“Do you want to sleep with me, Mr. More?”
She was, at times, exceptionally direct.
“Exactly that,” answered Simon, “I want to hold you close to me, and together we will sleep.”
He wasn’t kidding. She pressed her cheek against his. “You are a saint.”
The warmth of her face increased the cold shame of his deception. He forced himself to ignore the unexpected feelings of regret and remorse rising within him, and pretended to sleep.
The following morning, Emma awoke and turned to kiss her saintly, chaste, and poetic lover. He was gone. Instinctively she raced to her cards on the table. They were not her originals. Each of the five cards read: “Pm sorry.”
Dr. Emma Russell brought her hand to her heart, felt it torn apart, and dropped devastated to her knees. Tears flowed through her fingers and dropped in tiny splatters on the floor.
She felt more alone and betrayed at that moment than she had in her entire life. She sobbed and sobbed, and sobbed harder still, knowing that no one knew, and no one cared.
In the kitchen her makeshift laboratory spit out another pellet. In the fish tank her exotic pets swam in aimless circles. On the floor Dr. Russell continued to cry.
Part Two
1
Simon Templar derived no pleasure from stealing Emma’s cards, and the prospect of Tretiak’s $3 million arriving in his bank account did not minimize his sense of shame.
His rationalization, his only rationalization, was that he had agreed to the job. He was obligated to deliver.
Templar digitized her cards and transferred their images to his laptop. In a matter of moments Emma Russell’s life work was e-mailed to Moscow.
The reaction to its arrival was both enthusiastic and lethal.
Tretiak had arranged for Russian physicist Lev Botvin to study Emma’s work immediately upon delivery, and the scene at Tretiak’s mansion was one of elated exuberance
“It’s revolutionary, sir!” exclaimed Botvin, excitedly wiping his glasses with his shirttail. “She’s boldly cast aside a slew of stale ideas... but it will take months of trials and experimentation before I can confirm—”
“That won’t do,” insisted Tretiak. “Now that the people are nicely beginning to freeze, Tretiak must sweep in from the wings with a miracle to save them!”
The wings of Tretiak’s mansion were themselves in the midst of transformation. He enjoyed displaying his wealth in forms of conspicuous overstatement.
He led Botvin across a dropcloth-covered parquet floor awaiting a fifth coat of varnish, and passed between twin towers of wood scaffolding. Above them an extraordinary crystal chandelier hung from a pulley welded into the underside of the domed cupola. The chandelier’s two massive wedding-cake tiers were stabilized by concentric rings of steel.
A workman shouted down from the scaffold.
“How high do you want this, Mr. Tretiak?”
“Not now, not now!” He waved impatiently at the workman, who shrugged and signaled his coworkers to secure it to a cleat bolted in the wall.
“Lovely chandelier, sir,” commented Botvin with admiration.
“Screw the chandelier!”
“I think they did, sir,” offered Botvin seriously as he peddled behind his leader.
Tretiak led him up to a fully stocked physics lab where Botvin began to nervously assemble the apparatus needed to bear out Emma’s formula.
“Perhaps I can confirm the formula’s validity more quickly if I dispense with certain protocols,” began Botvin.
“Dispense with whatever you want,” agreed Tretiak. “You will make cold fusion a Russian innovation, then Russia will command and the West will cringe!”
Botvin’s glasses began to fog up again, and he looked askance at his leader in the process of wiping them. This did not go unnoticed.
“How long. Dr. Botvin, since your last salary check from Moscow University?”
“Ukrainian Independence Day,” answered the physicist wistfully, “last August.”
Tretiak chortled and threw an arm around Botvin’s shoulders.
“Well, I don’t foresee any problem in raising money for a man whose name will be synonymous with modem physics. The Lev Botvin Institute of Nuclear Fusion will be the greatest research facility any superpower’s ever seen.”
Had Botvin’s chest swelled any greater, the little man would have either exploded or levitated.
The lab door swung open, and one of Tretiak’s security men delivered a terse, yet important message.
“He’s on-line, sir. Your Mr. Fly is on-line.”
Indeed he was.
Simon Templar sat impatiently in his London hotel room, staring at his bank account balance on the laptop screen.
“C’mon, Tretiak,” he murmured to himself. “Time for Boris to pay the fly.”
The balance did not increase. Templar typed an urgent e-mail message to Boris the Spider.
Boris was sending Simon a message of his own:
RECIPE INCOMPLETE. CAKE WON’T RISE. HENCE, NO DOUGH.
Templar’s jaw clenched. He banged out his reply.
I’M NOT THE BAKER — DON’T MAKE ME THE BUTCHER!
Three blocks from the Belgravia-Copeland, Ilya Tretiak edged his way through traffic. He drove another in his ever-expanding collection of imported American 4X4 all-terrain vehicles. The fact that he had never driven one on any surface other than well-maintained pavement was irrelevant. To Ilya, appearances were everything.
Accompanying him were two henchmen with high foreheads and low morals — Vlad and Igor. Each was ill-tempered, high-strung, and augmented by chemicals best described as violent stimulants to the central nervous system.
The three thugs were not in the U.K. simply to test drive Range Rovers or Jeep Grand Cherokees. They carried an electronic triangulator keyed to the transmission signal of Templar’s modem.
“How we doin’?” asked Ilya.
“Gettin’ hot,” Vlad replied. “We’re almost on him.”
“Good. If dear old Dad can keep him on-line long enough, Mr. Fly will get the ultimate swat.”
Igor choked out something resembling a laugh. “Does that make us a swat team?”
“Yeah, an unofficial one, but a damn good one.”
As Templar typed his next response to Ivan Tretiak, Ilya and his two thugs further confirmed their coordinates.
“There!” snapped Ilya. “Belgravia-Copeland! Armor-up! Let’s go!”
The three toughs screeched their 4X4 to an abrupt halt outside the hotel, threw open the car doors, and marched toward the ornate entrance.
The Jamaican woman glanced out the window at their arrival and momentarily froze when she caught sight of ill-concealed automatic weapons.
Ilya led the way, stomping roughly into the lobby. Reanimated by the Russians’ militaristic entrance, the woman reached for the silent alarm.
Ilya abruptly raised his silencer-equipped Sig-Sauer and squeezed off the one round that smashed through her forehead and terminated her life. He didn’t bother watching her fall.
The bellboy descending the stairs was no more fortunate. Vlad finished him with a quick burst to the heart while Igor took control of the hotel switchboard. There were five lines in use, and he quickly monitored each one. Only room 17 gave him the distinctive whistle of a modem in use.
“Room seventeen,” barked Igor, “there’s a fax/modem on-line in room seventeen.”
They took the stairs three at a time, raced to room 17, and kicked down the door.
Empty. Almost empty — a small transmitter sat on the floor, relaying Templar’s modem signal from anther room.
Outraged and outwitted, Tretiak’s three stooges spread out. They kicked open every door in the hotel. Terrified guests in various stages of undress screamed and shouted in fear and panic.