The Prisoner of Chillon and Scattered Short Stories Read online

Page 5


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  Within two days all was ready. Complete with new identities, Lynn Peterson and Dean Westerfield drove north across the Scottish border in a shining, silver Alfa Romeo while Harry accompanied an electrical work crew down into the steaming tunnels beneath the streets of London. In another day, they would rendezvous at the Castle Scone.

  "Harry's on his own now. He altered his schedule on the electric company's computers so that he's assigned to the Scone team for tomorrow. He and his work crew leave this evening out of Gatwick."

  "How's he going to shake off the zombies?" asked Maggie, referring to the impartial, but still problematic, workers that Harry was following.

  "A simple tie up job. No hassle, no body count."

  "Do you really think he can handle that?" snickered the young grad student.

  "I wonder if you could break into MI5's security computers, my dear," he laughed.

  "I am still highly skeptical of that little trick of his."

  "We got in, didn't we? We weren’t detected for at least two days. He's not conventional, but I'd hate to have to operate without him."

  While his comrades drove through the beautiful landscape of Northern Britain and the southern reaches of the Scottish Highlands on a sunny day while laughing at his expense, Harry wiped the grime from his face as he followed three electrical technicians through the damp darkness of the London subway system, looking with the aid of harsh red lanterns for the break in the circuit.

  “Ah,” he whined to the others. “What did I just step on?!”

  “Don’t look down, ducky,” laughed one of the workers. “Nasty stuff likes to live under the tracks.” They consulted a map and trudged off down a passageway toward a parallel sewer tunnel to the right. “The busted circuit’s up this way, I think.”

  “It better be,” groaned Harry.