The Sacred Vault (2 page)

Fifteen minutes to carry out the most audacious robbery in history.

He gestured to one of his men, Franco, who had already secured one end of a line inside the open skylight. At the other end was a barbed metal spear, currently loaded into a custom-built, gas-powered launcher.

Franco had already selected his target, a squat brick ventilation blockhouse poking up from the Galleria’s roof like a periscope. He tilted up the launcher. Fernandez watched him closely. This was a ‘wildcard moment’, the biggest risk in any operation. If the brickwork was too weak to take the weight, if someone heard the noise of launch or clang of impact and looked up at the wrong moment . . .

At least they could minimise the chances of the last. Franco raised a thumb. Another man, Sklar, held up a string of firecrackers, lit the fuse - and flung them down the street.

There was a small square at the Galleria’s southwestern corner. The fireworks landed at its edge. People jumped at the string of little explosions. Once the initial fright passed, some onlookers were annoyed, others amused by the display . . . but they were all looking at the ground.

‘Now,’ said Fernandez.

Franco pulled the trigger. There was a flat thud as compressed nitrogen gas blasted the spear across the street - and a sharp clang as the spearhead pierced the blockhouse.

All eyes below were still on the firecrackers.

Franco put down the launcher and tugged on the line, gingerly at first, then harder. The spear held. He pulled a lever on the launcher’s side to engage a winch mechanism and quickly drew the line taut.

Fernandez gestured to a third man, Kristoff - the smallest and lightest member of the team. The German gave the line a tug of his own to reassure himself that it would hold, then clipped his harness to it and carefully lowered himself off the roof.

The others held their breaths. If the spear came loose, it was all over.

Suspended below the line, Kristoff pulled himself across the street. The cable shuddered, but held firm. Fernandez didn’t take his eyes off the spear. The crackle of fireworks had stopped, and now he could hear the crunch of broken bricks shifting against each other . . .

Kristoff reached the Galleria’s roof.

Mass exhalation. Fernandez realised he was sweating despite the cold. Kristoff detached himself from the line, then secured it around the blockhouse.

Thumbs up.

Fernandez hooked himself to the cable and pulled himself across, followed in rapid succession by the others. He checked his watch as the last man reached the Galleria. They had made it with thirty seconds to spare.

Now for the next stage.

He took out his phone and entered another number. He didn’t lift it to his ear as he pushed the final button, though. He was listening for something else.

 

In a Florentine suburb three kilometres to the southwest, two cars had been parked, one at each end of an unremarkable street.

Each car contained half a kilogram of C-4 explosive, wired to a detonator triggered by a mobile phone. The phones had been cloned; each shared the same number, ringing simultaneously.

An electrical impulse passed through the detonator—

By the time the booms reached the Galleria dell’ Accademia eight seconds later, the men on the roof were already moving towards their next objectives.

They raced across the rooftops, splitting into four groups of two men each. Zec and Franco comprised one team, reaching their destination first as the others continued past.

The pair dropped on to a section of flat roof where large humming air conditioning units kept the museum’s internal temperature constant. There was a small window just below the eaves of the abutting, slightly taller building. Zec shone a penlight inside. An office, as expected. A glance below the frame revealed a thin electrical cable. The window was rigged with an alarm.

He took a black box from his harness, uncoiling wires and digging a sharp-toothed crocodile clip deeply into the cable to bite the copper wire within. A second clip was affixed on the other side of the window. He pushed a button on the box. A green light came on.

Franco took out a pair of wirecutters and with a single snip severed the cable between the clips.

The light stayed green.

Zec touched his throat-mike to key it. ‘We’re in.’

 

Inside the museum, lights of the halls and galleries were dimmed to the softest glow. Had it been up to the curators they would have been switched off entirely, to prevent the artworks from fading, but the security guards’ inconvenient human need for illumination had required a compromise.

The Galleria dell’ Accademia is not an especially large museum, so the nightwatch usually consists only of six men. Despite the cultural value of the exhibits to the Italian people, this seemingly small staff is not an issue: any kind of alarm would normally result in a rapid police response.

But on this night, the police had other concerns.

Two guards entered one of the upper floor galleries. Familiarity had turned the art treasures into mundane furniture, the monotony of patrolling the halls punctuated only by check-ins with the security office. So the unexpected crackle of one man’s walkie-talkie got their attention; the next check wasn’t due for twenty minutes. ‘What’s up?’

‘Probably nothing,’ came the static-laden reply. ‘But Hall Three has gone dark. Can you look?’

‘No problem,’ said the guard, giving his companion a wry look. That passed as excitement in their job: checking for faulty light bulbs.

They made their way to a short flight of steps. It was immediately clear there was something wrong with the lights in Hall III, only darkness visible beyond the entrance. One guard took a torch from his belt, and they advanced into the gallery.

Nothing seemed out of place in the torch beam. The second man shrugged, turning to try the light switches—

A pair of eyes seemed to float in the blackness before him.

Before he could make a sound, he was hit in the heart by two bullets from Zec’s MP5K, the suppressor muting the noise of the shots to nothing more than sharp
tchack
s. His partner whirled - and a gloved hand clamped over his mouth, Franco’s black-bladed combat knife stabbing deep into his throat.

Both bodies were hauled into the shadows. Zec pulled up his balaclava and took the dead guard’s walkie-talkie. ‘Something’s buzzing,’ he said in Italian, the radio’s low fidelity disguising his voice. ‘The camera might have shorted out. Can you check the system?’

‘I’ll run a diagnostic. Hold on.’

Zec dropped the walkie-talkie. The computer would spend the next thirty seconds checking the various cameras and alarms around the building, eventually coming to the conclusion that the camera in Hall III was malfunctioning - unsurprising, since he had shot it.

But while the computer was busy, the security systems would be down.

He keyed the throat-mike. ‘Two down. Go.’

 

Fernandez and Sklar were suspended on lines hanging from the roof on the southern side of a courtyard, waiting for Zec’s signal: the instant it came, Fernandez kicked open an upper-floor window and swung inside, unslinging his gun. The Ukrainian jumped down beside him.

He and his team had reconnoitred the Galleria multiple times over the past month, and he knew exactly where he had entered the building - the upper level of the main stairwell. Right now, another team was also entering on the ground floor.

This part of the mission was a hunt - and a race against time. Find the remaining guards . . . and kill them before they could raise the alarm.

Fernandez knew where two of them would be - the security control room. He and Sklar hurried down the staircase. The position of the remaining two guards was another wildcard, which was why he had chosen entry points that would let his team spread out as quickly as possible. Speed and surprise were everything - it only took one guard to push a panic button . . .

They reached the ground floor. Fifteen seconds before the cameras came back online. Sklar hared off into the main entrance hall. Fernandez, meanwhile, shoved through a door marked
Privato
and threaded his way along a narrow corridor.

Another door. Five seconds left. He raised his gun and kicked it open.

The guard seated in front of the security monitors looked round in surprise—

Tchack. Tchack. Tchack
. The guard crashed off his chair, arms spasming in reflexive response to the three bullets that had just slammed into his skull, splattering blood across the blank monitor screens.

Shit! Where was the other man?

The diagnostic ended, and the monitors came back to life. He spotted one of his men in the Sale Bizantine, another in the Sale Fiorentine. Where were the guards?

There - in the Salone del Colosso. Sklar would be closest to them—

Both guards fell, thrashing in their noiseless death throes as a burst from Sklar’s silenced MP5K cut them down. Confirmation came through his earpiece: ‘Two down.’

Just one man left - but where?

The answer was almost comical in its obviousness. Fernandez rushed out of the control room and headed back up the passage to another door marked
WC
.

He opened it. A small tiled room, two stalls, one closed . . .

The rapid
tchack
s from the gun were louder in here, echoing in the confined space. The stall’s wooden door splintered, a startled gasp coming from behind it - along with clanks of shattering porcelain and the dull thud of lead entering flesh. A trickle of water ran out from beneath the door, pinkish rivulets spreading through it.

Six guards dealt with.

Fernandez hurried back into the museum proper, turning left in the entrance hall and looking down the length of the gallery to see his target at the far end.

Michelangelo’s David.

Possibly the most famous sculpture in the world, the Renaissance masterpiece towered above its viewers, over five metres tall even without its pedestal. During the day, illuminated mainly by light coming through the glass dome in the ceiling, the marble statue was a soft off-white, almost blending into the blandly painted walls of the semicircular chamber in which it stood. But at night, side-lit and with its surroundings in shadow, the naked figure stood out starkly, appearing almost threatening, a faint sneer of disdain visible on the young future king’s lips as he prepared to face Goliath in combat.

To Fernandez, the image seemed appropriate. After all, he was the David who defeated the Goliath of the world’s combined law enforcement agencies . . .

You haven’t done it yet
, he warned himself as he marched towards the statue, passing more of Michelangelo’s sculptures along the way. Three of his men were already waiting at David’s feet, and he heard footsteps behind - Zec and Franco. As for the last two team members . . .

He looked up at the dome, catching a glimpse of movement outside. They were right where they should be. Everything was on schedule.

‘You know what to do,’ he announced as he reached the statue. ‘Let’s make history.’

‘Or
take
history,’ said Zec. The two men grinned, then everyone moved into action.

One man ran to a control panel on one wall. It was protected by a locked metal cover, but a moment’s effort with a crowbar took care of that. The others went to the statue itself. Kristoff and Franco climbed on to the plinth, their heads only coming to David’s mid-thigh. They took out coiled straps, wider and much thicker than their own harnesses, and carefully secured them round the statue’s legs.

Once they were in place, Kristoff took out another coil and, keeping hold of the buckle at one end, tossed it upwards. It arced over the statue’s shoulder, dropping down on the other side like a streamer. Another man caught the coil and passed it back between David’s legs to Franco, who ran it through the buckle, connected it to the leg strap and pulled it tight. The process was repeated with a second strap over the other shoulder.

Kristoff quickly used the straps to scale the stone figure’s chest, hanging on with one hand as more straps were thrown to him. Fernandez looked on as his plan literally took shape before his eyes. The growing web was much like the harnesses he and his men were wearing, designed to spread out the weight of the body over as great an area as possible when it was lifted.

In the case of David, that weight was over six tons -
plus
the pedestal. But that had been planned for.

The Spaniard gestured to the man at the control panel. He pushed a button. A hydraulic rumble came from the floor.

Very slowly, the statue began to rise.

At considerable expense, the Galleria had recently installed a system to protect David from vibrations, whether in the form of earthquakes, city traffic or even the constant footsteps of visitors. Powerful shock absorbers under the pedestal shielded it from tremors - but also allowed it to be elevated for those rare occasions when the statue had to be moved. At full height, there was just enough space for a forklift’s blades to slip beneath the base.

That was all the space Fernandez needed.

Zec and the other man at the statue pushed more straps, thicker still and bearing heavy-duty metal D-rings, under the base. Once that was done, they fastened them over the pedestal, then began to secure the harness to them.

Fernandez took out his phone again, dialling the first number he had called earlier. The answer was heavily obscured by noise. ‘We’re less than two minutes out - but ATC’s issued an alert about us being off course.’

‘We’re almost ready,’ said Fernandez. ‘Just follow the plan.’ He disconnected, hearing knocking from the dome. One of the two figures outside gave him a thumbs up.

Zec rounded the statue. ‘All set. I just hope the harness holds.’