Page 35 of Seven
Habit.
People think the hardest part of a job like this is the breaking in. Wrong. The hardest part is acting like you belong until it's true.
I wore a faded blue jumpsuit of a pest control worker. The ID clipped to my collar was a copy, scanned and photoshopped by Viper himself. The patch on my sleeve was real, but it had belonged to a guy who wouldn't be missed for at least two weeks since he was on vacation. The QR code on theID belonged to him too. If anyone tried to track me down they would end up finding Jose Rivas fromTotal Hygiene Solutionsinstead. ButTotal Hygiene Solutionsdid service this building, so that gave me two passes.
Two passes to prepare and execute my plan in a very short window of time.
It took exactly nine minutes to reach the freight elevator. I waited until a cleaning crew passed, then hit the button with my gloved thumb. The doors parted with a sigh.
The vault was in sub-basement C, two floors below where the official plans said the building ended.
I waved my ID at the security guard stationed downstairs and he let me pass. I pretended to spray the common areas until I disappeared from his line of sight to slip into the narrow hallway behind a nondescript door. There I went through a secure entry with a scanner for the access code. Viper had taken care of that for me too.
The vault door was at the end, unmarked except for the brushed-steel handle. The camera above the door was real, but the feed looped thanks to Viper.
I went to work.
Most keypads are easy. This one was not. It used a rolling code, the numbers in a different order every time you touched it. But Viper had a solution for that as well. I peeled a wafer-thin membrane from my glove and pressed it flush against the panel. The embedded micro-filaments mapped the heat residue left by the last six entries. The pattern resolved itself.
The keypad lit green. I breathed once.
Next, the biometric. I'd already lifted the print from a wine glass in the target's office two days ago when I posed as the fire inspector. The gel-based replication fooled anything not military-grade. I pressed it to the plate and held it for three seconds. The vault beeped. The lock disengaged.
I slipped inside and closed the door behind me.
The temperature dropped immediately. There were two cameras, both mounted high, and both tracking. I had a jammer with me to disrupt the feed since Viper hadn't been able to access anything inside the vault.
The Picasso was in a locked glass case in the center of the room. It was smaller than I expected—eighteen by twenty-four, not counting the frame. The case was alarmed. I rolled the second jammer from my breast pocket and flicked it on. The indicator glowed blue.
I crouched, examining the base of the case. The hex bolt at the back was loose, like someone had serviced it in a hurry. I gripped it with the ratchet, three turns, and slid the glass top off with one hand.
There it was. The real thing.
I could have taken it with me now. But the rest of the security would be finishing up their lunch soon. And then there was the hiccup with the independent appraisal the evening of the gala. The only optimal time this piece could be moved was the night of the event.
I took a deep breath and got to work.
First I shot every angle with a camera. Whole painting, quarter sections, then the frame, the backing, the security tag. I set the camera on the ground, lifted the piece an inch, and photographed the shadow it cast, the way the oil caught the light.
Then I did a digital scan with a scanner.
Next I spread clear acrylic polymer gel over the entire canvas, waited for it to dry, peeled it off, and applied it to the similar size empty canvas.
I returned all my tools into my backpack sprayer dummy, including the impression of the original.
Once done, I just stood there, looking at the image inside the case. I wanted to test a theory that had been swirling inside my head ever since that ridiculous call from the client. I knew art was supposed to move you, to make you feel things. I'd been considering a possibility I was becoming weak, but I felt absolutely nothing as I studied the brushstrokes and colors.
So no, it wasn't me. It was her.
Shoving the thought aside, I left like I'd never been here.
In the parking lot, I slid into the back seat of the car I'd drive to the venue and dialed the Bureau's forger on the encrypted line.
The voice on the other end was a woman, voice scratchy and amused. "Thought you'd call sooner. What do you need, Operative Seven?"
"I have a rush job," I said. "Same delivery protocol as before."
"You have the files and the parameters?"
