Sealed with a Lie (17 page)

The Jolie building gleams white, cold, and forbidding in the frigid Zurich moonlight. Evan’s eyes are now as blank and professional as the dozens of windows that stare down at him and Gustav as they saunter up to the main doors.

Gustav whistles tunelessly as he tugs one open and they walk inside.

The night guard, ever cautious, moves forward to flank them as they scan their ID badges.
“Guten abend,”
he greets them in German.

“Good evening,” Gustav replies in English.

The guard switches to English, too. “You are here very late, gentlemen.”

Evan nods. “
Zut
, forgot some materials we need for a sales pitch tomorrow.”

Gustav lifts an eyebrow. “
He
forgot them.”

Evan snorts. “
He
didn’t tell me we needed these particular brochures.”

“Oh, I need to explain to you how to do your job?” Gustav snipes.

The guard steps back from them. “
Alors
, perhaps you two need a drink.” He laughs genially.

“A drink?” Evan says. “That’s no cure for his personality problems.”

“Ha!” The guard is entertained by them. But it makes me very nervous when he peers closely at Gustav. “I know you from somewhere, eh?”

“I don’t think so,” Gustav says casually. “But maybe from a party a couple of weeks ago? You have a buddy named . . . Jacques, yes?”

It’s a safe gamble. Pretty much everyone in Europe has a friend named Jacques. But I hold my breath and pray this guy doesn’t pay too much attention to the news. Specifically, the news about a juvenile thief who escaped from police custody on his way to trial.

“Jacques,”
the guard says, snapping his fingers. “Of course, that’s it. Not that I remember so much from that party,” he amends sheepishly.

Gustav grins. “Who among us does? Nice to see you again, my friend.”

I’m able to breathe normally as he and Evan make their way into the building. They deliberately go to a bank of cubicles in the marketing department on the fourth floor and paw through some poor woman’s stuff, though all they actually take before heading back toward the elevators is a department store catalog and a couple of empty
manila file folders. Outside the elevators, they make sure to stand and “talk” for a good three minutes or so. This will give Matthis the generic hallway footage he needs to copy for the fake camera feed.

“Okay, Rita—you know what to do,” I say. “They’re both in the elevator at the fourth floor now. The feed at camera nineteen near the lab entrance needs to show nobody entering, even though the computer will show later that someone did. The camera at the top floor elevator cannot show Gustav getting out—or getting back in with his bag of safe-cracking tools.”

“Yes, Kari, I know.” Rita’s fingers are flying so fast that they look possessed.

“Matthis, you’re copying and splicing in the footage from the fourth floor hallway?”

“Yep.” He’s calm and deliberate, but his tension level is pretty high, just like mine. I know he hasn’t slept much lately either.

Matthis squats in typical praying mantis position over his laptop as he does his thing. His eyes behind the blue metallic glasses are beyond intense.

Meanwhile, Gustav shoots to the top floor in the elevator, though somehow Matthis has programmed the buttons at ground level (where the guard is) not to light up and indicate this. I ask him how, but he says apologetically that I wouldn’t begin to understand it, so not to worry about it. “Not trying to say you’re stupid, Kari,” he adds with a sweet smile. “It’s just that it’s a geek thing.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I can hear Gustav through the comm unit as the
rooftop door clangs open. His feet crunch on some gravel up there. Then I hear his tools clanking faintly in the bag and more gravel crunching as he walks back. The door clangs behind him. Next I hear an elevator ding.

“Evan?” I whisper.

“Yeah.”

“Gustav’s on his way down. Don’t go into the lab wing until he gets to you.”

“Check.”

“Houston, we have a problem,” Rita says. “There’s a regular employee swiping his badge at the front. No telling what floor he’s going to.”

“Bollocks,” says Evan. “Gustav? Duck into the gent’s.”

“Ze what?”

“WC.”

Gustav chuckles. “But I don’t like you in zat way, Evan.”

Evan says tersely, “Kari, tell us when the coast is clear.”

We all wait for what’s only a minute or so, while the guy takes the elevator up to the seventh floor, where operations and supply-chain management is. I can’t imagine what he’d need there after one a.m., but evidently it’s something he can’t live without.

“Okay, guys,” I say. “You’re clear to go to the lab wing. Just hurry. Get in and get that door closed again. You have the prints from Luttrell’s card?”

“Yes,” Evan’s voice reassures me.

Beside me, Matthis smiles with pride. He figured out how to transfer the prints onto a soft, moldable rubber that’s almost like Silly Putty. Gustav will pull this over his own thumb before pressing it onto the biometric ID pad.

“You’re sure this will work, right?” I nudge Matthis.

He shrugs. “Ninety-eight percent sure.”

I can barely watch as Gustav slips the rubber “skin” out of his pocket and tests it out.

Evan swallows hard when it
doesn’t
work at first.

I almost pass out.

Rita pinches me, hard.

“Ow! What was that for?” But I don’t even listen to the answer, because on the second try, thank God, Luttrell’s print finally opens the door to the lab.

“
Apres vous
, Kincaid,” Gustav says, his teeth flashing white. And then, when Evan walks past him, “Ladies first.”

“I’ll kick your arse later,” Evan growls. “For now, let’s get on with it.”

Of course I have a more-than-vested interest in this next part for Charlie’s sake. But I’m fascinated from an educational level, too—because I’ve never seen anyone crack a safe before. So I may actually learn something useful.

“What’s in your magic bag, Gustav?” I can’t help asking. “A stethoscope?”

He snorts. “That is, how you say? Urban myth. Silly.”

“Then what do you have?”

“Curiosity killed
le chat
, Kari.”

“The bugger’s got a crowbar and a drill,” says Evan in dismissive tones.

“Oh, very good, English. I also have an autodialer and a very small ultrasound device—but I will not know what to use until I see ze safe itself.”

The lab is dark and full of shadows. As they walk
through, the guys’ wing tips make a racket on the tile floors. I don’t see any animal cages at all, and I’m relieved about that—though for all I know, there’s a top secret bunny room somewhere in the place.

After what seems an eternity, they arrive at a massive safe that is the size of a refrigerator. Gustav sets down his tool bag and evaluates it, stroking his newly naked chin as if he misses his scruff. “Oooooph,” he says.
“Putain de merde.”

He sets the bag on a table and unzips it. Then he pulls out a drill and a set of drill bits.

“Gustav!” I hiss. “You can’t make that much noise . . . what if a guard hears?”

“Zen we dispose of him,” he replies, fitting a very large bit into the drill and tightening it with the key. “Evan, can you please to plug zis in?”

“What, you don’t need any more practice bending over?” Evan says. But he does as he’s asked.

“
Casses-toi
, eh, English?” Gustav insults him almost affectionately. Then he sets about the task at hand. “Let us hope that zis safe does not have a relocker. I do not think so, because zis is an older model. But—” He shrugs.

The horrific noise of the drill fills our ears, and for far too long. At last, Gustav is finished.
“C’est bon,”
he says with satisfaction, dropping his drill back into the bag. Then he opens the safe. The heavily reinforced door reveals a well-organized space full of vials.

The
jungbrunnen
, a brownish powder, is in the lower left-hand quadrant of the safe.

“How much are we supposed to take?” Gustav asks. He’s stroking his chin again, which makes me wonder
what’s going on in that criminal brain of his.

“Only one vial,” Evan says sternly. “One.”

“Eh,
bien
,” Gustav replies cheerfully. “For my trouble, I take two.”

Rita breaks in. “Absolutely not. I have to work there with a guilty conscience already. That stuff has been years in research and development. It’s worth millions. One vial only, Gustav.”

I’m relieved to hear that Rita feels some remorse.

Our thief rolls his eyes.
“Vous faites chier.”

“Did you just say we suck?” Matthis mutters indignantly. “And after we broke you out of jail? There’s gratitude.”

“You broke me out for your own reasons,” Gustav reminds us. “And now I have paid my debt.” He reaches out a gloved hand and removes a vial, handing it quickly to Evan. “
Bon
. Your precious
jungbrunnen, s’il vous plait
.”

With an odd flick of the wrist, he closes the safe.

And then the shrill, piercing screech of an alarm fills our ears.

“Bloody hell,” Evan says, and runs for the exit.

“Merde, merde, merde,”
says Gustav, and follows.

“What did you do? Did you take more than one? That could have triggered security! Damn it all, I knew we couldn’t trust a felonious frog. . . .”

“Vas te faire fou—”
Gustav pants as he tries to catch up.

“You bloody well took more than one, didn’t you?”

“How was I to know?”

“How were you to know? Seriously? Because you’re a professional thief, that’s how!”

They get to the door of the lab, only to find that the rubber thumb cover won’t work this time. Of course not—security has overridden it.

So Evan unzips Gustav’s bag of toys, grabs the crowbar, and smashes it into the heavy glass. Nothing.

I’m just about hyperventilating by now.

“Kari, calm down,” Rita warns me. “Panic won’t do us any good.”

“Easy for you to say! Nobody’s threatened to send your brother’s head to you in a box!”

Evan winds up with the crowbar as if it’s a baseball bat and he’s Barry Bonds. He’s really kind of amazing to watch—especially when this second blow shatters the thick glass of the door. Funny, Gustav doesn’t offer Evan the same courtesy on the way out. He dives right through the glass, pulling his bag after him. That’s why he doesn’t see the guard coming around the corner until it’s too late.

“Arretez-vous!”
the guard shouts.

Right. As if Gustav is going to pay attention to that.

He hurtles forward. So the guard punches him in the jaw and sends him right to the floor.

Good thing Evan comes through the door at him. I get the privilege of seeing Evan’s triple-kick sequence—the same one he used on me—and then, naturally, the choke out at the end. Guard-Boy’s going to sleep for a while, and for longer than I did. He’s not going to feel so good when he wakes up, either.

Evan scrapes Gustav off the floor and tows him along, bitching at him the whole way.

“If you’d just done what you were told, we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

Gustav spits something at him that I can’t quite make out, but given Rita’s gasp, I know is really, really rude.

“I hope that second vial of
jungbrunnen
smashed when that guard knocked you down,” Evan continues. “And if it didn’t, I’ll shove it right up your arse. . . .”

This conversation is interrupted when two more guards come running at them.

Evan immobilizes one with a kick to the solar plexus and then to the left knee. He goes down screaming. The other guard draws his gun and points it right at Gustav.

I’m rigid with fear, can’t even take a breath.

Rita pinches me again, which forces me to gulp air. “Snap out of it!” she orders.

Evan takes a split second to evaluate the situation, to decide whether or not to take the risk. Then his foot becomes a blur and the gun flies out of the guard’s hand, skittering across the floor. In the same instant Evan chops the poor man in the windpipe, dropping him to the floor.

“Run, Gustav,” he orders.
“Run!”

Gustav does.

Evan stops only to pocket the gun.

The theft is all over the morning news. A break-in at Jolie is brazen and big-time. Law enforcement is swarming.

While Kale did swap out cars en route back to the hotel, the surveillance cameras caught the license plate of the original “borrowed” car, and the couple who rented it gets hauled unceremoniously out of bed by the Swiss police and put through the third degree. We hear the whole ruckus because it turns out that their room is just down the hall from the two we have. We feel bad for them, but it can’t be helped.

Gustav is silent while he plucks glass fragments out of his forearm with Rita’s tweezers and drops them into a waiting ashtray. For once he’s not trying to flirt with anyone. He knows the whole debacle is his fault—because he did take a second vial. He slipped it down his jacket sleeve when he handed Evan the first one. And of course
it broke when the guard knocked him to the floor.

I stare at the remaining small vial of
jungbrunnen
and pray once again for the kidnappers to call. I can’t call them—the number that I texted Gustav’s photo to has since been disconnected. They’re being very careful.

The phone finally rings when I’m in the bathroom, naturally, and I almost run out of there without pulling up my pants.

Evan answers for me. “Hello?” He listens. “Kincaid. Her friend. Here she is.” He hands me the phone.

“Charlie?” I ask breathlessly, while buttoning my jeans.

The mechanical voice says, “You have the
jungbrunnen
?”

“Yes. Let me talk to my brother.”

“You and Duvernay will head east with it, to Austria. To Salzburg. Just the two of you. Understand? Any others will be shot on sight, and Charlie will pay the price.”

“Salzburg,” I repeat, nodding even though this person can’t see me. “Only Gustav and me.”