The Saint in Persuit (19 page)

The Saint’s voice was more placid in precisely inverse ratio to the raised pitch of Uzdanov’s.

“You’d better not hurt her, because then I wouldn’t care what I did.”

The car’s speed was up to sixty now, and the wind tore at the papers in the Saint’s hand. They seemed alive and fighting to be free. Uzdanov ground his teeth audibly and switched the aim of his stiletto from Vicky’s throat to the back of the Saint’s neck.

“I think you must care what happens to yourself!” he shouted. “Bring those letters inside!”

“Don’t make me nervous, pal, or I might run over a cliff. In this kind of country the man at the wheel has to keep his mind on the road, and of all the back-seat drivers I’ve ever had the misfortune to travel with, you’re the most distracting.”

Simon could feel the point of Uzdanov’s knife against his skin, squarely in the centre of the back of his neck. One slip and the blade could plunge forward through flesh and bone, severing the connection of spinal cord and brain stem. But at least he felt sure that his enemy would not sink the dagger into him on purpose at the moment, since the consequences for the Russian would have been as disastrous as for himself.

The car was careening down into the darkness at a hundred and twenty kilometres on a narrow road that seemed to writhe like a living reptile around the side of the mountain. Rubber shrieked against paving as the tires skidded through turn after turn. Simon dreaded the possibility of a curve so tight that he would be forced to slow down enough to allow Uzdanov to risk driving the knife into his neck and grabbing for the wheel himself.

But so far luck was on the Saint’s side. The curves were hair-raising but banked enough to let him keep up a good speed, and as long as that lasted Uzdanov would be forced to wait.

Simon pulled the Volkswagen out of a particularly stomach-twirling loop, and said breezily: “We could all sing songs, I suppose. Anything to while away a dull trip. Why don’t you teach us the Internationale?”

“Templar!” screamed Uzdanov impotently.

“Oooh,” Vicky moaned.

She was leaning forward, clutching the handgrip on the dashboard as if to brace herself in case of a crash.

“Vicky, get down on the floor where he can’t reach you!” Simon told her in a suddenly sharp voice. “Now!”

She scrambled off her seat and huddled in the narrow space under the dashboard on her side of the car, ready to fend off Uzdanov with her leather purse if he tried to lean over and take a jab at her.

“Don’t try anything,” the Saint ordered her. “Just keep away from that pig-sticker of his.”

“What about you?” she cried.

“I’ve got him in the palm of my hand—can’t you see?” Simon replied brightly. “I think he may be ready to make a deal. Is that right, Boris?”

To increase the impact of his words he jammed his foot down on the accelerator with a vehemence that seemed certain to send the car shooting straight out into space.

“Slow down!” Uzdanov screeched in a panic as the Volkswagen lurched into another bend.

“I thought you were the one who got such a kick out of speed,” drawled the Saint.

Uzdanov’s face must have achieved an expression of particular ferocity at that moment; Vicky, looking back at him, whimpered: “Hell kill you, Simon!”

“If he tries making shish kebab out of me he’ll end up in the sauce himself, because we’ll all three be taking a half-mile short-cut—straight down!”

Uzdanov cleared his throat as the car sailed down a relatively straight stretch. The needle-sharp point of his stiletto was as firmly as ever against Simon’s neck.

“Perhaps … we can bargain,” he said hoarsely.

“For a start you can throw that bodkin out of the window,” the Saint told him. “Somehow I don’t enjoy talking business when a strip of steel may be poking between my vertebrae at any second.”

“No!” Uzdanov retorted. “You think I’m crazy? Slow down first, and then I will throw away the knife.”

“In that case, I can see the three of us meandering along the road of life like this for ever,” Simon said unconcernedly.

Wind whistled through the windows as the car zoomed on down the mountainside. The Russian grunted, obviously at a loss for any new form of persuasion. But while the deadlock was complete, it was becoming apparent that it could only be temporary.

“Sooner or later you will have to slow down, Templar,” he said, with a gradual recovery of much of his former composure. “In the meantime, there is nothing you can do— and I can wait.”

The Saint riposted with a blase insouciance that was deliberately meant to be infuriating.

“When I do have to slow down, chum, it’ll probably be because of traffic or a village cop—which’ll be no time for you to start slaughtering your fellow-passengers. The dome light will still be on, remember, which will give you about as much privacy for your butchering as a goldfish in a public aquarium.”

Uzdanov was not a man to be easily discouraged, nor to let trivia stand in his way.

“The light does not have to be on,” he said.

As he leaned to one side and reached for the switch, to clinch his argument, Simon could feel the welcome detachment of the dagger’s point from direct contact with his flesh.

This was the moment he had planned for, to which all his verbal sparring had been subtly directed.

Now he suddenly shifted his foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal. He could only hope that the knife was not poised directly behind him.

“Thanks, sucker,” he said simultaneously. “Now I will slow down!”

He jammed his foot down, virtually freezing the rear wheels of the automobile on the spot. Uzdanov, off balance and without his unarmed hand to brace himself, was catapulted forward, his dagger stabbing past the Saint’s head. Simon ducked as the sliver of steel shot past his jaw, and then he straightened galvanically up again like a released spring, smashing the back of his head into Uzdanov’s face with something very close to the force and effect of a cannon ball.

VI: How Simon Templar continued

to be Helpful.

The Saint had no time to appreciate the devastation his skull had inflicted on Uzdanov’s physiognomy. The sudden grab of the brakes had made the car swerve wildly and had hurled the Russian so violently forward that he might have continued on through the windshield if he had not been brought to a halt by Simon’s head. He went heavily limp across the Saint’s shoulders, his dagger clattering down among the foot controls, one of his forearms thrust between the spokes of the steering wheel, and the Saint struggled for control of the wheel as the car skidded with a scream of scorching rubber. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Vicky still balled on the floor next to his feet, her own eyes squeezed tightly shut. She let out a terrified gasp as she felt the car veer.

“Stay where you are!” Simon told her.

Somehow he kept the Volkswagen on the road in a swerving course that allowed no more sharp applications of the brake. It was all he could do to hold the car on the steep downgrade while he used all the leverage of his back to shrug and push the unconscious Uzdanov away, disengaging his fat arm from the steering wheel and dumping him off his shoulders and neck into the rear of the car.

As the Russian slid heavily back on to the floor behind, Simon had a more urgent problem to monopolize his attention. The headlights of the car, spearing out into the darkness, suddenly showed nothing at all. A hairpin turn was going its own way directly to the left, threatening to leave the Volkswagen with no more support under its wheels than several hundred feet of fresh and very dark mountain air. The Swiss highway authorities had reckoned that the bend could be negotiated at fifty kilometres an hour and had put up a sign marking it safe at forty. The Saint had just entered into it at a speed of almost eighty.

Only the instincts and skill of a Monte Carlo Rally driver, combined with a favorable nod from whatever gods concern themselves with such crises in the wee hours of the night, could have saved the car and its occupants from a graceful but rapidly drooping trajectory straight off the side of a cliff. By some miraculous combination of just the right amount of pressure on the brake and precise turns of the steering wheel Simon persuaded the car to keep its smoking tires more or less on the pavement.

A ton and more of metal responded to his delicate touch like a living thing. The highway and the rough shoulder to which it clung were a heaving blur as the machine, in a final fantastic pirouette, swung its engine-heavy rear to the fore with a wail like a riot of bagpipes. A partial spin had finally been the Saint’s only choice. Any other end to his manoeuvres would have sent him rolling over the low safety wall and plummeting into the valley below.

The car slid to a crashing stop, half on and half off the road. The engine stalled and died, and suddenly the world seemed terribly quiet. There was a sensation of extreme remoteness, and the only sound was the wind, which strangely made the car seem to sway and quiver.

Simon sat very still, his senses acutely tuned to judge the extent of the Volkswagen’s continuing predicament. It was not just vertigo or imagination which told him that the brisk Alpine breeze was making the car quiver. Straight ahead of him from where he sat in the driver’s seat, the car’s headlights illuminated the sheer wall of rock which rose straight up from the inner side of the road. Behind him, the rear of the car sagged ominously.

Near his feet there was a tentative stir.

“Have we stopped?” Vicky quavered.

She was still rolled into a frightened ball underneath the dashboard, and Simon could see by the light of the dome bulb which had proved Uzdanov’s undoing that her eyes were not yet open.

“We’ve stopped temporarily, at any rate,” he answered. But don’t move until I tell you to.”

Vicky’s eyes popped open.

“Don’t move?” she objected with a sudden bravado born of the simple realization that she was still alive. “Don’t move? Why not?”

“Ill tell you in a minute.”

Vicky looked less brave and stared towards the back of the car.

“Is that commie out cold? I think you killed him.”

“Anyway, he’s resting in peace at the moment,” Simon told her, after a cautious twist and a downward glance.

Vicky’s expression became a little happier again.

“You almost knocked his head off. It was wonderful.”

The Saint was paying much more attention to the precarious position of his car than to his desultory dialogue with Vicky, which was mainly designed to keep her occupied while he decided what to do. If she suddenly realized how close the car might be to losing its balance and dropping over the cliffside, she would be liable to panic and trigger just that undesirable event.

“He almost cut my head off, which wouldn’t have been so wonderful,” he mentioned abstractedly.

“He’s still got my letter!” Vicky remembered aloud.

Before she could unwind herself from the floor the Saint stopped her with a gentle but undeniably firm hand on her shoulder.

“I asked you not to move,” he said in a voice that had all the smooth poise of a tightrope-walker’s bearing.

“Not move?” Vicky asked indignantly, albeit impressed by his tone. “I want out. From now on I travel by bicycle or I don’t travel at all.”

“I think you’ll be travelling by foot for quite a distance, if we get out of here.”

He had chosen the last phrase deliberately.

“If?” Vicky echoed uneasily. “Aren’t we safe? We’re alive and that red rat or whatever he is has got his knife out of our backs. Don’t tell me something else can go wrong now?”

Simon nodded and held her eyes magnetized with the intense translucency of his blue ones as he measured his next words.

“What else can be wrong is the fact that the parking place I’ve ended up in is something less than ideal. Our rear wheels, my dear, are hanging over the void, and it may be only that extra bit of strudel you ate for dinner that’s keeping our front end anchored to the road. I recommend that we open our respective doors carefully and jump out simultaneously on the count of three.”

Vicky’s eyes were very, very wide.

“You’re kidding me,” she complained weakly.

“If you think so, let me get out first,” Simon answered.

“Oh, no! I’ll take your word for it.”

“Okay, then. Get out when I say ‘three’. One …”

“Wait!” she said. “What about him?”

“You mean Boris the back-seat driver? We’ll let Father Marx worry about him. After all, the car may not go over even after we get out.”

Vicky’s fingers were touching the streak of blood on her cheek.

“I’m not worried about his health,” she said. “But he’s got that letter he took away from me a few minutes ago. He’s got my ten million dollars!”

“We might shift the balance too much if we tried to get it. Worry about saving yourself first, and then worry about your loot.” His voice became imperative, still without losing its firm core of calmness. “Now pay attention to what I’m telling you! It’s important that we both get out of here at the same time, just in case it takes the two of us weighting down the front of this beetle to keep it from tangling with the thick end of this alp. Open your door while I count, and jump exactly when I say ‘three’.”

A fresh gust of wind seemed to make the car tremble as he spoke; and Vicky’s face, pale in the dim yellow dome light, became rigid with fear.

“Jump,” she repeated huskily, her lips barely moving.

“Yes, and be sure you don’t jump towards the back of the car or you’ll probably go over the edge. The rear end is sticking out into space.”

“All right,” she responded faintly.

“Good. Get ready, and when I say ‘three’ get out fast. One …”

Simon opened his door slowly, and Vicky timidly did the same.

“Two …”

Vicky moved from her kneeling position on the floor to a half-sitting crouch that would let her move quickly out of the car when the last number was called. Her shift of weight, combined with sail-effect of the open doors as they were caught by the wind, made the car sway like a distressed canoe. Her facial hue had become more green than white.

“Oh, we can’t!” she whimpered.