halfway up the slope.
But what worried Savage was what the photographs couldn't show-buried detectors between the first fence and the second. He removed his knapsack and selected a device the size of a Walkman radio: a battery-powered voltmeter, its purpose to register electrical impulses from underground pressure sensors. He couldn't risk referring to an illuminated dial on the meter, the light from which might reveal him, so he'd chosen a device equipped with an earplug.
Lightning flashed. His earplug wailed, and he froze. The night became dark again. At once his earplug stopped wailing, causing him to relax. The voltmeter had reacted to atmospheric electricity from the lightning, not to buried sensors. Otherwise the earplug would have continued to wail even when there wasn't lightning.
But the flash of light, though startling, had been useful. He'd been given a glimpse of the fence a few yards ahead of him. It too was chain link. Not topped by barbed wire, however. And Savage understood why-anyone who'd climbed the more imposing first fence would be tempted to scramble over this seemingly less protected barrier.
He approached it cautiously. Another flash of lightning revealed small metal boxes attached to the posts supporting the fence. Vibration detectors. If someone grabbed the chain links and started to climb, an alarm would warn guards in the mansion. A computer monitor would reveal the site of the intrusion. The guards would quickly converge on the area.
In theory, the vibration sensors could not be defeated. But Savage knew that vibration sensors had to be adjusted so that a specific amount of vibration was necessary before the sensors would trigger an alarm. Otherwise, wind gusting against the fence or a bird's landing on it would needlessly alert guards. After several false warnings, the guards would lose faith in the sensors and fail to investigate an alarm. So the only way to get beyond the fence was to use a method that seemed the most risky.
To cut through the links. But it had to be done in a special way.
Savage unslung his knapsack and took out wireclippers. Kneeling, he chose a link at shoulder level and snipped it. Instead of fearing that he'd caused an alarm, instead of succumbing to second thoughts and rushing away, he calmly waited forty seconds, snipped another link, and waited another forty seconds, then snipped a third link. Each snip was the same as a bird landing on the fence or given the weather, rain lashing against it. His carefully timed assault on the fence had insufficient constancy to activate the sensors.
Twelve minutes later, Savage removed a two-foot square from the fence, eased his knapsack through the gap, then crawled through, slowly, making sure he didn't touch the surrounding links.
He put the wireclippers into his pack and resecured the pack to his shoulders. Now, in addition to the voltmeter, he carried a miniature battery-powered microwave detector. As well, he again wore his infrared goggles. Because his photographs had revealed a further danger. A line of metal posts near the top of the slope. Nothing linked them. They appeared to be the start of a fence that would soon be completed, wires eventually attached to them.
But Savage knew better.
He stared through his goggles, anxious to know whether infrared beams filled the gaps between the posts. If his suspicion was correct, if the beams existed and he passed through them, he'd trigger an alarm.
But as he crept closer to the top of the rain-swept hill, his goggles
The moment the thought occurred to him, the earplug attached to his microwave detector began to wail.
He halted abruptly.
Yes, he thought. Microwaves. He'd have been disappointed if Papadropolis used infrared. That type of beam was too susceptible to false alarms caused by rain. But microwaves provided an absolutely invisible barrier and were much less affected by weather. This test meant nothing without a sufficient challenge.
Again, as lightning flashed, the earplug to Savage's voltmeter wailed. He paused, in case the lightning coincided with an electrical field from a buried pressure sensor. But when the wail stopped, he knew that the microwave fence was his only obstacle.
He approached his objective. The lightning had allowed him a glimpse of the nearest post. The post had a slot down its right and left side, for transmitting beams to and receiving beams from the next posts right and left. The post was too high for him to leap over the microwaves, the earth too shallow for him to dig under them.
Still, the installer-for all his cleverness-had made a mistake, for this system worked best when the posts weren't in a continuous line with each other but instead were staggered so the microwaves formed an overlapping pattern.
In such a formation, the posts were protected. If an intruder tried to use them to get past the system, he'd interfere with the microwaves. However, Savage's photographs had shown that the system was in a straight line.
It
Savage removed a metal clamp from his knapsack and attached the clamp to the post, above the slots that transmitted and received the microwaves. He screwed several sections of metal together to form a three-foot-long rod, then inserted the rod into the clamp, the rod projecting toward him. Next, he threw his knapsack over the post, gripped the rod, and raised himself onto it. For a heartpounding instant, he almost lost his balance. The rod became slippery in the rain. Wind pushed him. But the ridges on the soles of his boots gripped the rod. He managed to steady himself and dove over the top of the post, avoiding the microwaves.
He landed in a somersault. His shoulders, back, and hips absorbed his impact. So did the rain-soaked ground. He cringed from pain, however, still tender from the injuries he'd sustained six months ago. Ignoring the protest in his muscles, he came smoothly out of his roll and crouched to study the near crest of the slope.
It was haloed by faint light made misty by the rain. No sign of guards. In a careful rush, he put the clamp and rod back into his knapsack, along with the infrared goggles he no longer needed. He aimed his voltmeter and microwave detector and proceeded higher.
At the top, he lay on soggy ground and studied his target. Arc lights, dimmed by the rain, illuminated a lawn. Fifty yards away, a sprawling white mansion-a concatenation of cubes and domes that imitated the houses in the town of Mykonos -attracted his attention. Except for the arc lights on the corners of the building and a light in a far left window, the mansion was dark.
His photographs had not been detailed enough to let him know if closed-circuit television cameras were mounted above the doors, but he had to assume they were present, although in this storm the cameras would relay murky images and at three A.M. the guard who watched the monitors would not be alert.
As Savage charged toward the mansion, he saw a camera above the door he'd chosen-on the right, farthest from the lamp in the window on the opposite side of the building. The camera made him veer even farther right, rushing toward the door obliquely, clutching a canister that he'd taken from his knapsack.
When he reached the door, darting from the side, he raised the canister and sprayed the lens of the camera. The canister held pressurized water, its vapor coating the camera's lens as if a gust of rain had lanced against the house. The streaks of dripping liquid would impair but not eliminate the camera's murky image, thus troubling the guard who watched the monitor but not compelling him to sound an alarm.
Savage picked the door's lock-a good lock, a dead bolt, but freed in twelve seconds. Still he didn't dare open the door.
Instead he removed a metal detector from his knapsack and scanned the door's perimeter. Metal on the upper right, four feet above the doorknob, made his earphone wail. Another intrusion detector.
Savage understood the principle. A magnet within the door kept a metal lever in the doorframe from rising toward a switch that would signal an alarm if the door was opened.
To defeat the alarm, Savage removed a powerful horseshoe magnet from his knapsack and pressed it upward, against the doorframe, while he gently shoved the door open. His magnet replaced the magnet within the door and prevented the lever in the frame from rising toward the contact switch. As he squeezed through a gap in the door, he slid his magnet farther across the doorframe, then eased the door shut before he removed the magnet. Now the door's own magnet prevented the lever from rising.
He was in.
But he didn't dare relax.
