fic: Chinese Boxes 7/11

[01cheers]

(chapter 16 continued)

“There’s something I heard them say,” she starts when Bruce has run the bug-sweep check and told her and Gianfranco that they can talk in the car, “that may give us the killer evidence we need to get them.”

The announcement is met with an interested look from Gianfranco in the back seat and from stony silence from Bruce next to her. When he relents, it is in a flat, tense voice. “I can tell there is a but to this.”

“But you’re not gonna like it,” she admits.

“I can tell that much already,” he parries, not looking at her. “Go on.”

She takes a deep breath and gets on with it; they don’t have time to argue, and he has just de facto acknowledged it. “You’ve seen the way the upper floor rooms are arranged. After the meeting room there’s Zhang’s room, then the deputy general manager’s which is now Xiao’s, then the receptionist’s room, then Wu’s, which, I suppose, was Giacomo’s, that’s connected to the reception by a door, then the archive at the far end. When Wu got a phone call half an hour ago and you made a fake call to my number so I could follow him, he was so caught up in his call that he didn’t go all the way into his office, just stayed in the receptionist’s room, so I went and stayed outside the door, he didn’t know I was there, and the guard from downstairs must have thought Wu had gone into the office, so when he saw me outside the reception pretending to be talking in Italian he wasn’t alarmed and went back downstairs. But I heard what Wu was saying.”

“Did the translator pick up what he said from behind the door?” Bruce asks, doubtful.

“It didn’t need to. He talked in English to someone who must have been a new buyer, the way he was sweet-talking them and making promises. Something called PKK...”

“Fuck.” Bruce does not look so much shocked as disgusted, the way he rolls his eyes.

“Who are they?”

“The Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Terrorists. Mostly they kill people in Turkey, but they’re also active in Iraq and all over the region.”

“Figures. Well, he was promising that other asshole he was talking to that he’d get back to him later today with price quotes and proposed logistics arrangements, he said he’d need to look at production logs to see how much and how quickly they could ramp up production, and if they’d need to set up an additional facility. When he was done with the call I walked away from the door just in case he got out, I made it look like I was putting on makeup at the window, he doesn’t know I speak English anyway, but then he called in Xiao and they talked in Chinese, just loudly enough so I was getting a translation. He wanted to ask Zhang to play for time with us over the Qingdao sale proposal, he wanted to handle that discussion himself but needed time to work on the info for this PKK thing, and Xiao suggested that he get out the stick and run the numbers on it using his laptop while in the meeting room with us. And Wu shot it down at once saying there was no point keeping the stick locked in a safe if he then dangled it in front of us. Xiao wasn’t sure that we represented that much of a risk-“

“Good boy.”

“But Wu said better safe than sorry, and ended it at that. I don’t know if they said anything else after that, I figured I’d better get back in with you and Zhang before they saw me, but it sounds like we have to steal that chiavetta.”

They are almost at the villa by then, and listening to the engine rumble, she wonders if Bruce is going to say another word until they are inside... or afterwards, for that matter.

He speaks just as they are pulling up into the villa driveway. “You mean you have to steal the chiavetta.”

She does not want to rub it in, but she is the best qualified person to do it. “You said it yourself, it’s the killer evidence that can give us everything, with or without the orange notice. It could have enough info to catch them all, in Italy and in China. And it’s bound to have Wu’s fingerprints on it for the Interpol database check.”

They get out of the car and into the villa in gloomy silence. Gianfranco, wisely, does not interfere. Looking at the pained expression on Bruce’s face, she is sorry to be putting him through this, but hell, he did start this whole Varese thing with his uneasy conscience.

“Fine,” he finally says, in a tone of someone accepting his death sentence, when they are in Giacomo’s study. “I suppose I could try to see if I could get my hands on his laptop instead to get traces of data from the stick or get a keyboard log program running, but if he’s as paranoid about it as he seems, he’ll make sure it’s next to impossible to do either. But if you’re going to steal it, we go through it now, step by step, to see how it can be done and how we make certain you avoid capture.”

She isn’t going to argue with that.

Gianfranco takes Bruce’s unwilling acquiescence and her silence as his cue. “There’s something that can help us.” Seeing their expectant looks, he continues: “They don’t know it, but I have a key to my father’s office. Not to the door that opens into the reception, the secretary had it and they took it away when they fired her, but to the other door that opens directly into the corridor. I haven’t seen Wu use it, and if I understand you right, Céline, you haven’t either.” He sees her nod and finishes: “So it looks like Wu is treating it as locked. My father was the only one who had that key, and they must have figured that even if it was still out here somewhere, none of us from the family would be able to, or want to, go in there on our own to use it. Unless he has put up a bookcase or something in front of it, it may still open with the old key.”

Mercifully, it makes Bruce look less miserable. “Do you know what sort of security there was inside? Not that Wu couldn’t have changed it- “

“Same as outside, infrared sensors. If I remember right, there were two of them, in the two corners next to the wall where the window is.”

“Makes sense. They can be triggered by direct sunlight and car headlights, so they usually face away from windows. Did your father have a safe in there?”

“Yes, but it was an old one that opened with a key- “

“OK, so we can take it for granted that whether or not he added more sensors or a camera, he would have changed the safe.”

“That’s fine, I’ve brought the drilling kit and the bore scope,” Selina joins in, “so I can open it quickly regardless of type.”

“Unless the noise alerts the guards, or unless he has some sort of special alarm rigged after hours,” Bruce reminds her grimly. “Worst thing is, we can’t recon for it using a drone because it’s practically certain that the safe will be inside a closed cupboard of some kind-“

“That’s where the old one was, so I’m sure you’re right,” Gianfranco observes.

“Figures. So it will only be exposed a couple of times a day when Wu takes the stick out and puts it back in. We don’t have enough time to wait for that, and can’t manipulate the drone when we are over there without my laptop; and I’m not taking it there with the stuff that’s on it; plus having the drone fly close to Wu would be risky anyway. So yes, I suppose you’ll need to bring along all the safecracking kit you’ve got here, and maybe it’s a good idea to take Wu’s prints this afternoon just in case, if you manage it-“

“Consider it done.”

“Just make sure you don’t risk your life getting them. My bet is that being the greedy bastard he is, it’s more likely that he’ll either have something with just a thumbprint scan, or better still, a keypad where the index finger should be enough, rather than something super fancy that needs a full set. Apart from the safe, we have two problems.”

“Disabling the IR sensors,” Selina jumps in again.

“And the question of how you get in there in the first place, after hours and with all the equipment, and how you get back out. And then there’s the attendant problem of possible extra security in the room, but that’s tied in to the sensors and there may be a way to deal with it. Now for the sensors, the best thing to do would be to put a plate of glass or plastic in front of them that blocks the infrared- “

“Are you trying to teach me the tricks of my trade?”

“No, just thinking out loud. That would be impractical anyway. So the next best thing, I figure, would be to get a modified version of our camera drone fitted with a cooling foam spray can - the stuff goes solid in seconds and is commercially available in pressurised cans, it’s just a matter of making a miniature one just big enough to hold the amount of foam needed to cover a sensor window, no more than four square inches. The drone doesn’t generate heat, or rather whatever tiny amount it does generate is balanced out by its propeller cooling the air around it, and moving objects of identical temperature don’t trigger the alarm. I saw three sensors in the upper floor corridor, two at either end and a wide-angle in the middle, so we need at least five drones if we use one per sensor, plus a couple of spares if anything goes wrong, say three spares, eight in total. They’re going to be bigger than standard, so you’ll have to pick them up when you get there to make sure no one sees them later.”

“How are you going to get them modified between now and tonight?” She assumes that tonight is the soonest she can get in.

“I’m not,” Bruce corrects her. “Lucius is. He’ll have come back to Galileo by now, I’ll call him and ask him to fly a bunch of these back to Go-“ she can practically see the oh fuck written on his face before he changes it, mid-word, to goddamn HQ, “if he hasn’t done so already, remember that sample box I gave him, then get them modified there as crudely and quickly as he can, and fly them back here in time for me to disable the sensors this evening while there’s still enough ambient light to manoeuvre the drones, and before Wu leaves for the day so we can get to the sensors inside the room. That way we’ll also see if he has any new security in there. The sensor windows are white, or light grey, so the foam won’t really show up against them once it’s dried. There shouldn’t be anyone up there at night when the alarm would be on so a lack of signal is natural, and during the day the alarm is off so it won’t look suspicious that nothing’s being triggered. Could work. Let me call Lucius and see what I can do. In the meantime,” Bruce continues, turning to Gianfranco, “can you see if you can find anyone with a helicopter pilot’s licence that they can lend us for a few hours and for a few thousand euro, no questions asked? Preferably male and in his thirties or forties, I’d look pretty strange with a woman’s ID, even with my photo stuck on.”

“How are you going to get the helicopter itself?” Selina asks. She has to agree that his apparent plan is the only viable option.

“Write a corporate check for half a million euro,” Bruce says, ignoring Gianfranco’s round eyes, “and leave it with them as security.”

Whatever reservations Gianfranco may have regarding Bruce’s flying skills, he does not seem inclined to raise the issue. Then again, he knows about the Cessna. “What sort of helicopter are you thinking about?” he asks, once he has recovered from hearing the amount of Tessuti Varese’s onetime annual profits thrown around in such a blasé manner.

“Light. Small. Two- or four-seater. With a towing rig.”

“I think I can do better than the licence, then,” Gianfranco responds. “But there may be a condition attached.”

“OK, tell us more.”

“There’s a friend of my father’s who lives in Pistoia, about ten miles west of here. He owns a four-seater helicopter, I think a Robinson- “

“Raven I or Raven II?”

“What’s the difference?” Selina asks.

“The amount of the check I’ll need to write. One’s about three hundred thousand euro, the other one’s about four, though it depends on the extras.”

“I’m not sure,” Gianfranco comments, “but he won’t be interested in a deposit, I know him. What he’ll insist on is flying with us. He may be persuaded to let you fly it if I tell him we’re doing it to get the people who killed my father, but he’ll never agree to get it out of his sight.”

“Fair enough,” Bruce concedes. “Are you sure he can be trusted?”

“My father and he were best friends at school. I’m sure.”

“Good. You call him then and I’ll call Lucius about the drones. Tell him I used to fly a military prototype helicopter as a... test pilot.”

She has to admire Bruce’s ability to tell the truth in the most confusing ways.

***

It seems to be working. Lucius has concluded that adding a mini-spray can to the drones is feasible, despite the greater drain the added weight puts on power, considering that they’ll have relatively short distances to fly; Giacomo’s friend has agreed to let them come to his house late that evening and let Bruce show him if he can fly, which means it’s as good as settled already; Gianfranco has produced the key, which Bruce has hidden in the same concealed pocket in the back of his jacket lining where he smuggles Selina’s translator gadget, and they are wrapping up the discussion before heading back out, sitting around with beer bottles and sandwiches in place of the more leisurely lunch they pretend to be taking.

“The remaining big issue,” Bruce states, “is putting the stick back in. It’s too risky to let Céline take a computer in there to transfer the files - no offence, but if the stick is password protected or otherwise booby-trapped, it’ll take a bigger hacker than you are, and a more powerful computer than my laptop, to circumvent it. I wouldn’t try it myself, I’ll just take it to Lucius and have him do it. Which means that we’ll be taking the stick out and need to put it back in before Wu looks for it so they don’t figure out we’re on to them and start blowing shit up. It would be too suspicious to do another flyover; two in the same night is bad enough, but at least it can look like a roundtrip from Pistoia to Florence, but two more times will be obvious. So we must figure out a way to do it in the morning. We could get in early, say 8 am, and ask to wait for them in the meeting room, but there’s bound to be a guard watching us before the bosses arrive.”

“I could do what I did earlier today, pretend I got a phone call, go out and sneak into Wu’s office with Gianfranco’s key...”

“Too risky. As you yourself said, there’s usually a guard at the bottom of the stairs now that we’re in the building, it looks like they reassigned one from one of the yarn warehouses, and if he sees that you aren’t headed to the downstairs restrooms and doesn’t hear you on the phone, he’ll walk up to check. And if he sees that you aren’t in the corridor, he only needs two seconds to look into the meeting room and see you aren’t there either.”

“I can do it.” Gianfranco’s resolute statement takes them by surprise. So long as Bruce was the official superspy of the bunch, he could apparently live with being the relatively inept one, but now with Selina about to jump out of a helicopter to crack a safe, it must be too embarrassing for him to feel useless.

“You’ll have the same problem as Céline.”

“So long as we no longer care that they know I’ve got the key, I’ll have less of a problem. I can pretend that I wanted to use the en-suite bathroom in my father’s office instead of the restrooms, and if I put the office key on my usual key ring I’ll just say I always had it there and never cared, they’ve seen the key ring twice already at the gate and won’t be looking too closely, it’s unmarked anyway. And assuming Céline finds out how to open the safe tonight, I’ll use the same combination or fingerprint or whatever to open it tomorrow, put the stick in, and close it again quickly enough before I flush the toilet and open the door for the guard if he comes wondering.”

“It’s still risky. What if they get in and catch you when you’re at the safe cabinet?”

“That can only happen if Wu gets in early. But in that case I can say that my father kept a ledger in there, which he did, on top of the safe, that I was trying to sneak out now to help us bargain with them on the figures. In the worst case, it’ll make them break off negotiations, but if you get the info off the stick and they don’t find out, it won’t matter that we’re out of there.”

She can see the indecision in Bruce’s face; it is a matter of choosing the marginally lesser evil out of two pretty bad ones.

“OK,” he gives in at last. “If you do it quickly, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. As you say, they’ll probably boot us out, but hopefully it won’t matter. What this leaves is the matter of testing the key this afternoon when we’re back there.”

“Well, for that I could surely pretend to get a call while Wu is with you discussing Qingdao-“ she ventures.

“And what if the guard sees you fiddling with the door?”

“Shouldn’t take long-“

“I have an idea,” Gianfranco, inspired by his new career prospects as a secret agent, sits up and snaps his fingers for emphasis. “Céline - I mean, Chiara and I can sneak out of the meeting room separately and meet in the corridor just outside Wu’s office for a bit of carezze- “

He never finishes this. What he sees of Bruce’s expression in his peripheral vision is enough to stop him mid-sentence, with his mouth still open. Selina is not sure whether to laugh or to cry; at least she trusts Bruce to be the smarter one and not ruin the whole mission by reducing one of the principal performers to a pulp.

But when she ventures a sideways glance in his direction, it becomes clear that Bruce has chosen a less spectacular, but no less effective, mode of punishment.

He sits and stares. It isn’t a particularly intense stare, either, but the way it shifts between Gianfranco’s face and his crotch is a blatant reminder of what he said back on the boat about the survival of the other man’s balls, and it works like a charm: Gianfranco looks to be a split second away from jumping up and running off.

“Really?” Bruce says casually after a few endless seconds.

“No!” Gianfranco all but shouts. “I mean, I was... I was just... saying it... as an example... I mean... why don’t you two get out there... and pretend to... cheat on me?” He sounds out of breath by the end of it.

Selina is sorry for him; but not enough to let him completely off the hook.

“Pretend?” She raises her eyebrows as she gets up and walks past him, following Bruce out of the villa and to the car. “We’re gonna cheat all right, believe you me.”

____________________________________

Notes to Ch 16

The name of this chapter, should you see it and wonder about the plural later, comes from the Italian for USB stick, chiavetta, literally little key.

If you've read it thus far, it won't have escaped your attention that I am a major nerd, so you'll probably suspect already that what I mention about the properties of infrared sensors, cooling foam, Robinson helicopters, and the PKK is based on more or less official stuff I read on the respective subjects ;)

***

17. Unlocking doors

They manage to test the key that afternoon, though testing the key is not the part she will keep recalling later.

Two hours into the afternoon session, when they are hunched over ownership charts and an array of spreadsheets and Gianfranco is putting his Milanese MBA to good use by checking effective stake values and all-in ownership transfer costs on a fancy financial calculator, Bruce gives the Chinese a brief apology under the pretext of a bathroom break and walks out, but not before she has heard him mutter something in Gianfranco’s ear that to her, sounds distinctly like ciao, cornuto. A few seconds later, she gets an incoming call and offers her pretend fiancé a much more civilised scusami, tesoro before slipping out just as she says Pronto to her pretend caller.

When she has closed the door behind her and put the phone back into her handbag, she walks to her right where Bruce is waiting outside Giacomo’s old office; the moment she is within two paces of him, he takes her by the shoulders and flips her around so that her back is pressed against the office door. She is not sure how much is a calculated move to let them get on with the mission and how much is the desperation to just get it on, and suspects that it is more the latter.

“Missed me?” he teases her in a rasp of a whisper, when her hands slip under his jacket.

“You have no idea,” she breathes back, inwardly cursing both the Kevlar lining in the suits that restricts their roaming hands to above the waist and especially the fact that she is wearing trousers; if she had a skirt on, it would be up at her waist now and she’d be straddling him with her back against the door, and she is sure that for this once he wouldn’t mind the public setting. As it is, all they can do is frantically unbutton each other’s shirts - she is grateful that he is not wearing a tie - and all but claw at each other’s skin while devouring each other’s tongues in a wild kiss; but this is clearly not enough and, throwing caution to the winds and apparently with his wholehearted approval, she unzips his trousers and slips her hand inside to stroke him; when he does the same to her, she has to bite his neck to stop herself from moaning, and it only turns him on more. She has seen the guard watching them from the stairs, pretending not to, but when she stares at him directly over Bruce’s shoulder he retreats a few steps. It is ironic how hiding in plain sight is their best chance to both accomplish their covert task and finally get their fill of each other after a few stressful days. Not that she can ever really get her fill of him when to her, he is a controlled substance, the most powerful drug she ever tried.

It is all spliced together, desperation and hunger and need and lust, they really can’t get enough, like starved teenagers; she cranes her neck up to kiss him again, her vision blurred and her breath ragged, before they are seconds apart in a frantic climax, Selina unable to stop herself from crying out. It is only when they are slumped against each other on shaky legs when she remembers the key almost as an afterthought and, sneaking it out of her jacket pocket, slips it into the lock behind her back, turns it twice until it won’t go further, presses the handle and cautiously nudges the door; it opens and she can see a narrow strip of daylight across his cheek; there is nothing behind it. Carefully she pulls the door closed and locks it again; they still cannot let go of each other, their lips still locked in a succession of light kisses, until for once it is her turn to say that they need to go back.

When he has left to clean himself up downstairs, she picks up her handbag lying discarded on the floor, staggers over to the window across the corridor, and opens it - thankfully, a natural thing to do in her current state - and is happy to see that it is not alarmed. She takes a few deep breaths before closing it again, but not before she has fished out a mirror from the makeup kit in her handbag to check her face, pulling out a slip of plastic fingerprint tape strip from her business card case at the same time, and surreptitiously lodged it between the lock latch bolt and the other half of the casement window while closing it, flush with the window frame on the inside and with a one-inch tail of clear plastic on the outside that will let her open the window from the other side later. She has to follow Bruce downstairs to restore a minimum of decency to her appearance; they pass each other on the stairs with dirty looks and so end up back in the meeting room in a space of two minutes from each other, she ostensibly pocketing the phone but their flushed and still somewhat dishevelled appearance leaving little doubt as to their recent activities, or at least to the greater part of those. Even the stoical Chinese flash Gianfranco looks of commiseration; he presses his lips together and carries on with the financial haggling, by now once again with Bruce as his somewhat distracted go-between.

***

So far it has worked surprisingly smoothly, she thinks, sitting in the back seat of the helicopter, next to a mildly nervous Gianfranco. After a day of very relative progress with their key-test outing as its highlight, they wrapped up the discussion shortly before six saying that they would “recheck their calculations” and come back to Wu and Zhang the next morning with a modified proposal for the simultaneous sale of the Tessuti Varese and Qingdao Jinglian stakes. The way Gianfranco was cunningly hinting at it and Bruce was translating it, they seem to be willing to come back with a lower price quote, if only as a hook to keep Wu interested in the game for another day. Wu sat there stone-faced for a few seconds before issuing a fractional nod, which was Zhang’s cue to verbally state their agreement. An hour earlier, when they were granted the rare favour of a coffee break and one of he guards brought them a tray of plastic cups, she managed to swap the empty cup Wu had drunk his espresso from for her own and, pretending to still be sipping the last drops while holding it delicately at the rim, stepped outside just long enough to lift his fingerprints using the faux makeup kit in her bag.

Instead of going back to Prato after leaving Castelletto, they drove straight to Pisa for Bruce to pick up the modified drones from Lucius who had just landed, and after a quick test run spraying an infrared sensor at Gianfranco’s villa - she had to grant it to Lucius, the man was a genius - Bruce took his laptop and drove a second Varese family car to Castelletto to deploy the drones, and came back less than an hour later, just as it was getting dark, to say that everything was in place.

They ate dinner and waited around for another half hour before going to Pistoia to meet with Lorenzo Martignano, the late Varese’s friend, at eleven as previously agreed. Selina had a momentary worry seeing his sceptical face, but three minutes into the test flight on his beloved R44 Raven he was sufficiently convinced of Bruce’s skill as to say va bene, faccialo. After that he watched silently as Bruce, Gianfranco and Selina practiced the approach to a flat paved area of similar size to the Tessuti Varese rooftop and her landing on it and even offered to stay in the back seat for the real thing. It was an offer Selina would have gratefully accepted had she not needed Gianfranco’s help with the door and the towing rope when she had to step onto the landing skid for her descent to the rooftop and with the bigger harness when she had to get back in. He looked like a decent guy, if a touch too serious, and was impeccably polite to her and did his best not to stare at her black Kevlar cat burglar outfit, in contrast to both Gianfranco who had trouble keeping his eyes from popping out when he first saw her in it and Bruce who was too unnerved seeing her in it to even notice Gianfranco’s ogling. Good, she thought, I’m not the only one who is shaken by signature clothing.

They are now bound southeast from Pistoia in the direction of Florence, and that is nominally Bruce’s destination in case they are queried - helicopters seldom are but you never know, and it helps to have a cover story - luckily, Prato is almost exactly halfway between the two cities, a mere ten miles from Pistoia. Contrary to safety rules, Bruce has dimmed the headlights, but on the upside, he should be able to avoid any airborne objects or tall terrestrial obstacles thanks to wearing a pair of night vision goggles that he wisely packed in Lugano. Selina, of course, is wearing the same, and seeing the world in garish green hues once again reminds her incongruously of the last time she wore them for their early bedroom antics the night of the dinner date, and thus also of the events of the afternoon; she is glad that Gianfranco cannot see her blushing in the dim cabin.

Five minutes later, she can see the dim dark green outline of Castelletto below and ahead of them in her passenger window; she rechecks the carbine of the tow rope attached to her belt, exchanges nods with Gianfranco and holds up her hand in a salute to the men in front, getting a similar salute in return, opens the door, and steps out into the breezy darkness, sliding onto the landing skid as Bruce banks slightly to let the angle lend her extra stabiliity. When he straightens out the craft she is holding firmly on to one of the struts supporting the skid, and Gianfranco has moved into her seat so he is next to her. When they are about two hundred yards from the site, Bruce brings the helicopter down as low as could be considered less than absolutely suspicious, which they figured earlier would be about 60 feet, and she dives down, the rig mechanism luckily cushioning the moment when her eight-foot rope slack runs out, after which she gives thumbs-up to Gianfranco who in turn signals to Bruce and he slowly lets out the rope until she is far below them, at the same time slowing down until they are directly over the roof. She sees it as a dark rectangular outline of a hundred by thirty feet right under her, set off by the green glow around it from lights further below, and once her feet touch the roof she pulls the quick release for the carbine and rolls just as Bruce told her, seeing, as soon as she has straightened out, the helicopter soar upwards and continue its imaginary trip to Florence.

She waits for a minute to see if the guards suspect anything and either try to investigate or raise an alarm; but they do not seem curious enough. The door of the gatehouse stays closed, with bright flickering light behind the adjacent window telling her that they must be watching TV; the warehouse guards, deprived of such luxuries, return to their pacing almost immediately after the helicopter has passed. So much the better for her. She pulls out her phone, crouches down to make sure its screen is concealed from view and any reflected light is blocked, and taps a quick OK 1 message, sending it to Bruce’s temporary number, as an indication that she is safely on the roof and undetected, or else he would be coming back for her.

Her next task is to find an anchoring point for the rappelling rope she has brought; after a quick inspection of the roof she identifies two antenna banks as her best chances, and from what she remembers of the internal layout, the one in the middle looks more promising than the one on her far left as it must be closer to Wu’s office; she tests it for resistance, pulling at the antenna base with all her weight, and is satisfied to see that it holds. As soon as she has secured the rope around the base, she lets it out over the long side of the building and lies down, peering at the wall below, trying to figure out which window she has rigged so she can lodge her secondary anchor above it. She is fortunate on two counts, one of which she expected: just as she thought, the corridor wall is on the opposite side of the gate, warehouses, and guards, so when she needs to use the thermal lance, a staple burglar’s tool, to bore deep shafts into the roof to secure the bolted loop to thread the cable through, she is hidden from view thanks to her position; and the unexpected but fortunate central location of the antenna bank means that her target window is almost directly below, resulting in minimal stress on the secondary anchor and thus letting her cut shallower holes.

The task complete and the rope dangling just off the side of the window - it wouldn’t do to let it hang mid-window just in case - she attaches a sliding mechanism to the rope, secures it to her belt by a short cable, slides down until her foot finds purchase on the casement, and, crouching just slightly with both her feet on it, simultaneously gives the protruding slip of plastic a gentle tug to retract the latch and gives the window pane a gentle push to open it. Two more seconds later, she is standing in the corridor, the released rope dangling inside the window, the window itself pulled as near closed as possible. Bruce has done his job, not that she expected otherwise, and no one has discovered it; through her goggles she can see the windows on all three sensors covered in foam. She looks for the drones on the floor; five of them are next to the wall under the sensor at the corridor dead end, and it only takes a few seconds to pick them up and throw them into her utility pouch; she assumes that the remaining three are inside Wu’s room. Pulling out the phone again, she types and sends OK 2; she is in the corridor and has picked up the corridor drones.

The key works as it did the first time, though in far less exciting circumstances. She chases the memory away; it won’t do to get distracted, but she promises herself that once they are back in Lugano, they’ll have wild nonstop sex for days on every surface, inside and outside, of the villa... assuming they both survive. Bruce sketched the approximate room layout for her from what he had picked up from the drone feed; given the priority of disabling the sensor, he did not make a detailed examination of the room, but it is a relatively limited space of about fifteen by twenty five feet, and just like the meeting room, it looks to have been plundered of fancier furniture to leave a large desk, a high-backed executive chair behind it, two simple chairs in front, and a two-seater sofa on her right next to the door leading to the reception, with a built-in cupboard adjacent to the en suite bathroom on her left clearly being the most likely location of the safe. She pulls open the first set of double doors to see rows of document folders; the second set shows Selina her target, and she breathes a huge sigh of relief. Bruce was right in the more optimistic of his guesses; Wu has replaced Varese’s key-operated safe with a nothing fancier than a keypad-operated one, and judging by the size of the screen, it is only a four-digit combination. If she is lucky, she might not need the drill; though she’d have to be lucky indeed, as based on her experience, if she does not get the combination right the first three times, the bolt will likely lock in place and she will have to drill after all.

Her next step is to lightly dust fluorescent powder on the keypad with the brush applicator, and shine the UV blacklight. She is pleased to see clear shiny patches on four of the keys; at this rate she does not even need to compare prints to see which ones are Wu’s. 4 8 9 0; she looks at the four bright spots - and the memory flashes through her mind so sharp and clear that she bites down on a scream of delight. Lugano, a week ago; Bruce and Theo digging for info on Tessuti Varese and the Chinese companies; her unintentionally funny remark about the forty-niners, Bruce’s explanation about Triad codes. She is positive that these figures make up one of them, with four being the first number and zero definitely not in there. Knowing the four numbers has reduced the possible number of combinations from an unfathomable 3628800 to twenty four, and now with the Triad code likelihood, she is looking at only four of them, as the zero will be either first or last.

The trouble is, she is likely to have three attempts.

She tries the obvious 4 8 9 0; nothing.

4 9 8 0; nothing.

She is left with two combinations and only one chance. A flutter of panic runs through her shoulders to her fingertips; she knows that she still has the drill option, but it means the difference between an hour’s painstaking and potentially noisy work that could be difficult to make undetectable on the one hand and immediate success on the other. Concentrating all her mental effort on going a week back in time, she tries to remember the details. This must have been the number for the boss, who was also called Mountain Master or Dragon Head; if she ever had an unhelpful recollection, this is one. But then something else crosses her mind; they all started with a four, and in all those the following two numbers were in ascending order between them.

Her gloved finger trembles as she presses 0 4 8 9.

The safe opens.

***

Her OK 3 and OK 4 follow each other in a giddily quick succession. It is a matter of seconds to pick up the stick by the carbine at the end of the short chain attached to it, dust and seal it to preserve Wu’s fingerprints, wipe the keypad clean, find and pick up the three drones in the room, carefully push the safe door closed so it looks locked - she figures that if Wu intends to open it before the stick is back in it, it won’t matter if it is locked or not as the stick’s absence will be discovered anyway, and this way she buys Gianfranco five seconds tomorrow morning - close the cupboard and exit the room, locking the door behind her. From there, it is a few more seconds to climb onto the window sill, attach the rope to her belt, this time in a dead lock rather than sliding mode, and close the window securely this time, once again using the slip of fingerprint tape but this time pulling it all the way out. The following three-meter climb back to the rooftop is slightly more challenging but still eminently doable, and once there, she sends the final OK 4 message that is Bruce’s cue to come back for her. She thinks about untying the rope and taking it with her, but then decides against it. The rope is white and thus hardly visible against the pale yellow walls even in daylight, the far wall it is on is not visible from the rest of the grounds, and with the secondary anchor holding the rope in place out of a direct line of sight from the window, it does not present an immediate danger; this way, if the worst comes to the absolute worst tomorrow and they need an escape route other than the stairs, they can use it to get out of the building.

Once again the helicopter hovers in sight, a huge green insect with no headlights, but this time the lowered tow rope has a large, heavy round harness dangling from it, like a kid’s soft swing seat, both to weigh it down and to give Selina something to jump onto and hold on to on the way back up into the cabin. And again the craft dips and slows down in its flight path when it is near the roof, so that all she has to do is hop into the harness, reattach her carbine, and wait to be lifted up until she is level with the skid, at which point Gianfranco helps her get in.

It seems that the ubiquitous Murphy’s Law has given them an incredible reprieve.

***

The gloomy-faced Martignano is impressed, after all. When they briefly set down at Pisa Galileo to let Bruce take the stick to Lucius, he gets out to climb into the pilot’s seat for the short flight back to Pistoia and shakes Bruce’s hand before ceremoniously kissing hers, for good measure, even though she is staying on board, moving to the co-pilot’s seat now.

“Who are you two?” he asks, probably not expecting an answer - and judging by Bruce’s uncertain expression, probably unlikely to get one.

“They aren’t saying,” Gianfranco jumps in, “but they are the most dangerous people I know, and that includes Wu and his goons.”

“You’ll be relieved to hear that there are many people sharing your opinion, some of whom are in high-security prisons,” Bruce reassures him, “but so long as you stay away from her -“ he does not even need to indicate who he means - “you have nothing to fear from either of us.”

Almost unexpectedly, Gianfranco’s response is neither a scowl nor a shudder, but a timid smile.

***

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” From the way Bruce says it, it is clear which kind he thinks is predominant. He is looking in some amusement at Gianfranco and Selina seated on opposite sides of the living room sofa. He was still somewhat reluctant to accept the notion of Gianfranco driving Selina back from Pistoia to Prato, tight outfit and all, but had to accept it as the lesser evil as he was going to spend an unspecified amount of time examining the stick with Lucius before getting a taxi back to the villa. The sweet irony is, be it from respect or fear, Gianfranco never strayed within five feet of her ever since they arrived at the villa, and they spent the past hour talking and half-watching TV seated exactly as they are now.

“It’s empty,” Selina ventures. He shakes his head. “The files are fucked,” is Gianfranco’s guess. “No, not that bad,” he concedes, “but still a fucking pain. The stick is not only password protected but also, all the files on it are heavily encrypted. The paranoid fucker. Lucius cracked the password in real time when we were there, but the encryption is too strong. He’s pulled the files off the stick to transfer them to his HQ for decryption, but he says that even with their servers, it’ll take hours. We can only guess that the stick has what we need, but we won’t know for sure what’s on it, and we won’t know until the end if the decryption succeeds or if there’s some sort of booby trap code that will damage the files. Of course they’ll make multiple copies and work on them simultaneously and keep one master copy of the original encrypted set as a backup, but it still means that most likely we have to go back there tomorrow.”

“Unless Theo is able to get the orange notice issued before then, now that he has Wu’s prints,” Selina reminds him; sending the prints to Theo was another item on Bruce’s to do list at the airport.

“He says he’s sure he’ll get it soon after 9 am,” Bruce replies. “But we need to be there at eight so that Gianfranco can beat Wu to the safe. Even that is cutting it pretty fine, but we can’t legitimately show up earlier than that without setting off alarm bells. If we don’t show up and Wu sees that the stick is missing, they’ll do a runner as we said before, and destroy the plant. And if we don’t have the files or the plant or Wu, we’ll just seem like a bunch of paranoid fools crying wolf even with the notice issued.”

“Maybe the decryption will be finished before eight,” Selina wonders.

“Lucius has asked his IT people to send me a short message when they’re done, that way we’ll know we can get out with or without the notice. But I wouldn’t bet on it.” He sits down, or rather slumps down, between them on the sofa. “There’s one thing I think we should do,” he continues, with a hint of uncertainty creeping into his voice. “I think Céline should either stay here or go back to Lugano tomorrow morning. The two of us can - “

She understands the reason for his uncertain tone now, and does not let him finish. Logic, not diamonds, is a girl’s best friend, she thinks, even if all it gets her is a close brush with danger.

“And you think they won’t be suspicious if I do a runner?” she confronts him. “I’m Gianfranco’s fiancée, you know, and given how much I poked my nose into the proceedings today and how I kept rattling on about my family’s money tied up in it, it would seem strange to say the least.”

“It will seem less suspicious if you both leave,” Gianfranco offers. “It will look like you’ve sort of eloped together. I can go there on my own tomorrow and take my -“

Bruce does not let him finish. “No. If Céline won’t leave, we all go there.”

“You’ve already done all you could, more than you should have,” Gianfranco says earnestly, and it is as touching a gesture of gratitude as she would have expected from him.

“Not yet,” Bruce replies, and she shudders at the memory stabbing at her heart.

(end of Ch 17) - continued in part 8