"Can you speak any foreign languages?" Bruce asked.
He, Selina, Alfred, and Helena were all gathered in the study, planning their next move. Helena tried not to look at Alfred, fearing that Selina and Bruce might notice the change in their attitude toward each other. Yet she couldn't deny that knowing he had her back made her feel a million times better.
"I can speak Italian well, and a smattering of French," she told her father.
"She can play a foreign investor, don't you think, Alfred?" Bruce asked.
"I see where you're going, Master B. You'll be touring the labs with Miss Bertinelli from Florence, perhaps, who wishes to see the facilities before her company invests in one of our projects?"
"And I can tamper with security while we're down there," Helena said with understanding. "Prepare the place for a heist that night."
"I can break in later that night," Selina said.
"No," Helena said quickly. "It should be me." At their looks, she continued, "You're not an unfamiliar face, Selina. You live here. But no one knows me. If I get caught, then Bruce can come up with some story about how he hired me to check the lab's security."
"I don't get caught," Selina said, "but that particular excuse not a terrible idea. We'll go together."
Helena bit her lip. "Okay," she said. She glanced at Alfred. He nodded at her, slightly, so she decided not to push. She didn't like the idea of her mother possibly getting caught, but it wasn't as though Selina wasn't used to the danger of it.
Bruce pointed to the lab's blueprints on the table. "The object you're looking for is held in this room, here. All the unidentified objects are held in climate-controlled, lab-grade containers within lockboxes equipped with electronic codes."
"I should be able to crack those," Helena said. Because they were so out-of-date by her time, she'd used old discontinued ones of similar models to practice on when she was a kid. Hey, no one could accuse her education of being typical. "How do I get in the room?"
"That's where I come in," Selina said. She and Bruce had obviously spent their time planning the heist in Helena's absence. "I can take out all the cameras before we start, but the floor the room is on still has a lot of security. To get in there we'd need a lot more time and put out a lot more effort. The floor above it, however, is a different story. Bertinelli, you'll be in charge of swiping one of the guard's key passes to unlock the door on the roof. I can't pick the lock up there because there's a failsafe system that will set off alarms throughout the building if I try. I could get around that, but I don't have the materials for it, not if we want to do this tomorrow."
"So I get the pass. But wouldn't the guard notice his is missing?"
"Not if we replace it with a fake. They don't need the passes to leave the building, only to enter it. You just have to switch them out."
"I can do that," Helena said. "And then we get to the floor above and…"
"I can get us in through the doors on that level," Selina said. "The room above the storage area is a set of offices. I'll take out all the cameras, and then we'll climb through the vents to get to the room below. You get to the lockbox, take the stone, and then it's getaway time."
"Do we actually have a getaway car?" Helena started to smile.
"Courtesy of B, yes," Selina said. "Think you can do it?"
"Of course. Believe me, I've gotten into much tighter places."
Helena, wearing her disguise, followed behind Bruce. She'd straightened her hair again, wore it up high off her neck, and added a large pair of sunglasses to her face. In her black dress and heels, she'd thought it all looked very Breakfast at Tiffany's. Even though she would only be speaking in Italian the entire time she was there, she'd been on enough undercover missions to know that you never knew who might understand a foreign language; therefore, she and Bruce had agreed that her conversation would consist only of what foreign investor Miss Bertinelli would speak.
As she entered into the building and Bruce explained the situation to the woman at the front desk (no one turned Bruce Wayne and his guests away), Helena couldn't help but marvel at her surroundings. Everything looked dated but not old, which felt extremely paradoxical to eyes trained to expect such style and technology to at least appear faded and grimy by time.
"It shouldn't be long now," Bruce told her, in Italian.
"I am a patient person, Mr. Wayne," Helena answered back in the same language, lying superbly. She was not patient by nature, though she had been trained to overcome that over the years. "I do not mind waiting, if the end result is worth it."
"I promise it will be." He waved a hand at a passing employee to ask for a tour. Last night he and Helena had gone through files of employees. Peter Wheeling was their best option. His key card not only opened the roof door, but he was on duty patrolling the halls now. Selina had helped Helena create a fake ID for him, which Helena would switch out when she got close enough. Their plan had been put together so quickly, though, that she knew the slightest inconvenience could unravel it. If Peter Wheeling happened to be sick and didn't come into work…if he was there but they never managed to find him in the halls…just the slightest bit of bad luck and plan A was done for. (Not, of course, that there weren't backup plans. Her father usually had so many back-up plans Helena wondered how he kept track of them all—although, to be fair, she operated much the same way. She liked being prepared, which was one reason why this whole situation troubled her so much. Being sent back in time was the one thing she hadn't prepared herself for)
But now Helena forced herself to pay attention to the woman who was guiding them through the labs. Bruce translated the woman's words into Italian, and Helena had to pretend she didn't understand the guide's words the first time. On the second floor, where they were touring one of the research facilities, Bruce nudged Helena the same time she saw Peter Wheeling for herself. He was off near the door, talking to another of the security guards. As Miss Dorset led them through the room, Helena prepared herself for a fall. Passing Wheeling, she let her heel catch against the tile floor and fell against him, grabbing the ID clipped to his belt as she went down. She slid it up the skirt of her dress and hooked it onto the underside of her pocket, while in the same movement she clipped her copy of his ID back onto his belt as he pulled her up.
"Mi scusi!" she cried.
"You all right, Miss?" he asked, looking concerned.
"Grazie," Helena said, starting to rattle off in Italian. The guard looked at her in confusion.
"Are you all right?" Bruce asked in Italian. He turned to Miss Dorset. "She's fine." He nodded to Peter Wheeling. "Thank you, sir. She says she is grateful to you for catching her."
Helena smiled brightly at the guard.
"It was no trouble," he was a youngish man, and blushed a little. Helena couldn't resist. She patted his arm and said more in Italian. The man looked to Bruce.
"She says you are...uh.…very strong."
The guard's face turned even more red.
"And she says your girlfriend must be very lucky." Bruce gave a warning look to Helena, not appreciating the conversation she was forcing him to have.
"Oh, I don't…I don't have a…" the poor guard floundered.
Helena whispered something in Bruce's ear.
"I'm not translating your flirting for you," Bruce told Helena in Italian.
"You're no fun," she answered back with a grin. Bruce rolled his eyes.
"She says that she finds that hard to believe, but she has a friend she can set you up with," he told Wheeling.
"Oh, I'm sure that won't be necessary." The poor man was as red as a lobster, but not exactly displeased.
"That's just as well," Bruce said. "She probably only speaks Italian."
Helena waved at the guard, a bit coquettishly, as they left the room.
"You don't even have any friends here," Bruce whispered in English. "What if he had taken you up on your offer?"
Helena blinked at him innocently. "I know Selina."
He did not look amused.
Helena sighed dramatically. "I guess you're right. He was much too old for her, anyway." She regretted—just a tiny bit—teasing her father. It wasn't like her parents' relationship was entirely secure right now, anyway. She could tell Bruce loved her mother already, so she supposed that made the uncertain nature of their relationship even more of a sore spot for him.
Bruce was still grumbling as they left the building and climbed into the car. "He's going to remember you now," he said. "So much for being discreet."
"I was going to be remembered anyway," Helena said. "I figured I might as well have a little fun with it. Besides, I think I made that man's day."
Bruce rolled his eyes. "You embarrassed him half to death is what you did."
"I'm sure he was flattered." Both she and Bruce looked at each other for a moment, and then she couldn't hold back her straight face anymore. She laughed, and even Bruce smiled.
"All right, it did go pretty well," he admitted.
Helena unhooked the ID key card from underneath her skirt and took it out to examine it. "Selina's copy was really good. I don't think anyone would be able to tell the difference by sight."
"This stone," Bruce said. "Asset 329. How did your employer find out about it?"
"He has a large network that keeps an eye out for threats. Hugo Strange has been on his radar for years. When he saw that Strange was interested in something at the lab, he began looking at the possibilities more closely, until he discovered the stone."
"So it doesn't revolve around any weird legends or superstitious rituals or obscure religions?"
"It's not connected to any League of Assassins or anything, if that's what you're wondering."
Bruce almost hit the brakes. "You know about the League?"
Darn it. Helena schooled her features. "My employer knows about nearly any threat, including the League."
"Well, we could have used a little help with them the past."
"Gotham isn't the only place the League interferes with," Helena said. "Sorry."
But Bruce still looked serious. "How did you know that I even knew about the League?"
"My employer knows everything." Because he's Batman.
Bruce raised a brow. "I highly doubt that."
Helena tried not to smile. "You'd be surprised."
A few disclaimers: 1) I do not speak Italian. Please forgive my flimsy attempts to do so. 2) I am a law abiding citizen who has never stolen anything, so I apologize for my less-than-stellar heist planning skills. Although I have seen every episode of Leverage, so you'd think I'd be better at it. ;) Also, the scene with the guard just sort of…happened? I don't even know how, haha. I'm almost done with chapter 9, so with any luck, it might actually be up tomorrow.