You don't become a super thief overnight. And that wasn't how eight year old Xavier Li intended to hurt the people who were so powerful they supposedly couldn't be hurt. The truth was that skinny Xavier had no idea how he would get back at these Rothschilds and their allies. He certainly didn't have plans of becoming a super thief.

He had never stolen anything before his father went missing, not a piece of candy, not another kid's pencil, nothing. Not one thing. So claiming that Red X was born to be a super thief is lying. He didn't have any apparent destiny as a thief, never mind a super thief. He wanted to get these Rothschilds. He wasn't sure how he would do it but he didn't immediately jump to the idea of being a thief.

For one thing, little Xavier had adopted his father's quiet but intense sort of pride in everything about his family. The idea of being desperately covetous of something someone else owned was inconceivable to him. Sure other people had things that he and Pop and his mom didn't but so what? His regard for his father was so great that any jewels or money or possession that his father hadn't sought was at least slightly illegitimate in his eyes.

You have a 10 carat diamond? So what? You have a five million dollar mansion? So what?

X's father never seemed to care about these things. He had his beautiful wife and adoring son. Few and modest possessions were fine. X followed his lead. But when his father went missing and was then officially presumed dead the whole world and its order was called into question in Xavier's eyes. The top was ripped off the machine of the whole system and X saw corrupt people living impossibly rich lives while leaving just enough for others to get by. What had his father gotten for his honor and living modestly?

Death.

Betrayal, X suspected, and death.

Now 9 years old, skinny Xavier burned with resentment just looking for a target. His precarious obedience at school, sitting there and listening to fool teachers all day long was only possible because of the order given to the world and acceptance of the system imparted by his father. His father had told him to be a good boy and not get in any trouble at school. He would complain about something at school and Pop would put a hand on X's shoulder and give him an understanding look and X would feel all the tension of the stupidity of a school day go away. Pop understood. Even though Pop never varied from his instructions to X to be a good boy and not get in any trouble, knowing and actually feeling in Pop's pat of his shoulder that Pop understood made it all okay. His father justified the whole system to X. But now the system had let his father die or at least didn't seem to have any great interest in searching for him or figuring out what had happened to him. And there was nothing that would ever justify it again. X regarded the whole system as a bitter fraud.

The part of the system with which he came into contact was Eunos Primary School and his teachers. He saw them all quite differently now. Before they had all been a bit tiresome, and not especially worthy of his respect. Now, he regarded them with undisguised scorn. In conversations in the staff room they remarked about the furious looks the strikingly handsome Li boy now gave them. They knew he was having a rough time, having lost his father but still. Why become so hostile?

He'd been, not quite a favorite of the teachers before but such a strikingly handsome boy and such an intelligent one, he wasn't far from it. Now they came to dread seeing the Li boy. But as unfriendly as he was toward them, the Li boy didn't act out directly against them. There had been an American boy in the class ahead of him, who had done that, who had simply refused to sit down when told or be quiet or fold his hands on his desk. There had been a brief and swift two week period of his getting progressively greater punishments, even when the obedience demanded had no practical value, and then he was expelled and that was it.

No. That would be foolish. Xavier Li was not going to invite punishment. He was going to show them to be the fools they were, them and their fake system. So, it began that, in every class, Xavier would sit at his desk just like all the other boys and girls but with a fierce expression of focus. At the slightest mistake, his hand would shoot up.

"Yes, Xavier?"

"Teacher, that formula is wrong. It should be X squared."

"Teacher, the article in that sentence should be 'this' and not 'these' because it refers back to a singular and not a plural."

"Teacher, that happened after the battle of Leipzig in 1813 and not after Waterloo in 1815."

Every error they made was caught by Xavier Li. It got to be an expected thing. A teacher would hear girls snicker with delight and turn with a cringe toward Xavier Li with his hand raised. Damn! What did he catch now?

He was their implacable enemy. What was even more infuriating than his showing their every error to all the other students was that he would also question every moral or ethical teaching they included in any study of a piece of literature or history. He was always careful to do so within the strictures of classroom protocol, raising his hand and standing to speak when called upon but he would then put forth the most bitterly cynical interpretations or alternative views of every maxim they were trying to teach the class.

"Teacher, isn't there an alternative, colloquial version of that he who has the gold makes the rules?"

"Teacher, couldn't one also argue that, in a Sentimental Education, Flaubert is mocking religious piety not saluting it?"

They would have loved to give the Li boy an F in a class, on a paper, on a quiz. Oh, sweet heaven, that would have been a spoonful of ambrosia for one of them to get to flunk Xavier Li. Just giving him a D would have been joy. A C deeply satisfying.

They never even got to give his work a B. He was always the best prepared student in the class. He always turned in his assignments on time. He always knew the answer. At the end of each school year they had a ceremony, attended by most of the parents, giving awards to the top 3 students in each class. Every year, Xavier Li won it in his class. They had to give the highest award to that boy and watch him walk up to accept it to tremendous applause from the other students attending.

The teachers found themselves in the bizarre circumstance of hating that this boy had learned everything he was supposed to learn. But that's where he had forced them to be. There was no way to do anything to him. But he was there, day after day, sniping at them from cover. And he achieved a sort of bad boy popularity that infuriated the teachers. They hated Xavier Li, with one exception. The Physical Education teachers loved him. They would show the boys how to serve a tennis ball or swim freestyle or run hurdles and they knew to have Xavier Li be the first boy to try it. X would watch the PE teacher do it then step forward and casually hit a perfect serve or swim the freestyle with bilateral breathing or run the hurdles without so much as touching one hurdle. The other boys would be befuddled but the fact that X could do it right away let each Phys. Ed teacher believe that it was the other boys' fault not a lack of teaching on his part. After all, he hadn't taught the Li boy any more than he'd taught them.

So, there was one set of teachers who liked X while all the others wished to be rid of him. They would even barter with each other to avoid dealing with him.

"I had him in my english class last semester! Not again! Take him in yours, Mrs. Wong. Please! I'll watch your study hall for you. Please?!"

This was not California. This was Singapore. You didn't flout the system. If you flouted the system you got your ass caned. But this boy somehow seemed to get himself outside of the system when he wanted to be. The teachers could never figure out how this infuriating boy and his mother had gotten the principal to sign a note saying that he could wear his own clothes rather than the school uniform setting him apart from all the other children. He sat there every day in his white dress shirt and black pants attacking them, attacking the school in ways that they couldn't punish and the other children loved it.

He walked through the halls with his friends Hao and Yong beside him greeted by smiles and admiring glances from all the other students. With each passing year at Eunos Primary School the antipathy he had for the staff and that they felt for him became more and more open.

As much as the teachers hated it, all of this made school more bearable for Xavier. He could not have gone on showing respect to these fools, these people happy to be thoughtless cogs in an unjust system. But this was only a small part of what he knew he must do. Starting the night that he and his mother came home from the Geylang precinct station and the talk with Lieutenant Ling, there was one name that was a target for his revenge, that was always somewhere in his thoughts.

Rothschild.

The moment he and his mother stepped in the apartment after dealing with Lieutenant Ling at the Geylang station house, X immediately spent three hours writing down everything he could remember from having seen the file. He might never get to see it again. He had a photographic memory and put it to use. He even made stick figure sketches of all the photographs with brief labels of them such as "Photo 37 - sailor with greek flag on shirt impaled on exposed re-bar and missing left eye" and "Photo 41 - english man in khakis and white shirt with two missing eyeballs and knife into chest bled out on floor of ship's bridge". He wasn't sure he'd ever get to see that file again so he had to make the best record he could. He wiped tears from his cheeks in the darkness afterward when he finally lay down to go to sleep. "I'll get 'em, Pop. I'll get 'em," he whispered.

But the file had been frustratingly incomplete. The first question X had to answer was just whom he would get. Who was this David Rothschild? What did he do? And why was he the target of Pop's investigation? X began an extended program to learn all that he could about this name, about this family. This extra study was helped by the fact that X simply didn't require much sleep. Five hours was always plenty. And four hours was often enough. His mother had some inkling of what he was doing. She'd peek into his room just before going to bed, be it at midnight or 1 a.m. or whenever and almost invariably find Xavier at the computer looking at some writer's hypothesis about the Rothschilds or wide awake atop his bed reading some 100 year old book with yellowed pages and a split binding about wealthy dynastic families of that time. She would say a quiet goodnight and add "Be sensible, Xavier" but she never tried to stop him. His fixation never detracted from his school work and he seemed healthier every day. He kept up his training with Grandpa Li who told her "You should see your reed of a boy Xiu. He's fast and he's much stronger than you might think." One day when he was 11, curious about all the percussive sounds from downstairs. She went down to the basement at her in laws' home as Grandpa Li was training Xavier and was astounded at how her slender son flew through the air and rocked the heavy bag with kicks. Yah! There was no doubt that her beautiful, skinny boy could defeat many, if not most, full grown men. He was so fantastically toned, her little boy, not muscular, but not an ounce of fat on him. Not an ounce. She worried that he was being overworked by Grandpa Li. Or, maybe he wasn't eating enough. But he would wolf down prodigious amounts of food for a boy so slender and keep that same pace of training and practically have a glow of good health about him. She accepted the training.

It came to seem completely natural to X. In fact, thinking back on his childhood before this he realized that he had bounced from one fascination to another always looking for the next thing on which to fixate but needing that thing. He needed a cause, a fixation, what some people would have called a mania. X needed it. He had so much energy. He needed something on which to focus all of it. It wasn't a heightened, exhausting state of things for X. It was natural.

And, because she never tried to curtail his extracurricular studies or activities, Xavier knew he had his mother's implicit backing. And what he found amazed him. Reading everything possible from the internet and old used books he found that the Rothschild family had been universally acknowledged as the richest in the world in the mid 1800's, the richest by far. They controlled european banking with the dominant bank in the capital of every major country. The Rothschilds were so powerful that the matriarch of the family said that if her sons didn't want any particular war to happen then it wouldn't. This was no idle hyperbole. Countries and kings had to come, hat in hand, to the Rothschilds asking for financing, so powerful were they. If they didn't want a country to fight another country they didn't finance its side of the war and that was all there was to it.

But then, over a period of many years, they didn't become poorer. There were no stories of all their gold being stolen or that they had invested all their wealth in some project that didn't come to fruition. No quite the opposite was almost certainly the case. They almost certainly became much, much richer. But somehow they became invisible.

What had happened burst into Xavier's thoughts while over at Yong's apartment watching the american movie, The Usual Suspects. There was a line in it where, almost giving it all away, the non-descript little guy who turned out to be the most vicious killer says, "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist."

Xavier's eyes went wide and me muttered "Yes!". Yong and Hao had given him funny looks but just turned back to the movie. That was the trick the Rothschilds had pulled. Some time in the late 1800's they must have realized that they would be a target if everyone continued to know about them and see what they were doing.

There was a previous example of what could happen to someone in such a seemingly powerful position. Back in the 1300's the Knights Templar were an organization so financially powerful that the King of France came to owe them more money than he could pay back. He came up with a solution. He had them arrested and killed.

So the Rothschilds just . . disappeared. They still existed. But there were always intermediaries bribing parliaments and congresses, buying up whole industries. You could still see the family patriarch in the news every couple years or so in some innocuous announcement about the Rothschilds pulling out of the London gold fix or being in some minor partnership. But there were no stories at all about their wealth. None. Because, if you had more money than anyone in the world, more money than some nations, so much money that you could buy presidents and prime ministers, parliaments and congresses at least as much of them as you needed to buy, if you could do that and get whatever you wanted, you wouldn't want to be seen and acknowledged and have everyone rightly hating you every day and wishing your downfall.

So, how did the devil convince the world that he didn't exist? What was the trick? After months of research late at night, Xavier came to the conclusion that, if you were cleverly sinister, you would hide behind holding companies and shell corporations, trusts and partnerships multiple layers deep. You would hide behind banks. It wasn't the Rothschilds behind the Opium Wars in China. It was the British bank HSBC. The Rothschilds controlled it behind a series of trusts and holding corporations but it was HSBC that was evil.

Some old books said that it was the Rothschilds who'd bought off politicians to create the Federal Reserve in the United States. Banker J.P. Morgan was considered the richest man in the United States at that time and strongly rumored to be behind it but there were books that said he was only a clerk for the Rothschilds. He was only their agent. They directed his actions no less than you might a waiter in a restaurant or a bellhop in a hotel and let fools think that this ugly little Morgan had conceived a great fortune out of nowhere and was deploying it to suit his own predilections. They let this Morgan be the object of hatred while they derived all the benefits from how this clerk of theirs moved their money about the country.

This was clever, thought Xavier, in a macchiavellian sort of way. How else would the Devil disappear? He would buy the press, too, and make sure they didn't say anything about him or anything at all that he didn't want said, wouldn't he? It was easier than a person might think. Many articles talked about how, in the United States, only 6 corporations owned almost all the media. Control them and you control whether or not many people ever hear your name. If anyone else brings up your name you have all your bought and paid for media call that guy a kook, a wingnut, a conspiracy theorist.

The only place you could see or hear the name Rothschild was on the internet. The internet was where Xavier heard about a study by two Swiss professors which showed that a single entity, a single cluster of interlocked corporations and trusts seems to own at least 40% of all international corporations on the planet. And who do you think seemed to be at the center of all those interlocking corporations and trusts?

These were the things that Xavier spent his spare time thinking about in the year or two after his father was officially presumed dead. While other boys and girls in Singapore were concerning themselves with the pop culture phenomenon of the moment, Xavier Li was wondering how to free the world from the domination of this crime syndicate.

They were not just unimaginably rich, these Rothschilds, they owned the big american, british and swiss banks that controlled the international drug trade. They owned the companies at the center of the American military industrial complex. When the american military invaded another country and sorrow came to the families of the residents of that country and sorrow came to the families of the soldiers doing the fighting there were only the joyous sounds of the ringing of cash registers at companies like Brown and Root and Haliburton all owned, through intermediaries, by the Rothschilds.

Was it really such a surprise then that the politician owning side of the Rothschilds' economic colossus seemed to be used to blunder into pointless conflicts that enriched the military industrial complex side of the same organization?

At the same time as X was trying to grasp the enormity of the Rothschilds' empire he was also trying to figure out the details of his father's file. It was like a puzzle with only a handful of a hundred pieces visible. What evidence had his father been chasing after. Why was he on that freighter? What did a few innocuous words in the file mean? What was going on? Why had they felt they had to kill his father? Why had they had 17 guys on that freighter to fight Pop? And what were they trying to stop him from exposing? What had the Rothschilds been up to in Singapore?

X would go over loose words written in the margins of the file and a single name, "Senie" thinking about them over and over and over until it hurt, until he had to rub his temples to soothe himself. And then he would go for a walk. He would take off from the apartment he and his mother shared on Sims Avenue and go in all directions.

Just 88 miles north of the equator, Singapore was steamy hot year round. Until dark, it wasn't realistic to walk any distance in Singapore. X would go for a walk at midnight and, with his springy steps, walk 5 miles or more. He might go west across the Kallang River into downtown, south to the coast, east to the golf courses or north to Sengkang. Most of the island was within his reach and he did this night after night. He became familiar with every street and side street, every building of any sort within miles of where he and his mother lived on Sims Avenue. He developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the streets and terrain of the entire City.

X saw everything and noticed everything. He saw the women outside the houses and apartment building entrances of certain notorious addresses in Geylang. It contained the red light district of Singapore. He never quite knew what to think about these women. Grandpa and Grandma on his mother's side had only caustic things to say about these certain blocks within Geylang. They said it was one reason why they wouldn't live in this part of the island. But mostly X felt kind of sorry for them. He kind of liked them. A couple of them would smile and wave to him as he strode briskly past. They wondered what the hell this pretty boy was doing night after night walking by at a near run. He smiled and waved back.

He had to do something. He couldn't just get to another dead end trying to solve the puzzle that Pop must have at least partly solved and have that energy go nowhere. So he walked and walked and he became much more familiar with his city, with Singapore. It was on one of these walks that he saw what became the basis of his first crime. Of course, X wouldn't have regarded it as a crime at all. From whom was anything stolen? Not from any rightful owner of anything. It would have been impossible to figure out just who was a rightful owner of it, if there had ever been one.

There was no crime, maybe technically at most. In fact, it was quite just. So, he didn't have any sort of crisis of conscience that he had to get past. No tension. No hesitation. He was stealing but it wasn't a crime. There's a difference.

It began after 1 a.m. on a dark night with clouds and no moon and X was northwest of home, at the end of Kallang Way where it came to an intersection with much larger Aljunied Road. He was in the leafy shadows next to the entrance for the Kallang Centre when an unmarked white Hyundai Avante, the same make and model as most of the Singapore police cars, came whipping around the corner with a frantic looking man at the wheel. X recognized the driver instantly. He would know that hated face anywhere.

Ling!

It was Lieutenant Ling! Only not in a police uniform, wearing dirty work clothes, with a full day's growth of beard and looking absolutely frantic, borderline paranoid. He hadn't seen X standing behind a tree and a brick wall but had been scanning nervously all around him as he drove.

X didn't hesitate. He ran after him. That look on his face! X just knew that this terrible man had done something wrong. He didn't know what but he had to find out. He had to! Ten year old X ran as hard as he could. He ran his fastest without letup till his leg muscles burned and his lungs were on fire. He wasn't quite sure what he would do if he caught up to him. He should just observe him but giving his all physically, his thoughts naturally ran a bit to punching him. Oh, how sweet it would be, to run up and punch that coward Ling!

X ran faster than he'd ever run before but still Ling was in a car. Ten year old X was just reaching Genting Lane when he saw Ling's car in the distance take the sharp 90 degree bend of Kallang Way as it turned to the north. Ten year old X ran for all he was worth, but when he got to the corner and bent over in exhaustion, he didn't see anything. At 1 a.m., there were no cars heading north on Kallang at that moment and X felt sure that the car hadn't turned off in the other direction. He would have heard the tires squeal again if Ling had made another fast turn.

X felt angry frustration. Ling had done something wrong! Ling had done something wrong! X was certain of it. Certain! That frantic look on his face wasn't the kind you had when you were searching for someone else the way a cop might look for a crook. It was the look of someone who'd done something wrong and wondered if others were watching him. Did anyone see me?!

X sighed and walked back to the end of Kallang then down Aljunied to Sims all the while trying to imagine what was really going on. It pained him but he couldn't figure it out. He didn't come close to guessing, not until lunch time the next day. Then he knew.

After lunch, X was in the library sitting with his pals Hao and Yong at one of the tables furthest from the entrance. He was skimming that day's copy of The Straits Times, the biggest newspaper in Singapore, when he saw the write up of an arrest. There had been a robbery of a bullion storage facility on Chai Chee Lane. The article said that the cops had caught all the guys but one and had recovered 100 of 150 bars of platinum. The article said they were confident that they'd recover the rest of them. The bars weighed one hundred troy ounces each. With the price of platinum at a little over 1,400 Singapore dollars an ounce that meant each of the bars was worth 140,000 Singapore dollars.

X's eyes went wide. He slapped the table and let out a half shouted "Yes!".

Eyes around the library went to him. The librarian gave him a stare with her index finger crossing her lips. Shhhh!

X nodded and went over the article again, now laughing at the idea that they'd recover the missing platinum bars. No they wouldn't! He threw his head back and laughed out loud. Yong looked at him like he was nuts.

X knew they'd never find those bars. Not officially, anyway! And he knew why not. And now he knew why he lost sight of Ling's car, too! Ling hadn't gone around the corner. He'd turned into the self storage facility right before the bend of the road. Ling had the rest of the stolen platinum! Ling had it! X was sure of it. Ling had moved it to the self storage place.

He told Hao and Yong about it. They questioned him a bit but believed him. Yong shook his head. "You and your crazy late night walks."

"This is the guy!" whispered X enthusiastically to his buddies while glancing to make sure no teachers were nearby and no one was listening to them. "This is the guy I told you about! The guy who talked to me and my mom! The guy who told us to our faces that the cops wouldn't go after certain people. To our fucking faces!" He finished in a growl of a whisper, grabbing Hao's shoulder hard.

"Ow. Are you sure you're not just putting it all on this guy because you hate him so much?" asked Hao.

"That's not it, man. Look . . . "

X went over it all again. The article in the paper. Ling's appearance. Where he went.

"So . . what do you want to do?" asked Yong, fearfully.

X snickered at the obviousness of it. "We're gonna take the bullion from Ling."

Yong sighed with a slow shake of his head. "Dude. Teachers already tell me I shouldn't hang out with you. Did you know that?" he said and then adopted a stereotypical uncool teacher's voice, "Mr. Guo why do you associate with that Li boy. He's trouble," he said before going back to his normal voice. "Trouble, X. Do you have any idea how fucking crazy you have to be to be the kid with the best grades in class and for the teachers to say you're trouble? And here you are . . . !"

Hao looked X in the eyes and nodded. "I'm in."

X grinned and looked at Yong who sighed in defeat. "Fine, I'm in, too, then," said Yong, "But in what?"

"Look," whispered X more softly. "That platinum supposedly belonged to JP Morgan and I've told you what complete fucking crooks those guys are. They've been caught being crooks in every single market where they operate."

Yong rolled his eyes. X and his 'thieves robbing the whole world' rant again.

"-well, that bunch of crooks got robbed by some acknowledged crooks who got robbed by Ling and maybe some other cops, who're a bunch of corrupt bums. So we're three levels deep in crooks here, right? Is it still thievery when you steal from a thief? How 'bout when you steal from a thief who stole from thieves who stole from thieves? When you can't even trace the goods back to an honest owner? I say no. And it's even less when you're stealing from a thief who stole from thieves who stole from thieves. There's no original, innocent party here."

Hao nodded his agreement with this. He and X looked at Yong. Yong nodded.

"He's got it at the StorHub self storage place on the bend of Kallang Way, the yellow and brick building."

"So, how do we get it?" asked Hao, intrigued.

X leaned in and outlined his plan to his pals. "I . . think I know how. But I've got to got there right after school. See me at my room tonight. If I'm right, here's what we'll do . . ."

X went through it all. At the end of it, several layers of operation, Yong tilted his head to the side looking at X. "You just thought that up now?"

X nodded. "It's obvious."

The first step was after school that day. X waved bye to Hao and Yong and ran, with his books under his arm from Eunos Primary school to the shaded side of Kallang Way. Even thought it was still the heat of day in steamy Singapore, he ran. He had to get there right away. He slowed to a walk a block away and with a couple paper towels he wiped the sweat off his face and walked calmly into the entrance of the StorHub facility and marched straight to the caretaker's office and stepped inside where he was met by a blast of cold, air conditioning.

A bored, fat man behind the counter glanced up once then went back to staring at his phone. X furiously scanned the interior. On the wall facing the man were two screens showing live security camera footage. X quickly realized that the two cameras must be positioned at the two back corners of the property. On the counter in front of the fat man was a clipboard with several sheets of paper. There were times listed in the left most column then a number in the next column then a name taking up each line on the sheet from there to the right end of the sheet. Yes!

X grabbed a pen and started to write the time on the sheet while committing to memory everything on it.

"Hey, that's only for unit owners," the fat man limply objected. "Do you own?"

"Oh," chirped X. "I didn't realize. I was just signing in because I'm visiting," said X while signing "Lee Chin".

"That ain't how it works, kid," said the fat man reluctantly rousing himself from his chair and waddling over to the counter opposite slender X. "That sheet's for owners to check in when they visit. We keep records. Only owners go in and potential customers I wave in. You visit, you sign in. That way if anything happens, we got a record of who was here."

X nodded. "Well, my . . my mom and dad are . . divorcing." He dropped his eyes. "My mom and I are going to live in a smaller apartment and we need some space for some of our stuff. My mom sent me to scout for a place."

"Movin' to a real rabbit hutch, huh kid?"

X gave an ashamed nod. "What are the options for size of units and what are the monthly and yearly costs of them?"

The man recited sizes and prices of units in a tone that betrayed unenthusiastic memorization and complete disinterest in whether or not the boy and his mother signed up.

X asked for a brochure and the fat man pointed to a display on the counter. X then asked if he could take a look around the property.

The man sighed. "It's fucking hot out there, kid. Just . . . just take a walk, out that door," he pointed to a second door on the same side of the office as where X had entered only on the other side of the gate that blocked cars from going in or out. "You got five minutes or I call the cops on you and I'll have 'em cane your skinny ass."

X nodded. He palmed the pen off the counter and took it outside with him, immediately writing on the brochure in the stifling heat.

Sept. 19 1:17 a.m. Chen Wing Yan. Unit 237.

X walked briskly around the place noting the position of two cameras, fences, the gate and unit 237. This would be the one where Ling had the platinum bars. Today was the 29th and it had been about a quarter after 1 when Ling had screeched around the corner from Aljunied. The sign in before that had been just after 9 p.m on the 28th. The one after that just before 7 a.m. on the 29th. So, that had to be the one. But it didn't say "Ling".

This only perplexed X for a moment. Of course not. Was he gonna keep stolen goods in his real name? He's a cop. He can get fake ID. Especially if he's bent.

X didn't stop in front of unit 237. He walked past it casually noting the type of lock on its roll up metal door. Yes! He exulted. He knew he could beat that one. He smiled as he spun part way around to take in that whole part of the facility that included unit 237. He went back to the office and put the pen back on the counter, apologizing for having it. The fat guy just grunted. Yeah, whatever.

X left the property and walked around the block twice, looking at every property that abutted the storage place, the fences, an alley, the driveways and every possible means of approach or escape. He committed it all to memory in great detail.

That night after dinner, Hao and Yong showed up at X's apartment. Mrs. Li thought of it as just another visit of X's pals. She let them in with the usual smile. Xavier's friends were so adorable, Hao with his big ears and Yong with his little pot belly. She patted both their heads as usual when they walked by.

They filtered in through the apartment to X's room laden with books as usual. But this time was different. As soon as they closed the door, X waved them over to where he sat on his bed with a map spread out. He was calm but intense, focused and quietly certain of what he was telling them. Though Hao and, especially, Yong were uncertain about this, X won them over and after ten minutes they found themselves believing as well, that they, three 10 year olds, would take stolen bullion from a police lieutenant. It seemed so reasonable the way X explained it. Why not?

The very next evening was part 1 of the plan. There were two stationary cameras filming the site, each covering the other and most of the property. Their coverage overlapped and together they were constantly filming the entire site. They were located at the two back corners of the property and both were just inside a stockade wood fence topped by a series of points or spikes.

At 10:59, X sat with his back against the fence, his feet technically on the abutting property, his back on the self storage property. He listened closely. He heard a distant ship's horn in the harbor. There was the indistinct thrum of traffic on still busy streets a few blocks away. And then there was the sound of skateboard wheels on a sidewalk and two boys shouting and laughing. The sound came closer and then there was more shouting between the boys.

X grabbed the top of the six foot fence with one hand, jumped and in one smooth motion pulled himself up atop the fence so that he had one foot on the fence running across the back line of the property to the other corner and one foot atop the fence that ran to the front of the property. He leaned over, deftly keeping his balance, and with Yong's camera, took a picture from just a centimeter above the camera at that corner of the property. Then, just as smoothly as he was up, he was down. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw Yong looking at him and made a note to reproach Yong for not being completely invested in playing his role of idiot skater boy.

X ran across the stacked construction materials and debris in the storage yard that was the lot behind the self storage place. As he did, he was listening for Hao and Yong. There were a couple bits of skateboard sound but not much nor much yelling. But, at 11:05, just as planned, he heard Hao and Yong's skateboards and then the two of them laughing and yelling anew out in front of the self storage place. That was his cue. As before, X jumped atop the six foot fence, straddling the security camera and then taking a picture with Yong's camera from just barely above the security camera. He jumped down and ran out to Kallang Way. From a shadowed area across the street he yelled to Hao and Yong who by now were being yelled at by the fat guy from the office doorway. "Go do that somewhere else you little losers!"

"Yeah, have another doughnut, fatty!" shouted Hao as he and Yong skateboarded across Kallang Way to the shadows where X was. All three ran a ways down toward Aljunied and then Hao turned to X. "Got the pictures?"

X nodded.

The next part of the plan was preparation and had three parts. The first was to have pictures made and mount them on thick card stock then create something with which to attach them to the cameras. X had those two pictures enlarged to 11 by 17 then mounted. He glued the middle of a wire coat hanger to the back of both and extended the ends so that they could be wrapped around the cameras.

Then X took a pair of scissors and cut an aluminum soda can in half. He took one half, cut a vertical slit one half inch long and then cut around the circumference of the can so that he had a ribbon of aluminum one half inch wide.

The last part was to figure out transportation. If everything went right, X would have 50 platinum bars each weighing 100 ounces, a total of 350 pounds or so. But the solution was obvious. They'd already used it. Skateboards. They just needed to work out a few details in that and where they'd keep the bars. X had a meeting with Hao and Yong where they went over everything.

Then they went over it again.

Then they went over it again.

Hao and, especially, Yong were exasperated with X's demands to fine tune and critique and fine tune again every part of what they were going to do. For his part, X found the sense of a mission galvanizing. It made him appreciate even more how stupidly pointless most of the school day was. Why couldn't school be run so that he could be alive in the moment like this in school?! He squinted a moment thinking of school with white hot anger before going back to their preparations.

"Tomorrow", he told his pals as they were getting ready to leave.

"Really, miyou?" asked Hao. X nodded.

Yong took a deep inhale. "Think about it. We're 10 years old and tomorrow we'll . . " X patted his shoulder. He didn't want Yong getting nervous about it. He was more confident about Hao.

"Don't let him get scared!" he whispered into one of Hao's big ears as he slipped out of X's room behind Yong.

The job went so easy that Yong never go nervous at all. It all went just as X had planned. Hao and Yong made just enough noise out front to get the fat caretaker's attention. X attached the pictures to each camera so that the tv's in the office would show nothing but the same harmless picture. Then, X actually ran across the top of the fence. It impressed the hell out of Hao and Yong. He slid the strip of aluminum into the lock and pulled it free in just a couple seconds. It only took X a minute to find the bars inside unit 237 and another minute later they were flying over the fence to the adjacent property were Hao and Yong had set up a discarded mattress so that most of the bars landed on it. Then X locked the unit back up and jumped the fence to stand right beside Hao and Yong. He worked back to each of the cameras, removing the still pictures and joined his pals in divvying up the bars.

An hour later, there they were on the short cliff at the coast just west of the beach south of Geylang. They'd skateboarded there from the self storage facility. They'd stayed in the shadows so that no nice guy cops drove up to them and asked what they were doing and did they need a ride home. They had the bars in the pockets of the construction worker vests they wore under their clothes. Part way there, Yong and to a lesser degree Hao had balked at all the weight they were carrying. Even though they just had to stand up straight. The pitch of the roads was all downhill toward the coast; it was still a lot of weight. X sighed and took a couple of each of their bars. Finally, they got to the coast. They counted the bars.

Fifty.

All three giggled thinking of how much money it was. X reiterated their pact. Not a word of any of this on pain of death. He put his hand out. Yong and Hao put theirs over his. They vowed again.

X brought out the black mesh bags. He had five similar black mesh bags. He put in all the bars but one and then put that full bag in the second and that in the third etc. It didn't leave much shiny platinum visible. But X had swum off this cliff and he knew about all the rocks armoring the coast here. He pulled off all his clothes then threw the bag into the water just off the shore and jumped as far beyond that as he could.

Hao and Yong threw their light sticks into the water and this definitely helped. X had burst into the water fifteen feet out from the shore. The bag with the bars had gone in about five feet off the shore. X found it and wedged it into a gap between some boulders. Then he put a much smaller rock over it. Lastly, he looked for the zebra rock. He had to pick up a couple light sticks to find it. There was a small boulder with distinctive black and white stripes that X had seen before. With some difficulty he rolled the zebra rock along the water's edge till it marked where the bars were. Then he climbed up the cliff to where Hao and Yong were and put his clothes back on.

As they started to roll away from there, Yong had muttered, "I can't believe we got away with it. Seven million!"

Hao glanced at the bar in X's hand and gave a carefree laugh.

X only smirked.