The Thieves of Heaven (2 page)
But she was still there, the green hue of the nightscope painting her skin, her body straining against its bonds. Michael didn’t need to hear to know she was screaming behind the gag in her mouth.
Summertime on the Upper East Side. Most had abandoned the city for the Hamptons, for Greenwich, for their little piece of what they called the country; their apartments left dark and dusty until September. The kings and queens abandoned their castles for greener pastures and fresher air, leaving behind Silicon Alley fiefdoms and Wall Street empires. It was a concentration of wealth unlike any in the world, all encased behind thirty blocks of limestone facades and hulking Irish doormen.
The imposing embassy was originally the home and offices of J. S. Vandervelde, an oil baron whose empire rivaled those of Getty, Rockefeller, and Carnegie. The Akbiquestan government bought the building in the early seventies not for her ornate beauty but for her impenetrable exterior structure: walls three feet thick, massive doors, bulletproof windowpanes. The Vanderveldes had known their place in the world: they knew their enemies better than they knew their family and so had their home designed accordingly. Johan Sebastian Vandervelde had constructed his fortress—eight floors of mansion, seven floors of office—in 1915, moving his family uptown from their Greenwich Village home on Fourth Street. Running afoul of his workers had grown commonplace with Johan Sebastian and there was a price to be paid. It just wouldn’t be paid in blood on his own doorstep.
The Akbiquestans also knew their place in the world and knew they needed a bunker more than an office building. They had upgraded Vandervelde’s former home since moving in, plumbing, electric, heating, and security. The only way in was through the front door, if you were willing to endure guards, scanners, guns, and the like.
But people tend to think in two dimensions, not three. An assault from above was never considered a threat, even when the Akbiquestan ambassador was in residence. The roof was outfitted only with standard alarms on the roof doors, windows, and skylights.
It had taken six months of planning. Michael knew every corner of the building better than its longest resident. The Landmark Preservation Commission had been extremely accommodating in providing full plans and specs on the property. When they heard he was writing a book on the history of the most famous avenue in the world, they dropped everything they were doing to assist the nice young man in the Ralph Lauren suit. Not only did they provide info on the building in question, but on each of the adjacent structures. Forbes Carlton Smyth—Michael chose the alias for its implied pedigree—assured every commissioner he would receive an acknowledgment for his assistance. The building’s American security system was easily identified and access codes were purchased from the manufacturer for a nominal fee, as U.S. sentiment didn’t run deep for the Akbiques.
Like every good businessman, Michael was thorough in his work, dotting every i and crossing every t. He was every bit the professional. No stone left unturned in his planning, no detail overlooked in his research. Every foreseeable scenario was played out and provisioned for. But unlike other businesses his was a firm of one. No R&D staff, no secretarial pool, no VP of human resources. Michael always worked alone; in an untrusting field, you can’t be the trusting kind. Always performing below-the-radar lifts: governments, criminals, the over-insured. Nothing could or would ever point to him. Always in and out in minutes, never a mistake, never a trace, never a clue, and, most importantly, never caught.
The embassy was down-staffed now that the United Nations was on hiatus. Two guards on duty per shift, a handful of daytime secretaries, and that was it. Everyone else had returned home to enjoy the mountainous desert land they represented.
The ambassador, Anwar Sri Ruskot, was a well-respected general who excelled at diplomacy, but that talent ran a distant fourth to his greatest skills. General Ruskot was well-known in the black markets as a top courier, fence, and merchant specializing in the movement of antiques, jewelry, and paintings, all the while hiding behind his diplomatic credentials. As far as the general was concerned, the diplomatic pouch was an invention greater than electricity, the light bulb, and women combined. Rumors of his activities ran rampant in law enforcement circles but the FBI and Interpol were powerless. If they shook the tree, the State Department would have a major crisis on their hands that could swiftly escalate to bloodshed between the not-exactly-friendly countries.
When General Ruskot was in town, he ran his enterprise from the fifteenth floor of the embassy, well out of reach of his guards, councilors, secretaries, and busybodies. His office was on the top floor, where only he was allowed. Ruskot claimed that it was here he conducted his country’s most sensitive dealings and that if those dealings were to be prematurely exposed, the impact would be catastrophic to world diplomacy. Nobody ever entered fifteen, under any circumstance.
Michael was the first to see the ambassador’s true operation. He hung in the middle of the room on a Kevlar wire, five feet off the ground, shining a small penlight. The study was large, a cross between a gentleman’s library and an opium den. A massive masculine desk surrounded by high-back red leather chairs was positioned against the rear wall, while on the opposite end was a nomadic sitting area of thick deep pillows centered around a
hookah,
its stale opiate smell still clinging to the air. Among the host of Eastern antiques and master paintings, Turkish rugs and tapestries, there were ledgers, files, and computers detailing each shady transaction, each illicit payment, every underhanded deal. While most of the criminal element was discreet about record-keeping, that was a worry Ruskot would never have: the general wasn’t on American soil, this was pure Akbiquestan ground protected by the Vienna Convention.
Michael had entered the alley shortly after midnight to begin his ascent. The four-story boutique sat just off Madison Avenue, its granite-block face a climber’s dream. On his back he carried several lengths of thin kernmantle rope; at his waist, carabiners, clamps, and a tool kit—all taped to avoid jingling. From the shadowed alley he began his climb, his fingers clinging to the impossibly narrow lips between the building’s granite blocks. As if out for a stroll, he scaled the boutique in seconds, then cut across the roof and headed up the adjacent eight-story apartment house. Possessing the style and strength of a master, he moved building to building toward Fifth Avenue, rising higher in the city as he went. Michael loved climbing buildings more than rocks. They possessed a greater challenge, a greater sense of accomplishment for him. He’d gotten hooked on man-made facades back in college: the Towers dormitory was his first Mount Everest. He had worked his way up to the twenty-second floor of the dorm, slipped in and out of a student teacher’s window without so much as a sound; all for want of a test paper. The adventure didn’t have the payoff he was hoping for—the girl he stole it for had still failed the exam.
Michael descended to the Akbiquestan Embassy roof from the adjacent eighteen-story condo. The skylight, installed in ’68, was alarmed but easily defeated through a few choice splices. He removed the glass, looked about the dark room through his monocular, then lowered himself down. Hell of an apartment, hell of an art collection. Michael had studied the plans like a playbook and could easily redraw them blindfolded; he knew every inch of the place long before he set foot inside.
Through his various sources he was aware of a considerable amount of uncut diamonds on the premises and his contacts were proven correct when the six-foot-high 1908 Wells Fargo safe swung open under his knowledgeable fingers. There were diamonds, all right. He unfurled the black velvet jewelry roll and there they sat like stars against a night sky, winking and sparkling up at him. Enough to fill a cookie jar. Thirty million black market, untraceable dollars. What made the job even sweeter was no one would ever report these diamonds missing. They were surely stolen, illegally insured, their existence known to only a select few. The ambassador would never send out an alarm. Too many questions would be raised as to their origin. Under no circumstance was anyone entering the fifteenth-floor suite to inspect the scene of this crime. No police, no investigation, no problem.
At the same moment as the safe door swung open, Cpl. Javier Samaha was growing restless at his post by the embassy door. The guards had drawn lots to see who would rotate home and Samaha had gotten the proverbial short straw. The monotony of twelve-hour shifts was making his feet throb and his head ache. It was a quiet night, a Thursday, and nothing, as usual, was happening. Besides eating, reading, and cards, there wasn’t much else to do. Despite all the fears of being a stranger in a hostile land, there had never been an incident at the embassy or against any of his countrymen. Samaha thought the ambassador’s paranoia unfounded and the man’s precautions over the top. This was the twenty-first century, the age of tolerance, and the embassy sat in the most diverse, liberal city in the world. Besides, it was the middle of the summer, all the radicals and college kids were on vacation, nobody was going to stage even a protest until at least September. Samaha turned to the desk officer and told him he was going to make his rounds early, he needed to stretch his legs and clear his head. He usually started on the second floor and worked his way up, but exercising what little authority he possessed, tonight he decided to start at the top.
Michael closed the safe and stuffed the diamonds in the satchel, throwing it over his back. He took a brief moment to admire the artwork, confident that no one would be entering this restricted area, and noticed a jeweled cross in the corner. It was nine inches high and encrusted with a host of sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. He had come only for the diamonds, but the cross just screamed to him, he didn’t know why. It wasn’t in his plan and he hated deviating; he was always extremely fastidious in his work. He knew the key to success—which translated to not being caught—was to stick to the plan. But after all, this would be his last job.
He threw the cross in the bag and was out of there in 93 seconds.
