Hostage Tower u-1

by John Denis

  Bullets pinged off the shell of the helicopter, and one tore a track across the shoulder of his anti-radiation suit, but he felt no pain. A third salvo stuttered out, and Graham, who had been about to take off, swore brutally. He snapped open the clasp of his brief-case and drew out a heavy, ugly Schmeisser machine pistol.

  He could barely see the two vehicles in the pool of blinding light, so he hit the easier target.

  A vast swell of sound erupted as the gasolene cans exploded. The GIs were safe behind their jeeps, but there was now no possibility of stopping Graham.

  Behind a concealing wall of smoke and flame, the helicopter rose into the air, taking the false General, and four crated but fully operative Lap-Laser-guns, away to do the bidding of Mister Smith.

  The troops on the ground fired madly at the departing plane to ease their frustration, until the officer in charge resignedly flapped his hand in a gesture of dismissal.

  ‘Who the hell was he, sir?’ asked his sergeant.

  ‘Christ knows,’ the captain returned wearily, ‘but he sure wasn’t General Brick, because I’ve just been talking to General Brick in the officers’ club. Somebody walked off with his dress uniform, and it wasn’t his batman, so it must’ve been that sonofabitch up there.’

  He tipped his peaked cap back on his head, put his hands on his hips, and whistled out a tight-lipped sigh. ‘Can you imagine the crap that’s going to be flying around when the brass find out we’ve lost not just one of their favourite toys, but all four? Jeeze.’ He shook his head, almost admiringly. ‘You gotta hand it to that guy. He sure pulled a neat trick, whoever he is.’

  But the Army never did learn Graham’s identity. The BMW was untraceable, and Graham had made no fingerprints. His abandoned clothing was unmarked, and in any case had been bought from a chain store. He might as well have been a ghost for all the clues he left. Or a spook.

  He flew the helicopter eastwards for perhaps fifteen minutes on a pre-arranged flight path. Then he brought her in low and skimmed the tree-tops, his eyes combing the ground.

  There it was. A winking light in a pool of blackness. He flashed his own landing lights, and three pairs of vehicle headlamps came on in answer.

  Mike set the plane down quickly and expertly, forming a square in the deserted field with the big, dark Citröen, the Volkswagen, and the tough little pick-up truck that waited to greet him.

  He ran to the larger car, and the driver’s window slid noiselessly down. ‘You have them?’ asked a man in the uniform as a chauffeur.

  Mike said, ‘Yep.’

  ‘Excellent,’ the chauffeur returned briefly. He spoke guttural German. He reached over to the front passenger seat and handed Graham a loosely wrapped parcel and a brief-case of soft matt leather.

  ‘Clothing, your size,’ he grunted. ‘In the valise — money, and the keys to the Volkswagen. Don’t worry about the lasers. We’ll load them into the truck. You’ll be contacted for Phase Two. For now, disappear.’

  Graham opened the brief-case, and raised his eyebrows as he saw the fat bundles of small denomination US dollars. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’ The chauffeur nodded.

  Mike tried to peer beyond him to the man whom he could dimly see in the rear offside passenger seat, but a panel of tinted glass blocked his view. The windows were tinted, too. The man had not spoken a word, and sat hunched inside an enveloping overcoat, with a black Homburg pulled down over his brow.

  ‘Thank you, too,’ Graham said, cheerily. The mystery man stayed silent and unmoving. Mike gave up the struggle and walked away, whistling.

  The chauffeur turned and slid back the glass panel. ‘I’ll transfer the guns and take the pick-up to the warehouse, sir,’ he said, respectfully.

  ‘Do that,’ Smith grunted. ‘I’ll drive the Citröen and see you at the hotel. Don’t make any mistakes. Graham didn’t. He’s good.’

  The chauffeur nodded. ‘And the helicopter?’

  ‘Kill it,’ Smith ordered. ‘With Graham’s uniform and anti-radiation suit in it.’

  Mike was a mile away when he heard the ‘crump’ of the explosion, and saw in his rear-view mirror the funeral pyre of the helicopter.

  ‘You gotta hand it to that guy,’ he murmured, patting the brief-case on the seat beside him. ‘He sure pulls neat tricks, whoever he is.’

  TWO

  Weesperplein is not one of the great public squares of Amsterdam, like Sophiaplein, Rembrandtplein or Dam Square itself, but its commercial importance is undeniable. That Friday evening, Weesperplein hummed with important traffic and prosperous, stolid people, as the armoured secur ity van nosed its way patiently along to come to a halt outside Number Four.

  The uniformed, armed and helmeted driver of the vehicle got out, and slammed the self-locking door. He walked around to the rear of the van, and tapped with his truncheon on the panel. Two men, also in uniform and wearing guns, alighted to stand by him.

  The driver glanced at the clock above the heavy double-fronted entrance to Number Four, Weesperplein. The finely wrought gilt hands stood at four minutes to six. ‘Just in time,’ he remarked.

  While the driver rang the bell, his colleagues manhandled a wooden crate on to the sidewalk by its carrying handles. The summons was answered by a man of medium height, balding, with mild grey eyes and a nervous manner. He nodded to the driver, who turned to his companions and sang out, ‘OK.’

  They heaved the create up between them, and carried it inside. Then they returned and fetched from the van a precisely similar crate, and took that in, too. Both crates were heavy, and sealed.

  When all three security men came out, the nervous man stood in the doorway, watching them depart. He shut the front door behind them, and checked that it was fully locked.

  The driver glanced up again at the big clock. It gave the time as three minutes after six. ‘Home then,’ he said.

  Number Four, Weesperplein, was an impressive, even beautiful, building, and the Gothic-script ornamental letters forming the frieze around the clock described in two succinct words what went on behind the imposing facade. The legend was ‘AMSTERDAM DIAMANTBEUR’.

  A brass plate on the wall carried a translation for the benefit of foreigners: ‘AMSTERDAM DIAMOND EXCHANGE’.

  * * *

  Sabrina Carver made her first steal when she was seven.

  She lived then — and for the next ten years — in her native town of Fort Dodge, Iowa, county seat of Webster County, as Sabrina learned at an early age, and immediately forgot.

  It was also patiently explained to her that Fort Dodge had started life in 1850 as Fort Clarke, but the following year a pressing need arose to honour a certain Colonel Henry Dodge, and the name was changed. The fort was abandoned in 1853, so the tiny settlement, struggling to make ends meet in its uncompromising bed of river clay and gypsum, assumed the name.

  ‘Good for Colonel Dodge,’ thought Sabrina, and immediately forgot him, too.

  The Des Moines River, on which Fort Dodge stands, is still picturesque at that point, though it no longer rings to the cries of marauding Indians and defending settlers. It figured prominently in Sabrina Carver’s young life, though, since it was the scene of that very first theft.

  She was on a river trip with family and friends, and she calmly picked a tiny, silvery brooch off the coat of the lady who was sitting next to her, talking animatedly to Sabrina’s own mother. The larceny passed unnoticed for half an hour, until Sabrina’s mother spotted the brooch on her daughter’s dress.

  Though she was straightway forgiven by the gushing owner — ‘The poor, innocent little darling doesn’t know, does she’ — Sabrina made no fuss about giving the brooch back.

  For this act of mature contrition, she received a quarter from the gushing lady, who petted her like a doll, for Sabrina had appealing dark eyes, long red-blonde hair and a serious, saintly little face. As they were parting from her new-found friend, Sabrina stole the brooch again, and this time made sure her mother didn’t see it.

 
She sold the bauble to the roughest boy in school for two bucks. It was a gross under-payment, for the brooch had three diamonds set into a silver clasp. But at that time, Sabrina failed to recognize them as diamonds. She thought they were glass.

  She never made that mistake again.

  From then on, Sabrina stole regularly to brighten her comfortable but tedious middle-class life. She had unearthed a professional fence by the time she was nine, and impressed him with her ability to deliver her dentist father’s instruments, one at a time, over a space of three months. In that ongoing heist, she used a different modus operandi each time. The police were baffled.

  All her education, her astonishing physical fitness, her command of sports and special skills, even her flowering beauty, were ruthlessly channelled into serving her over-weening ambition to become one of the great thieves of all time. She chose new clothes, picture shows, books, lectures, holidays, only if they would widen her experience, or add to her prowess, or make the art of stealing easier for her.

  Sabrina was, then, supremely dedicated. On her seventeenth birthday she left high school laden with prizes, and clutching a letter from the Principal urging that she go on to Vassar, or at least Bryn Mawr, since she was the brightest student the school had ever known.

  Her fence held sixty-seven thousand dollars for Sabrina in his own deposit account. By the end of the following week she had almost doubled her nest-egg with the proceeds of a raid on a Des Moines hotel, which the police said could only have been committed by a small squad of acrobatic commandos.

  Sabrina warmly thanked her friend the fence, withdrew every cent of the capital, and disclaimed the current interest. She used the money to set up in business for herself in New York, later establishing branch offices in Paris, Monte Carlo, Rome and Gstaad.

  She never once went back to Fort Dodge, Iowa, and had not made the slightest attempt to contact her parents.

  Sabrina was a healthy girl and, at the age of twenty-five, almost indecently beautiful. Sex was easy to find, and she frequently found it.

  At no time, however, did she allow any ulterior consideration to interfere with what, for Sabrina, was the ruling passion, the most intense pleasure, of her life. Not merely stealing, but stealing diamonds.

  At stealing diamonds, Sabrina was indeed internationally acknowledged to be the very best.

  * * *

  There are probably more diamonds in Amsterdam than in any other single place in the world. Diamonds were first discovered in India, but the Dutch — who are inclined to treat anything of value with exaggerated respect — have been cutting and polishing them since the sixteenth century. At factories like Asscher’s, eagle-eyed cutters peer at cleavage panes parallel to the octahedral faces, and divide the fabulous crystals with immense care, skill and courage.

  Asscher’s it was who cleft the 2024-carat Cullinan Diamond. Joseph Asscher himself struck the master blow. Had he messed it up, his firm would doubtless have gone bankrupt, and the British Crown Jewels would have a lot of empty spaces in them.

  Asscher’s, and other manufacturing plants, are the places where the glamorous work of the diamond trade is done, but for dealing, the centre is the Amsterdam Diamond Exchange. The Exchange, in fact, handles bullion of all kinds, which was why its security manager did not for a moment hesitate to grant a request from an important client, concerning not gems, but a consignment of gold ingots.

  ‘I would not trouble you,’ the client, Kees van der Goes, had said, ‘except that I owe a favour to this friend of mine. He’s got a big shipment of gold passing through Amsterdam at the weekend … at least, it was supposed to, but the outward journey to London has been delayed. He’s asked me if you’d look after the crates for him until Monday morning. They’ll reach you on Friday night.’

  Van der Goes, a well-known diamond and bullion dealer, was a valued customer of the Exchange. The security manager, whose nervousness was endemic, and practically boundless, agreed immediately.

  ‘We’ll keep the vaults open for the consignment,’ he promised, ‘though if you could possibly arrange for the crates to be delivered by six o’clock, then the time-lock can run its routine, you know.’

  Van der Goes said he would try, and the security men backed him to the hilt. They had all, however, reckoned without the dealer’s pedantically fussy agent, who arrived at the Exchange shortly before the shipment, and insisted on examining at least part of the contents of both crates.

  They had been carried through to the rear lobby, and there, the massive steel door to the vaults stood open, even though the electric wall clock showed seven minutes after six. The crates stood side by side on the metal floor. The fussy agent had just finished sealing one crate, and was about to open the other.

  The nervous security manager’s anxiety increased with each second that passed.

  ‘Must you check the second crate?’ he pleaded. ‘It’s probably just the same as the first.’

  ‘I sincerely trust that it is,’ remarked the agent, ‘because it’s supposed to be, after all, isn’t it?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘But one must be positive, my dear fellow,’ protested the agent. ‘You would not wish me to do half my job, would you?’ ‘My job is to close the vault.’ ‘And so you shall. All in good time.’ The security manager shot the agent a glance of pure detestation, which was completely ignored. The agent unlocked the seals, and prised off the lid of the second crate. Like the first, it was filled to the brim with shiny gold ingots. As he had done before, however, the agent insisted in lifting up ingots from various places, to check the tier beneath. Finally satisfied, he lowered the lid, and laboriously replaced the clasps and seals.

  Mopping his brow, the nervous one pushed home the vault door, spun the locking wheels, dialled the combination, and set the clock for the time-lock. The Amsterdam Exchange vaults would now remain shut, sound-proof and air-tight, until nine o’clock on the following Monday morning.

  No human agency except a massive bomb could open the door from the outside.

  And no way had yet been devised for performing the operation from the inside.

  * * *

  The stillness within the vault was almost palpable, the air heavy and hot. No sound came, and no living thing stirred.

  So the shattering noise as the end panel of one of the crates was violently kicked out, seemed all the more horrendous because of the oppressive silence.

  Feet first, a dark figure wriggled into the total blackness of the vault. Despite the increasing warmth (which would eventually come under thermostatic control at 70 degrees Fahrenheit), the intruder shivered, for the place had about it the feel of the tomb.

  The beam of a slim torch cut through the Stygian darkness, and illuminated the other crate. With tools from the air-conditioned ‘living space’ in the first box, the burglar levered off the end panel of the second, and drew out more tools, plus battery lights, portable breathing apparatus, a radio, and a plentiful and varied supply of food and drink.

  A battery light came on, and the dark form of the thief was revealed, clad from head to foot in the sinister all-black garb and hood of a Ninja Assassin.

  Periodically, the hood was lifted to enable the intruder to breathe through a mask attached to an oxygen tank.

  Finally, Sabrina Carver pulled the hood off altogether, and released her flowing hair. She switched on the radio, and settled down to a packet of smoked salmon sandwiches and a bottle of excellent Pouilly Fuissé.

  It was going to be a long wait until Monday morning, she thought, with only the theft of a small fortune in diamonds to while away the time.

  * * *

  The electric clock controlling the time-lock jumped from two minutes of nine to one minute. The security manager started in sympathy, despite the fact that his Monday morning routine of opening the vaults had not varied since he joined the staff of the Amsterdam Diamond Exchange twelve years before.

  The machinery had merely got more sophisticated, and though the clock made
no noise as it ticked off the minutes, the security manager, being nervous, acted as if the passage of the long hand was the crack of doom.

  He was accompanied by the Deputy Director of the Exchange — again, as normal — and lurking discreetly behind them were two armed and uniformed guards. One kept a wary eye on van der Goes’s fussy little agent.

  Nine o’clock.

  A white bulb over a switch box next to the vault door blinked on. A plaque in the wall identified the box as the ‘Time Vault Release’. A security guard reached out a long arm and, on the nod of the Deputy Director, pressed down a lever.

  The security manager breathed a sigh of heartfelt relief, and stepped forward to turn the large combination dial, and spin the wheels in reverse direction.

  The guards lifted their weapons and flanked the two executives.

  With a solid metallic ‘clunk’, the bolts inside the vault slid along their tracks, and the mighty door swung soundlessly out.

  The security manager looked over his shoulder at his boss, smiling for the first time during the entire weekend.

  The five men outside the vault barely had time to register the unbelievable scene … steel deposit boxes lying open, some scattered on the floor, clearly empty, alongside a trio of equally empty wine bottles.

  Then the bizarre black hooded figure was on them.

  The guards did little more than gape, because the intruder was clear past before they realized there had been anyone in the vault at all.

  They were left with one scarcely possible, lunatic impression: of the sound of whirring wheels.

  It was only when the hooded figure had gone that one guard turned on his heel, loosed off a departing shot, and shouted, ‘Roller skates! It had roller skates!’

  In the outer lobby, secretaries and early arriving businessmen dived for safety as the apparition sped across the marble floor in long, crouching strides. Sabrina saw the far wall looming up, and made a dramatic power leg-over-leg turn.