The Fifth Profession (6 page)

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.

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 scanned the doorframe with his metal detector but found no sign of an intruder alarm, urgently entered, and shut the door.

12

The bedroom was luxurious, but Savage barely noticed its expensive furnishings as he scanned them in search of Rachel Stone. A bedside lamp was on. The bed had been slept in; its rumpled covers had been thrown aside. But the room was deserted.

Savage checked beneath the bed. He peered behind closed draperies, finding bars on a window, then searched behind a settee and a chair.

Where the hell
was
she?

He opened a door, found a bathroom, and turned on the light. The shower door was closed. When he looked inside, the stall was empty.

Where … ?

He tried another door. A closet. Dresses. Rachel Stone lunged through the dresses. Scissors glinted. Savage clutched her wrist an instant before she'd have stabbed his left eye.

“Bastard!”

Her anger-contorted features suddenly changed to a frown of surprise. Noticing Savage's black camouflage-greased face, she struggled backward.

“Who—?”

Savage clamped a hand across her mouth and shook his head. As he yanked the scissors from her grasp, his lips formed silent words.
Don't talk.
He pulled a card from his pocket. The card was sealed in transparent, waterproof plastic.

She stared at its dark hand-printed message.

YOUR SISTER SENT ME TO GET YOU OUT OF HERE.

He turned the card, revealing a further message.

THIS ROOM MIGHT HAVE HIDDEN MICROPHONES. WE MUSTN'T TALK.

She studied the card … and him … subdued her suspicion, and finally nodded.

He showed her another card.

GET DRESSED. WE'RE LEAVING.
NOW.

But Rachel Stone didn't move.

Savage flipped the second card.

YOUR SISTER TOLD ME TO SHOW YOU THIS.

TO PROVE SHE SENT ME.

He held up a wedding ring, its diamond enormous.

This time when Rachel Stone nodded, she did so with recognition and conviction.

She grabbed for a dress in the closet.

But Savage squeezed her arm to stop her. Shaking his head, he pointed toward jeans, a sweater, and jogging shoes.

She understood. With no hint of embarrassment, she removed her nightgown.

Savage tried to ignore her nakedness, directing his attention toward the door through which guards might any moment charge.

Hurry,
he silently pleaded. His pulse hammered faster.

Glancing again in her direction, he was too preoccupied to dwell on the jeans she tugged up over smooth, sensual thighs and silken bikini panties that revealed her pubic hair.

No, Savage's attention was directed solely toward two other—the most significant—aspects of her appearance.

One: Rachel Stone, though ten years younger than her sister, looked like Joyce Stone's twin. Tall, thin, angular. Intense blue eyes. A superb oval face, its magnificent curves framed by spectacular shoulder-length hair. There
was
one difference. Joyce Stone's hair was blond whereas Rachel's was auburn. The difference didn't matter. The resemblance between older and younger sister remained uncanny.

Two: while Joyce Stone's face was smooth and tanned, Rachel's was swollen and bruised. In addition to repeatedly raping his wife, Papadropolis had beaten her, making sure his fists left marks that couldn't be concealed. Humiliate— that was the tyrant's weapon. Subdue and dominate.

Not any longer, Savage thought. For the first time, he felt committed not just professionally but morally to this assignment. Rachel Stone might be—probably had been—spoiled by luxury. But nothing gave anyone the right to brutalize her.

Okay, Papadropolis, Savage thought. I started this for me, to prove myself. But I'll end this to get at
you.

You son of a bitch!

His skull throbbed with anger.

Turning from the door, he saw that Rachel Stone was now dressed.

He leaned toward her ear, his whisper almost soundless, conscious of her perfume.
“Take the few things you absolutely need.”

She nodded with determination and leaned close to him, her words as soft as her breath.
“I'll give you anything you want. Just get me out of here.”

Savage headed toward the door.

13

With the grace of a dancer, Rachel Stone rushed soundlessly down the stairs. In the shadowy vestibule, Savage touched her arm to guide her toward the living room, intending to reach the hallway near the kitchen and leave the mansion through the same door he'd used to enter.

But she twisted away from his grasp, her long, lithe legs taking her quickly toward the front door.

Savage rushed to stop her before she opened the door and triggered an alarm.

But she didn't reach for the door, instead for a switch above it, and Savage understood abruptly that, despite her compulsion to escape, she retained sufficient presence of mind to deactivate the alarm.

She opened the door. Rain lashed beneath a balcony. Savage followed her onto wide white steps and gently shut the door. Feeling exposed by a misty arc light, he turned to give her instructions.

She was gone, racing past pillars, down the steps, into the storm.

No! He ran to catch up to her. Christ, doesn't she realize there might be guards out here? She can't just scramble over a fence. She'll trip an alarm!

The rain was stronger than when he'd entered the mansion, and colder. But though he shivered, he knew that some of the moisture streaming down his face was sweat. From fear.

He reached her, about to tackle her, intending to drag her toward the cover of a large statue to his left. At once he changed his mind. She wasn't fleeing at random. Rather she stayed on a concrete driveway that curved in front of the mansion. Constantly heading toward the right, she reached a short lane that intersected with the driveway. At the end of the lane, a storm-shrouded arc light revealed a long, narrow, single-story building with six large doors of a type that opened upward.

The estate's garage.
That
was her destination. They could hide behind it while he explained how he planned to get her past the sensors.

Gaining speed, Savage flanked her, his voice low but forceful. “Follow me. Toward the back.”

But she didn't obey and instead lunged toward a door on the side of the garage, in view of the mansion. She twisted the knob. It didn't budge.

She sobbed. “Jesus, it's locked.”

“We have to get in back—out of sight.”

She kept struggling with the doorknob.

”Come on,”
Savage said.

He spun toward a shout from the mansion.

A guard charged out the front door, pistol raised, scanning the storm.

Oh, shit, Savage thought.

A second man charged out.

Savage hoped that the rain was too dense for the men to see the garage.

Then a third man charged out, and Savage knew the entire guard force would soon be searching the grounds.

“No choice,” he said. “Your idea's lousy, Rachel, but right now I can't think of anything better. Stand back.”

Rain drenched him as he frantically picked the lock. When he opened the door, Rachel shoved past him, reaching for a light switch. He managed to shut the door just in time, before the sudden illumination would have attracted the guards.

He faced a long row of luxury cars. “Is it too much to hope you brought keys? I can hot-wire one of these cars, but it'll take me a minute, and thanks to you, we don't have that much time.”

Rachel darted toward a Mercedes sedan. “The keys are already in them.”

“What?”

“No thief would dare to steal from my husband.”

“Then why was the door locked?”

“Isn't it obvious?”

“No.”

“To stop
me
from taking a car if I somehow got out of the house.”

As they spoke, Savage ran after her toward the Mercedes. But she got behind the steering wheel and slammed the driver's door before he could stop her. She twisted the ignition key she'd predicted would be in place. The car's finely tuned engine purred; acrid exhaust spewed into the garage.

At once she pressed a button on a remote control attached to the dashboard. A rumble reverberated. The door ahead of the Mercedes slid smoothly upward.