by Ken Follett
She seemed to consider him beneath her romantic notice. All this talk of older people implied that he was just a kid, even though he was older than Sophie by a year and seven months. He had to find some way to prove he was as mature and sophisticated as she.
Sophie would not be the first girl he had kissed. He had dated Caroline Stratton from tenth grade at his school for six weeks, but although she was pretty he had been bored. Lindy Riley, the plump sister of a footballing friend, had been more exciting, and had let him do several things he had never done before, but then she had switched her affections to the keyboard player in a Glasgow rock band. And there were several other girls he had kissed once or twice.
But this felt different. After meeting Sophie at his mother's birthday party, he had thought about her every day for four months. He had downloaded one of the photographs his father had taken at the party, showing Craig gesturing with his hands and Sophie laughing. He used it as the screen saver on his computer. He still looked at other girls, but always comparing them with Sophie, thinking that by comparison this one was too pale, that one too fat, another simply plain-looking, and all of them tediously conventional. He did not mind that she was difficult--he was used to difficult women, his mother was one. There was just something about Sophie that stabbed him in the heart.
At six o'clock, slumped on the couch in the barn, he decided he had watched as much MTV as he needed for one day. "Want to go over to the house?" he asked her.
"What for?"
"They'll all be sitting around the kitchen table."
"So?"
Well, Craig thought, it's sort of nice. The kitchen is warm, and you can smell dinner cooking, and my dad tells funny stories, and Aunt Miranda pours wine, and it just feels good. But he knew that would not impress Sophie, so he said, "There might be drinks."
She stood up. "Good. I want a cocktail."
Dream on, Craig thought. Grandpa was not going to serve hard liquor to a fourteen-year-old. If they were having champagne, she might get half a glass. But Craig did not disillusion her. They put on coats and went out.
It was now full dark, but the yard was brightly lit by lamps mounted on the walls of the surrounding buildings. Snow swirled thickly in the air, and the ground was slippery underfoot. They crossed to the main house and approached the back door. Just before they went in, Craig glanced around the corner of the house and saw Grandpa's Ferrari, still parked at the front, the snow now two inches thick on the sweeping arc of its rear spoiler. Luke must have been too busy to put it away.
Craig said, "Last time I was here, Grandpa let me drive his car into the garage."
"You can't drive," Sophie said skeptically.
"I haven't got a license, but that doesn't mean I can't handle a car." He was exaggerating. He had driven his father's Mercedes station wagon a couple of times, once on a beach and once on a disused airstrip, but never on a regular road.
"All right, then, park it now," Sophie said.
Craig knew he should ask permission. But if he said so, it would sound as if he were trying to back out. Anyway, Grandpa might say no, then Craig would have lost the chance to prove his point to Sophie. So he said, "All right, then."
The car was unlocked, and the key was in the ignition.
Sophie leaned against the wall of the house by the back door, arms folded, her stance saying, Okay, show me. Craig was not going to let her get away with that. "Why don't you come with me?" he said. "Or are you scared?"
They both got into the car.
It was not easy. The seats were low slung, almost on a level with the doorsills, and Craig had to put one leg in then slide his backside across the flat armrest. He slammed the door.
The gearshift was severely utilitarian, just an upright aluminum rod with a knob on the end. Craig checked that it was in neutral, then turned the ignition key. The car started with a roar like a 747.
Craig half hoped the noise would bring Luke running out of the house, arms raised in protest. However, the Ferrari was at the front door, and the family were in the kitchen, at the back of the house, overlooking the yard. The thunder of the car did not penetrate the thick stone walls of the old farmhouse.
The whole car seemed to tremble, as if in an earthquake, as the big engine turned over with lazy potency. Craig's body felt the vibrations through the black leather seat. "This is cool!" Sophie said excitedly.
Craig switched on the headlights. Two cones of light reached out from the front of the car, stretching across the garden, filled with snowflakes. He rested his hand on the knob of the gearshift, touched the clutch pedal with his foot, then looked behind. The driveway went back in a straight line to the garage before turning to curve around the cliff top.
"Come on, then," said Sophie. "Drive it."
Craig put on a casual air to conceal his reluctance. "Relax," he said. He released the hand brake. "Enjoy the ride." He depressed the clutch, then moved the stick through the open-gate Ferrari gearshift into reverse. He touched the accelerator pedal as gently as he could. The engine snarled menacingly. He released the clutch a millimeter at a time. The car began to creep backwards.
He held the steering wheel lightly, not moving it to either side, and the car went in a straight line. With the clutch fully out, he touched the throttle again. The car shot backwards, passing the garage. Sophie let out a scream of fear. Craig transferred his foot from the accelerator to the brake. The car skidded on the snow but, to Craig's relief, it did not waver from its straight line. As it came to a halt he remembered, at the last minute, to engage the clutch and prevent a stall.
He felt pleased with himself. He had kept control, just. Better yet, Sophie had been scared, while he appeared calm. Maybe she would stop acting so superior.
The garage stood at a right angle to the house, and now its doors were ahead and to the left of the Ferrari. Kit's car, a black Peugeot coupe, was parked in front of the garage block at its far end. Craig found a remote control under the Ferrari's dashboard and clicked. The farthermost of three garage doors swung up and over.
The concrete apron in front of the garage was covered with a smooth layer of snow. There was a clump of bushes at the near corner of the building and a large tree on the far side of the apron. Craig simply had to avoid those and slot the car into its bay.
More confident now, he moved the gearshift into the notch for first gear, touched the accelerator, then released the clutch. The car moved forward. He turned the steering wheel, which was heavy at low speed, not being power-assisted. The car obediently turned left. He depressed the throttle another millimeter, and it picked up speed, just enough to feel exciting. He swung right, aiming for the open door, but he was going too fast. He touched the brake.
That was his mistake.
The car was moving quickly on snow with its front wheels turning right. As soon as the brakes bit, the rear wheels lost traction. Instead of continuing to turn right into the open garage door, the car slid sideways across the snow. Craig knew what was happening, but had no idea what to do about it. He spun the steering wheel farther to the right, but that made the skid worse, and the car drifted inexorably over the slippery surface, like a boat blown by a gale. Craig stamped on the brake and the clutch at the same time, but it made no difference.
The garage building slid away to the right of the windshield. Craig thought he would crash into Kit's Peugeot, but to his blissful relief the Ferrari missed the other car by several inches. Losing momentum, it slowed down. For a moment he thought he had got away with it. But, just before the car came to a complete stop, its front nearside wing touched the big tree.
"That was great!" Sophie said.
"No, it bloody was not." Craig put the stick in neutral and released the clutch, then sprang out of the car. He walked around to the front. The impact had felt gentle but, to his dismay, he saw by the light of the lamps on the garage wall a large, unmistakable dimple in the gleaming blue wing. "Shit," he said miserably.
Sophie got out and looked. "It's not
a very big dent," she said.
"Don't talk bollocks." The size did not matter. The bodywork was damaged and Craig was responsible. He felt a sensation of nausea deep in his stomach. What a Christmas present for Grandpa.
"They might not notice it," Sophie said.
"Of course they'll bloody notice it," he said angrily. "Grandpa will see it as soon as he looks at the car."
"Well, that might not be for a while. He's not likely to go out in this weather."
"What difference does that make?" Craig said impatiently. He knew he was sounding petulant, but he hardly cared. "I'll have to own up."
"Better if you're not here when the shit hits the fan."
"I don't see--" He paused. He did see. If he confessed now, Christmas would be blighted. Mamma Marta would have said, There will be a bordello, by which she meant uproar. If he said nothing, but confessed later, perhaps there would be less fuss. Anyway, the prospect of postponing discovery for a few days was tempting.
"I'll have to put it in the garage," he said, thinking aloud.
"Park it with the dented side right up against the wall," Sophie suggested. "That way, it won't be noticed by anyone just walking past."
Sophie's idea was beginning to make sense, Craig thought. There were two other cars in the garage: a massive Toyota Land Cruiser Amazon off-road car with four-wheel drive, which Grandpa used in weather like this; and Luke's old Ford Mondeo, in which he drove himself and Lori between this house and their cottage a mile away. Luke would certainly enter the garage this evening to get his car and drive home. If the weather got worse, he might borrow the big Land Cruiser and leave his Ford here. Either way, he had to enter the garage. But if the Ferrari were hard up against the wall, the dent would not be visible.
The engine was still running. Craig sat in the driver's seat. He engaged first gear and drove slowly forward. Sophie ran into the garage and stood in the car's headlights. As it entered the garage, she used her hands to show Craig how close he was to the wall.
On his first attempt he was no closer than eighteen inches from the wall. That was not good enough. He had to try again. He looked nervously in the rearview mirror, but no one else was around. He was grateful for the cold weather that kept everyone indoors in the warm.
On his third attempt he managed to position the car four or five inches off the wall. He got out and looked. It was impossible to see the dent from any angle.
He closed the door, then he and Sophie headed for the kitchen. Craig felt jangled and guilty, but Sophie was in high spirits. "That was awesome," she said.
Craig realized he had impressed her at last.
7 P.M.
KIT set up his computer in the box room, a small space that could be reached only by going through his bedroom. He plugged in his laptop, a fingerprint scanner, and a smart-card reader-writer he had bought secondhand for PS270 on eBay.
This room had always been his lair. When he was small, they had had only the three bedrooms: Mamma and Daddy in the main room, Olga and Miranda in the second room, and Kit in a cot in this box room off the girls' room. After the extension was built, and Olga went off to university, Kit had the bedroom as well as the box room, but this had remained his den.
It was still furnished as a schoolboy's study, with a cheap desk, a bookshelf, a small TV set, and a seat known as the sleepchair, which unfolded into a small single bed and had often been used by school friends coming to stay. Sitting at the desk, he thought wistfully of the tedious hours of homework he had done here, geography and biology, medieval kings and irregular verbs, Hail, Caesar! He had learned so much, and forgotten it all.
He took the pass he had stolen from his father and slid it into the reader-writer. Its top stuck out of the slot, clearly showing the printed words "Oxenford Medical." He hoped no one would come into the room. They were all in the kitchen. Lori was making osso bucco according to Mamma Marta's famous recipe--Kit could smell the oregano. Daddy had opened a bottle of champagne. By now they would be telling stories that began "Do you remember when . . . ?"
The chip in the card contained details of his father's fingerprint. It was not a simple image, for that was too easy to fake--a photograph of the finger could fool a normal scanner. Rather, Kit had built a device that measured twenty-five points of the fingerprint, using minute electrical differences between ridges and valleys. He had also written a program that stored these details in code. At his apartment he had several prototypes of the fingerprint scanner and he had, naturally, kept a copy of the software he had created.
Now he set his laptop to read the smart card. The only danger was that someone at Oxenford Medical--Toni Gallo, perhaps--might have modified the software so that Kit's program would no longer work; for example, by requiring an access code before the card could be read. It was unlikely that anyone would have gone to such trouble and expense to guard against a possibility that must have seemed fanciful--but it was conceivable. And he had not told Nigel about this potential snag.
He waited a few anxious seconds, watching the screen.
At last it shimmered and displayed a page of code: Stanley's fingerprint details. Kit sighed with relief and saved the file.
His niece Caroline walked in, carrying a rat.
She was dressed younger than her age, in a flower-patterned dress and white stockings. The rat had white fur and pink eyes. Caroline sat on the sleepchair, stroking her pet.
Kit suppressed a curse. He could hardly tell her that he was doing something secret and would prefer to be alone. But he could not continue while she sat there.
She had always been a nuisance. From an early age she had hero-worshipped her young Uncle Kit. As a boy he had quickly wearied of this and become fed up with the way she followed him around. But she was hard to shake off.
He tried to be nice. "How's the rat?" he said.
"His name is Leonard," she replied in a tone of mild reproof.
"Leonard. Where did you get him?"
"Paradise Pets in Sauchiehall Street." She let the rat go, and it ran up her arm and perched on her shoulder.
Kit thought the girl was insane, carrying a rat around as if it were a baby. Caroline looked like her mother, Olga, with long dark hair and heavy black eyebrows, but where Olga was dryly severe, Caroline was as wet as a rainy February. She was only seventeen, she might grow out of it.
He hoped she was too wrapped up in herself and her pet to notice the card sticking up out of the reader and the words "Oxenford Medical" printed along its top. Even she would realize he was not supposed to have a pass for the Kremlin nine months after he was fired.
"What are you doing?" she asked him.
"Work. I need to finish this today." He longed to snatch the telltale card out of the reader, but he feared that would only call her attention to it.
"I won't bother you, just carry on."
"Nothing happening downstairs?"
"Mummy and Aunt Miranda are stuffing the stockings in the drawing room, so I've been chucked out."
"Ah." He turned back to the computer and switched the software into "Read" mode. His next step should be to scan his own fingerprint, but he could not let her see that. She might not grasp the significance herself, but she could easily mention it to someone who would. He pretended to study the screen, racking his brains for a way to get rid of her. After a minute he was inspired. He faked a sneeze.
"Bless you," she said.
"Thanks." He sneezed again. "You know, I think poor dear Leonard is doing this to me."
"How could he?" she said indignantly.
"I'm slightly allergic, and this room is so small."
She stood up. "We don't want to make people sneeze, do we, Lennie?" She went out.
Kit closed the door gratefully behind her, then sat down and pressed the forefinger of his right hand to the glass of the scanner. The program scrutinized his fingerprint and encoded the details. Kit saved the file.
Finally, he uploaded his own fingerprint details to the smart card, overwriting his
father's. No one else could have done this, unless they had copies of Kit's own software, plus a stolen smart card with the correct site code. If he were devising the system anew he still would not bother to make the cards nonrewritable. Nevertheless, Toni Gallo might have. He looked anxiously at the screen, half-expecting an error message saying "YOU DO NOT HAVE ACCESS."
No such message appeared. Toni had not outsmarted him this time. He reread the data from the chip, to make sure the procedure had been successful. It had: the card now carried Kit's fingerprint details, not Stanley's. "Yes!" he said aloud, mutedly triumphant.
He removed the card from the machine and put it in his pocket. It would now give him access to BSL4. When he waved the card at the reader, and pressed his finger to the touch screen, the computer would read the data on the card and compare it with the fingerprint, find they matched, and unlock the door.
After he returned from the lab, he would reverse the process, erasing his own fingerprint data from the chip and reinstating Stanley's, before he replaced the card in his father's wallet sometime tomorrow. The computer at the Kremlin would record that Stanley Oxenford had entered BSL4 in the early hours of 25 December. Stanley would protest that he had been at home in bed, and Toni Gallo would tell the police that no one else could have used Stanley's card because of the fingerprint check. "Sweet," he said aloud. It pleased him to think how baffled they would all be.
Some biometric security systems matched the fingerprint with data stored on a central computer. If the Kremlin had used that configuration, Kit would have needed access to the database. But employees had an irrational aversion to the thought of their personal details being stored on company computers. Scientists in particular often read the Guardian and became finicky about their civil rights. Kit had chosen to store the fingerprint record on the smart card, rather than the central database, to make the new security setup more acceptable to the staff. He had not anticipated that one day he would be trying to defeat his own scheme.
He felt satisfied. Stage One was complete. He had a working pass for BSL4. But, before he could use it, he had to get inside the Kremlin.
He took his phone from his pocket. The number he dialed was the mobile of Hamish McKinnon, one of the security guards on duty at the Kremlin tonight. Hamish was the company dope dealer, supplying marijuana to the younger scientists and Ecstasy to the secretaries for their weekends. He did not deal in heroin or crack, knowing that a serious addict was sure to betray him sooner or later. Kit had asked Hamish to be his inside man tonight, confident that Hamish would not dare to spill the beans, having his own secrets to conceal.