The Saint Returns (21 page)

“You are most generous with my expense
account,”
Tanya
said caustically.

“Don’t talk like a capitalist, Comrade
Colonel. I paid
for these things personally.”

He turned toward her, holding a large flat
box wrapped
in white paper and tied with red ribbon.

“Here. A little something for you.”

For a presumably hard-boiled survivor of
Soviet po
litical shuffles, Colonel Smolenko blushed somewhat
easily.
She was openly astonished, and the Saint was a little touched that it should
never even have occurred to
her that his visit to the ladies’ clothing
shop could have been on her behalf.

“You must be wrong,” she said.
“Not for me.”

She was shaking her head even as she held out
her
hands to accept the box.

“I’m quite sure I’m not wrong,”
Simon answered.
“Who’d know better than the one who picked it
out?”

“Well, thank you,” she said
quietly.

She put the package on a table next to her
bedroom door, then looked at him as her hands touched the red
bow. For an instant she brought
herself to something like
the military
posture of attention.

“Thank you,” she repeated with great
correctness.

“You’re welcome. Open it please, if you
will. One never
knows when something is going to explode these days,
and I’d
just as soon get the suspense over with.”

She pulled the bow loose, apparently being
careful to
avoid any appearance of excited haste. Before she lifted
the
cardboard top she looked over at him, questioningly.
He nodded. She peered
inside.

“Oh, what beautiful …” she
began.

She brought out a mass of shimmering pale satin and
spread it on the bed.

“A lovely dress,” she whispered.
“And shoes. But what
shoes.”

She held them up, and she was almost
laughing. The slender heels were three inches high, and the tops were
almost
nonexistent.

“I?”
she said. “Wear these?”

She studied Simon’s face for a moment. Her
expression became suspicious.

“You make fun of me?”

It was a suggestion rather than an
accusation.

“Nothing could be farther from my
mind,” the Saint
said. “Why would I throw away perfectly good and ex
pensive clothes just for a laugh? There’s more,
too.”

“I see.”

But she didn’t inspect the smaller black
lacy items while
he was watching.

“Thank you very much,” she said
awkwardly, but with genuine feeling. “Now I shall go wash and dress
myself.”

As she was closing her door she looked back
again.

“This is very good of you.”

Simon discovered, after finishing his own
shaving,
bathing,
and changing, that female Soviet colonels are no
more prompt in dressing for dinner than most other
varieties of female. He called room service for ice
and
water, inspected the delivery for
bombs and other quaint
attachments,
and poured himself a Peter Dawson. He
was
standing by the fireplace in his dinner jacket,
meditating on the strange whims of whatever Fate it is
that decides which lives shall cross, when Tanya
came
out of her room.

To say that he was overwhelmed at the sight of
her
would be to underestimate the Saint’s capacity for
subtleties
of feeling. In addition to the normal elation
produced by the close
proximity of any exceptionally
beautiful woman, he experienced a curious
thrill at the thought that, Svengali-like, he was partly responsible for
bringing
the beauty into open bloom.

He bowed his respects, and Tanya smiled
hesitantly.
Her self-consciousness, like that of a girl going to her
first formal dance, was as
charming to an observer as it
probably was
uncomfortable for her. The brown hair
which
had been suppressed into a tight wad at the back
of her head now fell free and soft around her face to
her bare shoulders. Her face, though innocent of
make
up except for lipstick, was
lovely enough to have graced
the cover
of any Hollywood magazine—which struck
Simon,
who momentarily wished he had the time to
arrange such a photographic appearance for her, as the
perfect
joke on both the magazine and the Soviet Secret
Police.

“You’re a gorgeous woman,” he said
simply, and
kissed
her hands.

“You are very kind. I still do not
understand …”

“Why I’d get you these things?”

“Yes.”

“I like giving presents, especially to
attractive young
ladies who’re living in hotels in Paris with me. It’s a
weakness
of mine.”

Tanya underwent another of her incongruous
blushes.

“You embarrass me.”

Simon gave her a devilish look as he took the stole she
carried and draped it expertly over her shoulders.

“Do I detect a trace of still unviolated
bourgeois
morality?”
he asked.

“You may detect all kinds of strange things. I am suddenly
like a fish out of water, in a world I never saw with
my own two eyes before, and with a man I
…”

Simon looked at her expectantly without
interrupting
as she paused. Suddenly the old suspicious shadow fell
across her face again.

“You think I come here without clothes to wear in the
Paris restaurants?”

The Saint took her arm and pressed her hand.

“Tanya, don’t you have any proverb in
Russia about gift horses? When I give intimate gifts such as dresses
or lacy
lingerie to a lady, it’s not because I think she
has nothing else to
wear. I promise you, my motives
weren’t in the least noble or
charitable.”

“Well, you would have been right,”
she admitted with
a sheepish little smile. “I did not have anything
proper
to wear.”

The telephone rang, and the Saint answered
it. He
recognized Ivan’s thick voice in the receiver.

“Dascha,”
Ivan said tersely.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Dascha,”
the MGB
man repeated impatiently. “Say
her
dascha.”

Simon covered the mouthpiece with his hand and
turned to Tanya.

“It’s Ivan. He wants me to say you
‘dascha,’
whatever that means.”

“My code name,” she explained,
taking the phone.
“You don’t expect him to ask for Colonel
Smolenko.”

She engaged in some heated Russian
interchange
which seemed to grow increasingly angry on her part
and sparse
on Ivan’s. She clamped down the receiver
as if hitting the
table with her fist.

“Idiots. They traced Moli
è
re to a village twenty kilo
meters
from Paris but have not found him yet.”

“Where’s Ivan now?”

“A café in some place called Villeneuve,
south of
here. They are trying to hire a car. They promise they
find
Molière by morning. They assure me that they have
his location, how do
you say it, pinned down? But they will not be back here tonight.”

“Well, that’s very good. I don’t think we
need them.
With the local boss—who I assume is Moli
è
re—on the run
it should take the
Ungodly at least until tomorrow to
conjure up another blast. Let’s see
Paris, shall we?”

They did not see all of Paris, but they saw
some of the
best that Simon knew, which was the best there was.
After
cocktails in the jam-packed sophistication of the
George V, he took her
to dinner at the Tour d’Argent,
not perhaps so much for its famous
canard
à la presse
as
for the entrancing view over the Seine to the floodlit
cathedral
of Notre Dame. Then when they were full of rich food and beauty and a bottle of
‘34 Cheval Blanc
settled with
ballons
of Delamain cognac, the
intimacy
of a short taxi ride transported them with hardly a per
ceptible break to one of those
impeccably discreet hide
aways which still
defy the rising din of the discotheques,
for those who prefer the Old
World trappings of romance,
a place of
candlelight, soft music for dancing, and an
agreeable absence of tourists.

After a few glasses of champagne on top of
their earlier
libations, Tanya Smolenko was as off guard and mildly
giggly as
most other women would have been under
similar
circumstances. The Saint led her onto the
minuscule dance
floor, whose meager dimensions were
designed to foster intimate contact
rather than terpsicho
rean athletics, and took her in his arms.

“I must admit,” he said, “that
this is one of the most
peculiar experiences of my life.”

Their bodies swayed slowly together to the
muted
sounds of gypsy violins.

“Bizarre,” she said, “but very
nice.”

“There’s no other place like Paris,
really.”

“All cities look well at night.”

“Tanya,” he said, “why don’t
you relax and enjoy it?
Answer me truthfully: doesn’t all this make
your heart
beat just the tiniest bit faster?”

“My heart? Of course not. What does it have to do with
my heart?”

“You must have a heart somewhere.”

He slipped his right hand around and under
her breast
for a moment.

“There,” he said, “you do have
one. And you aren’t
telling me the truth. I estimate it’s about twenty beats
a
minute above normal.”

“My heart rate is always high. It is my
metabolism. It has nothing to do with Paris.”

“No? How flattering. Anyway, it’s a
beautiful me
tabolism.”

He drew her closer to him, their eyes meeting
in a
wordless communication. Then his lips touched hers
in a light
leisurely way until she turned her head.

When they returned to the hotel, the trucks
of fresh
vegetables were rumbling through the city toward pre
dawn
market, and the streets were wet from their noc
turnal washing. It was
one of those late hours which are
best left indefinite, so as not to
evoke exhaustion the
next day by their very recollection.

Simon simply avoided looking at his watch,
prolong
ing the blissful timeless state in which he and Tanya had
existed
since the sun went down. And if he, who had
known virtually all
the pleasures of the world, was
happy, Tanya, who apparently had known very
little
beyond the comparatively harsh environment of her birthplace, was
euphoric. She was also slightly drunk,
which the Saint was
not.

As they entered the suite and Simon closed the
door,
she held both his hands and looked him in the face.

“I had a most beautiful time.”

“So did I, Tanya; I think you’d make any
night a suc
cess—when you were off duty.”

She smiled and slipped her hands to his
shoulders,
shyly inviting another kiss. But the Saint, moving
closer, noticed something on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” he said, stooping to
pick up the envelope,
“but these days one can’t be too careful.
It’s for you, my dear. Feels light and flexible enough. Probably the only
thing explosive involved will
be me if it turns out to be a
billet-doux
from a rival admirer.”

She smiled and looked curiously at the
envelope.

“From Switzerland.”

“Do all women do that?” Simon asked,
going over to
the fresh bucket of ice and bottle of Evian he’d
requested
in advance be sent up to keep his bottle of Peter Daw
son company
after the witching hour.

“What?”