The Fifth Profession Read Online Free PDF

to the north … perhaps a pickup site? … then studied a forbidding cape to the east … to be attempted only in an emergency … and finally reached his primary goal: Papadropolis's compound above Anna Bay on the southeastern side of the island.
    Since he'd met with his Greek informant two days earlier, Savage had been busy and to his wary satisfaction, had learned a great deal. He'd flown to contacts in Zurich and Brussels, the two most dependable European sources of information about black-market armament sales and the security systems of the men who smuggled the weapons.
    Through seemingly casual conversations—and generous gifts to “friends” to whom Savage pretended delight when he learned that the rumors weren't true about their having been killed—he discovered what he'd already guessed. Papadropolis was controlled by his arrogance. The Greek billionaire was too consumed with power to hire protectors who had sufficient professional integrity to insist on giving orders to their employer.
    Savage had also learned that Papadropolis was fascinated by gadgets and technology. Just as the shipping magnate had a passion for computers and video games, so he'd hired an expert in security systems to construct a web of intrusion-warning obstacles around his various European estates.
    All Savage cared about was the
Mykonos
estate. The moment he learned who'd designed its defenses, he knew—in the same way an art historian would have recognized a Renaissance style—what barriers he faced.
    His longtime and trusted Greek informant had verified what Joyce Stone had claimed. The movie legend's sister was being held captive on her billionaire husband's lavish summer estate on Mykonos.
    You want to divorce me, bitch? No woman ever walked away from me. I'd be a joke. An ungrateful wife has only one use. On your back. I'll teach you.
    But summer had become September. The start of the tourist season in Athens was the end of the tourist season on Mykonos—because of lowering temperatures. To force her to spend an autumn and perhaps a winter on the island was Papadropolis's idea of a further insult.
    Savage lowered his camera, switched off the automatic pilot, and gripped the Cessna's controls. For six months, since the disaster he'd almost described to his Greek informant, he'd been in seclusion, convalescing. His arms, legs, head, and back still ached from the injuries he'd sustained. Nightmarish memories persisted in haunting him.
    But the past could not be changed, he strained to remind himself. The present was all that mattered.
    And his work.
    He had to get back to his work.
    To prove himself
to
himself.
    He veered from Mykonos, heading north above the legendary wine-dark Aegean, patting his camera. It was good to be on an assignment again.
    He felt as if he'd returned from the dead.
    8
    Savage rose from the waves and crept toward the shore. His black wetsuit blended with the night. He crouched behind boulders, stared at the murky cliff above him, and turned toward the sea. The speedboat's pilot, a British mercenary whom Savage often employed, had been told to hurry from the area as soon as Savage dropped into the water a half-kilometer from the island. The pilot hadn't used any lights. In the dark, with no moon and approaching storm clouds obscuring the stars, a sentry couldn't have seen the boat. Amid the din of waves crashing onto rocks, a sentry couldn't have heard it either, though Savage had taken the precaution of placing a sound-absorbent housing over the speedboat's motor.
    Satisfied that he'd reached here undetected … unless the guards had night scopes … Savage pulled at the strong nylon cord cinched around his waist. He felt resistance, pulled harder, and soon withdrew a small rubber raft from the water. Behind a rock that shielded him from the spray of the waves, he unzipped the raft's waterproof compartment and took out a bulging knapsack. His wetsuit had kept the frigid water from draining his body heat and