The Ninth Step - John Milton #8 (John Milton Thrillers) (24 page)

He drew a breath and kicked again.

His boots landed on the exterior doors of the fourth floor.

He kicked again and then again, and the doors to the third floor passed him by.

Milton fed the rope through the karabiner with an easy, practiced motion. It was a difficult descent through the murk. He was unable to see all the potential snags and hazards until it was almost too late, but he had managed more challenging abseils than this. He was a little out of breath by the time he reached the bottom, but that was it.

He looked straight up and flicked his headlamp on and off two times. He heard the sound of the next climber clipping himself to the rope, and then the sound of boots thudding against the wall as the man started down.

Milton unclipped himself, removed his harness and shone his torch back up to just above the external elevator door. There was a roller in the mechanism atop it, and the roller locked the door from the inside. Milton pushed it up. The external doors opened a couple of inches and Milton was able to force them apart a little more.

No light was admitted into the shaft through the forced doors; it was just as dark on the other side. Milton shone his headlamp inside and saw that there was a security door blocking the way out.

He heard boots thud against the surface of the lift shaft as whoever had followed him down reached the bottom.

Milton turned, his headlamp picking out Marcus, and watched as he opened his bag to take out a battery-powered builder’s work lamp. The battery pack had three hours of life, and they had several spares. Marcus set it down on the floor and switched it on. The shaft was illuminated with a flood of light bright enough to reach up to the second floor. The third man was negotiating the descent. It was Vladimir. He was struggling a little with his harness, and, as he finally reached the bottom, Milton helped to release him.

“First time I’ve done that,” he said, his accent coming through a little more clearly now that he was out of breath.

“Get a move on,” Marcus said.

Vladimir shrugged his rucksack off his back, opened it and took out a hydraulic jack. The security door just outside the lift operated as a roller, pulled down and locked into place by mechanisms that had been set into the floor. Vladimir took out a jemmy and, inserting the tip between the bottom of the roller door and the floor, struggled with the lever for a minute until he had bent the metal just enough that it was possible to slide the toe of the jack between it and the floor. The jack was an expensive piece of industrial equipment, rated with a maximum lifting capacity of over twenty-five tons and more than powerful enough to handle the task at hand. Milton stood back as Vladimir switched it on. The metal groaned as the toe was pushed up, the sill creaking and then buckling as it was bent up and out of shape. Vladimir switched the jack off, repositioned it under the newly opened space, and activated it again. The jack forced its way up to full extension, buckling the door until there was a gap beneath it that was more than large enough for a man to slide through.

There wasn’t enough space for Spencer at the bottom of the shaft, and he was waiting above for the signal that it was clear to descend. Vladimir removed the jack from beneath the door and placed it out of the way. Marcus slid beneath the door first, reaching back in to take his bag from Milton. Vladimir went through next. Milton gave a quick whistle to signal that Spencer could come down, and then followed the others beneath the door.

He looked. It was familiar to him from the day before when he had been shown down here by Michael. There was a small space of around three square metres before it was curtailed by a second security door, this one barred and more substantial than the one they had just forced. The walls were bare, save for a fire extinguisher that was fixed to a bracket and a noticeboard to which was pinned health and safety information. The light from the work lamp in the lift shaft passed through the opening beneath the buckled roller door, but it was dim and Marcus augmented it by taking out and lighting a second lamp.

Vladimir appraised the door. “That’s not going to be a problem,” he said.

Milton went up to the door and looked through the bars. The basement corridor extended for ten metres, with a large metal vault door on the right-hand side.

He heard Spencer as he descended the shaft and dropped down to the floor.

Milton turned back to the door. Vladimir took out the cordless angle grinder that Milton had been carrying, got down on the floor and set to work. Just like the jack, they had not skimped on the equipment. The grinder was a high-quality DeWalt unit, and the blade sliced through the bars without difficulty. The operation created much more noise than when they had forced the first door, but Milton was content that they were deep enough below street level for most, if not all, of it to be muffled. Vladimir cut through the first bar, sparks flying out, and then moved onto the second, third and fourth. It took twenty minutes to cut through all of them and, when he was done, he put the grinder aside and turned to Milton.

“You look like you can handle yourself. Give me a hand.”

Milton made sure his gloves were on tight, wrapped both hands around the first bar, and pulled. It was strong and difficult to bend, but as Vladimir joined in they were able to yank it back until it was pointing at a forty-degree angle to the others. They repeated the feat for the other bars. Milton was sweating when they were finished, but the fruits of their labour were obvious: the bars had been rearranged so that there was plenty of space for them to slide through.

Milton went first.

THE DOOR BEYOND was a much more serious obstacle. The roller door and the barred security door had been simple enough to bypass, but the door to the vault was of another order entirely. Milton recalled it from his visit yesterday. It was a top-of-the-range Chubb vault door, eighteen inches thick, with two large wheels and armoured hinges. The steel cladding that protected the exposed sides of the door was a mould, with reinforced concrete poured directly into it. The door was square, easier to suspend than the iconic round doors in the images that banks used to use in order to demonstrate their security. It was secured with massive metal cylinders that protruded from the door into the surrounding frame. Holding those bolts in place was a combination lock. The lock had two dials that controlled two locking mechanisms. Both locks had to be dialled open at the same time for the door to be unlocked, and no single person had both combinations. Both key holders had to be in place before the door could be opened.

It was an impressive obstacle. Milton guessed that it would have been possible to remove the door or to cut through it, but it would have taken hours—or possibly days—and they would have had to bring in a lot more equipment than they could have comfortably carried.

The Fabians’ plan was to go around it instead.

There was enough space for all of them in the corridor. Marcus, Spencer and Vladimir set up work lamps, laid their bags down and removed the equipment inside. They had a Hilti DD350 diamond core drilling system. The drill bit was a hollow tube, half as long as Milton’s arm, with clusters of diamond teeth fixed to its circumference with a strong resin. The bit was slotted onto the drill and secured in place. There was a power point on the wall, and the drill was plugged in. They had two tripods with a guidance rail suspended between them, and these were set up so that the drill bit was pressed flush against the wall. Vladimir wound the ratchet to position the bit against the surface.

“Water,” Vladimir said.

They had a portable two and half gallon water supply, and the unit was attached to the drill with an extension hose.

Vladimir switched on the power and looked to Marcus for final approval. When he received it, he squeezed the trigger and started to drill. The operation made much less noise than Milton had anticipated. The diamond teeth bit through the concrete easily, and the motor did not need to work particularly hard to punch it through. Vladimir worked carefully, drilling a few inches into the wall and then withdrawing again. The hollow bit was full with a cylindrical cross section of the wall, much as an apple corer would remove a plug of apple. He removed the concrete core, cleaned out the bit, and then cut ahead again. The water from the supply unit sprayed directly onto the drill bit, damping down the dust that would otherwise have been thrown up.

The first hole took twenty minutes, much less time than Milton had anticipated. The water pooled on the floor, a dirty slurry that washed over their shoes.

Vladimir moved the rig, positioned the bit against the wall next to the freshly excavated hole, and started again.

There was nothing for Milton to do except wait.

The operation took just over three hours to complete. The aperture, when it had finally been finished, was small. Milton guessed it was no more than fifty-five centimetres across and forty centimetres from top to bottom. The wall was fifty centimetres thick. It was little more than a slot.

Milton looked at the others.

“I’ll go first,” Marcus said.

He stepped up to the opening, put his head and shoulders inside—there was no obvious space on either side of him—and slithered ahead. “Push me,” he called back, and his brother and Vladimir helped, raising his legs and impelling him forward until his hips were halfway into the breach. Milton heard him grunt with effort, wriggling up and down until he managed to slide forward enough so that his widest point was safely through the gap. He slid ahead, dropping down to bear his weight on his hands and then clambering on so that his legs were all the way through. It had taken a minute. Milton wondered whether he would manage the same feat and, if he became stuck, what they would do. He was bigger than Marcus. The prospect of negotiating the opening was not appealing.

Vladimir went through next. Milton and Spencer collected the bags with the rest of their equipment and passed them through the hole into the vault.

“Your turn,” Spencer said to him.

Milton knelt down next to the hole. He looked through and saw row upon row of boxes arrayed across the wall opposite. The opening was just higher than his waist, and he extended his arms and pushed ahead, sliding his shoulders through and then allowing Spencer to lift his legs and push him. The sensation of being so constricted was exquisitely unpleasant, and he was very aware of the concrete pressing at him on all sides. He wriggled ahead, quite sure that his hips would jam between the walls. They did not. He angled his pelvis and shoved forward, first sliding the right side of his body ahead and then following with the left. Spencer gripped his ankles and shoved, and, suddenly, Milton was far enough through the opening to put his palms on the floor and bring his legs through, too.

“Fat bastard,” Marcus said derisively.

Milton stayed on the cold concrete floor of the vault for a moment and gathered his breath. He was going to have to get out again, and without help. Spencer slithered through the hole, his brother tugging his arms to ease him into the vault.

“Good work,” Marcus said, “but we’re just getting started. These boxes are going to be tough to open. We need to push on.”

“You want to tell us what we’re looking for now?” Spencer said, looking at Milton.

“Photographs.”

“A bit more specific?”

“No. If you find anything like that, show it to me. I’ll tell you when we’ve found it.”

Vladimir rapped his knuckle against the nearest box. “What about the other stuff?”

Marcus grinned. “Into the bags.”

THEY HAD four cordless metal drills, four chisels and four short-handled sledgehammers. Marcus distributed them and then went to the back of the vault to organise the bags that they would use to remove their loot.

Milton took a position to the right of the vault. He made sure that he was facing the drawers numbered 200 through 250. He had no idea in which box the files had been stored—indeed, he had no proof that they were even here at all—but this was the side of the vault that he wanted to be near.

“Come on, ladies,” Marcus called out. “What are we waiting for? Let’s open them up!”

They all set to work.

Milton took the sledgehammer and slammed it into the row of drawers until two of the metal fasciae were weak enough to dislodge, offering easier access to the locks behind. He took a marker and inscribed three Xs on the lock: two were over each keyhole and the other was on the far left of the lock, next to the edge of the box door on the side opposite the hinge. He took the drill and drilled the two keyholes for an inch until the bit pierced the lock. He stopped, removed the drill and looked into the hole. He could see the locking mechanism. He drilled into the third X, pushing it all the way through until the bit was spinning without resistance. The lock bracer that was holding the door shut was broken, and, without it, the door swung open. He made a show of taking out the tray and examining the contents: a collection of old war medals.

The others had tried different tactics to open the drawers, but Milton’s method was the fastest and he was the first to get at the contents inside. He removed the drawer from the cabinet.

The vault was soon filled with a cacophony of noise: the crash as sledgehammers were driven into the metal fasciae and then the screams of anguished metal as the drills were used to force the locks. There came an exuberant whoop as Marcus went through the contents of the first drawer that he had opened. He tossed the empty tray on the floor and held up a tiara. It was mounted in gold and set in silver, with rose-cut and pear-shaped stones.

“Look at this shit!” he gloated. “Look at it! This is going to be insane!”

“Into the bag.”

Milton went back to his corner of the vault. He addressed the box with the stencilled 221 and crashed the sledgehammer against it until the protective cover fell away. He drilled into the box, popping the lock and opening the door. Everything was as he had left it, as he had known it would be: the ten envelopes, one atop the other. The two at the bottom were uneven with the shape of the cable ties, and he felt the bulk of the mobile phone in the envelope on the top. He made a show of opening the top envelope and glimpsing inside it. He found the phone, reached inside, switched it on and hid it in his palm.