by Roland Smith
“What if they wear a disguise?” Atticus asked.
Rommel gave a thin smile. “You can lose weight, gain weight, change your hairstyle, hair color, eye color, but you cannot change your bone structure. The software sees through all of these disguises.”
Atticus thought about texting Amy and telling her not to act suspicious but then squirmed. If someone told him not to act suspicious, he’d immediately look twice as guilty as before.
“So if you’re wanted by the police, your face is in the software database?” Atticus asked.
“Not just wanted.” Rommel took over the cursor. Atticus held his breath, then let it out when Rommel switched to the video feed near the Ishtar Gate. He zoomed in on a middle-aged man. “Notice how he is not paying attention to the wall like the other patrons.”
Atticus nodded. The man was looking everywhere but at the art.
“He was acting the same way as he went through the security line,” Rommel continued. “Very suspicious. Go ahead and click on him.”
Atticus clicked the mouse. A symbol appeared in the upper right-hand corner of the screen followed by the man’s name.
Atticus tried not to faint.
“So you can see that our facial recognition software not only identifies criminals,” Rommel explained, “but it also identifies those who are pursuing criminals. Interpol stands for International Criminal Police Organization. We don’t know who Agent Vanek is looking for, or even if he is after someone. We just know that he’s in the building. We do not ask him what he is doing here. We just simply keep an eye on him. If he needs assistance, of course we will be happy to help.”
Atticus knew exactly who Agent Milos Vanek was looking for. Vanek was the Interpol agent who had been hunting Amy and Dan Cahill since they committed their first crime for Vesper One. But how did Vanek know Amy and Dan were here? Atticus had to warn them, but Rommel was standing right over him.
“Why don’t we switch places?” Atticus suggested, taking his smartphone out. “I need to get some of this down for my report. You can demonstrate while I take notes.”
“Very good.” They switched places. “I’ll demonstrate how we can track . . .”
Atticus tuned Rommel out as he typed the bad news to Amy.
Dan was surprised to see there was only one door in and out of the Golden Jubilee room. People entered on the right side and exited on the left. An alert guard stood in the middle of the entrance, directing traffic and staring at everyone with steely blue eyes. Dan smiled at him as he passed. The guard did not smile back.
The glittering Jubilee Diamond was cordoned off by red velvet ropes. A mass of people circled their way past for a quick look, then moved on to the lesser jewels in the exhibit farther along the ropes. There were four armed guards standing in the middle of the rope circle, each facing a different direction. Above them were at least a dozen security cameras that swiveled constantly up and down, and back and forth.
Dan silently cursed Vesper One. Stealing the Jubilee was impossible.
Alistair Oh was going to die.
Amy stood in the security line, her backpack on the conveyor belt, her pockets empty except for the fake Jubilee Diamond, and her nerves completely frazzled.
Just before she stepped into line, they shut down two of the three security stations and announced that the museum would be closing in half an hour. This caused a bottleneck in the remaining line, and it was moving with agonizing slowness.
Amy’s phone buzzed. She pulled it out and saw that she had a text from Atticus. She opened it and froze in place.
Milos Vanek is in the building.
The person in line behind her bumped into her back, and Amy let out a small scream.
“Sorry,” she apologized, her face full of heat. She shuffled forward, scanning the room for Agent Vanek, wondering if the people around her could hear her heart pounding in her chest. She began to write a text to Dan, but didn’t get very far.
“You will have to put the phone on the belt, Fraülein,” a guard said, handing her a tray.
“Oh — oh . . .” she stammered. “Of course. Sorry.”
Get ahold of yourself! Breathe.
She put her cell on the belt and tried to give the guard a smile, then remembered her watch and slipped it into a separate tray.
“Nothing metal in your pockets?”
Amy shook her head.
The guard nodded and Amy stepped through the detector. Alarms began to blare and red light blazed out across the room. To her horror, Amy became the instant focus of every pair of eyes in the room.
“We have one,” a woman scanning the monitors said.
Rommel and Atticus turned around from the computer, and bile crept up Atticus’s throat. Amy was on the big screen, surrounded by three guards.
“She was acting a little suspicious in line,” the woman said. “But I didn’t think anything of it until the detector sounded.”
Rommel got up from the chair. “It’s probably nothing, but let’s run the facial program on her for our guest.”
“You-you don’t have to do that for me,” Atticus stammered. “I’m actually a lot more interested in how you can follow people from one end of the museum to the —”
“This will only take a minute,” Rommel interrupted. “And it’s just a teenager, so we probably won’t get a hit. Zoom in on her. Run the program.”
Rommel’s eyes widened, and then his lips curved into a hunter’s smile. “As you might say in America, bingo!”
Atticus stared at the screen in defeat. Amy was standing with her arms out to the side. In the upper right-hand corner of the monitor was an alert.
“Locate Agent Vanek!” Rommel said.
A video of Milos Vanek appeared on one of the smaller screens. He was standing inside the Jubilee room, but he was not looking at the diamond.
“What’s he staring at?” Rommel asked.
The guard started to flip through the cameras in the room.
Atticus already knew who Vanek was trailing. He quietly backed away from Rommel and the others to the computer terminal they had been using. He typed in Rommel’s password and found the menu he was looking for.
Time to flip the switch.
The lights went out, then came back on a second later as the backup generator kicked in.
There’s more than one switch!
Atticus killed the generator with five keystrokes, but the lights came on once again as the batteries took over.
Rommel turned around and glared at him.
“What are you doing?” he shouted, striding toward Atticus.
Atticus continued typing. He had to change the password before he hit the last switch or they would have the system back up in seconds.
“Step away from that keyboard!” Rommel lunged for him.
As Atticus dodged the enraged security chief, he managed to flip the final switch. The security room and the museum were plunged into complete darkness. Rommel started bellowing out orders. “Code red! Secure the rooms! We need lights! Find the boy!”
Atticus crawled as far away from the shouts as he could. He had positioned himself so he was facing the security door, but now in the pitch-black he wasn’t sure if he was moving in the right direction. A flashlight flicked on, then another. The beams started to comb the room.
“I can’t reboot the system!” someone shouted. “The passcode doesn’t work!”
“The boy!” Rommel said. “Find him!”
Atticus started hyperventilating. His heart was slamming in his chest. They would be on him any second.
A flashlight beam swept along the far wall.
The door!
He crawled as fast as he could.
Dan was crawling, too.
The sudden blackout caused pandemonium in the Jubilee room. People screamed and rushed the exit as the dark enveloped them. Dan was knocked to the floor. As he got to his hands and knees he was smacked down again. Someone stepped on his face. Another person clomped over his back. He
was terrified, but not because of the dark, or the stampede. A second before the lights went out, he had seen the triumphant face of Milos Vanek staring right at him.
Dan crawled over to a wall and curled into a fetal position to make his body the smallest possible target. Every time someone kicked or bumped against him, he wondered if it was Milos Vanek catching up with him at long last.
The guards shouted for everyone to relax and stay where they were, but their commands were drowned out by the general hysteria.
Dan took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. Think! This isn’t over yet. I’m ten feet away from the diamond in a pitch-black room. He watched the guards’ flashlight beams, trying to gauge where they were and what they were doing. What he saw was not good. All of the beams were concentrated around the Jubilee case. There was a sweep of light and Dan saw the guards illuminated. They had their guns drawn.
His heart sank. Even if I got past them, I’d still have to get the case open.
His Bluetooth pinged. “Dan?” It was Amy. She sounded out of breath.
“What?”
“Milos Vanek is in the museum!”
“I know. He’s in the room with me somewhere,” Dan said, his eyes still fixed on the cluster of guards around the diamond. “Where are you?”
“I’m with Atticus. He managed to slip out of security after switching off the lights. Rommel and the guards are looking for us. The police just arrived to secure the building. Atticus says the lights could come back on at any minute.”
“Then get out,” Dan said.
“What about the diamond? What about you?”
“I’ve got a plan. See you at the car.” Dan pocketed the phone and looked at the silhouettes of the guards surrounding the case.
What’s the worst that could happen? he thought as he crawled toward the Jubilee.
An unseen hand reached out from the darkness and grabbed Dan’s arm in a viselike grip. Dan tore himself away and jumped to his feet. The guards pointed their flashlights at the commotion and he caught a glimpse of his assailant.
It was Vanek.
The agent lunged for him. Dan dodged away and slammed into one of the jewel cases. Vanek tripped and fell.
“Interpol!” Vanek shouted. “Arrest him!”
Dan expected the guards to shoot him, or at least gang-tackle him, but they stayed exactly where they were, protecting the Golden Jubilee. He ducked under their flashlight beams and tried to feel his way out of the black room.
If I’m arrested, it’s game over. The Jubilee will have to wait.
He glanced back over at the guards. The shadow of a man was standing in front of them, shouting in German. He couldn’t understand what he was saying, but it had to be Vanek demanding their help. The guards didn’t budge from their positions, but Dan could see a flashlight beam bounce around the room, searching. Vanek had borrowed a light.
Dan stood and took off for where he hoped the exit was.
“Stop!”
He pressed through the panicked crowd trying to get through the door.
“Interpol! Stop him!”
Vanek’s shouts echoed closer and closer behind him as he clawed his way past screaming tourists. Interpol’s finest was only inches away.
“Do we wait for Dan?” Atticus asked, breathing hard.
“We leave together or we don’t leave at all,” Amy said as she frantically scanned the people stumbling through the darkness.
People were using the light of their cell phones to find the exit. Some of them were injured and being helped by others.
“The lights are thinning out,” she said. “It’ll be hard for us to hide without a crowd.”
“Try calling him again,” Atticus suggested.
Amy hit his speed dial. It rang and rang, then went to voice mail. . . .
“Dan here. The reason I didn’t pick up is because I’m probably eating something delicious. Leave a message and I’ll —”
Someone wrapped their arms around Amy from behind. She screamed and jerked her head toward Atticus. A second man had grabbed him at the exact same moment. Rommel! She tried to stomp on her captor’s foot, but he danced away and threw her to the ground. Her arms were wrenched behind her back and she felt the cold bite of handcuffs snapping around her wrists.
“Sorry . . . sorry . . . excuse me . . . sorry . . . umph . . . sorry . . .”
Dan stopped near the Ishtar Gate to catch his breath. He hadn’t seen Vanek’s flashlight beam in a couple of minutes, but he knew the Interpol agent was somewhere behind him in the dark. He wondered if he should double back and take another shot at the diamond now, or find a place to hide and tackle it later, after the museum emptied out. He looked at his watch and nearly vomited. There would be no later. Their time was up.
Someone is going to die.
The litany pounded across his brain until he couldn’t focus on anything else. The horror of it burst out of his mouth in a terrible scream, and he didn’t care if everyone in Berlin heard him. That’s when his legs were pulled out from under him. He hit the marble floor hard and all the air rushed out of his lungs. As he lay gasping for breath, a flashlight clicked on, illuminating the jack-o’-lantern face of Agent Milos Vanek. Dan tried to get away, but found himself cuffed to Vanek’s wrist.
“I go where you go,” Vanek said. “We will wait here until the lights come back on. Perhaps we can have a nice conversation while we watch the people bump into each other.” He scooted under the velvet rope near a stanchion and leaned against the wall of the Ishtar Gate.
Dan had no choice but to join him.
“Why were you screaming?”
Dan didn’t answer. At the moment he was almost angrier at himself than he was at Vesper One. How could he have let Vanek sneak up on him?
“Cat has tongue? Okay. Change subject. I assume your sister is in the museum.”
“If you don’t let me go, someone is going to die,” Dan said, surprised to feel hot tears of frustration running down his face.
“No need for tears. I can help. I am a policeman.”
“I’m not crying,” Dan said, turning his face away. “And I don’t need your help. I just need you to let me go.”
“That might be possible,” Vanek said. “After you tell us about stealing the Caravaggio ‘Medusa’ and the Marco Polo manuscript, and your escape from jail. When I get you and your sister into head-quarters I should not take more than a week to straighten this out.”
Dan did not have a week, or a day, or a minute. He dragged a hand across his face to wipe the tears away. He didn’t have time for crying, either. Vesper One could kill all of the hostages in a week.
“The Caravaggio painting we took from the Uffizi Gallery was a fake,” he said. “We found the real one and it was returned. No one even knew the Marco Polo manuscript existed, so you can’t very well accuse us of stealing it. As for the jailbreak, we didn’t escape. Your coworker Luna Amato let us out.”
“Luna Amato is not my coworker!” Vanek spit the words out like he had just taken a bite of cow dung. Dan felt spittle spray his face. “She is a traitor! If I could just get my hands on her I would . . .” Vanek raised his hands like he was throttling someone. “Wait a minute, what!?”
Dan stood up, rubbing his wrist. “Sorry, Milos, I gotta go.” He reached down and took the flashlight and grabbed his pack.
Lightfinger Larry would have been proud. While Vanek was talking, Dan had lifted his keys and wallet. He had removed the handcuff from his wrist and reattached it to a stanchion.
“Unlock these cuffs!” Vanek shouted.
Dan raced off, taking little satisfaction in getting away from the Interpol agent. He ran across the lobby, trying to keep back fresh tears, his thoughts focused on the diamond. His only hope was that Amy had found a way to grab it. People were pouring out through the front doors. The police and television crews had arrived and were setting up equipment. He was reaching for his cell to call Amy when someone grabbed him. But Dan wasn’t going t
o be taken again. He swung the heavy flashlight.
“It’s me!” a familiar voice shouted as Jake wrenched the flashlight out of his hand.
“I thought you were in the car,” Dan answered lamely.
“I got tired of waiting. And it’s lucky I did. I got here just in time to see two guys manhandle Atticus and Amy through there.” He pointed the flashlight at a door.
“‘Security. Do not enter,’” Jake translated.
“We have to get Atticus and Amy out of there.”
Jake nodded. “Where were you?”
“Up in the Jubilee room with Milos Vanek.”
“He’s here?”
Dan explained what had happened.
Jake’s voice brightened. “So you have his wallet?”
Dan took it out. “And his car keys.”
“We don’t need the keys for what I have in mind.” Jake raised his eyebrow. “Do you really know how to drive?”
Despite the tears and the tight feeling in his chest, Dan managed a weak smile as Jake explained what he wanted to do.
This sounded like Dan’s kind of plan.
Amy and Atticus had been handcuffed together and pushed into two hard chairs against the wall. Rommel stood in front of them, flicking a flashlight beam on their faces as he interrogated them. So far neither one had answered any of his questions, which seemed to make him very angry. A guard stood nearby, shifting from foot to foot, and Amy could only guess that he was a little uneasy watching his boss yell at two children. Amy was trying to think of a way of taking advantage of the guard’s nerves when there was a knock at the door.
“Tell whoever it is to go away,” Rommel shouted.
The guard opened the door, spoke to the visitor for a moment, then walked back and whispered something to Rommel.
“Really?” Rommel said. “By all means, let him in. Perhaps these two will talk to Interpol.”
Atticus leaned over to Amy and whispered, “Milos Vanek?”
“It must be,” Amy whispered back.
“What do you —”
“No talking!” Rommel shouted, then turned to the man walking into the security room. “Agent Vanek. We are honored to have you here.”
