The Fear Index

walkie-talkie. ‘Remember that – he has no weapon.’
    ‘A hundred litres of gasoline,’ said one gendarme. ‘That’s a weapon.’
    ‘No it isn’t. You four need to deploy to the other side. No one tries to go in without my orders, and absolutely nobody shoots – understood?’
    Leclerc reached the car containing Gabrielle. The door was open. She was still in the back seat, clearly in a state of shock, and worse was to come, he thought. He had continued to read the exchanges on the dead German’s laptop as the patrol car raced across Geneva. He wondered how she would feel when she discovered her husband had invited the intruder into their house to assault him. ‘Madame Hoffmann,’ he said, ‘I know this is an ordeal for you, but would you mind …?’ He offered her his hand. She looked at him blankly for a moment, then took it. Her grip was tenacious, as if he was not helping her out of a car so much as hauling her out of a sea that threatened to sweep her away.
    Emerging into the cold night seemed to wake her from her trance, and she blinked in amazement at the sight of the force assembled. She said, ‘All this just for Alex?’
    ‘I’m sorry. There is a standard procedure for cases such as this. Let’s just make sure it ends peacefully. Will you help me?’
    ‘Yes, of course. Anything.’
    He led her to the front of the column, where Quarry was standing with Genoud. The company’s head of security practically jumped to attention as he approached. What a weasel he was, Leclerc thought. Nevertheless he made an effort to be polite to him; it was his style.
    ‘Maurice,’ he said, ‘I understand you know this place. What are we dealing with exactly?’
    ‘Three floors, separated by timber-framed partitions.’ Genoud’s eagerness to help was almost risible: by morning he’d be denying he ever knew Hoffmann. ‘False floors, false ceilings. It’s a modular structure, each module filled with computer equipment, apart from a central control area. The last time I was inside, it was less than half-occupied.’
    ‘Upstairs?’
    ‘Empty.’
    ‘Access?’
    ‘Three entrances. One is a big unloading bay. There’s an internal fire escape down from the roof.’
    ‘How do the doors unlock?’
    ‘Four-digit code here; face recognition inside.’
    ‘Any gate into the compound apart from this one?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘What about power? Could we cut it off?’
    Genoud shook his head. ‘There are diesel generators around the back on the ground floor with enough fuel for forty-eight hours.’
    ‘Security?’
    ‘An alarm system. It’s all automatic. No personnel on the premises.’
    ‘How do we open the gates?’
    ‘The same code as the doors.’
    ‘Very well. Open them, please.’
    He watched as Genoud keyed in the number. The gates did not respond. Genoud, grim-faced, tried a couple more times, with the same result. He sounded mystified. ‘This is the right code, I swear.’
    Leclerc took hold of the bars. The barrier was immensely solid. It didn’t budge a millimetre. You could ram a truck at it and it would probably hold.
    Quarry said, ‘Maybe Alex couldn’t get in either, in which case he won’t be there.’
    ‘Possibly, but it’s more likely he’s changed the code.’ A man with death fantasies locked in a building with a hundred litres of gasoline! Leclerc called out to his driver: ‘Make sure the fire department are bringing cutting equipment. And we’d better have an ambulance, just in case. Madame Hoffmann, will you see if you can speak to your husband and ask him not to do anything foolish?’
    ‘I’ll try.’
    She pressed the entry buzzer. ‘Alex?’ she said softly. ‘Alex?’ She held her finger on the metal button, willing him to answer, pressing it again and again.

    HOFFMANN HAD JUST finished dousing the CPU room, the tape-robot cabinets and the fibre-optic trench with petrol when he heard the buzzer on the control console. He had a jerry can in either hand. His arms ached with the weight. Fuel had slopped over his boots and jeans. It had started to get noticeably hotter – somehow he must have managed to disable the power supply to the ventilation system. He was sweating. On CNBC the headline was ‘DOW DOWN MORE THAN 300 POINTS’. He set the canisters beside the console and inspected the security monitors. By moving the mouse and clicking on individual shots, he was able to take in the entire scene at the gate – the gendarmes, Quarry, Leclerc, Genoud and