headset, “Kill it.”
Diem did so with a radio transmission that the box picked up. The monitors went dark.
“It worked,” I said as I strode out of the shack and headed the five steps toward the personnel gate. “I’ll call you when I get inside.”
“There’s a car coming. The day guard, I think. You have about half a minute.”
I’m the second-best lock picker alive, but I wasn’t good enough to go through the gate lock and be out of sight inside the grounds within half a minute.
I bounded toward the gate and leaped. Got my hands on the top, which was about nine feet high, and scrambled up. One leg over, then the other. Nine feet is a long way to the ground. Praying I wouldn’t break an ankle, I jumped. Hit and rolled. Got up and zipped behind some evergreens that helped screen the buildings from the road. I paused there to inventory parts.
Sure enough, I was barely out of sight when the day man’s car rolled to a stop beside the night man’s Fiat. He got out, stretched, reached back in the car for a bag that undoubtedly held his lunch, then strolled over to the shack and unlocked the door.
When he was inside, I boogied for the main house, making sure that I kept the pines and spruces between me and the guard shack. Anyone looking out a window in the big house could have seen me sprinting across the lawn, but I was betting that anyone up and about in the half hour after dawn had other things on his or her mind. Like the bathroom, or coffee, or cooking breakfast for the lady who paid the bills.
I wanted inside that house, and quickly. The guard in the shack was probably diddling with the computer, trying to figure out what was wrong with it. I didn’t want him finding my radio-controlled control box and figuring out that someone had sabotaged the thing. Nor did I want to meet the night man on his walk from the dog pen to the gate.
I was approaching the front door of the chateau, under the overhang where the limos discharged their passengers and the doorman greeted them. Going through the front door would be nice, but not just now. I wanted something on the second story, a window perhaps.
Sure enough, on the west side of the building was a second-story balcony. I climbed a vine, got a handhold and swung myself up. One of the windows was open a crack.
I had a set of night vision/infrared goggles in my backpack, so I pulled them out and put them over my head. These things would allow me to see heat sources inside the room, things like people or lapdogs or even cats. I toggled the switch to turn them on — and got nothing. Took them off and examined them. The earpiece was cracked. That roll after I dropped off the personnel gate — I probably broke these things then.
I stuffed them back in the pack, listened at the window that was open an inch, then used my fingers to open it wider. There was a set of drapes. I eased them aside and looked. Someone was still asleep on the bed. Taking no chances on talking, I clicked my mike twice for Diem.
“Got it,” he said. He would turn the computer in the guard shack back on and stop that worthy’s search. We hoped.
The light in the bedroom was dim. A little light leaked through the gap in the drapes, and there was a five- watt glowworm in the bath. That was it.
I dug into my backpack, selected a bug and pinned it to the drape as high as I could reach. Then I oozed across the room to the door to the hallway. It was unlocked. I twisted the knob as carefully as humanly possible, all the while looking at the sleeping figure in the bed. She turned over.
It was Marisa!
Still asleep.
I opened the door enough to examine the hallway — empty — slipped through and closed the door behind me by carefully twisting the knob, pulling the door shut, then slowly releasing the knob.
Out here I could hear noises. Someone was awake.
“They’re opening the main gate,” Diem said in my ear.
I would have liked to bug every room in that mansion, but there was no way. Without night vision goggles, I was letting it all hang out. Someone could open a door or come around a corner at any moment and find me. Whoever it was would know that I wasn’t supposed to be there.
I went to the top of the staircase and listened intently. Fortunately my ears are as good as my eyes. I started down the stairs, keeping to the side so a step wouldn’t creak.
I found the library easily enough, so I bugged it. Likewise the dining room.
Neither room felt as if the folks who lived there spent much time in it. I needed to find the rooms where they lived.
After a glance into the larger rooms on the main floor, I went back up the stairs. Moved swiftly along the hallway, listening at each door. Found one standing open. It was an office. I went in.
There was an attached bedroom, and it was big. This, I guessed, was the master suite. Or where the young Petrou male slept alone. I bugged the office, then moved into the dark bedroom.
There was someone in there asleep, all right. I could hear the heavy breathing.
The sleeper was not Jean, but Isolde Petrou, and she had black blinders on her eyes to shut out the daylight oozing around the drapes. I put bugs on the drapes and one on the head of the bed.
“Two cars going through the gate,” Diem said in my ear, loud enough to wake the saints asleep under the Vatican. “Maids, I think.”
My heart kicked into a gallop. Madame Petrou didn’t stir.
The other Petrou was the one I wanted, the son. I sallied forth to find him.
I did. He was awake and in the bathroom making noises. Moving as quickly as I dared, I planted three bugs in the bedroom and two in the adjoining office. I was ready to step into the hallway when I heard someone coming.
I got behind the open closet door. There was a knock on the bedroom door; then it opened and the butler came in with a tray that held a thermal carafe. I saw him through the crack between the door and the jamb. There was someone right behind him, though, someone I had seen from a distance often enough to know him, the night security guard. He was wearing his pistol. Uh-oh.
Young Petrou stepped from the bathroom — he was wearing a robe — and the three of them began babbling in French. I knew enough of the language to get the drift; there was an intruder on the grounds, maybe. The night man saw a man’s footprint in a damp area without grass as he walked back across the grounds after feeding the dogs. It looked as if the man might have been running toward the chateau.
“A footprint?” Petrou was incredulous.
“A man’s footprint,” the guard said meekly.
I couldn’t believe my bad luck! Who would have thought that the security guards were Apache trackers? Next he was going to tell the master of the house my height and weight.
“When was it made?” Petrou demanded. ‘
“It wasn’t there yesterday.”
“You’re sure?”
“I didn’t see it yesterday, monsieur,” the guard said, a servant to the boss. He wasn’t going to insist on anything and risk getting fired. He was merely doing his duty. All this was in the few words he spoke.
“This morning you noticed it?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Have you seen anyone?” Petrou asked peremptorily. Presumably to the butler, who answered with a negative.
Petrou sighed. Then he took a noisy sip of something, perhaps coffee or hot chocolate. “Search the house and grounds,” he said without enthusiasm.
The guard left in a hurry, passing me behind the door. The butler wasn’t far behind. He began going into rooms along the hallway. Of course, he had already been in this one, so he wasn’t going to search it again.
I stood there trying to evaluate the situation as Petrou took his cup and returned to his toilet in the bathroom. Presumably the guards were going to search the grounds and outbuildings. I wondered if they were going to close the main gate and turn the dogs loose. By God, I hoped not.
I looked at the soles of my shoes. Tiny crumbs of dirt remained on them. Wonderful, wonderful. Presumably more crumbs were scattered everywhere I’d been in the house. I wondered if the staff were sharp enough to notice
