with centuries-old ivy clinging to the wall up to the rooftop. Tracy had casually tested the ivy the evening before. Now, as she put her weight on a vine, it held. She began to climb, scanning the grounds below. There was no sign of the dogs. l hope they stay busy for a long time, she prayed.
When Tracy reached the roof, she signaled to Jean Louis and waited until he climbed up beside her. From the pinpoint light Tracy switched on, they saw a glass skylight, securely locked from below. As Tracy watched, Jean Louis reached into the rucksack on his back and pulled out a small glass cutter. It took him less than a minute to remove the glass.
Tracy glanced down and saw that their way was blocked by a spiderweb of alarm wires. "Can you handle that, Jean?" she whispered.
"Je peux faire 蟹a. No problem." He reached into his pack and pulled out a foot-long wire with an alligator clamp on each end. Moving slowly, he traced the beginning of the alarm wire, stripped it, and connected the alligator clamp to the end of the alarm. He pulled out a pair of pliers and carefully cut the wire. Tracy tensed herself, waiting for the sound of the alarm, but all was quiet. Jean Louis looked up and grinned. "Voil邪. Fini."
Wrong, Tracy thought. This is just the beginning.
They used a second scaling ladder to climb down through the skylight. So far so good. They had made it safely into the attic. But when Tracy thought of what lay ahead, her heart began to pound.
She pulled out two pairs of red-lens goggles and handed one of them to Jean Louis. "Put these on."
She had figured out a way to distract the Doberman, but the infrared-ray alarms had proved to be a more difficult problem to solve. Jeff had been correct: The house was crisscrossed with invisible beams. Tracy took several long, deep breaths. Center your energy, your chi. Relax. She forced her mind into a crystal clarity: When a person moves into a beam, nothing happens, but the instant the person moves out of the beam, the sensor detects the difference in temperature and the alarm is set off. It has been set to go off before the burglar opens the safe, leaving him no time to do anything before the police arrive.
And there, Tracy had decided, was the weakness in the system. She had needed to devise a way to keep the alarm silent until after the safe was opened. At 6:30 in the morning she had found the solution. The burglary was possible, and Tracy had felt that familiar feeling of excitement begin to build within her.
Now, she slipped the infrared goggles on, and instantly everything in the room took on an eerie red glow. In front of the attic door Tracy saw a beam of light that would have been invisible without the glasses.
"Slip under it," she warned Jean Louis. "Careful."
They crawled under the beam and found themselves in a dark hallway leading to Count de Matigny's bedroom. Tracy flicked on the flashlight and led the way. Through the infrared goggles, Tracy saw another light beam, this one low across the threshold of the bedroom door. Gingerly, she jumped over it. Jean Louis was right behind her.
Tracy played her flashlight around the walls, and there were the paintings, impressive, awesome.
Promise to bring me the Leonardo, Gunther had said. And of course the jewelry.
Tracy took down the picture, turned it over, and laid it on the floor. She carefully removed it from its frame, rolled up the vellum, and stored it in her shoulder bag. All that remained now was to get into the safe, which stood in a curtained alcove at the far end of the bedroom.
Tracy opened the curtains. Four infrared lights transversed the alcove, from the floor to the ceiling, crisscrossing one another. It was impossible to reach the safe without breaking one of the beams.
Jean Louis stared at the beams with dismay. "Bon Dieu de merde! We can't get through those. They're too low to crawl under and too high to jump over."
"I want you to do just as I tell you," Tracy said. She stepped in back of him and put her arms tightly around his waist. "Now, walk with me. Left foot first."
Together, they took a step toward the beams, then another.
Jean Louis breathed, "Alors! We're going into them!"
"Right."
They moved directly into the center of the beams, where they converged, and Tracy