“Okay.” Sophie stepped a foot away, and then stopped, turning back. “Last time, I had a knife!” she blurted.
“You won’t need a weapon,” replied Brayden. “The guards are unarmed... they’ll be no match for you. We went through the logistics of the theft; it’ll be how you Brits say, a ‘doddle’.”
“I didn’t use it to fight with... I used it to break the glass.”
“Improvise,” said Brayden disinterested. “I’ve seen you do that before.”
Mullins smiled reassuringly towards the woman before climbing back into the car.
Alone, Sophie straightened herself up and walked away towards the pedestrian entrance that led into and exited the car park. As she stepped onto the footpath that ran the length of the road signposted as Horse Wynd, she willed herself invisible.
The change was sudden.
One moment there... the next – gone!
It was a transformation that she had done countless times and which she now took for granted. Her altered appearance had no significant impact on her faculties, but peculiarly did turn everything she wore or carried, invisible, a trick which did have its disadvantages.
Wrought iron fencing bordered the path, behind which trees lined the way all along to her right, and ahead, just before a bend, she could see a large gated entrance that led into the grounds of the Holyrood Palace.
Following the road round with the bend, Sophie continued on towards the building of interest. The Queen’s Gallery. On the opposite side of the road, the imposing modernistic construction that is the Scottish Parliament building, a convention of windows, angles, concrete and abstract art thrown together with the easier-on-the-eye pond stretching out in front of it; it almost looked out of place in the shadows of the seventeenth century palace building that stood regally behind the gallery, a Victorian structure originally built as a church and used as a store room until 2002.
Without realising, Sophie was standing outside the gallery’s entrance. Above the arched doorway ‘The Queen’s Gallery’ had been sculptured and inserted within the brickwork, topped by a red heraldic lion holding a golden sword and sceptre.
“Oh crap,” she said to herself using only her breath.
“Is everything all right?” asked Brayden within her ear, his sudden voice causing her to gasp.
“Warn me when you’re about to do that!” Sophie berated with a hiss. “I’m going in.” Let’s do this! she roused herself, taking a step in through the arched recess.
Internal glass doors stood immediately in her way, and opening them with invisible hands surprisingly caused no shock or confusion to the two visitors dawdling just inside, or to the two cashiers seated behind cash registers ahead.
Sophie slipped past the admissions desk and continued forward, through to a large hall rich with oil canvasses adorning its walls and sculptures and pieces of antique furniture taking up prominence at various points around the gallery. Along with her, there were two others visiting the Queen’s art collection, currently loitering in front of an oil portrait of a prominent figure from Scottish history.
Just as Dominic had two days earlier, Sophie gave none of the works a second glance, hastening ahead to the back of the room where a stencilled sign pointing left directed visitors to the gallery’s latest exhibit: The Whisper of Persia. Two members of staff guarded the door. Muscular and looking like ex-military, they wore no-nonsense expressions on their faces. Dressed in green and blue tartan trousers (striped with lines of black, red and yellow), a black waist coat buttoned up over a white shirt and dark blue tie, the look was completed by plain tartan Glengarry caps perched on their heads.
“I’m near. Just ten feet from the room,” Sophie commentated in a quiet voice. A bare moment later and she bypassed the two staff members and entered the small room inside which displayed the vivid yellow diamond. Although unseen, a peculiar feeling overcame the two guards as she moved past; they shared a puzzled look.
“Someone just walked over my grave,” said one, shuddering with goosebumps.
Sophie paid them no mind; instead, she considered the staff member in the immediate propinquity. Like the two standing just outside the room’s entrance, this one was similarly attired. Unlike them, he was smaller, and was moving about the room, though quietly. His hands were clasped together behind his back. From his appearance; five-foot-nine in height, narrow shoulders, slender frame, and a face that seemed hollow and gaunt/tired looking, he clearly wasn’t ex-military. Nothing in this man − she weighed up − offered any threat or would trouble her abilities; but his presence wasn’t meant to engage with any would-be robbers. He was there just to mind the diamond and be on the lookout for any signs of trouble.
As the guard drifted past, Sophie noticed the small gadget in one of his clasped hands; a remote device with a red panic button, a small LED light pulsed lime green upon it.
She correctly guessed that the simplest of movements would be all that was needed to sound the alarm, alerting and galvanising the big brawny guards outside the room into action.
A quick assessment of the area also indicated that there was surveillance cameras placed in the corners of the room. In addition, there were extra security mechanisms in place, far superior to what she had encountered in London back last July, when all she had needed to do was...
Smash and grab.
Her father’s voice spoke the words in her head, reminding her how easy it had been then, seemingly a lifetime ago.
A glance at the doorway behind her revealed a recess built within the sides of the frame − like a track − and, where she expected to see the lintel at the top, the flat edge of a steel door could be seen.
In the ceiling were a number of small glass-bulb-shaped sprinkler heads... too many required for such a small area in the event of a fire. She could imagine what their true purpose was, and doubted it was water that would be pumped from them. Probably chemical or gas, she thought. A poison to incapacitate any would-be intruder.
Stealing the diamond this time around wasn’t going to be quite as straightforward.
Sophie walked deeper into the room, careful not to step in the way of the guard still pacing vigilantly around the empty space.
How do I do this? She pondered, slowly approaching the glass case. Bright halogen light from the spotlight set in the ceiling above the cabinet made the yellow diamond glow majestically on the black velvet cushion at the centre of the display. It looked spectacular, and slightly magnified through the toughened glass.
Deferring any kind of action for a little longer, Sophie half-read the information card placed within the display, learning a bit about the diamond’s fabled history, its link to Arthurian legend and the belief that it once belonged to Cyrus the Great. The claim that it had magical properties was all nonsense, she quickly dismissed as her thoughts moved onto the objective laid out for her.
There are three guards. One in the room; two out... If I take the one out in the room, the two outside will hear and be alerted to my presence, likely resulting in activation of the security measures... I’ll end up trapped in here and likely ‘laid out’ by whatever comes out of those sprinklers in the ceiling.
If I make any attempt to break the glass, my presence will also become known and the guard in the room will likely press the button on his remote, activating the security measures. I won’t have a chance, so likely outcome: see earlier conclusion...
Hmm.
Sophie wished she could liaise with Brayden and Mullins. Or Ryan and Emily, but to speak outside of her head would definitely rouse suspicion and alert the guards to her existence.
It wasn’t ideal, but she was definitely on her own this time.
She looked around the room for inspiration. There were no windows, just bare whitewashed walls.
“What’s taking you so long?” Brayden’s v
oice blurted in Sophie’s ear. Nervously, she whirled around to see if his voice (loud in her ear) had been heard by the guard. She was relieved to see that he was still ignorant to her presence.
“Are you there?”
Silently, Sophie backed out of the exhibit room and glided past the two big guards standing sentry outside in the main gallery. She hurried to a corner where a large portrait was hung staring down at her accusingly.
“I’m here.” Despite speaking quietly, her voice carried a little in the large open room. Fortunately, the pair of visitors in the gallery were talking animatedly between themselves, gaining scornful looks from the guards, providing ample background noise to mask her talking. “It’s no use, I can’t do it,” she bemoaned.
“Is this the same girl I’m hearing who took on my best agents in California? Who thwarted my attempt at apprehending her in Washington with a decoy and who disarmed an FBI agent and fired her gun next to my head, all with the merest of thoughts?”
“That was different,” replied Sophie. “The security is too tight, there are three guards.”
“Three? They should be easy,” Brayden said cynically. “What about a distraction? What if we tried to draw them out?”
“It won’t work. You coming in guns blazing would likely alarm them. Any sniff of a threat, they’ll activate security measures.” She explained what she had seen: the remote; the steel door; the ceiling sprinkler system. And that’s without the toughened glass case which wouldn’t be easy to crack.
“I think you are over-thinking this. What do you normally do when faced with adversity? When I had you surrounded, there was no escape... but you still got away. How? How did you do that?”
“I don’t know... I didn’t think. I just did it,” she said, tonally.
“Well, there’s your answer. Just do what you do best... I have faith.”
“Okay... but I hope you have my back if this all goes to hell.” Sophie plucked out the in-the-ear com-piece before Brayden could reply and crossed the gallery to walk behind the two other visitors who were still talking, and who had advanced closer to where the pair of guards continued to watch over the gallery at the back.
A man and a woman, both in their early-thirties, and both looking like they were from privileged upbringing, had stopped in front of an early eighteenth century landscape and were commenting on the brush strokes used and the hidden detail within the painting. Over one shoulder, the woman carried a dark-brown handbag.
Barely registering what she was doing, Sophie barged the man and woman, and pulled off the woman’s handbag where it vanished on contact. The man fell onto his knees and just grunted. The woman whirled around and cried out: “Hey!” Not registering the fact that there was nobody else in the room, she exclaimed: “Someone just stole my bag!” As the man regained his feet, she jabbed him in the side and criticised him unabashedly. “You’re no help!”
One of the guards reluctantly stepped forward. “What’s going on? There’s no one else here!”
Sophie retraced her steps back to the corner of the room and dropped the bag on the floor where it reappeared, as if by magic.
“Look! What’s that over there?” The guard pointed towards the far corner of the room, moving towards it. “You’ve just left it, is all!”
“Someone snatched it!” the woman disputed, though a look of relief filled her face upon seeing her bag.
With the handbag absorbing their full attention, Sophie ghosted past the guard, and then the two visitors, heading for where the other custodian continued to stand patrol ahead of the exhibition door.
“Well, it’s found now,” the gallery employee said, picking up the brown handbag and presenting it to the woman.
Tapping the man still guarding the diamond exhibition door on his right shoulder, he jerked his head around to see who sought his attention. Before registering that there was nobody there, Sophie wrapped an arm tight about his neck and carefully applied pressure, feeling him suddenly grow heavy. Unconscious from the compression, the man slipped from her grasp and fell silently into a heap at her feet.
From the other end of the gallery, the guard who had attended the woman with her handbag looked up to see his partner collapsing to the floor. “Pete?” He ran back towards his post and felt his legs become knocked out from beneath him.
Sophie lunged from one side, executing a side tackle like a seasoned footballer, bringing the guard down hard onto his chest with a grunt. Slickly mounting his back, legs straddling him, the young woman grabbed the guard by a fistful of hair and propelled his head down hard against the lacquered wooden floor, then again a second time followed by a third, hearing a sickening, wet, meaty thud as the man’s nose broke under the final impact. Turning him slightly, she could see she’d knocked him out. His face was bloodied and showing rapid signs of bruising. A quick finger check to the man’s jugular reassured her that she hadn’t gone too far, that the man was still alive. She sighed and let him down gently.
Standing astonished, or maybe bemused a little way behind her, the man and woman had witnessed everything...
This wasn’t exactly accurate. When asked later what had happened, their account would be rather muddled and deemed unreliable by the authorities attending. They’d claim they saw the man trip over his own feet, and had watched him headbutt the floor until he had knocked himself out; coupled with what had happened to the other guard, and what then progressed within the exhibit room, they would be detained for questioning and accused of being accomplices.
Completely invisible and therefore unseen by the two gallery visitors, Sophie left them to wonder at what had just happened.
No longer guarded, Sophie was amazed to find that the man patrolling the diamond exhibit had not heard or seen anything untoward from within the gallery. Instead, he continued to toddle around the cabinet in his own world, mapping out plans for the weekend or deciding upon what to eat for dinner. Whatever it was he contemplated, he did not hear Sophie creep up on him, and didn’t know what had hit him when Sophie struck his neck with the flat underside of both hands, an action that quickly laid the man out cold and was fast becoming her signature move. Catching him in mid-fall, Sophie dragged the guard to one side, and laid him down. She prised the remote unit from his hand and discarded it somewhere safe and out of reach.
All alone, she advanced on the display case in the centre of the room, and placed her palms against the glass. Once again she saw the diamond on the velvet cushion, tantalisingly close. She closed her eyes and remembered how the precious stone felt in her hands and wished that to get to it all she needed to do was think it.
Opening her eyes wide, she concentrated, lifted her right hand and balled it into a fist, pulling her arm back. In full focus, she aimed a punch at the toughened glass.
Her fist cracked against the cabinet and bounced harmlessly to one side.
“Ahhh,” Sophie winced, immediately clasping her hand with the other, pressing it against her stomach. She cursed. The pain was immediate and lanced up her arm, making stars burst behind her eyes. It took a long moment to recover.
At the side of the room were four retractable barrier posts. When in use, a red pull-out strap would be linked to each post to create a safety border to manage visitors attending the exhibition; it would direct a queue around the display case one way, and lead it out from the other. Now, one of the posts was being hefted by Sophie. Too heavy to lift single handed, Sophie held the top with one hand, and the midsection with the other. The post’s weighted end, she hoisted up to shoulder height.
Returning to the display case, Sophie’s eyes flashed back towards the room’s entrance; she raised the post a little higher, before swinging the weighted base in a forceful arc down towards the glass barricade facing her.
Beneath her full weight, the toughened glass gave no resistance. A large hole first appeared w
ithin the wall of the cabinet, before imploding in a scene of cascading crystals and falling pieces of jagged glass. Sophie jerked the post around the edges of the case to make the opening more accessible. Leaving the barrier pole jutting from the display case, the young woman reached in and snatched the diamond from the velvet pillow.
Immediately, a burglar alarm penetrated through the building activated upon removal of the diamond from the case. Synchronously, the metal security door positioned above the threshold to the room began to whirr into operation automatically, its intent very clear.
“Oh crap!”
Leaping forward with the diamond clenched within a fist, she made for the room’s only exit. The steel door glided down smoothly, building momentum; it was almost halfway. Desperately, she threw herself forward, emulating a momentous, sliding tackle motion, throwing herself down as low as she could, and stretching her legs fast-forward to skid on the lacquered flooring, narrowly escaping beneath the closing jaws of capture with the thinnest of margins. All she needed was a hat to lunge back for, and it could easily have been a scene from an Indiana Jones movie.
Coming to a halt on her bum outside the room, the door banged closed behind her. She sighed with relief and bounced up to her feet.
With the alarm clamouring, a number of gallery staff had come running into the large hall to investigate the cause of the fracas. Sophie hurriedly ran past them.
One − a cashier from the ticket desk − saw a blur of a person (a girl?) reflected against the glass of one of the large paintings adorning the wall to her right; then it was gone and she quickly dismissed it once she caught sight of one of her colleagues lying unconscious across the floor.
Both Brayden and Mullins jumped up in alarm as the passenger door of their Ford Mondeo burst open, seemingly of its own volition. The driver had seen Sophie coming in the rear view mirror. Before the door closed, Sophie willed herself physically present, the seemingly vacant space on the back seat suddenly filled up with her existence. She looked out of breath and out of humour.
The Whisper of Persia (The Girl in the Mirror Book 3) Page 33