Black Rain

by Matthew B. J. Delaney

  Night Comfort flipped down the infrared eye lens. The view relit in swirls of red and yellow as the imager picked up the heat in the room. At each of the exits was a large mass of pulsating red, barely distinguishable as individual bodies. She gripped the pistol tightly, rolled off the sled, and fell through the opening and into space. There was a tug as the winch began to lower her smoothly down into the smoke-filled gallery.

  A figure, visible only as a warm glowing blob of red, stood ten feet to the right of her descent path. Night Comfort sighted the tranquilizer pistol, pulled the trigger, and watched the blob stagger back before it collapsed to the ground.

  The smoke was thicker as she descended, visibility without the IR imager reduced to six inches, everything blanketed. She continued to descend, gradually slowing as she neared the museum floor.

  The red blob she’d struck with the pneu-dart lay immobile on the ground to her right. In an hour or so she or he would begin to wake. The winch stopped suddenly. In front of Night Comfort was only white fog. Even without being able to see, she knew she should be only a few feet off the ground. Cautiously she swung her lower body down and felt the hard floor come into contact with her knee.

  She placed a hot pad on the floor, then stood and surveyed the room. The pulsating reds and yellows were still visible while an automated voice instructed the crowd to head toward the exits.

  Night Comfort turned her gaze now and concentrated on the details: the bright yellow of the emergency lights in the ceiling, the slowly fading pinks of the turned-off gallery lighting, the greens of the backup alarm system and, straight ahead of her, a four-inch line of red: the mark she had left earlier, the warm line of iron oxide streaked on the wall underneath the Renoir.

  She moved quickly through the smoke and headed toward the treasure, her harness still attached. When she reached the red line, she slid her hand up along the wall until she felt the corner edge of the frame with her hand, the ornate beauty of it barely visible through the smoke. She took the wood firmly in both hands and lifted it up off the wall. A separate, more urgent, alarm sounded in the gallery.

  The painting was heavy in her hands. She carried it awkwardly back through the smoke, guided toward the heat pad, which glowed a dull yellow in the infrared. When she reached her target, the winch smoothly pulled in the slack until the harness tugged against her back. A moment later she was in the air as she moved steadily up through the fog.

  Grand Bleu and Outback kept moving. They traveled the long gallery back toward the rotunda. As they passed a fire alarm pull, Grand Bleu knocked out the glass and yanked down the lever. Immediately a siren sounded. By the time he reached the rotunda, the party was in chaos as people made their way toward the exits. The security team ran the perimeter of the rotunda, fingers pressed against earpieces, as they tried to determine what the hell was going on.

  Directly below, the conductor was rounding up the tuxedo-clad men and black-dressed women of the small orchestra. Grand Bleu, in his tuxedo, and Outback, in her black cocktail dress, mixed in with the orchestra and let themselves be swept along toward the exits.

  The alarms were still erupting as hordes of people bunched up before the exits where security checkpoints had been hurriedly set up. A metal detector had been placed to the rear of the exit, a final precautionary measure before the guests reached the outside world. The musicians, too, were being searched, their instrument cases inspected. Grand Bleu and Outback followed the line to the checkpoint. A stocky guard with a black mustache pointed at Outback. “Open your case, please.”

  “Of course, but what’s happening?” Outback asked.

  “There’ve been some alarms set off,” he said as she opened the latches on her violin case. “Security checks for everyone leaving the building.”

  Calmly, Outback opened the violin case and exposed the Guarneri. At an adjoining table, a tuxedoed man had been told to open his viola case, and Grand Bleu watched a guard poking around inside the instrument with a metal rod and a flashlight. In fact, all around them instrument cases were being opened and prodded, exactly as he had planned.

  The guard picked up the Guarneri roughly, inspected the bridge and the ribs and tried to peek down into the F-hole.

  “I hope nothing’s been stolen,” Outback said.

  “I don’t think so. Our security is excellent here.”

  “I’ve noticed that.”

  The guard sighed, put the violin back in the case, and closed the lid.

  Outback took the handle in a firm grip and hefted the case off the table. Grand Bleu had reached the front of the line and was holding his arms up as another guard ran a metal-detecting wand over his body. She was already out in the night air before he received his own grunted dismissal. Behind Grand Bleu another violinist was being patted down. Tonight, Outback would make one more musician leaving than had arrived, with the extra violinist carrying an especially old and especially rare violin.

  Night Comfort was ninety feet in the air as she rose up through the hole she’d carefully cut to accommodate the painting. Below her, the museum gallery was still filled with fog. She unhitched herself from the harness, then rolled over onto her back on the sled, the Renoir resting heavily on her chest. The sled began to move, carrying her back down the length of the girder, its motor humming.

  When the sled had traveled forty feet, it stopped again at the second premeasured distance, the access ladder. Gripping the painting, Night Comfort rolled off the sled, crouching in the small crawl space. She turned on her headlamp. The bulb melted away the darkness and revealed the skeletal structure of the ceiling, the steel support beams, the lengths of wiring and, only a few yards away, a single metal ladder.

  According to the schematics, the ladder ran the entire height of the building, between the galleries of Chinese Art and 19th-Century American, before it exited on the museum’s roof near the ventilation systems, forty yards from the Cantor Roof Garden. Removing a custom-made backpack from beneath the sled, she slid the Renoir inside and strapped the bag to her shoulders. Picking her way over the lengths of cable to the ladder, she slowly climbed up. Below her, she could still hear the ongoing shriek of the alarms.

  The ladder ended with a large trapdoor. She cut the lock with her torch and pushed the heavy panel upward. Cool night air flowed through the open space. She climbed out onto the moonlit roof of the museum, the Central Park dome reflected the street lamps, and in the distance, the lights of Manhattan stretched before her.

  By now, the museum guards would have formed a perimeter around the museum. Police sirens approached from all sides. The entire museum would be shut down. She flicked off her headlamp, the moon and the skyline providing her with light. The roof was lined with square ventilation fans that formed a single column, pale like a row of metallic gravestones. She counted the third one in from the northern side of the wall. Crouching down next to the fan, she unzipped a side pocket of the carrier and emptied its contents onto the roof.

  Spread before her was a lightweight polyester composite balloon. She rolled it out to its full length, fourteen feet with an opening at one end connected to a compressor valve and a two-foot-long flexible tube. She affixed the tube’s open end to the lip of the fourth exhaust fan, then checked her watch and waited.

  The ventilation fan was connected by a straight duct to the Impressionist gallery, now filled with the helium-infused smoke. Helium naturally comprised only .06 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere, but levels of the gas’s concentration inside the gallery had quickly reached seventy percent when the alarm was triggered. To prevent hypoxia of museum guests and to allow the authorities to enter the room and assess loss, the alarm system was set to a timer, with the room automatically cleared of smoke in exactly nine minutes. As the smoke was pulled through the overhead ventilation systems, the helium naturally separated itself and was then released through the exhaust fans on the roof as a ninety-eight percent pure gas. The released helium would rise from the ventilation system and disappear into the
Earth’s atmosphere, unless something was placed over the exhaust fan to catch it.

  Something like a balloon.

  Night Comfort watched the timer. Down at street level, the sirens grew louder. Tires screeched as black-and-whites pulled into the circular museum driveway far below her. A police helicopter would be in the process of being scrambled now from the NYPD Aviation Center in Brooklyn.

  The exhaust fan was still quiet. It was getting late and she couldn’t wait much longer. Without the helium from the gallery below, she would have to leave the Renoir behind. From her spot on the roof, she could see across to the side-facing wall of the museum’s east wing; museum and police units moved through the rooms, appearing from window to window. Enough alarms had been triggered that security units would be spread out thinly through the building, trying to ascertain what exactly had happened.

  Suddenly she heard the fan beginning to move. Slowly but steadily it pumped out the helium and smoke from the gallery below. She turned on the small compressor, forcing the helium-filled air from the museum into the balloon.

  Its design was similar to a full-scale blimp. Interior ballonets worked like the ballasts of a submarine, deflating or inflating with additional air as the balloon needed to rise and fall, while air scoops, valves, and flight control surfaces all served to guide the direction and angle of movement. Two battery-powered engines were at the base, smaller versions of turbo-propeller airplane models, each about two and a half feet in length and giving the balloon a top speed of twenty miles per hour.

  In place of the gondola were a series of metal fasteners that clipped lengthwise along the carrier.

  The necessary diameter of the helium-filled balloon had already been calculated in order to ensure there was enough lift to pull the weight of the bag, painting, and frame off the roof. The gallery below carried a helium capacity far beyond what was necessary for launch.

  A beacon located northeast of the museum on City Island in the Bronx sent out a cellular homing signal every twenty seconds, which was received by a small transponder located on the balloon itself. Once airborne, the engines powered themselves automatically, the balloon rising to two thousand feet before propelling itself up over Manhattan toward the homing beacon.

  The balloon was rapidly filling now, tugging at Night Comfort as she held it in place. In the visible section of the museum’s east wing, the flashlights still crisscrossed over the walls and floors as security personnel made their way through the Greek and Roman exhibits.

  Night Comfort wondered how long it would be before they discovered the Renoir was missing.

  The exhaust fan still whirred, and the balloon, almost completely full now, was pulling away. A tightly rolled 100-yard length of nylon rope was attached to its side. She untied it, letting out slack until the bulk of the coil rested on the roof. If the balloon got into trouble during the first hundred yards, moving toward trees or electrical lines, Night Comfort would still be able to keep control manually. Beyond one hundred yards, it was on its own, following the signal being emitted from the final destination point.

  She sealed off the air envelope, pulled away the filling hose, then in one motion released the balloon from her grip. It rose quickly into the air, becoming a vague smudge high over the museum. In a few minutes, its efficient turbo-propeller engines would begin to power forward.

  She disconnected the hose from the air exhaust fan and heard a noise at the rooftop’s edge, twenty yards behind her.

  The sound of booted feet on the metal rungs of a ladder.

  Then a voice, surprised and overaggressive. “Hey! Police! Don’t move!”

  Night Comfort kept her back to the speaker as she slowly stood, raised her hands to the black ski mask on her head, and unrolled it until it covered her face, single holes for her eyes and mouth.

  “Don’t move! Show me your hands!”

  She did as she was told, raising her hands over her head. Behind her she could hear the screech of a police radio, then the excited chatter of voices.

  “Turn around . . . slowly . . .”

  Night Comfort turned and stared into the barrel of the SIG Sauer the young NYPD cop was aiming at her chest. He stood about twenty yards away. It would be a difficult shot for him to make if she moved quickly.

  “Nobody has to get hurt tonight,” she said steadily.

  “Stop talking. Don’t open your mouth.”

  On the far side of the roof, she heard shouting and new footsteps as four more cops climbed up onto the roof behind her.

  “Down on your knees! Hands behind your head!”

  Night Comfort slowly lowered herself to her knees, clasping her hands behind her head. The young cop moved forward, gun raised, chin down, as he talked into the radio on his left shoulder. Somewhere above, the balloon continued to rise, the control rope quickly uncoiling. The officer, ten yards away now, reached toward his belt and removed a set of handcuffs. The rope was almost completely uncoiled, stretching a full hundred yards above Night Comfort, just a few feet to her left.

  “Don’t move . . .” the cop warned again.

  “I’m not going with you,” Night Comfort said. She turned, grabbed the very end of the nylon rope, and ran toward the back edge of the museum roof. The cop froze for a moment, then lowered his gun and chased after her. She reached the rooftop edge, and, still in stride, leaped out into space, nine stories up. The world became a spinning, blurry thing of passing images and sounds. There was the wail of police vehicles, the hard, flat pavement, and dark grass, everything swinging back and forth below her.

  Then the rope pulled taught in her hands, and she felt her body swing as she was lifted up and over the street.

  The rope oscillated wildly before she swung her legs and steadied herself. Above her the balloon had already begun to power forward, giving her momentum from the jump as she sailed away from the immense building. Her weight was too much for the lift to carry and she slowly felt herself sinking back to Earth, falling in a long arc from the museum’s roof.

  She began to fall faster as she sailed across the line of squad cars parked at jagged angles below. Moments later, her feet skimmed the top brush of the elm trees that lined Fifth Avenue. She began to float downward until she hit the solid, grassy ground just before the park. She rolled, and let go of the rope. The balloon rose up again, carrying the line with it. She was a hundred yards down from the museum.

  Night Comfort turned from the shadow and ran, quickly swallowed up by the city.

  CHAPTER 47

  Night Comfort had gotten out of the city. After meeting Jack in a parking garage, they had picked up the Guarneri Gesù violin from Grand Bleu and Outback, then she and Jack had driven the rental van north while the painting floated somewhere overhead. Now, an hour later, Night Comfort lay alone in the center of a small wooded field on City Island that stretched down to the edge of Long Island Sound.

  Wind carried with it the smell of the ocean. Sometimes she thought there was so much beauty in the world that all the canvas that had been painted and all the stone that had been sculpted since the beginning couldn’t possibly come close to capturing it all. Sometimes she almost couldn’t breathe, so saturated was she with beauty that her lungs filled up and every pore was blocked.

  She thought of Arden, how she could feel no love for him. She felt maybe she had been created wrong. Created with a faulty vessel inside her, a leaky soul that let the beauty slip through and left her helpless and empty as so much seeped out of her, evaporated through her skin like a sheen of water in the hot sun while she struggled vainly to keep it all in, to remember it all. What would it be like to hold on to those little moments of beauty, this field at night with its hay grass and fragrant trees, to keep this place inside of her forever, carry it with her, keep all these places with her until she swelled with the joy of it like a woman carrying a growing child? What would it be like to have this as her soul?

  The homing beacon in her hand continued beeping with the steady regularity of a metr
onome. The Renoir was high above her, sailing among the stars, a black void against the night sky, difficult to see even with her amplified Synthate vision. The balloon began its descent, growing larger and larger until it sank into the tall grass off to her right. She kept her eyes on the stars above, and listened to the sound of crickets.

  Finally, she stood. Across the water, Manhattan’s lights stretched out like a distant sun dipping below the horizon. The big balloon was slowly deflating, collapsing in stages to the ground like a dying animal.

  Slowly she bent down, unzipped the carrier, and opened it.

  Inside Renoir’s Dance at Bougival glowed in the moonlight.

  On the top of the frame, a small red light blinked once. Then again. Curious, Night Comfort bent down to examine the point of light. Her heart plunged.

  A tracking device.

  “Jack! Get over here,” she called out.

  Jack came at a run and she pointed to the flash. “They put a tracker on it.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Not much.” Night Comfort took a corner of the painting. “Let’s get this in the van.”

  In the distance, they heard the low hum of rotors. Out across the water, two helisqualls skimmed the surface of the bay, heading toward their location.

  “Too late,” she said. “Here they come.”

  Night Comfort navigated the wheel as the van sped south back toward the city. Jack sat in the back with the Renoir, bracing himself against the door as the van bounced over roads. Through the rear window, he could see the lights of the helisquall gunships.

  Jack scanned the back of the frame, looking for anything out of place. If Reynolds had hidden something in the painting, the frame would be the easiest place to do so.

  “I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” Jack said.