The Orion Plan (22 page)

After a few seconds he reached the crooked, slanting bough and pulled himself up to where it branched off the trunk. He sat there, straddling the bough, catching his breath. A night breeze blew against the tree, making the branches swing back and forth, and Emilo glimpsed the security camera through the rustling leaves. This was bad—if he could see the camera, it could see him too, and one of the museum's guards might spot him on a video monitor. He needed to move quickly.

Wrapping his arms and legs around the bough, he scrabbled up its slanting length toward the second-floor window. The tree limb sagged and swayed as he crawled away from the trunk, but he kept pulling himself forward, hand over hand. Near the museum's stone façade the limb angled upward, pointing straight at the night sky. This allowed Emilio to clamber to his feet. He stood on the slanting lower part of the bough and held the vertical upper part for balance. Now he could step from the tree limb to the window, but he got worried when he saw the yawning gap between the two. The limb didn't come as close to the building as he'd thought. There was at least a yard of empty space between the bough and the windowsill.

Emilio hesitated. He muttered “
Coño!
” in frustration, cursing his bad luck. But he couldn't just stand there; the security camera could see him. He took his left foot off the tree and stretched it toward the window. Then he found a toehold on the sill and leaped across the gap.

The breeze pushed him sideways but he managed to grab the window frame and keep his balance on the sill. He bent over, slipped his fingers into the slit and yanked the window upward. As soon as it opened he jumped into the office and tumbled to the floor.

Emilio lay there for a moment, panting. Then he stood up, leaned out the window and gave Paco the thumbs-up signal. The boy scrambled up the tree, climbing much faster than Emilio had. Although Paco couldn't view any how-to videos in his head, he was in great shape and insanely competitive. Within seconds he vaulted from the tree limb to the window and came inside.

The room was dark but soon their eyes adjusted. It was a small office with a messy desk. The junk on the desk included an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes, which explained why the window had been left open. Emilio sidled toward the door, opened it quietly and peeked down the corridor. There were some cubicles and a coffee machine to the left. To the right was a second door, a really solid thing made of steel. The door had a crash bar for pushing it open, and above the bar was a sign that said
TO THE EXHIBITION HALLS
.

He looked over his shoulder at Paco. “Stay close,” he whispered. “And keep an eye out for the guards.”

Then he approached the steel door and pushed the crash bar. He thought an alarm might go off, but everything was silent. He held the door open for Paco, then stuck his baseball cap between the door and the jamb to stop it from locking behind them.

They stood in the Hall of Mexico and Central America, facing a monstrous stone head that was at least nine feet tall. During his reconnaissance mission Emilio had walked across the museum's floors to see where all the security cameras were, and he'd noticed the giant head. He'd even read the label for the exhibit, which said it was a monument sculpted by the Olmec people. Now, using the head as a landmark, he figured out the best route to the Hall of Gems and Minerals. First, he and Paco needed to go one flight down to the ground floor. There was a stairway a hundred feet ahead, but they couldn't use it—a surveillance camera was mounted near the steps. They would have to detour around it and go through the Hall of Asian Peoples to another stairway near the museum shop. That area was also monitored by a security camera, but Emilio had noticed it was poorly positioned. If he and Paco stayed on the left side of the stairway, they wouldn't be seen on the video monitor.

He stepped past the Olmec head and made his way across the darkened hall, with Paco silently following. The Hall of Asian Peoples was even darker, lit only by the glowing red
EXIT
signs. Emilio had come this way during his earlier visit and inspected the exhibits inside the display cases. Behind the glass were colorfully dressed mannequins that were supposed to look like all the different types of Asians: Arab sheikhs, Tibetan monks, Malaysian aborigines. Now, with the lights turned off, Emilio could see only looming silhouettes inside the display cases, but he vividly recalled what they looked like. He'd felt an odd compulsion when he'd come here earlier, a powerful need to look at every exhibit he passed, to scrutinize everything in sight, and not just the security cameras. He still felt this compulsion now but it wasn't as strong, possibly because there was less to see in the darkness.

When they reached the stairway by the museum shop they went down the left side of the steps, just out of camera range. Then they entered the Hall of North American Mammals and tiptoed past the stuffed wolves and grizzly bears. They turned left and then right and then stepped into the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians and passed the big totem poles with the spooky animal faces carved into the wood. Then Emilio heard footsteps and saw a flashlight beam lance into the room.

He and Paco dove to the right. They took cover behind one of the totem poles, huddling against its rough base. The footsteps grew louder and the flashlight beam swept across the hall, shining on the floor and walls and display cases. Then Emilio saw the museum guard in the center of the room, just fifteen feet away. The man was tall and black and very athletic-looking in his uniform. Luckily he was staring at a different totem pole. He aimed his flashlight at a froglike face at the top of the pole, painted green and red and yellow. Then he chuckled to himself and walked out of the hall, apparently heading for the museum shop.

After waiting a few more seconds, Emilio and Paco rose to their feet and quickstepped in the opposite direction. They hurried past the museum's snack bar and the ground-floor restrooms. They rushed through the Hall of Human Origins and the Hall of Meteorites. Emilio's T-shirt was heavy with sweat by the time they finally reached the Hall of Gems and Minerals, which was the darkest room in the whole building. The walls were painted black and the red
EXIT
signs were almost swallowed in the gloom. But at the far end of the hall were hundreds of tiny red sparks, like a swarm of bloodied fireflies. They were the reflections of the
EXIT
signs off the biggest crystals in the room, the ones too large to be kept in the display cases.

Emilio went straight to the massive block of topaz. It sat on the floor near the corner of the room, where Mrs. Cohen had forced him to stand ten years ago while the other third-graders romped around the hall. The crystal had impressed the hell out of him back then and still impressed him now. It was about three feet high and two feet wide and looked like a giant cube of rock candy. A couple of steel rods anchored the topaz to the floor, and underneath it was a lightbulb that shone—at least during museum hours—up into the crystal, giving it a yellowish glow. But now the bulb was turned off, and Emilio could see that only the bottom half of the crystal had the yellowish impurities that muddied its color. The top half was as clear as glass.

He bent over the crystal and ran his hand along its surface, so smooth and cool and hard. Then he turned to Paco. “This is it,” he whispered. “This is what we came for.”

Paco crouched beside the topaz. After inspecting it for a few seconds he pointed at the steel rods. “Shit, it's stuck to the floor. And even if we can get it loose, how are we gonna carry it? It must weigh a fucking ton.”

“Three tons, actually. But we're not gonna take the whole thing. We're gonna cut off a section from the top half of the crystal, the pure half.”

“A section?” Paco looked up at him, grimacing. “How the fuck are you gonna cut the thing? You got any tools?”

Emilio took the duffel bag off his back, slipping his arms out of the straps. Then he unzipped it and removed the only tool inside, a spike made of shiny black metal, as thin as a pencil and ten inches long. “This is all we need.”

*   *   *

He'd found the tool in the basement of his grandmother's apartment building. Well, maybe “found” wasn't the right word. He knew it would be there.

All day, both before and after his reconnaissance trip to the museum, Emilio had jittered with anticipation. Toward evening he'd tried to calm himself by lying on his grandmother's couch, but he couldn't close his eyes. Crazy visions ran through his head like scenes in a movie. He saw himself as a soldier leading a squad of commandos, all of them badasses like the ones in Battle Blood. He watched his men march through Inwood Hill Park and attack the cops on Dyckman Street, sending them running toward the river. Then he saw the white people fleeing from their fancy buildings, a huge herd of white people stampeding up the Harlem River Drive, trampling each other to get out of Manhattan.

Then the visions turned fuzzy and faded, and he was left with only one thought, which took the form of a command:
Go to the basement and look behind the dryers.
Although it didn't make a lot of sense, he got up from the couch anyway and took the elevator to the basement. When he looked behind the dryers in the laundry room he saw the tip of the spike sticking out of a crack in the wall. It should've scared him, but it didn't. He just wrapped his hand around the thing and pulled it out.

But now that Emilio finally stood next to the block of topaz, he was at a loss. He knew he was supposed to use the gleaming tool to cut the crystal, but he had no idea how to do it. The spike looked a bit like an ice pick but its ends weren't very sharp. He didn't see how it could even make a dent in the crystal. Paco stared at the spike too, probably thinking the same thing.

Emilio bent over the topaz and pointed the spike at it. He was trying to at least look like he knew what he was doing. He tapped one end of the spike against the smooth flat top of the crystal, testing its hardness. Then he tapped one of the crystal's equally smooth sides. He was about to tap the block a third time when the spike flew out of his hand. It struck the side of the topaz and stuck there, flush against the crystal's surface, as if held by a magnet.

“
Anda el diablo!
” Emilio stepped backward, startled. He turned to Paco. “Did you see that?”

His homeboy didn't answer. Emilo turned back to the crystal and saw the spike changing shape before his eyes. While staying attached to the topaz, it grew longer and thinner, its ends pulling away from each other. After a few seconds the spike was as slender as a string and stretched across the full width of the block. Then it began to penetrate the crystal, changing its shape again to become a blade of gleaming metal that wedged into the side of the topaz. The blade sliced through the crystal like a horizontal guillotine, moving swiftly and effortlessly from one side of the block to the other. Within seconds it severed the topmost section of the crystal, creating a four-inch-thick slice that continued to rest on the lower part of the topaz. The cut was so clean and neat you could barely see it. Then the blade emerged from the other side of the block and changed back to its old shape, a shiny black spike. It dropped to the floor.

Emilio gaped, amazed and delighted, as awestruck as an eight-year-old visiting the museum for the first time. “You believe this shit? That fucking thing cut the block all by itself!”

Paco remained silent. It was hard to see the boy's face in the dark but it looked like he was truly freaked. Emilio almost laughed. “Don't worry,
muchacho,
it's just modern technology. Now let's see if we can carry the part that's cut off.”

Emilio bent over the topaz again and touched the top section, which was roughly square and about the size and thickness of a briefcase. He pushed it with his index finger but it didn't budge. So he applied more pressure, pushing with his whole hand, and after a moment the section slid a couple of inches forward. Emilio stopped pushing, and now he did let out a laugh, a quiet snort of triumph. The edge of the top section hung over the lower part of the block.

“Okay, it's heavy as shit, more than a hundred pounds, but I think we can handle it.” Emilio reached for the duffel bag and opened its zipper all the way. He held the bag over the slice of crystal to confirm that the thing would fit inside. Then he knelt beside the block and draped the bag around the jutting edge of the top section. “You get on the other side and push the section toward me. I'll get it into the bag.”

Paco just stood there, as if in a trance. After a couple of seconds he shook his head. “I don't like this. It's fucked up.”

Emilio frowned. “I told you, it's just technology. This is how all the jewel-cutters do it now. You think they're still using hammers and chisels?”

“But the thing moved by itself! How the—”

“
Coño,
I don't have time to explain it! Are you gonna be a pussy or are you gonna help me?”

Paco tensed, his whole body going taut. Then, cursing under his breath, he knelt beside the block and started pushing the top section of the crystal.

As the thick slice of topaz slid off the lower part of the block Emilio guided it into the duffel bag. The section was even heavier than he'd thought, at least a hundred fifty pounds. He grasped both of the bag's straps and tried to lift it by himself, but he couldn't manage it. That's why he needed Paco. He hadn't understood the reason before, but now it made perfect sense. The plan was firming up in his mind, becoming a little less cloudy with each step.

He picked up the gleaming spike from the floor and put it into the duffel bag next to the crystal slice. Then he zipped up the bag and handed one of the straps to Paco. “We'll carry it between us. Come on, let's get out of here.”

Retracing their steps, they left the Hall of Gems and Minerals, Emilio on one side of the duffel bag, Paco on the other, each gripping one of the straps. Between the two of them, the heavy bag was manageable, although it strained their arms and made them lean toward each other. They planned to leave the museum the same way they'd come in, through that office window on the second floor, but Emilio worried about running into the tall, black guard who'd almost spotted them. Because they'd seen him walking toward the museum shop, Emilio chose a new route that steered clear of that area. He and Paco lugged the duffel bag through the Hall of Biodiversity and the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall. Then they went up the stairway to the second floor, staying on the left side again because of the camera. The bag felt very fucking heavy as they hauled it up the steps. When they reached the top of the stairway they turned left, heading back to the Hall of Asian Peoples.