Quick (21 page)

His phone vibrates and a new email arrives, blinks up on the screen.

Gotta love wi-fi in the sky.

He swipes open the email and reads it, then turns to the Australian beside him. He also studies his iPhone, but just one photograph: the list of numbers and letters from Kurt’s iPad. ‘I ran your friend Kurt through the database.’

‘Which database?’

‘The database of
coq au vin
recipes. What do you think? The Interpol database.’

‘Well I don’t know.’

‘Anyway, it can access pretty much everything. Police files, bank records, phone records.’

‘I presume there were no red flags?’

‘You know what happens when you presume?’

‘I make an educated guess and choose the correct answer?’

Claude’s caught. ‘In this case
yes,
but it’s not a good habit—’

‘Actually I didn’t presume. I just looked at your expression. If there had been a red flag you would have been excited.’

Claude points at his face. ‘What if this is me being excited?’

‘Then you have my deepest condolences.’

‘Anyway, I also ran that shopping list of numbers and letters past the guys in the lab. They don’t correspond to any known bank account numbering system currently in operation.’

‘Okay.’ Billy takes a moment, then: ‘What’s “the lab”?’ He throws out some air quotes on the words, then whispers, intrigued. ‘Is it like Q division in the Bond movies?’

‘Well that’s
fiction
and this is
real life
so no, and why are you whispering?’

‘I thought that’s what you do when you talk about super secret stuff.’

‘If it was super secret then you wouldn’t know about it. “The lab” is slang for the floor in the Interpol building where the computer boffin’s perform logistical support for field agents. They’re not building cars that turn into submarines or designing bagpipes that become flamethrowers or anything “cool beans”, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

~ * ~

Billy studies Claude flatly. ‘Well that’s disappointing. And you didn’t use “cool beans” correctly.’

‘Really?’ The Frenchman is surprised. ‘Don’t you say it when something’s cool?’

‘But not like that. It’s more informal, like: “Wanna go to the movies? Sure, cool beans.” Like that.’

‘Right.’ Claude nods but clearly doesn’t understand.

‘Anyway.’ Billy looks back at his iPhone screen and studies the list of numbers and letters.

14TICSM3

28JTPTKL3

4TIMED4

They make about as much sense to Billy as ‘cool beans’ does to the Frenchman. Maybe he’s kidding himself. Maybe they don’t mean anything.

Abhh, screw it.

He’s sick to death of this bloody list. He turns off the phone and reaches into the seat pocket in front of him to see if there’s anything to read that will take his mind off it. There is. He draws out a crinkled copy of the
International New York Times.
He flips it open and scans the print, notices an article about police on the French Riviera hunting what they believe to be a black panther after several reported sightings of a big cat. ‘Christ.’ Billy grins at the thought of some rich bloke in the South of France smuggling it into the country as a kitten not realising it’d grow into a hundred-kilo jungle cat who’d eat him out of house and home, then eat
him
if given half a chance. Billy reads on for a while, then slides the newspaper back into the seat pocket and pulls out
Open Skies
, the Emirates glossy in-flight magazine, to see if there are any movies he’d like to watch. He flips through it. Towards the back there’s a pre-season report about what could be expected from the FIA Formula One World Championship this year.

Beside Billy, the Frenchman peruses the in-flight menu and murmurs to himself: ‘Should I have the chicken or the beef?’

‘How about the
shhh, I’m reading
? I hear that’s excellent.’ Billy skims the Formula One article then turns the page and sees it contains the race schedule for the year, with all the dates and locations included.

He studies it for a moment. ‘Christ, it’s a
menu.’
He swipes open his iPhone and looks at the photograph he took of Kurt’s iPad.

Claude turns to him, half interested. ‘What’s that?’

‘You were just reading that menu and banging on about what you were going to eat and it made me think, could the list be a menu for the thieves, for the places they’re going to hit?’

The Frenchman frowns.

‘What’s that face?’

‘Is there a word in English for “I don’t believe you but I’m trying to be polite”?’

‘I don’t know but that expression pretty much nails it. Anyway, if you look at the first line —’ Billy points at it on the iPhone. ‘
14TICSM3.
The fourteenth was the day of the month of the first heist, right?’

Claude leans over and looks at it. ‘
Oui
.’

Billy then points at the first race on the list in the magazine. ‘And the first race weekend took place from the fourteenth to the sixteenth right?’

The Frenchman nods again. ‘You’re speaking but not really saying anything.’

Billy ignores him and moves his finger from the six to TI. ‘So what does TI stand for?’

‘It’s the chemical symbol for Titanium.’

‘Thank’s for the science lesson, Stephen Hawking, but I’m pretty sure it’s the first two letters in the word Tiffany, as in Tiffany
&C
Co., as in where the armoured car was about to deliver the diamonds.’

‘
Ouuui
.’ Claude is still unconvinced but less than before. ‘So what does CS stand for?’

‘Where was the Tiffany’s located?’

Claude takes a moment, then works it out: ‘Collins Street.’

Billy nods. ‘In
Melbourne.
And that’s what the M signifies.’

‘And the three is for, what?’

‘March. The third month. The month the heist took place.’ Billy looks at Claude. ‘So, what do you think? Am I onto something or am I onto something?’

Claude glances from the iPhone to the magazine to the iPhone, clearly less sceptical now. ‘Okay, what about the second line?’

The Australian points at
28JTPTKL3.
‘Okay. Twenty-eighth day, which was yesterday, then what does JT stand for?’ He thinks about it.

Claude does the same. ‘JT. JT … Justin Timberlake?’

‘Really?
That’s
what you think it means?’

‘Umm, John Travolta?’

‘Oh for godssake ...
jewellery.
It’s jewellery
something.’

‘Jewellery
trader!’
Claude’s getting into it now.

Billy points at the Parisian. ‘Jewellery trader! And who was robbed yesterday? A wholesale jewellery trader. So then PT stands for . . . Petronas Towers!’

‘And KL is Kuala Lumpur.’

‘And three is the month of March.’

The Frenchman is stunned. ‘That was—that was surprisingly easy. So what about the last one?’

They study the letters and numbers on the third and final line.
4TIMED4.

Billy starts. ‘Going by what we already know this should be the next robbery. On the fourth of April. At Tiffany’s. In Dubai, where the next race is. All the numbers and letters line up.’

‘Okay, but what is ME?’

‘I don’t—hold on.’ Billy swipes open his iPhone’s screen.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Googling my good man.’ He types onto the screen. ‘Googling at forty thousand feet.’

‘Googling what?’

‘To confirm I’m the smartest mofo on this plane.’ He reads the screen. ‘The Mall of the Emirates.’ He stresses the ‘M’ in mall and the ‘E’ in Emirates. ‘Did you hear what I did with the M and the E?’

‘I did. So it has a Tiffany’s?’

‘It sure does, Home Slice. I tapped in Dubai, Tiffany’s, ME and just like magic it gave up the answer. So the next heist will occur at Tiffany’s in the Mall of the Emirates in four days time.’

Claude nods thoughtfully. ‘Right.’

‘What was that? There’s no “right”. This is an “Oh yeah!” moment. You’re not allowed to be so casual about it. All the letters and numbers line up. This is real. We got ‘em.’

‘Let’s just see how it plays out.’

‘Spoiler alert! I know how it plays out. We wait for these guys to turn up, arrest them as they rob the store and we’re back at the hotel in time for dinner. Or lunch, depending on when they turn up.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Why are you harshing my buzz?’

‘What does that even mean?’

‘It means you’re raining on my parade, bursting my bubble, being a bit of a
Claude
about it. It’s very annoying. I can’t be the only one who’s ever mentioned this.’

‘I’m just being, how you say, judicious.’

‘Well, don’t. I did it. I cracked the case wide open while you were deciding between the chicken and the beef. You should thank me.

‘And I will, when we make an arrest.’

‘Okay then.’ Billy nods, happy to finally extract something positive out of the Frenchman.

‘Cool beans.’

‘Wrong usage.’

‘Really?’ Claude’s disappointed. ‘Anyway, if you are right about the next heist, you shouldn’t think it’ll be easy.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘First, have you ever been to the Mall of the Emirates?’

‘No. Why?’

‘You’ll see. But that won’t be the hard part.’

‘Then what will be?’

‘Arresting your friend.’

Billy takes this in and realises the old Gaul is right. If he’s worked this out correctly he will need to take down an old mate, and that won’t be easy at all.

~ * ~

12

This is what the Frenchman was talking about when he said ‘you’ll see’.

He was talking about the sheer size of this joint.

Billy scans the Mall of the Emirates from his chair outside the coffee shop. The place is enormous, much larger than any shopping mall he’s seen before. It’s so large it has its own
ski field
for chris-sake. It’s the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground with a slope one hundred metres high and four hundred metres long. He glances over the railing beside where he sits on the first floor and takes in its entry doors on the ground level below.

He turns back and takes a sip of black coffee, glances at the copy of the
Khaleej Times
open in front of him. The last four days have been a blur. The hardest part of the job was to familiarise himself with this mall. It’s so large, has so many levels and annexes and entrances that Billy’s original ‘It’ll be a piece of cake’ comment to Claude was humorously naive in retrospect. It took him the better part of two days just to understand the layout which he performed under the guise of a shopping expedition in case the Three Champions were doing something similar and recognised him.

While Billy was busy casing the joint, Claude spent his first two days in Dubai ‘liaising’ with the local authorities so they understood that there was a chance something was about to go down. The local Police Chief was keen to lend his support and understood the public relations value of partnering up with Interpol to crack an international burglary ring.

The Chief, who’s name is Kashif, is an elegant, quietly spoken man who reminds Billy of an Arabic David Bowie, of all people. Kashif quickly sequestered a thirty-man squad, all in plain clothes, to execute the arrest of the Three Champions. Billy was impressed when he first heard the number, but then he saw the size of the mall and realised thirty men would barely cover every exit.

Billy looks from his newspaper to the Tiffany’s jewellery store thirty metres away. He can see through the glass windows that it’s empty, except for one young guy who walks around and glances at the finery in that nervously nonchalant way a fiancé acts when he’s trying to decide just how many months salary he’s prepared to drop on his beloved’s engagement rock.

Billy looks back at his paper, tries to pretend he’s actually reading the thing, then glances at his watch. It’s three o’clock. He’s been pulling circuits of this floor since the place opened this morning but has never been more than a ten-second sprint away from the store. He should probably do another circuit.

The last time the Frenchman called in was about an hour and forty minutes ago. He reported that Kurt was still in the safety car compound at the Yas Island racetrack. The plan was that Claude would shadow him all day, and when (or if) he headed towards the mall Claude would give Billy a call. The track is an hour and a half from the mall so it would take a while for him to arrive. Billy would then get on the blower to Kashif, who would then set his men in position. They currently wait in a room in a building opposite the mall, ready for action.

The Australian glances at his watch again then looks at the phone and wills it to ring. ‘Come on you bast—’

The iPhone lights up and rattles on the table. He sees it’s Claude calling and picks up. ‘Is he on the move?’