Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

‘Very good, sir.’

Sabrina put away the mobile and went to kneel beside Wolff, who was still sitting on the grass.

‘I hope you won’t mind me raising something like this so soon after your ordeal,’ she said. She looked quickly at Mike, who rolled his eyes but said nothing. ‘It’s about the software you had tucked under your belt. Was that all of the work you were doing? I mean, was everything on those four disks?’

Wolff nodded. ‘Frankly, that is why I feel so sick.’

He pushed his fingers down the top of his trousers and fished out a few shards of the broken disks the medics had missed.

‘All gone,’ he sighed. ‘All gone.’

‘The grim truth,’ Mike said, ‘is that your life was saved at the expense of ICON’s next generation of security.’

Wolff stared at him. He looked puzzled.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t follow…’

‘I just said that ICON security has perished in the process of–’

‘Perished?’ Wolff stared at Mike wide-eyed. ‘ICON security? Never. Not a chance of it. Not as long as I breathe.’

Mike and Sabrina looked at each other. Mike looked at Wolff.

‘I don’t understand, Andreas. Those disks, weren’t they the upgrade security files, the ones you’ve been working on so hard?’

‘Tcha!’ Wolff looked at Mike as if he was an idiot. ‘The security codes are my discipline,’ he said, tapping the side of his head. ‘I make notes, sure, but the programs, the routines, they evolve all the time, and because they do they require volatile storage.’ He tapped his head again, more forcibly. ‘They were generated in my skull, and they will stay there until they are perfected and transferred to the network.’ Wolff pulled a few more particles of plastic from the waistband of his trousers. ‘These disks contained my new masterpieces,’ he said. His voice was hollow and sad.

Mike frowned. ‘You mean games?’

Wolff nodded. ‘Four of them. All beauties. All gone.’ Wolff looked at Sabrina with agony in his eyes. ‘I spent three years working on them. They were my creations, my children.’ He shook his head, desolated beyond comforting. ‘Three years of dedication. Three years of my life, for God’s sake.’

Mike did his best to commiserate.

Sabrina turned away.

It had been a hell of a day.

I am grateful to Philip Brent for information about satellite networks, Nick Carpenter for advice on firearms and incendiaries, Edwin Moss for Moroccan intelligence and Rosa Barlach for the low-down on urban biking.

Especial thanks to Fiona Stewart, my editor at HarperCollins, whose vigilance and overall savvy did my manuscript no end of good.

Alistair MacLean, who died on 2 February 1987, was the international bestselling author of thirty books, including world-famous novels such as The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. In 1977 he was commissioned by an American film company to write a number of story outlines that could be adapted into a series of movies; two, Hostage Tower and Air Force One is Down, were, with Alistair MacLean’s approval, published as novels by John Denis; these were followed with six by Alastair MacNeill, the highly successful Death Train, Night Watch, Red Alert, Time of the Assassins, Dead Halt and Code Breaker, and two, Prime Target and Borrowed Time by Hugh Miller.

Hugh Millerwas born in Scotland but now lives in Warwick. He is the author of the bestseller Ambulance, as well as the highly acclaimed Mike Fletcher crime novels. He is an acknowledged expert on forensic medicine and has numerous TV credits.

Prime Target is the ninth title in the UNACO series.