The Sacred Vault (19 page)

Knocking the suction cup over the edge.

If it hit the floor, the alarm would go off . . .

He heard a thump of impact—

The faint sound was not followed by the scream of sirens. Instead, Eddie heard a rapid fluttering like the beating of a moth’s wings. Grimacing at the pain in his arm, he squirmed forward and looked down. The assembly hung an inch above the floor. The suction cup had landed on one of the fans, jammed against the frame as the whirling blades beat against it.

‘What was that noise?’ Karima asked, alarmed.

‘My fan club,’ he rasped, pulling the cable back up. ‘Did those guys hear it?’

‘It doesn’t look like it.’ The vault’s thick walls had muffled the sound.

He hauled up the rack until it was swaying about two feet off the floor, then knotted the cable into a butterfly loop to hold it there. ‘How much time?’

‘Thirteen minutes - but Eddie, they could come back before then.’

‘Yeah, I needed to hear that, Karima. Okay, I’m going to climb down.’

Forcing the cable out of his way, Eddie dragged himself forward. The opening beneath him made movement easier, but he didn’t drop through it - yet. Instead, he pulled himself over the gap, still towing his cargo, then unfastened the strap from his belt, leaving it hanging over the edge, and carefully lowered his legs into the vault.

The fans swung on their makeshift tether, the flapping sound still coming from the suction cup. The pedestal desk containing the security terminal was about two feet to one side. Eddie swung down to land on it with a thump.

He was in!

Leaning down, he recovered the suction cup . . . and realised he was screwed.

The fan blades had slashed a ragged tear in the synthetic rubber. He tested it on the desktop, but knew even before he pulled the lever that it was useless. A pathetic puff of air came through the rip. It couldn’t create a vacuum.

Which meant he had no way to get back through the duct.

‘Buggeration,’ he whispered. He would have to find another way out, and soon.

First things first. He stood and pulled the strap, slowly tugging the case over the edge. It dropped - he caught it, gripping the second strap and dragging the plastic container after it. Both bulky items retrieved, he put them on the desk and opened the case.

The rapid prototyper was inside. He lifted it out, closed the case and set the machine on top of it, pouring the glutinous liquid into the tank. As soon as it was full he switched on the machine, darkly cursing as it ran through a self-test mode, the laser head whining along its tracks. Thirty seconds, wasted. Finally it was ready.

He inserted the memory card and pushed the start button.

Two beams flickered across the tank, the liquid hardening where they crossed. The laser head slowly moved along the machine’s length. A ghostly shape took on form beneath it. A hand, wraithlike and insubstantial.

And two-dimensional. The prototyper built up objects layer by layer, the lasers gradually focusing higher as they moved back and forth. Each layer was less than a millimetre thick, so making something substantial enough to trick the handprint scanner would take time.

Time that was running out.

Eddie looked round the vault. The simplest way out would be to set off the alarm by dropping something on the floor; the guards would open the door to investigate. But they were armed, and he wasn’t, and even if he got past them he didn’t fancy his chances of escaping the building. A man in a skin-tight bodysuit carrying a large book made of gold would be hard to miss.

What else could he do? He glanced at the hole in the ceiling. No way out there without the suction cup.

But there was something else he could use . . .

 

While Rad and Karima kept watch on the monitors, Matt went up on deck. He regarded the UN building for a moment, hoping Eddie would get his arse in gear, then looked downriver. At this time of night, water traffic was minimal, the lights of other vessels standing out clearly even from a distance.

He recognised the pattern of one of them.

The Harbor Unit boat.

It was over a mile away, and in no hurry to reach them. But it was definitely coming back upriver. He jumped back into the cabin. ‘We’ve got a problem!’

‘We’re not the only ones,’ said Rad, jabbing a finger at the laptop.

On the screen, one of the guards had just stood.

‘Gonna do the rounds,’ said Jablonsky. ‘Don’t let Mario distract you from the monitors, huh?’

Vernio waved a dismissive hand. ‘Nothing’s happening - he’s hardly moved.’

Jablonsky glanced back at the screens. Eddie was still at the desk. He turned in the direction of the reading area . . . then changed his mind, deciding to check the other side of the archives first. He could look in on the Englishman at the end of his patrol.

Which wouldn’t take long.

T
he object in the prototyper’s tank was now almost finished - and somewhat disturbing. Eddie could easily recognise it as Nina’s right hand, a small childhood scar visible at the base of her first finger . . . but it had no colour, a translucent, boneless mass like some primitive deep sea creature.

The fingers were complete, loops and whorls discernible in the lifeless flesh. The laser head whirred back and forth over the thickest part of the hand, the ball of the thumb, as it added the final layers. Eight minutes had gone, and it still wasn’t finished. Karima had warned him that one of the guards was patrolling, but there was no point worrying - there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

The scanner whined back to its rest position - and stopped. The prototyper bleeped three times. Done.

Eddie gingerly touched its end product. The ‘hand’ was soft, rubbery, almost but not quite like flesh. It was also hot. He dipped the digital thermometer into the liquid. Over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. He kept it in place, watching the display. The figure dropped by a tenth of a degree, then another.

He carefully lifted the hand out of the tank. It flopped grotesquely as it emerged from the thick liquid. He used a wipe to clean off the excess goo, then checked the temperature again. 99.1°F. Almost down to human body temperature. He didn’t know how far above or below the norm the temperature sensor in the handprint scanner would accept, but doubted it was more than a few tenths of a degree.

He typed in Nina’s security code. One, eight, six, zero, nine, two, four, six, zero, nine. The panel lit up: code accepted. Now the system was waiting to confirm her identity biometrically.

98.8°F. Almost normal. He laid the hand palm-down on the panel. The line of light moved beneath it. He glanced round at the locker, waiting for the LED to turn from red to green.

It didn’t.

The monitor flashed up a message, polite but chilling:
Unable to confirm. Please rescan.

It hadn’t worked. The system had recognised the fake . . .

No
, Eddie realised, forcing himself to be calm. If it had detected trickery, it would have raised the alarm. It just hadn’t quite matched the silicone palmprint to the one in its memory.

98.4°F. Below normal body temperature. And it would only keep falling.

What was wrong? He lifted the hand from the scanner, torch beam darting over it as he searched for any flaws—

There! Between the first and second fingers, bisecting the scar. A hairline split in the silicone. The two halves of the scar had slipped apart by a tiny amount . . . but enough for the computer to find something odd about the easily identifiable feature. He put the hand back on the scanner, nudging the gelatinous non-flesh into what he hoped was perfect alignment.

The scanning beam moved again. Eddie looked round—

A single point of green appeared amongst the grid of red lights. ‘Yes!’ he said, pumping a fist.

‘Eddie, did it work?’ Karima’s voice crackled in his ear.

‘Yeah, it’s open. What’s going on outside?’

‘That guard’s still on the far side of the archives, but he’s circling round - and the police are on their way back to us!’

‘I’ll have to get a shift on, then.’ He moved to the very edge of the desk, balancing on his toes - then let himself topple forward, one arm outstretched to arrest his fall on the lockers.

He reached out with his other hand and opened the large door. The case containing the Codex was inside. He slid it out - then, swinging the heavy container as a counterweight, shoved himself back upright. For one horrible moment he wavered, rubber-shod toes clawing at the edge, before arching his back and standing tall.

Eddie opened the case. A golden light filled the vault: his torch beam reflecting off the orichalcum cover of the Talonor Codex.

He had it.

Now . . . he had to get away with it.

 

Jablonsky had completed his rounds of one side of the labyrinth. Humming to himself, he started towards the vault to begin his circuit of the other.

 

Matt hurried back up to the deck. The police boat was about half a mile away - heading straight for him.

 

The desk was clear, almost all Eddie’s equipment shoved into the overhead vent. Aside from the case containing the Codex, the only thing left was the screwdriver.

He held it between his teeth as he hauled the hanging ventilator back up until it was at shoulder height. Supporting the weight of one end on his collarbone, he took the screwdriver in his free hand . . . and stabbed it into a fan.

The blades instantly jammed. The motor protested, whining angrily. He pushed the insulated handle down harder. With an electrical crack, the motor burned out.

He yanked out the screwdriver and did the same to another fan. This time, the motor sparked, an acrid burning smell hitting his nostrils as smoke coiled out of it.

 

Jablonsky crossed the central aisle in front of the vault door, and was heading for the reading area when his walkie-talkie squawked. ‘Hey, Lou,’ said his partner. ‘The computer’s showing something wrong in the vault.’

He went back to the curved steel door, looking down the main aisle to the security desk. ‘Has the alarm gone off?’

‘No, but there’s some problem with the ventilation system. I’ll open it up so you can check.’

Jablonsky inserted his card and waited while Vernio went through the procedure to open the door. After a minute, the heavy door hummed open.

He caught the sharp tang of smoke in the air as he entered. A crackle from above; he looked up at the grille to see a blue spark flicker behind it. ‘Yeah, something’s shorted out,’ he reported into his radio. ‘Better call it in.’

Leaving the vault door open to disperse the smoke, he headed back to the main desk as Vernio picked up the phone to summon an engineer.

 

Watching the laptop screen, Karima saw that the guard had his back to the vault - and the other was looking away as he made a phone call. ‘Eddie,
now
!’

The locker swung open. Inside was the case containing the Talonor Codex - and Eddie Chase, squeezed into the space even more tightly than he had been in the duct.

He had used the cutter, retrieved from the vent, to sabotage the lock mechanism inside the door. Now, he hurriedly unfolded himself, using the handles of the lockers above to climb out. Standing with one foot on the edge of the locker’s floor, he recovered the case and jumped across to the central desk.

The guard was still walking away from him. He stretched out one leg to nudge the locker shut, then drew back - and made a flying leap through the open vault door.

He cleared the pressure-sensitive floor by less than the length of a toe. Pain shot through his ankle at the awkward landing, but he held in a grunt and flung himself sideways behind the nearest bank of storage lockers.

One rubber sole squeaked on the floor—

Jablonsky looked round at the sound.

Eddie heard his footsteps stop. He froze, pressed against the cabinets.

The steps resumed . . . coming back.

‘What’s wrong?’ Vernio called.

‘Thought I heard something.’ Jablonsky was almost at the vault. Eddie braced himself - he was going to have to fight his way out after all . . .

One of the damaged fans sparked again. Jablonsky stopped. Eddie could see his shadow. One more step and he would be found—

The guard turned away, thinking the sound was just another spark. Eddie waited until he was clear, then quietly tiptoed back to the locker where he had stashed his clothes.

The spotlight beam stabbed through the porthole. ‘Time’s up!’ the cop said through the loudhailer. ‘Get moving.’

Matt ran up on deck. ‘We’re stowing our gear! Give us a minute.’

‘Okay, you got your minute - but if you aren’t moving by the end of it, you’re coming with us.’

‘We’re moving, we’re moving!’ Matt leapt back into the cabin. The live feeds showed Eddie hurrying back to the reading area, the Codex under one arm, a bundle of clothes in the other.

‘Eddie!’ Karima cried. ‘We’re out of time!’

 

Eddie reached the booths. He had dumped the Codex’s case in the locker; now, he flung open the briefcase and dropped the gleaming artefact inside before pulling on his trousers over the filthy bodysuit.

 

‘Maintenance is on the way,’ said Vernio, putting down the phone.

‘I’ll go get Eddie.’ Jablonsky headed for the reading area.

 

Eddie fumbled with his jumper. No time to clean the muck off his hands—

 

‘Come on, move it!’ growled the cop.

Matt ran back on deck and took the controls. ‘We’re going! Jesus Christ, mate!’ He started the engine, the diesels clattering. ‘The UN’ll be narked about this!’

He pushed the button to winch up the anchor, then opened the throttle. The boat moved off, turning downstream.

In the cabin, the fibre-optic spool spun faster and faster as the line was drawn out. It caught against the porthole’s brass frame—

And snapped.

Vernio looked up sharply as the monitors flickered. Was the electrical problem spreading?

His eyes went to the visitor—

 

‘Yo, Eddie.’

‘Yeah?’ said Eddie, dropping into the chair just before Jablonsky entered the reading area.

‘Afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,’ the guard said apologetically. ‘There’s an electrical problem, and we gotta clear the room while it’s being repaired. Safety rules.’

‘That’s okay, I’m finished anyway.’ He gathered the papers and put them into the files. ‘Health and safety, eh? Surprised they don’t make you wear a hard hat and a Day-Glo jacket.’

Jablonsky grinned. ‘Seems it’s getting that way, sometimes. You need a hand?’

‘Nah, I’ve got it.’ Eddie stacked everything so he could carry it with one arm, pretending that the now-empty box file was still heavy, and picked up the briefcase. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

 

Karima came on deck, Rad following. She looked back at the police boat. ‘That was close.’

‘Did Eddie make it?’ Matt asked.

‘He’s on his way out.’

‘Thank Christ,’ said Matt, relieved. ‘Only problem now is: how the hell am I going to explain to the Oceanic Survey Organisation that their hundred thousand dollar ROV is stuck in the UN’s basement?’

 

Jablonsky led Eddie back to the first locker and opened it. ‘There you go.’

‘Thanks.’ He put the box file inside, surreptitiously plucking the piece of cardboard from the lock. ‘Okay, all done.’

He stood back as Jablonsky closed the locker, waiting for him to escort him out of the archives. But the guard hesitated.

‘What’s up?’ Eddie said, as casually as he could.

‘You got something on your hand.’