by Hugh Miller
‘A little anaesthetic.’
Mike slid his hand down off Ahlin’s head and along the side of his neck. Ahlin’s hands came up to defend himself but Mike’s arm wouldn’t be deflected. His fingers went under the collar of Ahlin’s shirt and found the brachial plexus. He squeezed. Ahlin’s head dropped forward. Mike stood back a second, then turned smartly and crossed the deck. He leapt on to the jetty and ran to the others.
‘Ten minutes, I’d say, before he comes round. How are you doing, Andreas?’
‘I could be much worse,’ Wolff croaked. ‘I also could have had more luck.’ He looked at Erika lying by the jetty. ‘Perhaps we all could.’
‘It’s been one of those days.’ Mike crouched to pick up Erika’s body. ‘Help Andreas up the hill, will you, Sabrina? While there’s a lull, I think we should get ourselves to a safe vantage point.’
Four minutes later a police firearms unit arrived. They brought with them a senior officer, who carried an attaché case with a million dollars in used bills.
Mike explained the situation. The tension among the policemen ebbed.
‘There’s nothing to do but wait,’ Mike said.
Erika’s body was put on a stretcher, covered with a blanket and placed in the back of the police wagon. The marksmen took up positions on the hill overlooking the jetty, their tele-sights trained on the unconscious man in the launch. Mike sat on the grass talking quietly to Andreas Wolff, who was feeling sick.
As the minutes ticked away Sabrina realized some of the men were moving further down the hill.
‘Stay back!’ she warned. ‘That’s a big charge he’s sitting on!’
Some of them took notice. Others froze where they were, re-positioning their guns, re-focusing their sights.
From where Sabrina stood she could see the launch clearly. She didn’t want a close-up. She could make out Einar Ahlin’s shape in the prow. She could see him moving. Ahlin’s neck straightened, he rubbed the back of his head, then cupped both hands over his eyes. As his hands dropped away he looked up at the hillside.
‘He doesn’t understand what’s happening,’ a policeman said. ‘He’s dazed.’
‘I hope he stays that way,’ Sabrina said.
She saw Ahlin rub his eyes, as if he might sink back and go to sleep again. Then abruptly he stood up.
Everybody seemed to stop breathing. Ahlin stood motionless, looking round at where he had been sitting. He stiffened visibly, then took a step away from the prow.
The bomb went off with a blinding gold flash. A second later the roar travelled up the hillside and behind it the shockwave, bending bushes, knocking over a gun tripod and whipping off hats and spectacles.
Debris began to land like rain. The air was filled with cloudy vapour. Some of that, Sabrina thought, was Einar Ahlin. He was now what explosives experts referred to as pink mist.
‘So it’s over,’ Andreas Wolff said. ‘One less lunatic, making space for one more.’
28
‘The police are here, so are the medical services, and there are one or two people I suspect are Federal German Security,’ Sabrina told Philpott over the mobile phone. ‘It’s a circus. Thanks to Mike’s touch of ingenuity with Einar Ahlin, it’s a very grisly circus. There’s nothing left of the boat, apart from flotsam.’
Philpott asked how badly Wolff was hurt.
‘The bullet hit him right in the software, sir. Four metal-and-plastic laminated disks of it. Didn’t even break his skin, but I think he’s going to have a badly bruised abdomen.’
‘Did those four disks represent all of the security protocols?’ Philpott said. He sounded grim.
‘I haven’t asked yet. But considering the amount of data even one of those disks can hold, I would imagine he’d get everything on to four of them.’
‘Maybe he had back-ups.’
‘Opticals are pretty secure. People don’t tend to make extra copies.’
‘Well thank you for poking those rays of golden light into my day,’ Philpott said. ‘Call me back when you have more to report.’
‘I certainly will.’
‘Next time we speak I’ll have details of your next mission.’
‘It’s cooking already?’
‘C.W. is on the case. You know what they say about there being no rest for the wicked.’
‘Why should that apply to a virtuous soul like me?’
Philpott grunted. ‘Any other time I’d enjoy this light-hearted blather, Sabrina, but in view of what’s likely to happen to ICON, you’ll pardon me if I remain grumpy. Call me soon.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Sabrina put away the mobile and went to kneel beside Wolff, who was still sitting on the grass.
‘I hope you won’t mind me raising something like this so soon after your ordeal,’ she said. She looked quickly at Mike, who rolled his eyes but said nothing. ‘It’s about the software you had tucked under your belt. Was that all of the work you were doing? I mean, was everything on those four disks?’
Wolff nodded. ‘Frankly, that is why I feel so sick.’
He pushed his fingers down the top of his trousers and fished out a few shards of the broken disks the medics had missed.
‘All gone,’ he sighed. ‘All gone.’
‘The grim truth,’ Mike said, ‘is that your life was saved at the expense of ICON’s next generation of security.’
Wolff stared at him. He looked puzzled.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t follow…’
‘I just said that ICON security has perished in the process of — ’
‘Perished?’ Wolff stared at Mike wide-eyed. ‘ICON security? Never. Not a chance of it. Not as long as I breathe.’
Mike and Sabrina looked at each other. Mike looked at Wolff.
‘I don’t understand, Andreas. Those disks, weren’t they the upgrade security files, the ones you’ve been working on so hard?’
‘Tcha!’ Wolff looked at Mike as if he was an idiot. ‘The security codes are my discipline,’ he said, tapping the side of his head. ‘I make notes, sure, but the programs, the routines, they evolve all the time, and because they do they require volatile storage.’ He tapped his head again, more forcibly. ‘They were generated in my skull, and they will stay there until they are perfected and transferred to the network.’ Wolff pulled a few more particles of plastic from the waistband of his trousers. ‘These disks contained my new masterpieces,’ he said. His voice was hollow and sad.
Mike frowned. ‘You mean games?’
Wolff nodded. ‘Four of them. All beauties. All gone.’ Wolff looked at Sabrina with agony in his eyes. ‘I spent three years working on them. They were my creations, my children.’ He shook his head, desolated beyond comforting. ‘Three years of dedication. Three years of my life, for God’s sake.’
Mike did his best to commiserate.
Sabrina turned away.
It had been a hell of a day.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Philip Brent for information about satellite networks, Nick Carpenter for advice on firearms and incendiaries, Edwin Moss for Moroccan intelligence and Rosa Barlach for the low-down on urban biking.
Especial thanks to Fiona Stewart, my editor at HarperCollins, whose vigilance and overall savvy did my manuscript no end of good.
About the Author
Alistair MacLean, who died on 2 February 1987, was the international bestselling author of thirty books, including world-famous novels such as The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. In 1977 he was commissioned by an American film company to write a number of story outlines that could be adapted into a series of movies; two, Hostage Tower and Air Force One is Down, were, with Alistair MacLean’s approval, published as novels by John Denis; these were followed with six by Alastair MacNeill, the highly successful Death Train, Night Watch, Red Alert, Time of the Assassins, Dead Halt and Code Breaker, and two, Borrowed Time and Prime Target by Hugh Miller.
Hugh Miller was born in Scotland but now lives in Warwick.
He is the author of the bestseller Ambulance, as well as the highly acclaimed Mike Fletcher crime novels. He is an acknowledged expert on forensic medicine and has numerous TV credits.
Prime Target is the ninth title in the UNACO series.
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