Still clinging to the useless rope, he dropped through the gapping hole created by Ilya’s death-fall. His only hope of survival was the handful of hemp clutched in his powerful grip.
The dome-top pulley rattled its bolts as the rope wildly ran through, whipping and snapping in heated fury to its massive, knotted conclusion. The oversize endpiece hit the pulley full force, wedging itself intractably between unyielding.metal. The sudden tightening of the rope burned the flesh in Templar’s palms and almost ripped his arms from their sockets.
A few feet from death, suspended above Ilya’s broken body, Simon Templar appreciated the pain as a welcome alternative to extinction. He hung there gasping, dumbly bewildered that he should still be alive.
He dropped to safety. Slowly, in breathless wonder, he turned his gaze to the extraordinary sight before him — a vast storage space, the size of several city blocks, stacked to the rafters with aisle upon aisle of jumbo oil drums. Each drum contained hundreds of gallons of precious, hoarded heating oil.
“My, my, my,” said Templar appreciatively, “tricky old Tretiak hid it all in his basement.”
Templar pulled the computer disk from his pocket, regarded it in the flickering light of the fire that licked the shattered timbers above him. How much money did he hold in his hand? Ten billion dollars? Twenty? Realistically, he had contacts who would eagerly cough up tens of millions for the formula encoded upon the little magnetic wheel. Wealth beyond imagining. The prospect had, until this very moment, held him in an inescapable stranglehold. It had made him rich, for certain, but what else had it made him?
He tossed the disk up into the flames. The world’s only copy of Dr. Emma Russell’s cold fusion formula shriveled and melted into bubbling blue plastic.
Wealth beyond imagining...
If he felt a pang of remorse, it was buried under an avalanche of other, nobler feelings. In a life seemingly devised of one daring escape after another, Simon Templar felt, for the very first time, that he was truly free.
“Miracle number two,” whispered the Saint.
The floor above suddenly swarmed with Russian Marines foaming out the blaze, and it wasn’t long before Templar saw Frankie peering down through the crater in happy disbelief.
“Hey! Look at that! You’re alive! And there’s enough oil there to heat all of Moscow.”
“And no one to stop you,” called out Templar. “No one to stop you at all.”
Frankie was immediately joined by newscasters and reporters rattling off breathtaking descriptions of the mansion’s fiery destruction and its recently revealed hidden treasure.
CNN’s Lloyd Swain pointed his camera through the smoking hole in the foyer floor, as did his counterpart from UPN.
CNN’s signal digitally bounced via Eutelsat 2, flight 3, at 16 degrees east, transponder 41, to CNN in London, who then passed it on to CNN in Atlanta by way of Maxat’s Global Skylink. When the signal arrived in Atlanta, it was inserted live into CNN International as “breaking news,” and was then transmitted back across the Atlantic and retransmitted all over Europe.
The digital image of Simon Templar bounced over four satellites on its way to London’s television screens.
Inspector Teal sat drop-jawed in silence, absorbing every detail of the live coverage. He turned reluctantly from the TV set when his landlady informed him that he was wanted on the telephone.
The phlegmatic detective pulled his plump posterior from the comfort of his La-Z-Boy recliner, loosed a sigh, crossed the room, and placed the receiver to his ear.
It was Sir Hamilton Dorn. “Watching the news, Teal?”
Teal mumbled an affirmation. A direct call from Dorn was highly irregular.
“Does Scotland Yard have anything solid on this Templar character, anything you could use to actually press charges?”
“In reality?”
“What else is there?”
Teal cradled the telephone against his shoulder while he unwrapped a fresh stick of spearmint gum.
“if could lay my hands on him tomorrow, I’d have no more hope of proving he stole anything than I’d have of running the Pope in for bigamy. However, we could charge him with obstructing the police in the execution of their duty...” Teal left the sentence incomplete. He preferred Dorn supply the appropriate ending.
“What’s the use of busting the Saint for a milk-and-cookies rap like that?” asked Dorn rhetorically, and Inspector Teal wasn’t sure exactly which tack to take.
“At best he’s wanted for questioning in a dozen unsolved thefts and swindles,” responded the detective. “At worst, if he arrived back in London tomorrow, I could do nothing more than meet him at Heathrow and ask him if he had a good time in Russia.”
There was an ominous silence on the other end of the line, and Teal feared he was about to be remonstrated by a knighted superior.
“It’s not my fault, sir,” stated Teal gloomily. “We aren’t in the Saint’s class, and some day we shall have to admit it.”
Dorn cut him short. “This matter has definite international intelligence implications. Teal. I think my office should handle it directly. I’ll speak to the commissioner, and you can simply let it go.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s just as well,” added Dorn. “With these high-profile heroics, no jury would convict him of anything. Especially after...”
The two men said it in unison.
“God Save the Queen.”
Teal moved his gum to the other side of his mouth.
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“Good, Teal. I appreciate your cooperation. In fact, I’d like you to come by my office tomorrow and bring detective Rabbit-Hoe—”
“That’s Rabineau, sir...”
“... and we’ll have a nice chat.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sensing Teal’s weariness, Dorn made an unusually friendly offer.
“I’ll even buy you a beer when you’re off duty.”
Teal gave it serious consideration before reciting his standard reply to offers of alcohol.
“Fat men ought not to drink, but I appreciate the gesture.”
“As you wish,” said Sir Hamilton Dorn.
Teal returned the telephone to its cradle and plopped himself back down in front of the television. On the screen, live from Russia, Simon Templar looked every bit the hero.
5
“Am I boring you, Inspector?”
It was Dr. Emma Russell who asked him the question during her debriefing in Teal’s office a few days after her return from Moscow.
“Don’t take it personally,” explained Rabineau, leaning back in her chair. “He always looks like that.”
“Has this Simon Templar made any threat to contact you in the future?” asked Teal as he unwrapped another stick of gum and folded it into his mouth.
“No. Actually, he never had a chance to say much of anything to me after I started running for the embassy.”
Rabineau drummed her well-manicured fingers on the desk. She was a recent graduate of Lord Trenchard’s famous Police College, and usually gave the impression of being very well satisfied with her degree.
“Quite a charmer, though, isn’t he?” offered Rabineau. “The Saint, I mean.”
Emma was guarded in her reply, but attempted to sound spontaneous.
“I admit he holds a certain short-term appeal. But if you’re referring to romance, all I got from Mr. Templar in Moscow was a series of near-death experiences.”
“Count yourself lucky,” insisted Teal. “Simon Templar is our top suspect in the Uffizi bombing in Florence a few years back...”
“An innocent woman was killed, along with two children,” added Rabineau.