The Lost Relic. Scott Mariani

weren’t fully finished, with patches of freshly-dug earth and a half-built ornamental fountain. There was a works van present in two of the pictures, a slightly battered Mercedes with the company name SERVIZI GIARDINIERI ROSSI just about visible on the side.

      Italy, Anatoly thought. That was cool. He’d never been there before, but currently had two Ferraris, one red, one white, and most of his wardrobe came from there as well. He even spoke a bit of the language, mostly aped from the Godfather movies. Girls loved it. Yes, Italy was fine by him. Anatoly could appreciate art, too, as long as it involved depictions of naked female flesh.

      Sadly, the item his father seemed so desperate to acquire depicted nothing of the sort. Anatoly glanced at the glossy blow-up taken from the exhibition brochure. Just some colourless drawing of a guy on his knees praying. Who would desire such a thing? Obviously it was worth some serious cash, strange though that might seem.

      ‘You’re not listening to me, boy.’

      ‘You were saying the alarm system’s a bastard.’

      Maisky cleared his throat and cut in politely. ‘That’s putting it mildly. The perimeter protection system is state of the art. If you can get through it, the building is filled with cameras watching from every possible vantage point. The inside of the gallery itself is scanned constantly by photo-infrared motion sensors that could pick up a cockroach. The whole thing is automated, and the only way to override it is to enter a set of passcodes that are kept under lock and key in three separate locations. You need all three to disable the system. Furthermore, the passcodes are randomly re generated each day by computer, in staggered intervals so that the combination’s constantly changing. Any breach of the system will trigger the alarms as well as sending an instant signal to the police.’

      ‘Seems impossible,’ Anatoly ventured.

      ‘Nothing is impossible, boy.’ Shikov snatched a printed sheet from his desk and flipped it over.

      Anatoly picked it up. There were three names on the sheet, all Italian, all unknown to him. De Crescenzo, Corsini, Silvestri. Beside each name was an address and a thumbnail picture. De Crescenzo was a gaunt-looking man with thinning black hair. Corsini was round and fat. Silvestri looked like a preening popinjay, a man in love with himself even when he didn’t know his picture was being taken. ‘Who are they?’

      ‘The three men who hold the passcodes,’ Maisky told him.

      ‘Now here’s the plan,’ Shikov said. ‘Tomorrow evening is the inaugural opening of the gallery. Invitation only, some local VIPs and art critics, people like that, about thirty-five in all. All three passcode holders will be present. Your team will be waiting as they leave, and follow them home. At 3 a.m., you’ll snatch them simultaneously from their homes, bring them back to the gallery and make them enter the codes. How you do it is up to you, but you keep them alive.’

      ‘Right. And then we go in and grab what we came for.’

      Maisky had been waiting for the first sign that the hotheaded young punk was going to handle this in his usual reckless way. Here we go, he thought.

      ‘It’s not that simple,’ he said. ‘Because the only time the owners might have to override the alarm system would be an emergency situation such as a fire, earthquake or other potential threat to the valuable contents of the gallery, the system’s designers built in a function that will send an automatic alert to the police should the override codes be entered. That function is hard-wired into the system and can’t be disabled remotely in any way. It uses a broadband frequency via the optic fibre landline, with cellular backup in the event that the main lines are down. So it’s essential that before you go in, you ensure that the landline is chopped. And that you use this.’ He pointed at a device sitting on a side table. Anatoly had been eyeing it, wondering what it was. A plain black box, about twelve inches long, wired up to four patch antennas.

      ‘It’s an 18-watt ultra-high power digital cellphone jammer,’ Maisky explained. ‘It will work in all countries and block the signal from any type of phone, including 3G, over a radius of 120 metres. With this in place, the police won’t have a clue what’s going on.’

      ‘And if any of the owners decides to get smart and punch in a duress signal that could trip the silent alarm, they’re wasting their time,’ Shikov added.

      ‘So then I can pop them.’

      ‘Not until you have the item safely in your possession,’ Maisky said as patiently as he could. ‘Once you’re in, you have to take care of the secondary system as well. Each painting is rigged so that any attempt to remove it from the wall will set off a separate alarm.’

      ‘So what? If the phones are down—’

      ‘It also fires the automatic shutter system. A sensitive electronic trigger is hooked up to a hydraulic ram system that will slam shutters down to protect the artwork. The shutters will resist attack from bullets, blowtorches, and cutting blades. They will also automatically block every possible exit and imprison the intruder like a trapped rat until the police come and take them away. And there’s no override code for that. It can’t be reversed.’

      ‘Are you following all of this, Anatoly?’ Shikov said, watching his son closely from across the desk.

      Anatoly shrugged, as if to say all this kind of stuff was child’s play to him.

      ‘Good. Go and assemble four of your best men. I’m thinking of Turchin, Rykov, Petrovich—’

      ‘And Gourko,’ Anatoly cut in.

      Oh no, Maisky thought, his heart going icy. Not Gourko. Anatoly’s closest crony, the scarred bastard who’d been dishonourably drummed out of the Russian army’s Spetsnaz GRU Special Forces unit for beating one of his officers half to death with a rifle butt. The kind of gangster who gave gangsters a bad name, and one of the few other people who frightened Maisky even more than his boss.

      ‘You have two hours,’ Shikov said. ‘And then you’re on your way to Italy. You’ll rendezvous with our friends on the ground.’

      ‘How many in the team?’

      ‘Ten. Eight men inside, two on the outside.’

      Anatoly nodded. ‘Hardware?’

      ‘Everything you need.’

      Anatoly smiled. He could trust his father to be thorough on that score.

      When Anatoly had left the room a few minutes afterwards, Shikov gathered up the scattered paperwork and slid it into a drawer. It would be burned later. Maisky circled the desk, frowning. His head was full of things he wanted to say. Things like, ‘Are you so sure you can trust Anatoly with this? He’s wild and irresponsible and his friends are all maniacs, especially Spartak Gourko. How can you be so blind, uncle?’ But he had the good sense to say nothing at all.

      Yuri Maisky wasn’t the only one keeping his thoughts to himself. As Anatoly walked away from the boathouse, flipping his Ferrari keys in his hand, he was already thinking about how overcomplicated and boring his father’s plan was.

      He had other ideas.

      Yup, this was going to be fun.

       Chapter Five

      ‘A job?’ Boonzie said, raising his eyebrows.

      The sun was beginning to dip over the hills, throwing a wash of dramatic reds and purples across the skyline. Ben nodded. Crouching on the ground beside the new greenhouse foundations, he fished out his Zippo lighter and a pack of the same Gauloises cigarettes he always smoked.

      ‘Those fuckers’ll kill you,’ Boonzie muttered.

      ‘If something else doesn’t beat them to it. Want one?’

      ‘Aye, why not. Chuck them across.’ Boonzie kicked over the empty barrow and used it as a seat while he lit up.

      ‘At