“Here he comes,” one of the baggage clerks said.
The people in the waiting room watched as several automobiles pulled up in the asphalt circular drive and discharged their passengers. Simon saw the tall Prime Minister’s shaggy thatch of brown hair above the other heads. Policemen entered the waiting room. Some obvious secret service types already there began to look even more obvious. Then came half a dozen photographers walking backwards, and walking toward them came Thomas Liskard, his blonde wife, and his associates and aides.
A section of the waiting room had been roped off in advance, and now it was occupied by the government group. Simon, not standing and craning his neck as most of the others in the place had done, caught only glimpses of Liskard’s rather rumpled gray suit in the crowd. At the same time, he saw the jet which was to take them to London swooping smoothly down on to the runway.
The photographers had just about exhausted the possibilities for pictures in the waiting room. They drifted away from the official party, most of them going out to the loading area. Some of the police went in the same direction. The pack around the Prime Minister began to break up and disperse. Liskard, his wife, and several of their group took seats in the roped-off section. The whining roar of the jetliner grew louder as the plane taxied toward the terminal building. Just before it stopped, its engines generated so much noise, even in the more or less soundproofed waiting room, that conversation came to a virtual halt.
That was when Simon Templar suddenly seemed to go mad. One moment he was lounging peaceably in his chair. The next instant he sprang to his feet with a yell, snatched up a blue ceramic pot containing a crimson tropical blossom, and hurled it across the airport waiting room at the Prime Minister of Nagawiland.
2
Within two seconds, two more ceramic pots were flying through the air from Simon Templar’s side of the room toward the Prime Minister and his party. Liskard, his wife, and his associates were diving for cover, and the Saint was throwing himself down to avoid gunfire that might understandably be sent in his direction by the official party’s guards. But the only gunfire came from the ceiling, and it was directed at Thomas Liskard.
Along the ceiling were a series of grid-covered air-conditioning ducts, and it was through the grating of one of those two-foot-square holes that the Saint had seen — just before he jumped to his feet, and began to throw things — the head and shoulders of a man, and a rifle barrel. Merely shouting a warning at the Prime Minister would probably have resulted in nothing more, at least for the first precious few seconds, than startled stares — even if the shout were heard at all. So the Saint threw the pots, and even before the third had smashed against the floor beside the Prime Minister’s sofa, rifle shots thudded harmlessly into the sofa and shattered the plate glass window just behind it.
Before the police and the secret service men could so much as turn toward the Saint, their attention was caught by the crack of the rifle above their heads. The pistols which might have been directed at Simon were quickly aimed at the grating, and bullets clanged against the metal and plunked holes in the plaster around the hole.
There was no answering fire from the rifleman. Men dashed out of the doors of the waiting room to surround the building. Others crouched with drawn pistols behind chairs, gazing up at the row of gratings in the ceiling, waiting for more shots.
“Everybody stay down,” somebody was shouting.
“Is Tom all right?” one of Liskard’s aides called from the shelter of an alcove.
“I’m fine,” Liskard boomed back.
His rumbling resonant voice was suited to the size of his body. He was crouched behind the sofa. His wife had disappeared entirely behind it.
“Look there!”
Since the walls of the whole waiting room were almost entirely glass, the last phase of the attempted assassination was visible to everyone inside the building. A white man in a soiled tan suit appeared on the edge of the low roof which covered the unloading area of the driveway. He fired his rifle wildly without taking real aim at any of the security men around the terminal building, then jumped to the ground. He fell forward on his hands and knees when he hit the grass, and then snatched up his rifle and ran. The guards had no choice but to shoot him down. Their weapons crackled in a sudden fusillade. The would-be assassin leaped twisting into the air, throwing his rifle above his head. Then he crashed down on the earth and moved no more.
A civilian-dressed security man and a uniformed policeman were already standing over Simon, their guns drawn. It was by no means obvious to them whether he was an accomplice of the gunman or not. The Saint got to his feet with the utmost casualness and dusted his coat sleeves and the knees of his trousers. The secret service man looked around, not quite sure what to do with him.
“I believe this gentleman saved my life,” a deep voice said.
Thomas Liskard was walking across the room toward the Saint, much to the discomfort of his bodyguard, who thought he should stay under cover until the area was declared entirely safe. The other non-official persons in the waiting room were being gently herded into one small section of the place so that they could be easily watched over and questioned. The Saint, as a man long inured to life’s more spectacular possible crises, had only one really pressing thought: Now we’ll be hours late on the takeoff.
Prime Minister Liskard strode easily up to him and offered his huge hand. He was the kind of bulky bearish man whose very clumsiness had a politically valuable magnetism to it, and whose craggily handsome face had an obvious substratum of keen intelligence.
“Thank you, sir,” he said to the Saint. “That was quick thinking.”
They shook hands.
“I’m sorry about the method,” Simon said. “I didn’t have time to observe protocol.”
“I don’t think there is a really proper way of telling a Prime Minister to fall on his face,” Liskard replied with a grin. “I’m damned grateful.”
The secret service men were standing by ready to pounce. Liskard waved them back.
“If you boys kept up on your work, you’d know who this is,” Liskard said to them. “Mr Simon Templar, isn’t it, unless I’m very mistaken?”
A slight raising of the Saint’s eyebrows was all that betrayed his mild surprise.
“I have to admit I didn’t realize my notoriety had spread quite so far,” he said. “Or to such high circles.”
“This is a small country, Mr Templar,” Liskard said. “There’s not much that happens that I don’t hear about. What with constant threats against me and this country in general, we can’t afford to have guests dropping in without a strict screening process — and when the guest has your fame, especially among professional policemen, his name goes straight to the top of the bureaucratic pyramid as soon as he crosses our border.” Liskard smiled. “As a matter of fact, you were within our ken pretty well all the time. I have some excellent snapshots of you taking snapshots of leopards out at the park.”
Then it was Simon’s turn to smile.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I have some excellent snapshots of your men taking snapshots of me. Especially a little bald chap who almost got gored by a wart hog while he was watching me watch baboons.”
Prime Minister Liskard laughed out loud.
“You deserve your reputation,” he said. “I hope our attention didn’t offend you.”
“Not at all,” Simon said. “It made me feel right at home. I’d have felt a little lost without knowing that somebody was there watching.”