Meaner Things (18 page)

We buzzed back inside and I chose a position past my box and further into the vault where I could get a good look at exactly what he was doing.

“Will it be difficult?” I said.

“Not at all. I installed all these boxes years ago. I could take them apart and put them back together again blindfolded.”

“They’ve lasted well,” I said.

“Well enough,” he replied. “Though I’ve upgraded some of them, of course.”

“Really? How does that work?”

He gave me a look, as if deciding how much to say. “It’s like this. The boxes are perfectly secure, you need have no worries about that. But naturally there have been a few design improvements over the years since I put these ones in.”

“Design improvements? What like?”

“It’s a bit technical.”

I really wanted this information and thought about pressing him harder, then decided against it. I daren’t be too nosey or he might simply clam up.

He opened the fancy toolbox and took out a small, powerful-looking drill. “I sometimes have to do this when tenants forget their combination,” he said.

“Doesn’t that ruin it?” I replied, feigning alarm.

He plugged the drill into the wall. “Only way to open a box other than use the lock is to drill through the door,” he replied. “Yeah, it ruins it, but I’ll put in a nice shiny new one.”

“Does it take long?” I looked at my watch as if in a hurry.

“Not long,” he replied, grinning for the first time, “Just a couple of hours.”

*

He was exaggerating, but not by much. About ninety minutes later he was done and the door of my box came off. I stepped forward and removed a small cloth bag with heavy, roundish contents that jiggled about a bit. They were child’s miniature marbles, but Davenport would assume they were diamonds. I placed the bag very carefully into my briefcase.

“Thanks,” I said, putting plenty of affable relief into my voice. “You’ve just saved my business. It was vital I get those today.”

“I’ll put a new one on now,” he replied. He took a new door out of his toolbox, pulled off its clear plastic wrapping and handed it to me.

“Take a look,” he said. “Remember what I was saying about upgrading? See the inner faceplate here?” He pointed at the inside of the door. “It covers the brass deadbolt and the guts of the lock. The one on your old door was thin grey plastic. This new one is hardened steel. Makes the lock mechanism so much sturdier overall.”

“Nice,” I replied, peering at it closely. “Installed many of these, have you?”

“I do the tenants’ boxes as opportunity arises. The ones over there are all old style.” He nodded towards the Zheng side.

“Too time-consuming, I guess?”

He shrugged. “They say it would be too disruptive. Expensive too, of course.” He turned to my gaping box and began to attach the new door. I glanced at my watch. It was coming up to six thirty.

It didn’t take him long to complete the job and by six forty-five he was done.

“Just one more thing to do,” he said. He removed the inner faceplate with a screwdriver and loosened something behind the dials.

“Choose your new three-character combination now, please.”

“Sure,” I replied, and picked what I’d used before, namely E-M-A.

He tightened the mechanism and replaced the faceplate.

“This one should last a lifetime,” he said, handing me a new key.

I picked up the old door from the floor. “Mind if I keep this as a souvenir?”

“It’s wrecked after all that drilling, but go ahead,” he replied. “It’s no use to me.” He began packing up his tools.

“Thank you very, very much indeed, Mr. Davenport. You’ve been an absolute Godsend.” This time I didn’t have to inject any false sincerity.

17.

BREAKTHROUGH

“Come inside,” Charlie said. He’d called me as soon as I’d left the Zheng Building for the day and insisted I come over. I’d wanted to know why, but he wouldn’t tell me.

He led me down his back hall to a door I’d walked past but never been through.

“I’ve something in my bedroom I’d like you to see,” he said, and opened the door.

I walked inside and immediately wished that humans had the ability to close up their nostrils and switch off their sense of smell. I scanned around for a window to open and saw one at the other end of the room, its sill chock-full of little coloured bottles and what looked like a collection of ornamental owls. To get there I’d have to tread my way across a floor strewn with shoes, soiled underwear, Styrofoam cups, scraps of paper, rolls of tape, and various other detritus.

“What am I supposed to be seeing?” I asked.

Charlie pushed past me and went over to the far wall, and pointed to something high above his equally chaotic desk. There, in the corner where the walls met the ceiling, was a small white electronic box, its green eye winking benignly.

“Recognise it?”

I nodded. “A motion detector. It’s the same make as the one in the vault, isn’t it?”

He grinned. “That’s right. I’ve been testing ways to get past it.”

“That must be why you’ve been so baggy-eyed lately. Lack of sleep due to failure to get into your bedroom.”

Charlie ignored my feeble quip and sat in his desk chair, wheeling around in it from side to side like a kid. “Guess what?” he said, giving the chair another spin.

“What?”

“I’ve beaten it. It took a while but I figured it out. Simple really.”

“OK. Tell me how.”

“Better still, I’ll show you.” He reached up and turned something on. The motion detector started to peep and its green eye turned ruby red.

“Quick, we have fifteen seconds to get out of here,” he said, pushing me out the door and closing it behind us. “Let me explain,” he began. “The motion detector they use in the vault, same as the one in here, is actually two devices not one.”

“It’s got both infrared and radar, right? I’ve read up on it.”

Charlie nodded. “Good work, but you’re not a geek, Mike, and never will be. It takes an expert like me to figure out this stuff.” I could almost see his little chest puffing out with pride.

“Here’s how it works,” he continued. “This will be a bit technical for you, but try to keep up.”

I tried to look like the eager student. Maybe he’d get to the point quicker that way.

He actually began counting out points on his fingers. “Firstly, there’s the passive infrared technology, which is called PIR in the trade. It gets triggered by sudden changes in the amount of infrared heat in the vault. Because temperatures can alter frequently in a confined space, such as when lights are turned on and off, it’s calibrated to detect changes in the range emitted by the human body.”

“So it ignores minor heat changes?”

“That’s right. Which means it’s theoretically possible to trick these devices by moving extremely slowly into and out of the vault.”

“I know; I watched the MythBusters video on YouTube. Not much use for our purposes though, is it?”

“None at all. And, secondly, there’s the other part of it, the Doppler radar. It actually emits microwaves and maps the room based on the pattern that reflects off the walls, door, safe deposit boxes, and so forth. When someone moves through the room, and disrupts that pattern, the alarm goes off.”

“Sounds pretty daunting. In fact, it sounds foolproof.”

“It did to me too, until I figured out the fatal flaw.”

“Which is?”

He leaned forward and raised an index finger. “Both parts have to register an intruder
simultaneously
.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s like this: these devices are great, but they give a lot of false alarms. Can you imagine false alarms in the vault during the night? They’d have the police round and have to open up the vault, file reports, probably pay a fine too.”

“Go on.”

“There were so many false alarms that businesses stopped using them. The way the manufacturers have fixed the problem, while still giving the additional security protection, is by synchronising the two parts of the device. That means that both the infrared sensor
and
the microwave detector have to register significant changes at the same time. Only then will the alarm go off.”

The light of hope was dawning in my mind. “Which means that we only have to neutralise one part in order to neutralise both.”

“Correct.”

“Charlie, you’re a genius.”

“Not at all mate, it’s right there in the instruction manual. I only read it last, of course.”

“Of course.” Now that I knew about the failsafe, it made a lot of sense. Papers falling off the table wouldn’t trigger the alarm because they wouldn’t alter the quantity of infrared light in the vault. Similarly, if somehow the light came on, whilst it would raise the temperature it wouldn’t interfere with the microwave pattern, so the alarm wouldn’t go off then either. But a human intruder would change both, and set off the alarm.

“That’s good work, Charlie. Go to the top of the class. Now, just one more thing – how do we actually neutralise it?”

Charlie rubbed his hands. “This is the best part. As you say, walking in slow motion is out, too risky by far. That’s where my invention comes in.” He grabbed my elbow and pulled me down the hallway, stopping at a narrow closet. I watched as he rummaged around inside, expecting him to produce some impressive piece of electronic wizardry. Instead, he handed me a long plastic stick.

“What am I supposed to do with this broom handle? Spear the alarm?”

He gave me a disappointed look. “I thought you were keeping up mentally. Let me explain. This isn’t a broom handle, it’s an MDMD. A motion detector masking device.”

I burst out laughing. “You’re kidding me, right?”

He snorted in disgust, grabbed the broom handle and marched down the hall back to his bedroom. Without waiting for me, he flung the door open and marched right up to the motion detector on the far wall. It was still winking its red light. As I watched, Charlie raised the broom handle and extended its length telescopically from the middle, until it reached the motion detector at the very top of the wall. On the top there was what looked like a large rectangular Styrofoam box, open at the end. Charlie placed this over the motion detector and adjusted the telescopic handle some more until it was tightly wedged between the floor and ceiling.

The motion detector was now completely concealed, and it hadn’t gone off. Charlie swung around in triumph.

“Voila!”

I gave him an appreciative round of applause. “OK, now explain to me what you’ve just done.”

“Hah!” he crowed, grinning from ear to ear, “I knew you’d be baffled. It’s all incredibly simple really.”

“Hey, no more spinning this out. Tell me what you’ve just done or I’ll strangle you on the spot.”

Charlie shook his head slowly. He knew he had me. “Now, now, show some patience. Let’s go and make some coffee first.”

I sighed. “Sure, as long as I don’t have to drink it.”

*

“You cheated.”

Charlie shrugged. “A little bit, I guess. But the look on your face was worth it.”

I drained my glass of water. We were sitting in the kitchen and the potential of what Charlie had just shown me was buzzing in my brain. I thought I’d figured out at least part of it.

“So, let me guess: you had already blocked out the infrared rays, right?”

He nodded. “You got it. The PIR part of the detector is easy to block. There are tons of things infrared can’t penetrate, glass for example. But that doesn’t help us much. You can’t install a sheet of glass over it. We need something more practical that you can take with you into the vault during the daytime when the alarm’s turned off.”

“And you found out what that is?”

“Yup. Liquid glass. Or, to be more precise, hairspray.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. We just need to obscure the lens. A quick puff of hairspray does that brilliantly. I did the one in the bedroom twice, letting it dry the first time. It creates an opaque film over the lens that blocks the infrared. Vaseline works too, but it’s more obvious; someone might notice it.”

“And hairspray is easier to apply.”

“Exactly. You carry a can in your briefcase. When the vault’s empty you direct the can at the motion detector. Squirt, squirt and the job’s done. Once it dries, which only takes a few seconds, it’s virtually impossible to notice, as you’ve just found out. Repeat the next day and we’re good to go.”

“That’s brilliant, Charlie.”

He put down his cracked mug and looked sheepish. “It’s not bad, eh? I have to admit it wouldn’t work on the newer detectors though. They’re programmed to sense masking attempts. But fortunately, like much else, the Zheng Building has an old model.”

I smiled to myself, remembering the museum warehouse all those years ago. Ageing buildings seemed to be my forte. “Now, what about the broom handle? It deals with the other half of the mechanism, the microwave sensor, right?”

“Right. With the heat detector masked, the device is safe to approach whilst activated. But we still need to knock it out completely. After all, we’ll need to be in there quite a while. So, I came up with Styrofoam masking panels.”

“Which act like a shield?”

Again he nodded. “The problem was fitting them around the motion detector. We daren’t risk them falling off. So I designed my device, an extendable pole with the Styrofoam box at the top end and a holding foot at the bottom.”

I went over to the sink, refilled my glass with tap water and raised it in a toast. “Charlie, you’re a genius. There’s just one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“The other alarm, the light detector. How do we get past it?”

*

I pushed open the day gate and looked up at the vault ceiling. Along with everything else of interest to us, I’d filmed the light detector with the man purse camera, but since then I hadn’t given much thought to it. I could barely recall where it was located and now noted that it was bang in the centre of the ceiling, a long distance away from the motion detector at the far end of the room.

I stood beneath it and gave it a good long look. It didn’t look like much at all, just a small rectangular box about half the length of a pen, with what looked like two tiny lenses at one end. These, if I remembered Charlie’s explanation correctly, would contain photo-resistors, high resistance semiconductors connected to a circuit board. When light waves came into contact with the semiconductors it triggered the device. Charlie had described it as an atomic reaction, which had made me visualise a giant mushroom-shaped explosion. The point was that the light waves created an electrical current which set off the alarm. It was the same technology used in cameras to set off an automatic flash in low-light conditions.

I replayed the vault-closing scenario in my mind and recalled that Jeff D. switched out the lights in the vault and in the foyer in front of the vault before leaving. That meant on the night of the heist we would need to turn out the foyer lights before opening the vault door – assuming we could figure out how to open the door at all. Operating in total darkness for several hours was not a viable option; we would need light to see what we were doing.

According to Charlie there were no fancy electronic ways to subvert the light detector without risking inadvertently setting it off. I had to find a simpler method, one guaranteed to work but that wouldn’t draw any attention to the device.

I reached up and found that I could touch the detector with my fingertips. They had fitted it to a low part of the ceiling in the middle of the room, above which there seemed to be a concrete beam, probably designed to protect the vault against building collapse in the event of seismic disturbance. Vancouver, after all, was in an earthquake zone. That the detector was reachable by hand wouldn’t have been evident in the videos I’d taken for Charlie, so he wouldn’t have been able to factor this into his calculations.

The discovery gave me an idea: perhaps all I needed to do was cover the two tiny lenses with electrical tape. The problem with this scheme was, that in order to guarantee the device was neutralised, I’d have to use a lot of tape. I’d need to tape it completely around, preferably several times over, to exclude any possibility of light rays getting through. Even if I could get a roll in the same shade of grey as the device itself, such obvious taping would be far too noticeable if it was in place for even a short time while the vault was open. It would only take one tenant, or worse still Jeff D. himself, to look up and raise the alarm. No; any taping would need to be done during the heist itself.

Satisfied I’d discovered as much as I could, I took out my cell phone and snapped several close-ups of the light detector. Charlie would soon be conducting another bedroom experiment.