The Fifth Profession

Savage put the flashlight and goggles into his knapsack, hoisted the pack to his shoulders, and resecured it. As the rain gusted harder, he stepped away from the fence, assumed a sprinter's stance, and lunged.

His momentum carried him halfway up the fence. He grabbed for the projecting metal arm at the top, swung his body up onto the strands of barbed wire, clutched the metal arm on the opposite side of the V, swung over the second group of barbed wire, and landed smoothly, his knees bent, on the far side of the fence. His woolen clothes and gloves were ripped in many places; the barbed wire had inflicted several irritating nicks on his arms and legs. But his injuries were too inconsequential to concern him. Barbed wire was a discouragement only to amateurs.

Staying close to the ground, wiping rain from his eyes, he studied the murky area before him. His British mentor, who'd trained him to be an executive protector, had been fond of saying that life was an obstacle course and a scavenger hunt.

Well, now the obstacle course would begin.

10

The island of Mykonos was hilly, with shallow soil and many projecting rocks. Papadropolis had built his estate on one of the few level peaks. Savage's photographs had shown that a surrounding slope led up to the mansion.

From the mansion's perspective, the bottom of the slope could not be seen. Hence Papadropolis had decided that an aesthetic barrier around his property, a stone wall instead of a chain link fence, would not be necessary. After all, if the tyrant didn't have to look at the institutional-looking fence, it wouldn't offend him, and metal was always more intimidating to an intruder than stone and mortar.

Savage tried to think as his opponent did. Because Papadropolis couldn't see this rocky slope and probably avoided its sharp incline, most of the intrusion sensors would be located in this area. The photographs of the estate had shown a second fence, lower than the first but not enough to be jumped across. The fence was 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 still did not detect infrared beams between the posts. Which meant…

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 could be defeated.

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.