Chapter 5

The security command center was more crowded than usual. All of the guards that had been stationed in the second floor galleries were in the room, and Erwin was busy reassigning them new stations. It meant the first floor was going to be a veritable fortress thanks to the amount of eyes watching over everything and everyone…

He had already told one of the guards to take up position in front of the rotunda staircase, to ensure no one went up there. As for the others, he decided to get a little creative. He'd assign one guard to the gift shop, when normally the shop wasn't protected. He'd also assign two guards to walk the perimeter of the museum—again, not normally done. He'd give that plum duty to Hank and Phil—two veterans. He knew that to thank him, they'd each buy him beers at the pub they always went to across from the park.

He was just about to assign Maven Booker to Gallery 12 South when the corner of his eye registered the video cameras coming back on. This most recent outage had been much longer than the others, but…computers. He truly was downright scared about the first time he needed to take Peggy's Mazda into the shop. A brand-new microchip was going to cost him a fucking fortune!

No sooner had the monitors come back to life when all hell broke loose…

"Shit!" Tyrone shouted. "Robbery in progress in Sixteen!"

Erwin stood up so fast he felt the dizziness his doctor had warned him about should he ever stand up too fast. Tyrone had Sixteen up on the main monitor instantly.

Erwin's jaw went slack.

Oh my fucking god!

He felt his heart drop to the pit of his stomach.

It was the Overlord guys!

Suddenly…

"Look at Camera Twenty-two!" one of the other guards called out.

Erwin looked at the bank of 25" monitors. A gold-colored frame on the second-story rotunda landing was on the floor, its painting gone! The fucking bastards who were now in Sixteen ripping paintings off the wall had obviously struck there first.

"Fuck!" he shouted, his hand lifting the plastic protective cover over the Major Incident alarm button. He slammed his palm down on it.

Nothing happened.

He pressed it again.

Still nothing…

By now, alarms throughout the entire building should be blaring. Pressing the button should also alert the Central Division police station—the nearest one to Balboa Park—that the museum was being robbed, but he had to assume that if the alarms weren't working, that feature wasn't working either.

Shit!

"Tyrone, call Central Division!" he ordered. "Tell them we've got a robbery in progress. Five male suspects! Second floor! We do notknow if they're armed! Be sure to repeat that!" He turned to the guards in the command center. "Everybody stay where they are!" he barked.

The posted police response time was three to six minutes. It could be less if there was a patrol car or two nearby.

Keeping his eye on the main monitor, he toggled the radio controls at his console. "All hands, listen very carefully," he said into the microphone, "and stay where you are until I say otherwise. There is a robbery in progress in Gallery Sixteen. I repeat, robbery in progress in Sixteen. The alarms are not working, and we are on the phone with the police. This is what I want you all to do…"

He then spent the next two minutes instructing specific guards who were already in galleries on the first floor to take up positions which would block all possible egress points from the museum downstairs.

He then turned to the group of guards in the room with him. He started pointing at the veterans, including Maven Booker.

"You, you, you, and you, get up there!" he ordered. "Quietly! But only go so far as the top of the stairs closest to Sixteen. Stay out of sight and don't make a fucking sound!"

The guards he had just spoken to immediately left.

Under the circumstances, he didn't want his guards engaging the robbers…

His team was only armed with stun guns, but if the bastards in Sixteen were brazen enough to pull off a daytime robbery of the largest art museum in this region, then they were probably packing things much more deadly. And they had the advantage…

Each of the larger galleries in this place was a veritable maze of walls, offering desperate and (most likely) armed men the perfect setting for holding off an assault.

"The rest of you help clear the museum!" he ordered. "Go!"

***

On the second floor, in Gallery 16, Cyrus and the boys had gotten the Rembrandt, one of two Zurbaráns, and the Rubens off the walls, removed from their frames, and rolled up into their duffels. Luis was working on the Murillo, and Vinny was on the de Ribera. They were working off a list Boss Lady had provided.

"Let's go, let's go!" he whispered urgently. He had kept checking his watch. Boss Lady had told them that they would have—at most—ten minutes before someone came back upstairs to check on things, and up to now she had been right about everything. However…he and the boys had moved quickly. So far, they had only taken four minutes since entering the gallery from the maintenance access door near the emergency exit. Nonetheless, he wanted to be out of here in no more than another two…

***

Priscilla sensed the change in the guards as she continued moseying through Gallery 5 and then eventually back into Gallery 4. She pretended to focus her attention on the art, but with sidelong glances, she could see that any of the guards in her line of sight were now standing stock still, their eyes widened, with one or two of them swallowing rapidly.

She knew they were getting instructions from the command center, fed to them via the earpieces they all wore. No doubt the command center had seen the activity upstairs. Her guess was that the reason why all of the guards weren't rushing upstairs like the Goths sacking Rome was because they had no idea if Cyrus and his gang were armed, which meant they were wisely waiting for the police to arrive.

Suddenly…

"Everybody, may I have your attention, please!" one of the guards in Gallery 4 shouted. He was a young Black man with a booming voice, and so all of the visitors stopped what they were doing to turn their attention towards him.

"We need to evacuate the museum immediately!" the young man continued. "I need everyone to quickly but calmly make their way to the emergency exit which is indicated by the sign in that direction, or you could use the emergency exit which is closest to me. If you have coats or bags in the coat check room, you may come back later to claim them! Once outside, please move as far from the museum as you can! Okay, everybody, let's move! Right now, everybody! Right now!"

There were exclamations of surprise, of course, and some people tried asking the guard what was wrong, but he wasn't having any of it, and just kept instructing the visitors to evacuate the building. No one made any serious protestations, however, and the masses began heading towards the exit.

Priscilla decided she liked the way the guard carried himself and was able to exude command. She determined his talents were wasted in the museum, and that she would try to add him to her bodyguard corps.

She purposely placed herself in the middle of a knot of people who were making their way to the emergency exit closest to where she was, and in moments she was outside.

They were all now at the rear of the museum, just off Old Globe Way—a meandering limited-access roadway that ran behind many of the buildings in this part of Balboa Park.

Once out in the open, people started hurrying away from the museum, discussing what was happening. Priscilla even heard the word bomb used more than once, which made her shake her head. No one had said the word bomb, so why were such idiots mentioning it?

For her part, Priscilla moved about twenty yards from the museum and then stopped, waiting for the phone call she knew would be coming.

Sure enough…

"I'm fine," she stated, answering the call from Hans.

No doubt her bodyguards had noticed all of the people streaming out of the museum.

"There's something wrong in the museum and they've evacuated us all," she continued. "I'm in the back. Find your way over here to meet me. Something tells me this place is going to be swarming with the police soon, so call Gordon…tell him to bring the car behind the museum."

After Hans acknowledged that he understood her, Priscilla hung up and waited. Many other people who had been evacuated from the museum streamed past her.

Thirty seconds later, she heard the first sirens…

***

Cyrus heard the sirens too—at least, he thought he did. The museum was a pretty solid structure built of cast stone that was made of concrete. It did a good job of insulating people from the outside world. What's more, there were no windows in this gallery. He didn't think anything of the sirens. San Diego was a big city. Sirens were part of the soundscape of big cities.

But soon, there was another sound which did catch his attention. At first, he wasn't sure what it was, and he and Oleg shared a confused look. Whatever was causing it seemed to be coming from downstairs.

He heard a hiss. It came from Jeff, who was helping Vinny with the Murillo painting, The Penitent Magdalene.

Cyrus hurried over to them.

Jeff pointed to his ear, and then to the entryway leading out onto the rotunda landing.

Cyrus could hear the strange noise better at this location. It sounded like…

Frightened people…hurried footsteps…shouted orders…someone urging others along with what sounded like, "Hurry, please…hurry!"

He didn't like it. Boss Lady hadn't mentioned anything about the downstairs being evacuated as well, but that was exactly what this sounded like. He wished he could step out onto the rotunda landing to take a peek downstairs and try to figure out what was going on, but if he did that there was too great a risk of being seen by someone down there.

Shit!

Just then, his instincts kicked in. He had been in the criminal game for a long time, and the thing about criminals was that they developed a sixth sense about when shit was about to go down.

He turned to Jeff.

"We walk!" he whispered urgently.

"We're not done!" Jeff told him, also whispering.

"We're walking!" Cyrus repeated. "Leave this one!"

He got the attention of the rest of the boys and frantically pointed his finger towards their exit.

"Out, out, out!" he couldn't help whispering again, although the rule had been no talking in the gallery while they were doing the job.

He was starting to get a really sick feeling now. He picked up two of the black duffels containing their stolen artworks. He saw that Oleg was rolling up a canvas quickly…a moment later he shoved it into the duffel bag at his feet. They had managed to get four of the five paintings Boss Lady had requested. They hadn't completed the job, but he intended on demanding the full million bucks payment nonetheless.

However, a nagging voice was now telling him that if he thought he was going to see a dime of that money—or that he was even going to see the outside of a jail cell anytime soon—he was kidding himself. With each passing second, he was certain this was a double-cross. Maybe he was wrong, he tried to tell himself. Maybe what was happening downstairs was part of Boss Lady's plan. Maybe they were meant to use the obvious confusion to make their escape more easily, so maybe this was Boss Lady's way of helping them.

He wished now they had guns, but Boss Lady had reminded them what a bad idea that would be. And as much as he had wanted to at the time, he hadn't been able to argue with her logic…

Get caught robbing an art museum…that was one thing.

Get caught robbing an art museum with a gun…that was something completely different.

Thatwas armed robbery.

Even if the gun was never pulled—even if it was never even loaded—it was at least another ten years.

He and the boys made their way back to their entry point into this gallery: the maintenance access door next to the emergency exit.

Now they had a choice: go back down the way they came, which meant using the ladder to return all the way to the basement. Or use the emergency exit door and the stairs to get down to the first floor and then outside.

He chose the latter. He wanted to get out of this fucking place as quickly as he could.

He pushed open the door and went through it first.

And then cried out in surprise…

Cops armed with rifles and wearing riot gear were charging up the stairs.

"Back, back, back!" he shouted to the boys.

They all started running back into the gallery only to find that another phalanx of police officers had already rushed into the space from the main entryway, their rifles and handguns held forward.

"Freeze!" multiple uniformed voices yelled at Cyrus and the boys, who came to a screeching stop. "Show us your hands! Show us your hands!"

After that, it was a cacophony of other orders…

"Don't move, assholes!"

"Hands! Hands!"

"Drop the bags! Drop the bags!"

"Don't you fucking move!"

Finally, one voice took command.

"On your knees, assholes!" he shouted. "On your knees!"

Cyrus and the boys lowered themselves to their knees. For his part, Cyrus felt blank at first, but then started to feel a particularly painful sting in his chest, caused, he knew, by how…offended he was at this arrest.

Offended as a criminal.

He'd been arrested more times than he wanted to remember, but as a criminal, he could at least point to the fact that his arrests had always been due to something he had fucked up doing himself…

His plan had been flawed.

He had talked to someone beforehand who then told the police—usually a woman.

His getaway hadn't been thought out properly.

A fence had ratted him out.

Things like that.

But this arrest was different, and its sting hurt that much more.

This time, he was being arrested because he had been set up. He was certain of that now.

Boss Lady had set him and the boys up.

She had dangled the promise of a million bucks in front of them, and set them up.

He didn't know why, and as bad as that was, it wasn't the worst part.

The worst part was that he didn't know who she was…

***

Gordon was never far with the Bentley. Even when Priscilla chose to walk somewhere in central San Diego—Balboa Park, a nearby restaurant, or to an art gallery or shop—he was expected to drive the car to a location nearby and wait with it, just in case it was needed quickly in order to get her somewhere for something important.

Thus, the blue Bentley limousine with darkly-tinted rear windows met Priscilla on Old Globe Way at about the same time Hans and Stefan had located her behind the museum…just as she heard police cars pulling up on the opposite side of the museum, in the Plaza de Panama.

"Wait out here, please, gentlemen," she said to her bodyguards. "I need to make an urgent personal call before we start driving."

"Yes, ma'am," Stefan replied, opening the back door of the car for her.

There was nothing unusual in that request, Priscilla knew. She often used the limo as an ersatz office, having her bodyguards or any of her assistants wait outside of the car while she discussed certain affairs over the phone.

Today, however, she needed the privacy of the back seat for another reason…

She had known that getting into the car with The Young Shepherdess strapped to her leg would be tricky, and that once she was seated, it would be obvious to anyone with her that something was under her trousers. Which meant she needed alone time.

With Stefan holding the door open for her she bent at the waist, and entered the vehicle with her left leg first, keeping it as straight as possible while also trying to execute the maneuver as naturally as she could. She could feel how one end of the rolled-up canvas was pressing up against the fabric of the palazzo pants.

After Stefan shut the door behind her, she said, "Wait here two minutes, Gordon." She then raised the privacy screen between herself and him.

Her tennis bag was waiting for her here in the back, just as she had ordered it to be.

She lifted her bottom off the seat and once more lowered her trousers. She quickly removed the canvas from her leg, unzipped the tennis bag, and placed The Young Shepherdess in it, among all of the tennis gear, and zipped the bag closed.

She then pulled up her pants.

At that point, she collapsed back against the seat, with her legs spread wide, her arms at her sides, and her eyes closed. She let out a deep breath.

She suddenly felt so much lighter now.

And, quite frankly, turned on.

And then…she started laughing. She began laughing so hard, in fact, that tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

She had actually done it! Running through the entire caper in her mind—from the moment she had stepped into the museum, up until now—made her laugh even harder.

She indulged in the merriment for only a few more moments. Time was still of the essence here…

After looking around the back of the car and making sure that everything was in order, she rolled down the window.

"Okay, I'm done, let's go," she told the bodyguards.

The men got into the car—one from each side, and sat down on the bench seat facing her. Priscilla then told Gordon to drive her back to the office.

As the car started moving, she took out her iPhone and called Judy Pangborn.

"Judy, honey, it's me," she said. "Look, I am so sorry! I'll need to miss our tennis date this afternoon. Something quite important has come up. Will tomorrow work?"