RAIDING THE TREASURY
PART ONE
Treasury Code K11, Safe 3
12 p.m
At the dead of night, the witching hour, when wolves howled, when nocturnal creatures were afoot, while the city of Kungur slept; all lights were switched off, and even watchdogs had trouble keeping their eyes open, stood the State Treasury, an imposing, magnificent white building, guarded by the most agile Mammoths by day, but by a meagre Wasp by night.
The security guard, Lester Brunswick, snored like a rhinoceros inside his Wasp, his Hammer lying dilapidated at his side. No use for it, he would reason. That building’s got a sweet alarm system. There ain’t no one getting in here.
And indeed, behind Lester’s tank, security cameras gleamed, and laser sensors dotted the corridoors. The most advanced alarm on the planet. Even a cat burglar would have trouble getting through it. Heck, leave that alone, even a magpie would be caught before it left the building’s threshold.
A perfect trap for thieves, considered by many as the ‘impregnable building,’ an opinion valued by the experts for seventy-five years since its establishment in the beginning of the century.
An opinion that was going to change overnight.
~~~~~~~~~~
The silent air was rent by whispers, not twenty feet from where Lester slept.
“Tools?”
“Check.”
“Security code?”
“138226”
“The guard?”
“Sleeping.”
“Fingerprint access?”
“Boss’s given me the print on a clay model.”
“Wearing gloves?”
“Positive.”
“Very well. Let’s do it. You sure there won’t be anyone to stop us?”
“Boss made sure of that.”
With that, Murdoch and Alf scurried across the road, black masks blending in with the night, sweat falling from each one’s face. A dog lifted its head, sniffed the air, and then put his head back down. Murdoch threw a rope over the barbed wire, and, as nimble as cats, they scaled the wall, jumping over the wire and landing without a sound.
Lester grunted. Murdoch and Alf whirled around, tensed, wondering what they should do if the security guard woke up. However, Lester went back to sleep. There was no sound.
Alf took out a bunch of skeleton keys from his pocket, and after about a minute’s worth of fiddling, managed to open the revolving glass door. Both the ‘raiders’, as they called themselves, slipped inside the treasury and passed a huge white marble statue doused in golden ingots.
“We could make a fortune out of this statue itself, brother,” whispered Murdoch. “There’s about a million ingots covering this statue.”
“No,” hissed Alf. “We must do what the boss told us. Now, quick, tell me, where’s vault number 3?”
Murdoch consulted a blueprint of a building. “Third from left at the fork,” he announced.
Alf found himself face to face with a set of wicked laser pointers, which would set off a klaxon the moment they were alerted and would bar in the thieves inside the vault, till the police got to them.
“Get the code,” muttered Alf, and Murdoch punched in the appropriate keys. Immediately, the lasers disappeared, leaving an empty passage for the two brothers.
Alf smiled. It was going to be easier than they thought. The treasury had less security than a haunted house.
Alf and Murdoch strode towards the end of the corridor, where they should have found Vault number 3, but instead, found a door reading ‘Treasury Code K11, Vault 3’
Murdoch frowned. “You sure this is the one, Alf? The boss didn’t mention no Treasury code K11.”
“You’re right,” said Alf. “But the boss said Vault 3, and this has ‘vault 3 written on it, so I’m going in.” And with deft strokes of his fingers, he disabled the burglar alarm, and thumbed in the fingerprint.
The door opened, and Alf and Murdoch were greeted by a bizarre sight.
There were no ingots inside the vault.
Instead there were thousands of boxes, white flecked with beautiful shades of gold in the corners, hues that caught the light whenever Alf and Murdoch turned their necks. In the center, there was the ingot insignia marked on each currency coin, below which there was the number ‘1000’.
“What are these?” asked Murdoch. Alf looked around. A sign inside the room read, ‘Prototype storage for mass currency. Codename – Gold Box.’
“What’s a gold box?” asked Alf. “Don’t know, don’t care,” said Murdoch. They’re still ingots, and I’m taking them.
“But the boss……” began Alf, and then caught himself. Most probably, their boss would be more pleased if they got back with the ‘prototype.’
The two brothers began loading the boxes into their sacks, thinking about the rewards they would get from their boss if they got back with so much money.
“There’s a lot in here,” said Murdoch. Alf nodded. “We’d better move out quick. It’s fifteen minutes to the next security shift.”
They took almost all the contents of the vault, and then made sure they had disabled all the alarm systems. Satisfied that there was no CCTV camera monitoring their movements, they exited the vault, re-enabling the laser klaxons and the burglar alarm on the way out. Too thrilled to believe the ease of their theft, the brothers left the treasury, hoping to have a grand party by the end of the day.
~~~~~~~~~~
Meanwhile, Lester stirred, a buzzing sound greeting his ears, and quickly turned to the source, the security console as footage from the button camera hidden in the ingot symbols of the ‘gold boxes’ was relayed to the monitor within his Wasp.
END OF PART ONE
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