The Fifth Profession

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 sca

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.

11

Joyce Stone had described the mansion's layout. Having memorized the floor plan, Savage proceeded tensely along a dark hallway. He studied an opening to his left and saw an illuminated clock on an oven. The kitchen was spacious, fragrant with the lingering smells of oil and garlic from the evening's meal. Passing a counter, he entered a shadowy dining room, its rectangular table long enough to seat fifteen guests on each side as well as the master and his wife at each end.

But Papadropolis was not in residence. A member of Savage's surveillance team had reported that Papadropolis and an entourage of guards had flown on the billionaire's private plane to Crete this morning. The tyrant's departure had been an unexpected gift of the Fates. Not only had Papadropolis lessened the number of guards at the mansion, but those who remained would feel a lessened sense of duty.

So Savage hoped. He'd soon find out.

At a farther doorway, he halted, hearing muffled voices. Three men. Down a stairwell on his left. Laughter echoed upward. Sure, Savage thought, they're happy to be dry and warm.

He continued through the shadows, entering a murky living room. Halfway across, he heard a chair creak and ducked behind a sofa. The sound came through an archway ahead. Holding his breath, he crept nearer and saw the glow from a rain-misted light outside two barred windows. Each window flanked the mansion's front door, and in the vestibule, another glow-red, from a cigarette-revealed a guard in an alcove on the far side of the door.

Savage raised a pistol. Its projectiles weren't bullets but tranquilizer darts, and its front and rear sights had been tipped with infrared paint that allowed him to aim in the dark, its luminous specks visible only through his goggles.

The weapon made a muffled spit. At once Savage moved as quickly as the need for silence allowed, crossing the vestibule, grabbing the guard as he slumped from a chair, and more important, grabbing the guard's Uzi before it clattered onto the marble floor. He set the guard behind his chair and folded his legs to make sure they didn't project from the alcove.

With the Uzi slung across his shoulder, Savage studied the top of a curving staircase. A light up there indicated a hallway that Joyce Stone had described. Shifting his gaze from the vestibule toward the corridor above him, then once more toward the vestibule, he slowly ascended.

At the top, he pressed against the left wall and peered cautiously through the archway, toward the right, along the illuminated corridor. He couldn't see the corridor's end, but so far he hadn't glimpsed a guard. Rachel Stone's bedroom was in that direction, however, and he took for granted that a sentry would be watching her door.

He risked leaning farther into the archway to get a better view of the corridor. Still no guard.

At last he had to show his head, his view of the hallway complete.

A guard in a chair at the end! The man read a magazine.

Having revealed himself gradually, Savage used equal care to shift back out of sight, lest sudden motion attract the guard.

Would there be a corresponding sentry at the opposite end of the corridor?

Savage stepped softly toward the right side of the archway and peered with greater caution along the left flank of the corridor.

Or started to. A noise alerted him. A gun being cocked.

There was a guard on the left flank of the corridor. Savage aimed reflexively. His weapon spat. The guard on the left stumbled backward, his eyes already losing focus as he pawed at the dart protruding from his throat. The guard's knees buckled.

Savage prayed that the man's cocked handgun wouldn't discharge when it hit the floor. At the same time, he pivoted into the corridor and fired at the guard on the right. This guard had seen his counterpart stagger backward. Reacting to the commotion, he'd dropped what he was reading and grabbed his pistol. He began to surge out of his chair.

Savage's gun spat yet again. Its dart struck the man's left shoulder. Though the man tried desperately to aim his pistol, his eyes rolled upward. He toppled.

The thick carpet had muffled the noise of the falling bodies. Or so Savage prayed. Pulse hammering, he hurried to the right, toward the door to what Joyce Stone had told him was her sister's room. He tested the knob; it was locked. He suspected that the bolt could not be freed from inside but only from this side. After picking the lock, he sca