A Beautiful Heist

by Kim Foster

  Both monks nodded solemnly. “Yes, Mr. Barlow,” Brother Franco said. “We know, just as you do, that the Fabergé Egg contains the long-lost Gifts of the Magi.”

  Chapter 25

  I was pulled out of a deep sleep by an odd, loud noise. My eyes opened and slowly focused. I saw Ethan’s face. Memory came surging back. My face heated up and my heart sang hallelujah! I didn’t remember every detail but I was quite confident that it involved some rather marvelous sex.

  “Mmmm ...” I said. I tousled my hair and stretched kittenishly. “Hi, you ... What was that sound, just now?”

  Ethan was propped up on pillows, looking bemused. “You, my dear. You were snoring.”

  I froze. “You’re kidding.” I could feel the flush of mortification rise up my bare neck.

  “Nope,” he said. “I was just considering flipping you over to make you stop.”

  Which is exactly what one hopes a new lover says the morning after. Snoring? Excellent, Cat.

  But I wasn’t going to let the humiliation ruin my afterglow.

  Unfortunately, I noticed something else was threatening that. A subtle undertow: there was a small part of me that wished it had been Jack’s bed I’d woken up in.

  I scolded myself. That could never be.

  When I got home from Ethan’s apartment there was a large padded envelope waiting for me. More specifically, my neighbor Bradley was waiting for me, holding the envelope. At the precise moment I’d arrived at my apartment door, fumbling with my keys, his door had flung open and there he stood. The guy needed a hobby.

  “Thanks, Bradley. You’re such a help,” I said tonelessly.

  “No problem,” he said, with a condescending smile. “I noticed you didn’t come home last night, so I wanted to be sure you got this first thing. It’s not from the IRS, like the last one, though—”

  Slam. (My door, closing in his face.)

  I glanced at the return address—my tech lab—and beelined for my bedroom. I opened my closet and pushed aside stacks of shoe boxes, scarves, and clothes, and burrowed my way to the very back of the closet. There was a small camouflaged touch pad here. It illuminated as I pressed my fingertip to it and the back of the closet slid open, revealing a hidden room. The lights clicked on automatically as I stepped through.

  Creating this room involved sacrificing precious closet space, which had been a struggle. In the end I’d decided that staying out of prison would be worth it.

  My room contained various tools, weapons, disguises, and a top-of-the-line safe. There was also a secret exit: a hole in the ceiling that connected with the building’s air vents. In the event of a raid I could lock myself in here and escape.

  I shredded into the package and tossed the lab report aside; the scientific details were not what I was looking for. It was the product I was concerned with. From the envelope I carefully pulled out a pair of very special gloves. A small pouch was built into the index finger of each glove, containing a drop of fake blood. This was what, if all went to plan, would fool the biometric sensors.

  I held the gloves gingerly and my skin tingled. I was almost ready. Now all I needed was the gas mask. I frowned, picked up my phone and called my tech guy.

  “Sorry, Cat. Still not here,” said Lucas. “Something went screwy with the shipping people, and it looks like it won’t be here for another week, possibly.”

  I closed my eyes. “I don’t have a week.” I only had three days to go before Sandor’s deadline.

  “Sorry. There’s nothing I can do,” Lucas said.

  I flopped down on my chair after hanging up. I had a decision to make. Option A: I could wait the week for the mask to arrive. But then it would be too late. I’d lose the job. All my work, all the risk, for nothing. Option B: do the job anyway.

  I compressed my jaw. “Well,” I said quietly to myself, “I’ll just have to be perfect, and not trigger the alarm.”

  When I exited my secret room into my closet, I immediately stopped. All the hairs on my arms stood up. There was someone in my apartment. It was a sixth sense, I was sure—it was something about the sound, the feel in the air. Either way, there was someone there, and I didn’t know who.

  I stayed motionless, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the closet, considering my options. I then peered through a crack in the doorframe.

  Sitting on the end of my bed, facing the closet expectantly, was Brooke.

  I stepped out angrily. “Brooke, what the hell?”

  “Ah, there you are,” she said. Her tone suggested I was a few minutes late meeting her for coffee. “You know, I’ve been admiring this piece of equipment of yours.” She picked up my fiber-optic bendy-wire from beside her on the bed. “I love this little thing—where did you get it? I really should get one myself. Although I must say, Cat, it’s a little sloppy leaving it lying around.”

  My face burned with irritation. “Give me that,” I said. “Seriously, Brooke, do you mind? Also—what do you think you’re doing in here?”

  Brooke shrugged and handed me the bendy-wire, ignoring my question. “So, Cat, what job are you prepping for, anyway? What are you cooking up?” She craned her neck to try to look past me, into my closet and the secret room behind. “I must say, it doesn’t seem like an AB&T-sanctioned job. In fact, I’m not sure they’ve got you on assignment right now. So what are you up to?” She applied an expression of mock concern to her face. “Would they be happy to learn you’re moonlighting?”

  I panicked—was there any way she could have seen my special-order glove? No. Impossible. Still, this was a bad line of questioning. I could not have Brooke finding out about the Fabergé job.

  But then something else occurred to me. I narrowed my eyes. “Brooke, how are you so in tune with what’s going on at AB&T anyway? Are you sleeping with someone there, or something?” The look on her face told me that was exactly what was going on. “Oh, Christ, Brooke, you are. Do you have any principles at all?”

  She gazed at her fingernails with boredom.

  It took me less than five minutes to eject her from my apartment. She grinned the whole way out, however. I suppose it was mission accomplished for her. She’d rattled me.

  Locked inside my apartment again, I sent an urgent message to Templeton warning him that Brooke Sinclair was having inappropriate contact and communication with someone at AB&T. He needed to screen all his people carefully and give strict hush orders. I wished I could tell him more, but that was impossible. I could only hope Brooke would learn nothing else, until I’d finished the job.

  One more day. Just one more day, and it would all be over.

  The next morning I clipped along the sidewalk in the financial district of downtown Seattle in sensible pumps and a navy pencil skirt, my hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail. It was a bright Indian summer day with a warm wind and an apple-crisp sky. And I was trying hard to be positive about the task at hand. I was going to this interview solely for my dad, but I had to make a good show of it. Part of me said this was a completely ridiculous waste of time. But I was hoping that if I could just make this show of good faith for my father, it could be the first step to mending our relationship. I had to try. So I needed to get my head in the game. I needed to think: balance sheets, accounts receivable, taxes....

  Nice building, I thought, as my eyes were drawn up the sleek lines of a steel and glass tower that I was striding past. Reflexively, I started mapping out a way to scale it.

  Stop, Cat. Focus. I clenched my teeth.

  A massive helmet of single-process blond sat atop the head of the receptionist at the accounting firm’s suite. She smiled pleasantly as the telephone bleeped insistently on her desk; several lines were flashing on hold as I introduced myself.

  I sat on a fabric-covered chair in the waiting room that smelled of carpet cleaner and thumbed through an old copy of Reader’s Digest. I was eventually shown into another room, to stand in front of a panel of two men and a woman. They were all dressed in virtually identical gray fla
nnel suits. After the initial polite introductions and firm handshakes, they offered me a seat.

  “So, Catherine. We must tell you: before he retired, your father was one of the best. And now he tells us you’re interested in the accounting world.”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “Very interested. I like money, anyway!” My attempt at levity fell flat. All I received were expressionless gazes peering over reading glasses.

  Memo to self: Tax accountants and jokes are not a natural fit.

  “Listen, we want you to know that this is a very dynamic place to work,” said the older gentleman. His jowls jiggled slightly as he spoke. “We pride ourselves on being a fun workplace. This isn’t your regular nine-to-fiver!” he indicated vaguely, sweeping around the office with a gesture.

  “Mmm. Yes, I can see that,” I said, unable to resist shifting my eyes right and left, to see if I could make out what he was referring to. I had no idea.

  No matter. All I had to do was get through the interview so they could provide a good report to my dad.

  They began asking me questions about myself. Standard interview stuff about my strengths, my weaknesses, what I typically ate for breakfast, that sort of thing. And I must say, things were going very well. I caught an exchanged glance between the two men that consisted of pleasantly surprised smiles and a briefly raised eyebrow. I made no further joke attempts, and answered their questions pleasantly.

  And then the woman on the panel asked me, “So, Catherine, tell us why you want this job. What is it that fascinates you about being an accountant, exactly?”

  All three were smiling at me, expectantly. I got the feeling the job was mine if I wanted it. Silence was stretching out. The woman’s smile twitched ever so slightly. And I was staring at a stapler that sat atop the desk before me. It was a perfectly ordinary stapler. Heavy black metal, chrome trim, Standard engraved in script along the side. And that stapler, well, it belonged there. It made sense. It was fulfilling its destiny there. Doing exactly what it was best at doing; doing exactly what it was put on this earth to do.

  At that moment, the reality of the situation hit me, square between the eyes like one of those toy arrows with suction cups on the end. This—me sitting here, wearing Clarks and panty hose and feigning interest in the responsible world of grown-up work—was all wrong.

  “You know,” I said, looking at all three panel members, “I have to go, actually.”

  More silence followed. All I could hear was the buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead and the faint rhythmic chugging of a photocopier in the next office.

  The woman tilted her head like a bird, observing me quizzically. “Um, I beg your pardon—”

  “Yes. Ah, I’m terribly sorry,” I mumbled. I grabbed my purse and briefcase and umbrella and hurried out of the room. As I closed the door behind me I caught a few confused murmurs following me out.

  I burst from that office feeling like I could breathe again, like everything had bloomed into color, like I could fly into the sky if I wanted to.

  And then a pinprick deflated it all. I had no idea how I was going to explain this to my father. I forcefully pushed the thought away. I couldn’t worry about that right now. Because I had something more pressing on my schedule at the moment. I had a casino to bust into.

  Chapter 26

  Jack and Wesley strolled into the Starlight Casino. The warehouse-sized space was a writhing mass of flashing neon, bleating machines, and continuously chinking coins. Jack allowed a small smile and breathed deeply. The Fabergé was here somewhere.

  But this was no leisurely treasure hunt. If those monks knew the location of the Egg, Jack was certain the Caliga did, too. And if they hadn’t already, they would soon be hiring a thief to carry out the job. Jack knew that the Caliga had lost the old art of thievery a long time ago.

  He glanced around the casino floor—at the rows of permed hair at slot machines, the students gathered around the roulette wheel. Was the Caliga’s thief here somewhere? Staking things out, just as they were? He shuddered slightly. He hoped the contracted thief was valuable to the Caliga—otherwise he’d be dead the moment he turned the Fabergé over to them.

  “So? What do you think?” Wesley asked.

  Jack scanned the room. They needed somewhere to sit and discreetly watch. “I think we need to get a drink.”

  The two men ordered whiskey at the bar.

  “Okay, so where do we start?” Wesley said.

  “Security center, control room, I’d say.” Jack sipped his drink and gazed out over the casino floor. “We’re going to need to know everything about their systems. That’ll be the quickest way.”

  “How are we going to get in?”

  “Good question.”

  “Well, you’re not an FBI agent for nothing,” Wesley said, shrugging. “You don’t have that badge for decoration, do you?”

  Jack turned to Wesley’s smiling face. He closed his eyes. “No. No way.”

  “Come on, Jack, we need that info. It’s the best way. We can go in for some official reason or other, poke around, scope out the system, ask a few questions....”

  Shit. Jack could envision a million ways this plan would end badly.

  “You know what I’d like to know?” Jack said irritably. “I’d like to know how I ended up in this spot, exactly. Who was the genius, all those goddamn generations ago, who chose this nice little quest to pass on to his unsuspecting descendants?” He looked away, toward the endless rows of slot machines. A middle-aged couple in jeans and sweatshirts sat in front of “Pot of Gold” machines sipping draft beer from plastic cups. “But I guess nobody will ever know, will they?” He took a slug of his whiskey.

  He felt Wesley’s eyes on him. He turned to see the man staring at him with surprise. “You don’t know? Your father didn’t explain this to you?”

  “Explain what?”

  “Jack, the lost Gifts of the Magi is the legacy of thieves. And we know exactly how it happened.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Wesley put his drink on the bar. He lowered his voice. “The Bible doesn’t say what happened to the gold, frankincense, and myrrh that the Magi brought. But there’s a strong folk legend that it was stolen by two thieves. You’ve heard that there were two thieves crucified beside Jesus himself?”

  Jack struggled to remember his Sunday-school days. “Yes, okay, that sounds familiar.”

  “So after the thieves stole the Gifts, they argued and fought, because one thief began to regret what they’d done. He also didn’t believe what the other thief believed: that the Magi were Zoroastrian priests and astrologers, and they had charged their Gifts with great magical power.”

  “Power?” Jack said, not bothering to hide the disdain in his voice. Of course he’d heard the idea that the Gifts had mystical power. It was something the Caliga believed. Jack hadn’t believed it the first time he’d heard it; he wasn’t about to be converted now.

  Wesley shrugged. “Yeah, I know, cheesy right? Well, the unremorseful thief believed it—and it was one of those take over the world, total domination type scenarios. Anyway, the thieves betrayed each other. They tried to swindle each other and smuggle the Gifts away. They roped some of their shady colleagues into things—everyone’s lying to everyone else. But before you know it, people lose track of the Gifts in all that shuffle. Nobody knows who’s got them.”

  Jack narrowed his eyes. “So you’re saying—that’s how they became lost?” He shifted on his bar stool and leaned forward slightly.

  Wesley nodded. “In trying to screw the other guy, both thieves ended up screwed. And then, ba-da-boom, they’re both up for execution. Before his crucifixion, the remorseful thief made his family promise that they would retrieve the Gifts, and return them to the church. That group flourished. Honed the skills of thievery, ready for the opportunity to take the Gifts back.”

  Jack was fascinated now. His whiskey sat forgotten on the bar. “And the bad guy?”

  “Yeah, well, he gave hi
s sons a mission also.”

  Jack nodded. “To retrieve the Gifts.”

  “You got it. And, by doing that, he gave rise to some real nasty pieces of work.”

  “Ah. Caliga Rapio.” So that’s where they came from. It explained the Caliga’s crazed obsession with unlocking the Gifts’ power. Jack shuddered. He knew the Caliga’s plans to complete this task involved a ritual human sacrifice. His father had told him that much. That had been one reason to find the Gifts before the Caliga did.

  “So how did they end up concealed in a Fabergé Egg, exactly?”

  “It was your father’s generation that pieced this together, I believe,” Wesley said. “They’d managed to uncover the true path of the Gifts. They’d been smuggled, stolen, and traded on the black market, and finally made their way to imperial Russia. There, Fabergé himself transformed them into the Aurora Egg. After the Russian Revolution, of course, the Gifts were once again lost, underground, to resurface here.”

  Jack was motionless, now, staring down at the rings of condensation on the bar’s surface. At once he felt aware of his own insignificance in the face of such a monumental concern.

  The gears of his mind began to turn. And he came up with an idea to get them into the casino security room. Nicole had been doing an investigation involving several casinos about a month ago. The Starlight was one of them, if memory served. He could use that information as a pretext. And use his badge.

  Would he get away with it, though? But what other choice did they have? He rubbed his face. “All right,” Jack said with resignation. “Let’s do it.”

  The moment I entered the casino I was thrown into a carnival of blinking lights and glittering colors, electronic bleeping, and choking clouds of cigarette smoke. A spontaneous burst of cheering erupted from a far corner. Three men in Armani and a woman in a Vivienne Westwood cocktail dress and diamonds strolled across the floor toward the high-stakes room, martinis in hand.