At the Outpost of Fate

CHAPTER 3 — A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

As bad as conditions on the ground were, they could not compare with the weather that lashed the upper reaches of the city — the top floors of Manhattan’s gigantic skyscrapers. Not only did the rain pummel the exposed observation decks, but the strength of the hurricane force winds was enough to cause the buildings to sway violently, as though the solid steel and concrete walls were as supple as rubber. On the 86th floor of the city’s tallest structure, the Empire State Building, night watchman Sammy Barnes felt a little like a sailor at sea. He stared through the streaked glass windows, not daring to venture out onto the exposed observatory even though his duties required him to do so.

"Let ‘em can me," he murmured, still damp from the soaking he’d got on the short walk from the bus to his workplace.

He didn’t really think that would happen. Even though the key-clock he carried would show that he had skipped a station on his route, the head watchman would no doubt take the circumstances into consideration. Nevertheless, he made a good faith effort to check the observation deck from the safety of the elevator lobby before returning to the stairwell to continue his patrol.

Although his innocent omission would later become the subject of intense scrutiny, it was very unlikely that, even if Barnes had braved the tempest to insert the numbered key in his clock or had made a more thorough search of the area, he would have noticed the figure hiding outside and just below the cage-like barrier that surrounded the outermost parapet of the observatory. The lithe shape dressed all in black had been there for hours, completely motionless, awaiting the perfect moment to emerge from concealment. With the departure of the unlucky Mr. Barnes, that time had finally arrived.

The black-clad shape smoothly reached up and gripped the bars with gloved fingers. Spider-like, the wraith ascended the barrier and then rolled over the inwardly curving spikes that had been put in place to discourage daredevils and suicide jumpers from getting too close to the edge. The intruder lingered there, verifying that the area was completely abandoned before approaching the doors to the elevator foyer. A probing hand tested the latch. Locked.

The dark figure knelt before the door and produced a small roll of black cloth, which opened to reveal a variety of metal tools. The intruder selected two hardened steel lock-picks and went to work. A few minutes later the bolt slid back permitting entry to the lobby and the burglar hastened inside.

Most visitors to the Empire State Building came with a single purpose in mind: to see the city from the Observatory. To facilitate, the builders had installed fifty-eight passenger elevators, each one capable of traveling twelve hundred feet per minute. Upon close of business, however, those lift cars were all returned to the main level lobby to await their operators' arrival in the morning. The only other means of moving about the interior of the immense edifice seemed to be the fire stairs, which the watchmen walked on their nightly route, but the burglar made no move toward the stairwell. Instead, using tools from the small roll, the black-clad figure forced open one of the elevator doors to expose the dark, oily smelling shaft beyond.

With an alacrity that could only be the result of years of practice and experience, the shadowy form stepped out into the void and appeared to grasp one of the metal cables from which the car was suspended. The handgrip was more than it seemed. A unique mechanical device attached by a length of rope to the burglar’s waist had been secured to the cable, locked in place by a spring-loaded cam. Dangling from this belaying device, the intruder commenced a slow but steady descent. The only sound in the well of darkness was a mechanical ticking and after exactly six hundred and seventy-two clicks, one for every inch traveled, both the noise and the downward journey ceased. In almost total darkness, the burglar stepped away from the cable and got a toehold on the narrow ledge that marked the location of the door. The portal opened just a sliver and a small dental mirror was extended a few inches into the hallway. Barnes wasn’t due to arrive on the floor for ten more minutes, but the burglar hadn’t survived and prospered in such a dangerous line of work for so long by taking such things for granted. Satisfied that there were no unexpected eyes watching, the intruder emerged from the elevator shaft and into the dimly lit corridor of the seventy-eighth floor.

The burglar clung to the walls, checking every corner with the mirror before gliding effortlessly down the halls. Again, the caution was perhaps unwarranted. The floor was largely vacant of tenants, a problem that in fact plagued the entire enterprise to the extent that locals had taken to calling it the "Empty State Building." The burglar navigated through the hallways to a particular unmarked door.

With a swiftness born of practice, the intruder took an oblong metal rod from a sewn-in pocket and, with a few deft motions, unfolded it into a short single-peg ladder. Balancing the telescoping device directly in front of the door, the burglar stepped up the rungs and peered at the lintel. Probing gloved fingers revealed a wire that ran from the frame, up the wall and disappeared into the plaster ceiling. Using a small knife with an insulated handle, the burglar stripped the insulation from the wires and then closed a circuit between the two with a short length of twisted copper. The entire process took less than a minute. The dark clad figure dropped back to the floor and picked the lock to gain entry to the office.

There were no lights burning in the room beyond, but the darkness was partially alleviated by illumination from the distinctive fan-shaped panels of the Chrysler Building, visible through the enormous picture window dominating the far end of the office. The décor of the enclosure was Spartan; an uncluttered desk stood at the center of the room along with a few nondescript chairs. The arrangement suggested that the space’s tenants had not yet moved in.

The burglar paid no attention to the furniture, but instead moved directly to the right. The wall like everything else in the room was featureless, painted a flat white but lacking any portraits or bookshelves to break up the austere monotony. The intruder however wasn’t fooled for a second. A single gloved fingertip touched a cleverly concealed button and a section of the wall abruptly swung away to reveal a hidden room on the other side.

It had taken a small fortune in bribes to learn the name of the construction contractor that had done the finish work in this particular office and almost as much again to secure a glimpse of the blueprints for the secret enclosure and the ingenious device that limited access to it. In the grand scheme of things, however, it was a small price to pay, for the value of the item protected by these elaborate security measures was almost beyond estimation.

The secret door was not the end of the matter by any means, but here at least, no effort was made to hide the snares and pitfalls guarding the burglar’s goal. The room looked exactly like what it was: a scientific laboratory dedicated to the study of a single item that was kept in plain view behind the thick glass of a display case.

The burglar’s eyes lit on the artifact, a simple rod of silvery metal perhaps three feet in length. Only a few steps now separated the intruder from a successful night’s work, but instead of hastening to seize the relic, the dark-clothed thief took a moment to study a schematic of the countermeasures. There were pressure plates under the floor, a series of invisible ultra-violet photocells crisscrossing the air around the case like a spider web and lastly an electronic combination lock on the glass box housing the object, which would trigger an immediate response if the wrong sequence of numbers was entered. Not only would a claxon alert building security, but a heavy steel gate would seal the room, trapping anyone foolish enough to attempt such a heist.

A smile dawned behind the dark swatch of fabric that concealed the burglar’s face. Sometimes the challenge of outwitting the designers of such an elaborate security system was more rewarding than the sale of the goods.

The ultra-violet light beams were the most expensive and technologically advanced piece of protection in place and ironically, the easiest to defeat provided one knew of their presence. The burglar produced a small handheld flashlight equipped with a special bulb that emitted only a soft purple glow. Although providing no visible illumination, the lamp nonetheless cast its beam upon the photoelectric cells implanted in the floor, substituting its rays for those issuing from the emitters in the ceiling.

The pressure plates were an altogether different matter, but once again, prior knowledge of the obstacle had forearmed the burglar with the correct tool for the job. A single hardened steel dart propelled by a small gunpowder charge pierced through the ceiling plaster and deployed spring-loaded barbs to lock it in place directly above the glass case. The intruder fired a second dart, linked to the first by a thin but sturdy metal cable, directly overhead and then utilized the telescoping stepladder once more in order to hook into a pulley rig descending from the line. With seeming effortlessness, the thief began traversing the room high above the sensitive floor tiles.

The sealed display case remained the greatest impediment to success. Without advanced warning, the thief might have foolishly attempted to dial the combination by listening to the click of the tumblers within the lock or simply smashed the glass and snatched the prize, but to do so would have spelled certain failure, for the relatively fragile-looking transparent receptacle was in fact a vacuum chamber. If the internal barometer detected even the slightest rise in air pressure, it would trigger the fail-safe and seal the room. The burglar had never faced a device quite so advanced; that made the challenge all the more interesting and the eventual triumph that much sweeter.

The case itself did not rest on a pressure sensitive plate, allowing the intruder to unhook from the pulley and crouch on the glass surface. A device like this could not be defeated with on-the-spot ingenuity alone; special equipment was required, equipment that had not been thoroughly tested. This was the burglar's defining moment, the ultimate test of skill and luck.

The tool that the thief now brought out looked like something a surgeon might use in the operating room: a large rubber bladder with a circular wax seal at the open end. The burglar rolled the bladder back over one gloved hand, as though turning a sock inside out and then grasped a short metal tool through the rubber. With the seal placed firmly against the case, the thief began repeatedly scoring the glass with the diamond stylus that tipped the strange tool. After a few minutes of weakening a small area of the case covered by the seal, the intruder reversed the tool and pressed it against the scratched area. A spring-loaded bolt slammed into the damaged surface and smashed out a perfectly circular hole.

The thief sucked in a breath and held it, waiting for the clangor of alarms and the thunderous crash of the steel security gate, but nothing happened. The seal held as the vacuum inside the display sucked in the miniscule amount of atmosphere trapped in the rubber bladder.

The burglar exhaled and went to work. A black-gloved hand reached down through the inverted rubber sheath to grasp the object within. The metal staff was drawn up through the hole, carefully so as not to cut the airtight barrier on the sharp glass edge. With the relic finally removed from the vacuum chamber, all that remained was to get it out of the bladder. This feat was accomplished with yet another tool, this time a surgical clamp that pinched the sheath off like the end of a balloon. There was another tense moment as the thief sliced through the rubber with a small scalpel, but once more the elaborate preparations had paid off; the alarms remained silent.

The thief held the relic up for inspection. It was surprisingly lightweight but otherwise featureless; a rod of metal three feet long and an inch in diameter. The burglar did not speculate concerning its intrinsic value; that was for the man that had commissioned the theft to worry about. The thief's only concern was finishing the job.

A quick Tyrolean-traverse on the hanging wire brought the intruder back to the starting point, outside the perimeter of the pressure plates. The opening back to the bleak office space loomed ahead and beyond that, escape. It was all but accomplished; nothing could stop…

"I'm afraid I can't let you leave with that."

The intruder froze as a thin silhouette materialized in the doorway. The newcomer's posture was surprisingly relaxed, as was his voice; he might simply have been commenting on the weather for all the intensity in his tone. In the backlighting from the Chrysler Building, it was plainly evident that the man held no weapon, but the thief was nevertheless warier than if this man were a security guard gripping a service revolver with trembling hands.

"You can't stop me," the thief answered in a low voice.

"I'll have to try and that could lead to pain for both of us." The man advanced into the room, his white hair looking like blue ice in the ambient glow of outside light. "Put the Staff down and you can walk right out of here."

The thief drew out the telescoping stepladder, now merely a sturdy aluminum rod with the perfect heft to serve as a truncheon and struck a fighting stance. The silver-haired man continued to approach undaunted, but underlying the almost lackadaisical stride was a subtle shift of his center mass — he was gathering strength in his abdomen, coiling himself like a serpent about to strike.

The thief's eyes narrowed defensively; the man's posture was that of one trained in the Oriental fighting arts. This accurate assessment brought with it a faint glimmer of recognition. Their paths had crossed before, but the memory was strangely clouded.

The thief slashed diagonally with the rod directly across the path of the newcomer, who deftly retreated a step, but the first strike was merely a setup for the follow through. The thief darted forward, redirecting the club's energy into a sweeping curve that circled into a vicious two-handed overhead strike. The man seemed frozen in place, awaiting the attack like a sacrifice on the altar, but in the instant that the blow fell, he vanished. The bludgeon sliced the air and slammed into the floor with such force that it was jolted from the hands of its stunned wielder. A storm of rapid punches buffeted the dark-clad intruder, culminating in a sweeping claw-hand attack. The silver-haired man's fingers curled around the thief's mask, ripping it loose to expose the latter's true face.

There was an explosion of golden hair and in the midst of it, the face of an angel; the thief was a woman. The man gripped her shoulders and spun her around so that they were face to face. "You!" he rasped, genuinely surprised for the first time. "I might have known."

The woman shared no such sense of amazement. She used her foe's distraction to good advantage; she rammed a knee into the man's groin and twisted free of his hold. The man doubled over in pain, but recovered his composure with unnatural swiftness to dash after the fleeing villain.

She fled the laboratory and got as far as the exit from the office before he caught her. He snared her bulky backpack with one outstretched hand, deflecting her off her escape route by only a few degrees, enough to send her crashing into the wall a few steps to the left of the door. She rebounded and tried to correct her course, but her opponent was now steadfastly planted in front of the closed door.

"There's no way out," he declared. "My offer stands."

The blonde woman retreated a step, testing to see if the man would attack again — he did not — then glanced about to see if his statement was true. Indeed, the lone door appeared to be the only means of egress. The woman, however, had the means to alter that situation.

The man sucked in a breath as his eyes lit on the object she held up. It had been more than twenty years since he'd seen one — a wooden stick with what looked like a tin food can attached to one end. They had called them "Potato Mashers" back in the War, not only because of the physical resemblance to its namesake, but also because anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the blast radius would get squashed like an Idaho spud. The woman gripped the igniter cord in one hand and brandished the German made Model 24 Stielhandgranate—hand grenade — threateningly.

"Use that in here and you'll kill us both," the man warned. "There's no profit in that."

The woman's only answer was a smile that, in a different setting, would have been weapon enough against any man and then she pulled the cord. Although there was no outward change, the friction igniter inside the steel can sparked the fuse alight, commencing an inexorable countdown. Mirth trilled from the woman's shapely lips as if she believed the grenade to be nothing more than a New Year's Eve party favor.

"You have about three seconds to get out of my way," she said, still laughing.

A nerve twitched in the silver-haired man's cheek, but he did not relent. "No."

The woman's expression did not change; she had not anticipated any other answer. Abruptly, she spun on her heel and hurled the explosive device toward the window, diving for cover behind the desk in the same motion. Her foe moved almost as quickly, turning and throwing open the door, but he was too slow by a fraction of a second. The grenade detonated almost exactly at the same moment it made contact with the plate glass window.

Had the miniature bomb been equipped with a fragmentation sleeve, there would have been no surviving the blast at such close proximity; shrapnel would have sliced both of them to ribbons. Even without that augmentation, the high-explosive charge turned the air itself into a weapon, pushing outward in a sphere of force that crushed everything it touched. The window shattered and erupted out into the night, where thousands of glass splinters no larger than snowflakes were snatched away by the hurricane. The rush of wind mitigated some of the concussive force of the grenade, but the difference was marginal; the shockwave slammed into the wooden desk, blasting it back into the woman and throwing both in the opposite direction. The man in the doorway, though further away from the center of the explosion, had nothing to serve as a buffer; the force of the detonation slapped him across the threshold like an automobile windshield impacting a flying insect. He flew across the hallway and crashed into the far wall.

The explosive climax was followed by a brief lull as both combatants struggled to regain their feet. Perhaps because she was following a carefully devised script, the woman recovered more quickly, emerging from the broken remnants of the desk to stride purposefully toward the gaping wound in the side of the building. She slowed her pace as she neared the precipice. A few shards of glass remained fixed in place, giving the square window the look of a monstrous mouthful of teeth. Completing the illusion, the constant rush of air across the opening was like a dragon drawing breath; the wind sucked at the woman's straw-colored hair, whipping it into a frenzy around her face as she approached. She pulled her locks together in a loose ponytail held together only by a thumb and forefinger and gazed back at her foe. The man locked his gaze with hers, perhaps sensing in that moment what she was about to do and he broke into a mad dash to stop her.

She mouthed something—"au revoir" perhaps — but her whisper was caught away in the tempest as she leaped out into the night. And because he knew the import of what had been taken… because he knew what was at stake… Father Nathan Hobbs did not hesitate to follow.