Money Run (9 page)

“Floor 24, I think. The south room. Guess what I found in Buckland's office?”

“Uh, two hundred million dollars' worth of postage stamps?”

“Buckland's keys.”

Benjamin laughed. “That'll make things easier.”

Ash walked into the lift and pushed the button for floor 24. “Totally.” She smiled, and checked her hands. Not shaking.

“Ready to be rich?” she asked.

“Heck yes. But there's some pretty serious security around the next room.”

“I know. I was there when we watched the video.”

“A camera, a lock and three guards,” Benjamin said, “all for 20 cubic metres of space.”

“I know.”

When Ash and Benjamin had watched the footage from the vacuum cleaner, at first they'd thought that the signal was jammed when it travelled through a certain door. The screen always went blank, like someone was holding a sheet of paper in front of the camera. Then they saw a second vacuum cleaner, just briefly as the original one turned around. Thinking quickly, Benjamin ran the footage through a brightness and contrast filter, and they watched it again. They were stunned by the precautions Buckland had taken to protect the locked room on the south corner of floor 24.

The door led to a short, brightly lit antechamber, the ceiling, floor and one of the walls painted pure white. Any trace of colour or shadow would be immediately obvious. The opposing wall was a mirror, which was why they had seen two vacuum cleaners on the video. There was a camera at the far end, covering the whole antechamber – too far away to spray with anything without crossing the threshold, and it wasn't the kind of camera Ash could hide from after five minutes in a fridge. They could see the make and model number on the side – it filmed digital video at a rate of forty-eight frames per second and a resolution of 0.3 megapixels. When they watched the vacuum cleaner enter the room next door to the antechamber, they saw that the mirror was actually one-way glass, and that there were three security guards watching the antechamber through it.

The door the vacuum cleaner travelled through slid open when the pressure sensor in front of it was depressed. It was less than two metres tall and barely one metre wide. Anyone on the pressure sensor would be immediately visible to the guards and the camera the second the door opened. The door at the opposite end of the antechamber, the north end, was key-locked.

The guards each had an alarm button in front of them. Benjamin and Ash didn't know what it did. Ash thought it might call for backup, Benjamin suggested that it might lock the motion-sensor door, sealing the intruder in the antechamber. Probably both. The camera might perform the same function. Maybe something worse. There was no way to tell who was watching the feed.

The door at the south end of the antechamber separated Ash from her goal. There might well be $200 million behind it.

Ash stood near the door at the north end, looking at the pressure sensor. It was visible only as a square of slightly raised carpet. The door in front had no label or handle, nothing to draw attention to it. If Ash hadn't seen the footage from the vacuum cleaner of the glaring white room inside, she wouldn't have given the door a second glance.

Except maybe as a potential hiding place. That would have been disastrous.

“There's absolutely no way in,” Benjamin said, challenging her. “Not this time. Not unless you're invisible, and you can walk through walls.”

“No need to walk through walls,” Ash replied. “I have a key.” She knew Buckland would have a key to the door at the south end of the antechamber – the question was whether or not it was on the ring she'd stolen from his office. She was betting that it was.

“You're not invisible, though,” Benjamin said.

“Not yet.”

“So how're you going to get past?”

“Easily,” Ash said. “I only wish you could be here to see it.”

She walked past the door, making sure she wasn't close enough to activate the sensor. Then she went looking for the nearest bathroom.

She hadn't lied to Benjamin. She did think this would be easier than the north room had been. But she wouldn't tell him yet how she planned to do it. In the lead-up to a job, Benjamin was always dazzled by her problem solving, and the longer she postponed telling him her plans, the more impressed he was.

She smiled. Maybe she wouldn't tell him this time. Get through the antechamber and never reveal how.

Ash found herself wondering what she would do after stealing the $200 million. There were things she wanted to buy, of course – a nice car, for when she got her licence, and a classy inner-city apartment, for when she moved out of home in a couple of years. In the meantime there were outfits and accessories, DVDs…

She frowned. She couldn't really think of anything else. And none of that stuff cost $100 million – barely one million, in fact. So to use Buckland's logic, if she lived another sixty years and never earned another cent, she would still have $1.6 million to spend per year.

If they succeeded, she and Benjamin wouldn't ever have to do another job. That would be stupid – if they had all the money they would ever need, then why risk getting busted? One hundred million each was enough to retire on, so they would retire.

At fifteen.

But after she'd bought the car and the apartment and the outfits and the DVDs, what then? Once her living was taken care of, what would she do with her life?

She had the sudden paranoid suspicion that Buckland had given her the lecture on greed just to stop her robbing him. She shook her head. That was ridiculous.

She pushed open the door to the men's bathroom. The waterless urinals glistened silently. The lights around the mirrors cast shadows across the tiles. The room was empty. Ash crouched down, peering under the cubicle walls. No one in there, either. Not surprising, at 6 p.m.

The mirrors were screwed to the wall with 3.5 mm screws, same as in the ladies' bathroom. She took a screwdriver set out of her handbag, selected the appropriate device, and went to work.

Pretty soon the mirror was free. It was two metres tall and almost three wide – difficult to carry, although it was fairly light. Ash took a roll of duct tape out of her handbag and tore off a few strips with her teeth. Then she rolled up the right sleeve of her jacket and taped her forearm to the back of the mirror. Holding it like an oversized medieval shield, she left the bathroom.

She figured a missing mirror in the men's room would take longer to be reported than one missing from the ladies'. Maybe she was stereotyping. But she'd been pretty lucky so far today.

Ash walked up to the pressure sensor. She removed a Maglite from her handbag. She took a deep breath, and put one foot forward.

The door swished open. She heard it move, but didn't see it. She knew the camera was pointed at her, and that the one-way glass was just in front of her to the right. She knew that the pristine white walls were shining. But she didn't see any of these things.

Her mirror-shield was blocking the view.

Ash stepped slowly across the threshold, pushing her mirror forwards as she moved. To the camera and the guards behind the glass, it would look like the door hadn't even opened. Because everything in the antechamber was white, all her mirror reflected was white. She was invisible.

The door slid shut behind her, and she clicked on the Maglite. She had to wave her hand in front of the bulb to check it was on. Because the corridor was so white, it didn't add any extra light.

The silence was incredible – so complete that it was distracting, claustrophobic. This must be what it sounds like to be buried alive, Ash thought. She took a shaky breath.

She walked slowly and carefully. Her shoes made no sound on the white glass floor. She didn't know if the antechamber was monitored for sound, but she wasn't taking any chances.

As she moved forwards, she would have to gradually turn her shield side-on to hide from the guards. This would slowly reveal her to the camera at the other end.

She tilted the mirror so it was parallel to the glass. This exposed her to the camera, but only for a split second – she pointed the Maglite at it, dazzling the lens. Because the room was white anyway, the camera would now see exactly what it was supposed to. Nothing. If someone had been watching closely, they might have seen Ash flicker into view as she moved out from behind the mirror and raised the Maglite. But probably not.

Ash kept the light pointed at the camera, and held the mirror between her and the glass as she walked down the last few steps of the antechamber. When she was at the south door, directly under the camera and therefore out of its field of vision, she switched off the Maglite and dropped it back into her handbag. Holding the mirror steady, she pulled out Buckland's keys.

The first one was the wrong shape for the keyhole. She spun the ring and selected another. Too small.

Swish.

Ash's head snapped around in alarm. She'd heard the door at the opposite end of the antechamber open. Heart thumping, she tilted the mirror so as she could look back the way she had come without being visible to the guards.

There was no one in the doorway or the antechamber. Ash stared. Doors don't open themselves.

Then she heard a whirring and looked down at the floor in front of the doorway.

A vacuum cleaner was approaching her. She almost sighed with relief before she realized what would happen when it reached her. It would treat her like a wall and turn back – but the guards would see its reflection in the mirror she was holding. They would raise the alarm.

Ash grabbed another key and jammed it into the lock. The white door didn't open. She took another.

“Ash!” Benjamin's voice. “According to its signal, our vacuum cleaner has just gone into the antechamber! If you hurry, maybe you can slip in as it leaves somehow.”

“I'm already inside,” she whispered. “How do I get rid of it?” No luck with that key. The next key was obviously for a car, so she flipped past it and inserted the next candidate.

There was a momentary pause as Benjamin accessed the camera inside the cleaner. “Whoa, I can see you! Well, part of you. Is that a mirror you're holding?”

“Yes,” she hissed. “If the cleaner comes too close, the guards will see the mirror! How do I stop it?”

“Throw something white at it,” Benjamin said. “The guards won't see, and the cleaner will assume it's hit a wall and turned around.”

Ash knew for a fact she had nothing white in her handbag. She was a thief – all her tools were black. Panic rising in her chest. She pushed another key into the lock. Still the door wouldn't open.

The vacuum cleaner clicked as its brushes polished the floor. It had almost reached her. She only had two keys left – but if she picked the wrong one, she was done. There would be no time to try the other. The guards would see the vacuum cleaner reflected in her shield.

She selected a round-ended key with a square blade. It looked about the right size and shape. Biting her lip, she stuck it in and twisted.

It wouldn't turn.

She twisted the other way.

No movement.

She turned her head in panic. She had screwed it up! She was busted! She—

Pop
. The vacuum cleaner's treads stopped turning, and it fell silent. It sat as still as a giant dead bug on the floor.

Ash stared. It was a miracle! It had broken down at the last second! “I diverted all the power from the camera to the transmitter,” Benjamin said, “then activated my fail-safe meltdown. When I inserted the gizmos into the cleaner, I made sure that I could destroy them if I thought it was about to be opened. Sorry to keep you waiting – I just had to make sure that when I melted the transmitter there would be enough power to blow the battery.”

Ash slipped the last key into the lock and twisted.
Click
. The door swung open.

“The guards will report that it has broken down,” Benjamin said, “so you'd better get out of the antechamber before anyone comes to collect it.”

Ash was already closing the door behind her. “Thanks, Benjamin. You saved the day.”

“You think so? That's interesting. Perhaps we could talk about it over dinner?”

Ash took a moment to wait for her heart to stop racing. That had been a close call. “That was seriously unlucky,” she said. “That vacuum cleaner coming in at exactly the wrong moment.”

“Are you kidding?” Benjamin said. “How lucky was it that it was
our
vacuum cleaner?”

“True.”

There wasn't much to see in the room. Four grey walls, an air vent in the ceiling too small for a person to fit through. It probably goes up to Buckland's office, Ash thought. A huge white box, roughly the size of a coffin, was the only object in the room. Ash allowed herself a small smile. This looked promising.

“Could this be it?” Benjamin asked.

“Maybe.” Ash put her hands on the side of the box.

There was a clock with a timer, but no sign of an alarm. She unlatched the clasp.

The lid snapped open. Ash jumped back. Then she frowned.

The box was full of dust. A grey-white powdery substance that nearly reached the top.

“Well?”

Ash stepped back towards the box. “I've found a box with a clock on it filled with dust.”

“What?”

Ash prodded the dust with her finger. It felt a little like cotton wool. She pushed her arm in deeper, searching for something buried underneath. There was nothing.

“Take a sample for analysis,” Benjamin suggested.

“Okay, but I doubt it's worth $200 million.”

When trying to guess how the $200 million might be stored, Benjamin had made a tiny scanner capsule for Ash to take with her. He'd suggested it might be diamonds, and if so, she'd need a way to check their authenticity. Ash plugged the capsule into her phone so it would send the data straight to Benjamin, and scooped it into the dust.