NATIONAL TREASURE by Barry Faulkner (the best electronic book reader .txt) 📕

     CHAPTER 9

The Amsterdam Club was busy, very busy – I liked that, crowds give good cover. The queue of punters waiting to get in past the two very large doorman was a good fifty metres long and spilling from the pavement into the road. I edged near to the front of the queue on the opposite side of the road and waited for Gold to start the show.

I didn’t have to wait long; a verbal altercation near the front of the queue quickly escalated to pushing and shoving as Gold pushed herself in. I watched the doormen taking a look and then exchanging words and laughter. That changed when a perfectly placed right uppercut from Gold laid out a young man on the pavement and all hell broke loose. The doormen were quick to skip down the club steps two at a time and push into the crowd. I was just as quick to skip up the steps, through the doors and into the club. Others in the queue had the same idea and quickly followed; that was good, the more the better. Any inside security hadn’t a chance of stopping them and the many others who had the same idea behind them.

Inside the entrance to the club a short wide foyer area led to wide stairs going down to the dance area from where the incessant thud, thud, thud of dance beats could be heard. On the left before the stairs was a door marked ‘numai personalul’, staff only. I tried it and it opened. Once inside I closed it behind me and took stock of my bearings. I was in a corridor lit by fluorescent strips, with doors on both sides. I worked quickly along; the first two were an empty office and a storeroom, and the third door opened into a cloakroom, presumably for staff clothes as there were club logo T-shirts on a table and coats on wall hangers. I took off my borrowed goon overcoat and hung it up, taking my balaclava from my pocket and putting it on with my night vision glasses fastened tight around my forehead, ready to be flicked down to my eyes if needed. I took the PPK from the overcoat and slipped it into my right-hand thigh pocket, then I continued my room search. Next was a room of boxes – no time to look inside – followed by a room of old promotional material, stand-up adverts for events and a toilet. At the end of the corridor another door opened onto stairs going up and down; I chose up. I remembered the plan, the next floor would be the Casino; there was nobody on the stairs, so presumably it was shut.I crept up and I was right; double glass doors showed the Casino empty, lights off.

Onto the next floor which should be more promising; this would be the storerooms on the building plan. A swing door led off the stairs into a corridor; a pair of lift doors on the left seemed to fit the storerooms scenario – crates of beer were heavy to carry up and down stairs, so the lift must be for getting that. The LED indicator showed the lift to be on the bottom floor; must be the actual club room. I checked the rooms along the corridor; yes, all stores, with beer barrels, crates and boxes of bottled spirits and bar snacks.

A noise from the lift shaft caught my attention. The LED was now one above the bottom; the lift was on its way up, and this floor was next. I slipped quickly into the first room and stood to the side of the closed door. Anyone opening it wouldn’t see me until they stepped right into the room, by which time they’d be out cold. I hoped the lift would carry on up to the living accommodation floors. It didn’t.

I heard a metallic scraping as the lift doors opened and then voices; two people, both male. They gave my door a miss and went into the next room. I heard crates being pulled from that room along the corridor and into the lift – quite a few, business in the club must be good. At last the lift doors clanged shut and it was gone. I peeked out of the room; all clear, the lift LED showed at the bottom again. I carried on with the rooms. The last one was locked – none of the others had been locked. I hadn’t time to play around with lock picks – anyway, I hadn’t got a pair with me – and it looked a common or garden cheap Yale one lever cylinder lock that wouldn’t offer much resistance, I planted my right boot dead centre on the lock with as much force as I could give. There was a loud splintering of wood and the door swung open, taking half the jamb with it. I moved quickly inside and knelt in the darkness, my gun poised in my right hand as my left flicked down my night vision glasses.

It was a big room, bigger than the others, with the back half-partitioned off halfway to the ceiling with a door-sized opening. Something moved with a slight noise behind the partition. I moved quickly to the wall and crept silently along until I reached the partition, and laying sideways on the floor slid towards the opening; if there was anybody inside they wouldn’t expect me to be lowdown, and if armed would be aiming chest-high towards the opening. Slowly I looked around the opening; in the darkness my night visions picked out a figure huddled on the floor in the far corner.

‘Janie?’ I whispered across the floor.

‘Yes,’ came back a trembling answer.

‘Is there anybody in there with you?’

‘No.’

I stood and walked in, checking around just in case. She was