Tom attached himself to the nylon cord that was now stretched diagonally across the room and unclipped himself from the steel cable. Crossing his ankles over the cord, his back to the floor, he pulled himself across the room, the metal clip fizzing against the rope like a zip wire, until he was directly above the right-hand camera.
Reaching down, he clipped a small black box to the wire that carried the video signal back down to the control room on the ground floor. Once activated, this stored two minutes of video footage onto its small memory chip before switching into playback mode, overriding the input signal and transmitting its recorded images again and again until the batteries died about an hour later. He’d be long gone by then.
Tom switched the device on, waited the two minutes for the playback to start and then hauled himself back over to the camera on the other side of the room where he repeated the same procedure. Two minutes later and the room was effectively invisible to the guards downstairs. Twenty-five minutes left.
Tom heaved himself back along the nylon cord and stopped in the middle of the room. Looking down over his shoulder toward the floor, the square display case beneath him stared back. Through its glass top, the gold filigree that embraced the Fabergé egg’s green surface winked at him in the half light, urging him on. Tom grinned. He hated to admit it, but he was enjoying himself. The buzz was still there.
He clipped himself back onto the steel wire dangling down from the roof and, pressing the remote, lowered himself facedown until he was right above the display case, his breath gently clouding the glass surface before instantly evaporating. The case rested on an elegant brushed steel column that widened into a large square base that, ziggurat-like, cascaded down to the floor through a series of narrow steps and ledges, each about two inches wide.
Tom pressed the remote again and lowered himself below the level of the glass display cabinet, examining the sides of the metal column until he was only a few feet above the floor, his legs bent back to avoid brushing against its polished wooden surface. Right at the bottom of the column, just before the base widened out, Tom finally found the metal panel that he was looking for set flush to the surface and secured in each corner with four small screws. He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes left.
Slipping a slim electric screwdriver out from inside his jacket, he carefully unscrewed the plate, each screw sticking resolutely to the magnetized tip of the screwdriver as they came free, before he deposited them safely on the top step of the column’s base. The last screw came loose and Tom trapped the panel with his left hand to stop it from falling out.
But the sudden movement must have caused his right hand to shake a little, because the screw dropped from the screwdriver, hit the base of the platform with a metallic ping, and then rolled, with agonizing lethargy, down each of its narrow ledges toward the floor.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Suspended a few feet over the floor, Tom looked on in horrified fascination as the tiny silver screw tripped and skipped its way from step to step, flirting with the final edge that would have sent it spinning to the ground and the alarm being triggered.
But it did not fall.
Instead it hesitated, its shiny head peeking over the edge into oblivion, before gently coming to a rest. Tom blew through his masked lips in relief.
He reached toward the screw with the magnetized tip of the screwdriver, picked it up and deposited it safely. Looking into the small hole revealed by the panel he had just removed, he could just make out two wires. As Archie had predicted, it looked like the supply to a fairly basic pressure switch that would trigger if the egg was lifted out of the case. Easy enough to deal with — he simply snapped a small metal clip between the two wires that cut down through the insulation to the bare wires underneath.
He pressed the remote control, and the winch drew him back up over the top of the display case. Reaching into his overalls again, he produced a small diamond cutter with which he etched a large round circle into the glass directly beneath him. Replacing the cutter in his pocket, he struck the circle smartly with the heel of his hand. It snapped free, dropping into the case and bouncing off the top of the egg.
Tom reached into the case and clamped his gloved fingers around the egg’s silky surface. Hesitating momentarily, he lifted it out of the cabinet, a gentle click resonating inside the glass case as he pulled it clear. But the alarm stayed silent. Although the switch had been tripped, the circuit flowed uninterrupted through the secondary circuit formed by the metal clip that he had fixed to the wires.
Forty minutes gone. Five minutes left. Just enough time to get out.
He slipped the egg inside his jacket and then, pressing the remote, was hauled back up toward the roof. As his head and shoulders emerged through the space in the skylight, he stopped the winch and used his arms to help pull himself through.
That was when he noticed it. A small red dot flush in the middle of his chest. Tom stiffened, transfixed. He knew what it was immediately. The laser pointer of a high-powered rifle.
The red dot slid up to his face, flashing briefly into his left eye and making him blink. The dot then danced around his lips, tumbled down his arm, skidded across his gloved hand until it finally settled on the winch’s motor. Whoever it was, they were on the roof of the building on the other side of the canal. Playing with him.
There was a single shot. The motor sheared apart in an eruption of hot metal and sparks and the cable spooled free, sending Tom flying backward through the gap into the room below.
Instinctively, he reached out and somehow hooked the taut nylon cord that he had run across the room under his left arm. It brought him up short and hard, wrenching his shoulder in its socket. He clung onto the cord, locking his arm into place by grabbing his elbow with his other arm, panting in fear and pain. What the hell was going on? Who was out there? How had they known he would be there?
The cord dropped a few inches; jolted by the sudden impact, the left-hand spear had been torn from the wall. As Tom watched, its barbed tip slowly worked its way through the wood and plaster, the cord sinking inexorably lower. He held his breath. Five seconds. Ten seconds.
The spear abruptly ripped free and Tom plummeted to the alarmed floor.
The room exploded into life on impact. The lights burst on, their damning glare blinding Tom as he lay on the floor. The alarm detonated, a sonic boom of high-pitched sirens and bells that swept across the room in a wave of sound.
He staggered to his feet, reached helplessly for the doorway, but a huge steel door slammed down in front of it, sealing the only realistic exit from the room. With the skylight twenty feet above him, he knew that there was no way in or out.
He was trapped.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
The sight of the red dot on the opposite roof had suddenly explained to Jennifer where the man following Tom had vanished to. And yet it had still taken a few more seconds for her, crouching on the museum roof where she had climbed using the rope Tom had left dangling down the side of the building, to realize what the red dot actually was.
Even so, when it actually came only moments later, the sound of the shot had momentarily paralyzed her. It was only the strident sound of the alarm from the gallery below that had finally prodded her to her feet and sent her scrambling toward the skylight where she now stood, hands on hips, looking down at Tom through the hole in the glass.