The Saint Returns (16 page)

The train was picking up speed, passing from
under
the huge canopy of the station’s roof. The wheels rumbled
smoothly
underfoot, and the car swayed slightly. The
few passengers who had
been waving goodbye to friends
from the corridor windows went into their compartments,
and almost suddenly the entire population of the
train
seemed to settle into midnight
somnolence.

Simon had, even in his haste, taken care to
enter the
train at the dividing point between the second- and
third-class
sections of the train. The third-class cars were
at the rear, and there
the unfortunate passengers would
be nodding shoulder-to-shoulder on bare benches amid
whimpering infants and greasy lunch bags. It seemed
unlikely, however, that the guardians
of the proletarian
revolution would
go quite that far to demonstrate their
principles
or even to achieve anonymity. The more
luxuriantly
upholstered and privately compartmented
segments of the train were a much better bet. As for
Klaus, he could be anywhere, assuming he was on the
train at all, and he would most likely be surveying the
same territory that Simon now proceeded to cover.

The Saint took on a sleepy, possibly somewhat
alcoholic
air, and wove his way along the corridor peering through the window of each
compartment with the
amiably confused expression of a man who’d forgotten
the location of his seat. To the few people who were
awake
enough or alert enough to notice him, he gave
an apologetic smile
as he passed on.

His task was, of course, complicated by the
fact that
he had no idea of the appearance of the Russians for
whom he was
searching. He could only hope that his
experience and
instincts would serve him as well as they had on many former occasions.

He covered three second-class cars and two
first-class cars with no success. The street lights of the Berlin suburbs had
long since been left behind, the checkpoint into
Eastern Germany had
been negotiated. In place of the
city’s brightness there was the black rural
landscape,
marked here and there by the glow of a village or town,
blending
with the inner reflections of the corridor
windows.

Then the opening of the door of the next car
forward
produced hefty odors of wine, cigars, cigarettes, and
beer, along with subdued sounds
of revelry. Simon had
entered the
refreshment lounge, where an exhausted
and
rumpled waiter was dispensing goodies to a troupe
of plump insomniacs in various stages of hilarity,
grav
ity, or asphyxiation from cigar smoke.

At the extreme opposite end of the car was a
familiar
face whose slate gray eyes were looking startled at
Simon
through the haze. Simon looked at the face. It
belonged to Hans
Klaus.

The Saint tried to shove his way through the
lounge
car before Klaus could lose himself somewhere up
ahead, but
it was a little like trying to run unhindered
through the last
three minutes of a football match. First
the waiter blocked
the aisle, and then an extraordinarily
broad-backed man with
a size-twenty neck and a de
termined aversion to being pushed around.

By the time Simon arrived at the next car, a
sleeper whose compartments had no windows facing the corri
dor, Klaus
was just disappearing at the other end. In the
next car, Simon
hurried by two men who apparently,
until the rapid passage of Klaus, had
been resting their
elbows on the lowered windows, enjoying the night air.
They
watched the Saint as he came to the end of his
pursuit. The door at
the end of the car was locked, and a
sign in three languages told him:
PASSENGERS FOR
BIDDEN: TRAIN CREW ONLY.

The little
toilette
to the Saint’s
left, which might have
provided the last publicly available hiding
place, was
unlocked
and empty. Simon looked back toward the two
men
who were observing him with sharp but controlled
interest from their station halfway up the corridor. His
main comfort at the moment was that if they were
com
rades of Klaus’s they’d have been at his neck before this.
There was no sign, in fact, that Klaus meant
anything to
them at all. On their
faces—the one broad and red, the
other
somewhat triangular and pallid—was none of the overt alarm or amusement which
might have been normally aroused by the scene they had just witnessed.

They offered no hints or comments. They just
watched
as if to see whether the so far harmless and mysterious
little
drama in which the Saint was involved might en
large to include them—in which case then:
interest might
become more active.

Their solemnity reminded Simon of the Secret Service
men he had seen during appearances of American
presi
dents—aloof, alert, and
hair-triggered. He even thought
he
detected a bulge beneath the broad-faced one’s broad-lapeled unstylish jacket.

No lightning thought processes such as the
Saint’s were necessary to draw the essential conclusions. He
had on his
first quick trip down the corridor decided that
these wakeful
gentlemen were a very probable tipoff
to the whereabouts of the fabled
Colonel Smolenko.
Neither
of them possessed the aura of cleverness which
would expectedly emanate from the Colonel himself.

Simon sauntered back along the corridor. When
he
came abreast of the two sentinels, who made no pretense
of not
staring at him, he stooped all of a sudden and
squinted out the
window as if he had seen something
startling.

That was sufficient to distract his
travelling compan
ions long enough for him to open the compartment door
they were
guarding, step inside, and instantly throw the
bolt.

The Saint did not need to understand much
Russian
to disentangle the frightened word
tovarishtch
from the
heavy
pounding of fists on the door.

He turned to see his prize, and for once even
Simon
Templar was
momentarily at a loss: Colonel Smolenko
seemed
to be a woman.

3

She looked at him coolly from her seat by the window:
lovely Slavic cheekbones, fine lips devoid of
make-up, and such large brown eyes that the fact she was pointing
a pistol at Simon seemed entirely anticlimactic.
If her
dark hair had been less tightly
pulled to the back of her
head, and if
she had worn something more fetching
than
a raincoat which probably had relatives among the
nearest circus tents, she could have competed on
all
points with the distracting
rabbits of the Berlin Bunny
Club.

“Open the door,” she said in
English, gesturing with
her automatic.

“I’m here to help you,” said Simon.
“Pardon me if I
seem to gape, but I wasn’t expecting a
woman.”

“Does it matter?”

“It could matter very much under certain
circum
stances.”

“Keep your hands away from your body and
turn
and open the door.”

Her English was strongly accented but clearly
pronounced, and her determination that Simon should obey
her more
or less promptly or have his liver ventilated
was just as clear.

He unlocked the door and immediately was in
the ungentle hands of the Russian Secret Police.

“What you do here?” the big one
asked, pinning the
Saint’s arms behind him as the other despoiled his
pockets of
wallet, keys, and even small change.

Simon spoke to the beautiful Colonel.

“I’ve come to warn you that there’s a
man aboard this
train who very likely intends to see you dead before you
reach Paris.”

“There are many men who intended to see
me dead and ended up dead themselves,” she said with cold
arrogance.

“I don’t doubt that in the least. My
compliments.”

Smolenko put down her pistol and lay aside
the book
which had fallen to her lap when her compartment was
invaded. She took the passport
which the smaller guard
offered her from the
Saint’s jacket pocket.

“I think I do not need to look,”
she said, with the most frosty trace of a smile. “Simon Templar.”

The Saint responded with a more friendly
smile of his
own. He bowed his head slightly.

“I’m flattered that news of my infamy has
spread as
far as the Kremlin.”

“I have a photographic memory, and in our
central
office we have constantly updated files which inform us
of the
movements of any persons of interest who are in
the area where I am
going.”

“It’s nice to be of interest,
Colonel.”

The grip which the burly guard kept on Simon’s
arms
was beginning
to become irritatingly uncomfortable. The
Saint
knew a swift motion which would not only break
the hold but send the holder to the hospital for a month,
but that did not seem the best strategy for
maintaining
this temporary thaw in
the Cold War.

“Do you mind if I stand up by
myself?” he asked
mildly. “As you can see, I have no
weapons.”

“Ivan,” the Colonel said to the big
guard, and contin
ued
in Russian.

Simon was freed, and he rubbed circulation
back into
his
muscles. Ivan stationed himself at the door while his
smaller, triangular-faced colleague produced a pistol
that somehow seemed much too big for him and kept
it
pointed at the Saint.

“You may not leave,” Smolenko said.
“No one is to
know who I am.”

“I have no desire to leave,”
responded Simon with ex
aggerated gallantry. “Such congenial
company? Such heavy artillery? Besides, now there are enough of us for
a rubber
or two of bridge.”

“Sit down,” Smolenko said. “Before you are killed,
we
must talk a little. Ivan, go order some
tea.”

Ivan stared dubiously at his chief. Smolenko
said
something to him in Russian, and he shrugged and left
the
compartment. The other man took up the watch at
the door. Simon was
still standing.

“Now,” Smolenko said. “Sit
down.
Vis-à-vis.”

“I prefer
tête-à-tête,”
said
Simon, “but you’re the
hostess.”

He sat down opposite her, crossed his legs,
and re
laxed. The comely colonel kept her eyes fixed on his
face but
showed no particularly urgent interest in any
thing he might have to
reveal.

“You could have Raskolnikov there put
away his
hatchet,” Simon said finally. “As I told you,
I’m here for the sole purpose of saving your life.”

“His name is Igor, and I give the
orders, and I have no
need of anyone to save my life.”

“Apparently not, but don’t you ever
consider taking
well-intended
advice?”

“From bourgeois agents? Hardly.”

Simon looked pained.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones…”

“I do not understand.”

Obviously, she did not like not
understanding.

“It’s just a saving. You really speak
English very
well.”

“Anything it is necessary to do should be
done well.”

“A very sound maxim.”

Ivan returned, spoke in Russian to Smolenko,
and
then—with bear-like pride in his linguistic achievements
—addressed
Simon in English.

“Tea come.”

“Excellent,” said the Saint. “And well
spoken.”

Ivan’s ruddy countenance softened a little.

“Thanks you.”

“You’re quite welcome.”