One more bit, livelier this time, to move things forward, for the readers if not quite for the heroes ;)
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They listened to the remaining three bidders' meetings while Theo was making himself at home at the Raffles, Bruce still poking half-heartedly at the keyboard. The meetings followed the same script as her own and the Syrian's, with "Brian" checking the surety before going through the database demo, the bidders grumbling about not getting full hands-on access, typing their bids, and briefly discussing subsequent logistics before they, too, left for the damned mall. In Bruce's view, one of the men was ISIS, either Yemeni or Qatari, and another was definitely Boko Haram; it is not her area of expertise anyhow.
"Either way we're better off concentrating on Mitchum," she sums up in the ensuing lull.
"There isn't a lot of Mitchum to concentrate on. I'd bet he'll just go back to the Raffles and lie low, probably all the way until Monday. And if he needs to contact anyone, paranoid as he's been so far, he'll probably slip away to some crowded place before switching on his phone, so we may not be able to tag his contacts at all."
"There's still his office. If we find a good way in, we can bug it to the max."
"It's already bugged to the max, which is the problem," Bruce reminds her, somewhat needlessly, as she saw firsthand what her companions glimpsed through her minicam. Both the reception and the meeting room sported the 360-degree ceiling blobs – Mitchum's office probably had the same adornment – and likely as not, there were enough microphones to rival a presidential press conference. Not to mention the door alarm that she saw her host disable, away from her line of sight, in a side cabinet, his manipulations suspiciously looking like an eye scan in addition to a key sequence. A fingerprint scan would be possible to fool; an eye scan, not so. Still, they have their toys, too.
"The EMP would take care of all that. We just need a practical way in from the outside. That way even if the guards see the local outage, they'll come up to the locked door, stand around for a minute, and so long as we're quiet, they'll have no choice but to go back down."
"The EMP does permanent damage to the circuits," Bruce points out. "As soon as Mitchum sees that his equipment was fried, and he'll see it the moment he is inside with the alarm out of order, he'll start panicking. He may even go for a bug sweep."
"So long as the probability of that is less than a hundred percent, it's worth a try. Besides, we may find useful stuff in the office. I'm sure there'll be a safe – "
"No."
"There's no way he won't have one, if only just in case…"
"That's not what I meant."
She knows it is not what he meant, but she also knows that it is a battle she can win.
"With the EMP, it makes no difference risk-wise if you go alone or if I go with you. But time-wise, it will make a world of difference in how long it will take to crack a safe."
"The big difference is, I could probably fly up to the tower and fly out once I'm done, and you can't."
Theo slips into the room at this interesting juncture, and as soon as he hears the words fly up, he knows which direction the discussion is going, his look betraying growing disbelief. Bruce sees him but goes on undeterred.
"All I need is to tell Lucius to get me some memory cloth, he can fly it over in the hypersonic in three hours' time – "
"Are there any NATO bases in Singapore?" she prompts, pretty sure that there aren't.
"No," Bruce scowls. "There's one in the Philippines, it'll be a short flight from there to here, I could still have it before morning…"
While Selina is looking for a suitable objection, Theo gets ahead of her.
"And you'll be joining Batman bin Suparman in jail before mid-day. Surely they'll find an applicable charge or two. What happened to the whole keeping a low profile thing? There's no guarantee you'll pull it off unnoticed…"
Bruce rolls his eyes. "OK, you've got a better – " He stops himself. "What were you going to say about the zip line when the second bidder came in?"
"Ah." Theo looks pleased at the change of direction. "I was just thinking that instead of a horizontal zip line that would leave you hanging in mid-air, we could use a vertical zip line that would…"
"Leave me hanging in mid-air for even longer. It'll take forever to rappel up that tower."
"But you'll have a much better chance of getting a good grapple hold against the roof ledge, with gravity working in your favour. Besides, I was thinking we could rig up a kind of winch lift…"
Selina likes the idea already. By sidestepping the flying scenario, it also makes her participation in the outing a much more realistic prospect. "Absolutely. All we need is a mid-sized motor..."
"Which will still weigh about half a ton," Bruce cuts in.
"Actually, I was thinking we could use the elevator…" Theo offers, to Bruce's instant consternation and Selina's bafflement. "…as a makeshift winch. If we attach the cable end securely to the elevator roof, I can – "
Bruce does not let him finish, a spark of excitement in his eyes. "…Pull us up and let us down by sending the elevator in the opposite direction by remote hookup. Perfect."
Selina starts nodding emphatically as soon as she hears the us.
"Precisely," Theo agrees. "The only catch is getting access to the engine room on the roof to tie the cable – "
"I can use our earlier plan for that, the engine malfunction."
"Too risky," Theo counters. "If they decide to check and see the cable coming out of the engine room and hanging off the side of the building, you're screwed."
Bruce chews his lips. "Any other ideas?" His eyes travel from Theo to Selina and back.
"Some sort of repairman is still our best bet," Theo muses.
Selina shakes her head as the idea hits her. "Window cleaner."
"At night?" her companions say, almost at once.
"No. We can pretend we need them cleaned first thing Monday morning. The building's closed tomorrow, so this afternoon will be the best time to set up the cables and harness."
Bruce is not convinced. "Window cleaners usually work in rigs that weigh a couple of tons and take forever to set up, and it's usually programmed months in advance, they normally do it once or maximum twice a year."
"Normally being the operative word," she argues. "We're talking emergency here."
"What sort of emergency window cleaning is there?" Bruce insists, and Selina has to admit that the idea is less plausible than it first seemed. "It's not like we're in Dubai where they have regular sandstorms… What?" he asks, seeing Theo grinning at them.
"A sandstorm would be hard to organise here," he starts mock-pensively. "A shitstorm, on the other hand…"
Both Bruce and Selina give him puzzled looks.
"Would you care to explain?" Bruce prompts.
Theo is too amused to get to the point quickly. "I mean it literally. I was reminded of something you did in your… previous career."
"If you're thinking Lau and Hong Kong, no way. You yourself said that flying around in the cape is too risky, and if you think I'd fly circles around that tower spraying it with crap – "
Somehow, Bruce fails to see the humour in what he is saying, and is momentarily dismayed when both his listeners start shaking with silent laughter. "What?"
"The mental image," Theo manages finally in between laughing fits.
Bruce is unbowed. "We could send up remote-controlled weather balloons, but there need to be at least two dozen. And where are we going to get industrial quantities of – "
"Stop," Selina manages, unable to catch her breath. Her stomach is hurting already.
Theo has recovered to a point where he can speak. "Do you always go for the craziest high-tech solution?"
"It's usually the best," Bruce parries defensively, but by now he is smiling too, the absurdity of his own suggestions having finally hit him.
Theo takes a second to calm down. "No wonder they made you into a comic book hero. As a matter of fact, that's where I saw it, one of the comic books about your early adventures. I can't believe you forgot…"
"I probably forgot because I do not read Batman comic books," Bruce snaps. "And because my early adventures were ten years ago."
Theo gives in. "What I was thinking about was what you did to get out of Arkham Asylum when you summoned the bats – "
"Gotham's full of them," Bruce shoots back. "I've no idea how many bats there might be in Singapore city. Maybe no more than a hundred…"
"I think you need to get some sleep," Theo chides him. "We can finish our planning when your brain wakes up." Selina tries to stop herself from blushing; if Bruce can't think straight for lack of sleep, it is her fault, too.
"OK, just tell me," Bruce begs with a sigh.
"Gulls, not bats."
"How the hell do I know what works as a gull beacon? Bats are attracted to ultrasonic – "
"Go to bed. Right now."
"Stop giving me riddles."
"Fish. Lots of rotting fish, the stinkier the better."
It is Bruce's turn to look at Theo as if he is spewing gibberish. "How the fuck –"
Selina gets the drift, however. "We fake an office delivery. It would fit in perfectly with the window washing story. I've got the cell phone number of the Deloitte executive assistant. So long as you can program a phone to make it look like I'm calling from her number," she waits for Bruce to nod before continuing, "I can call the guards and tell them that Deloitte is hosting an important presentation first thing Monday morning and needs to bring in a new big flat-screen TV to show it on. We find the fish, wrap it in plastic, put it inside a TV box and pay a couple of guys to pretend they're delivering the TV I warned the guards about. We keep an eye out for the gulls, and as soon as we see a few splatters, I call again to say that the delivery men saw the shit on the window and we need to get it off before the event. That way if the guards go upstairs to check they'll see the crap."
"What if they go up to the roof and see the TV box?"
"We leave the TV box, re-sealed, at the Deloitte reception. They won't dare open it to check. All they'll see on the roof, if they go that far, will be rotten fish, whatever the gulls haven't taken yet, and at most the sheet of plastic underneath. And if we see them going out there on the top floor cam, I can always call again and say I'd just found out there was this disgruntled ex-employee who was recently fired and decided to leave his employers a parting gift by messing up their beautiful view."
"There are easier ways to hit back at former employers," Bruce points out.
"But not as picturesque," she argues. "I'm not saying it's a perfect story, but in the absence of alternatives…"
They ponder it for a few seconds before Bruce pronounces the verdict.
"Fine. On one condition." He gives Theo a pointed look. "You go get the fish."
"OK," Theo agrees lightly. "But you find someone to go dump it. Bird feeding is subject to a $500 fine here. You can't show up there until your window washer stint, and I'm enough of a danger to Singapore society already and have no wish to renew my acquaintance with a Singaporean jail."
"Considering the quantity," Selina puts in, "this would probably count as aggravated bird feeding and they'd put you in maximum security."
xxx
Mitchum is still in the office at 1 pm, half an hour after the last bidder left. They cannot postpone their plan any longer, and Selina makes her TV delivery call, surprisingly calmly received, even as Theo is scouring the local fish market for about eighty kilo of stale supplies – as much as will fit in the biggest TV box they can hope to find – and Bruce is looking for the willing workforce.
Both the fish and the delivery men are found by 1:30, and the delivery goes smoothly enough, just minutes after Mitchum leaves the building and jogs awkwardly, constantly turning to check behind his back for anyone following, into the Raffles complex five minutes' walk away. As instructed by Bruce, the delivery men use a clone of the keycard Selina stole, programmed to provide full access, to venture out onto the roof and leave their fragrant offering, even as Bruce manipulates the relevant camera feeds to keep their movements out of sight. They spend the better part of the following hour passing between them the binoculars Bruce had the foresight to buy on his way back to the hotel to watch, with a mix of schoolkid excitement and scientific attention, the swarm of mewling seagulls coalescing above the roof.
By 2:30 pm, the damage is done – and looks nothing short of spectacular on the top two floors, their recently-pristine mirrored glass now covered in long, thick white-and-brown splatters. Selina promptly calls the guards to complain, citing the TV delivery men as her source, and to say, in a frantic breathless voice, that they need the washer there asap to save Deloitte & Touche Singapore from an impending business development fiasco. Obviously the washer cannot come sooner than first thing Monday morning but the company they contacted has kindly agreed to set up the cable and harness this very afternoon. The guards do go upstairs to check and are sufficiently impressed by the exterior redecoration to let grateful Selina have her way so long as Deloitte contract the emergency washer at their own expense. She wonders for a moment about the real Deloitte assistant's reaction on Monday morning, and the guards' bafflement when the exact same request gets relayed to them, before recalling that guards work in shifts and it is unlikely that the Saturday bunch will leave detailed notes for their Monday successors.
The go-ahead is their cue to go shopping for props – or go stealing them, in Selina's case. Of the five window-washing outfits they found online in relative proximity, two looked sufficiently far away from crowds and traffic and sufficiently accessible from a breaking-and-entering point of view, and arriving at the first of the two, she makes quick work of the building back door and primitive alarm system to let herself in and take a workman's uniform from the storage room. It takes slightly longer to find a spare badge, but all in all, she is out and back at the Swissotel, mission accomplished, a quarter of an hour before Bruce shows up with his own set of supplies consisting of a black wig with a thick fringe, horn-rimmed glasses, a roll of industrial adhesive tape, and a big door handle, and half an hour before Theo comes back with his haul, a massive roll of mountaineering rope and a tarpaulin to make the harness. Considering the progress they've made so far this afternoon, it finally looks like their rotten luck is starting to turn.
xxx
"Wo shi lai sheli chuangkou xidi shebei". Selina is guessing that it means something along the lines of I've come to set up the window washing kit, but she wishes she'd remembered to fetch the in-ear translator from her room downstairs. Ever since the thingy saved her life – probably Bruce's too, coming to think of it – back in Prato, she never travels without it. But the scene she and Theo are watching on the laptop screen, showing them an angle close to Bruce's PoV from the mini-camera disguised as a collar snap, is too curious to watch for her to miss any of it. Theo has his own translator, but is reluctant to give it up, a rare case of his curiosity getting the better of chivalry.
One of the guards answers him in Mandarin, and judging by his expression, is happy with a bit of small talk to while away a slow afternoon. His colleague is a somewhat different story: he clearly follows the gist, but is studying Bruce out of a corner of his eye as he is keying up the building visitor badge, not with distrust or suspicion, but with obvious curiosity, trying to place him. It is not often that someone of Western appearance shows up speaking fluent Mandarin; Bruce has further complicated matters by wearing the black fringed wig that gives him a mix of Caucasian features and Asian hair. The badge duly coded, the second guard hands it to Bruce and finally says something. Whatever it is, Bruce's reply hits the right note as the normally dour-faced guards smile at him as they wave him inside without any intention of tagging along, and his companions at the Swissotel breathe a sigh of relief.
"What did he say?" she prompts Theo as Bruce's camera starts zooming in on the elevator doors.
"The guy asked him where he was from, and he said he was born in Hong Kong and has a Chinese grandmother from Harbin. I guess he figured out their accents and picked the place one of them comes from."
Bruce may have his slow moments, but sleepy or not, he still has the wits to get what he wants, most of the time.
xxx
By the time she has made her way into the 43rd floor window – Bruce has cut open the latch with a laser cutter before attaching a handle to the steel frame, which they would take off before taping the frame shut on their way out – she is immediately aware that their luck has taken a fresh turn for the worse. Framed by the green haze of her goggle field of vision, Bruce looks crushed.
She soon sees why: sitting on the desk in front of him is a laptop, clearly not his. The EMP does permanent damage to the circuits, she remembers him say. To the best of her knowledge, the damage is worse for any equipment that is powered up at the time of the pulse, and likewise worse for anything connected to the mains – or even to a long cable, not plugged in but serving as an energy conduit – but something as sensitive as a computer is sure to be fucked up.
She points to the door and raises her eyebrows. Bruce, wearing his own goggles, easily reads her expression as an enquiry about the guards.
"Been and gone already." He is still keeping his voice low, but this is good news that means they can talk, now that Mitchum's surveillance gear is out of commission. "Like you said, they poked around behind the door and went back down. Sounds like I took out the corridor lights outside, but they aren't going to call maintenance until Monday."
She wants to ask if he found anything interesting, but checks herself as it is bound to immediately bring up the matter of the laptop. Judging by Bruce's expression, he is kicking himself hard enough already for her to add to his humiliation by prompting a confession.
Instead he volunteers it, but at least it the anger is directed at Mitchum rather than himself.
"The fucker kept this," he points to the offending item, "inside a desk drawer. I had no way of knowing it was there until after I'd picked the lock. And now it's useless, won't even start up."
Like he said, there was no way of knowing it. But it also means the computer was likely of little value. "He wouldn't have kept it here if there was anything important on it. It's probably empty anyway and he kept all data on an external disk or datacard."
"I know. But now we'll never know for sure. And the desk is empty anyway, the whole office is empty. Don't know why he even bothers locking it unless the laptop did hold something."
"Probably the safe." Stuck in an otherwise empty corner, the safe – a reasonably modern, even if not exactly top-of-the-line Sentry – is a hurdle in itself, but still, a determined burglar or spy would eventually force it open given time and unrestricted access.
Bruce does not look convinced. "Let's hope so," he mutters as he sets out planting his surveillance micro-gadgets and Selina sits down in front of the Sentry to work her magic.
When the door swings smoothly open twenty minutes later, she figures that the afternoon's stroke of luck must have been a fluke, after all. She is staring at an empty safe.
xxx
It is left to Theo to try and cheer them up after the double letdown, but try as he might, they all know the truth: time is running out and they are still not getting anywhere.
"We still have his Raffles room. I took a good look at the surroundings today, you can very easily get in through the balcony." This is directed at Selina, who has just finished peeling off the Mitchum prints off her fingers. It looks like Bruce is not even bothering to do the same.
"I'm up for it, but we'll need to lure him out of the room, or be absolutely certain he'll be away for a while."
"Fire alarm," Theo suggests.
"How do we trigger it? Bruce, do you think you can hack their network to set it off?"
Theo beats Bruce to the answer. "There's an easier way. Put a wad of paper bags into a waste bin and throw a lit match in there. Doesn't even need to be near his room, so long as it's in the same wing. As soon as the smoke reaches the nearest ceiling detector, all hell will break loose."
"There's bound to be a cam that will catch you throwing stuff, so we still need the hack," Bruce cuts in.
"Unless you're willing to go there and do it yourself. You aren't staying there, after all," Selina suggests.
"I used to, as Wayne," he grumbles. "If any of the staff recognise me, there's no telling how much it can blow our cover."
He is not talking about the risk of losing his incognito status, just of the mission cover. Interesting.
"OK, so it's back to the hacking option," Theo says, almost soothingly. "In the meantime we'll keep tracking Kitty and see if we can find out who else she's in contact with. There's also the chance we might hear from Kettering – " He stops abruptly at a clicking noise unmistakably coming from the suite door.
Selina has a second to wonder how much worse it can get. She half expects a full-blown SWAT team to charge into the room, or else a bunch of machine-gun-toting terrorists.
But instead, standing framed in the backlit doorway is a lone silhouette.
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TBC
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If you think seagull shit is a minor nuisance, check this out: [http www] dailymail*co*uk/news/article-2397878/seagulls-Pest-control-firm-boss-forced-spend-500-cleaning-Mercedes-bird-poo*html ...on a personal note ;) I was once an unwitting recipient of a splotch of gull excrement on my window pane, and can assure you that it is a major eyesore seen from the inside!