“Well, you have me fooled,” agreed Frankie, and took a peek at Simon’s Bulgari Chronograph. “Can you trick the door of Stalin’s bunker, get into the Kremlin, and warn Karpov before General Sklarov’s Special Forces help Tretiak take over?”
A serious question.
“That has been a primary concern,” acknowledged the Saint.
“Maybe you should just call Karpov on the telephone. That be easier.”
Templar laughed and ran his hands through his hair. “Why Frankie, what adventure is there in that? Besides, President Karpov has an unlisted number. Crawling around under the Kremlin will be good exercise for both of us.”
Frankie gulped.
“Both...?”
“Of course, I treasure your companionship.”
“Am I supposed to say thank you?”
“You’re supposed to brew some warm tea while I perform high-tech miracles and assemble my wardrobe.”
“Wardrobe?”
“The play’s the thing, Frankie,” said Templar happily, pulling digital toys out of a knapsack, “and I have a costume for every occasion.”
She put a kettle on the small propane stove and shook her head in amazement. She had already seen the rather astonishing contents of his garment bag.
“You’re a different kind of man, all right. Maybe you should go into politics.”
“Heaven forbid,” admonished Templar playfully as he scanned portions of the Kremlin ground-plan onto a three-inch square card. “Besides, Tretiak might hear you, and you know what he thinks of competition.”
She shrugged and poured the hot water. “Tretiak big rat. Sklarov big rat. Karpov... I don’t know... maybe a mouse — a democratic mouse. But up there, outside, the people getting more mad; army getting more scary.”
She paused as if remembering something, then reached under the counter and lifted up a tiny black-and-white portable television.
“Runs on handful of D batteries,” Frankie explained, switching it on. “Reception not great, but...”
She stood in the lamplight, shadows of concern casting lines across her face, listening to the news report of another of Tretiak’s Oktober Party rallies.
General Sklarov’s voice crackled over the small speaker while the on-screen image wavered back and forth.
“... three great empires have dominated the world: Rome, Constantinople, and Russia. All three have fallen. Only one can be restored, and only one man can restore it — Ivan Tretiak!”
A thunderous response of stamping feet drowned out Sklarov’s shouted repetition of Tretiak’s name.
“When the world going to learn?” asked Frankie. “One more crook. One more dictator. One more liar. How many people die to make one more rich man even more rich?”
The crowd cheered as Tretiak himself took the microphone.
“You know me, I am Ivan Tretiak — a lunatic, a dreamer, a poet — a lunatic because I’m haunted by the fantasy of an empire that reclaims her former might, a dreamer beset by nightmares of the West cackling as it castrates us in the name of democracy, a poet spinning rhymes of Russia not cut off at the knees, but armed to the teeth! Not ridiculed, but revered!”
The crowd erupted in abject cacophonia.
“No, more than revered,” shouted Tretiak, “feared!”
Pandemonium. Tretiak continued, speaking over the clamor, his voice rising steadily.
“President Karpov will hand you over, weak and frozen, to the Western liberals, foreigners, and one-worlders, but it is not too late. We do not need to recreate Russia, we need to re-arm Russia! Russia is not a sweet old babushka who’s seen better days. No! Soon the babushka will rip off her rags, rear up, and reveal that she is Mother Russia, roaring bear!”
The crowd was in a frenzy.
“The world had better cringe from her claws!”
The hoarse, frenzied howl rising from the maddened crowd seemed to throb with a horrible blood lust.
Then came the music, the rhythm, and the synchronized juggernaut tramp of marching men.
Frankie shuddered and turned down the volume.
“It’s horrible,” she said sadly, “horrible.”
Templar set his jaw for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was curiously low. Frankie could almost hear the rumble of iron on the streets above.
“You understand, Frankie, but millions don’t. Whole nations that call themselves intelligent human beings are perfectly willing to exchange their brains for a brass band and tax themselves to starvation to buy bigger and better bombs. Were that not the case, criminals like Tretiak would never get anywhere. Brass and drums, Frankie, brass and drums and the thunder of marching feet — that’s what this country is about to succumb to, and that’s a fate colder and more deadly than any oil shortage.”
“Where does this all lead, Simon. What if we can’t stop it?”
“I’ll tell you exactly where it leads — streets swarming with uniformed militia, neighbors betraying neighbors, midnight arrests, the third degree, secret tribunals, forced confessions, kangaroo courts, concentration camps, firing squads.”
Frankie sat down wearily. “Sounds familiar.”
“Too familiar,” agreed Templar. “It’s the description of a world gone mad — a world divided against itself.”
Frankie managed something resembling a hopeful smile.
“Hey, you sound like one of those one-world people Tretiak doesn’t like, either.”
Templar smiled back. “Well, if you don’t like the idea of one world, how many worlds do you want, and how would you like them divided? By race? By religion? By income? Unless you have a spare planet in your pocket, one world is all we have.”
“And you think you can save the world, Simon Templar?”
At that moment, had he answered in the affirmative, she would have believed him without question. There was a strange fire in his ice-blue eyes, and a rakish line to his features that bespoke confidence and victory.
“No. Not the world. Not today, Frankie,” said Templar, “but you and I together are going to do our best to save this one little part of it.”
“One frozen part of it,” added Frankie, pulling her collar up around her chin. She pointed up toward the ceiling. “Going to be pretty hot in Red Square tomorrow.”
Frankie’s prophetic utterance was based on simple logical deduction of available facts — the same facts reiterated less than twenty-four hours later to their respective audiences by CNN’s Jan Sharp and UPN’s Chet Rogers, both broadcasting from Red Square.
“As freezing temperatures and fuel shortages continue to take their lethal toll,” reported Sharp, “and rumors sweep Moscow that many more deaths are unreported — troops under the command of right-wing General Leo Sklarov have begun to ring the Russian capital.”
Rogers, situated more precariously amidst the throng than Sharp, spoke with an edge of self-concern in his manly baritone. “Angry, frightened citizens are flocking to Red Square at this hour, but this time they are not braving the bitter cold for another political rally turned riot — they’ve been drawn here by the promise of a ‘revelation’ to be displayed on these colossal video screens...”
The video screens to which the reporter referred were the same shimmering technological marvels utilized by Tretiak in all his previous rallies — screens that made him seem larger than life and transformed him into an enormous, electronically enhanced champion of the people.
“This has become a life-and-death struggle,” exclaimed the hyperbole-laced reporter, “an intense drama played out on a very large stage whose final curtain is yet to come!”
Accompanying the intense drama were equally intense sound effects. The thunderous roar of stomping feet on concrete rumbled through the ground and vibrated the earth above Templar and Frankie, who were making their way through the dark and dismal tunnels beneath Red Square.