To recap: we regret ST3's absence last week, but lest the force of the story be lost in its absence, we would remind the reader that in the last chapter, the Cult have been in the planning stages of executing a bank robbery. As for what happens to that course of events — read on...

Crates of gold bul-lion (sto-len by Naz-is),

Indus-trial secrets and unknown da Vin-cis,

Fabergé eggs and gold papal rings...

These are a few of my favourite things...

Von Trapp strolled down the isles of the Phffeingstohler vault, running his hand over the steel safes and crooning quietly to himself. He was in a good mood. He slid to a gentle stop in front of Tonnajob, Mary, Daltmooreby and Vandeveer, and gave a thin smile. 'Very adequate work so far, everybody.' He pressed a communicator in his ear and spoke to Andrei at the security station: 'Sreka, are you in position?'

The tinny reply was just audible: 'Da.'

Von Trapp held up the security card. 'Shall we proceed?' He reached inside the satchel and pulled out a small card with two large-digit numbers on:

2111518



1920185

'These are the codes for the safes with the explosive charges in, as arranged,' said Von Trapp, smirking at his own superior criminal organisation, and handed the card to Mary, who nodded and said, 'Thank you, Friedrich.'

She turned to the others. 'We'll need to identify these first and get out the equipment. Then we can proceed with getting the diamond. Sean, you keep in character and watch the door — Sreka is in control of the security systems and if he sees anyone coming he'll alert us — but you are our last line of defence.'

'I'm on it,' said Daltmooreby. He tweaked his cap out of position, ruffled his tie clip and, assuming a slight scowl, slumped into the character of a disgruntled security guard.

Rounding on the hapless Vandeveer, Mary instructed him. 'We are looking for safe no. 2122 — it's in here somewhere. Find it — that's where the diamond is being kept.'

Vandeveer found himself, moments later, wandering down yet another identical corridor of identical boxes looking for a number. A variant of every other number in existence seemed to be inscribed onto the safes, except the one he was looking for. He doubled back and started re-counting. '2118... 2119... 2120... 2121... 2123...'

'It's not here!' he exclaimed in frustration.

'Mr Vandeveer.' Slepp appeared at the end of the corridor of safe deposit boxes. 'I've found something I think you should come see.' Vandeveer followed his assassin's lead.

Slepp stood over a grate in the floor. 'It is engraved with the number 2122.'

'Hand me that crowbar,' Vandeveer instructed his henchman, sensing something was afoot.

Slepp passed his boss the lever. Vandeveer wedged it under the rim of the grate and began trying to prise it open. 'Go and fetch the others Vandeveer instructed. I'll continue here.'

Slepp bowed his head — 'Very good, sir' — and left.

Vandeveer continued to work at the grate, heaving and pulling with the crowbar, willing it to work its way underneath the grate so that he could pull it up. There was movement; Vandeveer stumbled, caught slightly off-balance, and he briefly heard the sound of metal sliding on concrete. He was getting close, he just need to press a little.... harder... With a grunt of effort he worked the grate free and it came out of its housing in the ground with a metallic thud on the concrete floor of the vault. A small dust cloud made its way into the air, fogging the fluorescent bulbs.

Vandeveer sat on his haunches and wiped his brow. He crawled forward on all fours and stuck his head down the hole. There was a ladder leading into the gloom. Vandeveer cast about, but couldn't hear the others nearby, so he decided to head down on his own. He set a foot on the first rung and slowly lowered himself into the hole. Underneath the floor, the grate opened out into a small room. The walls were scarcely an arm's width apart and were seemingly dug into solid rock. And when Vandeveer turned around, he couldn't believe his eyes.

A tinny hiss in Daltmooreby's left ear alerted him to Sreka's urgent whisper. 'Someone's coming. Moving your way.'

'I'm on it,' Daltmooreby said into his wrist.

Ingrid Steler was a typical Hitchcockian icy blonde: all shoulder-length tresses, smouldering glances and pouting lips. Traditionally she would have found employ as a gangster's moll, a feisty reporter, a rich heiress or politician's mistress — any job that involved lots of slinking into dingy offices and having hard-boiled inner monologues directed at her, in fact. The economy, being what it was, however, she had been forced into working at the local bank. Nevertheless, she still attempted to smoulder when asking customers if they would like a receipt with their withdrawal, and managed to ask it in the same tone she might have used when seducing a hapless pawn into murdering her ratfink boyfriend.

Ingrid was a lady desperately in search of a genre.

Just now, she was swaying down to the vaults delivering her cash drawer for the morning and wondering idly if she should buy a cigarette holder. She tapped in the combination on the vault door, slid it open and stepped into the atrium — only to be confronted with an unfamiliar security guard, spinning around to face her with a surprised grunt. His hair spun around a fraction of a second later. The scruffy little man rubbed his chin, then attempted a seductive leer.

'Well hello, m'dear,' he purred. 'And what do you do when you're not being gorgeous?'

She rolled her eyes and flashed her ID card. 'I have a deposit for the daily cash. Please step aside.'

'You are?'

She clucked, 'As the card says. Ingrid Steler.'

'Stellar indeed, ahaha...' He chuckled heartily, twinkling at her from under his bushy eyebrows. She merely arched one of her perfectly pencilled equivalents. 'I'm sorry, doll, but the top brass are giving a tour at the moment, no entry allowed. Just gives us more time to get to know each other, hmm?' and he gave her the patented Daltmooreby smoulder and a suggestive squint.

Ingrid recoiled and squinted. 'Is there something wrong with your eyebrows?'

Daltmooreby blanched for a moment, then rallied. Honour, among other things, had to be satisfied. 'I see you like to get right to the point,' he drawled, moving in slightly closer. 'Perhaps you could get right... aahhhahh! You seem to have trodden on my foot accidentally, darling...'

In his heyday, the Subject would now have made a playful comment about the size of his feet. As it was, she had folded her arms and was saying something about the firm's strict policies on sexual harassment. Daltmooreby missed the Sixties. The decade, that is. His own personal sixties were turning out to be quite a drag.

Having warned the pervy old guard, Ingrid pivoted magnificently on her heels and tapped her way around him and down the corridor, making a mental note to report him to the Human Resources director. What the hell was this? The creep had actually grabbed her arm!

'Now look here, beautiful, I think we both — nghf!'

Daltmooreby got no further, because he was doubled up in agony on the floor. This afforded him a fine view of Ingrid's retreating legs — a view he was in no state to appreciate. Soldiers, guards, ninjas, assassins, terrorists, sharks, spies, saboteurs, spiders, snakes, megalomaniacs — all these he could handle. But he had never been entirely sane around beautiful women. 'Von Trapp,' he croaked into his cuff mike. 'The perimeter is breached!'

Ingrid turned the corner to see a huge man in blue overalls pacing around by the safety deposit boxes. He looked up at her, and time ran a little slower.

She dropped her cash tray; loose change ran in all directions; she rushed to the wall and fumbled with the glass cover of the alarm button... Tonnajob had no time to think, which was fine by him — he wouldn't have used it anyway. Slepp practised origami in his spare time and, approaching Ingrid from behind, folded something at about shoulder height very quickly that made her collapse into his arms quite dead.

Von Trapp arrived a moment later, a hand still pressed to the microphone in his ear. 'Did she trip the alarm?' von Trapp asked.

'No,' Slepp said quietly, laying Ingrid down on the ground reverentially.

Vandeveer appeared. 'I've found it!' he said.

'The diamond?' von Trapp asked.

'You'd better come see for yourself,' Vandeveer said, patting the dust off his clothes.

'Watch the body,' von Trapp said to Slepp, and then he followed Vandeveer.

Mary had an expectant look as she peered into the recess in the floor. 'Let's get down there.'

Soon, Mary, Vandeveer and Von Trapp were all crammed into the small space beneath the floor. And there it stood, in the dust at the centre of the room. A container: simple, unobtrusive, and plain. A box roughly the size of a large desk-fan that would contain the finest gem in existence.

Mary approached and batted away a thick layer of dust that covered everything. Reaching out to open the box, she hesitated and slowly wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, unintentionally creating a grey stubble effect. Flexing her fingers so they writhed like a kthulean monster, she then lifted the lid...

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