Anna said the security shift of eight officers signed on at seven o'clock. The international football came on the television at half-eight, a live screening from West Germany which meant two untroubled spells of forty-five minutes, briefly intersected by that worrisome fifteen-minute interval. Some conscientious nuisance could trot out of the telly room for a quick listen for burglars in that gap. I couldn't repress a surge of irritation at weak-kneed footballers actually needing a rest between halves. Soft sods.
When I was a kid we simply switched ends and carried on. You get no help when you need it.
I'd planned a couple of hours' calm reflection at this point, but being calm doesn't work for some blokes and I'm one of them. I just can't see the point of serenity. My inner peace lasted three minutes. After that I sat and sweated.
* * *
Anna had assured me that the Vatican Secret Police were mythical. There's no such body. Security guards, yes. Secret cloak-and-dagger artists, no. I'd believed her. Alone in the gathering gloom, I wasn't so convinced.
In fact I was shaking as I peered into the deserted cafeteria. Empty places are really weird. Not bad in themselves, but you're used to seeing them filled with people, aren't you.
The cafeteria was spotless, shining and neat. And silent. Long curtains were drawn across the long curved picture windows. Through them a weak light diffused, presumably the floodlights which played along the Stradone di Giardini, the low road which runs straight as a die between the four hundred metre stretch of the Museum and the Vatican gardens. The central security possessed eighty closed-circuit TV
monitors arranged in banks five screen high before a control console. They needed light. I had to trust Anna's map of the security electronics.
Slowly I stepped out into the cafeteria, feeling curiously exposed though I made no noise, almost as if I were performing on a stage with some vast silent audience watching my every move. Absurd.
The downstairs store room was locked, which meant an irritating ten-second delay while I pressed my plastic comb through the crack. A quick lick to stick my suction-pad coat-hook on the door, a series of rapid push-and-pull motions, and the lock snicked back. The delay was minuscule but worrying. That it was locked meant some bloody guard was doing his stuff, and that was bad news. I wanted them all cheering and booing in that staff telly room between the Museo Paolino and the Sala Rotunda.
No windows in the store room, thank God. I locked the door, took the thin towel from my toolbag, rolled it into a sausage and wedged it along the door's base to prevent light leaks. My krypton bulb beamed round the room. Two spare batteries weighing a ton were the heaviest items in my toolbag, nearly, but I couldn't risk working blind for a single second. They'd be worth the effort before the night was out. A rectangular black cloth to hold the tools, a swift unpacking, jacket on the floor and I was off.
My cafeteria table on which I'd laboured so much was the same as all the rest, except that its top was thicker, and an X-shaped strut reinforced the tubular steel legs. A security man might pass it over at a glance as an average modern nosh bar table. To me it meant ripping the Vatican.
I inverted the table and levered off the gruesome shiny edging strips. The main section I wanted was held on the underside by eight mirror brackets with their flat-headed screws. For one frightening second I thought I'd forgotten my favourite screwdriver, but I'm always like that when I've a job on. It was there all the time, beside the hand drill. The wooden section was only a series of oblique triangles. To fold a polygonal surface you can only hinge it along three lines. (Experienced forgers will already know this. You beginners can work it out.) I'd done this by linen hinges, for flatness, and now I unfolded the wood. It was a lovely Andaman surface. Some call it Tadouk' wood, a rich rosewood-like Burmese wood which has been with us since the eighteenth century.
Now I took my prepared rectangular blocks and made a quick swirl of the resin adhesives. I hate these modern synthetics, but a lovely old-fashioned smelly gluepot was a wistful dream in these crummy circumstances. I laid the inverted polygonal disc on the floor and glued the little blocks across the linen hinges, which had now served their purpose. In thirty minutes the disc would be rigid, and would become the
'Chippendale' rent table's top.
Meanwhile I unplugged the tips of the four hollow legs and from two drew out the slender steel rods carefully packed inside. The tissue paper could stay in, to save telltale mess. From the other two legs I shook out a dozen pieces of quartered wooden doweling. The glued blocks had holes to take the rods which slipped in easily, to my relief, though I'd rehearsed this a million times. The polygonal rent table top was now reinforced.
The cafeteria table's steel legs themselves and my added cross-strut came apart once the screws and clasps were undone, which only shows what modem rubbish stuff is nowadays. I had long ago dissected away the thin formica layer back in Adriana's workshop. Now I simply pulled it off and leaned it against the wall behind some stacked chairs.
That gave me the cafeteria table's rectangular chipboard top. One of my most difficult pieces of work had been cutting the rectangle into four so that it could become an elongated cube. The tubular steel legs would hold it rigid enough to carry practically any weight. They already had screwholes, made three days ago with a noisy electric drill. I'd veneered the exterior, of course, but the travelling had done it no good and I wasted time worrying about the shine. Anyway, the top central spot would be covered by that monstrous case of stuffed doves. The pedestal's lock keyhole was phoney but looked good.
The real rent table upstairs had a base plinth as deep as the drawers—always a good sign in an antique of this kind, because the plinths got deeper as fashions changed, the narrower the plinth, the earlier your antique. This place of honour was reserved for the last bit of chipboard which I screwed along the base. It was only stained African white wood and the colour was too dark compared with the thing upstairs, but it was the best I could do.
The metal X-shaped strut I placed across the centre of the polygon. By now the adhesive was setting well. I turned the huge wooden polygon the right way up and screwed it to the strut through the six holes I'd stencilled there. Solid and lovely.
Sweating badly in that confined airless room, I found my jacket and carefully removed the six tiny circles of Andaman veneer from the top pocket. I'd pencilled a number on the underside of each to show which screw-hole it came from. A touch of synthetic glue, and the shiny screws were covered precisely by the matching veneer.
I was having to hurry now. The false drawer fronts were the weak spots. If people fingered underneath the edge of my table, nosey sods, they would realize the game instantly, because there'd be only a sharp edge instead of a lovely smooth underface.
I'd have to risk that. Once the rip was over they could laugh their heads off at my folding copy—because a million miles off I'd be laughing too.
The drawer fronts had come fitted easily between the undersurface of the cafeteria table's top and the folded polygonal section, being only veneered three-ply. My pieces of quartered doweling rods came in handy now to hold the drawer facades completely rigid. It had to be glued, though my heart ached for a small brass hammer and a supply of fixing pins. I hate doing a job by halves.
So, in total silence, I completed the table margin with rotten modern adhesives and stood the polygonal top on its facade of drawers to set firm.
Looking at it, I was quite proud. It looked really great, even in the harsh beam of a krypton torch. Once the gleaming top was plonked on the pedestal it would be indistinguishable from the real thing, unless you looked underneath or pulled it to bits.