Eighteen Months Ago
Jordan Orr’s thumb hovered over the detonator. Two dead guards lay at his feet. He threw one final glance at his accomplices, who both nodded ready. Orr tapped the button, and a Mercedes in a car park near Piccadilly Circus exploded three miles away.
Orr didn’t know and didn’t care if there were casualties, but at three in the morning he didn’t expect any. The important thing was that the authorities would suspect a terrorist attack. The response time from the London police for any other call would more than double, leaving Orr and his men plenty of time to empty the auction house’s largest storage vault.
Orr pulled the balaclava over his face. Russo and Manzini did the same. Disabling the cameras inside the vault would take time they didn’t have. The alarm would go off the moment the door was opened.
The vault door was guarded by the double lock of a card key and a pass code. The card key was now in his hand, courtesy of one of the dead guards. He inserted the card, which prompted the system to ask for the code. Orr examined the touchpad. The clever design scrambled the arrangement of the numbers on the keypad every time it was used, making it impossible to guess the code simply by watching someone’s finger movements. But the manager had been careless the day before, when Orr cased the facility as a prospective client. He made no effort to shield the screen from Orr, who recorded the code with a pen-shaped video camera in his jacket pocket.
Typical complacency, Orr had thought. Security system planners always forgot about the human element.
Orr typed the code, and the door buzzed, signaling that it was unlocked. He yanked it open and heard no Klaxon, but he knew that the broken magnetic seal had set off the silent alarm at the security firm’s headquarters. At this time of the morning, no one should be accessing the vault.
Unable to reach the guards, the security company would call the police, but their problem would be a low priority. A terrorist event took precedence over everything else. Orr loved it.
He led the way in. He’d seen the interior in person, but Russo and Manzini had seen only the video.
The fifteen-foot-by-fifteen-foot vault was designed to showcase the objects that were to be formally appraised the next day. Jewelry, rare books, sculptures, gold coins, and antiques-valuables hidden away in an English manor’s attic for a hundred years-were illuminated for optimum effect. Together, the items were expected to fetch in excess of thirty million pounds at auction.
One item was the prize of the collection. In the center display case was a delicate hand made of pure gold. Orr marveled at the lustrous beauty of the metal.
Manzini, a short balding man with powerful arms, removed a sledgehammer from his belt.
“Let’s get rich,” he said, and swung the hammer toward the case. The thick glass shattered, and Manzini reached in, removed the golden hand, and wrapped it with bubble wrap before stuffing it into his bag. He moved on to the jewelry case.
Russo, so skinny that his pants could have been held up by a rubber band, used two hands to swing his own hammer. He smashed the back of the case holding a Picasso drawing and withdrew it carefully to keep it from getting cut by the shards.
While Manzini and Russo gathered the rest of the jewels and rolled up the artwork, Orr raced to the back of the vault. With a single blow, he liberated three ancient manuscripts and carefully placed them in his duffel. The collection of rare gold coins was next.
In three minutes, they had emptied the vault’s entire contents into their bags.
“That’s it,” Orr said. He opened his cell and dialed. The call was answered on the first ring.
“Yeah?”
“We’re on our way,” Orr said, and hung up.
They stepped over the bullet-riddled guards and ran to the building’s entrance. Outside, Orr could make out sirens in the distance, but they were going in the other direction. A stolen cab was waiting for them. The driver, Felder, wore a flat cap, glasses, and a fake mustache.
They tossed the bags into the car and got in.
“Success?” Felder asked.
“Just like the video,” Russo said. “Thirty million pounds’ worth.”
“A third of that on the black market,” Manzini said. “Orr’s buyer is only paying ten million.”
“Either way, it’s more money than you’ve ever seen,” Felder said.
“Drive,” Orr said, impatient with their giddiness. They still weren’t done.
The cab took off. Because London has the highest concentration of surveillance cameras in the world, they kept their masks on. After a theft like this, Scotland Yard would pore over every single video for the one clue that would lead back to the thieves.
Orr was confident that would never happen.
