That explained much. “Oh.”
They did a quick walk-through of rooms One and Two, which contained the Ancient Civilization Exhibit from Greece, Rome and Egypt, including art, weapons, jewelry, and, as a pièce de résistance, two really cool mummies. Other rooms in the two-story building housed other exhibits, including Dutch masterpieces from such artists as Rembrandt in rooms Nine through Eleven.
The second floor was largely devoted to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although Room Twenty-Nine was dedicated exclusively to more reproductions from Michelangelo. The David statue in the vast downstairs hall was obviously an escapee.
So as not to make their interest in Room Three obvious, Bianca was determined to walk through the whole place.
An office housing the computers controlling the surveillance cameras and other security systems was located in a covered two-story courtyard just beyond Room Three. The courtyard was full of statues and busts on pedestals, and had a skylight overhead and a gently bubbling fountain in the center. Bianca had known the office was there from the floor plans, and she eyed it with (veiled, she hoped) interest. It was a small space compared to the size of the courtyard, perhaps twelve-by-sixteen feet. The walls were made of wood up to a height of about four feet, at which point thick glass took over and soared the rest of the way to the ceiling, undoubtedly to allow light from the skylight into the office. Four wooden desks were in the room, with computer monitors on each desk. Two uniformed security officers sat behind two of those desks.
Bianca gave Doc a nudge. “There’s the security office.”
He was already looking at it. “Wonder what kind of signal strength they have?”
Since Bianca had no idea, she pulled him with her into Room Three.
The walls were painted a dull gold. The lighting was dim. The exhibit had clearly been in place for many years and looked tired, despite the fact that the artifacts themselves were magnificent.
King Priam’s Treasure was displayed in old-fashioned glass cases with black bases. Gold jewelry including rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings had been simply laid out on what looked like white shelf paper on glass shelves. A number was handwritten on the paper beside each piece, and a card that backed the shelf had printed descriptions to match the numbers. The large and small diadems, each of which consisted of a fringe of small gold discs that covered the wearer’s forehead and cascaded down either side of the face like a shoulder-length wig with bangs, were displayed on black wig stands in their own cases in the middle of the room. The so-called Trojan sauceboat of the terra-cotta replica fame, which was one of the prize pieces of the exhibit because of its size and two handles, sat on a clear pedestal inside its own case. Milky rock crystal lenses the size of quarters, a pencil-thin orange-red cylinder of carnelian, amber beads and a thumb-size bronze figurine of what looked like a bear cub were arrayed on glass fronted shelves along the wall. Golden goblets, silver vessels, bronze plates, and four axes, one of which had a lapis lazuli blade, filled more glass-fronted shelves.
One hundred one objects in nineteen cases. None appeared to be secured to the display in any way. The only barriers were the locked door of the display cases and the alarms attached to them. If each piece was carefully replaced in its numbered spot by its replica and the cases were locked again, it might be longer than Bianca had first thought before the theft was discovered.
Unless Germany wanted to brag about the treasure’s recovery, which it probably would. Then the shit would hit the fan. Fortunately, by that time they would all be out of Russia.
Looking around, Bianca felt good about the job. Most of the items were small and should easily fit in, say, three trunks. None of them looked heavy. Whispering to Doc to go ahead and do his thing, which he did, moving away to the bathroom for privacy to check out the computer system by exploring it with a program launched from his laptop, she got busy taking surreptitious photos of the exhibits with the handy-dandy pen camera she’d stowed in her pocket for just that purpose, and examining the display cases without seeming to do so. The locks securing them were laughable. Time needed to pick one? Maybe thirty seconds each. Still, there were nineteen cases, so that was nine and a half minutes. Add to that the time required to move between cases—
She was discreetly measuring the distances when Doc came back into the room.
“Boss.”
She held up a finger as she finished counting. Twenty paces between the large diadem and the sauceboat. That translated to ten seconds.
“Boss.”
Doc had followed her. The urgency of his tone communicated itself to her, and she looked at him inquiringly.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said.
26
Of course they had a problem. She should have known from the moment she’d spotted those unsecured items in those barely locked cases that the job was coming together too easily: her luck was never that good.
Bianca stopped measuring distances to frown at Doc. “What is it?”
“The entire system is air-gapped.”
“What?”
“It’s a secure LAN—local area network—system. No Wi-Fi. No Bluetooth. No outside connection to the internet. It’s a self-contained system.” His tone was stark. “I can’t take it over. It can’t be hacked. Not remotely. I’m going to have to get physical access to the computers themselves to do anything.”
“Are you serious?” Bianca asked, visions floating through her head of having to break into the security office during the gala, silently knock out whatever guards were inside at the time, and keep everybody from noticing that anything was amiss in the glass-walled room while a not-exactly-inconspicuous Doc hunched over the computers hacking away.
“’Fraid so.”
A whole string of swear words crowded her tongue. She didn’t say them.
“We’ll figure something out,” she said, going back to her measurements while Doc stood frowning into space. What that something would be she wasn’t quite sure, but never say die (literally) was her new mantra. Going all karate kid on the guards in a glass-walled room in the middle of a gala was probably out: pretty sure somebody was going to notice. Knockout gas pumped in through a vent? A ruse to draw the guards out? A fake delivery to get Doc inside?
She might be able to do something like leap out of a giant, celebratory cake delivered to the security office in the midst of the gala, but Doc probably wasn’t going to be able to pull that off.
Hmm.
They were nearly back to the apartment building, moving through a thick area, which meant one that was so heavily traveled that surveillance was hard to spot. As they shouldered their way through a crush of workers all apparently heading for the nearby Metro station—a glance at her watch told Bianca that it was just after five o’clock, which meant rush hour was under way—Doc said, out of nowhere, “What I need is a raspberry pie.”
Bianca looked at him. “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. There is no River Street Sweets around here.”
“It’s not a dessert.” Doc shot her an impatient look. “P-I, not P-I-E. It’s something I can use to fix our problem.”
They’d reached the Burger King next door to the circus. Bianca pulled him across the street and into the pharmacy on the corner to reconnoiter from the candy aisle, from which vantage point she could watch the passersby through the window.
Always check for a tail before returning to the place you’re staying in.
“So what is this thing?” Bianca asked.
Doc explained. Most of the technical jargon he used was incomprehensible to her, but the bottom line was that a Raspberry Pi was a credit-card-size device that he could configure and preprogram with instructions on everything they needed the Pushkin’s computer-controlled systems to do. Once plugged into the actual computer, it would download those instructions into the operating system, which would then automatically fol
low its instructions, doing things like deactivating the alarm systems and rerouting any emergency signals and phone calls to wherever they chose.
Finishing up with his description as they left the pharmacy and headed toward the circus, Doc said, “Once I’m within reach of their computer system, it’ll take five seconds to install.” He made a jabbing gesture with his hand. “Plug it in and boom, we’re good to go.”
Bianca grimaced. “Five seconds is better than, say, fifteen minutes, but we still have to figure out how to get you in and the guards out for long enough to do it.”
“It doesn’t have to be me. Anybody can do it. Like I said, all you do is plug it in. Easy as pie.” Grinning at his own joke, he looked at Bianca. “You could do it.”
He said that in very much the tone in which he might’ve said, any idiot can do it.
“Thanks a lot.” She was already turning over in her mind various scenarios by which she might gain access to the security office. The glass walls coupled with the number of people sure to be milling around in the near vicinity of the office made the whole thing difficult. On the plus side, she’d picked up a brochure advertising the gala, and it showed very dim lighting in the rooms where the Savitsky paintings were not being displayed. She suspected the atrium would be one of those dimly lit rooms. On a side note, Room Three would probably be another, which was a plus. “Is there any means of access besides the door?”
The door to the security office was front and center, opening right off the atrium. It would be in full view of anybody in the atrium, and of many guests in the Hall of Statues or near the entrance to Room Three or—no telling where. Probably all kinds of places. She would have to check.
It was safe to say that if she went in by the door, lots of people would see her.
“You mean like coming down through the skylight? I don’t know. Let’s look.”
They were inside the circus building by that time, cutting through the stands surrounding the arena because that was the shortest path to the back door of the apartment building. The circus was dark that day, so only a few people were in the seats. In the ring, Lazlo, Kristof, Franz, Adam and Bence were rehearsing their separate acts. Lazlo was on the ground juggling, while high overhead his sons and their cousins practiced traversing the high wire in a giant four-wheeled X-shaped machine in which each young man walked in a wheel to propel the contraption along the wire.
Bianca observed all that in a single, distracted glance as she sat down beside Doc, who’d dropped into one of the red plush stadium seats.
Extracting his laptop from his coat, not without some difficulty, Doc called up the floor plans of the Pushkin’s main building.
“Skylight’s out,” he said, as he and Bianca peered at the diagram. “It’s not over the office. There’s a chimney—”
Bianca could see it. Sporting a vented metal cap, it ran down from the roof and opened into the very back corner of the office’s two-story-high ceiling. Besides being high—people rarely looked up—the opening was well behind the desks, which meant that the backs of any guards present would be turned to anything emerging from it. It was a workable point of ingress except for one problem—it was about as big around as a large Maxwell House coffee can.
She said, “It’s a ventilation shaft, and I don’t think I’m going to fit.”
“No,” Doc agreed regretfully.
The other problem with going in through the door was that the guards would certainly notice and remember her. That was bad, but what was worse was the unsettling worry that one of them might have seen the Darjeeling Brothers’ contract. Of course, she would be in disguise but, still, she didn’t like to be so exposed.
Bianca was just thinking, I could have Doc take them a pizza, when her eye was caught by a tiny figure descending a rope that dangled from the aerialists’ rig up near the ceiling. It was Griff, and he came down furry brown paw over furry brown paw, passing Kristof and the others on the high wire, then flipping upside down so that he was sliding headfirst by his feet before launching himself into the air like a flying squirrel when he was still some twenty feet above the ground. He wore a red vest–type harness, and she saw that far from falling, he was being lowered, spread-eagled, tail arched over his back in a tight curl, to the ring by a red rope clipped to the harness.
Once he touched the ground, Griff unclipped the rope and scampered to Oskar, who’d just run into the ring with Zoltan. Griff sat and offered Oskar a banana that he pulled from his vest. When Oskar leaned down to accept the banana, Griff snatched the black bowler hat from Oskar’s head, leaped on Zoltan’s back, and, clutching the hat, rode the loping lion around the ring with a comically angry Oskar in hot pursuit.
As an act, it was mildly amusing. But what riveted Bianca’s attention was Griff.
She felt Doc’s eyes on her and glanced his way.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.
“Depends. I’m thinking that maybe Griff could do it.”
“Great minds,” Doc said. “’Cause that’s what I was thinking, too.”
Bianca waited until Oskar had finished his rehearsal, then went down to the ring to talk to him.
* * *
By 9:00 p.m. Thursday, everything was on track for the job the next night. Lazlo had acquired a used fire truck along with the necessary number of uniforms and equipment trunks to carry the fake treasure in and the real treasure out. Dedi and Bela were almost finished with the replicas, and Dedi vowed that everything would be completed and ready to pack up by noon the next day. Doc had visited a number of computer and hardware stores in the vicinity and had found the needed components for a Raspberry Pi. He was busy assembling and programming it to the exact timeline and specifications provided by Bianca, who had planned out the job to the minute. She always did so, but the fact that the Raspberry Pi meant that the Pushkin’s computer system would be completely preprogrammed with the instructions Doc fed it meant that she had to be especially careful to be accurate. If an emergency call went out to the police, for example, before Doc was able to intercept it, they would be screwed.
Oskar had greeted Bianca’s question about whether his pet could perform the needed action with scorn. Of course he could! Griff would require only the smallest amount of practice, his own act only the smallest of additions so that the needed practice could be acquired during rehearsals in the ring, which would allow them to work from the necessary height.
Watching Oskar’s addition to his act, Bianca had been impressed with both the old man’s ingenuity and Griff’s ability to learn. Now, after Griff descended the rope, flew into space and touched down in the ring, he unhooked himself and scampered over to a computer Doc had provided that was as nearly identical to the one used by the Pushkin security system as he’d been able to find. The computer was placed on a desk in the middle of the ring. Oskar sat behind the desk working on something. Griff crept up to it, looking cagily at Oskar who pretended to be unaware, and in a lightning movement plugged in a card designed to mimic the Raspberry Pi. That triggered a light show, and while Griff hooked himself back onto the rope and was whisked toward the ceiling, Oskar jumped up and clapped his hands to his cheeks in surprise as brightly colored polka dots and stars and figures made of light began to revolve crazily around the arena. Oskar ran out of the ring in mock fear, the light show finished and stagehands rolled the desk away. Oskar then reemerged with Zoltan, seemingly for protection, looking warily around the ring before Griff descended the rope again and they went into the original act.
As entertainment, it actually kind of worked.
Bianca, for her part, had determined that the invitations to the gala had been sent by e-vite and had obtained one by the simple expedient of having Doc hack into the event planner’s file and print one for her. She had also assembled the explosives she needed for both the tunnels and the gala. Two old cars, purchased for cash on the black market that wa
s so prevalent in Moscow, had their trunks loaded with the kind of charge that would produce a lot of noise, a lot of smoke, but very little danger to anyone. Elena would drive one and Maria would be in the other. Feigning car trouble, they would leave the vehicles on the shoulder inside the tunnels and return to the rendezvous spot in a vehicle driven by Dorottya. Dedi and Bela would be there with the caravan and the animals. There the five of them would wait for the rest of the group to join them postrobbery. At the same time, the explosives in the cars, which were on a timer, would go off as scheduled.
The circus’s 7:00 p.m. show was under way and the rest of the group was fully occupied with either completing their tasks for the robbery or watching the show or, in the case of Kristof, Franz, Adam and Bence, fretting about the result of their audition, which had taken place that afternoon. (For pride’s sake they wanted to be awarded a place, and Dorottya and Lazlo wanted them to be awarded a place. But given what was to come, they all agreed that it would be for the best if they were rejected.)
Tibor Alexandrovich had promised to tell them the verdict of the committee that made those decisions after the evening’s performance.
Bianca, meanwhile, was engaged in walking the first leg of the journey back to the circus from the Pushkin. She was alone, and in a mood to appreciate both privacy and anonymity. Usually right before a job she was amped up and laser focused. Tonight she just felt tired, and even a little down. Being constantly on the run was getting old, but since the alternative was dying, the only thing to do was buck up and get on with things.
She’d come out to get a look at the museum during the time the robbery would take place. Tonight the museum had closed at eight, but she’d lingered to check out such details as outside lighting and any exit closings that might trip them up. Roof access for Oskar and Griff was another concern, but a particularly dark and sheltered area around back would work well for an expandable ladder, which Oskar would then draw up behind him until it was time to come down.
The Moscow Deception--An International Spy Thriller Page 27
