A gleaming new Rolls-Royce in opulent purple stood near by, a grey-uniformed chauffeur behind the wheel. At a nod from the girl, this worthy made some minimal movement of his body, and the Saint heard the abrupt muffled cough of the starter, giving way instantly to the Rolls engine’s well-bred, barely audible throb.
“Would you step into the car, please?” The girl’s voice was still polite, but more matter-of-fact than before. The pleading had left her eyes.
“I think I’d rather not,” Simon replied evenly. “I told you — I’ve got a plane to catch. If I’m going to make it, this is where I leave the party. Sorry. Now, if you’d really had some bubbly on the premises —”
He turned to go back through the same doorway, but even before he did so he knew with virtual certainty what he would encounter. The exact form taken by the expected obstruction was that of an extremely large Greek, dressed in the same grey chauffeur’s livery and holding a squat automatic which he pointed unwaveringly at the Saint’s chest.
“You will get into the car — Mr Templar,” he rasped. For a few moments the Saint soberly contemplated the bulky chauffeur-gunman, whom he instantly christened Big Spiro. In an automatic response — born of long experience of threats and physical struggles and mayhem and all manner of antagonists, large and small, who had pointed guns in his direction down the years — he rapidly measured the distance between them, pictured accurately the leap that would bring him within reach of Big Spiro’s gun hand, gauged the other’s probable speed of reaction and the strength in those massive arms — and concluded that for the time being he had little option but to do as he was told. He shrugged and obeyed the injunction, following the girl into the back of the car.
Big Spiro somehow managed to ease his own gigantic chassis through the same door and to wedge it into the seat beside the Saint’s altogether more practical whipcord proportions without even a momentary deflection of the automatic protruding from his hamlike fist. Next he used the other ham of the pair to conduct an expert and thorough search of Simon’s person: but he found nothing, for the Saint on his ordinary travels had long since ceased to go armed.
Simon was more than a little annoyed — in the first place with himself for allowing his curiosity to lead him so easily into a trap, but more particularly with whoever was behind the abduction.
“Just where are we going?” he demanded tersely, as the big car glided silently away from the airport.
“You will see in good time,” answered the girl. “And by the way — in case you should be so rash as to try to escape — all the car doors are electrically locked and only the driver can release them. Why not just relax? We do not mean you any harm, but if you attempt any heroics you will certainly be shot.”
“We’d make a lovely couple, you and I,” murmured the Saint, but if the girl understood she gave no sign.
She pressed a button in front of her, and a panel slid back to reveal a telephone. She picked up the handset, dialled, and after a moment’s delay spoke softly into it. Simon had a sufficient smattering of Greek to understand.
“Ariadne reporting, sir. We have Mr Templar. We shall be with you by two-thirty.”
He glanced at his watch and saw that it was two-fifteen.
“Just how long is this pantomime scheduled to last?” he inquired. A veneer of laziness in his voice thinly covered the iron-hard core of anger beneath. “Hours? Days?”
“Please, do not be impatient.”
The mocking eyes danced like chips of blue steel.
“I’ve two main reasons for asking,” he drawled. “One — before long I may very well tire of humouring your giant teddy-bear chum with the popgun. I’ve handled plenty of bigger dumb heavies in my time,” he added, not entirely veraciously in view of Big Spiro’s six feet eight and more than proportional width. “And two — do you realise that about now they’ll be loading my suitcase into a London plane. I have — and I make no secret of it — certain eccentric habits. For example, every once in a while 1 change my socks. Now if I’m to be shortly separated from my spare Argylls... well, I’d prefer to avoid indelicacy, but my company could rapidly—”
“Your suitcase is in the boot of the car,” interrupted Ariadne laconically: and Simon Templar blinked with something very like surprise, and mentally chalked up another point to his anonymous abductor.
With philosophic resignation, he sank farther back into the car’s luxurious air-conditioned comfort and crossed one leg over the other, making the movements with slow careful deliberation in deference to Big Spiro’s trigger finger. No doubt that worthy colossus was under strict orders to deliver his prize alive and well, and no doubt he had been selected for his post with due care: yet however phlegmatically imperturbable he might appear, still a Greek is a Greek — quintessentially and forever a man of impulse and hot blood. And the Saint, knowing this well, saw no reason to take rash risks with the only skin he possessed.
He began to piece together what he knew or could deduce about the man from whom Ariadne and Big Spiro took their instructions. Who would want to kidnap the Saint? He had plenty of enemies with old scores to settle, but none in Greece that he knew of. For a moment his mind went back to recent events in Beirut; but on sober reflection he doubted if even the incendiary malevolence of Elil Azziz — especially bearing in mind the somewhat incapacitated condition in which the Saint had left him and his principal henchman that very morning — could have pursued him so swiftly.
As the purple Rolls whispered its insulated way through the Athens suburbs, groups of children gawped after it. Simon Templar, who had his moments of insight, had already categorised it as a far from discreet and inconspicuous vehicle. Not to mince words, it was the very latest model, announced only a month before; the colour was by special order, and Simon had already made a mental list of all the other custom features, among them the air-conditioning system, which together testified to the owner’s flamboyant taste as well as to his ability and readiness to pay for every conceivable luxury. Without doubt this was a wealthy and powerful man, someone used to impressing himself on the world and moulding his surroundings, and who took for granted that he would always get his own way... It might be one of those repulsive nouveaux riches tycoons who had grown newly fat on their lack of scruples in the aftermath of the war and of the civil wars that followed. And this was a man — the Saint felt a momentary grudging admiration — who worked with dazzling speed and efficiency; at most he had had a few hours’ advance notice of Simon’s arrival — and even for that he would have needed direct access to the airline’s passenger list — yet the airport operation had been smooth and unobtrusive, and the uniformed Ariadne had somehow been installed with the connivance or toleration of genuine airport staff.
That, more than anything, gave the Saint his clue. How could this postulated potentate have worked that particular trick, short of actually buying the whole airport?
A bell rang in Simon Templar’s brain.
Of course — he could already own the airport. Or, very nearly the equivalent in practice, he could own the airline — Parnassian — that Simon had used. In which case... His lips came together in a silent whistle. This was no minor tycoon; this was a big boy — one of the biggest.
It was something of an inspired guess. But the Saint’s inspired guesses had so often proved uncannily accurate in the past that he would have been more than mildly surprised now to find that he had sired even a partial dud.
In the Saint’s experience, powerful men sought him out either in a blood-lust for revenge or in the hope of somehow employing him towards their own further aggrandisement. Having mentally ruled out the first, he plumped for the second.