He felt suddenly faint, the room spinning around him, his heart pounding, the blood roaring in his ears. Turning on his heels, he limped back into the first room and threw one of the cupboards open with a crash. Empty. The next one was the same. And the one after that, the metal doors now clanging noisily against each other like shutters in a storm as he jumped from one cupboard to the next. They were all empty.
‘You’ve been fuckin’ turned over,’ Logan growled.
Faulks couldn’t speak, could barely breathe, felt sick. He staggered to the table, his legs threatening to give away under him at any minute, the open cupboard doors still swaying around him as if they were waving goodbye.
What about the files?
Somehow he found the strength to limp through to the third room, Logan following behind, his warning to be careful echoing unheard off the bare walls. Faulks stopped on the threshold, supporting himself against the door frame, not needing to go inside to see that this room too had also been stripped bare.
He had the strange sensation of drowning, of the air being squeezed from his lungs, the pressure clawing at his eardrums, pressing his eyes back into his head. And then he was falling, legs tumbling away from underneath him, back sliding down the wall as the floor rose up to grab him, umbrella toppling on to his lap. Gone. Gone. Everything gone.
‘Earl?’ He heard Verity’s voice echoing towards him. ‘You said five minutes, so I thought I’d come up. Is everything okay?’
SEVENTY-TWO
Free Port, Geneva
20th April-3.36 p.m.
‘He’s gone inside.’ Archie let himself back into the room with a relieved smile. ‘I’ve left Dom watching the stairs. How are you getting on?’
‘Any minute now,’ Tom replied, the air thick with the smell of oil, burnt steel and hot machine parts.
Allegra had been right. Her idea had had no reason to work. And yet, like all good ideas, there had been an elegance and simplicity to it that had at least given it a fighting chance of success.
‘Dominique said all the floors look the same,’ Allegra had reminded them. ‘If she’s right, then maybe we could try and trick Faulks into getting off on the second floor.’
‘It could work,’ Tom had said, immediately catching on. ‘We could rig the lift, swap over the wall signs and door numbers, and then use the forklift to move all his furniture downstairs so that when he goes inside his first thought will be that he’s been robbed.’
‘I’ll reroute the camera feed so the guard can’t see us,’ Dominique had suggested. ‘And we could fix the alarm cover panel to the wall so it at least looks the same.’
‘What about the cupboards?’ Archie had reminded them. ‘We haven’t got time to unload them all.’
‘Check out some of the other empty offices,’ Tom had suggested. ‘There’s bound to be a couple of spares lying around. As long as they look vaguely similar, he’ll be too shocked to notice. And by the time he does, we’ll be long gone with whatever’s inside.’
Tom’s safe-cracking kit was surprisingly simple. A 36-volt Bosch power drill, like you would buy at any normal hardware store. A tungsten-carbide-tipped drill bit shaped for steel cutting. A twenty-millimetre diamond-core drill bit, routinely used in the construction industry. And finally a Fein electro-magnetic drill rig to hold the power drill in place and control the pressure.
The method was relatively straightforward too. First fix the rig on to the side of the safe over the chosen breach point with the magnets. Then clamp the power drill into the rig. Then equip the tungsten carbide drill bit, and lower the drill to bore a centring hole in the steel. Finally swap it for the diamond-core drill bit and punch through.
The tricky part was applying the correct combination of drill speed and pressure at the right time. Puncturing the safe’s steel casing, for example, required drilling at about 2000 rpm with only medium to low pressure applied by the rig. Getting through the composite material underneath, however, demanded high pressure and low revs, maybe 300 rpm. Even then Tom had to go easy, the diamonds clogging in the angled mild steel plates that had been embedded in the concrete. With only one power drill, that meant he had to be careful not to blow the motor, and he was forced to stop at regular intervals and allow it to cool.
‘How are you getting on with the photos?’ Tom called, adding some lubricant.
‘I’ve got a system going-’ Allegra poked her head into the room -‘I won’t get them all, but I’ll get enough.’
‘Anything that might tell us where the League are meeting tonight?’
‘No, but I’ll keep looking.’
At last the drill punched through, the motor racing wildly.
‘That’s it,’ Tom called, fumbling for the off switch and then heaving the rig out of the way.
‘Here-’ Archie handed him a small monitor that he taped to the side of the safe and then connected to the borescope. The screen flickered with light, indicating it was working.
‘Ready?’ Tom looked up with a hopeful smile at Allegra, who had run across to join them. She nodded silently as he blew against the hole to cool the scorched metal and then slipped the cable inside.
‘Look,’ she gasped almost immediately. The outline of a white face was framed on the small screen like a human skull, the grainy image looking like it was being broadcast up through the depths from a long-lost shipwreck. ‘It’s the ivory mask. Cavalli must have sent it here before he was killed.’
‘They must have been working together,’ agreed Tom. ‘Cavalli supplying the antiquities and Faulks providing the buyers. That way, they didn’t have to split the profits with the Delian League.’
‘Faulks doesn’t have to split anything with anyone now that Cavalli’s dead,’ Allegra observed wryly.
‘Pretty convenient,’ Tom agreed. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if…’ He broke off, a sudden thought occurring to him. Of course. It had been so simple. So easy. And once Faulks had realised how much the mask was worth, so necessary.
‘Oi, you two,’ Archie interrupted. ‘Holmes and bloody Watson. Do you mind if we get a move on?’
Tom winked at Allegra, then nodded. He was right.
Looking back to the screen to get his bearings, he bent the cable towards the left and found the back of the safe door. Then he slowly moved it along until he was roughly behind the combination dial.
‘There it is,’ Archie said sharply.
‘There what is?’ Allegra leant closer with a frown.
‘The key-change hole,’ Archie explained. ‘Every combination safe comes with a special key that you insert in that hole when the safe’s open to change the code.’
‘How big is the hole?’
‘Not very,’ Tom said, jaw clenched in concentration.
‘Not big enough,’ Archie muttered under his breath. ‘That’s the problem.’
They watched the image silently, the camera’s proximity making the tiny hole look surprisingly large on the screen, the cable catching on its edge as Tom tried to nudge it inside.
‘Shit,’ he hissed, the cable slipping past yet again. ‘It keeps sliding off.’
‘Try from the other side,’ Archie suggested.
‘I’ve done that,’ Tom snapped, smearing oil across his forehead as he wiped the sweat away.
Dominique came in, out of breath from having run up the stairs.
‘How much time have we got?’ Tom barked without looking up.
‘About as much time as it takes them to look out the window and realise they’re only two floors up. How are we doing?’
‘Shit,’ Tom swore as the camera skated past the hole again.
‘That well.’ She pulled a face.
‘Why don’t you try coming in from underneath?’ Archie suggested. ‘You might catch against the upper lip.’
‘I don’t see why that will…’ Tom glanced up at Archie with a sheepish smile. It had worked first time.
The screen now showed a fuzzy image of the lock mechanism-four wheels, each with a n
otch that had to be aligned so that the locking gate could fall into them.
‘Someone’s going to have to turn the dial for me,’ Tom said, carefully holding the cable in place so that it didn’t pop out. Allegra immediately stepped forward and crouched down to next to him.
‘Which way?’
‘Clockwise. You need to pick up all the wheels first.’
Allegra turned the lock, the picture showing the drive cam turning and then gathering up each of the four wheels one by one until they were all going round.
‘Slowly,’ Tom said, as he saw the notch on the first wheel at the bottom right of the screen moving upwards.
‘Stop!’ Archie called as the notch reached the twelve o’clock position. Fifteen. ‘Now back the other way.’
Allegra turned the dial back, again slowing as the notch appeared on the second wheel and then stopping when Archie called to her. Seventy-one. Then came sixteen.
‘The last number’s ten,’ Tom guessed.
‘How do you know?’ Dominique asked with a frown.
‘Fifteen seventy-one to sixteen ten,’ Tom explained with a smile. ‘Caravaggio’s dates.’
As Tom pulled the borescope out of the hole, Allegra turned the dial to the final number and then tried the gold-plated wheel in the middle of the door. It turned easily, the handle vibrating with a dull clunk as the bolts slid back. Standing up, she tugged on the door, the airtight seal at first resisting her until, with a swooshing noise, it swept open.
The safe had a red velour interior and four shelves containing an eclectic assortment of items that Faulks had presumably felt deserved the extra security-twenty or so antique dinner plates, a set of red figure vases, notebooks, some files, a few maps. And of course, the ivory mask.
Tom’s attention, however, was drawn to a rectangular black velvet box, monogrammed with a by now familiar symbol: the clenched fist and entwined snakes of the Delian League. It opened to reveal a cream silk interior moulded to house six watches. Two of the spaces were occupied.
‘Epsilon and zeta,’ Allegra said, taking them out and turning them over so that they could see the Greek letters engraved into their backs.
‘Which gives us the three we need,’ Tom said, sliding D’Arcy’s watch into place and then snapping the case shut. ‘Let’s just see if there’s anything in here that tells us where they’re meeting tonight.’
‘What about this?’ Archie asked, carefully sliding out the small packing crate containing the ivory mask, its delicate face cushioned by the straw that poked through its eyes and parted lips in a way that reminded Tom of the Napoleonic death mask he and Archie had discovered the previous year.
‘Leave it,’ Tom said with a shake of his head, glancing up from the handful of notes and maps he had pulled from the safe and was now leafing through.
‘Leave it? Are you joking? This thing’s worth a bloody fortune.’
‘Not to us, it isn’t. Besides, the less we take, the more chance that Faulks won’t even realise we’ve been here.’
SEVENTY-THREE
Free Port, Geneva
20th March-3.46 p.m.
Faulks’s initial shock had given way to a bewildered incredulity. It was impossible. The stock. His best stock. The documentation. The safe. Everything gone. Spirited away. Everything. Thousands of items. Tens of millions of dollars. How had they got in? How had they got away without being seen?
‘Earl, I don’t understand. What’s going on? What is this place?’ Verity sounded nervous, like someone who’d witnessed a gangland killing and was now worried about being dragged into testifying.
‘Did you tell anyone you were coming here?’ Faulks spun round to face her, jabbing his umbrella at her accusingly.
‘Of course not,’ she insisted hotly. ‘How could I? I’ve never been here before.’
He glared at her, his disbelief having slipped into anger, although not with her in particular. With everyone. With everything. She gave a sharp intake of breath, her eyes widening in understanding.
‘Oh my God, Earl, have you been robbed?’
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled and then opened them again, part of him almost expecting to find that everything was still there after all and that this had just been a terrible dream. Logan reappeared and jerked his head to indicate that they needed to talk. Alone.
‘Give me a minute, Verity,’ Faulks said, following Logan back out into the first room and closing the door behind him.
‘Well?’
‘The guard downstairs hasn’a seen nothing,’ Logan said in a low voice. ‘Nor had th’ one on the night shift when we called him.’
‘Not unless they’re both in on it together,’ Faulks pointed out.
‘Aye well, I’d know if he was.’ Logan gave him a tight smile.
Looking down, Faulks noticed that the Scotsman’s knuckles were grazed and that there was a faint spray of blood on his collar. He felt a little better.
‘What about the surveillance footage?’
‘Backed up remotely. I’ve asked for a copy. It’ll be here in an hour.’
‘Anyone else in the building?’
‘Just the people who moved in today.’
Faulks snorted.
‘Well, there you go then.’
‘There’s only four o’ them and they signed in at twelve thirty,’ Logan pointed out with a firm shake of his head. ‘Shiftin’ all tha’ would have tak’n them days.’
‘And he didn’t hear the alarm go off?’
‘No.’
‘Bastards must have disabled it,’ Faulks hissed, striding over to the control panel next to the main entrance and smacking it angrily, taking some pleasure in the sharp stab of pain as it spread across his palm. ‘What’s the point in paying for…’
He broke off as the keypad fell away from the wall and crashed on to the floor. Frowning, he bent down to pick it up, then noticed the two pieces of black tape that had been securing it to the wall.
‘Jesus,’ he swore, tossing the panel to Logan. ‘It’s a dummy. We’re in the wrong goddamned room.’
Turning, he limped back out on to the corridor. Ignoring the lift, he made his way to the fire escape and leaned over the banisters, following the staircase as it snaked its way down to the floor below and then…to the ground floor.
With Logan at his shoulder, Faulks climbed the staircase as fast as he could, then stepped out on to the empty corridor and turned towards his offices. Here the nature of the deception became abundantly clear -all the signs and door numbers were missing, having presumably been removed and re-attached on the floor below to confuse him.
He flung the door to his offices open. Apart from the cupboards down the right-hand wall, the room was empty and almost unrecognisable without its furniture, carpet or curtains.
And standing at its centre was a woman.
SEVENTY-FOUR
Free Port, Geneva
20th March-3.50 p.m.
‘Where’s Archie?’ Tom asked as he threw his bag into the boot and slammed it shut.
‘With Allegra,’ Dominique panted, sliding into the passenger seat next to him.
There was a brief lull as they waited, Tom tapping his fingers nervously on the window sill.
‘Did you sweep the safe clean?’
‘He won’t know we’ve been in there,’ she reassured him. ‘Not unless he moves the crates and sees where I’ve taped over the drill hole in the side.’
‘Good.’
‘So what now?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Tom admitted. ‘We still don’t know where they’re meeting.’
‘What was that piece of paper you took out of the safe, then?’
‘Something else that I thought might come in useful.’ He craned his neck for a view of the entrance. ‘What’s taking them so long?’
‘Do you want me to go back inside?’
‘Let’s just give them another-’
‘Look, here he comes!’ Dominique pointed with relief as Archie exite
d the building and jogged over to the car.
‘Yeah, but why’s he on his own?’ Tom frowned, his eyes still fixed on the building’s entrance.
Archie threw the door open and climbed in.
‘Close one.’ He sighed with relief. ‘Nearly bumped into Faulks coming up the stairs. I think he’s finally twigged.’
‘Where’s Allegra?’ Tom asked in an urgent voice.
‘Allegra?’ Archie looked around, only now, it seemed, noticing that she was not in the car. ‘I thought she was with you?’
‘Well, she’s not,’ Tom shot back.
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Upstairs. She was helping me pack up my kit. I handed her the…’
He paused, a sudden thought occurring to him. Flinging the door open, he raced round to the back of the car and popped the boot.
‘What are you looking for?’ Archie asked as he rooted through his bag.
‘This,’ Tom said, holding up the receiver for the location beacon.
He turned it on. A faint pulse of light confirmed what he had already guessed. The transmitter was about fifty yards directly in front of him.
‘She’s still inside.’
‘What the hell’s she doing?’ Archie’s voice was caught somewhere surprise and admiration.
‘Playing the only card we have left.’
SEVENTY-FIVE
Free Port, Geneva
20th March-3.50 p.m.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Faulks paused on the threshold, wary of another trick.
‘Everything’s here,’ she reassured him. ‘I just wanted to make sure I got your attention.’
‘Congratulations. You’ve got it,’ he snarled, motioning at Logan to grab her, while he checked the cupboards and stuck his head into the next room.
Unbelievably, everything did indeed seem to be there, the empty desolation of a few minutes ago quickly replaced by a warm wave of relief. And a cold current of anger.
‘Who are you?’ he repeated.
‘Lieutenant Allegra Damico. An officer with the TPA.’
The Geneva Deception Page 28