Episode 4: For the Lost Leonardo, Chapter 4
"Well that's another fine mess..." Flynn muttered.
"I didn't touch a thing!" Ezekiel protested. "I promise!"
"I believe you Ezekiel," replied Flynn. "I do. I was standing here watching you, remember. But if it wasn't you and it wasn't me..."
"Who was it," finished the younger man. "Or what."
"There's a computer station here," said Flynn, waving a hand at a terminal below the monitors. "Think you can hack it?"
"There are only two hackers in the world better than me," boasted the thief. "Unless one of them set this thing up, or there's some other genius computer geek who's never got themselves known on the wrong side of the law, I will have it hacked and willing to execute my every command in no time at all."
"Okay then, thief, do your thing," shrugged Flynn. He wandered around the room, browsing across the multiple monitors staring down at him. A thought struck him. "If you're not the best hacker in the world, who are the other two and why didn't the library recruit them?"
"Flynn, I'm hurt," replied Ezekiel, counterfeiting the tone. "I've never claimed to be the greatest hacker in the world, just the greatest thief. Hacking is just one on my many geniuses. These guys are specialists. They have one field and they know it better than anyone else. They've gone head to head a few times too. Nobody really knows who's the top dog. Names aren't something you spread about in that world though, especially to people like yourself, who aren't a part of it already. All I will say is one of them keeps the other in check. If he were ever to quit, it would just be pure chaos out there."
Flynn examined the contents of a few cupboards. He checked the walls for ventilation ducts. They were there, but not in any way that would aid escape. He worked his way round to the wall that backed on to the study they had just left. The middle of it was covered with a rolled down projection screen. It was one of the more solid, mechanically operated ones. Something about it made Flynn stop and think. He stood back. He stared at the blank screen. He stared at the closed door. He closed his eyes and thought back to the layout of the room beyond. He looked around for buttons to press that would raise the screen. Eventually, in a drawer beside the computer, he found a remote control with an up arrow. He jabbed the remote at the screen and pressed the button. The screen began to rise. He laughed.
Behind the screen was a window through to the study. It was a one way window. It was the back of the mirror, whose frame had provided the hiding place for the secret room's entry button. Maybe there was an exit button somewhere around it too. He started looking.
"It's no good," sighed Ezekiel, shaking his head in frustration. "This thing is password protected with a password so long, and so many fire walls, that we'd run out of water before I can get into it. And that's assuming I can even get it to call out or talk to any others."
"Ooh! Call out!" Flynn cried, clapping his hands. "We've been so busy looking for a complicated way out, we forgot the simple one!"
He retrieved his phone and dialled Stone. The call rang out. He dialled Eve. The call was answered with a loud crash in the background."
"Eve?" Flynn frowned. "Is that you?"
"Hello Librarian," said Eve's slightly breathless voice on the other end of the phone.
"Are you alright?" Flynn's frown deepened. "You sound out of breath."
"I'm fine, I'm fine," she reassured him. "Just a bit busy right now if I'm honest."
Flynn's eyebrows rose. "Doing what? It sounds like you're being attacked by a minotaur!"
"Nope, no minotaurs here," she replied. "Just moving a few things around. Big, heavy things. Sometimes they fall over."
"Nobody hurt I hope?"
"All good," she replied brightly. "No problems here. Why, do you need something?"
"Do I have to need something to call you?" Flynn's voice tried to sound sincere, but failed miserably. "Can't I just call to say I love you?"
"Nope," she decided. "No, Flynn, you call because you need something and to tell me you love me, if you've any sense."
"And I do love you," he smiled.
"Now I know you need something!" Eve laughed. "What is it?"
"We may have got ourselves slightly stuck," admitted the Librarian. "And by me I mean myself and Ezekiel. Stone went the other way along the landing, but I can't get him to answer his phone."
"Did you boys have a fight?" Eve asked seriously.
"No, we, I... I thought it would be a good idea for Ezekiel and Stone to take a break from each other for a bit, and we were searching a massive old mansion house so we thought it best if somebody keep an eye on Ezekiel..."
"I resent that," chimed in the ex-thief in question.
"So he and I went one way and Stone the other," finished Flynn. "We found a panic room and went in to investigate, but now it seems to have locked us in. We need someone to come and let us out."
"Really?" Eve's voice shot up. "How is your air supply? Do you have water and food? There should be water and at least dried food, maybe tinned, depending on how fussy the owner is."
"Oh, that's all fine," he assured her. "We're in no immediate danger as far as I can see, we just can't get out."
"Okay, that's a relief," she sighed. "We'll just finish up here then come rescue you. How does that sound?"
"Like I've lost track of whose turn it is to rescue whom," grinned Flynn through the phone. "We're up the stairs, turn right at the first main landing and it's the fifth door on the left. Call me when you get here and I'll tell you how to open the door. I shall see you soon, Guardian."
"See you soon, Librarian."
Flynn hung up and turned back to the window. He froze. "It seems we have company."
Ezekiel got up from the computer and looked out the window. Three men were standing between the two leather armchairs. One, with body language that screamed security guy, stood silently behind another who, in a fine Italian suit and expensive leather shoes, was talking to, or perhaps at, the third man in a rather animated fashion.
"I sure would love to hear what they're saying," mused Flynn.
"Posh guy is yelling at flunky number one because he hasn't found something," began Ezekiel. "Two somethings. He says 'we know there were three of them. We have one. Where are the other two.' If that guy's a thief he's not one I've ever come across."
"You can lip read?" Flynn asked, watching the young man thoughtfully.
"Yeah, of course," Ezekiel shrugged. "I can sign too. Can't you?"
"I never had cause to learn," shrugged back Flynn. "There was always so much else that took priority. Why did you?"
Ezekiel, who was still watching the three men, remained silent for a moment, deep in thought. "There was a deaf kid in the foster house I grew up in. Nobody else could understand him, so I made the effort. He got adopted by some do-gooders, though, a couple of years after I arrived. He promised he'd write, but I don't think his new parents wanted him to have any ties to his old life, especially not to a promising young thief. I never heard from him again. Got kicked out a couple of months later, moved on to the next joint. Maybe he just couldn't find me."
"I didn't know you grew up in foster homes," said Flynn softly.
"Not much to know," shrugged the thief. "It sucked. I survived. End of."
"What happened?" Flynn asked. "To your parents, I mean."
"Never had parents," said Ezekiel, shaking his head, his features set. "No father's name on my birth certificate. Mother vanished without a trace. Don't know if she's dead or alive."
"That explains it," nodded Flynn.
"Explains what?" Ezekiel blinked and looked round at him.
"Why you've been relentlessly attacking Stone ever since we left," explained the older man. "Every chance you get to wind him up, you take it. No wonder he keeps snapping at you."
"I don't follow," frowned the young man. "Baiting Stone is just fun. His strings are way too easy to pull!"
"So it's nothing to do with the fact that you had come to accept us as family, then he goes and whisks away your favourite member of that family, leaving you abandoned all over again?"
"What? No," Ezekiel pulled a face and shook his head.
Flynn looked at him dubiously. "You don't sound too convinced."
"I've been on my own way longer than I've been hanging around with you guys," he replied. "I don't need anyone else."
"Everyone needs someone in their corner, Ezekiel."
"I have Jenkins."
"You have the rest of us too, you know."
"You have Eve. Cassandra has Stone."
"We're a family, not a tag team."
"Yeah," Ezekiel sighed dismissively and looked up. The three men were no longer in view. "Hey, where'd they go?"
A click and the sound of well oiled hinges moving heralded the opening of the panic room door. Flynn sighed. "I guess that answers that question."
"Apparently it answers mine too," said a well spoken voice by the door. Ezekiel and Flynn turned to see the well dressed man pointing a revolver at them. Behind him, the bodyguard glowered, a hand on his own gun. The well dressed man stepped back and indicated the now open door. "If you would, please gentlemen. Hands on your head of course. No talking."
Obediently, the two Librarians preceded the other two men out of the panic room. The third man was waiting for them with a revolver of his own. He waited for the well dressed man and the bodyguard to leave the panic room and close the door, then led the way through the study door into the hallway. With gun muzzles pressed into their backs, Flynn and Ezekiel followed the third man out into the hallway, along to the far end, through a door that led to a narrow servants' staircase, up to the floor above, along a dusty, cobweb decorated corridor and into a room at the very end that betrayed the proximity of the roof with its sloping ceiling. In the centre was a figure tied to a chair with a bag over his head.
"Stone!" Ezekiel blurted out, earning him a slap on the back of the head.
"I said quiet," barked the well dressed man.
Two more chairs appeared from the outer edges of the room, which must have run at least half the width of the mansion. There was a wall dividing it, in which there was a door, but the door was closed and, no doubt, locked or useless. The third man set the chairs down in the middle of the room, but not too close to Stone. The bodyguard hustled first Ezekiel then Flynn into the chairs. They were tied securely, gagged and blindfolded with bags dropped over their faces, just like Stone. Ezekiel had, of course, removed his gag before their captors had even left the room. He peered through the tightly woven fabric, just about able to detect three shapes heading for the door. The last of the three, the bodyguard judging by his size, reached over to the wall. The room plunged into darkness.
"Hey, who turned out the lights?"
Ezekiel jumped. He turned his head in the direction of the sound. "Do not do that to Whovians!"
"What hide-behind-the-sofa monster comes out with a line like that?" Stone asked, with more than a little grin in his voice.
"It's not the monster, it's the victim," Ezekiel patiently explained. "I take it you're well then?"
"I've been better," replied Stone. "I've been worse too though."
"Not quite such a master on Houdini, I see," quipped the thief.
"Not had quite so much practise as some folks," returned Stone. "Think I could get a hand here?"
"Patience grasshopper, the master is trying to focus," intoned Ezekiel. He felt the bag plucked from his head.
"The master is done already, the apprentice is trying to focus and failing," said Flynn pointedly. "Stop sniping and start picking that lock over there." He pointed the torch light of his phone at the door in the dividing wall. "I'll take the one we came in by."
Master or apprentice, Ezekiel was soon out of his ropes and heading for the door, leaving Flynn to finish untying Stone. Working by touch and sound, he carefully clicked each of the tumblers into place. The door swung open easily and he turned, shining the light of his own phone upwards to show Flynn and Stone his ghostly grinning visage. A movement within the room beyond brought his attention back around and he shone the light into the room beyond.
"Woah!" Ezekiel exclaimed, bringing the other two men instantly to his side.
"Indeed," murmured Flynn, shining his phone torch around.
"Wow!" Stone cried, pushing past the other two and hurrying into the room. He picked up an item from a long desk that ran along one side of the room. "This is da Vinci's automaton! It could propel da Vinci's circular, wooden tank forward or wherever. That there is a model of his giant crossbow. I have no idea what this is! And that!" His eyes had fallen on a painting hanging in pride of place above the desk. "That is the Val d'Arno. Da Vinci sketched it in August fourteen seventy three. He never painted it. Or rather, no painting of it has ever been found. This is undeniably his work..."
Flynn and Ezekiel looked at Stone pause and peer closely at the picture.
"That can't be right," murmured Stone. He beckoned them over and pointed to the paint. "This is modern paint. No way these colours would have been around in da Vinci's days."
"But you said it was undeniably him?" Ezekiel wondered aloud.
"I know, and the brush strokes and technique are absolutely in keeping with those of Leonardo, but this paint is wrong."
"You just can't get the ingredients these days," said a voice from behind a japanned screen at the far end of the room. "It's amazing what you can easily achieve, however, with what you have."
The three men looked across the room. Stone exchanged a glance with Flynn and the Librarian gave Jones a nod. The young man crept forward, then edged round the side of the screen. A few minutes later, he emerged with an elderly man in tow.
"Welcome, Librarian," said the ragged figure. "I assure you, you will need my help escaping, as I will need yours.
"Who are you?" Ezekiel asked, brows creased in puzzlement.
"You can't be..." Stone breathed.
"Of course he is," sighed Flynn.
"Indeed I am, sir," replied the old man. "I was once protected by the owner of this house, now I am hounded by his grandson. I am, good sirs, master Leonardo da Vinci."