The Prisoner's Gold (The Hunters 3) (18 page)

One of them was Jack Cobb.

The other was the sniper from Brighton Beach.

Tuesday, April
1

Florence, Italy

Hector Garcia lifted a succulent slice of Neapolitan pizza out of the box and savored the aroma. The team was staying in a small hotel just down the street from one of the best pizzerias in all of Italy, a charming restaurant called La Grotta di Leo on the via della Scala. More importantly, the hotel was just a mile away from the Uffizi Gallery.

They had checked into the hotel the previous night, and now Sarah and Maggie sat on the bed as Garcia took a moment to eat while going over last-minute details. Cobb and McNutt were already out in the city, ready to begin their respective parts of the plan.

The museum sat in the heart of the crowded central district of Florence. The massive building was several stories in height, and the closed end of the U-shaped structure looked out over the scenic Arno River. Housing artwork from Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Botticelli, the Uffizi was one of the most famous museums in Europe.

Thankfully, the guard’s journal hadn’t been recognized by historians as having anything to do with Marco Polo; if it had, it would have been a featured attraction. Instead, it was a small part of a ‘slice of life’ exhibit showcasing random artifacts from thirteenth-century Italy. Since there were no items of considerable value, the collection was displayed on a glass-covered desk the size of a dinner table in one of the hallways between two marble statues.

Most tourists ignored the display completely.

Maggie had cased the gallery earlier in the day, following directions that Sarah had fed to her through an earpiece. Sarah would have preferred to do the legwork herself, but she couldn’t risk being spotted on security cameras the day of the heist.

Although photography was strictly forbidden in the museum, Maggie filmed everything with a pair of Garcia’s high-tech glasses. She paused briefly in front of the journal itself, hoping to glean information about Polo, but the book was opened to a page that had nothing to do with him. She also pretended to examine the statues across the hallway from the display while slipping a small magnet next to a contact switch at the base of a nearby window. Garcia had given her the device and said it would prevent an alarm, even if the circuit were disrupted.

‘Let’s go through this one more time,’ he said before blowing on the piping hot pizza that was about to ravage the roof of his mouth.

Sarah nodded. ‘The plan is ridiculously simple for a museum of this caliber. Their security is relatively lax in the hallway because the most valuable items – the paintings and such – are inside the well-guarded galleries. The floor in the hall has no pressure plates, or lasers, or cages. Just the cameras, which you’ll cut right before I go in. Maggie already placed the magnet, so I should be able to break the case, grab the book, slip out the window, and run to the river.’

‘And if anything goes wrong …’ Maggie said.

Sarah finished the thought. ‘I go up.’

* * *

Four hours later, just after sunset, Sarah slipped along the crowded alleys toward the Uffizi. She wore a brunette wig and a locally purchased, leopard-spotted coat-and-scarf combination that made her look like any number of Italian women in the area.

She passed some graffiti on an alleyway wall that loosely translated to:
Italy. Go. Fuck. Party
. She smiled at the message, thinking of the drunken locals who were already starting their revelry despite the fact that it was barely dark on a weekday.

That type of chaos would only aid her escape.

Under her wig and scarf, Sarah had an earpiece that allowed her to communicate with the rest of the team. ‘Approaching the gallery now.’

‘Copy that,’ Garcia said as he adjusted her feed.

The museum would be open for an extra two hours to accommodate Dr Maria Pelati, a guest lecturer who would be talking about her recent discoveries in Orvieto, Italy, and Cholula, Mexico. Though her family was very well known in the region, she rarely made local appearances, so the gallery was expecting a huge crowd.

The fortified stone walls of the building gave the appearance of strength, but the outside plaza located between the wings of the building was designed to attract visitors, not scare them away. Each side of the building had terraced steps up to numerous doors and lit windows. Sarah could see that the hallways behind them were no longer packed, but they were still flowing with tourists who would be attending the lecture.

It wasn’t the only thing she noticed.

A construction crane being used to restore the terracotta tiles that covered the building’s roof had been parked near the closed end of the U-shaped plaza. The broad, bright orange base of the vehicle was surrounded by a six-foot-high chain-link fence that had been hastily erected around it. Two of the sandbags that anchored the fence in place were ripped open and leaking damp sand onto the cobblestones.

On the river side of the building was a fluorescent-yellow debris chute that ran up to the roof. Sarah wondered how long the roof repair had been going on. She mused that if she had needed to get into one of the more heavily guarded exhibits, the construction crane provided a ludicrous amount of exposure to the building’s roof. For the time being, she hoped they hadn’t increased security on the roof to counter that flaw.

‘Ready,’ she whispered.

A second later, she heard Cobb’s voice. ‘I’m good.’

Then McNutt’s. ‘I’m better.’

Then Maggie’s. ‘All clear.’

Garcia spoke last. ‘Just say the word, and I’ll kill the cameras.’

Sarah nodded and stepped inside the museum.

Sarah walked through the gallery, pretending to admire the works of art on the walls while making her way to the slice-of-life display in the mostly empty hallway. The entire operation hinged on crackerjack timing, and Garcia was in charge of the clock.

The long wooden table was filled with an assortment of items from the thirteenth century: a few cups and bowls, a nicked sword, a small shield that looked more ornamental than battle-tested, and a swath of fabric from a shirt supposedly worn during that era. The book was there as well, tucked in the back corner of the display like an afterthought – even though it was the most interesting item in the case. Unlike the dishware that looked remarkably similar to modern china, the journal didn’t look like a modern book. Instead, a twelve-inch long slat of wood held together long sheets of parchment that had been folded like an accordion. Roughly six inches wide, every fold made up two pages of the codex.

Sarah ignored the table and continued down the hallway toward the gallery where the lecture was about to start. One of the larger rooms in the museum, it displayed mostly Christian artwork, which would be the main focus of Dr Pelati’s presentation. In the center of the cavernous gallery, a thick slab of dark mahogany served as a bench for weary patrons. It was currently occupied by a portly Italian man, who looked like he might nod off at any moment.

If he did, they would have to work around him.

Sarah breathed a sigh of relief when he stood and walked to the other side of the room. This cleared a spot for her on the bench. A waiter strolled past with a tray of champagne, but he barely glanced at Sarah, who kept her head down as she looked at her phone. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted one lone security guard by the doorway through which she had entered.

He seemed even less attentive than the waiter.

Sarah put her phone to her ear and pretended to speak into it. In reality, she was talking to Garcia over the comm. ‘I’m ready when you are.’

‘You’re good. I’ve looped the camera in the gallery.’

Sarah leaned forward and stealthily slipped her hand under the bench. Her fingertips coated with latex, she wasn’t the least bit concerned about leaving prints on the small device that she anchored to the wood with double-sided tape. To complete her charade, she casually adjusted the black laces on her shoes before she stood up. She strolled around the room for a few minutes, looking with interest at the paintings on the wall.

No one paid her any mind.

‘Device is in place,’ she whispered. ‘I’m ready to move.’

Garcia acknowledged her comment. ‘Okay, people. It’s show time. Everyone set your watches on my command. Three … two … one … mark.’

Sarah started the timer on her digital watch. They had planned how long everything would take under perfect circumstances. If things went poorly, they knew how long it would be until the local police arrived.

She took a deep breath and waited for the watch to hit fifteen seconds, then slipped out of the lecture hall, past the bored guard, and into the hallway with the glass display case. At the thirty-second mark, Garcia pressed a button on his laptop.

An instant later, the fun really started.

The high-tech device she had planted underneath the bench emitted an intense burst of ultrasound beyond the range of human hearing. It was the perfect pitch to shatter all of the glass in the lecture hall. The cases didn’t explode outward – flying glass would have been too dangerous – they ruptured inward with a frightening crack that startled the nearby patrons.

One person screamed, followed by another, and another.

Before long, everyone was shouting and running.

The display case in the hallway shattered as well. As Sarah walked by, she swept up the book and slid it into a waterproof sack strapped against her side and underneath her long coat. Multiple security guards rushed into the gallery to calm the chaos inside while Sarah blended in with the rush of people surging toward her in the hallway. As expected, stainless steel bars slowly began to descend from the top of the hall’s arched entryway to prevent possible thievery and limit damage to other parts of the museum. But in this case, all the bars really did was trap multiple guards inside, just like Sarah had planned.

She knew that a heist in a highly secure facility was practically impossible when it was closed and the guards were on high alert. But something going wrong during an event was more likely to be viewed as an accident or even a prank. There were plenty of disgruntled groups in Italy forever setting off smoke bombs and trash can fires to draw public attention to their causes. It wouldn’t be a stretch for the guards to picture such protestors attacking a simple lecture. Sarah hoped to use the panicked crowds and the guards’ desire to get everyone out of the building as cover for the theft. With any luck, they wouldn’t realize the book was even missing until the following day when they were picking up all the shards of glass.

Then something happened that Sarah didn’t expect.

According to her research, a simple fire alarm should have sounded that would direct patrons to the nearest exits, but that’s all that should have happened since no paintings had been pulled from the walls. Instead, a hideous piercing noise that sounded like an air-raid warning started blaring. Then the rest of the museum’s alarm systems went off inside the gallery. Loud klaxons rang outside the museum, and pre-recorded messages announced in a variety of languages that tourists should step a respectful distance away from the building.

Sarah cursed at the development.

Things were about to get crazy.

* * *

Inside the sealed lecture hall, Dr Maria Pelati shook her head in amazement as she took in the scene. She leaned close to her traveling companion, a muscular man with mocha skin, and whispered, ‘I can’t stand this country. Every time I come here, something bad happens.’

‘Quit complaining,’ David Jones blurted as he held his hands in the air. ‘You know damn well who the guards are gonna blame. That’s right – the black guy.’

* * *

Outside the south end of the building, Cobb piloted an inflatable Zodiac with an outboard motor up to the quay. A nearby dock was home to a red-and-white pedal boat that could be rented by tourists who wanted to splash around the river, as well as two crew-style rowing boats with seating for eight. Just inland was a twenty-foot-high concrete wall that bordered the road and led to the south wall of the museum.

A few people milled about, looking at the building and wondering what was happening. None of them noticed Cobb as he moored the boat then casually strolled up the road behind the Uffizi.

* * *

Sarah moved toward the window where Maggie had disabled the alarm earlier in the day, but it was no longer a viable escape route. She watched as a heavy metal grate descended from recessed housings above the framing, sliding down on greased tracks and silently sealing in place. She glanced down the corridor, hoping to spot another option – with the sirens already wailing throughout the museum, she wasn’t worried about security sensors – but the other windows were blocked as well, all the way down the hall.

‘Shit,’ she cursed as the guests in the hallway went from panicked to frenzied. ‘Hector, I’m trapped. The windows are sealed.’

‘What do you mean? The device should’ve worked. It should’ve prevented the windows’ electromagnetic locks from engaging.’

‘Maybe so, but bars slid down to cover them before I had a chance to find out.’

‘Bars? What bars? There were no bars on the schematics. They have to be new,’ Garcia complained as he tried to make sense of things. ‘What do they look like?’

‘What do they look like?’ Sarah snapped at him. ‘Holy shit, Hector! I have more important things to worry about!’

‘Yeah, dumb question. Sorry about that.’ Back at the hotel, he scanned all of the camera feeds from the museum, looking for a way out. ‘I guess we’ll just have to improvise.’

‘
Improvise?
’ Cobb nearly choked on the word. ‘There’s no need to
improvise
. We planned for this possibility. The team is in place. Move to Plan B.’

As frantic patrons raced and pushed for the main entrance, Sarah lowered her head and calmly walked in the opposite direction until she reached the nearest stairs. The instant the stairwell door closed behind her, she sprinted upward to the second floor.