Griff reached the hole in the ceiling, disappeared inside.
Deep breath.
Okay. She had to assume that the Raspberry Pi was in place. She had to assume that the guards were as oblivious as they seemed.
She had to assume they were good to go.
30
Bianca held her breath while unlocking the first display case. If anything had gone wrong with the Raspberry Pi, or Griff’s installation of it, this was the moment of truth: an alarm would screech.
It didn’t. There wasn’t a lot of visibility in Room Three because only a quartet of low-level security lights were on, two on either side of each door. But then she didn’t need much light, and actually the gloom worked to her advantage in that it kept her from being easily seen by any chance passerby. Keeping a wary eye on the open doorway, she wielded her lock pick with practiced ease. Fourteen minutes later, she had all nineteen display cases unlocked.
Restoring the lock pick to its sheath in her garter belt, she left the treasure room and slipped back into Room Two.
There were more guests at the tables than before. None of them paid attention to her reentry into the room. A glance toward the atrium at the security office confirmed that the guards still sat in front of their monitors, seemingly unaware of any problem.
It was 9:19. She had eleven minutes to set the place on fire and smoke everybody out.
As she walked back toward the buffet tables, she heard the wail of multiple sirens, faint and fading because they came from outside the museum and were heading away.
Bianca ticked another item off her mental checklist: that should be the response to the tunnel explosions.
The bodysuit had pockets that secured everything in place until it was time to put the items to use. All she had to do was wait until no one was looking, reach inside the artful draping of her blouse and grab what she needed. First up was a bag of the gunpowder mixture. Palming it, she let the contents spill out in a thin trail that led from the tablecloth of the table nearest the buffet in Room Two to the buffet itself. She kept her body between what she was doing and the rest of the assembly, and her actions remained unremarked as she walked from one room to the next.
With the bag empty, she put it in her pocket.
Her next step was placing the explosives and setting the wicks alight. It would take approximately one minute for the wicks to burn down.
She needed a distraction so that she could set the charges without being observed. She also wanted to make sure that the women behind the tables serving the food were out of the way, and that the fire spread in the direction she intended. She accomplished all three goals by the simple expedient of “accidentally” tripping a man who was approaching the dessert table—that would be the third table, the one closest to Room Two—and supplementing that with an artfully disguised shove that sent him reeling into the table with a cry of dismay.
“Ty che blyad!”
The far end of the table collapsed under his weight, sending man and desserts crashing to the floor.
“Oj!”
“Bychit!”
Exclaiming, the servers rushed to his aid—or to try to save the desserts. It was impossible to be sure. The four other people cruising the buffet either jumped back or gathered around the fallen.
In any case, no one was watching her.
Bianca thrust one explosive each beneath the chafing dishes, making sure the wicks came into contact with the flame. She didn’t fear shrapnel, because she had specifically chosen to pack the charges in thermoses that were made of heavy Styrofoam to avoid it.
Then she hurried over to help with the downed man, who struggled to sit up amid a welter of curses and apologies.
She’d no sooner crouched beside him than the explosives went off, one right after the other.
Boom! Boom!
The table erupted in a sheet of flame that instantly stretched from one end to the other and soared toward the ceiling. It raced across the collapsed dessert table, found the trail of explosive powder, burned wildly toward Room Two and set the first table in that room alight. Those nearest the blaze—the fallen man, the servers, everyone who’d gathered to help or gawk, the diners in Room Two—screamed, jumped up, ran. Screaming herself and skittering backward just for the look of it, Bianca surreptitiously rolled two smoke grenades into the conflagration.
Dense black smoke began to billow up and out, filling the rooms, creating total panic. A crescendo of screams filled the air as people dashed for the exit.
The building’s fire alarm went off. The deafening clang of it hurt Bianca’s ears.
Then the Sterno fuel canisters blew: Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The sharp, loud explosions coming in rapid succession sounded like gunfire. The blaze crackled and roared. The smoke was intense.
Two security guards rushing toward the blaze with fire extinguishers did a quick one-eighty when the canisters went off and headed away from the fire, shooing patrons out before them.
“Vsekh! Vsekh!” They urged everyone out.
Bianca fell back toward Room Three and the clearer air there while everyone else disappeared into the smoke as they bolted for the door. She coughed a little—the smoke was thick—but she wasn’t worried about it or about getting trapped in a burning building: the explosives were designed to cause an intense, fiery eruption, create a lot of smoke and then quickly burn out.
The shriek of a close-at-hand siren pierced the screams of the fleeing patrons and the rush and pop of the fire.
A moment later, shouts from men heading in her direction told her that the cavalry had arrived.
“Ochistit zdaniye!”
“Ustupat dorogu!”
Orders came to clear the building and to make way. Bianca knew those voices: Lazlo and Sandor.
A double line of helmeted, masked firefighters in their red and black uniforms thundered toward her. One line pulled a big hose with them. The other bore three equipment trunks.
Two of the hose bearers stopped and prepared to douse the fire.
The rooms were empty of everyone except their gang. Bianca joined the others who ran toward Room Three, and quickly donned the uniform Lazlo tossed to her. She left her mask hanging around her neck for the moment; she would need it for only cover on the way out. The others had lowered their masks as well, to make it easier to work.
“Hurry, hurry!” Dorottya’s voice was sharp with anxiety.
Her urgency reflected the reality that they all knew: if they got caught, years in a Russian prison was the least of what they faced.
They worked in teams: Lazlo and Dorottya; Kristof and Maria; Franz and Elena; Bianca and Sandor.
One removed the treasure, storing it the trunk, while the other replaced each item with its replica. Exchanging all 101 pieces took precisely eight minutes, thirty-nine seconds. Bianca timed it with quick glances at her watch.
The moment the last artifact had been replaced, as the rest of the team closed up the trunks, Bianca locked the display cases.
It was then, as she reached the last display case, that she saw it: the Trojan sauceboat, which was so important that it merited its own individual display case in the center of the room, had toppled from its pedestal. It lay on its side on the bottom of the case.
One of its gold-painted handles had broken off, clearly revealing its plebian terra-cotta soul.
Bianca’s stomach dropped to her toes.
“Oh, no!” Her dismayed reaction had everyone looking around.
“What is it?”
“Oh my God!”
“Franz, that was yours to do! You clumsy—”
Doing her best to tune out the peanut gallery, Bianca reached inside the case and picked up the two pieces. There was no doing anything about it: the handle was no longer attached. And, yes, someone was going to notice. If not the
minute they walked back into the museum, soon afterward. They needed ten hours to get out of Russia. The chances that they were going to get them just plummeted.
“What can we do?”
“Glue it.”
“We have no glue!”
“And no time! Leave it! We must go.”
Bianca had an epiphany: they did have glue—kind of. Carefully setting the two pieces inside the display case, she reached up under her Ann wig, tore two pieces of double-sided wig tape used to secure the thing from the net base and applied them to the sauceboat. Then, praying hard, she stuck the handle back on.
Miracle of miracles, it held.
Not forever. Probably not for long. But hopefully for long enough.
Oh, so carefully, she set the sauceboat back on its pedestal and locked the case.
“Let’s go,” she told the others, who were watching wide-eyed.
They did, pelting toward the entrance, picking up Adam and Bence on the way. The fire was out. The black burned remnants of the buffet and the one small dining table made a soggy, stinking mess. Smoke still filled the building, rolling out the door in a thick gray cloud.
They burst out through that cloud into the cold, crisp night to discover that quite a crowd had gathered.
“Vam nuzhno, chtoby dym byl chistym!” Lazlo lifted his mask slightly to yell to the crowd that they needed to let the smoke clear as the “firefighters” dashed down the stairs.
The fire truck, boxy and red, waited at the foot of the stairs.
They loaded the trunks, piled on and were away.
* * *
Ten nail-biting hours later, they were at a small, under-the-radar airfield in a remote part of northern Belarus. The terrain was hilly, which served to hide the airport because it was nestled in a depression circled by the low hills. Unless someone was specifically looking for it, they were unlikely to find it. Unless they knew what it was, what they would see was a long, low corrugated metal warehouse with a narrow road running beside it. The circus caravan was parked inside the warehouse: it would be dismantled, sold off, disposed of.
Two planes idled on that road, which was actually a single, snow-dusted runway. The planes were discards from the Russian military. Now they were used by smugglers, primarily of guns but also of people and other things. The pilots, likewise, had formerly been Russian military. But the military had been downsized, they had lost their jobs and they had families to feed. They hired out themselves and their planes to anyone who could pay them. With Mason, Bianca had used them before, and she’d made the arrangements for them to be waiting for them today.
It was 8:00 a.m. Saturday, a cold gray morning that threatened imminent snow. The smell of airplane fuel hung in the air. Standing beside the first plane in line, Dorottya grabbed Bianca and hugged her goodbye. She, Lazlo, and Dedi were the last to board the plane. The rest of the family, plus the dogs, Zoltan and Griff, were already inside. Their destination was Spain: they were headed to a remote ranch in Andalucia where the plane could touch down without having to bother with inconveniences such as customs. They would stay there as long as they liked while they figured out how best to spend the four million dollars that Bianca had wired to their new, numbered bank account.
“Ah, Maggy, we will miss you!” Dorottya said, letting Bianca go. She wiped tears from her eyes. “Just like we will miss the circus. This is to say goodbye to all of our old friends, all of our old life.”
“I have been thinking,” Lazlo said. “That we do not have to say goodbye. Not forever. The boys and I have been talking. Why cannot we have the money and the circus, too? If, in the spring, there is no word that anyone is connecting us with the robbery, we can perhaps come back. Tibor Alexandrovich told the boys he would hold their place, and—”
“Ah, bah, bite your tongue and get on the plane,” Dedi interrupted, shoving him toward the stairs that led to the plane’s open door. “Men are fools, all of them.” She looked at Bianca as Lazlo, with Dorottya behind him, started up the stairs, and pointed an admonishing finger at her. “You remember that, you.” Then her expression softened. “The money means a great deal. Now my great-granddaughter has a chance at a decent life, and I can go to my Maker with an easy heart.”
“Not too soon, I hope,” Bianca said.
Dedi, no hugger, smiled and patted Bianca’s shoulder. “Another ninety years, God willing.”
Bianca, no hugger herself, clasped her hand. “God willing,” she echoed. “Goodbye, Dedi.”
Dedi nodded, then turned and headed up the stairs.
Oskar was looking out a window. Bianca lifted a hand at him in farewell, then, as the plane’s door closed behind Dedi, hurried to board the second plane that was to take her and Doc on the first stage of the journey to Berlin.
31
The sun set early in Berlin in November, and by a quarter to six that same Saturday the purple of twilight had passed on to full night. The city was ablaze with light. Its bold, avant-garde architecture created an arresting skyline against the starry black sky. Traffic was heavy as Bianca drove the rented Mercedes-Benz G-Class past the iconic Brandenburg Gate toward the Tiergarten, which was Berlin’s answer to New York’s Central Park. Located in the center of the city, its massive green space encompassed restaurants and playgrounds and walking trails and a zoo. It was toward the zoo that Bianca was heading: she was to meet Mason there.
She’d contacted him earlier, and he’d set the meeting for 6:15 p.m. in the parking lot next to the zoo. It would be a simple exchange. She would get out of the boxy SUV, which had the three treasure-filled trunks in the back, and Mason would get in, drive the treasure away and turn it over to whoever he needed to turn it over to. Meanwhile, she would get into the car he arrived in and drive back to Frankfurt, where she had put Doc on a commercial flight to Toronto earlier, Toronto being the first leg of his roundabout journey back to Savannah.
Bianca would board a commercial flight to Copenhagen the next morning, and from there would make her way to Savannah in the same surveillance-defeating stages.
Both she and Doc would be home on Monday.
And if Mason delivered on his promise, she would be able to put the whole CIA kill team and Darjeeling Brothers’ contract nightmare behind her and get on with her life.
She’d been on the move for nearly forty-eight hours, with only a few snatched hours of sleep. She was bone-tired and a little punchy from what she thought must be adrenaline withdrawal. But she felt good. Almost happy.
She’d done it. She’d succeeded.
The relief was indescribable.
Reaching the Tiergarten, she drove along the dark roads that wound through the forest to the zoo. In November, the zoo closed at 4:30 p.m., so only a few yellowish security lights illuminated the parking lot. It was nearly empty, maybe six cars scattered throughout, which she guessed belonged to employees of the zoo. The exchange was to take place at the elephant gate entrance. As she cruised past, she took a moment to admire its green tile roofs and stone arches. Then she proceeded, as directed, to the far left side of the parking lot and pulled into the last space.
She’d barely shoved the transmission into park before another vehicle, an older Volkswagen Passat, pulled up next to her and stopped. She looked—yes, that was Mason getting out of it. She would recognize his profile and his tall body even in silhouette, which was all she could really see of him, anywhere. He left the Passat’s lights on and the engine running. She did the same with the Mercedes. The headlights stabbed into the dark swath of trees beyond the parking lot.
Getting out, she walked around the back of the car. The area was full of shadows. As Mason came toward her, she saw that, while he was walking now, he had a pronounced limp.
They met behind the Mercedes, stopped. He wore a black overcoat against the cold, but no disguise. Bianca, who was once again in her Maggy wig with a short red car coat she had
acquired in Frankfurt, felt overdressed.
It was good to see him, but she didn’t say that.
“You did it,” he said. He wasn’t smiling, didn’t sound proud. Didn’t sound anything. It was a simple statement of fact.
She looked at him. “Yes.”
“Is it in the car?”
“In the back.”
He nodded, started to walk around her, business concluded. She felt—what did she feel? Let down? Hurt? If so, she needed to get over that STAT.
“Bianca.” He stopped, put a heavy hand on her shoulder, gripped it hard. That was an unusual thing for him to do. She frowned and looked around inquiringly—and was just in time to catch a glimpse of his other hand flying toward her in a quick blur of movement.
She didn’t even have time to process, much less react, before she felt the sting of something—a hypodermic needle, she’d caught a glimpse of it, my God, what’s he doing?—being plunged into her neck.
“What—” She grabbed his arm. It was too late. She felt the hot spurt of liquid into her vein and knew that he’d depressed the plunger, that he’d injected her with something. Across the parking lot she saw lights flash on in the cars she’d thought were empty, heard the thrum of engines and saw the cars come barreling her way. But the drug was fast acting. From the moment she became aware of what was happening, she could barely move. Everything started to blur. All she could see, leaning over her as he caught her collapsing body and kept her from hitting the ground, was his face. She frowned and shook her head, rejecting what she knew was true. This couldn’t be happening—
“Dad?” she said. Her voice was unsteady, a squeak. Pitiful. The pain of betrayal was almost as acute as her fear.
“I had to trade you to them along with the treasure,” he said, speaking rapidly. Her muscles were no longer working. She was dizzy and knew she would soon pass out. “For Marin and Margery’s safety, not just mine.”
* * *
The bitter anguish she felt then was like a knife stabbing her through the heart.
The Moscow Deception--An International Spy Thriller Page 31