“That’s why you’re here,” Dragan said. “There’s at least five hundred million dollars’ worth of diamonds in that vault, and we’ve already got clients lined up, waiting impatiently for the stones. You’re the only one with the skills to get us inside. It’s taken us more than a year to find you, and we’re running out of time to pull off the job.”
Things weren’t adding up for Nick. Why would Dragan be interested in a heist that he knew was beyond his team’s skill level? He had been doing the same routine for the past ten years. Why change now? Nick was about to pose the question when a fifth man limped onto the set. His face was covered with stitches, making him resemble a scarecrow stuffed into loose-fitting Versace sweats instead of burlap sacks. His flat eyes looked like they’d been ripped from a doll and glued onto his face. It was the guy who’d attacked Nick in Hawaii, and been tossed through the coffee table.
The scarecrow made eye contact with Nick, did his best to ball his meaty hands into fists, and took a step forward. Dragan cut him off, placing a halting hand on his chest.
“Easy, Zarko,” Dragan said. “You can’t blame a man for defending himself.”
“I don’t blame,” Zarko said, staring at Nick. “I kill.”
“How did you find me when the FBI, Interpol, and just about everybody else on earth with a badge hasn’t been able to?” Nick asked.
“They would have much more success finding crooks if they were crooks themselves,” Dragan said.
The deputy director of the FBI had come to the same conclusion. That was why Nick was now secretly teamed up with Kate.
“We found the forger in Hong Kong who made the ‘Nick Sweet’ passport you’ve been using lately,” Dragan said. “He’s done a few of ours, too. He was an excellent craftsman.”
“ ‘Was’?”
“Sadly it took some persuasion to convince him to help us find you…persuasion which unfortunately left him incapable of forgery or tying his shoes again. However, in the end he was quite generous with his information.”
Nick sighed and shook his head in disappointment. “I’m a thief. Instead of abducting me and threatening me, did it ever occur to you to just politely invite me to participate in one of the biggest diamond heists in history?”
“I like leverage,” Dragan said.
“Five hundred million dollars in diamonds is plenty of incentive for me,” Nick said.
“That’s our money.”
“Minus my fifteen percent commission as a creative consultant.”
“I’m not used to negotiating,” Dragan said. “I’m used to taking what I want.”
Nick turned to the blond woman. “I assume you’ve rented offices in the building, posing as a diamond merchant.”
She smiled, like a child witnessing a magic trick. “How did you know that it was me occupying the office and not Borko, Dusko, or Vinko?” She gestured to the other men in the room besides Dragan and Zarko.
“The Road Runners always use a beautiful, seemingly rich woman to case the jewelry stores that they’re planning to hit, often months in advance,” Nick said. “Why would it be any different now that the target is a vault?”
Her smile widened. “You think I’m beautiful?”
Dragan rolled his eyes. “Litija’s been a tenant in the building for nearly a year. She can go in and out as she pleases during business hours.”
“I have an empty office where I do nothing but sit and watch House Hunters International and Love It or List It from America on my laptop,” she said. “I have a safe-deposit box in the vault that I visit at least twice a day, though all that’s in it is some makeup.”
“But it’s thanks to her that we’ve learned every detail of their security system,” Dragan said, “and were able to construct this accurate re-creation of the vault to try to devise a way in.”
“Impressive, but overkill. Getting in is easy,” Nick said.
Litija was skeptical. “You just told us all of the reasons why it can’t be done.”
“Let me kill him,” Zarko said.
Nick looked at one of the remaining men, who’d said nothing so far, and had a face only a turtle could love. “What’s your opinion?”
“I think we spent too much on your coffin. When Zarko is done with you, it will be easier to bury you in bags.”
“I’m sorry I asked,” Nick said. “What about you, Litija?”
“I’d really like to see you do it, because you’re cute, funny, and are the only person besides Tom Selleck who has ever looked good in that outfit,” she said, gesturing to his aloha shirt and shorts. “But I don’t believe that you can.”
Nick turned to Dragan. “I guess you didn’t share my résumé with them.”
“I don’t ask for advice on my decisions,” Dragan said.
“I’m relieved to hear it, considering the consensus of the room. So let’s make a deal, shall we? Think of me as a willing and eager participant. I’ll even overlook how you got me here.”
“Very gracious of you,” Dragan said. “It’s been a pleasure watching you try to turn this situation to your advantage. I can see why you’re a world-class con man, but it also makes me worry that I’m being swindled. So here’s my one and only offer. You will remain as our guest. If you get us into that vault and out safely with the diamonds, we’ll give you a ten percent cut. But if anything goes wrong, you die. How does that sound?”
“Fifteen percent would sound better,” Nick said. “But I’m in.”
“Excellent,” Dragan said. “What do you need?”
“A car, for starters,” Nick said.
“Cars are not a problem. That’s how all of our robberies begin.”
“I thought you’d appreciate being in your comfort zone.”
“What kind of car would you like?”
“One that can fit in Litija’s purse,” Nick said.
—
Kate’s dad, Jake O’Hare, was in shorts and flip-flops when Kate handed him his boarding pass.
“I’m going to Antwerp and I might need help,” Kate said. “We have just enough time to get to the airport.”
“Andy’s not going to like this,” Jake said. “We have a one o’clock tee time.”
“Since when would you rather play golf than execute an unlawful extraction?”
“You didn’t tell me the part about the unlawful extraction,” Jake said. “The answer is never.”
Kate had grown up as an Army brat, following her father around the world while he performed “extraordinary renditions” with his Special Forces unit. He was retired now, living with Kate’s sister in Calabasas, enjoying the good life and missing the old one.
“Are you traveling in those clothes?” Jake asked. “They look like you slept in them. Not that I mind, but the TSA might pull you out of line thinking you’re a vagrant.”
Kate looked down at herself and smoothed out a wrinkle in her navy blazer. She hadn’t slept in the clothes, but they weren’t exactly fresh either. She’d kicked through the dirty laundry on her floor this morning and chosen some clothes that looked the freshest.
“I just rolled in from Hawaii and didn’t have a lot of time to put myself together,” she said. Not to mention she wasn’t all that good at the whole pretty-girl thing. She didn’t have time. It wasn’t a priority. She had no clue where to begin. Her father had taught her forty-seven ways to disable a man with a toothpick before she was nine years old, but he hadn’t exactly been a fashionista role model. And clearly she was lacking the hair and makeup gene.
—
The ten-story Executive Merchants Building was a major repository of the world’s wealth. The building looked like just another 1970s-era concrete and glass box, a place somebody might go to have a cavity filled, a car insured, or a tax return completed. The complete absence of style was the style. The only ornamentation on the building was its array of big, boxy surveillance cameras.
The main entrance was on the southern side of Schupstraat, one of three narrow streets that
comprised the “special security zone” in the heart of Antwerp’s diamond district and Jewish quarter. The three streets, Rijfstraat, Hoveniersstraat, and Schupstraat, formed a rigid “S” that began on the northeast corner of the district and ended on the southwest edge. Both ends of the “S” were closed to free-flowing vehicle traffic by retractable steel columns in the pavement that were lowered after vehicles passed police inspection at adjacent kiosks and then raised again after the inspected cars entered the secure zone.
On a Thursday at 11 A.M., three days after Nick’s abduction, Litija walked into the Executive Merchants Building. She sashayed through the marble-paneled lobby and blew a playful kiss to the elderly guard who sat in the control center behind a thick window of bulletproof glass. He waved back at her with a friendly smile as she approached the turnstile that controlled access to the first-floor offices, the elevators, and the stairwell. Litija swiped her tenant ID card over a scanner and walked through the turnstile as it unlocked.
She bypassed the elevator and took the stairwell. She paused on the landing just inside the door for a moment, listening for voices and looking around to make sure she was alone. There were no cameras in the stairwell. No footfalls of anyone else climbing the stairs.
She hurried down to the next landing, crouched beside an air vent near the floor, and took a screwdriver out of her purse. She quickly unscrewed the grill, reached into her purse again, and pulled out a radio-controlled red Lamborghini with a tiny camera taped on top of it.
Litija placed the car into the vent, and it sped off.
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 yo
u 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.”