Rachel exhaled nervously as she looked through the rear windscreen at the entrance of the bank. She scanned every passing face for familiarity and was relieved every time to see no one she recognised. Then she scanned the next passing crowd and relief turned to fear. Then came relief again. And the cycle continued.
‘I can’t believe I agreed to this,’ Flores said.
Mike noticed that her hands were trembling. ‘We appreciate what you’re doing. Besides, you don’t have to come in.’
‘No,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘It’s okay. I need to operate the cards. It’s fine, really.’
A ghost of a smile crossed Gabrielle’s lips.
‘Right,’ Swanson said, turning the other way to monitor the road. ‘It is now 10:38am. Now is as good a time as any.’
The American headquarters of the global conglomerate Starvel PLC looked like any ordinary bank building. It was situated in the business district of downtown Boston, roughly midway along the Freedom Trail, one of several large skyscrapers that dominated the city skyline. The building comprised twenty-five storeys minus the roof, appearing cylindrical in shape and was constructed almost entirely from reinforced concrete with several glass windows reflecting the outside world like a mirror. The company’s famous logo dominated both the upper skyscraper and the gable above the entrance: an almost unique assignment of a castle with a sloping roof below a cross, curiously reminiscent of one used by the Knights Templar in England in the 13th century, and also identical to the famous Templar cross.
Rachel led the way through one of four revolving doors, and surveyed the surroundings for familiarity. A lavishly furnished foyer was decorated with flora of all descriptions and twenty or more smartly dressed cashiers smiled widely from behind their booths lining the far end. Countless retail clients queued for various machines and cashier desks, while corporate clients chatted about matters of importance in the middle of the atrium. Large groups of suited individuals entered and exited the lifts with regularity whereas others stood patiently on one of two escalators that moved upwards to the eastern side of the complex. In total, four escalators went up and down to and from the first floor from the centre of the atrium, while six lifts lined the wall opposite the entrance, providing accessibility to the first seventeen floors and parts of the vaults.
Unlike most buildings of this type the whole thing belonged to Starvel. Although the company as a whole was mainly concerned with banking, the building also provided employment for over three thousand employees working in various departments including actuary, investments, mortgages, insurance, travel and currency exchange, and over eight subsidiary companies, including Starvel AG, who occupied the twelfth to seventeenth floors. The top eight floors were part of the hotel, entered through the opposite side of the building.
Rachel led them across the atrium, heading in the direction of the lifts. The building was typically crowded: perhaps less so than earlier in the week, but still packed with individuals, mainly in suits, hampering their progress. In many ways the high volume of people made Rachel nervous, yet Mike, Mark, and Swanson all spoke of the benefit. The best way to get lost is in a crowd.
‘Here,’ Rachel said, pointing at one of the lifts. ‘This is an employee elevator. We can get to the vaults from here.’
Mike eyed the surroundings curiously, maintaining a cool façade. Mark was not part of this – nor could he be. Gabrielle should not have been but she insisted. The cardinals were against Mike being there but he had a problem. He had to go with Gabrielle.
The lift doors opened and everyone inside got out. Rachel entered first and the others followed. She swiped the keycard and clicked on the last of four symbols below the ground floor. The floor they wanted would include the archives of Starvel AG.
Fortune favoured the brave. No one saw them descend.
The archives were hardly what Mike expected. While the atrium and upper floors of the bank were opulently decorated with modern furniture, the archives were more in keeping with a large library. Despite the initial impression of airlessness as they exited the lift, an unexpected hint of lemon air freshener made the air pleasantly bearable.
Up above, panelled lights shone down from high ceilings, reflecting off white walls and cream carpet, illuminating the long corridor brightly. Lining the corridor to their right was nothing but a wall, whereas to the left, organised shelving units housed thousands of boxes, numbered and named, lined up in sequence, containing files of all sorts dating back to the Great Depression. The racks continued for over one hundred and fifty feet along and over four hundred in depth before ending at another wall.
Ignoring the majority, the three intruders followed Rachel along the corridor until reaching a metal door. The door was wired and attached to an electronic keypad, which was consistent with a top-secret military bunker or even those used to guard the doors leading to the Vatican Archives. She stopped momentarily in front of it and swiped her keycard quickly. She held her breath until a green light flashed. She pushed against the door and it opened.
The door revealed a second corridor, identical in every way to the previous one. Once inside, every member followed Rachel, keeping an eye out for any signs of life. Although the area was brightly lit and surprisingly spacious, the archives seemed deserted. With a straining ear, Mike could just make out the sound of shuffling papers from one of the far shelves but he was unable to see who was making it. He hoped the important stuff would also be this quiet.
They walked through a further set of doors and down a small staircase, leading to another floor of archives, enterable only via the way they had come. An almost identical corridor followed, also ending with a metal door. They entered the final corridor.
‘Okay,’ Rachel said, mainly to Swanson. ‘This is the Starvel AG vault. Whatever you need is here.’
‘I fear not, my dear,’ the banker replied. ‘The important stuff will have its own vault.’
Rachel looked nervously at Gabrielle.
‘I take it you know where,’ Mike said.
Swanson pointed in the direction of the farthest metal door, located over one hundred yards away. The door was larger than the others, painted green and heavily armoured. A strange smile crossed Swanson’s face, somehow peaceful in nature. To the Swiss Guard, it was the smile of long overdue revenge.
Rachel inhaled with difficulty. She remembered the archives well from her previous employment but she had never been beyond the furthest door. She was aware that there were areas beyond her pay grade but she had no idea of their contents.
The appearance of the final door suggested security clearance was beyond the norm. Without any idea of how to gain access, she allowed Swanson to take the lead and followed him towards the door, passing further shelving. To the far right, partially hidden by several rows of shelves, was the nearest of three photocopiers.
Rachel looked blankly at the door, the smell of metal dominating her nostrils. ‘I’ve never been past here before,’ she said to Swanson.
Swanson looked back reassuringly. To the left of the door he eyed a small keypad, illustrating that the door was code operated. He adjusted his glasses and looked closely at the numbers before punching in a seven-digit code, making sure every number registered. All present waited patiently for a response. The device bleeped three times at equal intervals before a loud echo resonated as the lock separated.
Swanson opened the door widely and entered, followed first by Mike. Directly behind the door was another staircase: seventeen steps down, then sixteen more in the opposite direction. This area was less finely decorated than the rest of the vaults.
Mike followed Swanson to the bottom of the stairs and entered a small room, reminiscent of a large storage closet. The room was approximately eighteen feet by thirty, painted white and containing nothing but three lengthy rows of shelves that housed over two hundred silver boxes, decorated with coded alphanumeric labels.
Gabrielle looked at the room with disappointment, walking slowly towards the f
irst shelf. She opened the nearest box and began to scan the contents. She removed eight thin files. They all dated back to the 1980s.
Mike wandered towards the far end. For the first time he noticed that the air was denser down here, as though they were in a vacuum. He inhaled slowly, determined to keep his composure, and peeked inside one of the boxes.
‘Some of these date back centuries.’
‘Thankfully, the regular employees are unaware it even exists,’ said Swanson. ‘We are quite alone.’
Mike looked anxiously around the room. ‘This could take years.’
On the top floor, the secretary for the chief of security saw a red light flashing on the wall without an accompanying sound. After removing her reading glasses and taking a second bite of her apple she left her seat to take a closer look.
The light meant that someone had entered the limited access vault. She assumed it was probably fine, just one of the directors carrying out restricted business. Still, its occurrence unsettled her. She had never known anyone use the vault in office hours.
The secretary placed the phone to her right ear and started dialling. She tried four of the senior managers and received no response from any of them. She then tried three lesser managers: all were away or on early lunch. Finally she tried Mr. Velis.
Giving up, she returned to her apple.
Another black hatchback pulled up opposite the Starvel building and a smartly dressed passenger got out through the rear right door. The passenger looked both ways before jaywalking across the street and entered the building through the revolving door. He crossed the atrium with prior knowledge of the layout and immediately headed for the lift. He swiped a keycard on entry and pressed for the fifteenth floor.
Mark blinked twice in quick succession, watching the suited man as he entered the bank. His appearance was curiously familiar, although surely a coincidence.
Directly opposite, the American with blond locks looked with interest at the same man. Behind the seclusion of tinted glass he was in no danger of being noticed.
The identity of the man surprised him but he was not altogether shocked. He smiled to himself.
Over four hours had passed. Standing next to the photocopier, Mike passed another set of files to Gabrielle to photocopy and replaced the recently copied one back in the original box and handed it to Rachel. Gabrielle removed the paper clip from the original and made one copy of each before placing them into her briefcase. They would study them in more detail later.
Each person had brought a briefcase, but four was not enough. All present had come and gone five times back to the car and this was alarming to Mike. Surely it did not bode well to keep coming and going from the lift with briefcases.
‘Okay,’ Mike said to Gabrielle. ‘Only six boxes left.’
With every passing second he felt his body become more and more tense. From Swanson’s observations of the files he felt they probably had enough of what they needed already, yet the scale of the findings made the potential of the threat more severe. Mike knew it could be only a matter of time before someone spotted them, and such repercussions could be extreme. On the other side of the furthest metal door he heard the sound of voices and his heart began to thunder. It was most probably just some employees checking a mortgage receipt for a client or something. Thankfully they were not coming in their direction.
Mike waited calmly for Gabrielle to finish a final photocopy. Downstairs, Swanson was still working, examining the files before deciding whether or not it was necessary to make a copy, while Rachel walked nervously over to Mike, returning from the vault.
‘Okay,’ Mike said to Gabrielle. ‘You and Rachel get the heck outta here. I’ll stay here with Mr. Swanson.’
Gabrielle looked at Mike and then at Rachel. Her nervous state, mixed with the brightness of the light, made her pale skin look almost ghostlike. She grimaced hopelessly at Mike.
‘Okay,’ Gabrielle said, taking Rachel by the hand. ‘Don’t be long.’
Mike escorted Rachel and Gabrielle through the first metal door and continued up the stairs and all the way to the lift. Rachel swiped the keycard and quickly passed it to Mike. She would no longer need it.
Rachel smiled thankfully at Mike as the doors closed. Seconds later, the lift ascended to the ground floor and the doors opened. They exited quickly and walked with composure across the crowded atrium, heading towards the front doors. Nobody noticed them. Dressed in their smart designer suits and briefcases they looked like just two young career women easily mistaken for employees. They ignored the doormen as they exited to the street and headed swiftly towards the car.
The dark hatchback was parked in the same position. At 14:27 Mark added another hour to the meter and fifty-five minutes later he added some more. At 15:41 he was back in the front seat when the rear right door opened and Gabrielle entered, followed by Rachel. She flashed a smile and placed the briefcase to the floor.
‘Everything okay?’
Gabrielle smiled. ‘Sweet as a nut. We’ve got him.’
Fifteen minutes later, Swanson finished examining the final file of yet another box and exhaled gratefully. He replaced the original in the box and placed the copy in his leather briefcase. There were only two boxes left.
In an upstairs office, Velis and the visitor argued loudly. While their words remained private in the luxury of the otherwise deserted floor, their emotions were highly charged.
After fifty minutes of heated discussion the smartly dressed bearded man with thinning grey hair left the office and exited the building. Moments later the Templar Grand Master entered the elevator. His destination: the archives.
Twenty minutes later they were finished. Swanson lifted the final file from the photocopier and carefully placed it into his overly full briefcase. He replaced the final original into the silver box and passed it to Mike. The Swiss Guard entered the chamber for the final time and returned it to the correct shelf.
At last they were ready to go. Swanson ensured that the door to the restricted vault was closed before heading back towards the lift. He nodded briefly at the sharply dressed Swiss Guard: only the second time he had worn his stunning suit. Silently it was beginning to grow on Mike but the nature of the work made it feel stifling.
Swanson walked slowly. His briefcase felt heavy in his right hand and pain shot through his calves and back: a combination of several hours of photocopying and bending over to investigate files. He grimaced slightly as he walked. The sooner they were out the better he would feel.
Mike swiped the keycard to the first door and walked through it quickly. The next corridor was empty and Mike breathed a sigh of relief. They picked up speed and within two minutes they reached the lift.
Both men exhaled gratefully and made brief eye contact as Mike stepped forward to press the up button. The illuminated dials suggested the lift was on its journey downwards. Seconds later the lift chimed and the doors opened.
One man was present.
It was Louis Velis.
51
The chiming sound of opening lift doors reverberated softly through the lemon-scented air. Mike and Swanson stood rigidly, practically paralysed, before its occupant standing less than three metres away.
Inside the lift, Louis Velis was dressed in an immaculate black suit purchased from a tailor in New York two years earlier. He wore a plain white shirt and matching red tie, and had a look of curiosity on his face. He stood silently, failing to hide his surprise at the sight of the man he had met once before and his former co-director.
In the otherwise deserted archives, the two intruders remained unflinching. Mike felt a thudding sensation hammering through his chest, the thought of the inevitable repercussions dominating. No one had spoken, but in his mind he considered the banker’s thoughts. He remembered the night he met the man. Then he thought of Gabrielle. Had she made it out? And Rachel? To think she had once been married to this man. Suddenly he was worried.
Velis walked a couple of paces forward.
His facial expression relaxed slightly as he neared them.
‘Whenever someone opens the door to the restricted vault, it activates a small red light on the security control panel,’ Velis said. ‘I also have one fitted in my office. Personal reasons you understand.’
The first thing Mike noticed was that Velis spoke slowly. He remembered noticing the same thing the night he met him. Something about the way he spoke irritated Mike and disturbed him at the same time. It was almost hypnotic.
‘Now only twelve people have the code to this door. Five, I know to be abroad; I myself am one, and the only others I know to be deceased. Therefore, you can imagine my surprise when I saw the light flickering. At first I thought perhaps it was a mistake, a power cut, a malfunction,’ Velis said, gesturing with his arms. ‘But clearly that was not the case,’ he said, eyeing his former colleague. ‘Something you left behind, Irving?’
The Templar Agenda Page 49