left. It consisted mainly of tiny shops and derelict houses separated occasionally by fenced-off patches of weed-covered rubble where buildings had been demolished and not replaced. Simon berthed the car in a pool of darkness between two street lamps and cut the engine.
For a moment he sat and carefully took stock of their surroundings, satisfying himself that the lane was temporarily deserted, while he took a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles from the glove compartment and put them on. Then he got out and reached into the back seat for a mackintosh that might once have been a smart sandy beige but had long ago given up the straggle against the city grease and grime, and rammed a trilby of equally hard-worn lineage onto his head. The shabby raincoat covered up the elegant tailoring of Savile Row, and the thick frames of the glasses under the down-turned brim of the battered hat took the finely cut piratical edge off his features.
Leila had been watching the process of transformation with a puzzled frown.
“What is all that for?” she demanded.
“The hostelry I’m headed for is somewhat different from the one we just left,” he explained, “and I don’t want to be specially noticed. Or even recognised, except by the bloke I’m meeting,” he added.
He went around to her side of the car, and she started to open her door, but he firmly closed it again.
“This is one place you can’t come with me,” he said. “It’s a place where women are quite rudely made unwelcome. You’ll just have to wait here. I’ll only be about fifteen minutes. Wind up the window and keep the doors locked, and if anyone comes by, try to keep your pretty face hidden.”
Resentfully, but bereft of any effective argument, she watched him slouch off down the lane at a brilliantly different gait from his normal athletic stride, and was forced to concede to herself, professionally, that his technique of subtle camouflage outpointed anything that could be done with elaborate props of the false-beard school.