It happened like this.
One June day a curious German by the name of Hans walked out of a bank. He wasn’t in any hurry, and he paid attention to all sorts of nonsense. Birds were chirping. Girls were smiling serenely. The pavement was vibrating under his feet… Vibrating very temptingly. «Hmm,» thought Hans. And he didn’t just think it – within a week he had obtained an operational schematic of the metro lines and a photograph of a certain excavation pit. The photograph was about forty years old. The pit in it vaguely resembled, in outline, something like the square in front of the bank. By a strange coincidence, the curious German happened to have a meticulous girlfriend. She dug around in the dust of the archives and found an address where a certain old man lived, a former metro construction worker. And lo! A touching friendship sprang up between the chatty grandpa and the silent young woman who listened with such great attention to the ravings of a decrepit senile.
The romantic part of the story ended very quickly. The prose of life began. That’s how it goes.
For three months two focused young men regularly acted as though they were late for the commuter train, and disappeared into the gloomy underworld of the metro with entrenching tools in their backpacks. What they got up to down there I leave to your imagination. Hint: by November the tunnel was ready.
On D-Day, as had been arranged in advance, I turned up at the station at ten thirty in the evening. Not the most suspicious hour. I was carrying a bulky bag and looked every inch the athlete: trainers, tracksuit bottoms, jacket. Greetings from the world of sport! I let a train go by, and once the crowd had drained off the platform, I jumped down onto the tracks. I had three hundred seconds at my disposal before the next train came through. In that time I had to cover seven hundred metres of slippery track and reach point «Y». The place was marked by a sign reading «Caution – cable breach», propped against the tunnel wall.
Right.
Four and a half minutes later, the beam of my torch pulled a scrap of tin with an illegible inscription out of the damp gloom. There was no time to inspect it and make certain. I groped along the wall at random, and the dusty plane gave way to light pressure. A hidden door opened.
«Three!» I barked into the gap. For a fraction of a second light flared inside and went straight out again. Even so, I managed to make out the threshold I stepped over, and my accomplices.
Greetings, Geschwister!
Once I was in company I caught my breath and smiled inwardly at the sudden association – four gravediggers in a crypt. What the brothers were thinking, I don’t know. They were silent. They behaved formally and strictly. The business ahead was no joke. People were nervous.
I didn’t waste any time, of course. By touch I pulled the assault rifle out of my bag, two magazines, a grenade, a knife, tape… kitted the whole household out properly, strapped it all down… checked it for noise… shifted the tape to my breast pocket… tried to slide the knife into my boot top… swore, remembering I was wearing trainers… put the knife back in the bag… took five sacks rolled into tubes out of the bag, unrolled them and laid them under me so it would be softer to sit on… looked at my watch. The phosphorescent hands seemed frozen in place. The whole business had taken me five minutes. Hmm… Oh, right! The balaclava!!!
I spent a couple of minutes studying my own pockets. Somewhere in there was the special headgear for robbers – a woollen ski mask with slits for eyes and mouth. The Germans called it by the fiddly word Kapuzenmütze. I couldn’t be bothered breaking my tongue on it and called it the balaclava.
Hmm-mmm…
I turned my head. From the heavy sighing I worked out that number two was old Heinrich, a great specialist in safes, and number four was, apparently, Dieter. Though I wasn’t sure…
Then I calculated that with the fee from this shady little job I could buy myself something bright and sporty. A blood-red Toyota Celica, for instance. A dealership I knew had one going at a discount. Or a silver Porsche? No, Christmas sales don’t affect the price of a Porsche. Pity. Now Hans, the scoundrel, would definitely buy a Lamborghini Diablo GT and park it in his garage for the duration. I’d been in that garage once, looking over the rarities…
I glanced at my watch again. Ten minutes were in the past. Time dragged slowly, very slowly. To occupy myself somehow, I started remembering the cars I’d seen in Hans’s garage. First in line stood an Aston Martin Virage, 1992, dark green metallic, three hundred and thirty horses…
…
And then a pre-war Bugatti rose up before my mind’s eye. Gathering dust in the very furthest corner of the garage, where it’s always dark… So, just as I was straining to remember the colour of the upholstery of the car that had lodged so deep in my soul, the little watch on One’s wrist beeped. «Three o’clock. Time’s running!» he announced. «Torches on.»
Ho-ho! Four hours had flown past like a single minute. I love machinery with utter self-abandon!
«Two and Four forward, Three behind me,» commanded One. Four bright beams scribbled across the cube of the room and came to rest on a small hole in the wall, out of which breathed damp, mould and… the smell of big money. When One vanished into the opening after Four, I exhaled «to hell with it», stood up, took the sacks in my hands, bent down, picked the balaclava up off the floor – how had it got there? – and squeezed into the narrow, low slot that had not been dug with me in mind.
It was a comical occupation – forcing your way through in a half-crouch through damp thicknesses of some sort of shell limestone, pulling your head down into your shoulders out of fear that the rock was about to collapse, and listening to the ragged wheezing of One suffocating up ahead. It got funnier still when I planted my head into his solid backside and worked out that we were there. Stop! A strained yelp, the sound of a falling body and a torrent of curses aimed at my head confirmed my guess.
That’s right. We’d arrived.
I squatted down and, craning my neck past the back of the cursing One, began watching Two and Four drill the wall, briskly and deftly. In two or three minutes a section of the wall fell at their feet with a light metallic clatter. «Why is the wall iron? What sort of architectural refinement is that? Strange,» I began to reflect unhurriedly, but I was interrupted.
«Sack!» commanded One. I held out what was wanted, got it back a minute later packed tight, and understood everything.
The diggers had tunnelled through to the basement of the bank, where the vault was housed, and had taken apart the brickwork, or maybe broken through a concrete wall, doesn’t matter. What mattered was that a civilised crawlway had been produced running right up to the bank’s safes. The back wall of one of them, notwithstanding all the alarm gadgetry, had been opened by Two. An original solution to the problem.
I turned around with difficulty and, swearing quietly, made the return trip to the little room. There I threw the sack on the floor, caught my breath, wiped the sweat off my forehead and went back to the boys. Two, who had disappeared inside the safe, was clanking and scraping at something. One was glancing nervously at his watch, and Four…
«Attention,» came Two’s voice. «The show begins. We have five minutes.»
Understood. I pulled the balaclava down over my head, took the rifle off safe and froze, wincing slightly at the unpleasant chill in the pit of my stomach.
The door of the emptied safe, opened from within, swung wide. Two leapt into the vault chamber, Four after him, then One, then me. Finding myself in a flood of bright light, I screwed my eyes shut… one-two-three… carefully unstuck my eyelids and looked around a hundred times faster.
The lenses of two surveillance cameras had been shot out and, one had to assume, were not functioning. The indicator of a Doppler motion sensor was blinking red and beeping obnoxiously. A distant hysterical ringing reached my ears. Aha, the alarm had gone off at the control desk.
That was it! My part had begun.
I threw the sacks to One, ran up to the barred door, smashed the lock with three single shots, burst out into the corridor and… came nose to nose with a guard. That wasn’t in the plan. Out of surprise and confusion, instead of bringing up the rifle and putting two or three helpings of lead into the uninvited guest, I hit him in the jaw with a powerful straight right. Badly barked my knuckles. Stop! What knuckles? A fight! Adrenaline!!!
The guard collapsed to the floor like a sack. I raised my foot to finish him with a kick to the temple, or wherever on the head it landed, and… crashed down beside him myself. The lad turned out not to be a simple patient. He’d had his own adrenaline dump – he’d worked out that his trip to the loo had stopped being a leisurely affair… And he was as tall as me (one ninety, by the way) and had shoulders an Ivan and a half wide! A giant, in a word! Somehow, already falling, he managed to sweep my supporting leg. Both of us wound up transferred to the ground game. But what kind of fight is it lying down? Up!
We sprang to our feet simultaneously, with the sole difference that my rifle had slipped out of my hands and, kicked aside by the guard’s foot, was looking at me like an orphan from five metres away. The guard was armed. In the buttoned holster – a millisecond, but everything was clear!!! – a piece of something firearm-shaped had glinted. However, unbuttoning, drawing, aiming and pulling the trigger – all that takes time, a second minimum! And there was no second. Here I am! Swinging my fists, trying to land one in the horn department. The guard understood that shooting was postponed until better times, put up a block against my straight right and started working his limbs for all he was worth. A nimble lad, as it turned out. You could tell at once he hadn’t just come out of hospital.
Ah, if only anyone knew how much I hate these one-on-one collisions with some wrestler brother!
Nothing for it – I put up a couple of blocks in reply, a step back and sharply right, threw a punch myself, then a couple more, and finally got the client in the jaw. Knockdown. He took a step back and dropped his hands. Now would have been the moment to press the advantage, drive my left foot into his kneecap, then hook, shove, and go to work on him on the ground… can’t! While I’m working my feet, the client can easily get his gun out. Why else is his right hand hanging down, dangling next to the holster? Who knows what’s in his head? He wouldn’t have time to bring the barrel round on me, but anything can happen. So I threw myself in close. Grabbed the lad by his right wrist, put my other arm around his waist and headbutted him in the nose! Like that! Like that!! Like that!!!
Fuck!!!
He turned out to be an experienced fighter – a yank at my hair… only there isn’t any… it’s under the balaclava! It came in useful after all!!!
So the movement wouldn’t go to waste, the lad pulled the balaclava off me and flung it away. I won half a second on that, and it decided the whole business. I hooked his supporting leg with my left. Caught his other leg with my hand. Leaned forward with my shoulder, transferred my centre of mass to the place where his supporting leg should have been, and further, further. The lad crashed onto his back, and his little right hand, the one capable of shooting, ended up underneath him. That was good.
While my head was rejoicing, my body leaned back of its own accord and my right striking arm shifted a little to the side and dropped sharply down, then up-down-up-down!… And suddenly, with the nerve in my spine, with my skin, I felt something coming… Ap!
At the very last moment I grabbed the guard by the hand holding the pistol and jerked it. The bullet, leaving the barrel with a roar, immediately met a body that had gone limp all at once. Thank God, not mine.
Phew!!! That was close…
I got up, picked up the rifle, gave up on the balaclava as no longer needed, and fired into the television camera that had dispassionately recorded the brief scuffle between the guard and the raider. Then I looked at my watch. Nine seconds had been wasted. It was time to proceed according to plan.
I ran to the next door, the one separating the vault corridor from the main corridor, and tugged at the handle. No result. The door was blocked. The bank’s security was acting by the book: on receipt of an alarm signal, the doors were locked to await the police. Four minutes were allotted for that. The clock was running.
I wedged a grenade under the door handle, ran the cord from the pin across to the other handle and fixed it there with tape. I checked the reliability of the resulting construction. Checked it well – gave it a good hearty tug! Ugh! Time to get back.
My accomplices, in black smocks and masks – unfriendly ghosts, no more, no less! – were cracking safes like nuts, fishing out the contents and transferring them into sacks. Their business was going without a hitch, exactly to plan. I wiped the sweat off my forehead, unfastened the pouch with the magazines and glanced at my watch again. One minute of the performance had passed. In three minutes the soloists were due to leave the stage, and other performers were expected in their place – the chorus. I gripped the rifle with sweating palms and made a swallowing motion. Made it for nothing. There was no saliva in my mouth.
How slowly time dragged.
How much had passed?
A minute?
Two?
Four and a half?!
What?!!! It was long past time to clear out of here, and still no police. Where were they? What was going on?!
The handle jerked. They’re opening it!
«Achtung!» I barked, and out of the corner of my eye caught the boys freezing for an instant, exchanging glances and darting for the safe that had been opened from within. One and Four vanished inside. Two stayed outside, by the door.
Meanwhile there came a roar, and a hot, dense wave of air smacked me in the face.
Contact!!!
Oh!!! I’ll get life if they catch me!
I let off a burst – ten rounds, no more! – towards the door that had flown open… counted to three… another ten! and another! that’s it! enough! no time to change the magazine! I threw myself at the safe we’d come into the vault through…
And on the run, you can think about eternal things, like changing your magazine.
Whistling past Two like a swift, I stuck myself into the crawlway, scraped up my shoulders, my knees and my palms, and squirmed my way back like a snake, into the little room – back to the start of the treasure hunt. Two shut the safe from the inside and puffed along after me, down the narrow crawlway. The very narrow one. I scraped everything I had! But that’s trivia!!!
The grazes would heal in two weeks. No traces would remain. Whereas by the time the police worked out what was what, by the time they got the right safe open – a good deal of time would pass, no less than two minutes. And a hundred and twenty seconds of handicap, my friends, is a very, very great deal!
We got back to the little room where we’d begun the enterprise, caught our breath, hawked and spat, and silently, inwardly, gave thanks to the old track worker. The old bugger had loved to reminisce about a certain storeroom they’d dug out for a switchboard, then changed their minds about using and boarded up. There, as he recalled, he used to feel up the young workwomen after their shift. Thanks to the old codger for the fact that four grown lads were now wiping their brows after a big job. Although… it seemed a little early to be handing out gratitude.
I rummaged under the bench and took a mine out of the bag. Set the fuse timer for a hundred and fifteen seconds, released the safety and – forward!
Hey lads! Where are you? Where are you going! Wait!!!
For them, a ragged, nervous weighted run along the sleepers was like a quick dash out for beer. Not a trace of them left!
And each of them had three sacks on his shoulders, a hundred kilos in total.
Ugh! I hoisted my two sacks and set off too.
Wrung out like a marathon runner, I ran along the slippery sleepers, fell, scraped the skin off my legs and arms bloody again, but didn’t drop the load. I drove myself stubbornly forward, not forgetting, however, to look back. What if they’d got the safe open faster than expected, and the police were on our heels? Then I’d have to shoot again, and after that it’s however the chips fall: either life, or shot while resisting arrest.
We got lucky. Everything went fine.
Spurred on by the rumble of a distant blast wave, we burst out into the station and tore across the deserted platform like a storm, a mudslide, a hurricane. Then we flew up the steps and – time three sixteen, precise as a pharmacy! – jumped into the back of a blue Volkswagen Transporter van that had only just pulled up at the station exit. The driver stamped the accelerator into the floor and didn’t let it up until exactly three fifty-five, all the way to Lübeck. There the four of us, safe-emptiers, laughed merrily and pulled off our masks. I skipped that last action.
For running in the dark over broken ground, firing short bursts and a one-round bout, I received seventy thousand marks and a stern dressing-down for having shown my face. That was a great unpleasantness, I agree. But where had a guard come from in the vault? There was no post there! Not a living soul was supposed to appear there at night!
Damn it!
Instead of driving around in a brand-new Celica, I had to clear off to Morocco and rot in a provincial hotel in the middle of witless natives and cheap prostitutes. Rot while I waited for the wave of interest to subside – interest in the snub-nosed raider’s mug, captured by a television camera and circulated to every police station.