James Twining - The Geneva Deception

Tom’s safe-cracking kit was surprisingly simple. A 36-volt Bosch power drill, like you would buy at any normal hardware store. A tungsten-carbide-tipped drill bit shaped for steel cutting. A twenty-millimetre diamond-core drill bit, routinely used in the construction industry. And finally a Fein electro-magnetic drill rig to hold the power drill in place and control the pressure.

The method was relatively straightforward too. First fix the rig on to the side of the safe over the chosen breach point with the magnets. Then clamp the power drill into the rig. Then equip the tungsten carbide drill bit, and lower the drill to bore a centring hole in the steel. Finally swap it for the diamond-core drill bit and punch through.

The tricky part was applying the correct combination of drill speed and pressure at the right time. Puncturing the safe’s steel casing, for example, required drilling at about 2000 rpm with only medium to low pressure applied by the rig. Getting through the composite material underneath, however, demanded high pressure and low revs, maybe 300 rpm. Even then Tom had to go easy, the diamonds clogging in the angled mild steel plates that had been embedded in the concrete. With only one power drill, that meant he had to be careful not to blow the motor, and he was forced to stop at regular intervals and allow it to cool.

‘How are you getting on with the photos?’ Tom called, adding some lubricant.

‘I’ve got a system going-’ Allegra poked her head into the room -‘I won’t get them all, but I’ll get enough.’

‘Anything that might tell us where the League are meeting tonight?’

‘No, but I’ll keep looking.’

At last the drill punched through, the motor racing wildly.

‘That’s it,’ Tom called, fumbling for the off switch and then heaving the rig out of the way.

‘Here-’ Archie handed him a small monitor that he taped to the side of the safe and then connected to the borescope. The screen flickered with light, indicating it was working.

‘Ready?’ Tom looked up with a hopeful smile at Allegra, who had run across to join them. She nodded silently as he blew against the hole to cool the scorched metal and then slipped the cable inside.

‘Look,’ she gasped almost immediately. The outline of a white face was framed on the small screen like a human skull, the grainy image looking like it was being broadcast up through the depths from a long-lost shipwreck. ‘It’s the ivory mask. Cavalli must have sent it here before he was killed.’

‘They must have been working together,’ agreed Tom. ‘Cavalli supplying the antiquities and Faulks providing the buyers. That way, they didn’t have to split the profits with the Delian League.’

‘Faulks doesn’t have to split anything with anyone now that Cavalli’s dead,’ Allegra observed wryly.

‘Pretty convenient,’ Tom agreed. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if…’ He broke off, a sudden thought occurring to him. Of course. It had been so simple. So easy. And once Faulks had realised how much the mask was worth, so necessary.

‘Oi, you two,’ Archie interrupted. ‘Holmes and bloody Watson. Do you mind if we get a move on?’

Tom winked at Allegra, then nodded. He was right.

Looking back to the screen to get his bearings, he bent the cable towards the left and found the back of the safe door. Then he slowly moved it along until he was roughly behind the combination dial.

‘There it is,’ Archie said sharply.

‘There what is?’ Allegra leant closer with a frown.

‘The key-change hole,’ Archie explained. ‘Every combination safe comes with a special key that you insert in that hole when the safe’s open to change the code.’

‘How big is the hole?’

‘Not very,’ Tom said, jaw clenched in concentration.

‘Not big enough,’ Archie muttered under his breath. ‘That’s the problem.’

They watched the image silently, the camera’s proximity making the tiny hole look surprisingly large on the screen, the cable catching on its edge as Tom tried to nudge it inside.

‘Shit,’ he hissed, the cable slipping past yet again. ‘It keeps sliding off.’

‘Try from the other side,’ Archie suggested.

‘I’ve done that,’ Tom snapped, smearing oil across his forehead as he wiped the sweat away.

Dominique came in, out of breath from having run up the stairs.

‘How much time have we got?’ Tom barked without looking up.

‘About as much time as it takes them to look out the window and realise they’re only two floors up. How are we doing?’

‘Shit,’ Tom swore as the camera skated past the hole again.

‘That well.’ She pulled a face.

‘Why don’t you try coming in from underneath?’ Archie suggested. ‘You might catch against the upper lip.’

‘I don’t see why that will…’ Tom glanced up at Archie with a sheepish smile. It had worked first time.

The screen now showed a fuzzy image of the lock mechanism-four wheels, each with a notch that had to be aligned so that the locking gate could fall into them.

‘Someone’s going to have to turn the dial for me,’ Tom said, carefully holding the cable in place so that it didn’t pop out. Allegra immediately stepped forward and crouched down to next to him.

‘Which way?’

‘Clockwise. You need to pick up all the wheels first.’

Allegra turned the lock, the picture showing the drive cam turning and then gathering up each of the four wheels one by one until they were all going round.

‘Slowly,’ Tom said, as he saw the notch on the first wheel at the bottom right of the screen moving upwards.

‘Stop!’ Archie called as the notch reached the twelve o’clock position. Fifteen. ‘Now back the other way.’

Allegra turned the dial back, again slowing as the notch appeared on the second wheel and then stopping when Archie called to her. Seventy-one. Then came sixteen.

‘The last number’s ten,’ Tom guessed.

‘How do you know?’ Dominique asked with a frown.

‘Fifteen seventy-one to sixteen ten,’ Tom explained with a smile. ‘Caravaggio’s dates.’

As Tom pulled the borescope out of the hole, Allegra turned the dial to the final number and then tried the gold-plated wheel in the middle of the door. It turned easily, the handle vibrating with a dull clunk as the bolts slid back. Standing up, she tugged on the door, the airtight seal at first resisting her until, with a swooshing noise, it swept open.

The safe had a red velour interior and four shelves containing an eclectic assortment of items that Faulks had presumably felt deserved the extra security-twenty or so antique dinner plates, a set of red figure vases, notebooks, some files, a few maps. And of course, the ivory mask.

Tom’s attention, however, was drawn to a rectangular black velvet box, monogrammed with a by now familiar symbol: the clenched fist and entwined snakes of the Delian League. It opened to reveal a cream silk interior moulded to house six watches. Two of the spaces were occupied.

‘Epsilon and zeta,’ Allegra said, taking them out and turning them over so that they could see the Greek letters engraved into their backs.

‘Which gives us the three we need,’ Tom said, sliding D’Arcy’s watch into place and then snapping the case shut. ‘Let’s just see if there’s anything in here that tells us where they’re meeting tonight.’

‘What about this?’ Archie asked, carefully sliding out the small packing crate containing the ivory mask, its delicate face cushioned by the straw that poked through its eyes and parted lips in a way that reminded Tom of the Napoleonic death mask he and Archie had discovered the previous year.

‘Leave it,’ Tom said with a shake of his head, glancing up from the handful of notes and maps he had pulled from the safe and was now leafing through.