The Sacred Vault Read Free

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 tchack s. 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