The Sacred Vault

Fernandez gestured to a third man, Kristoff - the smallest and lightest member of the team. The German gave the line a tug of his own to reassure himself that it would hold, then clipped his harness to it and carefully lowered himself off the roof.

The others held their breaths. If the spear came loose, it was all over.

Suspended below the line, Kristoff pulled himself across the street. The cable shuddered, but held firm. Fernandez didn’t take his eyes off the spear. The crackle of fireworks had stopped, and now he could hear the crunch of broken bricks shifting against each other . . .

Kristoff reached the Galleria’s roof.

Mass exhalation. Fernandez realised he was sweating despite the cold. Kristoff detached himself from the line, then secured it around the blockhouse.

Thumbs up.

Fernandez hooked himself to the cable and pulled himself across, followed in rapid succession by the others. He checked his watch as the last man reached the Galleria. They had made it with thirty seconds to spare.

Now for the next stage.

He took out his phone and entered another number. He didn’t lift it to his ear as he pushed the final button, though. He was listening for something else.

In a Florentine suburb three kilometres to the southwest, two cars had been parked, one at each end of an unremarkable street.

Each car contained half a kilogram of C-4 explosive, wired to a detonator triggered by a mobile phone. The phones had been cloned; each shared the same number, ringing simultaneously.

An electrical impulse passed through the detonator—

By the time the booms reached the Galleria dell’ Accademia eight seconds later, the men on the roof were already moving towards their next objectives.

They raced across the rooftops, splitting into four groups of two men each. Zec and Franco comprised one team, reaching their destination first as the others continued past.

The pair dropped on to a section of flat roof where large humming air conditioning units kept the museum’s internal temperature constant. There was a small window just below the eaves of the abutting, slightly taller building. Zec shone a penlight inside. An office, as expected. A glance below the frame revealed a thin electrical cable. The window was rigged with an alarm.

He took a black box from his harness, uncoiling wires and digging a sharp-toothed crocodile clip deeply into the cable to bite the copper wire within. A second clip was affixed on the other side of the window. He pushed a button on the box. A green light came on.

Franco took out a pair of wirecutters and with a single snip severed the cable between the clips.

The light stayed green.

Zec touched his throat-mike to key it. ‘We’re in.’

Inside the museum, lights of the halls and galleries were dimmed to the softest glow. Had it been up to the curators they would have been switched off entirely, to prevent the artworks from fading, but the security guards’ inconvenient human need for illumination had required a compromise.

The Galleria dell’ Accademia is not an especially large museum, so the nightwatch usually consists only of six men. Despite the cultural value of the exhibits to the Italian people, this seemingly small staff is not an issue: any kind of alarm would normally result in a rapid police response.

But on this night, the police had other concerns.

Two guards entered one of the upper floor galleries. Familiarity had turned the art treasures into mundane furniture, the monotony of patrolling the halls punctuated only by check-ins with the security office. So the unexpected crackle of one man’s walkie-talkie got their attention; the next check wasn’t due for twenty minutes. ‘What’s up?’

‘Probably nothing,’ came the static-laden reply. ‘But Hall Three has gone dark. Can you look?’

‘No problem,’ said the guard, giving his companion a wry look. That passed as excitement in their job: checking for faulty light bulbs.

They made their way to a short flight of steps. It was immediately clear there was something wrong with the lights in Hall III, only darkness visible beyond the entrance. One guard took a torch from his belt, and they advanced into the gallery.

Nothing seemed out of place in the torch beam. The second man shrugged, turning to try the light switches —

A pair of eyes seemed to float in the blackness before him.

Before he could make a sound, he was hit in the heart by two bullets from Zec’s MP5K, the suppressor muting the noise of the shots to nothing more than sharp tchacks. His partner whirled - and a gloved hand clamped over his mouth, Franco’s black-bladed combat knife stabbing deep into his throat.

Both bodies were hauled into the shadows. Zec pulled up his balaclava and took the dead guard’s walkie- talkie. ‘Something’s buzzing,’ he said in Italian, the radio’s low fidelity disguising his voice. ‘The camera might have shorted out. Can you check the system?’

‘I’ll run a diagnostic. Hold on.’

Zec dropped the walkie-talkie. The computer would spend the next thirty seconds checking the various cameras and alarms around the building, eventually coming to the conclusion that the camera in Hall III was malfunctioning - unsurprising, since he had shot it.

But while the computer was busy, the security systems would be down.

He keyed the throat-mike. ‘Two down. Go.’

Fernandez and Sklar were suspended on lines hanging from the roof on the southern side of a courtyard, waiting for Zec’s signal: the instant it came, Fernandez kicked open an upper-floor window and swung inside, unslinging his gun. The Ukrainian jumped down beside him.

He and his team had reconnoitred the Galleria multiple times over the past month, and he knew exactly where he had entered the building - the upper level of the main stairwell. Right now, another team was also entering on the ground floor.

This part of the mission was a hunt - and a race against time. Find the remaining guards . . . and kill them before they could raise the alarm.

Fernandez knew where two of them would be - the security control room. He and Sklar hurried down the staircase. The position of the remaining two guards was another wildcard, which was why he had chosen entry points that would let his team spread out as quickly as possible. Speed and surprise were everything - it only took one guard to push a panic button . . .

They reached the ground floor. Fifteen seconds before the cameras came back online. Sklar hared off into the main entrance hall. Fernandez, meanwhile, shoved through a door marked Privato and threaded his way along a narrow corridor.

Another door. Five seconds left. He raised his gun and kicked it open.

The guard seated in front of the security monitors looked round in surprise—

Tchack. Tchack. Tchack. The guard crashed off his chair, arms spasming in reflexive response to the three bullets that had just slammed into his skull, splattering blood across the blank monitor screens.

Shit! Where was the other man?

The diagnostic ended, and the monitors came back to life. He spotted one of his men in the Sale Bizantine, another in the Sale Fiorentine. Where were the guards?

There - in the Salone del Colosso. Sklar would be closest to them—

Both guards fell, thrashing in their noiseless death throes as a burst from Sklar’s silenced MP5K cut them down. Confirmation came through his earpiece: ‘Two down.’

Just one man left - but where?

The answer was almost comical in its obviousness. Fernandez rushed out of the control room and headed back up the passage to another door marked WC.