by Stephen Cole
‘Maybe not total,’ Con suggested, returning a smile to a good-looking Indian man who sat with two friends and a bottle of wine in an ice bucket. ‘We can check to see if the Chrysler with the false plates is still on the premises. And someone here has just got to work in the post room.’
Tye saw what she was driving at. ‘You think Samraj sent the lekythos on somewhere? But she’d never trust the regular post!’
‘Of course not,’ Con agreed coolly. ‘But she might use a special courier, yes? And that might have gone through the post room.’
‘Might.’ Tye pulled a face. ‘First we have to find someone who’s willing to show us the company dispatch log.’
‘Relax, sweets.’ Con popped the melting ice cube from her glass into her mouth and smiled. ‘By the time we’re through with them, they’ll show us any damn thing we want them to. First one to find a post boy gets first crack at the hotel mini-bar. Deal?’
‘OK.’ Tye smiled despite herself. ‘Deal.’
Jonah stood in the Florentine orchard, holding his breath. The break-in had begun.
It was a warm, fragrant night, but he felt so cold that if he ever breathed again it would gust out like steam. Someone would see, the alarms would go off …
Motti’s fierce whisper carried over the cascading chirrups of the cicadas. ‘Right, Jonah, one step forward… Hold it.’
Their luck had held so far. The floodlights remained off, the PIR this side of the house successfully stymied by Motti’s work. They’d got past the vibration sensors in the perimeter walls, too, climbing up high-suction footholds at a point where the wall changed direction at 90 degrees. The corner was the least sensitive part of the structure, since it was harder to press the coaxial cable that worked the system into the corner crevice.
‘Patch, forward one … and hold it.’
Now they were performing Motti’s patented way of beating the seismic detectors he was convinced lay buried in the garden. ‘These systems usually rely on the intruder not knowing they’re there,’ he’d told them. ‘The processor studies the weight and frequency of the impact – if it recognises, say, a couple of footsteps in a thirty-second period, it hits the panic button. But if you keep it real soft and real slow …’
So here they were, creeping through the beautiful moonlit gardens at zero miles per hour, one person at a time and no more than one little step every 45 seconds. The agony of it was that they were in full view of several windows, and the lights were clearly still on behind the heavy drapes. If Samraj or one of her staff looked out they’d find three fellas frozen red-faced in the grounds. Probably set the guard dogs on them …
Please, God, let them not have guard dogs.
Finally the long slow-mo traipse through the lavender-scented night came to a quiet end. Motti declared they were out of range of the innermost sensors and could walk normally again. He led the way over to an opaque glass outhouse attached to the main building. Jonah felt a flush of achievement that they had made it this far; not because he’d contributed anything much, but because he hadn’t messed up.
Now it was Patch’s turn to shine; his job, as ever, was to get them inside. He pulled off his shoulder bag and laid it carefully on the floor.
Jonah became aware of a low rushing noise, like a fan heater. He saw there was a vent built into the frosted glass near ground level, spewing cold air out into the night.
‘What’s in here?’ he asked quietly.
‘It’s a glasshouse,’ grunted Motti. ‘Gotta be plants, right?’
‘Attached to the main house?’ It didn’t sound likely to Jonah. ‘If cold air’s coming out, it must be pretty warm in there.’
‘You want us to strip off? Is this some faggy play to see me topless, geek?’
‘Would you keep it down?’ said Patch indignantly, kneeling on the ground. ‘I’m unleashing my genius here.’ He removed two rolls of thick duct tape from the bag and handed one to each of them. Jonah and Motti tore off long strips and handed them to him. Carefully, Patch started covering the lowest window with the tape.
‘The outhouse is a fairly new addition,’ Motti had explained. ‘The glass was ordered from a security firm. A line of metallic foil makes a circuit, stretching round the perimeter of each pane – so fine that if the glass so much as cracks, the foil tears, the circuit breaks and the alarms go off.’
Jonah had decided he might as well ask the obvious so Motti could tell him: ‘So how do we get inside?’
But it was Patch who’d explained, and here he was putting his proposal into practice.
He’d taped up a fair portion of the window, leaving a clear square of glass in the centre – enough for someone small to crawl through. The tape would now act as a shock absorber, so Patch could deal with the exposed glass with less risk of tearing the foil.
Now he pulled out his glass eye and unscrewed it at the middle. Motti muttered under his breath and turned away, white-faced, but Jonah was intrigued to see what looked like a diamond inside. Swiftly, Patch removed the jewel and pushed it into the ‘pupil’ of the fake eye. Then he used it to score a square in the glass, just within the thick duct tape frame.
‘Glass cutter,’ Patch explained proudly. ‘Diamond-tipped. Coldhardt sorted me with a whole lot of cool stuff like this.’
Motti obviously disapproved. ‘Batman has a utility belt, Butt-kid here has utility eyes. How dumb is that?’
‘You want me to take my patch off and wink atcha? Just keep talking.’
Motti shut up and Patch continued to cut his crawl space. Jonah stared round nervously for any signs of approaching security guards. Motti watched Patch work, tutting and shaking his head now and then like he thought he could do better.
‘Should be worn thin enough now,’ Patch concluded a couple of minutes later. ‘Mot, get the newspaper.’
Jonah watched as Patch started pressing a thin layer of clay against the window and Motti produced the New York Times from the shoulder bag and started pouring water all over it. For a moment, he thought they’d lost it.
‘The clay deadens the sound of the glass hitting the floor,’ Patch explained, ‘stops it smashing everywhere. He took the dripping newspaper from Motti, placed it over the square, and started tapping with his knuckles. ‘This muffles the sound of me tapping at the glass to knock through the –’
With a dull crack, and a heavy thud, the square of glass jumped away. Patch bit his lip. Jonah held his breath. The noise was deafening to his ears, however muffled it was supposed to be.
But no alarms went off. All Jonah could hear was the cicadas, invisible in the night.
And a strange, sibilant hissing sound.
‘What the hell’s that?’ whispered Jonah.
‘We ain’t got time to worry,’ said Motti. ‘Jonah, get inside.’
‘Why me?’
‘It’s your first time.’ Motti grinned. ‘You wanna make it special, right? So treat that hole real gentle.’
Jonah ignored their quiet sniggers, swallowed hard and crouched down in front of the hole. The hissing was definitely coming from inside. Some kind of gas heater maybe? It was horribly humid in here …
He wriggled slowly, cautiously through the crawl space, into the fetid darkness. Was this carpet? Felt almost springy, like AstroTurf or something. ‘How about some light?’ he whispered, when he was halfway through. ‘I can’t see a—’
He froze. Something brushed against his back.
Then Motti flicked on a torch. It cast a hazy light, sending Jonah’s own shadow bobbing thickly about on the wall ahead of him, and some kind of weird reflection back into his eyes too.
When he saw where he was, it was all he could do to stop himself screaming at the top of his lungs.
There were snakes in here. Everywhere around him, fat hoses of flesh, coiling, stretching, writhing.
This was no hothouse. It was a reptile house.
And he’d emerged not into the viewing area, but into one of the crowded enclosures.
Ch
apter Twelve
‘Jesus, Motti, get me out of here!’ Jonah tried to push himself back out through the narrow crawl space. He shuddered as a length of scaly flesh started to slide round his neck like a noose. ‘It’s full of snakes! They’ve built enclosures up against the walls!’
‘Hold still,’ Motti snapped. ‘You’ll slice yourself to ribbons on the glass and you’ll set off the alarm. Plus, you make any sudden moves and one of those critters could bite you. Either way you could end up dead.’
‘Thanks for the good news,’ Jonah murmured, clamping his eyes shut.
‘So it’s an enclosure, right? Like a big fish tank. You’ve got to pull yourself all the way inside and then push up on the lid. That’s the only way you’re gonna get out.’
‘I’m getting out the same way I got in!’ Jonah informed him.
‘Hold still, Goddamn it!’ Motti whispered hoarsely. ‘Come on, Jonah, you can do this. You got your smokestone, didn’t you? We need to know we can count on you.’
Jonah said nothing. He could feel the sweat oozing all over his body. He knew the longer he was in here, the more likely he’d be bitten or gash himself on the sharp glass like Motti said – and then what would he do? Ask Samraj for a plaster?
Slowly, carefully, he pulled himself into the cage. Kneeling now, he felt a squat head push itself against his cheek, felt the tickle of its tongue, held absolutely still for a few moments. When the head pulled away he reached cautiously up, felt the glass lid of the cage. ‘Please,’ he murmured, pushing with all his strength, trying to ignore the tail that slithered round his wrist. ‘Please …’
With a quiet crack, the lid gave way. Forcing himself to keep his movements slow and controlled, he eased away the heavy glass panel and straightened up. The cage stood as high as his hips.
Placing the lid quietly on top of the neighbouring enclosure, Jonah started to pull himself clear. ‘All right, we’ve got a way in. Now could one of you help me get this bloody great python off my ankle?’ A few seconds later he felt a pair of hands forcing their way under the reptile-flesh, coaxing away the weight. The second he thought it was safe to do so, Jonah pulled his leg free and clambered out of the enclosure. He stood shaking and sweaty in the humid, fetid atmosphere, listening to the sibilant hissing all around him. In the gloomy glow from the torch, he could see it was a real Snakes-R-Us, packed with reptiles of all kinds and colours.
Motti joined him a few seconds later. He was breathing a little shakily but seemed otherwise unbothered.
‘Didn’t have this down on your plans, did you?’ said Jonah quietly.
‘It’s all custom built,’ Motti observed. ‘Explains why they’ve built against that outside wall. Still, I don’t think the bastards are poisonous.’
‘I don’t think they’re pets, either,’ said Jonah. The walls and floor were tiled an antiseptic white, like a hospital or something. ‘So many of them, caged in together? That’s not right, is it?’
Motti scowled and shrugged. ‘We’ll write to the humane society when we get out of here, ’K?’
‘Boo!’ whispered Patch, clambering out of the cage holding some nasty-looking green snake over his head. ‘Oi, Mot, think we can take him with us?’
‘Think you’d enjoy my boot in your mouth? Come on, we’ve wasted enough time.’
Patch put back the snake almost sadly, and Motti led the way over to the door. It led on to a tiled corridor that again put Jonah in mind of something medical.
‘Is that a lab?’ Patch wondered, peering through a doorway. ‘Motti, look here!’
Jonah looked too. It was a lab, all sorts of gear and gizmos hogging the workbenches. As Motti played his torch around the room, they saw a kind of operating table. A white sheet had been laid over it, flecked with spots of blood, covering something.
Motti pulled it back to reveal a small snake, incisions made down the length of its body.
‘Gross.’ Patch screwed up his nose. ‘Samraj ain’t just a bitch, she’s a butcher. What the hell’s going on here?’
Motti put the cover back over the mutilated body. ‘Let’s just find the fragments and get the hell out of here.’
‘Will there be any more security?’ asked Jonah.
‘Doubt it,’ said Motti. ‘Lights are still on, must mean people are about – so the PIRs inside won’t be set yet.’
‘But we could walk right into Samraj or whoever!’
‘You never hear of audacious theft?’ he grinned. ‘This is bodacious, man. Now, the documents are supposed to be in a hidden safe in the drawing room.’
‘How’d you know?’ asked Jonah.
‘He doesn’t,’ said Patch. ‘Coldhardt does.’
Once out of the lab area, the house became more traditional. It was plush and opulently furnished as you might expect, if kind of oppressive with all the huge, dark oil landscapes and portraits staring out from the walls. Jonah saw large, bluff figures in bright military colours, slim, demure maidens with wide, dark eyes and uneasy smiles. It felt uncomfortably like the paintings were watching his progress through the house, and from the way Patch sent nervous looks in every direction, it seemed he was feeling uneasy too.
Motti, on the other hand, didn’t spare the pictures a glance. He must have been acquainted with the layout of the main building, as he led them through it quite confidently. Jonah couldn’t believe his nerve. Good thing there were no seismic detectors inside the place – never mind the footsteps, his pounding heart could set one off on its own.
‘I don’t know, Samraj …’
Jonah nearly hit the ceiling at the sound of the voice. It was a woman speaking, slow, stolid English with a strong accent, and it was coming from behind the door of the room they’d just passed.
Motti and Patch spun round at the sound too. Jonah pointed to the door. ‘In there,’ he mouthed.
‘You’re certain we are close to a breakthrough?’ the woman’s voice went on. ‘After all this time?’
Jonah crept away, holding his breath. The thought of Samraj and her guest catching him here wasn’t a happy one.
‘Chill,’ said Motti. ‘If they’re gassing away in there, we got the run of the place, don’t we?’
He joined the others, moving swiftly but stealthily over the deep pile carpeting.
Their luck was in. The drawing room was empty. Motti made a beeline for some weird, abstract painting showing an angel with moth-eaten wings hunched over a filthy bed, and carefully removed it to reveal a small grey combination safe.
‘Doesn’t look like much,’ Jonah observed.
‘It ain’t much.’ Motti chuckled, putting down the picture. ‘Gotta love these rich houseproud types. They blow a bomb doing big-time security on the grounds and they think no one’ll get as far as the crap like this. This safe came out of the ark, man, just like Coldhardt said.’
‘Probably the most valuable antique in the place.’ Jonah watched Patch reach into his shoulder bag and pull out an old-fashioned telephone receiver. ‘Unless that is. What’re you going to do, phone a friend?’
‘This is all you need to crack an old-time safe like this,’ Patch explained, unscrewing the mouthpiece. ‘The amplifier in here lets you hear the clicks of the safe dial like someone’s snapping their fingers in your ear.’ He fished out a small metal disc attached by short, coloured wires. ‘You note down the numbers that set the tumblers clicking, then try out each combination of them till –’
‘Get on with it, Cyclops,’ said Motti, who was now keeping watch in the doorway.
Jonah felt a bit of a spare part. He crossed to the window, looked out into the grounds. Different darknesses of sky and shadow loured over the silent orchard. Nothing moved.
He started as the safe door opened with a noisy creak.
‘We’re in,’ Patch breathed, putting down his phone.
‘OK, geek, take over the watch.’ Motti crossed back to the safe and reached gingerly inside. ‘This has gotta be it. Could be rigged. Incendiary or …’
; ‘Could be cursed,’ said Patch.
Motti pulled a small cedar casket out of the safe, placed it on a writing desk and started muttering something quietly. His saturnine features looked almost demonic in the uplight from Patch’s torch as the strange, arcane syllables tripped darkly from his tongue. It sounded to Jonah like some ancient prayer, but to what god or spirit he couldn’t hazard a guess.
Slowly, Motti opened the cedar chest. ‘We got ’em,’ he muttered, carefully removing what looked like bits of old leaf that had somehow blown inside.
‘The fragments,’ breathed Patch, pulling a tiny camera from his shoulder bag. ‘Lay ’em down on the desk and I’ll get snapping.’
Jonah watched, fascinated by the speed and precision with which they worked. But then Patch caught him looking and frowned over his camera. ‘The door, Jonah!’ he urged him.
Jonah nodded, turned and checked for signs of movement outside.
His heart almost stopped as he saw a small figure across the darkened hallway, hunched up and half-lost to the shadows at the back of the room.
He ducked out of sight, but knew he’d been much too slow.
Motti and Patch caught the sudden movement.
‘Trouble?’ Motti demanded, gathering up the scraps of parchment and replacing them in the cedar chest.
‘I saw someone!’ Jonah hissed. Terrified, he peeped back around the side of the door, but the figure had departed as silently as it arrived.
‘He saw me,’ he breathed. ‘Must have done.’
‘You useless dick! You had one job to do …’ Motti passed the little chest to Patch, who stuck it back in the safe. ‘Which way did they go?’
‘Back the way we came.’
Patch pocketed the camera and hastily hung the painting on the wall. He turned to Motti. ‘So we gotta find a new way out?’
‘It’s OK. We ain’t so far from the main entrance. If the alarms go off now, we got nothing to lose going out that way.’ He barged Jonah aside from the doorway. ‘Let’s move it.’
Jonah felt sick with fear as he stumbled after the others. Any second now, the alarms would sound, steel shutters would slam down all around them, cutting off any hope of escape …
