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 Dawson company after the witching hour.
“What?”
“Try to figure out who letters are from before they open them. Don’t you have agents in Switzerland?”
She was intent now on slitting the envelope and unfolding the rather heavy paper of the letter. Simon, in order not to seem to pry, devoted his attention to pouring drinks. Tanya’s scream took him by surprise.
“Simon! What...”
He saw the edges of the letter, as if touched by an invisible flame, begin to curl and turn brown.
“Drop it!” he snapped, and reacted faster than a pouncing cat.
By the time the letter reached the floor he was emptying the ice and water from the bucket over it. His aim was so accurate that the paper was completely sodden, and after emitting a few dying wisps of steam it lay harmlessly on the carpet, a wrinkled sheet of scorched brown.
“The envelope,” Tanya said.
Simon had already thought of that and assured himself that it lay inert and inactive where Tanya had let it fall.
“Your friends,” he said, “impress me with the variety of distractions they manage to throw our way. I don’t know if that was supposed to burn us up, blow us up, or gas us, but...”
“When I find who does this...”
“You and me both,” Simon said, admiring the expressively murderous clenching of her fist.
“I crush him like a bedbug.”
“I’ve never had the pleasure of that particular type of violence, but I sympathize completely with your feelings.”
He picked up the envelope and examined it.
“Lined with black inside. Sealed airtight, I’m sure. The paper was obviously some sort of plastic sensitized to go off when it was exposed to light and air.”
Tanya stood directly in front of him and looked into his eyes very seriously.
“Simon Templar, I have come to trust you. For good reasons. This is the third time, at least, that you save my life. And I know that being together like this, and being who we are, we... have a physical attraction. But that could happen even between enemies. A biological thing. I am not ashamed of it.”
“Neither am I.”
“But Simon — who am I to think... After all, consider my position. Who am I to think is behind these things if not the British and Americans? Surely not my own men. Why? Why would they? The whole thing is so pointless. For instance I carry no information or plans in my head on this mission which would make me dangerous to any nation. There is nothing I might reveal. And if I were gone, somebody else would immediately replace me. Yet there have been several attempts on my life already. Can you blame me for suspecting the most obvious enemy?”
“No,” Simon said quietly. “It seems to me there are several possibilities, at least. One, that I’m lying, and I’m really here as a hostile agent — but the silliness of that should be pretty obvious by now. I’ve certainly shown I don’t want you dead. A second possibility is of some kind of upheaval or take-over plot within your own organization, but...”
“I have thought of that many times, of course. But it makes no sense, and I have checked every facet. There is no pattern to the killing, to who is killed.”
“You’d know about that much better than I. Incidentally, I assume that not all these spying devices of yours are booby-trapped. Just one here and one there, enough to do the job without tipping you off as to the cause. You obviously didn’t know it was their own little gadgets that were blowing up your agents until I told you.”
She nodded, too preoccupied to bother defending herself.
“But you see the advantage to the British, for example,” she said. “So no one of the agents killed is especially important... but the constant fear of our equipment exploding would bring about a serious cutback in our activities. We would be forced to recall every piece of apparatus.”
“That makes perfect sense,” said the Saint. “All I can do is say again that to the best of my knowledge our side is as concerned about this as you are. The fact that I’m here with you should be some kind of evidence of that. And another thing: It seems to me that any kind of cutback you’d be forced to make because of these bombs would be so temporary it wouldn’t do us an ounce of good. I think you’ve got to count that out.”
“What do we count in, then?” asked Smolenko.
“One remote possibility would be some individual joker who gets a private kick out of disintegrating Russian agents, but I don’t think any one nut could possibly handle this operation, and the chances of several nuts sharing the same mania and working together are practically infinitesimal. We have to look somewhere else for the answer.”
“Where?”
“You must have thought of it yourself,” he said.
“Of course. China. But it seems so much less likely than...”
“Seemed, I hope,” said Simon. “I thought I was beginning to convince you.”
She smiled and seemed to become a woman again after her reversion to official capacity. She squeezed his hand and kissed him on the cheek.
“I am afraid it is all too easy now for you to convince me of anything. Especially because I’ve had so much to drink.”
She drew back a little, still smiling.
“But let me ask you one thing,” she continued. “Would it not be rather clever of the British or Americans or whoever to make me think it is the Chinese behind this — and in that way putting a bigger split between us and another socialist power?”
“It would be very clever, Tanya,” the Saint said, touching the end of her nose with one finger, “but not half as clever as you. You’re as sharp as a needle even when you’re tipsy. I think the only way we’ll ever convince you — and me — is to go right to the source of the whole thing.”
“Simon, you are not so smart. If we knew the source we would have no problem.”
“Tanya, when you have only fragments to work with, little things become significant. You remember where Molière said the miniaturized equipment comes from?”
“Zurich.”
“Zurich. From Grossmeyer, etc. But of course there is no Grossmeyer. And yet when we were still at that record shop I noticed shipping cartons marked Grossmeyer, Cardin, and so forth, mailed from Altbergen — Altbergen being a tiny village in the mountains in southeast Switzerland.”
He turned to her from the pacing he’d begun.
“Now, do you know how I know about this obscure village of Altbergen, which would hardly be found on anything but a local hiker’s map?”
“Because you have hiked there?”
“No, Altbergen is one spot I’ve never been to. But I’ve heard of it, and this afternoon I was reminded of it by more than the packing cartons. You remember the bottle of liqueur, Grand Abrouillac, that Molière was so kind as to offer us this afternoon?”
“It seems like years ago.”
“Your mind is wandering, sweetheart. You do remember?”
“Of course.”
“Well, Grand Abrouillac is made in only one place in the world — a monastery in Altbergen, Switzerland.”
“Simon, that’s fine, but it still does not mean that we know...”
“Take another look at this, please.”
He handed her the envelope in which the incendiary paper had been mailed.
“The postmark,” she said. “Altbergen.”
She looked at the envelope more closely, and then at him.
“So,” said Simon with the satisfaction that comes of seeing order emerge from chaos, “I think that if Igor and Ivan haven’t come up with Molière and plenty of facts by early morning, you and I should take off for Switzerland.”