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studying the photographs and comparing the theoretical height of the fence with the distance between the fence and these bushes, he'd calculated that the barrier was twenty yards ahead. The photographs hadn't shown any closed-circuit cameras mounted on the fence, so he didn't worry about revealing himself to remote-controlled night-vision lenses. All the same, from habit, he crawled. The rain-soaked ground felt mushy beneath him.
    At the fence, he stopped to remove his knapsack. He took out an infrared flashlight and a pair of infrared goggles. The beam from the flashlight would be invisible to unaided eyes, but through the goggles, Savage saw a greenish glow. He aimed the beam toward the fence's metal posts, scanning upward toward the projecting metal arms that secured the barbed wire.
    What he looked for were vibration sensors.
    He found none. As he'd expected, the fence was merely a line of demarcation, a barrier but not an intrusion detector. It kept hikers from trespassing unintentionally. Its barbed-wire top discouraged unskilled invaders. If animals—roaming dogs, for example—banged against it, there'd be no alarm needlessly attracting guards.
    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