The Pursuit Read Free Page B

model. And clearly she was lacking the hair and makeup gene.
    —
    The ten-story Executive Merchants Building was a major repository of the world’s wealth. The building looked like just another 1970s-era concrete and glass box, a place somebody might go to have a cavity filled, a car insured, or a tax return completed. The complete absence of style was the style. The only ornamentation on the building was its array of big, boxy surveillance cameras.
    The main entrance was on the southern side of Schupstraat, one of three narrow streets that comprised the “special security zone” in the heart of Antwerp’s diamond district and Jewish quarter. The three streets, Rijfstraat, Hoveniersstraat, and Schupstraat, formed a rigid “S” that began on the northeast corner of the district and ended on the southwest edge. Both ends of the “S” were closed to free-flowing vehicle traffic by retractable steel columns in the pavement that were lowered after vehicles passed police inspection at adjacent kiosks and then raised again after the inspected cars entered the secure zone.
    On a Thursday at 11  A.M. , three days after Nick’s abduction, Litija walked into the Executive Merchants Building. She sashayed through the marble-paneled lobby and blew a playful kiss to the elderly guard who sat in the control center behind a thick window of bulletproof glass. He waved back at her with a friendly smile as she approached the turnstile that controlled access to the first-floor offices, the elevators, and the stairwell. Litija swiped her tenant ID card over a scanner and walked through the turnstile as it unlocked.
    She bypassed the elevator and took the stairwell. She paused on the landing just inside the door for a moment, listening for voices and looking around to make sure she was alone. There were no cameras in the stairwell. No footfalls of anyone else climbing the stairs.
    She hurried down to the next landing, crouched beside an air vent near the floor, and took a screwdriver out of her purse. She quickly unscrewed the grill, reached into her purse again, and pulled out a radio-controlled red Lamborghini with a tiny camera taped on top of it.
    Litija placed the car into the vent, and it sped off.

N ick and Dragan sat in the back of a panel van parked directly across the intersection from the police kiosk on the southwest corner of Schupstraat and Lange Herentalsestraat, which also happened to be the northwest edge of the Executive Merchants Building. Borko and Vinko were in the front seats, trying very hard to look anywhere but at the uniformed, heavily armed officers they were facing.
    “Do we really have to park here?” Borko asked.
    “Any further away and we wouldn’t have a signal,” Nick said. He used a joystick to steer the Lamborghini while watching the camera’s view on an iPad that sat on his lap.
    “But we’re parked right outside the building we’re going to rob,” Vinko said. “The police can see us and our van.”
    “Relax,” Nick said. “A thief planning to rob that building would have to be insane to sit here to do his recon.”
    Dragan gave him a hard look. “You’re reading my mind.”
    “That’s what makes this spot the safest place to be,” Nick said. “Besides, the police aren’t on the lookout for thieves plotting to break in. Everybody knows it’s impossible. The police are for show.” Nick steered the Lamborghini past several air vents and around a tight corner. “How long have the guards worked in the building?”
    “One guy just got his thirty-year pin. The others have been here nearly as long.”
    “That proves my point,” Nick said. “They’ve stayed so long because it’s a very cushy job. Nobody has tried to break in to the vault since the day the building opened, and they know that nobody ever will.”
    Nick parked the Lamborghini at the end of an air vent that gave their camera a view down into the vault foyer. They could see the open vault door and the closed gate.