Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us Page 7

‘Interesting,’ Con reported after a high-speed flurry of français. ‘The tomb of Ophiuchus was found to be full of anachronistic stuff.’

  ‘What, spiders, you mean?’ Tye ventured.

  Jonah shook his head. ‘Not arachno, anachro. They found objects there from the wrong period of history.’

  ‘I was just kidding,’ Tye snapped at him. Motti looked away, saying nothing.

  The professor was speaking again. ‘They’ve recovered items from many different cultures and centuries,’ Con translated, ‘placed there long after the tomb was first sealed. The experts are baffled – this would suggest tomb raiders have got inside the tomb, and yet nothing valuable has been removed. This other stuff has been added to what was already there – treasures dating right up to the fifteenth century.’ She paused again. ‘The smaller objects have been cleared out and placed in a museum lockup until they can be examined thoroughly.’

  ‘Better than some goddamn crypt,’ grumbled Motti.

  Con paused while the professor went on, her face slowly clouding. ‘Oh, but one thing was missing. A corpse. They can find no trace there was ever a body here.’

  ‘Then Demnos was right,’ Tye realised.

  ‘A tomb with no body, and stuff dumped here regularly for thousands of years?’ Jonah nodded thoughtfully. ‘Sounds like the storehouse theory is bang on.’

  ‘Con, ask him for a list of the stuff,’ said Motti.

  Con did so, but the professor went tight-lipped and shook his head. He tapped his watch, nodded cordially at the others, made to duck back inside his office. But Con took him by the arm, smiled, started to stare deep into his eyes …

  Just then Patch appeared in the doorway, relief all over his face. He pushed past the professor, who was jolted back into puzzled awareness. Con was about to try again but the professor said a polite but firm goodbye and closed the door on them both a moment later.

  ‘Patch, you idiot.’ Con folded her arms crossly, which drew his eye like lightning to the deepening line of her cleavage. ‘I was going to get the list of the contents of that tomb!’

  ‘No point,’ said Patch. He reached into his baggy orange shorts, tugged out a folded, slightly soggy wad of paper and offered it to her. ‘I already got it.’

  Con surveyed it dubiously.

  ‘It’s just water what’s made the ink run,’ said Patch, blushing red. ‘It is, honest!’

  ‘Yeah, Con,’ sniggered Motti, ‘don’t take the piss.’

  ‘You think it’s so funny, you look it over,’ said Con, turning her back on both of them. ‘I am not touching anything that has been down Patch’s trousers!’

  ‘And another dream dies,’ sighed Patch, passing the papers to Motti.

  They all piled back into the car, and Tye roared away. By the time the professor realised his precious list was missing, they were already on the home straits to the city.

  Cairo was a maze of streets and lanes and different quarters. Tye steered them through half-finished suburbs, old neighbourhoods where the houses crowded close together as if for comfort, sprawling sweeps of brown, boxy blocks. There was a sense of decay all around, as if the city itself was worn ragged by the endless bustle and bother of its people. Even the slicker downtown offices showed signs of neglect, the proud steel letters of their logos pitted and discoloured by the fine blown sand and polluted air. Jonah’s throat was burning after only twenty minutes, and Tye had wisely raised the roof on the convertible.

  But that and even the pumping stereo couldn’t hope to shut out the incredible noise as they stop-started through the dense five-lane traffic. Jonah found it terrifying – cars swung out without warning, drove directly at you. Horns honked and headlights flashed. Sometimes Tye would swerve aside, sometimes she’d stand her ground, like there was some logic to this mental metal ballet only those behind the wheel could understand. Bikes, pedestrians, donkey carts – they all added to the full-on chaos. A traffic cop stood in the middle of the street with a white hat and whistle, apparently ignorant of the madness all around him, contentedly chewing on a tangerine.

  Somehow they made it unscathed to a hotel, a decent enough building but with bags of overripe rubbish piled up against the scuffed walls. Motti asked for two twin rooms for the five of them.

  ‘What gives?’ said Jonah. ‘Coldhardt’s expense account not stretch to separate beds?’

  ‘Protection,’ Motti told him, heading for the lift. ‘This ain’t no holiday, geek. We got to expect trouble at any time. And there’s safety in numbers.’

  ‘As well as a queue for the bathroom.’ Patch smiled.

  The rooms were fine, up on the tenth floor. Con and Tye came through to the guys’ place, and they all bundled on the bed to go over the list Patch had pinched.

  ‘It is a pity, yes?’ said Con, flicking through. ‘No parchment marked “Secret of Immortality” here.’

  ‘Maybe the prof nicked it for himself,’ Patch suggested.

  She shook her head. ‘He’s the sort who’d hand it in for the good of mankind. The honest type.’

  Tye prodded her arm, smiling. ‘You wouldn’t know honest if it bit your ass.’

  Motti unpacked a laptop with Bluetooth from his rucksack and signalled to Jonah. ‘We’ll read out everything on the list. Type in the key words. Then we can check online, see if anything stands out.’

  Patch snorted. ‘Who died and made you king, Motti?’

  ‘I’m oldest,’ he argued.

  ‘With the biggest mouth,’ said Tye.

  Jonah held up his hands. ‘I’ll do it, it’s fine.’ At least he could contribute something round here.

  The list was a long one, but Jonah duly searched each item. Royal robes, wishing cup perfume vases, necklaces, pendants, caskets, figurines, sandals, fruit baskets … Nothing that hadn’t been found in a dozen other Egyptian tombs. Pinky-grey fingers of cloud were soon dusking the blue sky as the sun slowly set.

  Then, finally, something odd was thrown up.

  ‘Lekythos, age uncertain … Sealed,’ Patch read carefully. ‘Red figure style. Engraved characters, obscure. What’s a lekythos?’

  ‘Sounds Greek,’ said Con.

  For a minute or so, the only sound in the room was Jonah’s fingers clicking on the keys as he checked it out.

  ‘Lekythos,’ he read, as he reached a page on Greek antiquities. ‘Special type of oil jar …often used at funerals and for making offerings to the dead.’

  Tye frowned. ‘But if there never was a body in that tomb, what was it doing there?’

  ‘Looking pretty?’ Jonah turned round the laptop so they could see the accompanying image. A lekythos looked a little like an earthenware trumpet. Cylindrical in form, it had a single vertical handle attached to its slender neck, with a slightly wider mouth at the top.

  ‘Imhotep’s one is sealed,’ Con reminded them. ‘Why seal up some oil?’

  ‘Could be something stuffed inside,’ Patch offered. ‘An old scroll, maybe?’

  ‘Take a good look at that thing,’ said Motti. ‘We’ve got to steal something looking like that tonight.’

  ‘How do we find this lock-up?’ asked Jonah.

  ‘Wait!’ said Con, putting both hands to her head and frowning. ‘I’m hearing the thoughts of the professor in my mind …I see a museum close to Sharia Ramses … Not far from this hotel …’

  Jonah stared in amazement. ‘You can really do that?’ Then he caught the smirks creeping over Patch and Motti’s faces. Finally Con could keep up the act no longer and burst into bright peals of laughter.

  ‘Coldhardt already tracked down the address of this lock-up,’ said Tye, nudging Con in the ribs. ‘That’s why we chose this hotel. It’s in the area.’

  Jonah felt himself reddening. ‘Thanks for sharing the news.’

  ‘We talked about it in the car! Guess you were too busy dreaming, looking out the window.’

  Patch shrugged. ‘Hey, it’s Jonah’s first time abroad. He just wants to take it all in, don’t you, mate?’

/>   Jonah looked away. He appreciated Patch’s defending him, but it was weird, having a fourteen-year-old with one eye stand up for him.

  Con was still giggling away. But she stopped when Motti pulled out a big hunter’s knife from his black denim jacket.

  ‘Insurance,’ he explained, slapping it down on the table by the bed. ‘OK, Cyclops, you’re with me. Coldhardt got us plans of the museum, but I want to check it out myself. Make sure we got no surprises waiting.’ He swaggered over to the door, Patch trailing after him. ‘You guys, chill out, grab some sleep maybe. We’re going in at three.’

  Chapter Eight

  To kill time, and to work off some nervous energy, Jonah decided to use the hotel pool. He was pleased to find he had the whole place to himself. The turquoise pool sat in a big, red-bricked room that reeked of chlorine – but clearly not enough to kill the cloud of flies dizzying about overhead. The night was black and noisy outside.

  He was finishing his seventh length and wishing he were fitter when he looked up to see Tye had entered the room. She was wearing a deep blue high-necked swimsuit and trailing a fluffy white towel behind her.

  ‘Get out of the pool,’ she said. ‘Now.’

  He frowned, and hauled himself out as she strode towards him. ‘What is it? What happened?’

  ‘It’s what’s going to happen you should be worried about,’ she said gravely. ‘Your ass is going to get whupped!’

  With that, she crouched into some martial arts-style pose and then kicked his legs out from under him. With a surprised shout, Jonah fell back into the water.

  ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he spluttered.

  ‘Self-defence,’ said Tye. ‘Coldhardt trained us. Now we have to train you. Get out of the pool.’

  ‘So you can kick me back into it?’

  ‘You’ve got to start somewhere, Jonah.’ She watched him climb out, her dark eyes intense. ‘When we’re out on a job we don’t fool around. We can’t afford to. You need to learn how to handle yourself.’

  He frowned. ‘What, in just a few hours?’

  ‘It’s OK, you’ll be lookout tonight, and you’ll have Con with you,’ Tye told him. ‘But since we’ve got those few hours …’

  She spun a full circle on the ball of her foot and then launched herself into a formidable flurry of jabs and punches and high-kicks in his direction. Jonah jumped away, his wet feet skidding on the tiles.

  ‘You know I normally wear glasses, right?’ he joked.

  ‘We’ll start with a side kick.’

  ‘All the best superheroes have them.’

  ‘Stand with the right side of your body facing me,’ she instructed. He did so, trying hard not to dwell on how good she looked in a swimsuit. ‘Now pull your right knee up towards your left shoulder, and bend your left knee just a little as you kick in my direction, ’K?’

  He took a stab at it. She slapped her palm against the sole of his foot. ‘You want to hit me with the outside of your foot or your heel – it’ll hurt me more and do less damage to you.’ Jonah tried again. ‘Better. Now with your other leg.’

  ‘Is this kickboxing?’ he said, giving it a try.

  ‘Uh-huh. It’s cool, gives you a total body workout. And it’s great for getting out all your anger and frustration and stuff.’

  Jonah kicked out at her a little harder. ‘You get angry and frustrated a lot? Does that come from Coldhardt making you take all the risks while he sits around at –’

  ‘Will you kick me like you mean it?’ she snapped, grabbing his foot and pushing him backwards towards the pool.

  ‘Sore point?’ he asked.

  ‘If you’d like one, I’m happy to oblige.’ With that Tye performed an expert side kick, planting the edge of her foot in his stomach. Jonah doubled up and staggered back into the pool with an ungainly splash.

  ‘Thanks for the lesson,’ he croaked as he broke the water’s surface.

  Tye dived gracefully into the water over his head, barely disturbing the surface. She fired herself through the water like a torpedo, only resurfacing once she’d touched the other side, covering the length of the pool in just a few seconds with a powerful front crawl.

  ‘See what I mean about the outside edge of the foot?’ she said, bobbing up beside him, smoothing black plaits away from her eyes.

  ‘You’re doing nothing for my delusions of adequacy,’ he told her, with a weak smile.

  ‘Feeling nervous about tonight?’

  ‘Well, I …’ He nodded. ‘Yeah. For one thing, I don’t know why I’m even coming along. You don’t really need two lookouts, do you? And I think we just proved that I can’t do much else to help out.’

  ‘You’re seeing how we work,’ Tye told him. ‘You’ve got to know what it’s like if you’re going to be a part of it.’

  Jonah nodded, doubtfully. Him a part of all this? It seemed like fantasy land.

  ‘I was kind of like you are,’ she said awkwardly. ‘You know, when I joined up with Coldhardt. Motti and Patch were already set up together and I was the outsider – like you are now. I found it hard to trust anyone.’

  ‘What did you used to do, before Coldhardt?’ asked Jonah casually.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No.’

  At once her pretty face hardened. ‘I think you do.’

  Jonah sighed and looked away. ‘Motti told you we talked about you and Con?’

  ‘He didn’t have to. I find it hard to trust, Jonah, ’cause I can see people telling so many damn lies the whole time.’ Her dark eyes burnt into him. ‘I read body language. And when I asked you outright you hunched a little, licked your lips, glanced at the exit. Classic signals. Your body gave you away three times over in a second.’

  ‘You’re good,’ Jonah admitted. ‘Patch told me no one could get stuff past you.’

  ‘Did he now,’ she said quietly, a bitter smile flitting across her face. ‘You know I was a smuggler back in Haiti.’

  ‘And that’s all I know.’

  ‘Ran stuff between the islands and South America for five years. If you can’t tell between those you can trust and those who’re trying to sell your ass down the river, you don’t last long. And if you get canned for running out there, the prisons make your cosy little detention centre look like the teddy bears’ picnic. I used to hope that if I was ever caught, it was by one of the gangs. At least they kill you neater.’

  Jonah swallowed, unsure what to say. ‘How old were you when …?

  ‘When I started? Eleven.’ Tye looked up at the cloud of flies and their endless circling. ‘There was this guy, sixteen … He told me stuff, made me feel special. Said these guys would kill him if I didn’t help him take this shit through.’ She looked at Jonah. ‘Yeah, you could say I learned about lying kind of young.’

  ‘Didn’t your parents …?’

  ‘My mum ran out on my dad and me when I was five. Dad went to pieces. She was English, made documentaries. He used to love the sound of her voice, you know? So he spent every cent we had on English and elocution lessons for me, so I could grow up sounding just like her. He’d just sit there drinking and make me say stuff …to kid himself she was still there.’ Now it was her turn to look away. ‘I’m sorry. I know you didn’t have it easy yourself.’

  ‘Next to yours, my life’s been a dream.’

  ‘Liar,’ she said with the ghost of a smile. There was real sympathy in the look she gave him. ‘The photos Coldhardt put up on the screens in the hub … That was mean of him.’

  ‘Not really. He wanted to show me he had power. That was a good way to do it.’

  ‘How can you be so cool about it?’

  ‘Analytical mind, I s’pose. What landed me here in the first place.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyhow, I wasn’t so cool in those pictures, was I?’

  ‘Want to tell me what really happened?’ She tilted her head to one side. ‘I’m good with secrets.’

  ‘I guess you have to be.’

  She half-smiled. ‘And just so you k
now, this head on one side thing is a vulnerable gesture, hardly ever used by people who are lying to you.’

  ‘Can’t be good for your neck.’ He reached out to straighten her head, but she flinched away just slightly. It was an awkward moment, and he found himself talking to fill it. ‘So, you remember that company I helped my foster dad set up, selling secure payroll systems? I worked my butt off doing it ’cause I liked him, and I wanted our family to do well. We’d been together eighteen months; it was kind of a record for me. My foster mum was kind, I even thought I could maybe love her …’ He stopped to rub at his stinging eyes. ‘Sorry, it’s the chlorine,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Uh-huh. Go on.’

  ‘Well, anyway, I found out Derek, my foster dad – he was seeing some other woman. Found out he was planning to move in with her. Leave us. And I didn’t want to lose another family … you know?’ Jonah looked away, filled his ears with the uncaring growls and chatter of the traffic outside till he could speak again. He’d come this far, he might as well let it all out. ‘So yeah, I broke into the encrypted accounts of one of Derek’s clients. Transferred about five hundred grand to my account. I thought with that kind of money, me and my foster mum could just leave the bastard. We could go away somewhere, start a new life without him.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell her first,’ Tye said softly.

  ‘And when I did she freaked. She didn’t know Derek had been playing away from home, and I handled the whole thing like a …’ He snorted, cringing at the memories. ‘She must have shopped me in seconds.’

  ‘You’ve got a new family now, Jonah,’ said Tye. ‘If you want it.’

  ‘I didn’t steal that cash because I wanted to become a career crook,’ he told her. ‘I’m just an ordinary bloke.’

  ‘No. You’re a talent.’

  ‘All I want is an ordinary life –’

  He broke off, unnerved by the strength of Tye’s gaze.

  ‘Liar.’ There was a sudden, fierce compassion in her soft features. ‘Jonah, from what I know about you, your childhood stank. You lived through years of messed-up crap. You think an ordinary life’s ever going to make up for that?’ She shook her head. ‘No way. Whatever cards you get dealt, you’re gonna be turning that analytical mind on them – is my life normal enough yet? Hmm, you know, I think things could be a little more ordinary round here.’