Free Port, Geneva 20th March - 3.22 p.m.
‘What did you think?’ Verity asked, fixing her lipstick in the mirror.
‘Which one?’
The Bentley tacked into the warehouse car park, the chassis leaning gracefully into the bend.
‘Sekhmet. The Egyptian lion goddess.’
‘Oh, that one,’ Faulks sniffed, looking disinterestedly out of the window.
‘Don’t go all shy on me.’ Verity glanced across, wiping the corner of her mouth where she had smudged it slightly. ‘What did you think?’
‘I don’t like to bad-mouth the competition,’ Faulks gave a small shake of his head as the car glided to a halt.
‘Liar!’ Verity laughed. ‘You thought it was a fake, didn’t you?’
‘Well, didn’t you?’ He threw his hands up in exasperation. ‘And not even a very good one. The base was far too short.’
‘Are we here?’ Verity glanced up at the ware-house’s rusted façade with a dubious expression.
‘Don’t sound so disappointed,’ Faulks laughed. ‘Most people don’t even know I have this place, let alone get to come inside.’
‘In that case I’m honoured.’ She smiled.
‘Anyway, I’m moving. They’re knocking it down. It’s a shame, really. I’ve been here almost since I started. Grown quite attached to it over the years.’
‘I never took you for a romantic, Earl,’ she teased.
‘Oh, I’m an incurable romantic,’ he protested. ‘Just as long as there are no people involved.’
Logan stepped round and opened her door. But as Verity went to get out, Faulks placed his hand on her arm.
‘Can you give me five minutes? I just want to make sure everything’s set up.’
‘Of course.’ She sat back with an indulgent smile although there was no disguising the impatience in her voice. ‘There are a few calls I need to make anyway.’
Nodding his thanks, he led Logan inside where they both signed in.
‘New tenants, Stefan?’ Faulks asked, surprised to see four names above his.
The guard checked that no one else was listening then leaned forward with a grin.
‘Just until the end of the month,’ he whispered excitedly. ‘They’re making a porno and wanted somewhere…discreet. You should see the two girls they’ve got! The director said I could go and watch them shoot a couple of scenes later this week.’
Faulks mustered a thin smile.
‘How nice for you.’
They rode the lift to the third floor and traced a familiar path round to corridor thirteen, stopping outside Faulk’s suite. Unlocking the door, he stepped inside and then stopped.
‘That’s funny,’ he muttered.
‘What?’ Logan followed him inside, immediately alert.
‘The alarm’s off. I was sure I’d…’
Logan drew his gun and stepped protectively in front of him.
‘Wait here.’
Treading carefully, he stepped over to the door to the middle room, eased it open and then peered inside. His gun dropped.
‘Boss, you’d better come’n see.’
Faulks stepped past him with a frown, the tip of his umbrella striking the floor every second step, then froze.
It was empty. Gutted. Stripped clean. The crates, the boxes, the vases, the statues, the safe—everything had gone.
He felt suddenly faint, the room spinning around him, his heart pounding, the blood roaring in his ears. Turning on his heels, he limped back into the first room and threw one of the cupboards open with a crash. Empty. The next one was the same. And the one after that, the metal doors now clanging noisily against each other like shutters in a storm as he jumped from one cupboard to the next. They were all empty.
‘You’ve been fuckin’ turned over,’ Logan growled.
Faulks couldn’t speak, could barely breathe, felt sick. He staggered to the table, his legs threatening to give away under him at any minute, the open cupboard doors still swaying around him as if they were waving goodbye.
What about the files?
Somehow he found the strength to limp through to the third room, Logan following behind, his warning to be careful echoing unheard off the bare walls. Faulks stopped on the threshold, supporting himself against the door frame, not needing to go inside to see that this room too had also been stripped bare.
He had the strange sensation of drowning, of the air being squeezed from his lungs, the pressure clawing at his eardrums, pressing his eyes back into his head. And then he was falling, legs tumbling away from underneath him,
back sliding down the wall as the floor rose up to grab him, umbrella toppling on to his lap. Gone. Gone. Everything gone.
‘Earl?’ He heard Verity’s voice echoing towards him. ‘You said five minutes, so I thought I’d come up. Is everything okay?’
Free Port, Geneva
20th April—3.36 p.m.
‘He’s gone inside.’ Archie let himself back into the room with a relieved smile. ‘I’ve left Dom watching the stairs. How are you getting on?’
‘Any minute now,’ Tom replied, the air thick with the smell of oil, burnt steel and hot machine parts.
Allegra had been right. Her idea had had no reason to work. And yet, like all good ideas, there had been an elegance and simplicity to it that had at least given it a fighting chance of success.
‘Dominique said all the floors look the same,’ Allegra had reminded them. ‘If she’s right, then maybe we could try and trick Faulks into getting off on the second floor.’
‘It could work,’ Tom had said, immediately
catching on. ‘We could rig the lift, swap over the wall signs and door numbers, and then use the forklift to move all his furniture downstairs so that when he goes inside his first thought will be that he’s been robbed.’
‘I’ll reroute the camera feed so the guard can’t see us,’ Dominique had suggested. ‘And we could fix the alarm cover panel to the wall so it at least looks the same.’
‘What about the cupboards?’ Archie had reminded them. ‘We haven’t got time to unload them all.’
‘Check out some of the other empty offices,’ Tom had suggested. ‘There’s bound to be a couple of spares lying around. As long as they look vaguely similar, he’ll be too shocked to notice. And by the time he does, we’ll be long gone with whatever’s inside.’
Tom’s safe-cracking kit was surprisingly simple. A 36-volt Bosch power drill, like you would buy at any normal hardware store. A tungsten-carbide-tipped drill bit shaped for steel cutting. A twenty-millimetre diamond-core drill bit, routinely used in the construction industry. And finally a Fein electro-magnetic drill rig to hold the power drill in place and control the pressure.
The method was relatively straightforward too. First fix the rig on to the side of the safe over the chosen breach point with the magnets. Then clamp the power drill into the rig. Then
equip the tungsten carbide drill bit, and lower the drill to bore a centring hole in the steel. Finally swap it for the diamond-core drill bit and punch through.
The tricky part was applying the correct combination of drill speed and pressure at the right time. Puncturing the safe’s steel casing, for example, required drilling at about 2000 rpm with only medium to low pressure applied by the rig. Getting through the composite material underneath, however, demanded high pressure and low revs, maybe 300 rpm. Even then Tom had to go easy, the diamonds clogging in the angled mild steel plates that had been embedded in the concrete. With only one power drill, that meant he had to be careful not to blow the motor, and he was forced to stop at regular intervals and allow it to cool.
‘How are you getting on with the photos?’ Tom called, adding some lubricant.
‘I’ve got a system going—’ Allegra poked her head into the room —‘I won’t get them all, but I’ll get enough.’
‘Anything that might tell us where the League are meeting tonight?’
‘No, but I’ll keep looking.’
At last the drill punched through, the motor racing wildly.
‘That’s it,’ Tom called, fumbling for the off
switch and then heaving the rig out of the way.
‘Here—’ Archie handed him a small monitor that he taped to the side of the safe and then connected to the borescope. The screen flickered with light, indicating it was working.
‘Ready?’ Tom looked up with a hopeful smile at Allegra, who had run across to join them. She nodded silently as he blew against the hole to cool the scorched metal and then slipped the cable inside.
‘Look,’ she gasped almost immediately. The outline of a white face was framed on the small screen like a human skull, the grainy image looking like it was being broadcast up through the depths from a long-lost shipwreck. ‘It’s the ivory mask. Cavalli must have sent it here before he was killed.’
‘They must have been working together,’ agreed Tom. ‘Cavalli supplying the antiquities and Faulks providing the buyers. That way, they didn’t have to split the profits with the Delian League.’
‘Faulks doesn’t have to split anything with anyone now that Cavalli’s dead,’ Allegra observed wryly.
‘Pretty convenient,’ Tom agreed. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if…’ He broke off, a sudden thought occurring to him. Of course. It had been so simple. So easy. And once Faulks had realised how much the mask was worth, so necessary.
‘Oi, you two,’ Archie interrupted. ‘Holmes and bloody Watson. Do you mind if we get a move on?’
Tom winked at Allegra, then nodded. He was right.
Looking back to the screen to get his bearings, he bent the cable towards the left and found the back of the safe door. Then he slowly moved it along until he was roughly behind the combination dial.
‘There it is,’ Archie said sharply.
‘There what is?’ Allegra leant closer with a frown.
‘The key-change hole,’ Archie explained. ‘Every combination safe comes with a special key that you insert in that hole when the safe’s open to change the code.’
‘How big is the hole?’
‘Not very,’ Tom said, jaw clenched in concentration.
‘Not big enough,’ Archie muttered under his breath. ‘That’s the problem.’
They watched the image silently, the camera’s proximity making the tiny hole look surprisingly large on the screen, the cable catching on its edge as Tom tried to nudge it inside.
‘Shit,’ he hissed, the cable slipping past yet again. ‘It keeps sliding off.’
‘Try from the other side,’ Archie suggested.
‘I’ve done that,’ Tom snapped, smearing oil across his forehead as he wiped the sweat away.
Dominique came in, out of breath from having run up the stairs.
‘How much time have we got?’ Tom barked without looking up.
‘About as much time as it takes them to look out the window and realise they’re only two floors up. How are we doing?’
‘Shit,’ Tom swore as the camera skated past the hole again.
‘That well.’ She pulled a face.
‘Why don’t you try coming in from underneath?’ Archie suggested. ‘You might catch against the upper lip.’
‘I don’t see why that will…’ Tom glanced up at Archie with a sheepish smile. It had worked first time.
The screen now showed a fuzzy image of the lock mechanism—four wheels, each with a notch that had to be aligned so that the locking gate could fall into them.
‘Someone’s going to have to turn the dial for me,’ Tom said, carefully holding the cable in place so that it didn’t pop out. Allegra immediately stepped forward and crouched down to next to him.
‘Which way?’
‘Clockwise. You need to pick up all the wheels first.’
Allegra turned the lock, the picture showing the drive cam turning and then gathering up each of the four wheels one by one until they were all going round.
‘Slowly,’ Tom said, as he saw the notch on the first wheel at the bottom right of the screen moving upwards.
‘Stop!’ Archie called as the notch reached the twelve o’clock position. Fifteen. ‘Now back the other way.’
Allegra turned the dial back, again slowing as the notch appeared on the second wheel and then stopping when Archie called to her. Seventy-one. Then came sixteen.
‘The last number’s ten,’ Tom guessed.
‘How do you know?’ Dominique asked with a frown.
‘Fifteen seventy-one to sixteen ten,’ Tom explained with a smile. ‘Caravaggio’s dates.’
As Tom pulled the borescope out of the hole, Allegra turned the dial to the final number and then tried the gold-plated wheel in the middle of the door. It turned easily, the handle vibrating with a dull clunk as the bolts slid back. Standing up, she tugged on the door, the airtight seal at first resisting her until, with a swooshing noise, it swept open.
The safe had a red velour interior and four shelves containing an eclectic assortment of items that Faulks had presumably felt deserved the
extra security—twenty or so antique dinner plates, a set of red figure vases, notebooks, some files, a few maps. And of course, the ivory mask.
Tom’s attention, however, was drawn to a rectangular black velvet box, monogrammed with a by now familiar symbol: the clenched fist and entwined snakes of the Delian League. It opened to reveal a cream silk interior moulded to house six watches. Two of the spaces were occupied.
‘Epsilon and zeta,’ Allegra said, taking them out and turning them over so that they could see the Greek letters engraved into their backs.
‘Which gives us the three we need,’ Tom said, sliding D’Arcy’s watch into place and then snapping the case shut. ‘Let’s just see if there’s anything in here that tells us where they’re meeting tonight.’
‘What about this?’ Archie asked, carefully sliding out the small packing crate containing the ivory mask, its delicate face cushioned by the straw that poked through its eyes and parted lips in a way that reminded Tom of the Napoleonic death mask he and Archie had discovered the previous year.
‘Leave it,’ Tom said with a shake of his head, glancing up from the handful of notes and maps he had pulled from the safe and was now leafing through.
‘Leave it? Are you joking? This thing’s worth a bloody fortune.’
‘Not to us, it isn’t. Besides, the less we take, the more chance that Faulks won’t even realise we’ve been here.’
Free Port, Geneva
20th March—3.46 p.m.
Faulks’s initial shock had given way to a bewildered incredulity. It was impossible. The stock. His best stock. The documentation. The safe. Everything gone. Spirited away. Everything. Thousands of items. Tens of millions of dollars. How had they got in? How had they got away without being seen?
‘Earl, I don’t understand. What’s going on? What is this place?’ Verity sounded nervous, like someone who’d witnessed a gangland killing and was now worried about being dragged into testifying.
‘Did you tell anyone you were coming here?’ Faulks spun round to face her, jabbing his umbrella at her accusingly.
‘Of course not,’ she insisted hotly. ‘How could I? I’ve never been here before.’
He glared at her, his disbelief having slipped into anger, although not with her in particular. With everyone. With everything. She gave a sharp intake of breath, her eyes widening in understanding.
‘Oh my God, Earl, have you been robbed?’
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled and then opened them again, part of him almost expecting to find that everything was still there after all and that this had just been a terrible dream. Logan reappeared and jerked his head to indicate that they needed to talk. Alone.
‘Give me a minute, Verity,’ Faulks said, following Logan back out into the first room and closing the door behind him.
‘Well?’
‘The guard downstairs hasn’a seen nothing,’ Logan said in a low voice. ‘Nor had th’ one on the night shift when we called him.’
‘Not unless they’re both in on it together,’ Faulks pointed out.
‘Aye well, I’d know if he was.’ Logan gave him a tight smile.
Looking down, Faulks noticed that the Scotsman’s knuckles were grazed and that there was a faint spray of blood on his collar. He felt a little better.
‘What about the surveillance footage?’
‘Backed up remotely. I’ve asked for a copy. It’ll be here in an hour.’
‘Anyone else in the building?’
‘Just the people who moved in today.’
Faulks snorted.
‘Well, there you go then.’
‘There’s only four o’ them and they signed in at twelve thirty,’ Logan pointed out with a firm shake of his head. ‘Shiftin’ all tha’ would have tak’n them days.’
‘And he didn’t hear the alarm go off?’
‘No.’
‘Bastards must have disabled it,’ Faulks hissed, striding over to the control panel next to the main entrance and smacking it angrily, taking some pleasure in the sharp stab of pain as it spread across his palm. ‘What’s the point in paying for...’
He broke off as the keypad fell away from the wall and crashed on to the floor. Frowning, he bent down to pick it up, then noticed the two pieces of black tape that had been securing it to the wall.
‘Jesus,’ he swore, tossing the panel to Logan. ‘It’s a dummy. We’re in the wrong goddamned room.’
Turning, he limped back out on to the corridor. Ignoring the lift, he made his way to the fire escape and leaned over the banisters, following the staircase as it snaked its way down to the floor below and then …to the ground floor.
With Logan at his shoulder, Faulks climbed the staircase as fast as he could, then stepped out on
to the empty corridor and turned towards his offices. Here the nature of the deception became abundantly clear —all the signs and door numbers were missing, having presumably been removed and re-attached on the floor below to confuse him.
He flung the door to his offices open. Apart from the cupboards down the right-hand wall, the room was empty and almost unrecognisable without its furniture, carpet or curtains.
And standing at its centre was a woman.