A hundred yards away, beside one of the wings of the terminal building, he saw the wheeled stairway which would be put up to the jet’s door. Near it was a black limousine and a handful of men. It was not a very spectacular reception, considering Liskard’s status, and Simon regretted it. Whatever reservations he had felt about being with the Prime Minister’s party at the beginning of the flight, when he had realized what sort of woman Mrs Liskard was, he had grown much more pleased with the situation during his long chat with Thomas Liskard. His intuition about the man — based only on reading — had proved right. The Prime Minister was a straight, honest, and intelligent man who shared nothing of the barren lust for power or the dependence on cloudy and utterly impractical social theories with which so many of his counterparts in other countries were leading their people in the direction of hypothetical Utopias which in reality prove to be nothing more, at their noisiest, than maelstroms of disorder, or, at their dullest, stagnant backwaters of living death. More than ever, the Saint saw Liskard as a bulwark — even if not a very powerful one — against the denial of truths about human instinct and the strange guilty deference to mediocrity, indolence and weakness which sometimes seemed to be threatening to emasculate the whole western world.
One of the stewardesses who had been serving the party throughout the flight came into the curtained compartment as the plane stopped and cut its engines.
“We’ll hold the other passengers in their places until your party is off, Mr Prime Minister,” she said.
Liskard turned in his seat and shook his head. “I think it would be best if the others left first,” he told her. “we might delay things at the foot of the gangway for quite a while.”
The stewardess leaned down and peered out of one of the windows.
“I don’t see any band or anything,” she said.
Liskard laughed.
“You’re probably remembering the reception you got when you flew some murderous little tribal dictator through here on his way to bawl out the United Nations. There’ll be no brass band for the likes of us. We can count ourselves lucky that they haven’t laid on a firing squad.”
“Assuming they haven’t,” said Stewart with a wry grin.
Lockhart stood up as the plane’s personnel set about opening the door and shepherding the ordinary passengers out. He pointed suddenly toward the open deck on the upper floor of the terminal building.
“Look at that!”
On the terrace, where friends of passengers were able to stand and wave to arriving and departing passengers, there was a violent commotion. Apparently a dozen or so anti-Liskard demonstrators had gone up there individually without attracting any special attention from the police. Now the demonstrators — who were of the shorn and shod variety, and were able to avoid arousing suspicion until they were ready to act — pulled rolls of paper from under their coats and unfurled them into banners with brief but clearly legible messages printed in large red letters.
The police obviously had been instructed to allow no demonstrations in the terminal building, an instruction with which the demonstrators disagreed with open vehemence when they were informed of it. The policemen tried to take their signs away, and there was a scuffle. One of the demonstrators sat down. Another clung to the pedestal of a coin-slot telescope with arms and legs. All began to chant so loudly that their words could be heard inside the plane as the passengers disembarked.
“Liskard out! Freedom in! Liskard out! Freedom in!”
Lockhart shook his head.
“Ugly-looking lot, aren’t they?”
Liskard pretended he was referring to the very correctly dressed gentlemen grouped to meet him by the rolling stairway.
“You’re speaking of the flower of the lower branches of the diplomatic corps,” he said.
Lockhart’s youthful face turned crimson.
“I mean the demonstrators, sir,” he said stiffly.
Liskard, who was standing next to his secretary, clapped him on the shoulder.
“You take things much too seriously, Lockhart. You’ve got to laugh sometimes or you’ll go loony. That’s especially true when you look at types like that out there with the signs. They screech for peace, but they’d as soon kill you for disagreeing with them as not.”
Todd grunted.
“I suppose you’re planning to say that when you speak to the press?” he said.
Anne Liskard, who was returning down the aisle, produced a sarcastic chuckle.
“Don’t be silly. Tom knows as well as anybody that honesty has its own season.”
“At least I know when I’m lying and when I’m not — though we call it being diplomatic, not lying. At least when you know a man’s self-interest is clearly tied with his own survival and his possessions and his people, you know where you stand with him. To me, the most potentially destructive man of all is the one who really believes his motives are based on universal ideals instead of what he’d call more selfish loyalties. Show me a man who claims he bases his actions on the principle that all power is evil, and that human want and inequality can be done away with, and that the world can be persuaded and legislated into eternal peace and brotherhood, and I’ll show you a man who’s either a liar or a fool... and most likely a very unstable and dangerous fool at that.”
Anne Liskard sighed.
“The philosopher king,” she muttered.
Simon, who had found it more interesting to listen than to intrude his own thoughts, extended his hand to Liskard.
“I’ll just say thank you,” he said. “I’d better get off with the rest of the common people. But I’d like to wish you luck.”
“You aren’t leaving us to that mob, are you?” Anne Liskard asked tauntingly.
“Mr Templar has already saved my life once today,” the Prime Minister said. “I can’t ask him to do it again. But I can ask him to dinner with us. Tomorrow night, Mr Templar? It won’t be terribly elaborate, which means it may be a little more bearable than most of these diplomatic things.”
“Please do!” Anne Liskard begged, with more sincerity than show. “You have no idea what a relief it would be to have a real person at the table along with all those marionettes.”
“We might even be able to furnish you with some of that excitement you’re so famous for enjoying. There could be other attempts against my life here in London.”
At that moment, the last thing that Simon wanted was any further exciting involvement in international politics, and he might have refused the Prime Minister’s invitation if he had had time to give it thought; but the last of the non-political passengers were descending the ramp from the door of the plane, and he hoped to make his exit as an anonymous member of the herd. Newspapers would be hawking the story of the Nagawiland assassination attempt all over the city by now, and reporters would be baying like a pack of hounds after any detail of the story and any personality involved — and particularly any personality already as fabled as the Saint. His chance of avoiding recognition was slim now, but it would be totally nil within another minute.
“Thank you very much,” he said hastily. “I’d be honored to come, even without any gunfire to liven up the evening. But now I’d better get out of here.”
“Come with us if you like,” the Prime Minister said. “I’d certainly be delighted to introduce you to the press and publicly thank you for saving my life.”