by Adam Maxwell
“They’ve got the painting?” Zoe sighed. “Fuckers.”
*
Zoe had managed to salvage Barry’s mobile phone from the wreckage of the car. She called Violet.
Violet, in turn, did not react well to the news.
Zoe and Barry walked the half a mile down the road to the meeting point in relative silence, each contemplating the problem alone. By the time they got there both had the beginnings of ideas forming.
Like many roadside cafes, the Kilchester Travel Chef was not a place of rest, nor was it a place of recuperation for the weary traveller. The franchise appeared to have been excreted onto the world by a deranged giant. Its awful architecture jutted menacingly out and appeared to put you in danger of actual physical harm if you were brave enough to stare it down. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the chef of this particular franchise was a man possessed with mediocrity. Not for him the extremes of good or bad, his unconscious directed him only to the middle road.
The mediocre.
Violet was already inside, sipping mediocre coffee that had been served to her in an untimely fashion. It wasn’t that it had taken too long. It hadn’t arrived immediately. It had arrived just before the moment when, as a customer, you could legitimately become slightly irritated at the beverage’s absence.
On the journey over to the cafe Violet had regretted her outburst to Zoe. All she could think about was the fact that they had four days. Lose the forgeries now and they were out of the game. But Violet’s mind didn’t work like that. Not for long. She was 75% optimist. If they were lucky, the men who had stolen the forgeries thought they had two autographs. It wasn’t exactly easy to identify what the paintings were and if you Googled them you would most likely find what she herself had found: a plethora of pages dedicated to the majority of Dali signatures which were, comparatively speaking, worthless.
There were options. There were always options. She just needed all the facts first.
Violet’s regret at her reaction turned to horror when they finally appeared at the cafe. Zoe limping slightly in her left leg, her shoulders drooping. And Barry... his face was... a bloody mess.
Feeling like a monster, Violet stood up so the pair of them could see where she was and come over. She watched as Zoe’s gaze flipped around the cafe looking for her, then saw her, and then...
Zoe burst into tears.
Barry tried to put his arm around her as they walked towards the table but Zoe shrugged it off. Trying to claw back her composure, she grabbed a handful of napkins from an empty table and blew her nose with a rasping parp that echoed throughout the small establishment.
They sat down at the table, Violet on one side, Barry and Zoe on the other.
“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” said Zoe blowing her nose again. “He was the one who was hurt, not me.”
“It’s shock,” said Violet, trying to sound as understanding as possible. “Your whole system’s in shock. Barry’s just...”
“This isn’t my first car crash.” Sensing that he should comfort Zoe, Barry finished Violet’s sentence. “Or the first time I’ve had a kicking.”
“Well that’s not very reassuring,” Zoe snapped. She stared at him for a second, big tears welling in her eyes, and burst out laughing.
Violet and Barry joined in and Zoe seemed to calm again.
A silence descended on the table and, for a moment, all that could be heard was the murmur of customers and the chink of metal on plate.
“It’s my fault,” said Barry eventually.
Violet lifted her hands and rubbed her brow, her palms covering the whole of her face. She ran her fingers through her hair and levelled her gaze at the pair of them.
“I overreacted,” she said slowly. “On the phone. I’m supposed to be in charge of you lot and what with being the leader and making the plans and making sure we steal priceless works of art…”
Barry and Zoe nodded. Violet was picking up speed as she spoke and, although she was looking at them, there was a sense that she was looking slightly past them.
“Well, we need to be a team,” she continued. “And as a team, to be perfectly frank, we could have done without this little fuckup, Barry.”
Barry shifted in his seat uncomfortably but didn’t interrupt. He was trying to work out if Violet was staring past him. He had begun to suspect that she was, in fact, staring two minutes into the future.
“But shit like this crops up from time to time and while I was driving over here I got to thinking about jobs we’ve pulled in the past. We would usually do a dry run, go in there a week or two before and test the plan, make sure it would all just go like clockwork. But on this job we can’t do that.”
Zoe opened her mouth to speak, but Violet just kept talking. “We’ve been chipping away with our eyes too focused on the horizon and I’ve been forgetting about certain human elements. There have been some things going on which have made me doubt certain people...” Violet trailed off, her gaze going completely glassy for a second before she snapped back into the moment. “But that’s exactly why I think we need to deal with this little hitch quickly and fucking fiercely.”
Zoe smiled, her eyes dry, her confidence returning. “Sounds like fun. What do you mean?”
“We take the casino,” said Violet.
“We take the casino?” Barry asked in disbelief.
“Tomorrow night,” added Violet.
Zoe laughed. “Are you absolutely sure about that?” she asked. “A casino? With twenty four hours to prep?”
Violet grinned. “Course I’m sure. It’ll be a fucking blast. Be like being twenty two again, won’t it Barry?”
Barry smiled. Pain shot from his busted lip and he tried to hide the wince. “Yeah, I’m not that old you know?”
“Take down a lot of casinos when you were twenty two, did you?” Zoe asked.
“One or two,” Violet cackled. “Rumour has it. You’ll love it.”
“I remember those heady days,” said Zoe. “Oh... no, wait... I don’t because I’ve only been twenty two for about three months.”
Barry groaned. “Now I feel old,” he said. “So... how?”
“Well, first we need to establish that the forgeries are definitely stashed there,” said Violet.
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” said Zoe. “They took my tablet, so I’ll be able to get a trace on that. Plus we should be able to tap into their security feeds remotely. Those places think they’re banks but...”
“Excellent,” interrupted Violet. “So once we’re sure... this is the plan...”
Violet laid it out very simply. Zoe would work surveillance, acting electronically as their eyes in the sky and co-ordinating in case anything unexpected happened. Lucas would be on the floor of the casino. He had a certain talent for the cards and could be relied upon to stay on the tables indefinitely. Also, it wouldn’t break the bank for them and whilst he played he could feed information from the belly of the beast. Violet and Katie would penetrate covertly, make their way to wherever the painting was being held, and lift it before the four of them made their way quietly back to base.
“And where am I during all this?” asked Barry with a sigh. He knew the answer.
“Outside. Out of the way.”
“But why?” asked Zoe.
“Because,” Barry replied, “if they see me then they’ll know it was me who took the paintings and they might come after us again.”
“At the very least they would increase security and vigilance, which is the last thing we want for a quick in-and-out,” said Violet.
“Just one other thing,” said Zoe. “We’ll need to get my tablet back because it’s got the access codes for the bug I planted at the banker’s flat.”
“Oh,” said Violet, nodding. “Has it now? Well, that’s just grand. Looks like that’ll be on the shopping list too.”
Zoe looked sheepish. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I would have backed them up but… I never have the thing out of my hands…”
> Violet shrugged. “Right then, do you want a lift back to civilisation or what?”
24th September
* * *
2 1/2 weeks to go
* * *
48 hours to go…
Chapter 33
There was a low mumbling across the five earpieces.
“Violet receiving, over.” Zoe saw Barry jump, not expecting the voice in his earpiece. Violet continued. “And you lazy shits better get checking in given the price we paid for this tech.”
“Lucas standing by.”
“Red four standing by.” Barry smirked. Zoe glared. Barry continued. “So why don’t we have nicknames? Shouldn’t we have nicknames? It’s Barry. Standing by.”
“We don’t have nicknames because you’re too thick to remember who’s who when we have nicknames.” Violet remained stern and in command.
“Who was that aimed at?” Lucas asked, his voice more muffled than the rest.
“Take your pick,” said Violet then, relaxing slightly, she cackled down the line. “Not Katie, she’s right next to me.”
“Katie, can you acknowledge? Over.” Zoe ploughed on in the face of the overwhelming stupidity that stood in her way.
A panel lit up on the laptop screen in front of her. Katie’s transmitter was working.
“So, what’s the point in Katie having one of these when she doesn’t talk?” Barry squinted in concentration.
The screen blinked red in front of Zoe; Barry could see the colour reflecting off Zoe’s face.
“Sorry Katie,” he said, a little quieter.
The screen blinked green.
“We’re all in this together, Barry,” said Zoe. “Except you. You get to sit on your arse and shut up.”
There was laughter in the earpieces. Barry chewed lightly on his busted lip. The swelling in his face had subsided but the cuts and the black eye were still evident.
“The reason we can use our own names is because we’re about twenty five times more high tech and more secure than the most high tech secure things you can imagine,” said Zoe with a smile. “And here we go…”
Something was happening on Zoe’s laptop that Barry couldn’t make out, but he could see from the flurry of activity that it was something important. He toyed momentarily with the idea of going over to have a look but decided against it. The last time he had tried, it had been a jumble of text and code that he didn’t understand.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking,” said Zoe, affecting a mid-Atlantic drawl. “On behalf of the flight crew let me welcome you aboard flight twenty one forty two to the Princess Casino. Lucas will be touching down on the floor of the casino in the next couple of minutes and will need to maintain almost radio silence, so if he has anything interesting or useful to say then now would be a good time to say it.”
“Over and out,” said Lucas. He was walking along the Kilchester riverside approaching the floating cash vortex that was the Princess Casino.
Kilchester was an odd sort of a city. Like many towns around Europe, it had grown from a Roman settlement that expanded from the river docks, and had then spread like an infection over the surrounding lands on both sides of the river for the subsequent two thousand years. Travel far enough downstream and you would wind up in the sea. As a result, occasionally, a huge ship would drift into town.
One such ship was the Princess Casino. Originally a car ferry, some bright spark had thought that converting it into a floating casino would be a hugely profitable idea. The north of England’s very own slice of Las Vegas. On a boat. Permanently moored in a permanently cold dock in the shitpipe of Kilchester.
Against the odds it had remained afloat. On the water if not financially. After the original owners had jumped ship, a string of respectable national casino chains had fallen over themselves to try their hand at panning for gold. But the river was particularly unforgiving to those not of its city.
That was until the Baldoni Brothers took over. The Baldoni brothers managed to sail on the right side of the law — and their customers — while simultaneously perfecting as many different ways to extort money from their patrons as was humanly possible.
And it turned out there were quite a number of ways to do exactly that. As Barry had found out to his cost.
Lucas stepped from the docks up some gaudily-decorated steps leading to a covered walkway and on, past the bouncers into the belly of the ship. Once you were inside the ship, the it’s-neither-day-nor-night feeling kicked in immediately: all the usual tricks, banks of slot machines on the way in; flashing neon; and, of course, no clocks.
Passing the rows of slot machines, Lucas headed through crowds of people clustered around roulette tables and towards the window in the wall to get some chips.
“Security pretty lax on the floor,” said Lucas, not sure if there would be any signal for the transmitter inside the boat.
There was no response on the communicator and he was about to give up on the update when Zoe’s voice came through in his ear. “Excellent,” she said, as clear as if she were walking along beside him. “Sorry I didn’t come back straight away there, I’m multi-tasking.”
Lucas nodded and began to wonder if Zoe could tell if he was nodding. “No cameras to speak of. A few on the tables, but…” he trailed off as he reached the cashier. He handed over a thousand pounds.
“Yeah, seems as though they’re mainly for show,” said Zoe. “I’ve hacked their feed and half of them are turned off. If I had to guess I’d say they’ve maybe got one guy half-heartedly monitoring what’s going on. More than likely they are relying on the dealers spotting anything untoward and then escalating it from there.”
Lucas nodded again. The cashier handed him over his chips. “Thanks,” he said and smiled at her. She stared back, unblinking.
“You’re welcome,” said Zoe’s voice. “I’m going to hook everyone else in. One second.”
There was a crackle in his ear. “Right, everyone,” Zoe continued. “Using Lucas’ signal, I’ve triangulated where my tablet is and, roughly speaking, it would be in what would have been the captain’s quarters. I mean… I couldn’t get the floor plans of the ship at such short notice but–”
“Zoe,” Violet shut Zoe down. “Stop apologising. We are all doing our best. Stay focused.”
Stay focused, thought Lucas. It was time to focus. Scanning the tables, he spotted one that was crowded and whose female dealer looked a little weary around the eyes. Perfect. He sat down at the blackjack table and created a neat stack of chips to his right. The dealer smiled and Lucas smiled back. Judging by the size of the card shoe they were playing with four decks rather than the usual six, which made Lucas’ task a little easier.
Lucas threw down a couple of low value chips and started counting the cards.
*
“So Lucas is just going to sit there and win money,” said Violet.
Katie raised an eyebrow.
They were dressed head to toe in black and had just climbed the fire escape of the ship. With Zoe’s guidance they had successfully avoided any entanglements with the casino’s security staff and Violet was presently working her magic on the emergency exit’s deadlock.
“What?” Violet asked quietly. “It’s a plan.”
Katie lowered her eyebrow, looked away, then looked back and raised it again. Violet sighed and went back to teasing the lock with her lockpicks.
“Well, he reckons he’s been banned from all the major casino chains. He’s quite touchy about it, actually.”
Katie frowned.
“Because it means he’s been caught,” said Violet. “Shows weakness, doesn’t it?”
Katie’s eyebrows arched upwards in acknowledgement. She nodded, then turned her gaze outwards, scanning the area for anything unusual. There really wasn’t likely to be any intrusions at this point but you could never be too careful.
“All we need him to do is get on a decent winning streak. With the security they’ve got here, that should be e
nough to get them to look in the wrong direction,” Violet said. “Of course, there is a chance that they’ll take badly to it and beat him to a bloody pulp. But that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Violet closed her eyes, feeling the inside of the lock with the delicate tools, picturing the tumblers, feeling for the sweet spot.
Katie tapped her foot twice sharply on the metal of the fire escape. Violet’s eyes snapped open. Katie grinned down at her.
“I’m not falling asleep,” Violet hissed. “I’m concentrating. This isn’t as easy is it looks, you know?”
Katie flexed her left bicep and the tight, black, long-sleeved top she wore struggled under the strain, stretching comically.
“Yes, yes.” Violet rolled her eyes. “I’m sure that repeatedly lifting increasingly heavier weights is just as difficult as becoming as dexterous as a motherfucking ninja. Some of us aspire to more than simply having thicker arms.”
There was a loud clunk and Violet pulled the door towards them.
“Motherfucking finger ninja,” Violet whispered, nodding in self-approval.
Katie flexed harder, pointing the index finger of her flexed arm, and snarled, pulling a ridiculous bodybuilder pose. Violet stifled a laugh and poked her head into the dark bowels of the boat. They were in.
Chapter 34
“So...” said Violet with a sigh. “I’m not too proud to admit that we’ve probably walked past that sign three times.”
It seemed that it wasn’t as easy to navigate the bowels of an unknown sea vessel as you would imagine. Without the blueprints, without the preparation, Violet and Katie were becoming more than a little lost.
“It was easier at the museum,” Violet continued. They were at a junction, with the main corridor continuing ahead of them and a side corridor shooting off to the left. Violet pointed down the corridor to the left.