fic: Chinese Boxes 11/11
24. Chinese boxes
It looks like she is about to get back to work sooner than she thought. He calls her from the office at about ten the next day to ask if she was up for a safecracking job. Usually when he is away from the villa, he does not call her before noon, in case she is sleeping late, but this morning he saw her stir awake when he got up and sit moping around in bed after he had brought her breakfast; now that she has finished the navigation rules and Falcon manual, and he has talked her out of reading The Fundamentals of Options and Futures, she is struggling to find something to keep her busy.
“If you’re still as bored as you were this morning,” he tells her, “I can bring you something to do. We have an idiot of a client who bought himself a safe with a Group 1 lock,” he explains, referring to the top-of-the-line, high-security kind, “and fucked up setting the lock combination. After he put in a stack of documents, mind you. So now he’s left with time-sensitive contracts inside a safe he can’t open, the safe’s too expensive to cut open or drill through, and there’s the danger that a spark could ignite the paper, so he’s been begging us to crack it for him. Has sent it to us from Zurich in a truck, as a matter of fact. Now if you don’t feel like doing it, Frederick from the testing team can have a go at it - “
She is not so much dismissive of the other man’s skills as she is anxious not to have this golden opportunity of cracking a Group 1 safe again slip by. Treasures like that don’t crop up often. “Of course I feel like doing it,” she insists. “When can you come pick me up?”
“There’s no need for you to come to the office,” he assures her instead. “I’ll have it brought to you.”
Half an hour later, he is back at the villa directing four workers to the huge sitting room downstairs. She watches from the terrace as the men carefully manoeuvre a super heavy duty rolling cargo platform next to the similarly heavy truck at the end of the villa driveway before the attached crane picks up what looks like a miniature elevator and, straining with the weight, lowers it on top of the platform. Next, the men roll over the platform into the lobby - luckily, the villa entrance is level with the driveway, but for some reason they still leave a shallow industrial-looking steel ramp just outside the main door - and she can practically feel the floor shudder as the safe moves into the sitting room. Another quarter of an hour later, when they have left and Bruce has carried her downstairs, she is admiring the safe and scowling slightly at the task ahead of her.
It is, indeed, a top-of-the-line model, a formidable artefact of brushed steel and gleaming controls. The trouble is, this beauty comes complete with a beast of a Kaba-Ilco rotary dial lock. And if she remembers right, instead of the three, maximum four wheels on the usual Group 2 models, this one has five, making it harder to discern the code by pure manipulation, which seems like her only choice considering what Bruce said earlier about the client not wanting to damage the safe and its flammable contents. Leaving aside the crude cutting torch option, she can’t even risk drilling it to insert a scope that would dramatically cut the time needed to complete the task; she knows that the hardplate beneath the steel lining the sides of the safe is so thick and durable that any drill needed to penetrate that is bound to produce sparks. All she has at her disposal is paper and a pencil to map the wheels on a contact point graph, and a spare stethoscope from among the tools of her trade that she did not take into the office.
“I could use the autodialer or the SoftDrill”, she suggests, referring to the transducer pack that is not really a drill, just a sophisticated electronic gadget that takes the pain out of manipulating locks. “But I’d need to go into the office to pick them up.”
Bruce returns her look with one that smacks of a transparent challenge. “I’ll bring them for you if you give up on opening it by touch,” he promises. Like hell she is giving up now.
“I think I’ll manage,” she mutters, unwilling to yield.
“Just tell me if you change your mind,” he prompts her. Not a chance.
After that, she is barely aware of the hours passing, consumed by the challenge. This is not normally something that is done on this kind of safe; it is too complex and in fact has a 20-hour burglary resistance rating. The best hope of opening it sooner should be by drilling, and in most situations the safecracker, be it a burglar or a security professional, would do just that, or else they’d go for the slow-but-sure SoftDrill solution; but even if what she is doing is somewhat impractical, it is, she has to admit, engrossing. She sits in front of the safe and completely forgets about Bruce on the sofa a few feet away from her, swamped in a sea of paper between the latest draft of the Wayne Enterprises framework partnership agreement, the Italian Carabinieri letter of intent, and the Interpol prequalification document package now that he has yielded to her persuasion and agreed to let her design and run the simulation training course, all of which he has promised to review asap. All she is aware of is the fluid movement of her own hand turning the dial, the slow and steady creep of the digits against the marks she has made on the adhesive paper circle around it, feeling the wheels picking up one by one and the cam drive pin clicking against the fly, the minute falling and rising of the lever as the cam gate moves under... poetry in motion, even if it is a bitch of a challenge. Knowing the lock to be a Kaba-Ilco, she knows its contact region positions, thus eliminating at least some of the combinations where the values would fall too close to the contact region forbidden zones - and she tries to visualise the lock mechanism to “see” the position of the wheels, figure out the cam gate contact points and read the dial position with the maximum precision, parking the wheels at the low points to re-map combinations and meticulously recording her findings on the contact point graph. She tells Bruce that she wants to skip lunch, leaving him to gnaw on an old sandwich, and does not even notice it when he falls asleep on the vast sofa, exhausted by the paperwork, so she is surprised to see him jump up when she finally cracks the safe almost eight hours later, still well ahead of the 20-hour rating, with a near-orgasmic feeling and a triumphant “YES!”
Except that the sight that greets her inside is enough to make her both very angry and perversely happy. Nestled snugly inside the steel contraption is another rotary dial safe.
She turns an accusing glare on Bruce. “This isn’t a client.” The effect, she suspects, is rather spoiled by the fact that she can’t help grinning as soon as she has said it, but still, it is one hell of a practical joke to play on her.
“Probably not,” he admits, as if wondering.
The deadliest weapon at her disposal happens to be a plastic hairclip holding her ponytail; but her aim is good enough so that it hits the side of his head before he can avoid it. However, all it makes him do is laugh out loud at her predicament.
“Have you developed a nostalgic fondness for Chinese boxes?” she taunts him.
“I guess you could say that,” he concedes, before explaining. “It was the easiest way to bring the maximum amount of safe here while taking up the minimum amount of space in transit. If I’d just brought one safe, you’d have nothing to keep you entertained by now. You looked like you were getting bored, and I promise that the futures and options textbook would have driven you up a wall.”
“And what about the time-sensitive papers inside?” she reminds him of the complicated subterfuge.
He has the decency to look self-conscious. “Admit it, if you could attack this one with the tools, you’d have opened it in even less time, and what would the fun be in that?” She has to give it to him, there is a point in what he is saying.
“How many?” she asks. Given what he just said, she suspects that the Chinese boxes don’t end here.
Sure enough, they don’t. “About half a dozen,” he says, absent-mindedly.
“And the rest are all dial lock too, right?” She knows the answer already.
“I think so.” For someone with a photographic memory to rival and exceed her own, Bruce has suddenly become remarkably forgetful.
“That’s torture,” she accuses him mockingly.
“That’s practice,” he shoots back, undaunted. “Besides, you don’t have to open them all at once.”
“You know I can’t resist the temptation.”
“You’re trying to make me jealous of a piece of hardware,” he grumbles.
“Me? Trying?” she injects her voice with as close a shot at righteous indignation as her enjoyment will allow. “You seem to be actively seeking out people and pieces of hardware to be jealous of. At this rate you’ll soon be jealous of the kitchen sink.”
“I’m pretty relaxed about the kitchen sink,” he parries. “There’s nothing to crack in it.”
***
She ends up enjoying this challenge; to Bruce’s credit, he has picked an assortment of safes with really tricky locks. She does not recognise the make of the second safe; judging by the contact region positions on the cam wheel, it has an S&G lock with four wheels, but is still an uphill battle as it is packed with crack-resistant features: a low dialling tolerance, a couple of false gates, and nylon wheels instead of metal ones for smoother movement. This time it comes as no surprise when she opens it two and a half hours later to find a third one; Bruce has to go outside and fetch the steel ramp - now she finally knows why the workers left it there - to slide the third one out onto the floor so that she can have full access to the lock dial.
“You’re in too much of a hurry,” he tells her when she immediately slides down to the floor herself to work on it. “And if you say you’re going to skip dinner as well, I’ll carry you upstairs and not bring you back until tomorrow.”
She wonders if the way she looks now is not unlike that of the proverbial baby that has candy taken from it; but she cannot help it. “OK, here’s a deal for you,” she offers. “You order dinner, I keep going until it’s here and then I stop and we eat it together.”
“Sounds good,” he admits, flipping through a stack of takeaway menus on the side table. “You sure you can’t be persuaded to leave the rest until morning?”
“No way. I’m gonna finish them before bedtime,” she insists. How many more safes can there be left, really?
“So much for keeping you busy for longer,” he comments wryly.
After dinner - Bruce cunningly ordered Chinese to go with the theme - two more safes later and close to midnight, she gets to what must be the last one. In all her considerable history of encounters with safes, she has never come across a rotary dial one less than a cubic foot in size, and the fifth one is cutting it close. It is so compact and relatively lightweight that Bruce can lift it in his hands and set it on the side table for her to tweak open without the table showing much stress from the weight. It is sturdy wood, true, but the safe can’t be more than twenty pounds.
“There’s no way you could have found a dial lock safe to fit inside this one.” It isn’t even a question.
“You never know,” is the cryptic answer. Having sufficiently confused her with it, he resumes his place at the other end of the sofa, pen in hand and partnership agreement draft in his lap.
Half an hour later, when the door silently swings open, she is ready to triumphantly announce that her hunch was right... when the quick look inside, just to be sure that it is, in fact, empty, makes her forget to breathe.
She was too carried away by the thrill of the chase to allow for the possibility of a third option other than an empty space, or another safe. But here it is; sitting innocently just inside the steel cube is a tiny square black velvet thing, not more than two inches across and with a domed lid that leaves little doubt as to its contents. And all she can do is sit and stare, mesmerised, feeling her throat catch and the tears well up in her eyes, cursing her stupidity at her own reaction. The man has an uncanny ability to reduce her to tears. Mostly tears of joy, she’ll give him that; but still.
“Are you going to open it?” She did not even notice him walking up to her. And she is in no state to answer. She manages a nod, but still does not trust herself to speak.
"Since you said you like a smaller kind of box, I thought I'd get you one," he continues. "But I forgot that for a jewel thief, you have a rare aversion to looking inside jewellery cases."
"I think I know what's in it," she says finally, barely above a breath.
It is when he looks at her with just the tiniest flicker of insecurity, his dark green eyes almost black in the soft light, that she almost breaks down crying again; there are definitely a couple of tears sliding down her cheeks, though neither of them really notices.
"I think you do," he admits. "But you'd better take a look. Maybe you won't like it."
She pulls him down on the sofa next to her, and closer still until their foreheads touch. "Maybe I'll hate it," she whispers against his lips. She really, really doubts it. "It won't change my answer."
fin
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Notes to Ch 24
I don't expect anyone to understand the safecracking terminology in this chapter ;) but if you ever feel like cracking a dial-lock safe, the following may come in handy ;) Pretty tech-heavy, be warned. http://www.crypto.com/papers/safelocks.pdf
Selina may not have been curious to see her engagement ring, but the readers might be. The so-called Shawish ring weighs 150 carats and costs 70 million dollars, but I figure Bruce only plans to get married once and has enough money stashed away... I mean, how else does an ex-billionaire impress a future wife who used to be Gotham City's best jewel thief, if not with the ultimate engagement ring cut out of an entire diamond?
I realise that I am a massive letdown on the celebratory sex, but I am offering a bribe, in three words, Metroland and Laurel Canyon, as in, two of Christian Bale's early films. If you have not seen them, find them. The first of these has him having more sex than he does in all his other films put together... with the exception of the second of these ;) And shall we say, he appears in very considerable states of undress in both :P
Once I was done with my precious Ch 19 of Boxes, I typed up the summary for a mini-sequel… if a 25K estimate qualifies as a mini. But it won't be like Boxes, where my initial guess of 25K ended up being 80. Even less of a relationship development story (by then, a year on from the end of Boxes, they'll be an established couple with a relatively stable dynamic) and more of a travelogue loosely strung together by a notional plot, a kind of Bond ultra lite, more romp than drama, more Ocean's Eleven than Nolan. The fluff-to-plot ratio is going to be more in favour of the former, of which I am duly ashamed. But I suppose it'll bring a sort of symmetry, turning the mismatched lot of Catching Up and Boxes into a middle-heavy trilogy. If you are not yet tired of this version of them, I look forward to seeing you in the final instalment that will go under the name of Plus ça Change.
As the really last endnote here, and a final testament to my control freakery when writing this, here is a timeline of events from Selina's phone call from Hong Kong to Lugano in Catching Up to this point. You may appreciate my restraint in not throwing in my schematic of the Tessuti Varese premises while I'm at it; even I could see that posting it would have been a bit excessive. The plot takes two months; I picked May 2 somewhat arbitrarily, but I did see it as beginning in early May and ending in early July. Plus I had them planning to see Alfred in "early June" some thirty-five days later, which could not be too close to June 2, a national holiday that usually means a long weekend and bigger crowds (which both they and Alfred would know of and try to avoid) and did not want Bruce's de facto proposal to coincide with the US Independence Day… but I digress.
Master timeline
t" = Selina discovers the pearls and flies out of Hong Kong (beginning of May, e.g. May 2)
t"+1 Selina flies into Zurich for the dinner date
t"+2 the next afternoon - villa, the chase, shopping, dinner, and the movie - start of Chinese Boxes
t"+5 meeting with Theo; Selina starts working with Wainwright Security
t"+20 they decide on the China trip
t"+22 go to China
t"+23 arrive Beijing-Xilihot
t"+24 stay around Xilihot
t"+25 go to Yinchuan
t"+26 go to Turpan
t"+27 stay around Turpan
t"+28 go to Xining
t"+29 sightseeing around Xining and the landing incident
t"+30 go to Lhasa
t"+31 return Lhasa-Beijing and fly to Hong Kong
t"+32 = t they come back to Lugano (e.g. June 4) and go to Florence
t+5 see Alfred
t+6 come back to Lugano
t+7 get the Giacomo Varese death news (killed t+5), talk to Theo, and leave for Prato
t+8 Varese's funeral, go to meet Gianfranco, get into the hospital, talk to the doctor, go back to Lugano
t+9 start digging for ownership and financial info on Tessuti Varese
t+10 keep digging for info and put the picture together; Bruce decides to go to Liguria
t+11 arrive in Liguria, Bruce sticks the tags onto yarn containers and goes on recon to Prato late at night
t+14 they track the containers to Tessuti Varese, call Gianfranco and meet with him in the evening
t+15 return to Lugano, mission prep and evening meeting with Lucius in Aviano
t+16 leave Lugano and arrive in Prato; first meeting at Tessuti Varese and intel gathering overnight
t+17 negotiations at Tessuti Varese and theft of USB stick overnight
t+18 final day and the confrontation
t+19 Selina wakes up in hospital
t+21 they leave for Lugano
t+25 Alfred's call; Selina gets the chocolates and the pearls back
t+26 call from Lucius about the Wayne-Wainwright takeover threat
t+27 the Interpol "job offer" letter
t+28 Selina cracks the safe (e.g. July 2)