A Covenant of Thieves

by Christian Velguth

  Modern Myths. That was the name of the new exhibit; Booker had seen the gigantic banners draped over the austere columns of the Museum’s facade advertising it as such, complete with spooky font and shadowy photographs of skulls and mysterious artifacts.

  Heads turned as they walked, following Booker more than Hollis. Being a young and, in his modest opinion, not-unattractive African-American man who stood at six foot four inches, he was used to the attention. There was an added element to it, however, that he was not yet accustomed to: the knowledge that he was being viewed by all around him as an agent of the FBI first and a person second. He'd carried the badge long enough for it to lose some of its shine now, but it still felt a bit like being the new kid at school. He could feel himself being evaluated, sized up.

  They came to the bloody spot of concrete. Booker paused to frown down at it, feeling a rush of disconnect. A forensic technician was crouched over the scene, compiling a digital recreation with his 3D scanning rig.

  “What were they packing?” he asked Hollis.

  “Based on security footage and my contacts in SWAT, it looks like the gunmen were armed with Colt Soldier-Integrated-System M17s, latest models. Knew how to use ‘em, too.”

  Booker tapped his smartwatch, accessing the Bureau’s database and calling up a file on the weapons. A model of a blunt, mean-looking rifle hovered in the air a meter before him, projected via his lenses with stats and metrics scrolling along the right side of his vision. He whistled. “Military grade smart rifle. So that’s a lead. Not easy for a civilian to get one of those without leaving a trail.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Hollis didn’t sound too hopeful. He indicated the back wall, where a small crater in the cinder blocks had been outlined by forensics. “The bullet passed through the guard’s shoulder and pancaked in the wall, but forensics was still able to make something of it.”

  “And?”

  “And the perps were using home-grown ammo. It was a laser-drawn ballistic resin bullet. Any half-competent person with a home printer and the right STL file could whip up an armory’s worth of cartridges in about a day.”

  Meaning there was likely no trail to follow, at least as far as the ammunition went. “But what about the rifles themselves? Don’t tell me they printed those too.”

  The detective shrugged. “Probably not, but it’s still not much of a lead. There’s plenty of ways to get around the registry. SIS M17s are modular, which makes it easy for these assholes to buy their toys piece by piece, one aftermarket purchase at a time through a hundred dummy accounts. Makes it almost impossible to figure out where a weapon came from or who it went to.”

  Booker turned to him, frowning. “So you’re not even going to check?”

  “Oh, we’ll check. But I’ll bet you my Cubs tickets that the firearms are a dead-end. They always are.”

  Unsure of whether the detective was being cynical or realistic, Booker thought it best to simply nod rather than risk showing his own inexperience. His training had focused on data analysis, tracking digital transactions, identifying forgeries, infiltrating black-market forums. He’d had weapons training during his time with the National Guard, and the basics of modern firearms had been covered his first year at Quantico, but subsequent years spent behind a desk had reduced that knowledge to a raisin rattling somewhere in the back of his brain.

  He turned back to examine the stretch of stained concrete. From what he’d heard, the guard’s arm had been hanging by only a few inches of shredded muscle and the fabric of his shirt when help arrived. Hard to imagine the man had survived even that long, with that much blood out of his system. And there was something else about it that bothered him.

  “Why do you think they shot the guard? I saw the footage. Nobody was putting up any resistance.”

  “Intimidation?” Hollis nodded back towards what remained of the door. “Clearly these guys aren’t fans of subtlety.”

  “Maybe.”

  Hollis turned to look at him, frowning. “Maybe? There something I’m missing?”

  “Well…” Booker noted the slight sharpness to the detective’s voice, felt himself straying out into the brightest center of the spotlight that was Hollis’ scrutiny, but plowed ahead. “I’m just thinking out loud here, but everything I’ve seen tells me this was well-planned and well-executed. The homemade cartridges might not have been hard to make, but it was still a pragmatic move. Same with the rifles, if you’re right about them being obtained piecemeal. They took the time to do it right.” He ticked off a finger. “Then there’s the vehicle. Most delivery vans aren’t built to bull through steel and cinder block like that, right? So it must have been reinforced.” He ticked off another finger. “Expensive and time-consuming. The Amazon decal was a clever touch too, hiding in plain sight.” A third finger, and then a fourth. “And the fact that they knew what they were here for, went straight for it without grabbing any of the other cases? That speaks of discipline. Experience. Even the chaos of it all was part of the plan, a distraction.” He pointed to the bloodstain. “But that? That doesn’t make sense to me. Someone careful enough to plan and pull this off would have known better than to put a bullet in someone if they could avoid it. That’s a good way to light a fire under the manhunt. Not worth what you’d gain in intimidation, especially since the courier and guard were being more than compliant.”

  The detective watched him, arms folded, eyes thoughtful. “So they had a wild card. Some young punk who blew his load.”

  Booker nodded, feeling the heat of the spotlight recede slightly, relieved that Hollis was following his thread. “Could be an angle.”

  “Sure, we could be dragging a body out of the river this time tomorrow.”

  Booker didn’t think so; pissed off or not, the brain behind this hit wouldn’t want to leave a trail of bodies. One shot guard on the verge of death was bad enough. Better to go to ground, sever all ties and hope the new guy wasn’t stupid enough to drop crypto on a new gold-plated Tesla. Still, he didn’t contradict the detective. It was a possibility.

  “Could be,” Booker admitted. “Either way, we should put an ear to the ground for any gossip. Someone as green as our wild card will probably have a hard time keeping a hit as high-profile as this to themselves.”

  Hollis nodded. “I’ll have my people follow up on that.” He paused, and seemed to be working up to something. “Good thinking. FBI put all their best agents on Art Crime?”

  Booker smiled. “Careful, or you might have to buy me a drink.” Hollis laughed.

  Inwardly, he was relieved. After nearly four years of driving a desk, tracking black-market sales through digital trails and hardly even leaving the office, today was the first time he’d been called into the field to respond to a case this big. Helen Martinez, Assistant Special Agent in Charge for the Third Coast branch of the Art Crime Team, had given him her version of a pep-talk after the call came in.

  “This is our chance to show the Director, the city of Chicago, the whole damn country, that ACT is worth keeping alive,” she’d said, straightening his tie as if he were a kid going to prom. “All eyes will be on you out there. So please, Booker, don’t fuck us?”

  “With that sort of support, how could I?”

  So far he thought he’d done an admirable job of fulfilling Helen’s one request. He’d been nervous, though. No denying it. Enough years behind a desk and your field training tended to atrophy, no matter how regularly you attended the range and hit the gym. The nervousness was starting to fade away, though, replaced with an excitement he hadn’t felt since graduating from Quantico.

  Hollis gave him a tour of the rest of the crime scene. The truck that had delivered the museum pieces was a point of interest, but a minor one. Paint chips left behind could maybe point to a chop-shop, but the techs weren’t optimistic on that front.

  “There a driver we can talk to?” Booker asked.

  “Self-driving truck,” an officer told him. “It left the museum earlier this morning and ran a loop to
O’Hare and back. Courier was just along for the ride. We already pulled footage from the onboard cameras, but it hasn’t shown us anything we didn’t already get from museum security.”

  Hollis grunted. “How about a manifest?”

  “You’d have to ask the courier, sir.”

  Booker nodded. “We’ll do that.”

  The courier sat at one end of the loading dock, wrapped in a blanket, legs dangling over the edge. This close, Booker now saw the man was wearing a pair of CPD sweatpants as replacement for those that had been ruined in his efforts to keep the security guard from bleeding out. A profile of the man scrolled along the periphery of Booker’s vision: age 42, no criminal record, on his eleventh year with the SecureShip courier service, and no prior incidents. He looked up with hollow eyes as they approached, and the twist of his lips made it plain he was tired of having his integrity called into question.

  “I already told the police everything I remember,” he said at once, voice brittle.

  Booker held out a hand. “Special Agent Hopkins.”

  The man’s face seemed to crumple in on itself. He raised his right hand towards his lips, then caught himself, as if embarrassed. “FBI? Is it that bad?”

  “Remains to be seen,” Hollis grunted.

  Booker noticed how the fingers of the man’s right hand were drumming restlessly on the concrete. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his e-cig, offering it to the man. The courier made a show of eyeing it for a few seconds before accepting. His entire body visibly unclenched after the first pull.

  “Better?” Booker asked.

  The courier nodded. He took another long drag, the end of the stick flaring green. “Look, they tell us no heroics, ok? If we ever get robbed, we’re just supposed to let them take it, so -- so I mean…I mean, Jesus, you should’ve seen the size of those guns. Goddamn portable railguns. What was I supposed to do?”

  Hollis leaned against the loading dock beside the man. “You did the right thing. No bits of junk are worth your life. Let us worry about getting them back. What was in the shipment?”

  “Some pieces for a new exhibit.” He glanced between Booker and the detective. “I don’t know what they were, exactly. I just scan the codes, match them on the manifest, then bring ’em back.”

  “Any way we could take a look at that manifest?” Booker asked.

  The courier nodded, eager to redeem himself, and tapped at his wristband. Booker’s smartwatch bleeped a moment later, indicating it had been pinged with a near-field transfer request. He accepted and downloaded the shipment manifest, then opened it on his smart lenses. The document that hovered in his vision was brief and depressingly unhelpful:

  DELIVERY - -

  1 – Crate (KiN Diam.)

  2 – Crate (MH)

  3 – Crate (OI)

  “MH,” Booker mused aloud. “That’s our crate. Any idea what that means?”

  The courier shook his head. “Like I said, I just pick up the shipments. You’d have to ask someone on staff, involved with the actual exhibit.”

  Which meant dealing with the rabble Hollis’ officers were currently trying to keep at bay. It would be better to wait for the excitement to die down before questioning the staff. Booker thanked the man and let him take another hit from his e-cig. He replaced the antibacterial mouthpiece with a fresh one as they went to inspect the black shipment crates. Couldn’t be too careful these days; the wrong bug would have you shitting your brains out for a month.

  “Hey,” the courier called as they began to move away. His voice had a slight tremor to it. “Is he going to be ok? The security guard?”

  “He’ll live,” Hollis assured him. The courier sagged, looking relieved. “You did a good job.”

  “Yeah…yeah, I guess.”

  “Nicely done,” Booker noted quietly, once they were out of earshot.

  “You too, with the smoke. Reading him like that.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised, detective.”

  “Hey, look, this is my first rodeo with the FBI. I’m expressing my gratitude that they didn’t send me some number-cruncher who’s never even been in the field, y’know?”

  Booker laughed loudly.

  The middle crate yawned on the loading dock, containing only black impact foam with an empty square indentation to suggest its contents. The first crate held a silver case the size of Booker’s fist, the third roughly the size of a briefcase.

  “KiN Diam.,” Hollis muttered. He was inspecting a copy of the manifest on his standard-issue armband. “Am I crazy, or does that stand for Something-Something Diamond?”

  “You’re not crazy,” Booker told him. He was pretty sure he knew which diamond it was, too.

  Hollis peered at the fist-sized case in the first crate and whistled. “That’s one hell of a rock.”

  “Which begs the question, why not take it?”

  “And what the hell makes MH so special?”

  Judging by the indentation in the middle crate, whatever the thieves were after had been bigger than the first case but smaller than the third. If it was another, larger gemstone, that would make sense. But he didn’t know of any stone that big. And it still didn’t explain why they wouldn’t have grabbed all three crates.

  The more he thought of it, the less sense any of it made. Why leave anything behind? Even a veteran thief wouldn’t pass up the chance for a bigger score if it was all there, ripe for the taking. Why the laser-focus on the middle crate?

  A loud, stern voice cut cleanly through the endless roar of the rain and the noise of the gawking crowd. “Let me through. Move, damn it, this is my museum!”

  Booker turned to see a stocky woman pushing her way to the front of the crowd, where she was stopped by one of the two officers. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t let you –”

  She bulled over him. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

  “Um – no, ma’am, but –”

  “I am Operations Director Regina Lyle. This is my museum, my exhibit, I have every right to be allowed through.”

  Booker could see the officer’s shoulders tensing and felt a stab of pity for the man. His partner sighed. “Ok, Director Lyle, I understand –”

  “No, you clearly don’t!” Though the Operations Director stood a head shorter than the officer, she seemed to be somehow staring down her nose at him. “I am the Director of the Modern Myths exhibit, crucial pieces for which were in the delivery that was attacked this morning!”

  Bingo. Booker straightened his tie and stepped forward. “Director Lyle, I’m Special Agent Hopkins, with the FBI Art Crime Team. Would you come with me please?”

  The police officer cleared his throat. “Uh, sir, we’re not supposed to let anyone through until forensics is finished.”

  “It’s alright,” Hollis said, clapping the man on the shoulder. “Director Lyle is just the person we needed to see.”

  Regina Lyle pushed through the barricade of blue suits, giving the young officer a swipe with her shoulder that could have been interpreted as accidental. “It’s about time. Honestly, the months of work I’ve put into this exhibit, only for it all to fall apart opening week!”

  “I understand, and I’m sorry.” Booker led her away from the museum entrance and the prying eyes of the other staff members who were being held back. “We just have a few questions, ones I’m hoping you can answer.”

  “Of course, anything to hel –” She cut off with a choking sound as they stepped into the dock. Her eyes bulged, taking in the carnage of the smashed door. Clearly, this was her first glimpse of the damage. “Oh, for God’s sake! Tell me you’ve found the animals who did this.”

  Detective Hollis coughed. “We’re doing everything within our power, rest assured.”

  “I am not assured!” The Operations Director hopped off the concrete ledge, forgoing the steps. “Look at this! Just – look at it!” She was frowning down at the wide bloodstain as if it were wine on the carpet. “What the hell is wrong with people?”

 
Hollis made a half-hearted move to place a consoling hand on her arm. Regina Lyle somehow shook him off without even acknowledging the attempt. Her gaze kept moving from the ruined entryway to the dented side of the delivery truck to the bloodstain, nostrils flaring. Booker felt her temper rising like a thunderhead building on the horizon and moved to deflate it. “Director Lyle, Detective Hollis and I were hoping you could clear some things up for us. Namely, the nature of the item that was stolen.”

  “Item?” Lyle’s eyebrows rose, some of the fire going out of her. “They only took one? What was it?” All at once the tension returned to her face. “Oh, please don’t tell me it was the Koh-I-Noor!”

  So it is the Koh-I-Noor. Booker glanced at the first of the black crates with renewed appreciation. The legendary diamond came in at a whopping 105 carats and was steeped in the blood of British imperialism. Though the diamond was ostensibly given to Queen Victoria as a “gift” from the Maharajah Duleep Singh after the annexation of Punjab in 1849, the true nature of the exchange remained a matter of controversy. Over the centuries, India, Pakistan, and Britain had made various claims of ownership; only in recent decades had it been returned to India by the British Kingdom, as a gesture of good will. That Regina Lyle had been able to negotiate a loan spoke to her competency as Director.

  Hollis cleared his throat. “You’re talking about the diamond?”

  Lyle nodded impatiently. “Yes, the Koh-I-Noor diamond, on loan from India, and I can tell you that it was a hell of an uphill battle with the Ministry of Culture. The Indian Prime Minister will personally declare war on the state of Illinois if it goes missing, I had to make personal assurances –”

  All at once her eyelids fluttered, and she took a few stumbling steps back. Booker quickly took her by the arm. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “No. No, I’m – I’ll be alright. This damned humidity.” She took a few deep breaths, eyes closed. When she opened them again, the hard fury had returned. “Special Agent Whatever Your Name Is, my blood went into this exhibit. My entire reputation is on the line here. The museum’s reputation is on the line. Please tell me you’ll get it back.”