The Doomsday Testament Read Online Free PDF

through the electric cables. Not that he was going to shoot anything. He’d never used the heavy six-round RSA Kobalt revolver that hung so uncomfortably in the holster at his waist. They’d put poison down, but the slippery bastards seemed to thrive on it. He wandered cheerfully through the pillared main hall and under the big staircase, allowing the torch beam to wash over the portrait-covered walls under the eyes of the classical statues and busts of stern-eyed tsars. His rubber-soled shoes made no noise on the stone floor. Sometimes being alone in the palace could be a little spooky, but tonight he felt he was among friends.
    ‘One minute. Night vision. Lights off.’ Inside the van the leader felt the tension grow as if it were a gathering thunderstorm. Each man locked his goggles in place and stared ahead, wound tight but lost in his thoughts, mentally going through his movements over the next ten minutes. Three months they’d been training for this. Three months of sweat and endless repetition – all for ten minutes that would change all their lives. Yet success or failure depended on a man they had never seen who sat in an office seven thousand miles away.
    The security system that protected the Menshikov was as good as any in the world, but, like every security set-up, the alarms and the cameras and the detectors and the automatic door locks were all controlled by a central computer heavily dependent on technology and software originally developed in the United States. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, senior US government officials held secret talks with the heads of the country’s top-ten computer manufacturers. The White House was, and is, concerned about the use of computer technology for recruitment and secure encrypted communication by al-Qaida and its associated terrorist networks. Post-9/11, the big corporations also recognized that the world had changed, particularly when it was made clear that the lucrative government contracts that helped boost their stockholder profits were dependent on a new level of cooperation. In return for increased research and development funding they agreed to provide privileged access to, and information on, all new and forthcoming technological developments. The most significant effect of this pact was to provide a small offshoot of the National Security Agency with the ability and technology to infiltrate, and if necessary control, any computer on the planet. Of course, the client couldn’t buy the US government, but he did have the resources to identify and purchase the services of a software developer and computer engineer at the heart of the new system: a man whose pension arrangements had been boosted by multi-million-dollar payments to a private bank on the Cayman Islands. By now the engineer would have remotely entered the Menshikov computer system and made the necessary undetectable change to its emergency reaction procedures.
    ‘Thirty seconds.’
    In a major incident, the computer controlling the Menshikov’s security system would automatically restrict access to all areas of the museum, securing every door and window. A similar reaction would take place in the event of a power cut. In this case, the leader knew it would take ten minutes for the museum’s emergency generator to provide enough power for the system to be reset. Loss of power wouldn’t be enough to trigger a mass call-out of police, unless it was accompanied by an emergency signal from the control room. Which was why the lights were about to go out in this particular sector of St Petersburg.
    ‘Ten.’
    A red dot crept slowly across the screen of the laptop. One of the guards was on the move, but the others were exactly where he wanted them.
    ‘Nine.’
    He looked around the van at the intense eyes staring at him from behind the night-vision goggles.
    ‘Eight.’
    His hands ran over the equipment on the belts and harnesses strapped to his body. Stun grenades, taser electric dart gun,