“They are purchased in Western Europe by our Paris organization, which is absolutely trustworthy. You are lying. I am trying to think why.”
The Saint gave a weary sigh.
“Okay. Believe what you like. I’m only trying to help. If you get yourself blown into pretty little pieces in Paris, don’t expect any flowers on your grave from me.” He stood up. “Charming as your company is, I’m tired, I didn’t ask for this job in the first place, and if anything happens to you now, you can’t claim it’s my fault.”
“Wrong,” Igor said, speaking English for the first time. “We are blame you.”
“No person in Paris know Colonel Smolenko,” Ivan explained laboriously. “Not what she is looking like...”
“Or that she is woman,” said Igor.
He prodded the Saint’s shoulder with a long, skinny finger.
“Nobody know... but you. So if she dies, it will be through you. But she will not die.”
Ivan looked cheerfully at the Saint and drew his broad peasant face closer.
“You will die.”
“A fall from the train?” Igor asked.
“Da. I am think yes.”
Smolenko’s icy voice sliced Ivan’s grin in half.
“Be silent, both of you.”
She looked thoughtfully at the Saint.
“Of course we could never let you go. Now, you say Smolenko will be killed?”
“I do indeed, unless you take precautions, including some kind of co-operation with Western intelligence.”
“Well, we will see if that is true, without co-operation of bourgeois spy apparatus. With your co-operation only. When we get to Paris in the morning...”
The Saint watched suspiciously as her lips pouted slightly in a smile.
“Yes?”
“We change places,” she said. “I become your secretary, and you... you become Colonel Smolenko.”
4
Simon Templar had seen Paris many times, and in many seasons, but never as a colonel of the Soviet Secret Police, and never in quite such precarious circumstances.
The hotel was not exactly of the class he would have chosen either, but apparently it impressed red travel agents as striking the proper tone between capitalistic extravagance and unbecoming shoddiness. His own taste ran to such palaces as the George V, where he could treat himself to the level of luxury that he felt any self-respecting buccaneer deserved, but he realized that Smolenko might have to conform to a more ascetic expense account.
Of all the more gracious hostelries he had frequented, however, he could not recall one that he had entered with such an entourage. In addition to a pair of bellboys, there were Igor and Ivan lumbering along the thinly carpeted hallway on either side of him like a movie gangster’s bodyguards, and Simon’s new secretary, the former Colonel Smolenko, looking decidedly mussed by the long train journey, but still more attractive than she had any right to be, considering her almost total disdain for the civilized amenities which women ordinarily find indispensable for any sort of decent public appearance.
As the hotel employees opened the unimpressive suite, Igor and Ivan hurried inside and began inspecting the three bedrooms, the baths, and the closets. The porters went away looking surprised at the size of Simon’s tip.
“Please,” Ivan said, dragging two straight chairs to the center of the living room. “Down.”
Colonel Smolenko sat in one of the chairs, half smiling at Simon’s mystification.
“They want us out of the way while they search,” she explained. “What you call, I think, standard operation procedure.”
The Saint watched as the security agents pulled out drawers, looked behind pictures, peered and felt under table tops and rugs.
“Do a thorough job, boys,” he said encouragingly. “From now on practically anything you touch could go bang.”
“They are experts,” Smolenko said frostily. “They need no advice.”
“You forget, darling,” Simon said, “I am in command now. I need no advice from a mere secretary, especially one who probably can’t even take shorthand.”
“Mr. Templar...”
“Colonel to you. You communists carry this equality business much too far.”
Smolenko’s lips tightened for a moment.
“You ask for trouble.”
“I have trouble, and I didn’t ask for it. As a matter of fact, it occurs to me that as long as we’re the same person we may as well be friends. Any objection to that?”
Smolenko simmered for another few moments, breathed deeply, and shook her head.
“I’m glad you’re so understanding,” the Saint continued. “After all, I’m not a philanthropist in any ordinary sense of the word, but what I’m doing is entirely for your own good.”
She gave an uncertain jerk of her head.
“You doubt me?” he asked. “You have good reason to. As a matter of fact I’d have been gone long before this if I could have managed to contact someone to pass the job on to.”
“My men would have stopped you.”
“Don’t tempt me to take that as a dare.”
There was an awkward silence. Simon stretched his long legs and yawned.
“I can’t even think of anything I might be able to steal,” he said gloomily.
“Naturally you would think in terms of the profit motive,” Smolenko said.
He nodded agreeably.
“Of course.”
There was no sound for a while but the pushings and pullings and probings of the security twins.
“Have you been in Paris before?” Simon asked finally.
“No.”
“You’ll be out shopping for clothes, I imagine, while I’m tracking down the manufacturers of those noisy cigarette lighters.”
“Why?”
“Well, women tend to associate Paris with fashions — and you surely can’t be intending to go around this city in that coat.”
She flushed and smoothed the rumpled material.
“In ordinary circumstances a man would not dare to speak to me in that manner.”
“Would you send him to Siberia, or have him shot?”
“You think we are barbarians, don’t you?”
“Not necessarily. I just think you have poor taste in clothes.”
“Clothing I regard as necessary covering to maintain body temperature. That is its only use.”
“Then I’d love to spend a couple of weeks with you on a South Sea island.”
Igor was taking a vase of roses apart, looking inside each blossom. Finding nothing, he threw the whole bouquet out the window.
“Not a nature lover, your friend,” the Saint commented.
“He is trained to distrust all manifestations of bourgeois sentimentality.”
“Here we are back to your favorite subject again.”
“All good, polkovnik,” Igor said, pointedly addressing himself exclusively to Smolenko.
“Fine,” Simon replied. “Now you boys may unpack your suitcases and...”
There was a tap at the door. Simon smiled with anticipation.
“The champagne.”
Smolenko looked horrified.
“Champagne?”
“I ordered it when we checked in.”
Ivan and Igor dashed for the door and stood on either side of it. Ivan yanked it open. The startled waiter blinked, then stepped hesitantly inside. Simon indicated the most convenient table, where the waiter put down the ice bucket and glasses, rattling the crystal when he heard the door slammed and locked behind him.
“Voila, m’sieu,” he said nervously.
“Open it, please,” the Saint said in French.
“Oui, m’sieu.”
The waiter eased the cork toward release, looking more and more uneasy as the other occupants of the room moved several yards away from him.