Nick and Dragan sat in the back of a panel van parked directly across the intersection from the police kiosk on the southwest corner of Schupstraat and Lange Herentalsestraat, which also happened to be the northwest edge of the Executive Merchants Building. Borko and Vinko were in the front seats, trying very hard to look anywhere but at the uniformed, heavily armed officers they were facing.
“Do we really have to park here?” Borko asked.
“Any further away and we wouldn’t have a signal,” Nick said. He used a joystick to steer the Lamborghini while watching the camera’s view on an iPad that sat on his lap.
“But we’re parked right outside the building we’re going to rob,” Vinko said. “The police can see us and our van.”
“Relax,” Nick said. “A thief planning to rob that building would have to be insane to sit here to do his recon.”
Dragan gave him a hard look. “You’re reading my mind.”
“That’s what makes this spot the safest place to be,” Nick said. “Besides, the police aren’t on the lookout for thieves plotting to break in. Everybody knows it’s impossible. The police are for show.” Nick steered the Lamborghini past several air vents and around a tight corner. “How long have the guards worked in the building?”
“One guy just got his thirty-year pin. The others have been here nearly as long.”
“That proves my point,” Nick said. “They’ve stayed so long because it’s a very cushy job. Nobody has tried to break in to the vault since the day the building opened, and they know that nobody ever will.”
Nick parked the Lamborghini at the end of an air vent that gave their camera a view down into the vault foyer. They could see the open vault door and the closed gate. Something caught Nick’s eye. He zoomed in on a door a few feet from the vault.
“You don’t have that door on your set,” he said.
“Because it’s a supply closet,” Dragan said. “We aren’t interested in stealing toilet paper and file folders.”
Litija came in, and Nick adjusted the camera view to a wider angle. She walked past the open vault door, stood in front of the inner gate, then turned to wave at the security camera and the guards watching in the control room. It looked like she was waving at Nick and Dragan.
“The security camera that’s mounted outside the vault is only watched during business hours, when the door is open,” Nick said. “But at night and on weekends, there’s nobody watching the monitors. The feed is recorded and taped over every thirty days. In fact, there isn’t a single guard in the building after hours. Do you know why?”
“Because a break-in is impossible,” Dragan said.
“You’re catching on,” Nick said.
Litija was buzzed through by the guards upstairs. She pushed the unlocked gate to let herself in and stumbled a moment after the gate swung closed behind her. She dropped her purse in the process and crouched down to pick it up.
“When the vault is open during the day, the heat and motion sensor is deactivated, of course, or everyone who walks in would set off the alarm,” Nick said. “More important, to protect the privacy of the tenants and the contents of their safe-deposit boxes, there aren’t any cameras in the vault.”
So nobody saw Litija take a tiny bottle of hairspray from her purse and spritz the combination heat and motion sensor, coating the surface with a thin, milky film. She got up, tugged on her miniskirt, and presumably went to her safe-deposit box, disappearing entirely from view.
A few moments later, Litija walked out of the vault again, closed the gate behind her, and, before she left, offered a parting wave to everyone who was watching.
“That takes care of the heat and motion detector,” Nick said. “In the morning, our camera will be parked right here, so we’ll be able to see the building manager enter the combination and open the vault. Then we can do it, too.”
“We’re still using a car to open the vault,” Dragan said. “I love it.”
“You have a reputation to maintain.”
“You have style, Nick, I’ll give you that.” Dragan pointed to the magnetic plate on the vault door and the matching one on the jamb beside it. “But the instant we open the vault door, we’ll break the magnetic field, setting off the alarm in the police station. And if we cut the power to the magnets, that will activate the alarm, too.”
“Don’t worry,” Nick said. “I’ve got that covered.”
“How?”
“If I tell you now, it would ruin the surprise.”
Nick was sharing details only as they were needed so Dragan couldn’t proceed without him. It was a way to extend his life expectancy for as long as possible. He figured if he hung in there long enough, Kate would track him down and rescue him. He’d been under constant watch and hadn’t been able to contact her, but he knew she was like a dog with a bone when she had a job to do. And right now, like it or not, her job was to retrieve him. He was government property.
“What about the gate?” Dragan asked. “It can only be opened with a key that can’t be duplicated.”
Nick smiled. “We’ll rely upon human nature for that.”
While Nick and Dragan were parked on Lange Herentalsestraat, Kate O’Hare and her father were standing on Schupstraat, outside the Executive Merchants Building. They were lost amid the stream of tourists, police officers, and bearded men in yarmulkes carrying attaché cases full of diamonds chained to their wrists.
Kate had identified the men who grabbed Nick by running their pictures and fingerprints through FBI databases. She had pinpointed their location when she gleaned a non-cell number from the throwaway phone. The call had been to an office in the Executive Merchants Building. The number was no longer in service, but it was a credible enough lead to get Kate and her father on a plane to Antwerp, the medieval Belgian port city that was home to 80 percent of the world’s trade in rough diamonds. Their first stop was Stadspark, a triangular park in the city center, where they picked up two Glocks and plenty of ammo that an arms-dealing friend of Jake’s had hidden for them in a prearranged spot. From there they went to Schupstraat.
Kate’s phone rang and she recognized the number as coming from the Federal Building in West Los Angeles where she was currently based.
“O’Hare,” Kate said.
“Hey, Katie Bug. It’s Cosmo Uno. Whatcha doin’? What’s shakin’? Haven’t seen you in forever. Heard you zipped in here and zipped out. Like you were here for a nanosecond, right? And I must have blinked and missed you. Bummer, right? Am I right?”
Kate stared at her phone. Cosmo Uno was the annoying idiot in the cubicle next to her. He was shorter than her, single and desperate, slicked his hair up with what looked like goose grease, and was a foot jiggler. All day long when she was in her cubicle she could hear him jiggling his foot.
“Why are you calling me?” Kate asked him. “And how did you get my number?”
“You’re gonna love this. Wait until I tell you. Like I thought I was the luckiest guy in the building to get the cubicle next to you, and now we’re working together.”
“What?”
“That’s over the moon, right? I mean, we’re practically partners. Do you love it? I love it.”
Good thing she wasn’t in the building, Kate thought, because she’d have to shoot him.
“See, here’s the thing,” Cosmo said. “Jessup thought it would be a good idea if you had someone to help you keep track of expenses.”
Kate narrowed her eyes. “Un-hunh.”
“So I’m going to be your expense guy. For instance, there’s an item we just received for a rental car in Hawaii. That’s a mistake, right?”
“I’m busy,” Kate said. “Good talking to you.”
She disconnected, turned to her father, and pointed at the building directly in front of them.
“The office that one of the Road Runners called on the throwaway was in this building,” Kate said. “A building, incidentally, with a vault that holds a fortune in diamonds.”
“A vault that’s impossible to break in to,” Jake said, holding up the Antwerp guidebook he’d bought so they’d look like tourists. “Rick Steves says so right here.”
“That’s one mystery solved,” Kate said. “Now we know why a gang of international diamond thieves kidnapped Nick.”
“We don’t actually know,” Jake said.
“Okay, we think we know.”
“Good enough for me,” Jake said. “What’s the plan?”
“We’ll get a room at the hotel across the street.” Kate pointed in the general direction of Lange Herentalsestraat, where, unbeknownst to her, Nick had been sitting in a panel van only a few minutes earlier. “Then we’ll watch for an opportunity to rescue Nick. We need to be ready to take it when it comes.”
“I’ll call my friend who left the guns for us in the park,” Jake said. “He can get us a rocket launcher.”
“We don’t need a rocket launcher.”
“Sure we do,” Jake said. “Nothing creates opportunity like a rocket-propelled explosive.”
“It would also create an international incident. I’m going to be in enough trouble as it is.”
Kate hadn’t informed her bosses, Special Agent in Charge Carl Jessup or Deputy Director Fletcher Bolton, that Nick had been taken, or that she was pursuing him to a foreign country. She couldn’t take the risk that they wouldn’t let her go.
“Not if we don’t get caught,” Jake said.
“We aren’t blowing up anything, Dad. Whatever we do will have to be quick and quiet.”
“We’re dealing with the same thieves who drove a bulldozer through a jewelry store in Saint-Tropez in broad daylight and escaped in a speedboat,” Jake said. “So this might end quick, but it won’t end quiet.”
Kate’s phone rang again. Same L.A. number. “Oh for the love of Pete,” Kate said, opening the connection. “Now what?”
“You haven’t filed your form S-Q-zero-zero-niner,” Cosmo said.
“I’m pretty sure I filed that,” Kate said, having no idea what he was talking about.
“We can’t find it.”
“If you call me again I’ll have you killed,” Kate said. “I can do it. I know people.”
And she disconnected.