He had almost reached their table, when Ryan suddenly remembered. He had been sitting at the restaurant window when he and Lily had been on their dinner date. He now recalled the pale face, sitting alone with just one table setting. A stab of fear gripped Ryan as he realized that it was not a coincidence that he had been there that night. He looked across at Lily, his face now filled with concern as he tried to work everything out in his head.
Lily gave the man a silent nod of recognition, and Ryan watched as he took a chair from the next table and positioned himself facing them both across the small wooden coffee table.
Ryan kept his eyes on Lily, the knots in his stomach twisting uncontrollably, telling him that something was terribly wrong. No one spoke. Ryan looked between Lily and the new arrival and finally broke the awkward silence between them.
“Lily, what’s going on?” Ryan murmured.
The Chinese man spoke before Lily could respond.
“We have spoken before Mr Harper. I’m sure my voice is familiar to you?”
Ryan heard again the same cool tone that he had listened to earlier that day. It was still as threatening and it chilled Ryan to his core, causing him to shiver involuntarily.
Ryan remained silent, not sure of himself any longer, not sure of anything.
“I’m very pleased that we have finally been able to meet.” The Chinese man continued to speak to Ryan as though this was just a social meeting.
Ryan’s mind was racing. None of the past few hours had made any sense to him. He couldn’t fathom why this was all happening. Why he found himself sitting in a café, with a woman that he thought he was having a relationship with, his closest friend disappearing without trace and sitting opposite a total stranger who was successfully intimidating him. Finally Ryan spoke again, he needed to understand. He needed it all to be explained to him.
“Where is Rob, is he OK?” Ryan was trying to remain calm, but the strain in his voice was audible.
“Your friend is quite well. But it’s time that we explained to you why I’m here and why you are here.” He said to Ryan. “You have something that I need, and you are going to help to me to get it.”
Ryan sat quietly waiting for him to continue.
“Just in case you had any stray thoughts of contacting the Police or the Bank, I’ve brought this along to show you.”
Ryan watched as he slipped his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and produced a Polaroid picture. He slid it across the table to Ryan.
Ryan looked at the image before him. It took only a second for the reality of what he was looking at sink in. His mouth dried up immediately and his heart began to pump adrenaline through his body.
The grainy Polaroid featured Rob sitting on a metal chair in the middle of an empty well-lit white room. He was wearing his work shirt, no longer white and crisp. It was now crumpled and covered with a mixture of dirt, and what Ryan assumed could only be blood. His trousers and shoes had been removed, leaving him in just his boxer shorts and socks with his legs bare. His feet and ankles were taped with silver duct tape to the chair legs. His hands had been taped to his thighs rendering him helpless. Rob’s nose was bleeding heavily and Ryan guessed that it was probably also broken. His lip was swollen to the point of splitting and his left eye was black around the socket, with a cut above the brow. His hair was messy and hung down across his other eye. He was reluctantly looking toward the camera, clear that he had been told to do so under duress.
Ryan’s hand shook slightly as he passed the Polaroid back across the table. Alarmed now, he looked at Lily for help.
“Did-did you know about this?” Ryan muttered quietly. He looked into Lily’s eyes, hoping that she would be as horrified as he was at the sight of their friend, severely beaten and clearly distressed, that he would see the same fear that now gripped him.
Almost before he had finished saying the words, the truth of what he had hoped he wouldn’t have to face collapsed completely when he saw the affirmation in her eyes. She knew. The realization made him feel sick and for the first time, since the pale Chinese man had entered the café, Lily’s tight grip on Ryan’s arm slackened. For a fleeting moment Ryan thought that she looked almost sad, then she straightened her back and slowly removed her hand altogether from Ryan and answered his question.
“Ryan” she spoke softly and slowly now as she tried to choose her words carefully.
“I knew about Rob. But I didn’t know that he would be treated so badly, this was not part of the plan.” This comment she flung across the table accusingly, before returning her attention back to Ryan.
“You need to do everything that he tells you to do, and I guarantee that Rob will be released, unharmed, as soon as it’s all over. I’m sorry Ryan, but you have no choice at this stage”.
For a brief moment Lily’s eyes began to moisten and she quickly blinked back the hot angry tears that threatened to spill. She was angry and emotional. Angry that Ghost Face had put her in this position, and that she had allowed her friend to be hurt unnecessarily.
“Save the dramatics”, Ryan said harshly. He turned his head toward to café counter. He couldn’t bear to look at her. He suddenly felt like such a fool. He took a few deeps breaths and when he spoke again, he was calmer.
“What do you want from me? What do you need me to do?” He managed to get the words out this time without his voice cracking.
Ghost Face’s mouth formed a thin smile.
“Good” he almost whispered to Ryan. “You may have just saved your friends life.”
“You, Mr Harper, are going to help us to break in to the World Asia Bank”.
Ryan blinked once. His mind now trying to process what had just been said.
“W-what”, he stumbled quietly over his own words. “What?” incredulous, he repeated himself again a little louder this time. “What!” Then taking them by surprise, he laughed out loud.
His laugh echoed across the café, making people turn and look at the three of them sitting around the table, perhaps enjoying a good story or a joke. But it was no joke. Ryan could see the seriousness in their faces.
“How am I supposed to do that?” He looked first at Lily and then Ghost Face, whose thin-lipped smile had quickly disappeared leaving behind a deadpan glare.
“It’s very simple Mr Harper, you have two things that I need”. He said, his voice steady and calm with his customary trace of coldness.
“Firstly your hands, or, more precisely, your fingertips, and secondly your security access. ”
“Oh” Ryan muttered weakly.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of the Lights Out Campaign. It’s been busy gaining popularity over the last few months. We’ve been following it closely and helping it along where we can. They have successfully managed to enroll all major buildings and businesses across the City to join their campaign. Your Bank is one of them. And tonight, when the lights of Hong Kong go out at 8pm and we are all plunged into a City of absolute darkness, we will enter the bank, and we will break into the vault using your security access.”
Ghost Face continued, almost breathless now. “If you do everything that we say and we are successful, then we will release your friend alive.”
“And if I refuse? Or-or if we fail?” Ryan already knew the answer, but he needed to hear it out loud.
Ghost Face leaned in so close to Ryan that he could smell his warm stale breath, making Ryan recoil slightly in his chair.
“If you refuse Mr Harper, we will first torture you until you give us the access codes, cut off the hand that we require, and then kill your friend. If you prefer it that way.”
Ryan was unable to mask his own feelings of despair as he reluctantly agreed to do what he needed to do, to save Rob. His heart was now pumping so hard that he feared that they could hear it beating outside of his body. He knew in that very moment that he had been stripped of any choice. The responsibility of what he was going to have to do, and the thought that he held his friends life in his hands, started to
descend heavily upon his shoulders.
He refused to allow himself to wallow too deeply in self-pity and started to consider what lay ahead. Questions now started to pour into his already busy head with a multitude of potential obstacles and concerns.
“Since the attempted breach last week we have tightened security everywhere. Even I can’t simply switch everything off whilst you do your thing.” He looked at Lily now, trying to fathom her involvement in this.
“Lily, you know this. You installed everything, but now that it’s all in, we manage it all ourselves. If I try to mess with the security cameras, sensors and alarms, everything will be recorded. The date, the time, who changed the settings. It’s impossible to change without one of the alarms being raised.”
Ghost Face spoke now, his face shining with excitement.
“Ah, all good questions Mr Harper.” He said. “Your good friend here, Lily, has taken care of everything.” Ghost Face moved his gaze to Lily then back to Ryan, enjoying the moment.
Ryan had been well and truly played. He thought back to his first meeting with Lily and tried to dissect it. He remembered that she had shown mild interest in him, but had still been reserved, even a little demure. She certainly hadn’t thrown herself at him. It had been Rob that had massaged their relationship, pushed him to call her, thought it was all a great idea. Ryan couldn’t believe his luck that she had even been interested in him. Now he knew why. He had been such a fool, so easily deceived. Poor Rob. Ryan suddenly thought. This was so much worse for him.
“How could you do this to Rob?” He asked almost in a whisper, all of his energy was now ebbing away.
Lily moved her body so that she was fully facing Ryan. She tried to ignore Ghost Face observing her now.
She rested her left hand gently on Ryan’s arm, testing the reaction. He didn’t move. He was frozen to his seat.
“I had no choice, it was the only way to convince you to be involved. Rob doesn’t know about my connection. He doesn’t even know who has taken him and why. It’s for the best.” She paused. “Ryan, it was always going to be you. You are a faithful friend and you have something that we need. I knew you would help us. I knew you wouldn’t let your friend get hurt.”
“Don’t patronize me”, Ryan said, suddenly angry. “ This is not a game Lily, you can’t play with people like this. This is serious stuff. Stuff that gets you thrown into jail or killed.”
“It never was a game Ryan. I am, by choice, involved in this, from start to finish, something that I would never expect you to understand, even if I explained it to you. I’m sorry, but I need you to do this one thing”.
Ryan was struggling to stay calm. He wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her, make her see that she was making a huge mistake, that she was putting them all at risk. He wanted to just get up and leave, to go straight to the Police and tell them everything. But he knew that he couldn’t do it. He knew that he could never live with himself if Rob was killed at his expense. He suddenly imagined his old life. His boring job, and his boring friends and what he would pay to be back in boring England now. He would never complain again.
Ryan felt a cool distance between them now. No longer the warmth that had been there earlier, or days before when they had been wrapped around each other in his bed. All of that had now dissolved, evaporated the second her true colours had been exposed. He didn’t recognise this Woman before him. The calm exterior, the serious face. She was all business now. He heard her talking again as she pulled him away from his troubled thoughts.
“Ryan, the rules are quite simple. Do as we tell you, and when it’s over, you can go back to your life as though this never even happened.”
Ryan looked from Lily to Ghost Face and back again, incredulous that she actually believed what she was saying.
“And you really, really think that you can get away with this?” He looked at them both eyes wide waiting for their response.
“Yes, we do.” Lily said simply.
Ryan slumped back in his chair. He was silent for a moment, trying to reconcile himself. He was about to agree to something so against everything that he believed in, so that he in turn could save his friend.
“OK”, he said, now resigned. “ What do I need to do?”
“Lily will run through the plan with you now, it won’t take long, then you will go back to your apartment and wait there until I come to collect you in a few hours. Your phone, keep it close at hand, if I need to contact you, I will call you.” Ghost Face gave Ryan a twisted smile. Ryan wanted to throw up there and then and it took all of his concentration for him to keep the bile down.
“Lily, the details.” Ghost Face motioned with his pale hand for Lily to get started. She leaned down to her black Hermes bag sitting on the floor next to her chair and pulled out a brown dossier.
“Now, you need to listen carefully”, Lily began as she leaned over the coffee table and closer to Ryan. “We will guide you tonight, but you need to understand exactly what is going to happen.” She folded out the file onto the coffee table in front of them.
She sifted through the papers until she found the drawing that she was looking for. Looking down at the paper Ryan scanned the image before him and immediately recognized the plans of the bank’s ground floor and vault.
“OK, we only have eight minutes tonight, so we have no time to hang back or pause, every member of this team has a job to do, including you, and every second counts.” She looked at him seriously and he nodded back silently, trying to focus on what she was saying.
“As soon as the lights go out across the City, the stopwatch starts which Ghost Face is going to monitor throughout. We will all slip into the entrance and the first hurdle is the door leading towards the vault entrance. Here we will need you to swipe your card to get us all through.” Lily traced her finger across the plans indicating to Ryan their direction.
Ryan stopped her before she could continue.
“What about the cameras and sensors? He said that you had everything covered? How can we proceed undetected? He asked Lily.
Lily nodded expecting the question.
“As you know this is my field of expertise. Alongside developing the new IP technology that replaced your CCTV cameras, we also developed software that allows us to manipulate the images seen from a remote location. It’s already built in to your system. It’s just that you are not aware of it. We cloaked it. The video signal is digitalized, using a special decoder that also contains an onboard web server. This acts as a network device, which allows the images to be viewed through a routed network, but also through a web browser. All this can be done in another location, and it’s all completely wireless. We already have all of the footage that we need to send back through the system, which will replace the real footage for exactly eight minutes. As soon as we are done, all of the cameras will be switched back to real time as though nothing ever happened. We can also remotely disable the motion detectors area by area. The security officer on duty will be none the wiser, and it will appear that we were never even there.”
Ryan sat motionless for a moment whilst he arranged his thoughts.
“So when the cameras were down a few weeks ago during the attempted breakin, that was on purpose?” Ryan asked looking directly at Lily.
“Yes, it was a trial run that didn’t quite go as planned.” Lily said dryly, shooting a fleeting glance across the table at Ghost Face.
“So your company is actually a total front? Incredible!” Ryan blinked in disbelief. They had all been fooled. The bank. John McIntyre. Rob and of course himself. All of them had been sucked in by her charms and her clever lies.
“So what is it exactly that you plan to do?” Ryan asked, now curious.
“We plan to steal $20 million USD in $100 dollar bills.” Lily stated simply. She looked across at Ghost Face. He was amused, enjoying himself at Ryan’s expense.
“Is-is that all?” Ryan asked, surprising them both. “I mean, if you are in the vault and you can pull this
off, is that all you think you can get out? Why not more?”
“It’s a very good question”. Lily said.
“We have a lot of factors against us for this one. We have an absolute eight-minute time frame in which to carry this out. We have four men, people that we have used before that we know and trust. They are professional, discreet and strong, and we are not going to be greedy. Greed is often the thing that catches a person out, or causes a plan to fail. If you get lost in the moment, take just that little bit more than you intended, then you stop following the rules, and you open yourself up to problems.”
“Are they just going to carry the money out in bags? Ryan asked. “Casually walk out of the bank’s entrance with $20 million dollars. How’s that even possible?” he asked.
“How much do you think $1 million USD weighs?” she said, looking at Ryan.
“I have no idea?” He said truthfully.
“It weighs just 10kgs, in $100 dollar bills. It’s easy to carry. We know that the bank stacks the notes two ways in the vault. We expect to find them either in stacks of four, measuring just over 1ft high, or they will be sitting in stacks of six, measuring just over 20cm high. The stacks are wrapped in plastic and bound. All of these factors have been included in the total weight calculation. Of course whichever way that we find the stacks, it will still come to a total of 10kgs in weight.” Lily paused allowing Ryan to take everything in.
“So we have calculated that we have our four men, and you, to carry the money.” She gave Ryan a brief smile.
“Me?” Ryan spluttered, “I thought I was your code and palm guy”.
“Well, yes you are, and the extra muscle. It has to be five guys in total to get the value that we need out. You will all carry 40kgs each in duffle bags that have special weight bearing back straps on them.” She said.
“We’ve worked out all the ratio’s. The average Chinese or Asian man is around 5ft, 6” tall with an average weight of 70-80 kilos. So based on their weight to height ratio and the theory that everyone can in fact carry 50% of their total body weight, means that if the four Chinese men that we have selected can do it, then so can you. You are taller, and weigh heavier than 80 kilo’s, so for sure you can manage it.”
Lights Out Page 8
