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It was exactly half an hour after midnight—zero-dark-thirty—when Maddock and Bones arrived in a quiet neighborhood about a quarter mile from the museum. Maddock pulled the Fiat to the curb and, after a quick look to make sure that no one was around to see them, they both got out. Maddock circled to the rear hatch, opened it, and took out the drone.
“Just hold it up,” said Corey. “I’ll take over from here.”
Corey wasn’t actually there with them. He and Slava were back at the hotel, manning the bank of computer hardware that would not only allow them to guide Maddock and Bones to their objective in real time, but also deal with all the electronic security measures that would stand in their way.
Maddock held the drone out at arm’s length. “Ready when you are.”
A few seconds later, the mini-aircraft’s four rotor blades whirred noisily to life, and it leapt from his fingertips. As it rose higher, the buzz diminished to the point where it might easily be dismissed as insect noise or the hum of a power line.
Corey’s disembodied voice issued from the bud in Maddock’s right ear. “Okay, looking good. You’re clear to move. There’s a fence to the east—on your right. Climb it, and then head south along the fence line for about three hundred meters.’’
“Easy for him to say,” Bones muttered, looking at the six-foot high metal barrier that stood in their way.
“At least there isn’t any barbed wire,” said Maddock.
Despite Bones’ complaint, they easily vaulted the fence and began moving silently through the woods. Both men wore gray coveralls and leather work gloves, which they had “borrowed” from the hotel’s maintenance office—not exactly the sort of high-speed ‘tacti-cool’ attire favored by cat-burglars in Hollywood blockbusters, but the best they could manage on short notice. They also had head-mounted GoPros, which were transmitting back to Corey via the same data relay that allowed for two-way comms and remote control of the drone. Bones carried a small backpack stuffed with an assortment of tools which, hopefully, they would not need. Maddock also had a backpack which was empty at the moment, though hopefully, it would not remain that way for long.
Corey guided them through a series of turns that kept them in the relative concealment of the trees until they emerged at the south end of the museum building. Several outdoor floodlights illuminated the open area in between, so they paused and waited for Corey to give them the go-ahead.
“Just sit tight for now,” Corey advised. “If he stays on schedule, the night watchman will be in the conservation lab in about three minutes. After that, you should have at least thirty minutes to get in, grab, and go.”
Maddock nodded absently. “Just say when.”
No one had been more surprised than Corey at the ease with which he had cracked the museum’s intranet, which had in turn given him full access to the security system—the alarms, all electronic doors, and the feed from the surveillance cameras located around and throughout the museum grounds. After a full two hours of watching the video, he was able to identify the roving night watchman’s routine, and while there was nothing he could do to alter the guard’s route, he could ensure that the man was in another part of the museum when Maddock and Bones made their move. He would also be able to loop the feed in those areas so that the two intruders would not appear on the monitor screens in the security office.
After about five minutes of waiting in silence, Corey gave the go ahead. Maddock and Bones stepped out from the woodline and started across the open area to an emergency exit located near the southwest corner. They moved with quick, confident steps, not running, but not creeping either. With Corey monitoring the area from multiple angles, including the hovering drone with its high-resolution camera, there was little chance of them happening upon someone, but in the event that they did, it would be much harder to pass themselves off as late night maintenance workers if they were skulking about like the thieves they were.
The precaution proved unnecessary. They reached the door and, right on cue, heard the click of the electronic lock disengaging. Maddock pulled the door open and stepped through, with Bones right behind him.
It took only a few minutes for them to make their way to the conservation lab, where Corey again opened the door to admit them. The lab was dark, so the two men produced MagLites equipped with red filters to navigate the maze of desks and workstations, to the table where they had last seen the cup of Khan Krum.
Maddock had been secretly hoping that the silver goblet would still be there, but the table had been cleared.
This was the part of the operation where things could go terribly wrong. It was a safe bet that the artifact was still there in the conservation lab, but to find it, they would have to conduct a thorough search—open every closet, cabinet and drawer—and that would take time. The longer they remained there—on the X, as they used to say back in their SEAL days—the more likely it was that someone would discover them.
“We should have brought Lady Luck along with us,” Bones whispered as he shone a circle of red light on a placard with Cyrillic writing adorning a locked door. Maddock thought he was speaking figuratively, until Bones added. “I could use a translation.”
Slava’s voice came over the comms. “It’s a warning that there are hazardous chemicals inside.”
“So probably not the kind of place you’d store a priceless artifact.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” she replied.
Maddock, on the other side of the room, had found plenty of towels, brushes, and other implements for cleaning and restoration, but no unsecured artifacts. “They must lock everything up at the end of the day,” he ventured. “But if not in here, where?”
“Maddock,” Bones whispered. “Over here. I think this is it.”
Maddock left off his search and crossed the lab to join his friend. He was wondering why Bones had not asked Slava for another translation before making the determination, but when he got there, he saw why. There was no placard on the door before which Bones stood—just a sturdy looking metal handle and a round dial ringed with hashmarks and numbers in ten-digit intervals. It wasn’t a closet; it was a vault.
“Well, crap.”
––––––––
Corey stared at the screen displaying the feed from Bones’ GoPro and echoed the sentiment. He’d congratulated himself on being able to beat all the high-tech security measures, but he was helpless in the face of this low-tech mechanical barrier.
Bones however, just bent close to get a better look at the combination lock. “Maddock, hold the light for me,”
Maddock did as asked, while Bones stripped off his gloves, and then placed his left hand on the handle. The fingers of his right hovered above the dial. He rubbed his thumb and first two fingers together as if trying to warm them up, and then reached down and lightly touched the dial.
“Some of these old combos have what’s called a ‘day lock,’” he explained as he began rotating the dial slowly, testing the handle at each hashmark. “It’s a short cut that lets you open the vault without having to dial the entire combination every time. It’s useful if you have to open the door a lot during the day.”
“But it’s not daytime anymore,” Corey countered.
“That doesn’t matter,” Bones replied, patiently. “All you have to do is find the last number of the combination, and it will open.” After a few more attempts, he added with a sigh, “Unless the last person to close it spun the dial both ways to scramble it. Which is what it looks like happened here.”
“Crap,” Corey said again. “What do we do?”
Bones took his hands away from the dial and cracked his knuckles. “You just keep an eye on those cameras. This could take a while.”
Corey realized that Bones was about to try beating the lock the old-fashioned way, listening for the clicks and feeling the subtle change in resistance that would signal the correct alignment of the internal mechanism. Corey had seen it done in movies, and knew that in real life, it wasn’t nearly as simple as they made it look.
“There’s got to be something we can do to help him,” he muttered.
Slava, who had been watching at his elbow, offered a suggestion. “Do you see the name of the manufacturer there? Or a serial number? Maybe we can find the specifications of that particular door online. They might even have the combination on file.”
Corey glanced over at her, suitably impressed and a little embarrassed that he hadn’t thought of it first.
“No,” Bones replied. “I looked. It’s either been covered up or removed. Now be quiet and let me work.”
Corey felt Slava’s hand on his arm. “I have an idea,” she whispered. “But you’ll need to let me use the computer.”
“Umm, I guess so, but what’s your idea?”
“You hacked into the museum intranet, right? Maybe Dr. Ivanova sent or received the combination to the vault in an email, and forgot to delete it.”
Corey considered this idea, and then nodded. “Yeah, that might work. Let me try a search of her emails.”
“Do you read Bulgarian?” she countered.
That stopped him. “Uh, no. I can run it through a translation program.”
“That will take too long, and the results will be unpredictable at best. I know how to do this. Allow me to, please.”
Her confidence was as surprising to him as the urgency of her suggestion. “Uh, sure.” He pushed a tablet with a Bluetooth-enabled keyboard toward her, and then returned his attention to the screen in front of him. “Okay, Bones. We’re going to try something here.”
Maddock’s voice came back in a low whisper. “Bones is off comms for now. Keep me posted.”
Corey didn’t send a reply, but continued watching the different video feeds as the minutes ticked by. On the main screen, he saw Bones patiently turning the dial this way and that, occasionally trying the handle, but to no avail. The other screens showed mostly unchanging views of dimly lit hallways, exhibitions, and sidewalks, but once in a while, they revealed the watchman moving through with his flashlight to conduct a physical inspection.
Corey consulted the spreadsheet with the guard’s schedule and then glanced at the time displayed in the corner of the screen. “Maddock, you’ve got about ten minutes until the guard comes through there again.”
“Ten minutes isn’t going to be enough time,” Maddock replied. “Is there somewhere we can wait him out?”
“Maybe crawl under a table? He isn’t very thorough.”
“Crawl under a table,” Maddock repeated, sounding dubious. “That’s the best you can do?”
Before Corey could reply, Slava let out a cry of exultation. “I have it. She emailed the combination to one of her colleagues. It was still in her ‘sent’ file.”
Corey keyed the toggle and relayed the news to Maddock, who in turn told Bones to get back on comms.
“Okay, genius,” Bones said, “Let’s have it.”
Corey nodded to Slava who reeled off a string of two-digit numbers. She repeated them, but Bones was already spinning the dial, and before she finished, he gave the handle a turn.
“Open sesame,” he said as the vault door swung open.
Corey pumped his fist in triumph. The view on the screen showed a first-person perspective of Bones stepping into the vault, which was the size of a large walk-in closet. The walls were lined with three levels of shelves, all of which were filled with various artifacts and objects.
Abruptly, the screen went dark, and then the words, “Network connection lost—Try again?” appeared.
“Damn,” he muttered, switching to Maddock’s feed. “Dane, stay out of the vault.”
But Maddock was already offline, too.
Corey glanced at the watchman schedule again. If Maddock and Bones weren’t out of the conservation lab in six minutes, the guard would discover them. He checked the surveillance cameras again, scanning them quickly to locate the watchman, and his heart skipped a beat.
“Crap. He’s running ahead of schedule.”
“What?” Slava said, looking past him.
“He’s rushing through. Maybe it’s lunchtime or something. He’s going to be there in a minute or two.”
“Did you tell them?”
Corey shook his head. “I can’t get a signal through the vault. There’s too much interference.” And even though he knew it would probably be futile, he tapped the “Try again?” prompt.
A little animated graphic of a spinning pinwheel appeared—the technical name for it was a “throbber”—indicating that the network was trying to re-establish contact. Several seconds passed and the wheel continued to spin.
On the other screen, the watchman ambled out of the view of one camera and into another, moving purposefully toward the door to the conservation lab.
“Come on, Maddock,” Corey whispered. “Get the hell out of there.”
––––––––
As he entered the vault, Bones found the silver, skull cup resting on the middle shelf to his immediate right. He picked it up and turned to find Maddock right behind him, with his empty backpack held open to receive the artifact. As soon as it was nestled inside, Maddock zipped the bag closed, slung it over his shoulder, and headed out. Bones exited the vault after him, and as soon as he was out, he pushed the door shut, spun the dial, and then took a bandana from his pocket and wiped both dial and handle to remove any fingerprints.
“Corey,” Maddock whispered. “How much time do we have?”
Bones looked up sharply. Something was wrong. Maddock’s hoarse whisper should have been retransmitted through his earbuds after a millisecond of lag, but that had not happened.
“We’re offline,” he said. “The vault must have blocked the signal.”
“Rookie mistake.” Maddock shook his head in a display of chagrin. “I should have known better.”
“Gasp. The infallible Pope Maddock makes a mistake? The apocalypse must be nigh.”
Maddock ignored the comment. “Corey said we had about ten minutes, but I don’t think we should move until we have him looking out for us.”
Bones was about to signal his agreement when he heard a faint but familiar click come from the opposite side of the lab. Someone had just disengaged the electronic lock on the door.
“Crap,” Bones whispered.
The two men looked at each other and then simultaneously said, “Table!” and then dropped flat and scurried under the nearest worktable as another barely audible click accompanied the turning of a doorknob.
Bones quickly switched off his red-hooded Maglite, at almost the same instant that a diffuse cone of white light swept the room right above his hiding space. He held his breath as the watchman entered the room, his shoes scraping softly on the carpeted floor.
A voice sounded in his ear, startling him. “Bones?” It was Corey. “Maddock? Are you receiving me? Hold your position.”
No, really? Bones thought, but wisely kept his mouth shut.
The circle of light moving back and forth on the wall continued to shrink as the watchman moved closer.
Nothing to see here, jerkweed, Bones thought, as if he could somehow Jedi-mind trick the man.
As if in response, another voice broke the quiet—loud, unfamiliar, and speaking Bulgarian.
Crap. He knows we’re here.
But there was something odd about the voice, and after a second or two, Bones realized that it wasn’t the watchman, but rather a radio transmission on his walkie-talkie. The man replied in the same language, and then abruptly turned away, plunging the room into darkness once more as he hurried for the exit.
Bones decided to risk a question. “Corey, what the hell just happened?”
Corey’s reply was uncertain. “Uh, I don’t know if this is good news or bad, but something just tripped one of the alarms in the main hall. The guard is going to check it out.”
“Does this have anything to do with us?” Maddock asked.
Slava answered the question. “I don’t think so. The shift leader thinks it’s just a malfunction.” She paused a moment then added, “This might be a good time for you to get away.”
“Corey is the coast clear?”
“It looks like it, but we’ll have to be very careful about how we loop the video. Take it slow.”
Bones and Maddock did just that, letting Corey talk them through every movement until they were outside the museum and once more moving through the trees surrounding the facility.
Ten minutes later, they were back in the Fiat, heading for the hotel, with Maddock once more at the wheel. Bones took the cup from the backpack and shone his red-hooded flashlight into the interior of the bowl, examining the inscription and the other markings and lines that might or might not have been mere natural deformities. The inspection revealed nothing that they had not already seen in the hi-def video footage.
“So what do you think?” he said. “Is this a treasure map?”
Maddock shook his head uncertainly. “Hard to say. Even if it is, we might be looking at this the wrong way. There was a fortune in gold coins in that cave where we found the cup. Maybe that’s the treasure the inscription was talking about. Maybe somebody else followed the clues, found the treasure, and moved it there.”
Bones grunted softly in acknowledgement. “But we’re still going to check out that Eyes of God place, right?”
Maddock laughed. “Of course we are.”