The Thieves of Darkness (41 page)

“How long is this going to take?” Busch asked. But Michael’s focus kept him from answering.

Michael began by spinning the miniflywheel three times to the right, his eyes focused via the scope and his ears tuned to the moment of the gentle click. He had opened similar vault doors both in his legitimate security business and in the course of his more illicit affairs. He was thankful they were not on a clock lock as banks were, restricting the times that the combination would work to specific hours and minutes.

Like a laparoscopic surgeon, Michael watched through his scope closely until the first pin fell into place. He slowly spun the wheel back until the second pin clicked in, and so on through to the fifth and final pin.

Michael eyed Busch; a mutual smile began to crease their faces.

Michael stood, his right hand holding tight to the flywheel, keeping the pins in place while his left hand grasped the handle. And with a gentle nudge, the steel bar handle began to turn.

But Michael suddenly froze. A high-pitched beep began to rhythmically pulse. It came from the other side of the door, from within the room.

“Cindy?”

“Michael, what’s that noise, that beeping?”

Busch turned to Michael but said nothing as he saw Michael’s intensity rise.

“Listen to me, Cindy. Quickly look around, follow your ears, I need you to locate the source of that sound.”

“Iblis would blow this all up?” Busch asked as he turned and looked back down the hall toward all of the artwork.

“No,” Michael said. “The blast will be contained to the vault room, but it will be more than enough to kill Cindy and Simon.”

KC
STARED AT
Iblis. She and Michael had walked right into a trap.

“Getting past my guards I’m sure proved easy. Finding my private sanctuary where I store my art would prove far more challenging, but if
he’s as good as you think he is, he’ll make it through the security, which will lead him to the last obstacle before reaching your sister. He’ll be feeling confident as a result of his success and fall for the simplest of traps.

“The bomb is made of Semtex, encased in a score of razor blades and nails. They’ll not only be incinerated but shredded into hundreds of pieces. And it will all be your fault. If you’d trusted me, I would have let her go, I’d even have let Simon go if … you hadn’t betrayed me.”

KC quickly withdrew her cell phone.

“Don’t bother,” Iblis said. “There’s no signal down there. Now give me the rod.”

KC’s heart thundered in her chest; her sister was dead by her hand, an innocent victim. KC took a step back, her mind in a fog as the guilt overwhelmed her.

“KC, don’t force me to do the one thing I would regret,” Iblis said in all seriousness. “I’m not leaving here without the rod.”

As KC stared at Iblis, at the man who had taught her everything she knew, bile rose in her throat, utter hatred began to consume her, and it took everything she had to stay her hand. She decided right then that he deserved pain and suffering, he deserved to be punished.

But suddenly, with a lightning hand, Iblis snatched the tube from KC’s grasp. He flipped up the leather top and then the interior metal seal; he peered into the case to see the twin-headed snake with ruby eyes. He closed it back up and looked at KC.

KC stood there at a loss for words as Iblis held her eyes. For a moment she was beyond vulnerable, she was in too much shock to have reacted if he tried to kill her. But without a word, without raising his hand, Iblis turned and walked away across the courtyard, down the shrub-lined path.

KC wrapped her head in a scarf, took a seat on the bench, pulled out her cell phone, and dialed. It rang on and on, each ring like the toll of a death bell. She hung up and redialed, but again there was no answer. KC tucked the phone back in her pocket and did all she could possibly do in that moment: She wept.

The tears poured forth at her sister’s death; she had failed her. And to compound the situation, Cindy had died hating her, their last words spoken in anger. She had hoped that they would reunite, that she would be able to explain that the unfortunate path her life had taken was taken out of necessity, out of love. But the tears of reunion would never come, only the tears of grief and anguish that covered her face now.

She finally looked up to see Iblis approaching the exit of the grounds of the Blue Mosque. He never looked back, he never suspected.

The police swarmed in from all directions, thirty strong. Iblis had nowhere to run as he was violently tackled to the ground, his hands cuffed before he could even struggle.

T
HE WINGBACK LEATHER
chair in the corner of the room was pulled aside. Upon the floor sat a foot-square black box, its lid flipped back. The sound of the beeping cut through the room and Cindy’s ears like a hot blade. The sound corresponded to a red LED timer that was counting down. Cindy had never seen one before but she knew exactly what she was looking at as the panic flooded in.

“Michael, it’s a bomb!” Cindy screamed. “And it’s ticking down from ninety.”

Michael looked through the scope into the vault door, moving the fiber-optic gooseneck around before finally finding the cause of the current threat. It was a simple mechanical switch attached to the handle, its wires running out of the door and into the wall. Michael was beyond angry at himself for not checking first. He could have easily removed it, but his impatience had caused him not to be mindful of such traps. He had played right into Iblis’s hands.

Michael quickly cleared his mind. “Cindy, I need you to focus. Describe it to me.”

“I’m terrible with this kind of stuff, I can’t even set my alarm clock.” Cindy’s voice, on the brink of hysteria, was barely audible through the door.

“Listen to my voice, focus, or you’ll die.”

“Hey, she’s scared enough—” Busch began.

“Better scared than dead,” Michael said without turning around. “Cindy…?”

“It’s black, the timer is on top, red numbers ticking down, my God, seventy seconds.”

“Do you see any wires?” Michael looked at his watch and hit the stopwatch function, synchronizing to the seventy-second countdown.

There was total silence. Until … “Four wires coming out of the wall into the box. There are a bunch of wires inside the box, two metal spikes are protruding from the inside case, there are wires coming out of the timer—Jesus, Michael. I can’t do this!”

“Cindy, what color are the wires?” Michael knew it was a foolish question; there never was a blue wire to cut, or a red one, for that matter. There was no standard wiring for bombs. No anarchist handbook for wiring explosives.

“White, black, red, green, striped. It’s less than fifty seconds, Michael, help me.”

“Open the door, Michael,” Busch said as his hand grabbed the handle.

“No,” Michael shouted, pushing his large friend back. “It’ll blow; didn’t you hear what she said? Four wires from the wall. Iblis has not only a timer switch but a trigger switch on the door.”

“She’s going to die,” Busch said.

“Cindy?” Michael looked at his watch: Twenty seconds left. “I need you to reach into the box—”

“Michael,” Cindy’s voice was calm, her panic evaporated. “Please tell KC I’m sorry—”

“Reach into the box, you can do this,” Michael said calmly. “You can tell her yourself.”

But there was no response. Michael glanced at his watch again. Ten seconds … Five seconds … “Cindy!!!!”

Michael crushed his eyes closed, braced himself against the thick vault door … two … one…

Michael’s watch ticked to zero, the numbers going negative past five
seconds, ten, a half-minute gone by, but there was nothing, not a sound, not an explosion, not a voice.

“Cindy…?” Michael said as he turned a questioning eye to Busch.

Suddenly the door creaked. Michael stood up and away from the door as it slowly swung open. Michael and Busch stood there, their hearts in their mouths, waiting until finally the room was revealed.

Cindy sat against the wall, her knees pulled tight to her chest, her head buried in her arms. Her body was racked with uncontrollable sobs.

“Took you long enough.”

Michael turned to the familiar voice.

Simon sat on the floor propped against a leather chair, his head wrapped in a large blood-encrusted bandage. He was pale, his eyes barely open. Michael finally looked at his right hand to see a red timer and a host of dangling wires wrapped about his splayed fingers, the unexploded bomb on the floor next to him.

Busch laid Simon across the back of the limo. He had carried him up from the basement, and even though he prided himself on his strength and fitness, he felt as if his heart was going to explode from carrying his two-hundred-pound friend.

Busch backed out of the limo to see Michael closing his cell phone. “KC will meet us at the hospital.”

“She’s okay?” Busch asked.

“Yeah, relieved.” Michael nodded as he looked at Cindy, who stood in the shade of a large cypress tree. “You really should talk to her.”

“Is my hotel on the way to the hospital?” Cindy asked, ignoring Michael’s suggestion.

“Don’t you want to see your sister?” Busch asked as he walked around the car and opened the trunk.

“No,” Cindy said. “Not particularly.”

“You said to tell her you were sorry…?” Michael said.

“That’s when I thought I was going to die.”

“That’s cold,” Michael said, much to Cindy’s surprise. “She just went through hell to get you, she risked her life to save you.”

“Yeah, and she is also the reason I’m here, the reason Iblis used me to make her steal. None of this would have happened if she wasn’t a thief.”

“You know what, you’re right,” Michael said. “But you know what else wouldn’t have happened? Your life. Your schooling, your career. You would have been stuck in foster care and out on your own at eighteen. Why don’t you think about that? Why don’t you think about what she gave up for you, instead of being so goddamn self-centered?”

Cindy looked at Michael, unsure how to respond. And then it hit her. “You love my sister.”

Michael said nothing as he stared at her.

“The way you defend her; I can see it in your eyes,” Cindy said with a smile.

And Michael was suddenly disarmed.

“What are you going to do about all that artwork down there,” Cindy said as she pointed at the house, completely changing the subject.

“When we’re clear, we’ll call it in to the police,” Busch said as he walked over from the limo. “Can you imagine the press that this is going to get? Some of that art has been missing for decades.”

“I thought you were a thief,” Cindy said to Michael. “None of that stuff interests you? You’d have millions.”

“Billions, actually,” Busch said.

Michael smiled. “I’m not that kind of thief.”

“What about the chart? Isn’t that why I was just put through hell?” Cindy asked.

“We don’t have time to look for it. I’ve got digital pictures of it. Let’s go,” Michael insisted as he began to climb in the back of the limo. “We need to get Simon to the hospital.”

“Michael, she’s right. That’s the one thing you can’t leave in that house,” Busch said. “Simon wanted it for a reason.”

“Look who’s getting all hot and bothered.” Michael smiled. “I thought you didn’t give a shit about this stuff, that it was a bunch of bullshit.”

“It is bullshit. I don’t think it should be in anyone else’s hands, though. It would make a nice present for Simon when he wakes up.”

“You’re so thoughtful,” Michael joked. “But I have no idea where it is.”

“I do,” Cindy spoke up.

“You don’t even know what it looks like,” Busch said, dismissing her.

“A big map, on some kind of animal skin? This big,” Cindy said as she held her arms apart. “There’s only one problem.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” Busch said.

“It’s in a wall safe.”

Michael and Busch looked at each other and smiled.

“Take him to the hospital,” Michael said to Busch, pointing into the limo at Simon. Michael grabbed his leather bag of tools off the car seat and began walking back toward the house. He turned to Cindy. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Cindy looked back at Busch, unsure what to do.

“This won’t take long, then I’ll drop you at your hotel,” Michael said.

Cindy headed toward Michael.

“How are you going to get back?” Busch asked as he opened the driver’s side door.

“I always wanted to drive an Aston Martin Vantage.”

Iblis sat on the cold metal bench of the police van. His hands and feet were manacled, the chains jingling with every pothole they hit on their way out of the Sultanahmet district on their way to the police station. Four policemen, dressed in dark uniforms, sat with him, their eyes filled with hate.

A large dark-haired man arose from the passenger’s seat. He had a slight paunch but his harsh face diminished any sense that the man was soft, that he couldn’t crush someone’s spine in his bare, callused hands. He patted the driver on the shoulder and walked back among his men and the prisoner.

Kudret Levant was a fifteen-year veteran, a senior detective. He had been awoken twelve hours earlier by an enraged Ahmet Baghatur, the chief of police, who had just had half his ass removed by Prime Minister Erdem. Levant had twenty-four hours to find the terrorists responsible for the fiasco at Topkapi Palace if he had any interest in keeping his job.

Levant smiled to himself as he stared down at the short, skinny man; he had accomplished his mandate in less than twelve. And it wasn’t terrorists or extremists; in fact, there appeared to be no political agenda to the night’s chaos. It was simply about money, that universal motivator.

The anonymous call came into the police station giving the name and description of the perpetrator and his location. It was one of hundreds of tips, but it was a tip provided without incentive or demand for recompense, giving a description of what the man would be carrying and of the motive behind the night’s events. He had sent his men at the prescribed hour, all bursting as they lay in wait watching the man who perfectly fit the description carry the long tube out of the grounds of the Blue Mosque. Their gruff supervisor had ordered them to hold their position until their mark was back on the public street; they could ill afford an incident at another of their most revered tourist attractions.