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is that this doesn’t need to become a major public scare. The chances are that no one is in danger.”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œWe don’t want to hold anything back, but the publicity should be calm and measured. No one needs to panic.”
    Frank grinned. “You’re frightened of tabloid stories about killer hamsters roaming the highlands.”
    â€œYou owe me, Frank. I hope you remember.”
    His face darkened. “I owe you?”
    She lowered her voice, although there was no one nearby. “You remember Farmer Johnny Kirk.” Kirk had been a big-time cocaine importer. Born in the rough Glasgow neighborhood of Garscube Road, he had never seen a farm in his life, but got the nickname from the oversize green rubber boots he wore to ease the pain of the corns on his feet. Frank had put together a case against Farmer Johnny. During the trial, by accident, Toni had come across evidence that would have helped the defense. She had told Frank, but Frank had not informed the court. Johnny was as guilty as sin, and Frank had got a conviction—but if the truth ever came out, Frank’s career would be over.
    Now Frank said angrily, “Are you threatening to bring that up again if I don’t do what you want?”
    â€œNo, just reminding you of a time when you needed me to keep quiet about something, and I did.”
    His attitude changed again. He had been frightened, for a moment, but now he was his old arrogant self. “We all bend the rules from time to time. That’s life.”
    â€œYes. And I’m asking you not to leak this story to your friend Carl Osborne, or anyone else in the media.”
    Frank grinned. “Why, Toni,” he said in a tone of mock indignation, “I never do things like that.”
7 A.M.
    KIT OXENFORD woke early, feeling eager and anxious at the same time. It was a strange sensation.
    Today he was going to rob Oxenford Medical.
    The idea filled him with excitement. It would be the greatest prank ever. It would be written up in books with titles like The Perfect Crime. Even better, it would be revenge on his father. The company would be destroyed, and Stanley Oxenford would be ruined financially. The fact that the old man would never know who had done this to him somehow made it better. It would be a secret gratification that Kit could hug to himself for the rest of his life.
    But he was anxious, too. This was unusual. By nature, he was not a worrier. Whatever trouble he was in, he could generally talk his way out. He rarely planned anything.
    He had planned today. Perhaps that was his problem.
    He lay in bed with his eyes closed, thinking of the obstacles he had to overcome.
    First, there was the physical security around the Kremlin: the double row of fencing, the razor wire, the lights, the intruder alarms. Those alarms were protected by tamper switches, shock sensors, and end-of-line circuitry that would detect a short circuit. The alarms were directly connected to regional police headquarters at Inverburn via a phone linethat was continuously checked by the system to verify that it was operational.
    None of that would protect the place against Kit and his collaborators.
    Then there were the guards, watching important areas on closed-circuit television cameras, patrolling the premises hourly. Their TV monitors were fitted with high-security biased switches that would detect equipment substitution, for example if the feed from a camera were replaced by a signal from a videotape player.
    Kit had thought of a way around that.
    Finally there was the elaborate scheme of access control: the plastic credit-card passes, each bearing a photo of the authorized user plus details of the user’s fingerprint embedded in a chip.
    Defeating this system would be complicated, but Kit knew how to do it.
    His degree was in computer science, and he had been top of his class, but he had an even more important advantage. He had designed the software that