There were three flashlights hanging on the wall on the other side of the door. I took one of them and flicked it on. “Come on, then,” I said.
“We’re not going in, are we?”
“Of course we are! Don’t you want to see where this leads?”
“No!”
We went in.
There must have been some sort of pressure switch built into the staircase because after a few steps the door swung shut behind us. I was glad in a way. Tim would probably have turned back given half a chance. And the way I was feeling right then I’d have probably taken the other half and followed him.
Led on by the beam of the flashlight, we went down. And down. The stairs, which had been narrow to begin with, got narrower. It was like being on the inside of a tube of toothpaste. The farther down we went the more buckled and bent the walls became. I could feel them pressing in on me. I just wondered what we’d find when we got squeezed out the other end.
The air was damp now. It smelled of the river. But there was light ahead, a strange blue glow framed by a stone archway. I flicked off the flashlight and turned around to warn Tim to keep quiet. I was half a second too late. Suddenly there was a muffled explosion. It was so loud that for a moment I thought the bomb in the backpack had gone off. I felt for my shoulders. They were still attached to my arms. Then I realized. It was Tim. He had sneezed.
“Tim!” I hissed.
“I’b sorry,” he whispered. “I thig I’b caught a cold.”
“Well, try and keep it quiet.”
“Sure, Nig.”
We reached the bottom of the staircase and passed through the archway. If the steps had looked like they’d been carved out by some nineteenth-century smuggler, the corridor that now faced us was brand-new, white-tiled, with neon strips burning at half strength in the ceiling. The floor was raw concrete. I was about to move forward when a door opened at the far end. Grabbing Tim, I ducked back behind the arch.
“What is it, Johnny?” I heard a voice ask.
“I thought I heard someone, Ma,” Johnny answered.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Somebody sneezed . . .”
“It was nothing, Johnny boy. Ya’re imagining things.”
“Ya think so, Ma?”
“Sure, Johnny. Come and finish ya hot chocolate and gin.”
The door closed and we breathed again. But at least I knew now that Johnny Powers and his mother were here. The door at the end of the corridor had to lead to some sort of living quarters. It was just as well we hadn’t wandered in or we’d have probably ended up in quarters and certainly not living.
A second corridor led off to the right. We took it. It stretched for about a hundred feet, the blue neon throwing blue shadows ahead of us. The underground complex was bizarre—a bit like a hospital, or a bit like the subway station it was directly under. There were no windows, of course. I could hear a faint hum in the air, some sort of ventilation system. How far did the complex reach? And how complex was it? It was impossible to say.
And “impossible” was the only word to describe what we found at the end of the corridor. I’d known it was large, but this was something else. In fact, it was so far beyond belief that I couldn’t have imagined it in my wildest dreams, and I can tell you now, some of my dreams have been pretty wild.
The white tiles had ended. Forget the hospital. Forget the subway station. What we were looking at was a crazy museum, a vast chamber with archways running down both sides and classical pillars supporting a curving brick roof. It was an Aladdin’s cave, a fantastic warehouse. It had to be the central depot. The place where the Fence kept his hoard.
Paintings lined the walls, some hanging, some leaning against the brickwork. Antique statues stood in a cluster, chandeliers hung from the archways. Oriental masks and mosaics poked out behind the pillars. Plain wooden crates spilled out gold and silver jewelry. We passed a mountain of video recorders and stereo equipment. We saw enough fur coats to wipe out a generation of minks, enough cutlery to equip a chain of hotels. You could have burgled every house in London, robbed every store, and stripped every museum and you still wouldn’t have as much stuff as we saw there.
We’d found what we were looking for. As far as I was concerned, that was it. Now we could go to the police and give them everything they wanted . . . the Fence, Powers, and the proceeds from just about every robbery in the last ten years. All we had to do was get out again. It was as simple as that.
But of course nothing in my life is simple. And when things look easy, that’s just when the problems begin.
My problems began with Tim. We’d gotten about halfway through the cavern when he suddenly uttered a strangled gasp. I thought he was going to sneeze again, but then he snatched something off a table and held it up to the light. When he turned around he was holding a vase, twelve inches high, bright blue, with some sort of bird painted on the side.
“I’ve foud it!” he whispered, his voice on the edge of a giggle. “I’ve agdually foud it!”
“Found what?” I asked.
“The Purble Peagog.” He tried to clear his nose.
“Peagog . . .”
“Peacock?”
“You remember! The Ming . . .”
And it was. The Ming vase stolen from the British Museum had somehow found its way to the Fence and there it was, waiting to be sold. I didn’t know what to say. Tim was grinning like a kid with a new toy. For the first time in his career he had actually succeeded. But this was no time for congratulations.
“Put your hands up!” somebody said.
I spun around. Nails Nathan was standing there. In the blue light his acne looked like the surface of the moon. But it was his hand, not his face, that caught my eye. It was holding a gun. And the gun was pointing at me.
“Nails . . .” I muttered, showing him my palms. “Maybe we can do a deal.”
“No deal, Diamond,” he snarled. “You’re dead meat.”
He was right. And Tim was the vegetable that went with it. It was all his fault. Johnny Powers had heard him sneeze. His mother hadn’t been so sure, but Powers hadn’t been taking any chances. He’d sent Nails out to investigate. And Tim and his wretched Ming vase had drawn him to us.
I looked around out of the corner of my eye, hoping for a gold-plated poker or anything I could hit him with. But there was nothing. Anyway Nails had me pinned down. He’d have blasted me before I could so much as blink. All he had to do was call out for Johnny and we’d be finished.
Then Tim sneezed a second time. It was so unexpected and so loud that Nails jerked around before he knew what he was doing. At the same time I was on him.
With one hand I grabbed his throat. With the other I went for the gun. And that’s how we stayed for a few seconds, like mad dancers doing the tango. He was trying to shout out, but I had a firm grip on his windpipe and no wind was getting through. I spun him around. Now I was facing Tim, who was still standing there, clutching his precious Ming.
“Hit him, Tim!” I hissed.
Nails was bigger than me and I could feel him getting away. There were only a few seconds left. The gun swayed between us as he tried to force it down toward me. I pushed with all my strength and it swung up again.
“Hit him!” I hissed again. “Use the vase!”
Tim moved forward. He was holding the vase in both hands and now he lifted it up, holding it above Nails’s head. I waited for it to come shattering down. But Tim didn’t do it. His arms were shaking. His face was a torment as he struggled with himself.
“I can’t do it!” he muttered. “I can’t do it, Nig.”
Then the gun went off.
