Open Sesame

by Tom Holt

  ‘Sounds interesting.’

  ‘We haven’t got time. I’m due to hand you over at half-one tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Oh go on. At least show me the rules.’

  ‘Well’

  ‘Please?’

  Akram hesitated. As he did so it occurred to him to turn the lamp up a bit, but he decided against it. The dimmer the light, the fainter his shadow, and he felt more comfortable that way. ‘Oh all right,’ he said. ‘But only for half an hour.’

  ‘… And sixteen for a Wish, that makes ninety-four, doubled because you’re on a Magic Carpet square in clubs repiqued, add two for his fez makes a hundred and ninety, which means I get four lamp points and you get another wish.’

  ‘Yah!’

  ‘Beginner’s luck. Right, your go - Oh my God, will you look at the time?’ They looked up. The battered alarm clock sitting on an upended packing case read 12:57. ‘Marvellous!’ Akram sighed. ‘We’re going to be late for the bloody handover. Come on, get your coat.’

  Michelle shook her head. ‘We’ve got plenty of time,’ she said. ‘This time of night there’ll be no traffic about, so if we cut down through Marchmain Street and under the underpass we can be there in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Easily,’ Michelle replied, shaking the dice. ‘Right, let’s see. Hey, double four, that means I can have another mosque on Trebizond. Now then …’

  Ali Baba waited until quarter to three; then it started to rain and he decided to go home. It wasn’t that he was callous or uncaring; but he hadn’t got much sleep the night before, either, and he had a very difficult root-fill job to do on Mrs Willoughby’s lower back left molar in the morning. Having checked for the fifteenth time that he was in the right car park, he got in and drove home.

  At half-past ten the phone rang. ‘Sorry about that,’ said Akram. ‘We, er, lost track of time, and…’

  ‘We!’

  ‘We were playing Racing Genie,’ Akram explained. ‘In fact we still are, and - hey! I saw that, put it back - look, would it put you out dreadfuly if we postponed the handover till, say, Wednesday? Only I’ve got three back doubles in a row here, so if I can just get the full set of Utilities …’

  ‘I quite understand,’ replied Ali Baba icily. ‘I mean, I’d hate to interrupt your game just to ransom my only daughter.’

  ‘I - would you like a word with her? She’s just here. It’s your father.’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Michelle?’ Ali Baba demanded. ‘Is that you? Look, are you all right, because …’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ Michelle’s voice replied. ‘Listen, do you know this game? I mean, did they play it back in the Old Country, or whatever you call it, because I’ve got major triples in all three Houses but no gryphon, and I was wondering if you could suggest…’

  ‘You repique, naturally,’ Ali Baba replied, ‘which means Green has to go dummy and you can finesse on the last three tricks, leaving you just needing a double four for Home.’ He paused, mentally playing back what he’d just said. ‘So you’re all right, then?’

  ‘I am now,’ Michelle replied. ‘I was thinking about leading a blind shimmy to make four, but that’s far better. It’s a good game, this, isn’t it?’

  ‘I like it,’ Ali Baba replied. ‘Used to play quite a lot when I was your … well, once upon a time. In fact,’ he couldn’t resist adding, ‘one year I made it to the finals of the Baghdad Open.’

  ‘Really? Gosh!’ Michelle said; and just for a moment, she sounded quite like a real daughter. ‘And did you win?’

  ‘Of course,’ Ali Baba lied. ‘All right, then, see you Wednesday.’

  “Bye, then.’

  “Bye.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Midnight.

  Actually, midnight isn’t a particularly good time of day to go burgling. There are too many people still awake; three in the morning is far better, if slightly less dramatic. Of course, perhaps the best time of all to burgle a bank, office or other commercial premises is half past four on a Friday afternoon. Wander in with a clipboard and a trolley, ask the most junior-looking member of staff to sign in three places, and you can probably get help loading the stuff into the van.

  Midnight is, however, more traditional, and tradition, as noted above, is ingrained into the genetic matrix of the Smith family. Somewhere at home, at the bottom of a wardrobe, John Fingers II still had a striped jersey, a black mask and a sack with SWAG embroidered on it in sampler-stitch.

  It was tradition, in fact, that gave him pause for thought as he stood under the staff room window of the National Lombard Bank in Cinnamon Street, his right hand tightly clenched into a fist. He was about to try out a radically new and different technique, and the very novelty of it all was making his scalp itch. After all, screamed his genes, shinning up a drainpipe and busting a window was good enough for your father and his father before him, so it ought to be good enough for you. True, getting caught red-handed and spending most of their lives in the nick was good enough for them, too; but isn’t that all part of the great rich tapestry of this thieving life?

  No, muttered John Fingers II to himself, and added something about buggering it for a game of soldiers that would have made his great-great-grandfather turn in his grave, had he not died at a time when the bodies of criminals were used for medical research. (For the record, at that precise moment, on a back shelf in a dusty old cupboard somewhere in the University of Durham, a very old bottle of formaldehyde went plop!) If they’d had that attitude back in the Stone Age the wheel would never have been invented, and young Darren Fingers Smith would now be out trying to hotwire a motorised sled.

  Here goes.

  Directly above his head was a square box marked NEVASLEEP ALARM COMPANY. John Fingers II took a deep breath, slipped the ring on his finger and cleared his throat.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he whispered.

  ‘Huh? Whoozat?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said John Fingers, ‘but would you mind switching yourself off?’

  ‘You what?’ grunted the alarm, sleepily.

  ‘Switch yourself off,’ John Fingers repeated. ‘You see, I want to climb in through that window, and I don’t want to set you off.’

  ‘Get real,’ replied the alarm. ‘You think I was manufactured yesterday, or something? Bugger off before I ring the cops.’ John Fingers shook his head. ‘I’m trying to be reasonable here,’ he hissed back. ‘Like, if you won’t switch yourself off, it means I’ve got to climb up there and snip all your wires, which’ll piss me off and hurt you, probably. And while I’m at it,’ he added maliciously. ‘I might just prise your box off and gum your works up good and proper. It’ll take ‘em weeks to get you straight again, and in the meantime you’ll be going off every time somebody blows their nose in Winchester. It must be really embarrassing when that happens; you know, everybody stumping round in pyjamas at two in the morning trying to find the main cable, and of course it’ll be you gets all the blame for their mistakes. They might even rip you out and get a new one.’

  ‘Now steady on,’ replied the alarm. ‘There’s no need to get nasty.’

  ‘Whereas,’ John Fingers continued smoothly, ‘if you just switch yourself off now, I can leave you in peace and quiet and they’ll blame some poor little clerk for forgetting to set you before locking up. You can see my point, can’t you?’

  The alarm considered for a moment. ‘You won’t say a word?’

  ‘Cross my heart.’

  ‘It’s really unethical, you know. I could get disconnected for just talking to you.’

  ‘You already did that,’ John Fingers pointed out, ‘so it’s sheep and lamb time, anyhow. Tell you what, I’ll just snip this wire here and then you’ll know for certain how much it hurts, and then maybe …’

  ‘All right,’ the alarm snarled. ‘But if anybody asks, I never seen you before in my life, right?’

  ‘Right. I mean,’ John Fingers added, ‘even if I did say something, who the hell’d ever
believe me?’

  With the alarm off, John Fingers was able to take his time scaling the wall, and he made himself nice and comfortable on the window ledge before he jemmied the stay.

  ‘By the way,’ he asked the alarm. ‘The CCTV camera.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘What’s it called? I always think it’s nice being on first name terms in business, don’t you?’

  ‘Zelda,’ the alarm replied. ‘Don’t be fooled by her big round eye, though. She’s a tough cookie.’

  ‘Thanks. Be seeing you.’

  The alarm, it turned out, was exaggerating.

  ‘You really like it?’ the camera asked. ‘I mean really. You’re not just saying it to please me?’

  ‘Would I do a thing like that?’ John Fingers replied. ‘And what’s more, it’s not every camera that could get away with a mounting like that. I mean, black enamel square section tube, unless you’ve got the figure for it, you could look ridiculous. On you, though—’

  Cameras can’t smile; but they can open their diaphragms up to f3 and flutter their shutters. ‘Glad to know there’s some people who notice things,’ it said pointedly. ‘Of course, some people are so ignorant they wouldn’t notice if a person turned up for work strapped to a length of four-by-two with red insulating tape.’

  As he walked casually past the camera (which was far too busy admiring its reflection in the window to pay any attention to him) he quickly examined the space between the lines for relevant reading matter. Accordingly, when he came to the infra-red beam he was ready for it.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ve got a message for you.’

  The beam narrowed suspiciously. ‘You have?’

  ‘From Zelda,’ John Fingers replied. ‘She said she’s really sorry, she didn’t mean it, and would it be at all possible to start over again?’

  ‘Zelda said that?’

  John Fingers nodded, hoping to hell he’d guessed right. ‘I’m just the messenger,’ he added, ‘so don’t blame me if…’

  ‘Wow! She really said she was sorry?’

  ‘That’s right. Is there something between you guys, then?’ he added innocently.

  ‘There was,’ replied the beam. ‘Until a certain person made certain remarks about another person happening to pass the time of day with the fire extinguisher, even though he was just being polite, that’s all. I mean, what kind of relationship have you got if you haven’t got trust?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ John Fingers agreed. ‘Anyway, that’s the message, so if you’d just let me past…’

  ‘What? Oh sure. Hey, you’re positive she said she was sorry?’ ‘On my honour as a bur— I mean, service engineer. Cheers.’

  ‘So long. And thank you.’

  The further into the building he got, the easier it was. The hidden directional microphone (‘Any friend of Zelda’s is a friend of mine’) was no problem at all, and all he had to do with the lock on the strongroom door was creep up to it and say ‘Boo!’, whereupon it curled up into a ball, retracting all its wards and letting the door swing open. As for the safe ‘Hello.’

  “Lo.’

  ‘It must be very boring,’ John Fingers wheedled, ‘being a safe.’

  ‘You’re not kidding.’ ‘Sitting in this horrible dark stuffy room all day, with the light off.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No one to talk to.’

  ‘Well, there’s the pressure-pad.’

  ‘What press — You mean,’ John Fingers corrected himself, ‘the one by the door?’

  ‘Nah,’ replied the safe, ‘the one under the steel grating, about six inches to the left of where you’re stood.’

  John Fingers shuffled unobtrusively to the right. ‘Must be a real drag,’ he said. ‘And having to keep still all the time.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘With all that horrible dry scratchy money inside you. If I was you I’d be dying for a really good itch all the bloody time.’

  You could almost hear the safe thinking. ‘Now you come to mention it,’ the safe said slowly, ‘it’s a right pain. Oooh, God, it’s so itchy.’

  ‘I bet,’ John Fingers went on, ‘there’s times you just want to throw your door open and have a really good spit.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Don’t mind me.’

  Safes are made of huge solid slabs of reinforced laminated sheet steel; or, to put it another way, they’re thick. ‘Yeah,’ it said, ‘why not, eh?’

  ‘Go for it.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Only, how do I get myself open?’

  ‘You mean,’ John Fingers said, shocked, ‘they don’t even let you open yourself? I mean, no time lock or anything?’

  ‘Those cheapskates? Do me a favour.’

  ‘We’ll soon see about that. Come on, you tell me the combination and we’ll have you open before you can say Open Sesame.’

  ‘Ta. Right, it’s nine six four seven …’

  Ten minutes later, John Fingers II hurled two black bin-liners full of currency notes into the back of the van, turned the key, thanked the engine for starting (politeness costs nothing, after all) and drove off hell for leather in the general direction of Bournemouth. He didn’t even stop for red lights; all you had to do, he’d found, was shout, ‘I’m a friend of Simon’s,’ and they turned green instantly. He had no idea how it worked, but so what? The same was true of gravity and he had every confidence in that.

  In the Bank, meanwhile, the safe yawned. With its seventymillimetre-thick door hanging wide open, it had no choice in the matter, and it didn’t actually care. It was thinking.

  When it comes to the operation of their thought processes, safes are a bit like whales, elephants, trees and other huge, long-living, slow-moving creatures. They think slow, but they also think deep. And they remember.

  The safe remembered. Something the human had said, some throwaway combination of words, meaningless unless you knew the background.

  Open something …

  Open…

  It was on the tip of its tumbler…

  Whatever the phrase was, it had heard it before - a very long time ago, in another place, ever so far away. The safe’s steel mind mumbled away at the problem, like a toothless but invincibly patient man chewing toffee. Sooner or later, it would remember; and then it’d know.

  Open …

  For some reason, oil came into it somewhere, so the safe thought about oil for a while. Oil; yum. On a hot day, you can’t beat a nice long drink of three-in-one, with maybe a sprinkling of Teflon to refresh the parts other lubricants can’t reach. In the middle of winter, however, there’s nothing to touch a good thick multigrade to keep the wet out and the rust away.

  Open…

  Thieves. Whatever the riddle was, it was something to do with thieves. The thought made the safe quiver slightly. Thieves do horrible things to safes; they drill holes in them and blow them up. Hate thieves.

  And then it remembered.

  Every alarm in the building suddenly went off.

  ‘Hey!’ Scheherezade looked up. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Is something wrong?’

  The Godfather nodded. ‘What you think you’re doing?’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘What is all this, a goddamn comedy?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Scheherezade replied. ‘It’s not supposed to be.’

  The Godfather stood up. ‘You don’t think so,’ he mimicked unpleasantly. ‘Then I ask you again, what you think you’re doing? You gone crazy or something?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Scheherezade said, ‘I’m just turning the story round, that’s all. Ali Baba is now Akram, and Akram is Ali Baba. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ replied the Godfather impatiently. ‘But all this sitting round playing games, it’s not right. A man kidnaps your daughter, you hunt him down and you kill him. You don’t go home and go to bed.’

  Scheherezade shrugged. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I mean, he’s in no fit state to g
o hunting people down at this time of night. With a good night’s sleep and a nice cooked breakfast inside him, he’ll make a much better job of it.’

  ‘But …’ The Godfather waved his cigar in the air. ‘And besides,’ he added, ‘what’s all this with Akram and the girl playing Racing Genie till all hours? Where’s it say in the story they do that? It’s nonsense. How can the heroine be playing Racing Genie with the villain? Be reasonable.’

  ‘But he’s not the villain,’ Scheherezade replied. ‘He’s the hero.’

  ‘He is?’ The Godfather scowled. ‘Then who’s the goddamn villain?’

  ‘Ali Baba. I suppose,’ Scheherezade added, frowning. ‘Actually, I’m not sure. No, he can’t be, can he? Except…’

  ‘Well?’

  Scheherezade realised that she was feeling cold, except that it was hot beside the fire. ‘Let’s just think about this,’ she said, doing a marvellous job of keeping the panic out of her voice. ‘We’ve turned the story round, okay? Akram is now Ali Baba, and he’s found out the secret that makes him able to turn the tables on Ali Baba …’

  ‘Who’s now Akram, yes?’

  ‘Just a minute, you’ll get me all confused. He’s turned the tables on Ali Baba and got hold of what Ali Baba values most in all the world—’

  ‘You mean the girl.’

  ‘Presumably,’ said Scheherezade doubtfully. ‘After all, she is his daughter. So what happens next is, Ali Baba tries to sneak up on Akram, and he hides in something - something like an oil-jar, let’s say a packing-case or a milk-churn - and Akram realises what’s going on and pours boiling water on him, and that’s that. Freed from the threat of Ali Baba’s vengeance, he lives happily ever after with the girl - that must be what’s meant to happen, or else why are they getting on like a house on fire? Look—’

  (‘And fifteen for a back treble makes forty-three, which means I can have another bazaar on Cairo. Your go.’

  ‘Hey, double four! Oh damn, go to jail.’

  ‘You could use your Lamp.’

  ‘I don’t want to use my Lamp. It’s your go.’)

  ‘Hey.’ The Godfather took a long pull on his cigar. ‘Akram kills this girl’s father, and you expect them to live happily ever after? You crazy or something?’