He stood as if in a stupor and scuffed his way across the mezzanine’s highly polished floor. All around him was conspicuous luxury and grotesque overstatement. Above him hung the elaborate dual-tiered chandelier, suspended between twin towers as if it were a hangman suspended from a gallows.
“Gallows,” whispered Vereshagin.
He pulled a black Berreta from the holster on his hip, placed the barrel against his temple, and watched the mansion slowly spin around him. He was the center of a dying universe.
His finger jerked the trigger.
The room stopped spinning.
In Red Square, Ilya and Tretiak dived into the limo. Hot lead slammed into the bulletproof windshield.
“Drive! Drive!” Ilya was yelling, his voice cracking with desperation.
The limo’s tires screamed on pavement, the car careened wildly down the street, arid Tretiak’s foot soldiers were left stranded to fend for themselves.
Templar, disregarding the mayhem swirling around him, watched the limo’s taillights disappear in the distance. There was only one place Tretiak could go — back to his mansion for the cold fusion formula.
A microphone was suddenly thrust into Templar’s face, and he found himself staring into a camera lens.
“Simon Templar, ahas the Saint, wanted by Scotland Yard!” It was Chet Rogers, angling for an exclusive. “Mr. Templar, what’s your involvement with Karpov, Tretiak, cold fusion, and this failed coup?”
Templar’s piratical visage filled television screens around the globe. One such TV set was situated in the communal living room of a large boardinghouse in the Gloucester Road area of London where three floors had been converted for that purpose. A motherly landlady provided breakfast and an occasional supper for her residents, among them being Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard.
He had not caught the earlier portions of the broadcast, but joined the coverage about the moment the camera first focused on the tanned and devilish features of Simon Templar.
Teal almost swallowed his gum, and soon his rotund nose was virtually pressed against the television screen.
Intimidated neither by Tretiak’s plot nor uneven odds. Templar was even less cowed by electronic media. He felt much as he did re-entering London at Heathrow Airport, sensing that Teal himself was on the other side of the glass — which, of course, he was.
“Tretiak is a power-mad criminal attempting to kill democracy and establish a new dictatorship in Russia.”
Rogers, thrilled with these sound bites, felt a rush of professional adrenaline.
“But what about you — why are you here? Are you a criminal or a hero?”
Teal yelped at his television. “Criminal, dammit!”
The Saint’s eyes scanned the crowd’s perimeter, searching for signs of Frankie.
“If I can stop Tretiak and rescue cold fusion, let the world decide if I deserve praise or punishment.”
“Simon!”
It was Frankie piloting a Zhiguli motorcycle, complete with vintage sidecar.
“Excuse me; time to play hero,” said Templar to the reporter as he climbed in. “Oh. One more thing.” The Saint could not resist an admirable addendum, intoned in his most authentic and unquestionably sincere British accent: “God Save the Queen!”
Across the U.K., the cheers and acclaim were, with a singular exception, unanimous. Claude Eustace Teal, had he not been so reserved, would have wept.
4
Frankie negotiated through the chaos with breathtaking confidence.
“Nice to see you again!” exclaimed Templar. “You’re right, this is a classic.”
“Yeah, and my timing’s good, too!” yelled Frankie over the cycle’s roar. “How’d you pull off that stunt in Red Square?”
“Botvin and I have been in close communication ever since I visited his lab and wired him up. It was a close call, but Karpov, Botvin, and I cooked up that little miracle before Sklarov came crashing in.”
Frankie shook her helmeted head in amazement. “That was quite a miracle, even for a Saint.”
“I’ll need a couple more before this is over, Frankie. All hell is going to break loose at Tretiak’s.”
Simon should have used the present tense. The gates of Tretiak’s estate were already flung wide open, and the staff was fleeing like proverbial rats.
Ilya and Tretiak, out of the limo and into the mansion, were racing about wildly. The younger was yelping orders at Igor and Vlad.
“Clean out the safes! Jewels, cash, passports! Hurry!”
Ilya dashed into his room, retrieved a gram vial of Methadrine, and grabbed his walking stick.
Tretiak almost stumbled over the body of Vereshagin at the foot of the winding staircase. The chief operating officer lay dead. Half his head was missing, but the weapon responsible was easily found in Vereshagin’s hand.
“Suicide! You damned coward!”
Tretiak kicked the corpse before continuing up the stairs.
Frankie’s motorbike-and-sidecar combination raced over the icy road to Tretiak’s mansion, slush and snow spraying from the spinning tread. Above them, Simon heard the distinctive sound of helicopters — an airborne armada of news choppers en route to document the adventure’s climax.
She pushed the bike full throttle, and the wind lashed them with invisible whips. The iced air stung Templar’s cheeks and almost froze his lungs. Holding his two-way communicator close to his lips, he shouted a warning to Botvin.
“I’m on my way. Watch out for Tretiak!”
He had no way of knowing if Botvin could hear him or understand him over the engine’s roar and the whipping wind, but he at least owed him the effort.
Botvin could hear him, but making out every word was more than difficult. He sat at his computer, fogged glasses in his lap, downloading the cold fusion formula onto disk.
He turned when he heard the door creak.
“Mr. Templar,” said Botvin to the blurry silhouette, “I make a disk for you, of full cold fusion formula.”
“Templar? You said Templar?!”
Tretiak was enraged.
Botvin put on his glasses. A lump rose in his throat and his stomach sank.
“You traitor!” Tretiak screamed as he pulled out his gun.
“No, I’m not a traitor,” insisted Botvin proudly. “I have given my talents for the future of Russia.”
“You’ve also given your life,” snarled Tretiak, and he shot Botvin point blank in the forehead. The scientist pitched backward in his chair, then slumped lifeless to the floor.
Tretiak pocketed his gun, sat down in the bloodstained chair, and swiveled toward the computer. The formula was almost finished downloading.
“I may have lost the Kremlin,” said Tretiak triumphantly to Botvin’s dead body, “but to control cold fusion gives me more power than the president of any country.”
He ejected the priceless disk and spun the chair away from the computer. As the chair swiveled, he found himself facing Ilya. His son was pointing a gun at him.
“Gee, Dad, I was just thinking the same thing.”
Tretiak laughed nervously. “What an absurd situation! My own son holding a gun on me! Don’t be ridiculous, Ilya, put that away.”
He did not put it away.
“A son must annihilate a father, one way or another,” stated Ilya dispassionately, “if he’s to be a man...”
Tretiak attempted looking deeply into his son’s eyes. They were not that deep. All Tretiak saw was madness fueled by Methadrine.
The universe seemed to tilt out of kilter, and the floor rumbled from approaching loyalist tanks — heavy firepower under the direction of returned turncoat General Sklarov.