The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [79]
98.8°F. Almost normal. He laid the hand palm-down on the panel. The line of light moved beneath it. He glanced round at the locker, waiting for the LED to turn from red to green.
It didn’t.
The monitor flashed up a message, polite but chilling: Unable to confirm. Please rescan.
It hadn’t worked. The system had recognised the fake . . .
No, Eddie realised, forcing himself to be calm. If it had detected trickery, it would have raised the alarm. It just hadn’t quite matched the silicone palmprint to the one in its memory.
98.4°F. Below normal body temperature. And it would only keep falling.
What was wrong? He lifted the hand from the scanner, torch beam darting over it as he searched for any flaws—
There! Between the first and second fingers, bisecting the scar. A hairline split in the silicone. The two halves of the scar had slipped apart by a tiny amount . . . but enough for the computer to find something odd about the easily identifiable feature. He put the hand back on the scanner, nudging the gelatinous non-flesh into what he hoped was perfect alignment.
The scanning beam moved again. Eddie looked round—
A single point of green appeared amongst the grid of red lights. ‘Yes!’ he said, pumping a fist.
‘Eddie, did it work?’ Karima’s voice crackled in his ear.
‘Yeah, it’s open. What’s going on outside?’
‘That guard’s still on the far side of the archives, but he’s circling round - and the police are on their way back to us!’
‘I’ll have to get a shift on, then.’ He moved to the very edge of the desk, balancing on his toes - then let himself topple forward, one arm outstretched to arrest his fall on the lockers.
He reached out with his other hand and opened the large door. The case containing the Codex was inside. He slid it out - then, swinging the heavy container as a counterweight, shoved himself back upright. For one horrible moment he wavered, rubber-shod toes clawing at the edge, before arching his back and standing tall.
Eddie opened the case. A golden light filled the vault: his torch beam reflecting off the orichalcum cover of the Talonor Codex.
He had it.
Now . . . he had to get away with it.
Jablonsky had completed his rounds of one side of the labyrinth. Humming to himself, he started towards the vault to begin his circuit of the other.
Matt hurried back up to the deck. The police boat was about half a mile away - heading straight for him.
The desk was clear, almost all Eddie’s equipment shoved into the overhead vent. Aside from the case containing the Codex, the only thing left was the screwdriver.
He held it between his teeth as he hauled the hanging ventilator back up until it was at shoulder height. Supporting the weight of one end on his collarbone, he took the screwdriver in his free hand . . . and stabbed it into a fan.
The blades instantly jammed. The motor protested, whining angrily. He pushed the insulated handle down harder. With an electrical crack, the motor burned out.
He yanked out the screwdriver and did the same to another fan. This time, the motor sparked, an acrid burning smell hitting his nostrils as smoke coiled out of it.
Jablonsky crossed the central aisle in front of the vault door, and was heading for the reading area when his walkie-talkie squawked. ‘Hey, Lou,’ said his partner. ‘The computer’s showing something wrong in the vault.’
He went back to the curved steel door, looking down the main aisle to the security desk. ‘Has the alarm gone off?’
‘No, but there’s some problem with the ventilation system. I’ll open it up so you can check.’
Jablonsky inserted his card and waited while Vernio went through the procedure to open the door. After a minute, the heavy door hummed open.
He caught the sharp tang of smoke in the air as he entered. A crackle from above; he looked up at the grille to see a blue spark flicker behind it. ‘Yeah, something’s shorted out,’ he reported into his radio. ‘Better call