R. M. Danelev, Esquire. - A Story of Teamwork and Looking Over Your Shoulder The Whole Time...

"Damn, Randi. What's your problem with this?"

She talked to herself when she was working a job. And when she was working
on anything else, for that matter. It was a bad habit she'd picked up in
school.

Professors talk to themselves a lot, when they're standing up at the board,
trying to pound a little knowledge into thick skulls.

"Fine." She pushed the hand-drawn maps away, covered them over with the
hand-written notes.

It didn't last. "Right, try it again. The guards work nights only.
During the day they monitor the video and sound systems, so they don't scare
the high end custom..." But she couldn't sustain the thoughtstream. There was
a path there, a line that would let a motivated crew in and out, but she
just couldn't see it.

"What would Gene say about it?"

Her mentor, first partner, trainer. He'd mostly kept himself to himself. If
Randi talked, Gene zipped his lip.

Unless there was reason to talk. "Randi, you have to work the thing with your
hands. Pictures, drawings, all that's great. But when you have to open the
lock..."

"You have to get out the tools and go to work," she finished. "But how in
the hell do you work an alarm system?" she asked the memory.

"You build one yourself," memory replied.

Which meant warehouse space. Plywood, lumber, tools. Wiring and sensors.
Online ordering and delivery?

For ninety percent of it. She pulled an empty notebook free of the pile,
a pen from the cup on the drafting table, and wrote out her list.

In the end, even renting the space she could do online. Deposit and three
months rent from a high dollar gift card, and she could pick up the keys at
the property manager's office. Which was a convenient hour away from the
rental space. Nice of them to map out their properties on the website like
that. "Oh, honey, we've got a drive-by security service for all our units.
You don't have to worry about a thing."

"I'm just asking for my insurance company. They've got their list, I'm sure
you get that all the time."

"You know it. The agent had his auditors here just last month. Here's your
keys, Ms. Lace. Just let me know if you have any questions."

"Ms. Lace" left to check out how closely the warehouse space matched the
internet floor plan. But she waited until she was home again to take the
wig and false glasses off. "Practice every chance you get" was another
of Gene's lessons. "Don't let bad habits sneak in."

Now she had a business address. Getting deliveries meant she had to set up
a little office space in the front. And arrange for some help. "Hey, Marlan.
I'm setting up a model for a test run. Got some time on your hands?"

"Just me, or you need the others?"

"Just you. Let's keep it small for now."

He was a big dude, wide and tall and looking like a lot of bad road. She
thought about the tattoos on his arms. "Marlan, how'd you like to own a
business? It means you have to dress the part."

He chuckled, a bass rumble that overwhelmed the phone's speaker. "How'd I
pick the short straw?"

But he did show up in engineer's dress uniform, khakis and plain white
button-down shirt. He'd even dug up a set of steel-toed boots. "My cousin
works the ship channel, and he's always complaining about OSHA. I figure
I'd best look like I've been through the same rigmarole."

The few people who stuck their heads into the warehouse bought his
self-description. "I'm an engineer, and I needed a place to build mock-ups
for some designs. That's my sister-in-law, Miranda, have you met her yet?"

The electronics and building materials were all delivered in a couple of
weeks, and then it was down to business. "Layout and through-lines. I want
to know what the all-seeing, all-knowing computers think about it."

"The microphones and lighting are going to be off."

"That's what the drop ceilings are for," Randi pointed out.

Marlan didn't think much of that, "but at least we don't have to drill out
the walls to run the cables."

It took the two of them a couple more weeks to get everything set up, and
a laptop hooked to the ad-hoc security systems.

"I used standard off the shelf parts. The only difference between this and
the stuff their security company uses is lifetime and quality."

"How did you get the name of their security company?" he asked.

She laughed. "Would you believe they advertise it? The salesman must have
cut a deal, you know, lower rates for a few stickers and a link on the
website."

"And the security company was nice enough to give you a quote?"

"All the bells and whistles, yes sir. Standard packages for just about
everything, and they know that insurance companies are reading the quote,
so they make sure and tell you who makes their equipment. I'm just glad I
used a burner address and phone number, I'm sure they're calling every
day or so looking to see if I'm ready to sign a contract."

When they were powered up, and the video cameras and the microphones were
tuned so they could watch the occasional moth fly through, then it was time
to call in the others. Yala and Squeak, Sami and Dave.

"I'm still surprised you all answer the phone," Marlan said the first night
they could all get together. "It's not like you haven't got better things
to do than listen to this nitwit."

Randi flipped him the bird, and then called out her questions. "Get past
the front door camera. Walk through the front hall without the mikes picking
you up. Get through the back door without the guards cluing in." Like that.

Take it apart, piece by piece. Put it back together, if you can. It overlaps,
that's the way they design security.

But your team overlaps, too. And better, and faster given the magic of
wireless tethered phones. Randi realized what she'd been missing, sitting
there with pen in hand and her maps and notes.

The team. She wasn't directing them, any more than Duke directed his orchestra.
They were directing, but she was playing along, cuing and cluing and
signaling when and how loud.

Sami and Squeaks ended up working together, unusual. Big tall woman with
a basketball player's grace, pairing off with the little bitty man with
the bass voice. Sami was usually more comfortable working alone.

Yala and David worked together occasionally, so that wasn't odd. But how
were they going to break the back door, she'd blow away in a strong
wind, and he had the standard computer geek's physique? Ah, of course, tech
and tools, she'd 'acquired' one of the electronic door breaks from somewhere,
and he had a pull cart with pony torch and battery powered saws.

"Marlan, where do you fit into this dance?"

"Backup, Randi, but I don't think they're gonna need it. Besides, someone
needs to drive the van."

"You don't think I'll have time to jump in from the back?"

"Too little room in the timing. Not your fault, really, but we'll need to
be able to move from front door to back door while you're still talking
to them."

And that's the way it went down, after their rehearsals had spotted the flaw
in the way the security was put together. Squeaks was the one who realized
why. "The manager wants to be able to get back to the safes without setting
the alarms off. Somebody wants to be able to work in the back after hours,
but still get in and out without worrying about the cops showing up."

"Or an escape path, in case they need to get out?"

The little man considered it. "Yeah, I could see that. Someone's in the
back, working on the designs or whatever, and the others lock up without
knowing you're there. How do you get out, if you can't get good cell service
'cause you're locked in the vault?"

"How many know about it, do you think?" Randi asked. She worried that they'd
end up with an eyewitness.

"Half dozen? All the jewelers, the ones that work with the stones every day,
plus the owner and her every day manager. Anybody who has to lock up regularly."

Most of the stones the storefront held were generic, but high end stuff.
Collectible jewelry aimed at the custom buyer with a lot more than two months
salary in mind. But most of that work was still bought from the big names
in New York and Paris, and sold on for a markup.

The good stuff, the stone cutting and polishing, there were two master jewelers
working for the store, and they worked in a special part of the vault that
was set up with their tables and tools.

"What's the latest you've seen anyone leave, Randi?" Marlan asked.

"Midnight, twelve thirty." She didn't have to tell him about the time she'd
spent pouring over video surveillance, insuring that no one else was working
nights.

Computers certainly made it a lot easier, you didn't have to sit in a van
watching through binoculars anymore. You just have to set up the right
collection of pocket cameras, and you didn't even have to pick up the cameras,
a good wireless router took care of the feed and she could watch the videos
on fast-forward over coffee.

Still a tedious job, but a lot easier than it used to be.

All of them were old enough to remember how it was done in 'ye olde days',
though. There was a collective feeling of both relief and shudder at the
thought of ever going back to that.

Marlan ticked off on his fingers. "After about eight, there's three people,
then. The owner or her manager, a clerk running the front end, and one of
the jewelers. And the only way you'd know the jeweler was there?"

"Was if you knew how the store worked." Sami jumped in. "Which means that
they're going to look at the store staff first, if we pull this off."

"I'm beginning to think that's part of why we were hired," Randi said. "If
this goes according to plan, their world is going to be turned upside down."

"Jesus, Randi. Whoever hired us, don't ever get on their bad side, 'k? I
don't want to know what they'd do to us."

Every one of them started worrying, then. Even more than usual, that is.

Two weeks later, Dave was the one who finally called it. Randi had the van
pulled into the warehouse now, and she and Marlan ran their end of rehearsal
completely from the wireless feed, while the rest did their dance.

"All right, guys. We've done this several days in a row now without tripping
the stuff we know about. If we keep going this way, all we're gonna manage
is to get complacent." Dave was drenched, nerves making him sweat, on top
of the fact that the warehouse didn't have much of an a/c.

That, and the fourth time running through the breaking and entering that
night.

"Besides, you've been using this dummy code for the safe. When are you going
to give us the real thing?"

It was the one part of the job she couldn't control. The safe used a lock
with a digital control panel, an odd little upgrade. The keypad itself looked
normal, but the guts of the lock held a full computer system. The whole
point was to generate a two-factor security system, enter your own pin number,
and then a random code that the computer sent to a pre-programmed cell phone number.

If your phone number matched the pin number, you got a text, entered the
random number generated just for you, and you're stardust, you're golden.

Miss the number three times, though, and not only were you locked out, but
the cops were on their way. Enough room for the occasional finger fatigue or
brain fart, but not enough to crack the system in real time.

"I don't have it. And unless you want to break into and out of this place
as many nights as we have to for you to crack through that lock's wireless
access point?"

Dave shook his head, emphatically. "No way in hell. It'd take me a month,
two hours at a time like that."

Sami was the one to ask the next obvious question. "What are we taking,
Randi? Given the amount of time and effort involved here, we're not just
after a bag full of diamonds."

"We're not withdrawing this time. We're making a deposit."

Marlan barked his laughter, the rest of them just shook their heads. They'd
all worked with Randi for a long time, so they were used to the oddball sorts of
jobs they got hired to do.

And, all of them knew better than to ask why. Randi insisted, from long
practice, that they never know what the point of the job was. All they needed
to know was what and where. How was their business, and she only ever asked
for something when she absolutely had to. In this case, a phone added to
the access list for the computer lock.

But what, that they had to know. "We're adding a set of diamonds to their
collection. They'll need to be scattered one by one through the rough cut
stones, no more than one or two in a given drawer or bag, so they don't twig
to the difference unless they do a full weight inventory. Even then, the
stones are light enough and few enough they should chalk it up to an accident
of labels."

"Fakes?"

"Nah, they're real. And I stopped right there when she wanted to explain how
neat her plan is. I think we can all guess that they've figured out some way
to track the stones, but I don't know and don't want to know how."

Marlan snorted at that. "This may be one time you could break your rule,
Randi. We've been paid with rough cut stones before, it'd be nice to know
how to work around their trick, just in case it matters down the road."

She nodded, but didn't answer because the phone she'd asked to be listed on
the computer lock's access list buzzed. Just once, a message coming in.

Randi picked it up and swiped the little icon. She read the numbers out loud,
"1071 428 9000."

She passed the phone over to Dave. He checked the numbers, nodded, and
gave the thumbs up. "It matches the standard setup for the lock."

"Sami, Squeaks? Yala?" The other three nodded, then got up to start packing
their tools into the van. "Marlan?"

"That leaves the stones, Randi. Where do we go to get those?"

She smiled, an anxious tension making the corners of her mouth wrinkle to
belie the expression. "Now, that's a goddamned good question."

One that had an equally good answer. When the team assembled the next
day, just at sunset since they had taken to the night shift, Randi found
that a heavy cardboard envelope from FedEx had been slipped through their
mail slot.

She wasn't surprised that the return address pointed to a particularly
remote region of the upcountry of Idaho, and that there were half a dozen
rough cut diamonds set into a foam cutout and sealed inside a plastic
sleeve.

She handed the package over to Yala, their resident expert. She settled
into the desk, and pulled out a loupe and pocket flashlight. There were just
half a dozen stones in the folder; she gave each a detailed lookover.

"Call 'em two and a half carats each, they'll polish up to about a half carat
finished. Good quality, good color, all nice and symmetric and well chosen. The
sort of collection you'd pick on purpose to set off a better large stone,
especially a nice big sapphire given their grades. None of them are etched.
Want me to put 'em under a scope?" She put the stones back into their foam set, one by one. None of them had turned on any more lights, so they all watched the glitter of the rough cut diamonds against the pink and brown of Yala's hands, almost like a mime show.

Randi looked at Marlan, who shrugged in turn. "You know what I think about
it. I guess the real question is, did they tell you to leave them alone?
No warnings about the dark deeds that will befall you if you do?"

"No, they didn't. Which worries me. Why are we being paid good money to
break into a custom jeweler's, just to give them the kind of diamonds they
could pick up tomorrow?" She waited until the faces of her team, indistinct
in the shadows, convinced her.

"Do it, Yala. Give them the treatment you would if that's the way we were
being paid. Meantime, the rest of us have work to do."

Yala nodded, then went to her car to get her other tools.

The others settled into their routine; Yala working on other things didn't
much slow them down. They were used to each other, and taking up the slack
was necessary to prepare for anyway.

Randi essentially forgot what Yala was up to in the midst of the run. Until
Yala got tired of yelling for her, and came up to the middle of the practice
run with a laser pointer and one of the diamonds. She didn't bother to tell
anyone what she was doing, she simply held the diamond over the laser, held
them up in the air and pushed the button.

Most of the beam simply scattered, bits of green light speckling the
false ceiling tiles. The rough cut diamond didn't have the clarity to allow
the beam easy passage.

But in the middle of the speckled lights on the ceiling, there was a definite
pattern. A three dimensional, layered something, almost an image that the
eye could identify, almost noise, but with that indefinite order from random
noise that called out "made with purpose and forethought".

"It's a hologram," Yala said. "Etched one atom at a time, there's a tiny little
message buried in the middle of each one of the stones that can only be
seen with a laser."

"They're all different?" Randi asked.

"Yeah," Yala confirmed. "I can't tell you what the pattern means, it's not
a qr code or barcode. It's three d, for one thing. But in addition to that,
it's not anything standard that I can identify right away."

Dave perked up at that. "Want me to work on it?"

Randi didn't have to look to her team for this one. She'd already made the
decision to learn what was going on to protect them; now it was
in for a penny in for a pound. "Record them, in as high a resolution as you
can. Video, whatever combination you can put together that lets you
reproduce them at will. We've got a couple days to play with, but I have
a feeling that won't be enough, even if we had a supercomputer for you to
play with."

Dave nodded. "Sami, I'm gonna have to pick your brain, and Yala's." The three
of them walked up to the front of the warehouse to set to work, while
Randi and the remainder set about cleaning up the tools.

"Don't worry about the job, boss. We've got it covered. And the distraction
will help get our minds clear ahead of it." Squeaks sounded almost like he
was trying to convince himself, a bass rumble that threw Randi off because
it sounded more like he was talking to himself and she could barely understand
him.

But her nerves had passed around the group, like a cold in the family. "I'm
mostly worried about making sure we don't get caught in the blowback from
this. We're not the targets, I hope. But that don't mean we're clear of
the possibilities."

Squeaks giggled, at odds with his earlier comment. "I've always wanted to
retire to a small, quiet corner of the world."

"I think we're going to have to work for it, Squeaks. Whoever's involved in
this, I'll be goddamned if I'm letting them peg us into their little cribbage
game."

The computer and electronics experts of the group worked on getting whatever
code was etched into the interior of the diamonds mapped out. The other
members of the group cleaned up the site, and then sat down to twiddle their
thumbs.

Which was a lot more satisfying than it used to be, as well. Any cell phone
had all the entertainment they could want. Marlan and Squeaks eventually gave
up on that and dealt themselves a game of gin. Randi just alternated surfing
the web and pacing.

Eventually, Dave wandered over to let them know what they'd been able to
put together. "We can't read the diffraction pattern directly, that kind
of equipment is pretty easy to get, but it takes a while. It's standard lab
gear, but by the time we'd get it delivered our due date would have passed."

"Meaning we won't have any way to record it?" Randi asked.

"Not what I said. I just won't be able to record the pattern directly from
the laser. But we will be able to get high def video, from all angles. Yala
and Sami already have the equipment here, they've both got cameras with the
video resolution we need. So long as we can sync the recordings, I'll be
able to reproduce it at the same level as we can see it."

Marlan objected, then. "What if there's something about the way the thing's
etched that you can't see with the naked eye?"

"Then we won't get it. But we don't have time to do it the right way, guys.
This is the best we can do overnight."

Randi cussed, Marlan cussed, even Dave and Yala and Sami hated it, but they
were right. They basically had the rest of the night to play with the stones,
and then they had to move on the break-in.

Given the way the client had set the whole thing up, none of them
wanted to find out what would happen if they busted their schedule.

They spent the rest of the evening recording the holograms from each of the
stones, in as many angles and as much notation as they could. Somewhere around the time the sun came up, Dave threw in the towel, and even Sami admitted that there was nothing else she could do with them.

"Whatever the images are code for, we'll have to deal with them later. For
now, we've got a job to deliver on. Let's make sure we've got everything
we need packed up, get a good night's sleep, and then tomorrow night we're
doing this thing. One way or another, we're done with the diamonds." Randi
wasn't naive to the unknowables that they were taking on, but she knew
they had to start performing the job they were being paid for.

The rest, well. If the person hiring them tried to set them up, she'd have
to return the favor. Her team were perfectly capable of extending their talents
to the challenge. It wouldn't be the first time.

She was the last one to leave. The van and its tools were all locked away.
Each of them worked with their partner to make sure everything needed was
in place. The warehouse itself was emptied out, except for the old desk, a
surplus from the local school district. The lease was through the end of
the month, the keys they'd drop in the mail tomorrow on the way out the
door.

She locked up on the way out, and unlocked on the way in the next night.
The team came in behind her, in a staggered pattern of around ten minutes
between. Sure, it took more than an hour for everyone to get in, but they'd
all discovered the utility of doing so, since it at least gave the possibility
for stragglers to escape if something went wrong.

Depending on the circumstances, they'd have arranged easy signals. Hotel rooms, light patterns. Office suites, a door stop. But at the warehouse, they'd yet to settle on a workable signal set. And once they were all there, loaded
up and leaving the place behind, there was no point to worrying about it.

"Marlan," Randi said. "No, Squeaks. We need to think about how we never quite
put together a workable set of signals for that place. It means that we're
vulnerable when we end up in a similar workup down the road. When you get the chance, let's see if you can figure out something that might work well."

"I think I can figure that out. And, of course, I've got all these backtalkers
who'll be happy to tell me what I do wrong."

"Of course, but somehow it always works out well, anyway."

Marlan drove; he'd volunteered for the gig to begin with, just to shortcut
the inevitable arguments from everyone else. Besides, he didn't mind the
wait. It gave him a chance to practice his observation.

Randi's tension amped up, from the moment they left the warehouse, until
the moment the rest of her team walked out of the van door. Then the tension
leveled off, anxiety giving energy to the doing of the job.

Sami, Yala, and Squeaks fanned out into the parking lot, giving Dave space
to get the door open. They'd mapped out the view of the cameras, knew that
the camera focused only on the door. The company monitoring had insisted,
given the amount of foot traffic that passed by until the mall the store
was in closed.

But the company didn't monitor video in real time; they only took the recordings from onsite if they were called in by the actual alarm. The team wore uniforms consistent with the mall security. Except for the masks they pulled down over their faces.

Dave phished the lock, and the rest of the crew slid through into the
store beyond.

Randi watched a pair of laptops. The first held a mosaic of videos, lapel
cameras from each of the team giving her a bug's eye view of their actions.

The second was a blank screen waiting... for Sami to make her way, one pace
at a time, through the path they'd mapped out. When she got to the safe, she
also found the media computer holding the data from the camera feed. When
Dave moved in behind her, she moved to work on the safe, while he looped
a custom emf hook over the network cable feeding into the back of the
security computer.

Which lit up the other computer screen in the van. Now Randi got a view
from the store's video feed. A half-dozen screens; she reached out to go
to work. Since Dave didn't have enough room to hack the thing in real time,
not with the delicate footwork required to get to the safe, Randi took
over here. With the physical connection established, all she really had to
do was rewind the feed, just so. And pause, like such.

And wait. The three team members had the safe open. Inside was a simple
workman's space, just large enough for a half-size drafting table with
magnifiers and lights, a couple of carefully mounted microscopes, and
then a floor to ceiling collection of dial-locked drawers.

"Shit," Randi muttered.

"No worries," Yala whispered back. "The jewelers use those for bulk storage.
There's a set of drawers underneath the table for their working stones."
She pulled the drawers open, carefully, one at a time, until she found
a set of working stones that matched up.

"They're just piled in, I think."

"Either way," Randi said. "Just as long as there's room, and it doesn't look
too obvious."

Sami shrugged, bouncing the camera around. "Not my workbench, so I can't say. What do you think, Yala?"

"We're good." She used a stainless rod, just a little thicker than a pencil
lead, to push the stones around, then she poured the bag containing the
unmarked stones out into the cup. She gave the stones a stir, randomizing
the arrangement as best she could, then put the rod away and waved at
the door. "After you?"

Sami and Dave didn't wait, they proceeded for the exits, Dave stopping to
pull the emf loop from the network line. "Randi, is that script ready?"

"Got it, count it down." She had a script loaded at the command prompt.

"3...2...1" Dave counted, as soon as Yala passed him. Randi hit the return
key, the script started its own countdown, and Dave pulled the emf loop.

"Get going Dave, everybody. You officially have three minutes." She'd timed
their progress in, then added a minute to give them a margin for error.

The team hauled it to where Squeaks waited. He pushed the door open, and
with thirty seconds to spare they climbed into the van.

The script in the store's computer finished its countdown, modified the time
stamp and video feed by inserting just the right amount of empty feed, and
then restarted its recording.

Then it wiped itself, and so far as the computer was concerned, nothing
happened that evening that looked remotely out of the ordinary.

The rest of the night went according to the plan, as well. Drop off split
up head for the hills and we'll see ya when we see ya. They had ways to
correspond if necessary, and when the money was on the table again. But
otherwise, there was no need for any of them to know more than they had to,
once everyone got out of the van and walked away.

Randi headed for the beach. Oh, not a tropical getaway. It's sort of a dead
giveaway, when you hop a plane for Fiji.

Computers can build patterns, after all. And the setups the big dogs use
have all the time in the world to detect you.

No, Randi preferred low key. Head to the Gulf Coast, no more than a couple
hours drive and she was feet in the sand, beer in the cooler, and a fishing
pole to fool with when she got bored. She thought this time she'd spend the
time getting more familiar with kite fishing.

That, or pick up a simple drone and try it that way.

The cell phone she carried didn't have any connection to anything. Not to the
job, certainly, and she'd made sure long ago that family ties were cut and
left to drift. One of the best parts of her job was that when she was off,
it was a good long few months, with lots of time to herself.

Before she went back home to become R. Levdane, Professor of Engineering, and left her extracurricular activities for the next semester break. Inevitably,
she knew, there would be an anonymous request passed along, word of mouth
being the best advertising, and a corresponding set of deposits in a series
of escrow accounts.

And then it would be time to put the team together again, and joust again
in the grey world.