“ARE WE GONNA TALK ALL DAY OR ARE WE GONNA DO SOMETHING? ” Happy asked, standing at the lectern and bouncing with all the enthusiasm of a motivational speaker.
“Did you sleep at all?” Fletcher asked.
“No, no, no,” he said quickly. “But I had two of those little bottles of 8-Hour Gusto. Eight and eight makes sixteen. Next question, please.”
Andrew picked up one of the empties from the floor by Happy’s feet. “It says, ‘Not a substitute for sleep’ right on it.”
“Yeah, but then it has the little winky-face emoticon.”
Andrew took a seat facing Happy. “What have you got for us?”
“So glad you asked.” He slapped the back of his hand against his palm three times in rapid succession. “Meg and I were up all night reading and researching—you’re welcome—and we have a plan to determine the whereabouts of the necklace.”
Fletcher and Andrew groaned.
“What’s the problem?” Meg asked.
“We don’t let Happy plan out jobs,” Fletcher said.
“Why not? He’s a genius.”
“A genius at logistics? Yes. A computer genius? Sure. Genius with big-picture stuff? Not so much.” He shifted toward Happy. “Do you want to tell her about the Canadian quarter scheme or shall I?”
Happy flushed. “It would work,” he said, pounding the pulpit. “If you would just give it a chance.”
“Okay then, run us through it,” Fletcher said. “If Meg thinks it holds water, we’ll follow your lead today.”
“Fine.” Happy sat on the edge of the platform, his feet hanging down. “As a fellow Canadian, you’ll appreciate this, Meg.” He took a tug off a Watt Energy Drink and cracked his neck. “My first month in the Great Lakes State, I noticed that sometimes when I’d buy something with cash, there would be a Canadian coin in my change—usually pennies and nickels, but occasionally a quarter. I would then spend those coins along with American currency, and no one thought anything of it. The people of this city consider a Canadian quarter to be worth twenty-five cents. Only it’s worth more like twenty-three cents.
“So I had this idea. A vision, really. We take, like, fifty thousand dollars to Canada, convert it to Canadian currency. Go to a few banks and exchange the notes for quarters, then bring them back.”
“Bring them back, how?” Fletcher interrupted.
“In a . . . dump truck. Anyway, you slowly launder the quarters through a chain of restaurants or convenience stores or something, giving out a Canadian quarter for every few American quarters and you wind up almost five thousand bucks ahead at the end of the day.”
“Minus the cost of the dump truck,” Andrew said.
“Eh, you could use a U-Haul and just make multiple trips.”
“And do you know someone who owns a chain of restaurants who would launder your Canadian money for free?” Fletcher asked.
“Shut up.”
Andrew snorted. “How about you stick to the gadgets and let me and Fletcher plan the scores, huh?”
Meg sighed. “We were up most of the night working on this. Are you going to listen or not?”
“Sorry,” Fletcher said. “Proceed.”
“Okay, hang on.” Happy jumped to his feet and raced back to the podium. He pressed a button on his laptop, and the projection screen behind them filled with an image of Cagliostro.
“Oh boy, there’s a slide show,” Andrew droned. “Super.”
Happy ignored him. “The secret society that Fonseca and Cagliostro founded has never really been identified.” He glanced down at his notes and found his place. “In his novels, Alexandre Dumas portrayed Cagliostro as the head of the Illuminati, a nefarious international cabal.” He clicked to the next slide, a collage of graphics from conspiracy websites. “While this is not entirely untrue, it’s based in exaggerated tales. This was no central conspiracy designed to rule the world—just a plan by a few people with a lot of power to hang on to it for a bit longer. They saw the winds of change coming and decided to be proactive—kind of the opposite of an IPO.”
Andrew raised his hand. “I thought you said we weren’t going to talk all morning.”
“Let him get to the point,” Dante said.
“Thank you. It seems to Meg and me that this group, drawing its resources from the Egyptian Mystery lodges, was very powerful during the French Revolution and for a while afterward, but quickly lost steam in the nineteenth century. By 1820, even the trail of rumors seems to disappear.”
“So how does that help?” Andrew asked.
“We think the group still exists, after a fashion,” Meg said. “Show them the picture.”
Happy clicked to the next slide—one of the letters from the college library.
“Now look here,” he said, pointing off to the side of the screen. Next to the letter sat the acid-free plastic sleeve in which the page was kept. “Do you see what it says?” Happy asked. They could all make it out: “This letter on loan from Fonseca, Intl.”
Happy clicked again to the next slide, this one a screenshot from the website for Fonseca, International, featuring an impressive upward-angled shot of a six-story office building. “We need to get into that place.”
“That’s Cagliostro’s secret society?” Andrew asked.
“Yeah, but they’re a lot less secret these days. Multinational holdings are their bag, along with enough philanthropy to make them look benevolent. And their world headquarters are on Telegraph Road, in this building.”
Fletcher snuffed. “Times are tough. Even the Illuminati has had to downsize.”
“It doesn’t live up to the old rumors, sure, but if anyone still knows how Cagliostro gave José Pinto da Fonseca the location of the necklace or what the heck 19.12 means, it’s them.”
Fletcher crossed his arms. “But if this is the group lobbying for the Knights to carry on in the footsteps of Fonseca, wouldn’t the Alchemist be part of it?”
“No way,” Happy said. “If he were, he wouldn’t need us. He’d already have access. I’m convinced that our best chance to find the necklace is to make a copy of all their files and run a search algorithm for anything involving Cagliostro, either Rohan, or either Fonseca.”
“You can hack into their computers, then?” Dante asked.
Happy fiddled with his notes. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. I was poking around the Deep Web last night, and it turns out Fonseca’s famous among hackers for their inaccessible network. You absolutely cannot get in from an outside connection. And their redundant backups are all on-site as well—some ultra-innovative system, probably heavy encryption, mixed with some sort of old-school backup system. They don’t want to risk someone like me finding a back door in.”
“So what, then?” Dante asked.
Happy grinned. “I think I can stroll right in the front door and make us a copy.”
“You?” Andrew practically shouted.
“Hear me out—”
“No,” Fletcher said. “Bad things happen when you leave the van.”
“But I won’t be myself. I’ll be Scott Sprague, their IT manager.” Happy flipped to the next slide: a screenshot of Scott Sprague’s LinkUp page, the sight of which was met by an initial wall of silence.
Finally Fletcher said, “Uh, Happy . . . that guy’s Korean.”
“Yeah, I’ll dye my hair black. I’m committed, man.”
“Umm . . .”
“Show them his profile pictures,” Meg said.
Happy began flipping through candid photos of Scott. “See? He’s always got that Tigers cap pulled down over his eyes. Same thick-framed glasses and denim jacket every day. At home”—he clicked from picture to picture—“out about town. This one’s at work, setting up in a conference room. And look: always face-deep in that smartphone.”
“Object permanence, right?” Meg said. “The mind fills in the rest.”
“The network, the backup—it’s all on-site,” Happy said. “But if I can get into that server room, I can upload a
virus and make their computer think the latest backup has been corrupted. With any luck, it’ll wipe the hard drive and begin restoring from the second newest full backup, decrypting and reencrypting as it copies, and I’ll be there, siphoning the ones and zeroes onto this.” He held up a large external hard drive.
“Still seems like a lot of risk for a long shot,” Andrew said.
“Long shot?” Happy bounced on his toes a few times. “Let’s look a little closer at this picture, shall we?” He zoomed in on a framed document, partially visible on the conference room wall behind Scott Sprague. It was aged and yellowed, but they could all make out two Greek letters in the lower right corner, followed by the number 19.12.
“That’s our map,” Andrew said.
Dante stood and walked right up to the screen, craning his neck as if another angle would allow him to see the rest of the document. “But how are we going to find that room?” he asked, examining the image. “Walk up and down every hall on all six floors?”
Happy smiled and shook his head. “No need. This picture was taken with a smartphone, which means it’s geocoded.” He clicked back to the slide of the office building. “The coordinates are right here on the east side of the building. Also embedded in the image are the date and time it was taken, which, along with the angle of the shadows from the sun, gave me the room’s elevation.” He rose up on his tiptoes and pointed at a window. “Here’s our target. Get me down to that server, and I think I can disable the alarms.”
Andrew was perking up. “Finally, a real grift.”
“There’s just one more thing,” Happy said, clicking back to the picture of the conference room. He zoomed back out and panned to the right. There in a niche in the wall, lit from above and covered over by glass, was the Valletta Monstrance.
Andrew, too, was on his feet now, approaching the screen. Only Meg and Fletcher remained in their seats.
“If you’re making another grab for the monstrance, I can’t be anywhere near this,” Fletcher said. “My parole officer knows I’m in the city. I did six years for trying to steal that thing.”
Andrew scratched his neck. “So Fletcher’s in the van and Happy’s going in. What could possibly go wrong?”
“You serious?” Dante said. “Everything could go wrong here! There are people you do not grift: syndicate bosses, mob lieutenants, guys with a long reach and an even longer memory. Guys you can never give the fix because they own all the action. You cross them, and the whole city is dead to you. You’d have to pick up and move. But these guys”—he pointed at the screen—“you say they’re worldwide, positioned high up in every government. You don’t grift the Illuminati! Am I outta line here?”
“What choice do we have?” Andrew asked.
“How are you even going to get in there?”
“Building codes,” Happy answered.
“What?”
“They’ve gone legit—on the grid. At least this aspect of their organization. They’re not meeting in underground secret lairs anymore. They have to let the fire inspector in.”
Fletcher tipped back in his chair. “Dante, you’re the only one here the police haven’t grilled about that monstrance. You think you can talk your way past the front desk?”
“Don’t worry about me; I can talk.”
Fletcher was dubious. “And Happy’s going to be Scott the IT guy? Are we really doing this?”
Andrew smirked. “We’re both going to be Scott the IT guy.”
CHAPTER 47
APRIL 1, 1789
ROME
The inn was crowded and filled with the din of talking, dining, and occasional bursts of laughter, which suited Cagliostro’s purposes. The two men who sat with him were well dressed and well collected, their cloaks and swords of the finest quality. They listened carefully to the count’s practiced invitation.
Upon his release from the Bastille, Cagliostro had set sail first for England, then Naples, Turin, and finally Rome. He had hoped to arrive in Rome much sooner, but every element in his Great Design had to be in place, and some were beyond his control. So he waited.
“And I, the Grand Kophta and High Priest of Egypt, offer you far more than fraternity, position, and enlightenment,” he said. “I offer you a path to restore your primitive state of innocence, which was lost by original sin. Our symbols include not only the compass and square but the septangle, death’s head, the wooden bridge, and the phoenix. Through these we rise beyond mere mortality.
“Our art is an ancient one. Through the ages, the Secret Superiors of our order have included Moses, Elijah, and Christ himself. Their powers have come down to me, and I am likewise able to transmit my powers to the master of each lodge. If you wish to confirm my claims, there are scores in France, England, Sicily, the Netherlands, and even America who can bear witness. When I first spoke publicly of the secrets I possess, it was in The Hague before hundreds who, upon hearing my words, were caught up in such a state of heavenly bliss that many of them became like statues and did not move for more than a day.”
“What think you of the Scottish Rite?” asked one of the men.
Cagliostro scoffed. “Many have attained the highest degrees of Masonry in the Scottish Rite and yet remain as base and earthly in their thoughts as the uninitiated. What I offer is as much purer than the Scottish Rite as the crisp, clear waters of the Nile are clearer than what runs through the sewers of Paris.”
“It took us nearly a decade to rise to the status of Master Mason in the Scottish Rite,” said the other man. “We have no desire to start over from the first.”
Cagliostro bobbed his head and looked at the men as if considering the purchase of a new coat. “Considering your foundation in the concepts of Masonry, I believe I can offer you an expedited journey to the highest ranks of the pure and primitive lodge.”
“How much expedited?”
“If you renounce your former lodge and devote yourself to the Egyptian Mysteries, within a year you will be Master Masons again.”
The men nodded happily. In truth, they were not Masons at all, but spies of the Inquisition. And within a year, they would see the great Cagliostro arrested, imprisoned, and condemned to death.
CHAPTER 48
He checks in here with his 4Corners account every morning at about seven forty-five,” Andrew scoffed. “How can you be a yuppie and a hippy at the same time?”
“That’s been a thing for, like, a decade,” Happy said. “He’s a hipster. Sort of.”
They were in the parking lot of EnerJuice Boost!, an organic smoothie shop squeezed in between a medical marijuana dispensary and a health food store.
“That’s him,” Meg said from the passenger seat. “Let’s go.”
She and Andrew left the van, staggering their approach so that Scott Sprague, who barely even looked up from his phone to slip through the door, was sandwiched between them in line.
Standing behind him, Meg reprised a bimbo she’d played in a production a few years back, wearing little denim shorts and a tank top that had been in a bin with a number of similar garments in Andrew’s storage space and that he had not wanted to discuss.
“Berry-pomegranate Pep,” she read from the menu, mispronouncing pomegranate. “Pacific Passion Probiotic Blend?” She put her hand softly on Scott’s shoulder. “What do you get here?”
He looked up from his phone, annoyance all over his face until he saw Meg’s—her eyes wide and heavily painted with glittery makeup, modeled after a character from a sci-fi show to whom the IT professional before her was engaged to be married, if one was to believe his online profile.
“I, uh, get the Whole Fruit Pre-boost Mango with an extra post-boost,” he answered.
The woman at the counter called, “Next!” and Andrew approached, quietly ordering Scott’s regular while Meg giggled and asked him, “Say that again? That’s a mouthful!”
Scott pocketed his phone and repeated the drink name, waiting after each word for Meg to echo it back to him. She got tongue-twist
ed again and burst into laughter.
“Next!” called the woman behind the counter. Scott excused himself, ordered his drink, then pointed toward Meg and said, “I’ve got hers too.”
“I guess I’ll have the Karamel Karma Ice Mocha,” she said, feeling a pang of guilt. She’d gotten the girl in the library reprimanded—one strike closer to who-knows-what—and now she was going to break this poor guy’s heart and use his ID to help her husband’s old criminal cohort carry out the very crime that had landed Fletcher in jail. Things were escalating quickly. She saw Andrew receiving his drink at the counter and furtively mixing in a cocktail of fast-acting tranquilizers, which Happy had dubbed the Happy Napper and described as “GHB on GHB.”
Then she thought of Ivy and refocused on the plan and her character. Andrew had left his smoothie on the counter and taken a phone call from no one.
“No! A verbal contract is still a contract,” he said, swiping at the air. “I’m at the smoothie place! Keep him there.”
“Oh my gosh. Don’t look at that guy,” Meg whispered.
“Order for Scott!”
Meg leaned up to Scott’s ear. “Wait a second,” she said. “He’s staring at you.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. He’s just—wait, no, he’s leaving.” She gestured at the two drinks on the counter. “It’s a nice morning to have a smoothie outside. Or are you in a hurry to get to work?”
“I make my own hours,” Scott said.
“I think you should at least tape his wrists,” Andrew said. They were now six in the van—five of them conscious—and it was getting crowded.
“That’s a little serial killer, isn’t it?” Fletcher said.
“Right, and we’re kidnappers,” Meg said. “Oh my gosh, I’m a kidnapper. I’m just like them.”
“He’s not a kid,” Happy said. “And by the time he wakes up, he’ll be back in his car. Now help me get his jacket off.”
“And then we tape his wrists,” Andrew repeated.
“He’ll be out for at least four hours. We only need two.”
The Last Con Page 25