Dance Of Death

Smitty was squinting at his BlackBerry. "Okay, set to initialize the final test?"

Nobody replied.

"I'll take that as a yes." He turned back to his console, tapped briefly on the keyboard. "Astor Hall," he intoned, "final fail-safe test of the security upgrade, January 28, 8:28 p.m."

Jeez, he always makes it sound like it's Mission Control in here, Enderby thought. He glanced over at Jim Choi, who once again rolled his eyes.

"Larry, what's the status of the legacy system?" Smitty asked.

"Looks good."

"Jim, give me an update on the laser grid in the Astor Hall."

A brief tapping of keys. "Ready to go," Choi said.

"Then let's run the low-level diagnostics."

There was a brief silence as both Smitty and Choi ran independent tests. Enderby, whose job was to monitor the behavior of the preexisting security system as the updated laser security system was brought online, stared at his monitor. This was probably the fortieth hall they'd converted to the new system. And for each conversion, there were a hundred steps to perform: on-site analysis, system architecture, coding, installation… He could be making three times his salary in some slick start-up in Palo Alto, with stock options to boot. And he probably wouldn't stumble over any bodies in the middle of the night, either.

Smitty looked up from his keyboard. "Jim, what's your checksum?"

"It's 780E4F3 hex."

"I concur. Let's proceed." Smitty picked up a phone, dialed.

Enderby watched without interest. He knew Smitty was calling the boys in the Pit, giving them a heads-up that the switchover was about to happen, just a reminder in case some newbie went apeshit when he saw the hiccup on their screens. It was always the same. The old system would be disabled; there would be a ninety-second period in which the new system was initialized and the "handshake" performed; then a final twenty-minute test of the new system would follow, to ensure the installation was correct and that it had been brought online successfully. Twenty minutes in which they had nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs. Then, at last, the new system would become fully operational and the old system put in backup mode. He fetched a huge yawn. As he did so, his stomach grumbled unhappily.

"Central Security?" Smitty was saying into the phone. "Who is this, Carlos? Hey, it's Walt Smith in ATC. We're activating the lasers in the Astor Hall. We'll be initializing in about five minutes. Right. I'll call back once the handshake's complete."

He put the phone down, then looked back at Enderby. "Hey, Larry," he said gently.

"What?"

"Just how much time did Choi there say he needed to consume that trawler-load of shrimp?"

"I told you," Choi piped up. "Thirty minutes."

Smitty leaned forward, resting his arm on the console. "Tell you what. If we can get this initialization done and the twenty-minute test phase started, I'll give you fifteen. Including the time it'll take us to get there and back again."

Enderby sat up. "On the level?"

Smitty nodded.

Choi gri

"Good. Then let's see how fast we can get through this checklist." And Smitty turned back to his terminal.

FIFTY-TWO

Hugo Menzies inserted his key into the staff elevator and rode it from the second to the fifth floor. Exiting the elevator, he strolled meditatively down the long, polished corridor. The curatorial offices lay on either side: old oaken doors with panels of frosted glass, each bearing the name of a curator in old-fashioned gold-leaf lettering, even those most recently appointed. Menzies smiled, already feeling a nostalgia for the old pile and its quaint traditions.

He paused before his own office door, opened it, and entered just long enough to pick up the canvas satchel that accompanied him almost everywhere. Then he closed and locked the door and continued his stroll to the farthest end of the hall, where there was an unmarked door. He unlocked it, stepped into the stairwell beyond, descended two flights, and exited into a dark, deserted hall-the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians. It was one of the oldest halls in the museum, a true gem of late-nineteenth-century museology, and it smelled of old cedar and smoke. Transformation masks, totem poles, slate bowls gleamed in the dark recesses. Menzies paused to inhale the air with delight. Then he walked briskly through the deserted hall and several others, finally arriving at a large metal door bearing the legend The Astor Hall of Diamonds.

His eye dwelled lovingly on the door in all its brushed-steel splendor, taking special note of the two video cameras on either side, staring down at him like beady black eyes-except, as he knew, they were currently not functioning. He smiled again, then removed a large round watch from his vest pocket and gazed at it. Although in shape it resembled a pocket watch, it was, in fact, a modern digital stopwatch. On its face, numbers were counting down with enormous rapidity, at an accuracy to the thousandths of a second.

The watch was reading time signals from the same satellite that the museum's security system used.

He waited until the watch signaled a certain point in time with a soft beep. Menzies immediately put the watch away, stepped rapidly to the door, placed his ear against it, and then quickly swiped a magnetic card through the reader. The door did not open; instead, a small eye-level window shot open, revealing a retinal optical sca

Menzies bowed his head, popped two soft contact lenses out from his eyes and into a waiting plastic container, then stepped up to the optical reader. A quick bar of light passed across his face; there was a moment's stillness, and then a soft click a

With a rapidity of movement marvelous for his advanced age, Menzies knelt, opened his satchel, and got to work. First he reached up and, with a sharp tug, removed his leonine thatch of white hair, shoved the wig into the satchel, then reached into his mouth and pulled out five molded rubber cheek and chin pieces. This act alone caused an astonishing transformation in the shape and apparent age of his face. Another pair of quick tugs took off the bushy eyebrows and a few small blemishes, liver spots, a mole.

Next, still kneeling, the man removed more than a dozen small dental mirrors from the satchel, mounted on bizarre little stands in a variety of odd shapes and sizes, all made of beautifully hand-machined brass. Next came an array of black objects wired together, a stack of thin Mylar sheets, several small cutting tools, exotic-looking metal instruments, and a flat of sticky pads, each the size and shape of a lentil.

When these had been arranged on the floor with military precision, the man waited, still crouching, unmoving, stopwatch again in his hands. He raised his head once to look at the hall in front of him. It was dark-utterly dark-without even the slightest gleam a

The watch gave another soft beep, and the man exploded into movement. With the speed of a ferret, he darted about the room, placing the dental mirrors in precisely fixed and calibrated locations, each mirror turned to the precise angle.