by Jack Heath
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 t
he 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.
But her stomach was churning. This didn’t feel right.
She stepped back from the box. She wiped the hand that had touched the dust on her jeans.
“Ash, get away from the box,” Benjamin said. His voice was shaky. “Stand as far away from it as you can.”
“Why?” Ash said, backing away. “What is it?”
“Don’t talk. Don’t even breathe.”
“What—”
“Shut up, Ash!” Benjamin snapped. “I’m just checking something.”
There was a pause that seemed to last an eternity. Ash didn’t take her eyes off the box. She half expected a muscular claw to push up through the dust and reach out for her—
“Oh god,” Benjamin said. “Umm…”
“What is it?”
“Put your jacket over your mouth,” Benjamin said. “Breathe through it. How much did you touch?”
“Benjamin, what the hell is going on?”
“It’s not just dust, Ash. I think it’s anthrax.”
Pandora’s Box
Peachey wrapped his free hand around his wrist, just above the cuff. This was going to hurt.
“Aargh!” He pulled, and the cuff ground across his flesh, mashing the skin against the bones inside his hand. It got stuck just above his thumb. The girl had done them up tight.
He wiped the sweat off his free hand against his trousers, rubbed the sleeve across his brow to keep the moisture out of his eyes, and pulled again.
Shick. The cuff slid off his hand, and Peachey gritted his teeth as the feeling flooded back into his fingers. There were advantages to having wide wrists and narrow hands after all. He curled his hands into fists, like he was crushing the pain into a harmless paste. He rested the back of his head against the side of the desk for a moment.
He didn’t have much time to waste. The girl would be getting away. Angry as he was at her, that wasn’t the main source of his desire to kill her – she had seen too much. She knew his face, she knew what he was up to. Peachey doubted that she was calling the cops; she was clearly up to something herself, and would want someone else to do her dirty work. But she would tell her employers. And Peachey didn’t even know who she worked for.
He clambered to his feet and stretched. He still couldn’t see his Glock anywhere, and finding the girl quickly was probably more important than having a gun. Now that she no longer had the element of surprise, he would be able to kill her with his bare hands.
He twisted the door handle, and the door swung open. She hadn’t locked it behind her – first mistake. He closed it behind him, and tapped out the same combination as before on Keighley’s keyboard. The door locked. Now no one would come in and see the ruined office before he wanted them to. Control. It was all about control.
Peachey worked through his objectives as he ran towards the lifts. Maybe in the movie of his life, they would flash up on the screen, silver and sparkling. Like his mind was a computer. He smiled. Smart and analytical, like a computer. I like that, he thought.
Objective one: kill the girl. Two: return to the office and hide. Three: kill Buckland. Four: escape. Same plan as before this unpleasant interruption. Just with one extra step.
He pushed the lift button, and a door slid open almost immediately. No one inside the lift. He stepped inside, and stared up at the screen. No way to know what floor she was on. He’d have to do this the hard way.
Peachey was an efficient and methodical man. He pushed the button for floor 24. If she wasn’t there, he would move down to floor 23. Then floor 22. And so on, until she was dead and he could return to Buckland’s office to wait for his main target to arrive.
The girl was a temporary setback. Emphasis on temporary, he thought. The doors slid shut, and he waited as the numbers counted down. He glanced at his pocket watch. It was nearly quarter past six.
“Oh my god,” Benjamin said again.
“Stay calm.” Ash’s voice was muffled by her jacket. She’d ripped off the sleeve she’d dipped in the dust with her contaminated hand, and was breathing through the rest of the jacket. She was holding the arm she’d dipped in the box away from her and tilting her head to the side. Why am I telling him to stay calm? she thought, teeth clenched. I’m the one who’s been exposed!
She tried to steady her breathing. “How do you know it’s anthrax?” she asked.
“I examined the data from the scanner, and the picture didn’t look like th
e Wikipedia image of dust mites. So I checked the anthrax images on a hunch, and it looks the same. Well, similar. I don’t know. Oh god.”
Ash didn’t know much about anthrax. But she knew that it was a disease, and that it came in powder form. She knew that it was a popular biological weapon because it was fast-acting and fatal. She knew that once you inhaled it, you were a goner.
This was worse than getting arrested. Convicted. Jailed. This was death. By planning the Hammond Buckland Operation, Ash had engineered her own destruction.
“I thought anthrax came in envelope-sized amounts,” Ash said. “I thought that was how weaponized anthrax was usually used. That’s why it was such a threat – because so little could do so much.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Benjamin said. “How much is in the box?”
“It’s full, Benjamin. Full. As in, to the brim.”
“That’s…impossible. Are you sure?”
Ash wanted to scream. “Yes, I’m sure! The coffin-sized box is full! I’m looking right at it!”
That part wasn’t true. She was staring at the floor, like even making eye contact with the box could kill her. Like it wasn’t already too late.
“Maybe…maybe that’s how much anthrax $200 million buys.”
Ash coughed into her jacket, startled. “You think Buckland bought it? Why would he put anthrax beneath the air vent in the room right underneath his office? That’s the stupidest, most elaborate suicide method I’ve ever heard of.”
“But he’s not in his office,” Benjamin pointed out, still panicky. “You saw him downstairs. And you said the box had a clock. Like it was supposed to open on a timer. Or maybe he was planning to sell it to someone else, like he’s using terrorist groups to launder money—”
“We’re wasting time,” Ash said. “Is there anything I can do now that I’m exposed?”