The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,225

not be spoofed. The buried cables were inaccessible, and the TriStar system had redundant tamper protection, so any interruption of its circuits would itself be detected and prompt an alarm response. There was only one way through it.

And that was over it.

Janson retrieved the telescoping rod and, twisting the segments counterclockwise, locked it in its fully extended position. He walked some ways back toward the microwave poles and, keeping the rod extended in his hands, raced toward the buried sensor cables, imagining the invisible six-foot-wide band to be a physical barrier.

He held the pole as he ran, then plunged the end of it in the ground, just above where he believed the cable to be buried. Now: a step and drive. He swung his right knee up and forward and jumped, swinging upward with his hips as he held on to the pole. If all went well, his momentum would carry him, and he would land a safe distance from the cable. It need not be a soaring, athletic pole vault, but a broad jump; it was merely necessary to keep his body several feet in the air. The volumetric detector would have been alerted only to the thin pole twitching in the ground - nothing even approaching the volume, or flux disturbance patterns, consistent with a human being. Now, as he kept his eyes on the area of grass where he hoped to land, a comfortable distance from the buried sensor cable, he suddenly felt the metal rod buckling under his weight.

Oh dear God, no!

In mid-arch, the rod collapsed and Janson tumbled heavily to the ground, just a few feet from where he'd estimated the coaxial to lie.

He was too close!

Or was he? It was impossible to be sure, and the sheer uncertainty was the most nerve-racking thing of all.

A cold sweat formed on his skin almost instantly as he rolled out of the zone. Any moment now he would know if he had triggered the pressure sensors. The floodlights would blaze; the camera would pivot. And then, as his visage came into focus, a team of heavily armed guards would rush to the site. The barricades and alarm systems to every side would make his chance for escape essentially nil.

With bated breath, he waited, feeling relief budding with each passing second. Nothing. He had cleared it. All three perimeter security systems were now behind him.

Now he stood and looked up at the mansion that loomed before him. Up close, it was breathtaking in its grandeur. To either side of the main house were vast conical turrets; the exterior of the mansion was fashioned from Briar Hill sandstone. The roof was trimmed with an intricate balustrade and topped with a smaller one. The place was an eclectic display of architectural bombast. Yet did it count as ostentation if nobody could see it?

The windows were dark except for a dim glow of what might be standard nighttime illumination; were its inhabitants in the back rooms? It seemed too early for anyone to be asleep. Something about the setup bothered Janson, but he could not say why, and it was no time for turning around.

Now he crept to the left side of the building and over to a narrow side entrance.

Mounted in the stone near the dark, ornately incised door was a discreet electrostatic touch screen, of the kind used by ATMs. If the right numbers were pressed, the entrance alarm would be deactivated. Janson withdrew the small compressed-air atomizer from his knapsack and directed a jet of finely powdered charcoal at the pad. If everything went well, it would alight on fingerprints, and by the pattern he would be able to tell which digits the alarm code used; depending on how light or heavy the oils were, he could make a good guess as to their relative frequency.

A dead end. No pattern was revealed at all. As he had feared, the alarm pad employed a scrambled video display: the numerals were displayed in a random order, never in the same sequence twice.

He cleared his head. So close and yet so ... No, he was not down for the count. Deactivating the alarm would have been enormously helpful, but he had not exhausted his backup plans. The door was alarmed. Accept it. If the alarm system did not detect that it had been opened, however, it would not go off. With the help of a penlight, Janson scanned the dark-stained door until he saw the tiny screws on the topmost section: