Skeleton Key

still burning. It took all his strength to draw breath. But now he ran forward and climbed into the crane. He had operated a crane before. He knew it couldn‟t be too difficult. He reached out and took the controls. At the same moment, one of Sarov‟s men fired at him. The bullet clanged against the metal casing of the cabin. Alex ducked instinctively and pulled a lever.
    The magnetic disc stopped and swung in the air with Conrad stuck beneath it like a broken doll.
    Alex pushed forward and it began to drop down into the sea. No! That wasn‟t what he wanted.
    He pulled the lever back and it stopped abruptly. How did you turn off the magnet? Alex looked around him and saw a switch. He pressed it. A light came on over his head. Wrong switch! There was a button set in the control stick he was holding and he tried that. At once, Conrad fell free.
    He plunged into the grey, freezing water and sank immediately. With all the metal inside him, Alex thought, it was hardly surprising.
    He pulled the control stick towards him and the magnet rose again. A soldier ran across the quay towards him. There was a burst of fire from the helicopter and the man fell down and lay still.
    Now … concentrate! Alex tried a second lever and this time the magnet began its return journey over to the submarine. It seemed to take for ever. Alex was only partly aware of the battle still raging all around him. It seemed that the Russian authorities had arrived in force. Sarov‟s men were heavily out-numbered but were still fighting back. They knew they had nothing to lose.
    The magnet reached the submarine. Alex dropped it towards the silver chest, remembering how delicately it had been done by Conrad. He was less skilled—and winced as the heavy disc smashed into the top. Damn! He would set the thing off himself if he wasn‟t careful. He pressed the button in the control stick a second time and actually felt the magnet come alive and knew that the nuclear bomb was in its grip. He pulled back, lifting the magnetic hoist. The silver chest came clear of the submarine.
    Now, a centimetre at a time, he swung the arm of the crane over the water, bringing the nuclear bomb back towards the harbour. A second bullet slammed into the crane and the window shattered right next to his head. Alex cried out. Glass fragments showered over him. He thought he was going to be blinded. But when he next looked up, the nuclear bomb was over the quay and he knew that he was nearly finished.
    He lowered it. At the very moment it touched the ground, there was another explosion, louder and closer than any that had gone before. But it wasn‟t nuclear. One of the warehouses had shattered. Another was on fire. A second helicopter had arrived and it was strafing the ground, whipping dust and debris into the air. It was hard to be sure, but Alex thought that Sarov‟s men were losing ground. There seemed to be less return fire. Well, in a few more seconds, it wouldn‟t matter.
    All he had to do was retrieve the plastic card.
    He pulled the magnet clear, jumped from the crane, then ran over to the chest. He could see the card, half protruding from the slot where Sarov had inserted it. The lights were still blinking, the numbers spinning. There was less gunfire around him now. Looking over his shoulder, he saw more men in blue edging slowly into the compound, coming in from all sides. He reached down and pulled out the card. The lights on the nuclear bomb went out. The numbers disappeared. He had done it!
    “Put it back.”
    The words were softly spoken but each one dripped menace. Alex looked up and saw Sarov in front of him. Somehow he must have learned that the compound was under attack and had made his way back. How much time had passed since the two of them had last faced each other? Thirty minutes? An hour? However long it had been, Sarov had changed. He was smaller, shrunken.
    The light in his eyes had gone out and what little colour there had been in his skin seemed to have become muddied. He had been wounded fighting his way back into the harbour. There was a rip in his jacket and a slowly spreading red stain. His left hand hung useless.
    But his right hand was holding a gun.
    “It‟s over, General,” Alex said. “Conrad is dead. The Russian army is here. Someone must have tipped them off.”
    Sarov shook his head. “I can still detonate the bomb. There is an override. You and I will die.
    But the end result will be the same.”
    “A better