“Yes! There he is, running for his life after an attempted robbery right here in Moscow! International police are searching everywhere for him, but we’ve captured him — the notorious Simon Templar, alias the Saint — thief, terrorist, scoundrel, and a man who, this very evening, was found in President Karpov’s bedroom!”
The crowd had some difficulty visualizing the scene as implied by Tretiak, but they managed to hiss, boo, and hurl verbal insults.
Watching the telecast inside the American Embassy, Emma sat mesmerized and half-crazed with fear for Simon’s safety.
Templar, mindful of the theatrical element of the presentation, offered a polite and efficient stage bow to the audience. He followed that with a warm smile and friendly wave.
Tretiak almost choked.
“This criminal and your corrupt president were going to bankrupt our national treasury!” he yelled in mock astonishment. “And for what? Let me show you!”
Yet another spotlight came to life, hitting the pièce de résistance — the bedraggled array of beakers, tubes, and a lightbulb from Botvin’s lab, now displayed on the back of a flatbed truck.
“Look! Look and laugh... laugh to keep from crying.” Tretiak was laying it on with a trowel. “This sad science project was supposed to rescue Russia from a frigid, freezing death. Do you deny this, Mr. Karpov?”
Karpov threw a glance at Templar, then responded with resonant self-assurance.
“Absolutely not! I proudly admit it!”
This was not the answer Tretiak expected, and he felt a sudden unease in the pit of his stomach.
The crowd looked from Tretiak to Karpov, from Karpov to Tretiak, but no one was looking at Simon Templar. He leaned his head down to his chest and spoke into the third button of his guard uniform.
“Send the signal — do it now!”
Miles away in Tretiak’s mansion. Dr. Lev Botvin sent a remote activation signal via microwave transmission. In response, the cold fusion apparatus slowly came to life, setting chemicals bubbling in their beakers.
“Sitting stupidly on that truck,” continued Tretiak, regaining his authoritative demeanor, “is a fairy tale called cold fusion. You pass electrical current into the apparatus and there is supposed to be a chemical reaction. But just watch! It is supposed to heat this huge, cold, continent — but it can’t even light up a measly lightbulb!”
He paused so as to not step on the audience’s outburst of laughter. The laugh did not come. Instead, there was a mass murmur.
What the audience could see, and Tretiak could not, was the lightbulb beginning to glow.
The would-be dictator continued his anti-West diatribe.
“From the same, sick culture that gave us crack, unemployment, AIDS, gangster rap...” Tretiak was fighting to regain his rhythm, but he had already lost his audience to the astonishing image on the screen — the bulb glowing brighter, hotter. The flatbed truck began to sag, its tires melting under the intense heat of cold fusion.
The crowd surged forward as the bulb reached critical mass, the truck’s windows shattered, and a magnificent white-hot column erupted into the dark night sky like a true beacon of hope.
The visuals were astonishing.
Tretiak, stunned, felt as if he were shrinking.
The crowd was amazed, amused, aghast, agog. Children were hoisted onto adult shoulders to witness this modem miracle of power and light, and several entrepreneurial members of the audience wished they had made arrangements for concession rights.
“It works! Karpov’s cold fusion works!” The cry came from the crowd, repeated and rephrased again and again with mounting enthusiasm.
“The light gives off heat!”
Templar winked at Karpov.
“Miracle number one,” said the Saint slyly.
Back at the American Embassy, the now-crowded room erupted in cheers. Emma wept for joy.
Three hundred thousand Muscovites stared at an exceedingly nervous Ivan Tretiak.
“All right, I grant that it seems to work to some extent... but who knows whether in the long run, the cost outweighs...”
No one was listening anymore. All attention reverted back to the glorious column of light, growing taller and brighter.
The crowd, caught up in a carnival mood, began to shout its allegiance to Karpov, their beloved president.
“Karpov! Karpov! Karpov!”
Then they said it again.
“Kar-pov! Kar-pov! Kar-pov!”
General Sklarov, rapidly assessing his future prospects in the Russian military as decidedly dim, hastily approached his president.
“A thousand apologies, Mr. President, there was obviously a miscommunication somewhere in the chain of command. I intend to conduct a strenuous inquiry right away.”
“Really? From where — prison?”
Sklarov was afraid Karpov would say something like that, and he was not tremendously surprised to find his fears were well founded. He decided it was best to ignore Karpov’s comment and press on patriotically.
“We’ll get that traitor, Mr. President,” insisted Sklarov, and he began waving signals to his troops.
“Hey, Sklarov!” yelled Templar as he fanned the air with a friendly wave. “When do I get my epaulets back?”
From his vantage point on the scaffold, Simon could see the tanks begin to roll backward out of Red Square, the drivers hoping their anonymity would remain intact until they got back to the barracks. None of them would ever admit to being in Red Square the night the coup failed.
The amazing turn of events generated a maelstrom of chaos. The crowd, caught up in the energy of the moment, could have either torn Tretiak to shreds or ignored him completely.
Fearing the former, Tretiak slid from the tank, discarded his microphone, and was immediately shielded by Ilya and a phalanx of thugs.
“Get me the hell out of here,” barked Tretiak, and made for his awaiting limo before the crowd could take action.
Ilya waved his Smith & Wesson, intimidating the locals and aggravating the loyal military. As for the Saint, he was already off the scaffold and pushing his way through the throng.
The crowd backed off in fear at the sight of Ilya’s weapon, but the military and Sklarov’s Special Forces took a threatening stance. Ilya impulsively opened fire, blasting away at anyone in uniform, and three men fell dead in the street.
Panic and pandemonium. The military launched a close-range firefight with Tretiak’s goons. Parents threw themselves atop their children, and the air was filled with screams and gunfire.
Flack-jacketed reporters and fearless journalists continued their five converge, detailing the action for an entranced worldwide audience.
“In an unexpected reversal of fortune, the Tretiak coup has suddenly collapsed,” explained a breathless Jan Sharp. “It is not clear what role General Sklarov is playing in this media event turned violent — his Special Forces first seized the president. Now they are freeing him and turning on Tretiak!”
Back at Tretiak’s mansion, Vereshagin watched Sklarov’s reversal on television. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach. Everything had gone wrong. He had envisioned himself riding a rocket named Tretiak to power and influence in the New Russia. His self-aggrandizing hopes were now as shattered as the broken bottles in Red Square.
He quickly drank three glasses of vodka, smoked as many cigarettes, and began to shiver as if all the doors and windows were thrown wide to the winter cold.
He pondered fact upon fact, formed and reviewed and discarded plan after plan, until his weary brain shaped a plot with which he could find no fault.
It was, of course, a rather wild and desperate scheme, the kind a man such as Vereshagin forms after too many drinks taken in fear, but it was the only answer he could devise.