by Stephen Cole
‘OK, you don’t have to take the –’
‘And you don’t have to take this opportunity, Jonah. Before, I almost wished you wouldn’t. It’s dangerous, it’s tough – it sure as hell isn’t ordinary.’ Her voice softened. ‘But you know, I think you’ve got this big picture in your head of how peachy perfect a normal life would be. But like it or not, you aren’t normal, Jonah. You’ve got a gift.’
He ducked his shoulders under the water, trying to stop himself shivering. ‘What, and so I should give it to Coldhardt?’
‘Sell it. You saw those pictures, Jonah. You’re known – some big people out there, they’ve been watching you, close-up.’ She pushed out her chin, defensive. ‘If Coldhardt hadn’t come for you, someone else would.’
‘How do I know he didn’t take those pictures himself?’ Jonah argued. ‘Trying to scare me. Like you are now.’
‘Life with Coldhardt can get ugly sometimes, yeah. There’s danger. But at least we belong.’ She paused, took a small step towards him. ‘For us, this is ordinary life. The risks are a little bigger, but then so are the rewards.’
‘And I suppose you can stand there in your fancy castle and your designer gear with anything you want at your fingertips and say, look how far I’ve come. Look how far away that bad old life I used to have is now.’ Jonah glared at her. ‘But is it, Tye? Is it really?’
‘Yes,’ she hissed.
He realised they were both breathing shakily, just a little out of time with each other.
‘Now who’s lying?’ he said slowly.
The doors to the pool kicked open loudly. Jonah and Tye splashed as they sprang apart almost guiltily.
‘Jesus, Patch,’ Tye complained. ‘You scared the crap out of us.’
He bounded over, a sly smile on his face as his one eye flicked between them. ‘Sorry to interrupt your swim, but Motti wants to run through the plan for tonight.’
Tye nodded, pulled herself out of the pool without another glance at Jonah. ‘Find any surprises?’
‘Nah.’ Patch shook his head. ‘Looks like it should be smooth. Nothing we can’t handle.’
‘Fine. I’ll catch you both later.’ She picked up her towel, headed briskly for the exit. ‘And take your eye off my butt, Patch, before I come back and slug you.’
The doors echoed shut behind her.
‘How did she know?’ Patch sighed. He turned to Jonah. ‘Everything all right, mate?’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Jonah. ‘Everything’s just … normal.’
Patch gave him a baffled little smile. He held out his hand to help Jonah up and out of the pool.
Jonah took it.
Tye drove the car down a side alley a few blocks from the museum and killed the engine. It was 2.45am. No one spoke, they just sat listening to the passing blare of horns and stereos, of distant arguments.
She kept replaying her argument with Jonah. Why had she even started that conversation? It wasn’t like she wanted to be his special friend or something. She had learned all too well back in Haiti that if you opened up to someone, they could get inside and trash you. Did she really want to go through that again?
There he was in the rear-view, all nervous and trying not to show it. With his fair hair, clear skin and blue eyes, Jonah should’ve looked like an overgrown choirboy – if not for his smile. That seemed a long way from angelic …
‘OK, it’s time,’ Motti announced. ‘Move out, people.’
At once, Tye swept her head clear of idle thoughts, forced herself to focus on the only thing that mattered right now – getting the job done.
They got out into the moonlit street, all dressed smartly but simply in black. A lone flower seller stood in filthy robes on the corner, waving wilted roses at the heedless traffic. Music thudded from a cellar club nearby. A group of young men laughed and smoked beside a van stacked high with boxes.
Jonah shook his head in quiet amazement. ‘Doesn’t this city ever sleep?’
‘Just hope it’s quiet round the back of the museum,’ said Con.
Patch nodded. ‘Least there’s no night watchman. What a shame museums round here get such crap funding.’
Motti had thought it safest to walk the last stretch to the lock-up – five teenagers in a BMW might have attracted attention, whereas if they played the part of late-night revellers staggering home through the dusty, rundown streets, no one would look twice at them. He’d detailed Con and Jonah to wait around up front and stage a distraction if anyone came too close. Con instantly suggested they could play lovers, just to see Jonah blush.
‘This is the place,’ said Motti quietly.
They broke off into their two groups. Con and Jonah lounged against a lamppost, talking in low voices, while Tye darted down a back alley after Motti and Patch.
She pulled a slim torch from her jacket pocket and bathed the two of them in its steady, yellow glow. Their chosen entry point was an alarmed steel fire door. Motti traced a small gadget over some wires above the frame, searching for a critical point, while Patch produced a pick and torque wrench and practised his own brand of keyhole surgery.
‘You ready?’ Motti whispered. ‘The alarms should take a three-second scramble without going off. So we gotta be quick.’
Tye and Patch both nodded.
He pressed his gadget to the wires, clicked a button. ‘In!’ he hissed.
Patch flicked his wrists, and Tye kicked the door open. She was first through, then Patch, then Motti, who swung the door back closed behind him.
They stood, their shaky breathing loud in Tye’s ears.
Motti looked murderous in the sinister torchlight. ‘That was a long three seconds. Can’t believe nothing went off.’
‘We got away with it,’ said Patch. ‘That’s all that matters.’
‘Can we get going?’ Tye prompted, shining her torch up the concrete stairwell. Mica dust caught in the beam like a sinister mist. She had a bad feeling about this place.
‘Lock-up’s on the third floor.’ Motti’s long skinny legs took three steps at a time, and Tye and Patch jogged to keep up. ‘Should be no real security till we reach it.’
Patch soon fixed the door that led on to the third floor. As it swung open, Tye swept her torch around. The beam lingered on thick, clouded Plexiglas, on dusty pots and plinths, on a row of light switches set into a rusty metal plate. Then she froze as a small red oblong of light flicked on in a corner of the room.
‘Motion sensor,’ she hissed. Patch and Motti froze beside her.
‘Gimme that,’ said Motti, taking the torch. He soon illuminated a security camera in the corner, and Tye swore. ‘Be cool,’ he told her. ‘It’s not CCTV, it’s bogus – just an empty box. It’s a sham, like the motion sensor.’
‘Thank God for that,’ said Patch. ‘That was a big brown-trouser moment.’
‘I told you there was zilch security up to this level,’ said Motti, acting like he’d never been bothered. He led them through the priceless exhibits to a heavy looking door, a well-worn plastic keypad beside it. ‘And not much more now we’re here,’ he scoffed, passing the torch back to Tye. ‘So much for the secure area.’
Patch peeled back the leather over his missing eye. Then he plucked out the glass ball between finger and thumb.
Motti cringed. ‘Goddamn it, freak!’
‘I’m wearing the patch, ain’t I? You should wear one on your mouth.’
‘That’s a sick, sick place to keep your tools.’
‘Oi! I’m disabled, OK? Might as well make the most of it,’ Patch retorted. ‘Just ’cause you’re so squeamish you can’t even put in contacts.’ He unscrewed the eyeball, which came apart in the middle like some twisted Russian doll. Then he pulled a tiny make-up brush out of it.
‘Wait!’ hissed Tye. She put out the light. ‘Thought I heard something.’
They strained to hear in the darkness.
‘You imagined it,’ said Motti.
Patch looked less certain. ‘Tye don’t imagine stuff.’
‘Stop sucking up. She ain’t gonna lay you any more than Con will.’
‘Can we just get this over with?’ Tye whispered, flicking the torch back on. Patch kept fingerprint powder in his glass eye, and now he brushed it over the well-worn keypad. Purple stains rose like bruises on four of the buttons.
‘These schmucks can’t have changed the code in ten years,’ gloated Motti. ‘And I bet you it’s sequential order, nice and easy for the knuckleheads to remember.’
Tye played the torch beam around the doorframe. ‘Think it’s alarmed?’
‘Magnetic switch.’ Motti carefully extracted a length of thin wire from the arm of his glasses. ‘Magnet in the side of the door holds down a switch, completes the circuit. Open the door, switch comes up – the circuit breaks and alarms go crazy.’
‘Yeah, I know. So you use your gadget to screw up the systems for a couple of secs –’
‘No need,’ he said, retrieving the torch from her. ‘The cables are already exposed here, see? I can trip the circuit with this bit of wire once I’ve stripped the insulation –’
‘Already stripped,’ said Patch. ‘Look.’ He pointed to a shallow gouge beside the frame. ‘Bloody switch has been dug out from the plaster.’
Tye felt suddenly sick as the realisation hit home: ‘Someone’s been here before us.’
A sudden scrabbling from behind the door.
‘Scratch before us,’ hissed Motti, ‘they’re still in there –’
Then the door to the lockup flew open. Patch yelled as the edge cracked into his face, knocking him backwards.
For a split second, Tye caught a dance of dark shadow in the torch beam, figures swooping out from inside. Then the light was knocked from her hand and bony fingers clamped around her throat.
Chapter Nine
Tye didn’t struggle. She used her attacker’s momentum to her advantage, falling back as he charged forwards. She landed on her back, brought up her leg against his stomach and flipped him over her head. He crashed into something that smashed noisily, but Tye was already back on her feet, running for the light switches she’d seen earlier across the room.
She slammed them on. An awkward flicker of light as the fluorescents warmed up. It was almost like a strobe effect: in snatches she saw Motti wrestling with a masked black-clad figure, saw the man she’d brought down in the debris of a large earthenware jar, saw someone else racing for the door that led on to the stairwell, dodging exhibits with ease.
‘Stop them!’ Motti yelled, like she needed telling.
As the lights strengthened into noisy, humming life, Tye hurled the torch at the fleeing figure. It was a woman, wearing a black veil like a dupatta – Hindu maybe? The woman staggered as the torch cracked against her skull, lost balance for a moment. Tye was already sprinting after her when she realised the woman was clutching something, some kind of jar …
The lekythos. Whoever these people were, they wanted it too.
The woman assumed a fighting stance as Tye approached. Though the black veil shrouded most of her face, her hooded eyes showed through, cold dark stones. Though her speed and agility suggested someone in the flush of youth, there was something ancient in those eyes that made Tye shiver.
In her other hand the woman held a stiletto. Its tapering blade gleamed. Tye clocked the tattoo that coiled up from the woman’s wrist to her knuckles – a distinctive blue snake. Then she swung up her leg in a high front kick to knock the stiletto away.
The woman swung the knife out of reach, then lunged forwards. Tye jumped back but knocked against the edge of a display case, gasping as she felt the sharp corner bite into her spine. Caught off-balance, she couldn’t deflect a kick to her stomach, and with a gasp she went down.
In a second, Tye’s assailant was crouched over her, one hand holding the lekythos up and out of reach, the other ready to plunge the knife down into her chest.
Then, suddenly, the old Greek vase seemed to explode. The woman cried out.
And in a shower of fine black dust, a glass eyeball plopped out of the lekythos on to Tye’s chest.
‘Lousy bloody shot!’ wailed Patch, still clutching his head.
Tye used the distraction well and punched her attacker hard in the jaw. But the woman fell backwards, rolled over and was back on her feet in a second. Still clutching the remains of the vase tight to her chest, she turned and ran for the door. Patch was knocked to the ground as Motti’s attacker followed her to the exit. The man Tye had tackled first must already have made his getaway.
‘Patch, is Motti OK?’ Tye snapped.
‘I’m fine,’ Motti shouted, though his nose was pouring blood and his glasses were smashed. He staggered over to help Patch up. ‘Get after them! Go!’
Tye nodded and ran to the exit. The sound of pounding feet echoed all around the concrete stairwell. She charged down the steps, swinging herself round the rickety banisters, driving herself faster, faster. Finally she shot out into the alleyway.
To find someone was taking a swing at her with a makeshift bat.
She twisted away desperately but she was going too fast to dodge the blow. The plank broke in two over her shoulder, and she cried out with the sickening, jarring impact. It was the same masked man she’d thown into the earthenware vase, waiting for her. She spun round, aimed a roundhouse kick at his knee – but he caught hold of her foot, threw her back against the alley wall.
The man raised his arm to deliver some kind of karate blow, but she jabbed her knuckles into his sternum as hard as she could. He staggered back, cursing in Arabic. Tye punched him in the face, once, twice – but on the third swing he ducked and landed a crashing blow to her bad shoulder. The pain almost blotted out her senses and she fell to her knees. She wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that, clinging on to consciousness, but when she opened her eyes again the man was gone.
‘Tye?’ In a haze of stars she saw Con, running down the alleyway towards her from the main road. ‘That bastard nearly knocked me flying. Did he hurt you badly?’
‘There were two others with him,’ she muttered. ‘Man and a woman, already inside the lock-up.’
‘We saw them. First the woman, then the man.’
‘They were after the same thing we were.’
‘Did they get it?’
‘Kind of. Where’s Jonah?’
Con pursed her lips. ‘He went after them.’
She stared, appalled. ‘You let him?’
‘He just took off. He wants to prove himself, yes? You know boys …’ Con shrugged. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll never catch them.’
‘But that guy who did this to me might catch Jonah!’
Con shrugged. ‘I was more worried about you guys.’
‘Check Motti and Patch are OK,’ Tye told her. ‘They’re hurt, I dunno how bad.’
‘And how bad are you? You look terrible.’
‘Thanks.’ Tye shut her eyes, fighting a wave of nausea. It felt like a load of termites were trying to eat their way out of her head, and the buzz of the distant traffic seemed sickeningly loud.
She staggered off towards the main road to see if Jonah was OK. She only hoped she didn’t black out before she got there.
* * *
Jonah came staggering back up to the lamppost outside the museum, his lungs burning, saliva thick in his mouth. He spat on the pavement, gasping for breath.
Tye stumbled out of the shadowy mouth of the alleyway. She was obviously in a lot of pain.
‘You OK?’
She nodded, wincing as she did so.
‘What happened back there? Those people in black –?’
‘They got away?’
‘I’m crap, I’m sorry.’ He coughed noisily. ‘This other guy came after me, and I had to duck out of the way. They were all so fast!’
‘Tell me about it,’ she said. ‘They sure sped that vase away.’
‘They did?’ He chewed his lip. ‘Well, it may not be a total disaster. They had a car. I got the number plate.’
She just nodded. Jonah felt slightly hurt that she wasn’t more impressed. ‘Whoever they were,’ she said, ‘they had the jump on us. Totally.’
Now Con came out of the alley, Patch leaning on her for support and Motti lagging behind. He and Patch looked like they’d been chasing after parked lorries and hadn’t stopped in time.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Con said. ‘There must be cops on the way after all that.’
Motti was glaring round wildly. He was holding his broken glasses in his left hand, and his eyes seemed small and watery without them. ‘Washout,’ he snarled, wiping his bleeding nose on his jacket sleeve. ‘We screwed up big time.’
‘They were better informed than us,’ said Tye, as they started as quickly as they could down the street.
‘Local knowledge?’ Con suggested.
Tye shook her head. ‘I reckon they must have had inside help. One of the museum staff, maybe.’
Motti frowned. ‘How’d you figure?’
‘They’d already taken care of the alarm on the fire exit. They knew the layout of that floor of the museum so they could move fast even in the dark.’
‘And they must have known the combination to the lock-up,’ Patch added. He had a livid bruise rising over his good eye. ‘They didn’t knacker the keypad, did they?’
‘So then why bother to screw with the magnetic switch?’ said Motti. ‘They coulda disabled the alarm easy.’
‘Maybe that was for show,’ Patch said. ‘Fake calling card. Like, “Hi, we’re regular burglars!”’
Tye agreed. ‘If it looked too much like an inside job, cops would start asking the staff questions.’
Patch gave a theatrical groan and leaned more heavily on Con, managing to nudge his head against her chest.
‘You’re not hurt so bad,’ Con told him, shoving him away. ‘But keep that up and you will be.’
‘OK, so they had some help.’ Motti stared down angrily at his smashed glasses. ‘But that don’t let us off the hook. We screwed up big. Coldhardt ain’t gonna be happy.’
