Sun and Moon (part 18)

It looked like any other old abandoned warehouse by the waterfront at three in the morning. The three black-clad figures blended in with the moonless night, almost impossible to see. The alley was still slick from an evening rain, and a dead silence filled the chill air.

Slowly Clay and Umbry made their way up and across the roof, careful not to make any noise. When they had reached the appointed spot Clay touched Umbry lightly on the shoulder, and she paused, waiting.

Meanwhile Julia eased her way around the building, her rail thin body pressed flat against the wall, only inches from the laser beams of the alarm system. She tried to keep her mind on the task at hand, to not think about the possibility of being caught. She willed herself to remain calm as she slowly inched nearer to the corner of the building.

Clay worked silently at the roof air vent, methodically going through his toolkit until he found the proper phillips head screw driver. Once he had the correct tool, unfastening the four retaining bolts was quick work. Slowly and carefully he lifted the cover and placed it silently on the roof beside him.

At his signal Umbry eased her slender body down into the darkness of the narrow shaft. When she was most of the way in, Clay placed his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him questioningly, and he kissed her on the mouth for good luck. For a moment she was too surprised to respond. Then she pressed her lips tightly against his with a hunger that surprised them both, and kissed him back passionately, a long slow kiss.

Afterward the two of them regarded each other for a long moment. This was something that would need to wait, at least for a little while. She lowered herself the rest of the way down into the shaft. He looked after her for a moment, then roused himself. Silently he stole over to the edge of the building, and signaled down to Julia, who had been waiting at the corner of the building for his signal. When she saw his face peering over the the edge of the roof at the appointed spot, she nodded and began to ease herself around the corner.

The ventilation system of the huge former warehouse formed a maze of interconnecting shafts, but Umbry moved quickly and confidently, knowing the way. Up on the roof, Clay mused how simple it had been to retrieve the blueprints of the original building plan. All that had been required was a trip to the office of municipal records, armed with a veneer of authority and the proper fake ID. He smiled to himself. Why do bad guys always set themselves up in old abandoned warehouses? For some reason he found this thought very amusing. Although he suspected his good mood also had something to do with that kiss.

Julia had edged her way half way around the building, and was only five feet from the delivery entrance when she heard the crunch of boots upon gravel. She held her breath, pressing her back tightly against the wall. In the darkness the man walked by, only a few feet away. She looked on in sickened fascination at the white bandage that covered the place where his ear had been.

He stopped and looked around, the standard procedure of his nightly patrol. At one point he looked right at her, and she held her breath. She was in shadow, and his gaze passed on. Footsteps retreated and he was gone. Slowly she exhaled and inched herself the rest of the way to the doorway.

Umbry took two rights and a left to reach the main shaft, and then a final right, as they had worked out beforehand from the plans. Lindsay had told them the command room was on the second floor, facing away from the harbor, so it was clear where she would need to emerge into the building. At last she could see into the room. In the dim light from the facing alley the security console was just visible in the far corner.

Removing a small nail file from her tool belt, she carefully unscrewed the retaining bolts on the ventilator grill, pulled the grill away from the wall, angled it and pulled it up into the shaft. She slowly worked her body backward along the shaft until she reached the wider main shaft. Leaving the grill there, she turned onto her tummy and eased her body back down the shaft, feet first. Slowly, carefully, she lowered herself out of the shaft and felt for the floor with her toes. She moved with deliberately slowness, since jumping down to the floor – or any other sudden movement – could have triggered a motion alarm.

Once at the console, she smiled at the irony. A security console in a locked building generally isn’t password protected – there wouldn’t be any point. Unless, that is, someone has already broken into the building, which is not something the system’s designers would generally think of. With the access screen wide open, she had free reign to click through the subsystems, and it took only a few moments to orient herself.

In under forty seconds Umbry had disabled all the alarms in the building. She leaned back in the chair and breathed a sigh of relief. This had been the hard part – the rest should be a cakewalk.

When Julia saw the small red LED turn to green on the electronic lock beside the door, she didn’t hesitate. So far the plan was moving along smoothly. She tried pulling down the door lever, and it turned easily in her hand. In moments she was in the building, the door carefully closed again behind her. Walking confidently through the darkness, knowing exactly where she was going, she strolled from the loading dock into the main corridor, counted out twenty three footsteps precisely, and entered the door on her left. Lindsay, for all his faults, had turned out to be an excellent mole. Between his inside knowledge and access to the building plans, they had been able to work out the exact path she needed to take.

She reached out until she could feel the edge of the desk. Slowly she ran her hands over its surface, feeling for the cutout letters. She knew the three music boxes were somewhere on the desk, but she didn’t care about them – they would no longer be needed. She removed the small camera with its built in infrared flash from her tool belt and took enough photos to capture the entire desktop. SunMoon would not be needing the letters themselves, only the message they contained.

When she was done she turned around, prepared to follow the planned instructions up to the second floor and from there out to the roof, far from the patrolling guard outside. But when she turned around she saw a gun pointing directly at her. On the face behind it was an ugly grin, made even uglier by the unsightly bandage covering the left side of his face. “Well well, looks like we got ourselves an intruder,” he sneered. “And the boss said to shoot intruders on sight.” She closed her eyes, waiting for the bang that would signal the end of her life. Instead she heard a dull thud.

Opening her eyes, she saw the gunman crumpled at her feet, his gun still clutched in his hand. Standing over him was Francesca, clad in a simple single piece black outfit, a small billy club in her hand. Julia couldn’t help thinking how wonderful Francesca looked in black. Actually, at this moment Julia thought Francesca just looked wonderful, period.

“You seem surprised my dear,” Francesca smiled. Even in this dim light her smile seemed to light up the entire room. “I suspected that my young friends might require some help.”

Julia smiled back. “I thought you were going to wait for us back at the agency, but I am very happy to see that you changed your mind.”

Francesca shrugged with simple elegance. “It appears that I am, as you say in this country, the woman of action. Although I must confess there was an element of selfishness in my decision. One can spend only so much time in little rooms, drinking espresso and discussing one’s feelings. One’s life is, after all, a story. And after a point the story feels like a soap opera. It desperately needs some action.”