by Tom Fox
Angelina’s arrival only seemed to flare his temper.
‘If this isn’t it,’ he shouted, waving an arm over the crowd and repeating her words, ‘then what is it?’ A question, technically, but it was clear that Heinrich didn’t expect an answer. His frustration simply required an outlet.
‘A distraction,’ Angelina answered, nonetheless.
The Major stared at her blankly for a full second. Then, ‘This is one hell of a distraction!’
‘I can’t explain it,’ she continued, shifting to keep herself in his line of sight and prevent him from gazing back at the crowd or up at the sky, losing the attention she momentarily had, ‘but it’s the only thing that makes sense. We were brought here.’
‘Brought here?’
‘The whole city, us, you.’ Angelina motioned towards the ranks of the Swiss Guard. They tried to attend to their duty, but their faces were white and the sky above them kept attracting their attention. ‘So many of you.’ Her eyes locked into Heinrich’s. ‘Almost all of you.’
He steadied himself, Angelina’s words sinking in.
‘And we were brought here for a reason,’ she continued.
‘What sort of reason?’ A coldness, dry from an emerging understanding, entered into Heinrich’s words.
‘Presumably, to keep us from being somewhere else.’
The Major paled. He looked out over the square, where Angelina’s summary of the situation suddenly hit home. Almost the whole of the Swiss Guard was here. Even city and state police were in the square.
All . . . right here.
He spun back to Angelina. ‘If not here, then where? The sun’s been bloody well blocked out. Look above your head, woman!’
His radio chirped to life, however, before she had a chance to answer. A voice crackled through the small unit Velcroed on to his shoulder.
‘Is that Major Heinrich?’ a male voice asked.
He batted at the radio irritably. This was not the moment for interruption.
‘Yes, but this isn’t a good—’
‘Agent Como here, from the Polizia di Stato,’ the man’s voice cut across Heinrich’s protest. ‘That number plate your men asked us to run last night, you remember that?’
Heinrich stiffened. ‘Yes, I remember.’
‘Well, we just got a hit on it. A stoplight camera caught it a few minutes ago, and we’ve got a present location from CCTV footage. Assuming you’re in the Vatican now, it’s only about three kilometres away from you.’
The officer read the address aloud over the radio a moment later. Via della Luce 46, near the Piazza Mastai. Heinrich thanked him abruptly, his features stony, and the transmission ended.
Angelina’s rising curiosity, however, sank as the address was read. She knew this city too well not to know the address, at least in terms of its general location, and she knew there was nothing there. Piazza Mastai was pretty but insignificant, a fountain in a paved square bordered by an eye-catching but inconsequential building that used to be the headquarters of a tobacco company. Hardly a site of religious significance, or political – or anything else.
‘There’s nothing at that spot,’ she announced once the radio call was over. ‘I take tour groups past the square occasionally, simply as a way from getting from point A to point B, nothing more. The two men in the car must have simply ditched it there, like you said.’ Defeat sagged in her shoulders.
But Major Heinrich’s face was white, his eyes wide. His gaze was locked with Ben’s, and as Angelina turned to face him, she could see his features were just as tense.
‘Ben, what is it? What’s going on?’
‘The Piazza Mastai,’ he said, his voice lowered. His eyes lifted up again to stare at the black sky above them, his face filled with wonder. Could there possibly be a connection between what he was seeing here, and what he knew was there?
She shook her head. ‘Like I said, there’s nothing at the Piazza Mastai. I’ve walked over that square a hundred times.’
‘Over it, exactly,’ Heinrich interjected. He was already starting to move. ‘But given what you’ve said, that’s precisely the point.’
86
In car, en route to the Piazza Mastai
The swirling blue lights of the unmarked Swiss Guard sedan into which Heinrich had directed Ben, Angelina and Thomás, together with himself and a driver, glowed brightly against the foreign darkness of the black sky. Behind them, three SUVs filled with armed Special Activities Teams – the Swiss Guard’s equivalent of SWAT – had their lights and sirens blaring and the whole enclave raced towards what Heinrich had assured them was the site that needed to be their point of immediate and complete focus.
They had taken little convincing.
‘The reason you’ve never heard of anything significant at the Piazza Mastai,’ he explained to Angelina and Thomás as the car rounded a corner, ‘is that what’s there is not meant to be known about. Lack of knowledge is a significant portion of its secure status.’
‘But it’s an empty square,’ Angelina protested, still baffled as to why they were speeding towards a location that, as far as she knew, was of no significance whatsoever.
‘Precisely. Nothing to see. Nothing to tempt you.’ Heinrich’s eyes were forward as he spoke from the passenger seat. ‘It’s what’s underneath that has value.’
‘Underneath?’
‘A vault,’ Ben said. He sat at Angelina’s left, Thomás at her right, on the bench seat in the back of the car. ‘A secure vault that’s been buried under the Piazza Mastai for over sixty-five years.’
Angelina stared at him with incredulity. ‘A vault? I’ve never heard about this.’
‘That’s not a surprise,’ Heinrich muttered.
Angelina was still staring at Ben. ‘But . . . you have?’ He nodded. ‘How, Ben?’
‘Presumably, the same way Emil Durré learned about it,’ he answered.
‘They both had the same access,’ Heinrich said from the front.
Angelina was getting irritated by how little she understood of what these two men were saying.
‘Ben, what the hell are you talking about?’
‘The records of the vault’s existence are kept in the Vatican Secret Archives,’ he answered. ‘There’s a lot in our collections that’s ancient, and a lot that’s considered “secret” in the modern sense, even though we make almost all of it available to researchers who have a legitimate interest.’
‘Almost,’ Angelina repeated the key word.
Ben nodded. ‘People always assume it’s the most ancient things that we keep restricted, but in fact it’s precisely the opposite. The only section of the Archives that is entirely forbidden for access, except by staff or members of the Curia, is the post-1945 collection.’
‘After ’forty-five?’ Angelina asked in surprise. ‘The modern stuff?’
‘Right. Modern records, details, plans.’
‘Such as plans for the bullion reserve,’ Heinrich interjected. He twisted round to face his three passengers. ‘It was a project created after the war, when the Vatican realised the political turmoil in Europe was significant enough that keeping its raw wealth in public banks was a risk no longer worth taking. Vatican City may be eternal, but it’s a few city blocks in the heart of a nation that rises and falls with Fascists, Communists, Nazis, Socialists. Too much risk.’
‘Hold on,’ Angelina interjected, raising a palm. ‘Bullion reserve? What are we talking about here?’
‘It’s a vault to hold the non-religious physical wealth of the Vatican,’ Ben said.
‘Non-religious?’ The question came from Thomás.
‘In the cathedrals and churches we have wealth of every kind,’ Heinrich answered. ‘There’s two hundred million euros worth of bronze and gold dangling above the altar in St Peter’s alone. The Vatican Museums house billions in artefacts. But most of that is potential value. Historical. Hard to convert into hard cash for thieves, which is why it’s relatively safe – though we guard it with abs
olute diligence.’
Angelina understood Heinrich’s meaning. The papal throne might be worth millions for its historical value and the inherent worth of its materials, but it wasn’t exactly something you could sell on eBay.
‘So the vault was conceived, and constructed, to house the bulk of the raw wealth that’s actually . . . usable,’ Ben said. ‘Nothing of historical or religious significance. Just raw gold, silver, cash.’
‘Shit,’ Angelina said. ‘I had no idea such a thing was under there.’
‘No one does,’ Heinrich said. ‘The vault isn’t a major target for crime precisely because there is so much more visible wealth above, and because almost no one knows it exists. We have hundreds of attempts every year at thefts from our churches and museums, but in all the years since it was completed we’ve never had a single attempted incursion into the vault.’
‘Durré must have learned about it during his period of work in the Archives,’ Ben added. ‘It’s the only way. And that would have included details on the construction, as well as its location and its contents.’
Heinrich said nothing, but Angelina could see his shoulders tense.
‘But obviously it has to be guarded?’ she asked. ‘The Swiss Guard presumably keep it protected.’
‘Of course,’ Heinrich snapped. ‘We have a presence there at all times. There’s only a single access point, guarded around the clock, and the vault itself is equipped with all the security features of a modern bank system.’
The car banked as the driver swerved around another corner, tyres squealing against the tarmac. In front of it, its two headlight beams were cones of light in the uncommon darkness.
‘We pay attention to it, just like we pay attention to everything else in our care,’ Heinrich said once they’d straightened out again.
But to Angelina, to whom their circumstances now made sense, he’d left off an important detail.
‘You pay attention to it,’ she said, ‘unless your attention is elsewhere.’
She could almost feel Heinrich’s skin go cold.
87
Inside the Vatican Bullion Vault
At Emil’s instruction, his men were packing his longed-for prize into thick vinyl bags that had been precisely chosen both for their sturdiness and for holding almost exactly the quantity of gold bullion bricks that a single strong man could realistically manoeuvre on his own. The density of gold meant the bags were small, but could be stacked neatly as bricks on the carts they would use to remove them from the site.
The carts themselves were also custom-designed creations that Yiannis had crafted for the incursion. They were two-layer units of reinforced steel, allowing them to support the weight of two dozen bricked-bags of bullion each, and the wheels were oversized to what appeared an almost comical degree – but one which made it possible to roll in and out of the vault over the rough edging of the blasted hole in its side. The shaping of charges to ensure the bottom of that hole ran flush to the floor had been precise. The carts moved easily over the unusual terrain.
Emil was thrilled with everything he saw. He couldn’t, of course, shake the tension that had jolted through his nerves since the moment the sky had gone dark over St Peter’s, but hell, he’d take a freak accident that worked in his favour any time. It didn’t matter, at the end of the day. No, screw it, it actually made things better. Within minutes he and his men would be out of here, with more wealth than the entire troop of them could ever spend in their collective lifetimes, and the whole city would still be staring up at the clouds.
Maybe God was smiling on him, after all. The thought brought a smile to Emil’s lips. The divine favour of heaven, showering grace upon his brilliance and granting him success.
It would be a pleasant thought, if Emil Durré believed in any of that crap. As it was, and as the whole affair had made eminently clear, he was perfectly capable of taking what he wanted, all on his own.
Piazza Mastai
The motorcade of Swiss Guard vehicles swept into the piazza and halted in positions that all pointed towards an innocuous section of brick wall that only they knew was the false-facade entrance to the bullion vault beneath. At Heinrich’s instruction, their sirens had been muted and lights switched off as they neared, which had made the final seconds of their drive eerily black and silent. But the instant they were in position, doors flew open in unison and men started to pour out on to the square.
The three Special Activities Teams emerged in full incursion kit. Bullet-resistant vests shielded their torsos and slender, visored helmets covered their heads. They were armed with SIG 552s and MP7s, all with laser sights and enlarged magazines, and within their helmets night-vision capabilities allowed them to move in the blackness as if it were the brightness of day. They also allowed their microphoned communications to be carried out in such low tones that they spoke in what outwardly was complete silence.
Angelina emerged from the sedan after Ben, Heinrich having already rushed over to one of the SUVs to get a suit for himself.
‘There’s nothing there,’ Angelina whispered to Ben as she saw the whole entourage of men moving towards a section of brickwork on one of the buildings that surrounded the piazza.
‘You can’t open a door you don’t see,’ Ben whispered back, and then Angelina watched as a metal wand was waved by one of the Guardsmen over the wall. It looked like the kind of handheld metal detector used for body searches in airports, but this one wasn’t searching for metal. It was beaming an encrypted access code to a receiver embedded deep within the wall. The instant the signal was received and decoded, the wall began to move. Angelina watched in wonder as a door-sized section of brickwork protruded out from the edifice more than an arm’s length, then swivelled silently open. At its new angle, she could see that only the exterior surface was brick. Behind, the door was solid metal.
‘The control room is just inside,’ Ben whispered, but Angelina was already walking towards the opened door.
She was four metres away when she heard Heinrich question a man at his side, ‘What do you mean, there was no response chirp from the guards inside?’
Angelina felt dread lump concretely into her stomach. She didn’t know the details, but his demeanour made it clear that Major Heinrich had expected the electronic beacon would not only open the door but also notify the guards posted inside, alerting them to new entrants and drawing some sort of verification.
That none was coming put everyone on edge.
A second later, they saw why.
It took Angelina’s eyes a few seconds longer to see the corpses of the fallen Guardsmen inside the entrance than it did the teams equipped with night-vision helmets. By the time her brain had made sense of the sight – two slumped bodies surrounded by congealing pools of their own blood, heads reduced to masses of gore and scalp – Heinrich was already shouting.
‘Full incursion! Go now!’
The Special Activities Teams rushed through the entrance and bounded down the metal stairway that led to the vault.
Though his men had felt no need to work in perfect silence, both the awe of their take and the strenuous physical effort required to move so much heavy bullion had kept Emil’s teams operating in a natural, efficient quiet.
Which made the sudden thumping of boots on metal staircases boom like thunder through the subterranean space.
When, three seconds after it began, the boom was superseded by the explosion of gunfire, the blood iced in Emil’s veins.
With all the confusion already present over the mystery of what had taken place above ground, it took Emil’s mind fractionally longer than usual to cope with the new questions that burst into it. How could anyone have found them? How could anyone have got inside? Ridolfo and André had executed the two guards at the top of the stairs, and the external door was sealed. The only other way in or out of the vault was through the tunnel Emil’s own men had dug – but these noises were coming from its other side.
The thoughts wrestled and battled
in his brain for a few seconds before the only available conclusion smacked at him like a fist. He had been found out, despite all his best efforts.
His fury was overwhelming.
Another round of gunfire from the access shaft on the far side of the vault.
Emil spun on his men. Like him, they’d frozen in place the moment the noise had sliced through the silence, bullion and bags in hand.
‘Pick up your fucking guns!’ he shouted to everyone on his left, and to those on his right, ‘Get everything out of here!’ The carts were already heavy. They weren’t full, but it was still more than enough wealth to luxuriate a lifetime for all of them.
He turned back to his other men, now scrambling after their weapons.
‘Shoot on sight,’ he commanded. ‘Shoot everyone. Anyone. Just keep them away.’
88
Piazza Mastai
Heinrich had not, of course, allowed Angelina, Ben or Thomás to get a step closer to the vault’s ground-level entrance than the distance Angelina had crossed as the door opened. After barking his commands to the special forces teams he’d spun to face them.
‘Get back in the car,’ he ordered, his voice stern and his motions already marked by the swift strokes of military efficiency. ‘You’ve done enough. Stay put, and stay out of the way until this is over.’
He’d said no more. The Major was a man in command and he’d spun back to his teams and his task, disappearing into the dark entrance.
Angelina, Ben and Thomás were left on the square in what quickly became silence, as the last of the teams followed their colleagues inward and vanished.
They were alone.
The situation appeared to suit Ben and Thomás just fine, both men tense but clearly relieved that troops of agents with large guns were buffering them from Durré’s men underground. Men who had already left behind corpses.
But her inner voice seemed to scream at Angelina. You have to go in! You can’t just stand here. You have to act!