Date 24/01/2060, Location 40.37711, 49.8968

The team woke early – the alarm going off at about 05:30, causing some grumbles and curses as they rolled out of hammocks and bunks. The town was blissfully quiet as they got on the road, and headed towards the tower. Being only a block back from the waterfront, and in the middle of the central business district, parking was an issue – the signs made it clear that they would be towed or fined, no matter where they were. In the end, they found a multi-story garage that let them pay for a day about five blocks away. Marius crept into the garage in low gear, watching the sensors as the truck scraped under the height barrier, having to use the truck's active suspension to lower it down enough to fit, and then making sure he parked in a place at the end of a row so he had a clear route to pull out without having to turn.

The car park was almost empty – only three other cars were present, presumably belonging to overnight security staff working nearby. When they were settled and parked up, Tadibya summoned a watcher spirit to her for use later. Then they settled down to wait for a bit…

Around 06:30, a couple of vehicles arrived in the car park, all old and battered models covered in rust spots and with mismatched panels. They parked up and disgorged full loads of passengers – in some cases they appeared to have more people than seats even. From the dress and deportment, they were obviously cleaning staff, maintenance engineers and other custodial functions. Car-pooling was the only way they could afford to travel into the centre of Baku effectively, and the banter between them showed that it was a routine arrangement. They travelled in a loose group to the exit of the car park, and then split up, heading to their respective buildings. Tadibya trailed after a group or two, but none of them went to the building they were checking out.

When she returned to her body, she found the team discussing the general plan and how to infiltrate the building, including how they should dress to try and avoid attention.

"Erm, I don't have one of those suit things. Or anything really busisnessey. Is that a word? Clothes for office work I mean."

"What, nothing? Did you not get a suit or anything when we went shopping?" asked Hunter.

"No, why would I do that? I didn't think I needed one."

"Well, it's a country with a reasonable number of Muslims still. Guess it's time to get back in your burka."

Tadibya sighed, and then rummaged through her pile of stuff, looking for the burkas purchased in Iran, and then tried to smooth out the creases in the fabric from where it had been scrunched into a ball.

They continued to chat aimlessly whilst waiting for more arrivals, and ended up discussing food – it became clear that they were a very multicultural bunch with a variety of ethnic backgrounds when they started to discuss their ideal puddings.

"Donoughts. With jam in the middle. Lovely things, full of sugary goodness, but not over the top." was Aswon's chosen sweet. "Got a taste for them when I was running with a Merc unit and we were doing ops in a toxic zone in the UK, looking for some stuff."

"They are not bad, but what you really need is a modified version – you add cream to the jam in the donut, and they give a much more refined taste," pronounced Marius, then stared at Aswon with horror as he turned his nose up at the idea and restated his preference for just jam.

Tadibya also liked a variation of donuts, made with a slightly different dough mixture based on the crops grown in her area – but liked hot fruit fillings with a touch of spices to flavour them, with the sugar caramelised over an open fire.

All conversation stopped though as Kai chipped in that he personally rated chicken donuts, though they took ages to cook on account of their size – being formed around a whole chicken. You could see the thought processes as the rest of the team worked through this chain of logic, including the shudders as they contemplated the taste – or the idea of having to pick bones out of your donut…

However, the conversation did fill up the time until the next batch of cars arrived, at about 07:30. Also battered and relatively unkempt, these two disgorged relatively full passenger loads – but with radios, batons and pepper spray in evidence, along with some holstered side-arms. The security staff followed the behaviour of the cleaners, travelling to the car park entrance in a group and then splitting out to their various buildings. Once more Tadibya followed, but was rewarded this time by someone heading in the right direction.

She called her watcher to her, and told it to monitor the doors of the target office block, and to observe what happened when they opened. It was to come back and tell her if the ward stayed up over the dividing line for the outside of the building, or if the ward was tied to the doors and opened a hole when the doors swung open. She took her time explaining the concept and what she wanted to the spirit, ensuring that its simple mind comprehended what she wanted – in fact she took so long that the security guard wandered up to the building and wandered in. As she and the spirit watched, she saw the doors slide open, the ward with them, leaving a big hole to wander through.

"When the doors open, the ward goes with them," the watcher spirit told her, with utter seriousness and no irony at all.

"Well, thanks for that. Ok, come on – back to the van." She and the spirit flew back to the van, Tadibya merging with her body, and the spirit amusing itself by tracing the faint chalk marks of the ward around the van's interior.

Around 8:30 the car park became more active – cars starting to arrive thick and fast. It filled up over the next fifteen minutes until there were only a few spaces left, as the vast horde of office workers arrived for their 09:00 start. Shimazu remarked that they seemed to like late starts here, comparing it to his native Japan, and commenting that they obviously didn't care for their companies much.

Marius noticed with a snort of amusement that the people that had parked near the truck had given it a wide berth – parking as far over in their bays as they could. They must have realised that with the ground clearance and steelwork on the military style truck, any collision would have wrecked the paintwork and possibly the body panels on their cars and caused nothing more than scrapes in the dirt covering the truck.

The street outside the carpark was awash with people now, in a mix of traditional dress and business suits. Many of them carried coffee or bags from the local stores with breakfast inside, and they moved without the haste or urgency common to cities like New York, Frankfurt or Tokyo. Still, there area was as busy as any other city-centre finance district, and they watched as drones drifted past and the odd patrol of the local police drove through the area to keep an eye on things.

Now that the staff were in, Marius fired up his electronics suite however, and trained his sensors on the right bearing for the office block, gathering electronic intelligence. At first he thought he was being jammed or disrupted, and he spent a good few minutes hopping frequencies and trying alternate settings. Eventually though he realised what was causing a problem – the building itself. It appeared to be a legacy of old construction materials, and the concrete was the special blend of "Soviet Style" – instead of using rebar rods to reinforce it, instead they used cheaper wire mesh. It made for thicker blocks, but also transformed the building into a series of massive Faraday cages. The entire office block was an incredibly adverse environment to begin with – made worse by the multi-tenancy occupation. Each floor had its own wireless matrix system, with the little signal that did make it through floors competing with those of the floors above and below to create a constantly fluxing set of hopping signals and variable strength fields that must have driven people mad in the office.

After watching the displays for a while and ensuring his information was correct, Marius told the rest of the team the news. It was probably a good thing for them – not only did the building not have a Rigged network that would make infiltration harder, but with the types of dropouts and interference they must experience, there would be no lockdown sequences or panic room activations – the false alarms and inconvenience would have seen to that. And also, if they did cut the building systems, it was entirely likely that people would just "blame IT" – and probably for a while, at least. Their systems must be ropey as all hell, and a constant battle to use.

Based on this, he took a wander down to the building, and checked round the back, in the service area. Moving carefully to avoid the field of view of the fixed cameras, he found the service console for the tower's matrix connections positioned on the wall a few metres from the rear entranceway. A moment with his multi-tool swung open the plastic cover and then he let out a little gasp of horror – he couldn't help it. Inside was the scene from one of his worst nightmares. There were about forty or fifty interconnects coming up through the service duct, and available. Each one had multiple pairs of old fashioned twisted copper connections in a variety of coloured sheathes, with a leavening of fibre optic cables snaked throughout. The twisted pairs were looped, hung, intermingled and threaded through each other, with crimps and splices all over the place. In a few examples, the outer sheath had just been trimmed back and the bare copper twisted together and rolled up into a ball, then covered with a sliver of tape. The fibre splices were if anything worse – each one was in a snap-fit plastic sheath, with no strain relief or order, and he could see the stretch marks in some of them where the jackets had been snagged or crimped by other tools. Nothing was labelled, nothing made sense.

He slowly resealed the box, and retraced his steps – his inner sense of calm and order destroyed by whatever thumb-less retards from the local telecom provider were responsible for that abortion of a cabinet. It was a wonder that anything worked in the tower at all, let alone reliably. It made the job even easier – a tiny amount of explosives in there would trash everything for sure – and it would take days, possibly weeks to reconnect. On the other hand, there was no way he could even begin to fathom which of those connections were for the fifteenth floor without a full survey team. He got back to the van and let them know a simple and direct demo charge, something small, would do the job – but he didn't mention the horrible image now imprinted into his mind. While Aswon prepared a small section of det-cord and a simple detonator, he sat back and stared into space, imagining some special kind of torture to be used on installation engineers who didn't label their work, use strain relief or proper insulation…

Tadibya meanwhile left her body behind again and floated down the street, keeping a careful and watchful eye out for other astral forms. Other than the wards over most of the buildings, the area was pretty quiet astrally, and she saw barely any other astral entities – even here in the capital, it appeared that magic was still very rare indeed. She waited outside the tower, for the next person to walk through the doors, and followed them in as the ward split open. Once inside she slowly looked around, before darting into the lift as it responded to their request. They got off at the seventh floor, as did she, continuing to look around the place. There was a ward over the office, low in force and appearing to be one continuous block around the floor. However, the lobby and stairwell were free and open. She floated up the stairs, switching back and forth as the stairs climbed sharply through the core of the building and glad that her astral form didn't require any real effort to ascend. At the fifteenth floor, she spied the ward and gave it a good long look – like the floors below, it appeared to be a continuous ward that was tied to the outside view – all part of the same astral construct.

Out of curiousity, she floated up the last flight of stairs to the roof access door and checked it out – it appeared to be unwarded. Slowly and carefully, expecting some kind of trap or very subtle alarm ward, she examined and pressed through the door – before finding herself outside on the roof. She could see the ward on the roof below her, just above the roof level and intersecting with the parapet – but it stopped flush with the roof door. It didn't go up and cover the roof access, or cut through it like a plane – it just stopped on the outside. Whoever had done this job was definitely putting in minimum effort, it seemed! After checking the stairwell out some more and confirming her thoughts, she headed back to the truck and her body, and like Marius, reported in her new findings.

This report changed their options a fair bit – as long as they didn't have a spell active on the roof, it was all good – and knowing the ward didn't cover the actual door, gave them the option to enter the building under the cover of an invisibility spell or a spirit concealment, as long as the door could be opened. So, the next trick was to get the door open it seemed. Kai placed a call to Germaine, but her number came up as engaged. He waited a few minutes, then tried again – but she was still on a call. He hung up, but had barely started to put the phone away when it rang in his hands. Answering, an automated message told him that the person he was calling was still on the phone, but gave him a chance to leave a message which it would display as a text to them. Kai told the messaging service he was after a little gear, and hung up.

Hunter had been on the matrix searching through various services and online shops, and had finally found a place that would sell a print of the piece of artwork, without an outrageous cost. Once paid for and downloaded, he then found a print shop in Baku that could output the work onto a canvas roll. Hopefully that would allow whoever actually did the steal – looking more and more like Shimazu – could perhaps do a swap, leaving a print behind in the hope that it might cover the theft, even for a few hours. He headed over to get the print run off, and bought it back to the team without issue.

Germaine had called back whilst he was gone, and spoken with Kai to find out what he needed – to which he'd let her know that he needed some lockpicks to "get into his garage, as he'd lost the key". She sounded vaguely amused, and then asked him if he was free for lunch, arranging to meet at the same restaurant at midday. With nothing more to do on site, the team pulled out, leaving the massive space in the car park as the only sign of their presence, and heading back towards the Waterside restaurant for their meeting. Germaine arrived, as before and the Jaguar was parked in front of the no parking sign without anyone raising an eyebrow. She greeted Kai with enthusiasm and volume, and then sat down with him, recommending the Prawn Salad as being worthy of his attention.

They chatted amiably about art and the state of the world, and tucked into their salads when they arrived, and about halfway through Germaine casually pulled out a small velvet wrap and slid it over to the side of his plate. Kai casually scooped it up with his next forkful and slid it into his pocket with what he hoped was a graceful motion. Germaine also mentioned that she hoped that Kai would be able to get into his garage – and then raised a query.

"Of course, if you do find anything valuable in your garage, I do hope you will take proper care of it – white cotton gloves, a muslin bag, a nice sturdy box to ensure it's not damaged in transit?" She raised an eyebrow and looked at him steadily.

"Absolutely – I have all of those things ready, just in case I should find anything interesting in there – you never know what you might find, after all!" Kai hoped that she couldn't tell that he had no such thing, and had just added it to his mental shopping list. They finished up their lunch with more small talk, before Germaine made her goodbyes, rewarding Kai with a kiss on each cheek.

The waiter slid over the bill to Kai after she had left. Bracing himself, he opened the folio, and saw that a five hundred Nuyen charge had been added to the bill. Kai paid with a certified credstick and headed back to the truck, waiting until he was inside before he fished out the velvet bag and opened it up. It turned out to be a roll, rather than a bag, with a number of slender compartments each containing a finely wrought individual pick. Aswon looked disappointed, and let out a sigh.

"I was hoping for an auto-pick, rather than actual lock picks. It would have cost more, but it would have just done the job automatically – these you actually have to know how to use. Unless there's something you're not telling us, Shimazu?"

Shimazu shook his head, and reached over to pull out one of the picks to examine it, rotating and turning it in his hand carefully.

"I'm guessing it's more complicated than it looks in the trid – you don't just have to put them in and wiggle them about?"

Hunter tapped on some keys on his pad, and a couple of moments later Marius started the engine, as he received the GPS routing to a nearby hardware store. Once there, they purchased some cheap padlocks – something easy to learn on – and a couple of more serious locks that looked close in design to the model on the rooftop door – or at least as close as Tadibya could describe from her exterior view of the mechanism. As soon as they were back in the truck, they were handed over to Shimazu who made himself comfortable at the table in the back and started to practice, following a guide found on some site discussing magic tricks and escapology. They bounced around a little more, until they'd found some appropriate gloves, a bag of something that looked soft and lint free, some bubblewrap and a plastic box large enough for the picture and frame.

Hunter spent a few more hours online, researching the picture and in particular the frame – trying to find out something about how it was likely to be mounted or attached to the wall, and if it was likely to be alarmed separately. What he found wasn't encouraging. The heavyweight frame looked to be an original, not a plastic reproduction. This meant the canvas was likely to be stretched and attached into a mounting batten, screwed into the outer frame and not something quickly and easily dismounted.

The rest of the afternoon passed by, with Shimazu practicing with the lockpicks. His natural levels of dexterity helped, and he soon was cracking open the padlocks in a reasonable time. He then started to vary his routine a little – working on speed with the simplest padlock, and then trying the more complex lock but taking as long as he needed to. The others relaxed – reading, practicing skills or cleaning equipment, or just dozing a little, banking sleep against the potential operations of the day to follow. Shimazu practiced until about 9pm, then stopped for food and a break, and settled back for a few hours of reading with his psychology texts.

The next morning, the team were up at 05:00, and headed over to the office tower. Once more the streets were deserted, just the occasional bit of litter blowing down the empty road in the morning breeze, lit up by the orange street lights. Aswon grabbed his demo kit and sidled down the access road and into the service area, moving around the field of view of the cameras they had scoped out previously. It didn't take much effort to lay the det-cord and set the small amount of C4 in place, and he quickly returned to the truck and told them it was all set. With that done, Tadibya cast her spell on Shimazu, making him levitate in the air. She walked with him down past the building, and also ducked around the side alleyway, and then with a mental command sent him swiftly soaring up the side of the building. In mere seconds he had reached the parapet, and balanced on the edge, giving a quick thumbs up to Tadibya when he was safe. She dropped the spell, and Shimazu dropped down onto the roof, out of sight – and now there was no active magic, he could freely walk through the ward without issue. He moved to find a place behind some air conditioning equipment that kept him out of sight from the surrounding tower blocks, and pulled out the lockpicks and padlocks, and continued to practice.

The rest of the team hung around in the truck, waiting until the bulk of the workforce was heading in, just like the previous day. At around 08:30, Tadibya cast another spell, this time wrapping her invisibility spell around Kai. He wandered down the street, dodging pedestrians and traffic unaware of his presence, and waited by the corner until he saw a likely candidate. When they turned into the office block, he dashed over behind them, tailgating them through the open doors and the hole in the ward. Once inside he had a look around, and then slunk towards the back of the reception area, walking as quietly as possible and standing in the corners. It felt un-natural, standing there in plain sight, but people's gazes just seemed to wash over him – confounded by the magical protection.

After a few minutes to ensure he really was unnoticed, he moved over to a piece of artwork – what appeared to be a huge piece of a drill head on a display stand that was noted as being the first drill piece used after the formation of the State Oil company that was used to break ground in Field #3. Whatever it was, when he gave it a shove, it slid and fell with an enormous crash, clattering to the ground and scaring the receptionist and the security guard, who spilt paper and coffee alike. Whilst they were mopping up the coffee and wrestling to get the drill piece back on the stand, Kai pushed open the door to the staff break room and slid inside. Nobody noticed the door open and close without anyone being there…

Inside the break room, he looked around for anyone lurking, but found himself quite alone. Moving swiftly he pulled out one of the smoke grenades and the timers that had been set up by Aswon earlier that morning, and climbed up onto a table. With a gentle push he lifted a ceiling tile, and then gently placed the demo package in the ceiling void, and twisted the timer until it read 16:07, then hit the activate button and then lowered the tile back into place. He left the room, crossing the hallway and into the staff toilets, again unnoticed by the reception staff. Climbing up onto a toilet cistern, he again placed a device in the ceiling, this time set for 16:09.

When he got back into reception, the receptionist and the guard were back in position, having resumed their normal duties. He gave them a wide berth and then slowly climbed the stairs, keeping to the edges and placing his feet carefully, avoiding as much noise as possible. He climbed slowly and carefully, pacing himself, until he'd reached the tenth floor. The stairwell was painted an institutional beige, with a rippled plaster finish that looked worn and tired, and past the first atrium level there were no pictures or adornments on the walls – it was purely functional. He slid out into the tenth floor area, and saw the lift banks and a few chairs and plants in the common area, surrounded by the frosted glass of whatever company had rented this space. He slid out a third device from his bag, setting this one to 16:04. With a couple of moments work, it was secreted behind one of the potted plants, and he slowly and carefully descended down the stairs again to the reception area. He had to wait about ten minutes before someone left the office, but once again was able to tailgate after them and slide out through the hole in the ward, and then quickly return to the truck.

They waited, the hours crawling by slowly. Despite not being in immediate danger, there was still a gnawing tension – Shimazu was on the roof, on his own, and other than Tadibya they had no real way to assist him quickly. She was limited to the actions of a spirit or watcher, and there were plenty of circumstances where that would be unhelpful or would bring its own set of problems. Hunter and Aswon had purchased a cheap set of alternate clothing from a vending machine, and left it with Tadibya and the motorbike – it should allow Shimazu to change his appearance if needed during the exit phase of the plan. The only person who had a task with any real purpose and length was Marius – who had found the details of a Baku-registered delivery company and had made a quick stencil for their logo and was busily spraying it onto the side of the truck. The armoured truck was noticeable of course, but not completely out of character for a courier, especially those that carried high value cargo or travelled through troublespots.

When the paint was dry, they headed off towards the central business district, arriving a little before 16:00. Marius drove the truck into the loading bay of a nearby business. After a quick check for security cameras, he drove in nose first, leaving the truck at a tight angle, with the back corner just missing the entranceway. It was terrible parking, and made the truck impossible to get out of on one side – but it neatly covered the drone launcher mechanism from view. He fired up his Condor drone, quickly inflating the lifting bag and running the self-check on the drone and then fitting it into the launch tube. Moments later it was expelled into the air and spiralling up into the air, the translucent bag filled with helium quickly fading from view, and the streamlined body of the drone fading away behind it as the drone gained altitude. The electric motors were almost inaudible as soon as it launched, let alone at height.

Marius jacked into his deck, and connected up to the drone, his consciousness flooding into the tiny drone body. There was a moment of discombobulation as he adapted to having motors and a giant lifting sack instead of a normal body, but it didn't take long for it to feel right for him to be floating through the air.

The clock ticked past 16:00, and Tadibya puttered into the side alley on one of the motorbikes. Climbing off, she lifted it onto the kickstand, and then crouched down by the side of the back wheel, and began to poke at the mechanism, as if she was troubleshooting some mechanical issue. She was out of sight of the cameras, and hopefully looked respectable enough to not draw any police attention.

The seconds ticked down on Kai's watch, hitting zero. He was perched almost on the dashboard, craning his head to look down the street, watching the narrow sliver of the target office block that he could see from their vantage point. The seconds ticked by… nothing. Another thirty seconds…. Still nothing.

Despite expecting it, Tadibya was still startled when the fire door was thrown open and a stream of people erupted out of it. People sauntered out from the door, most of them with coats on and bags in their hands. They were probably from the first floor, and that meant the fire alarm must have been triggered ok. She watched as the snake of people wound its way out from the door, people chatting amiably, a few of them lighting up cigarettes once they emerged from the building. Down the road, Kai released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding as the first handful of people emerged from the front doors of the building.

More people continued to stream out of the building, but a minute later there was a surge of people pushing out of the doorway. From the panicked expressions, high-pitched voices and elbowing and jockeying for positions, it seemed that they were certainly from an upper floor – or responding to those from above. The crowd moved more rapidly now, pushing and shoving to get clear of the building. The first wisps of smoke drifted out of the fire doors, and the crowd surged again – that should be the first blast from the ground floor. The evacuation become hurried and desperate as people found themselves in a building rapidly filling with smoke to back up the ringing of the alarm bells, and the orderly and somewhat bored expressions of people dealing with a fire drill were nowhere to be found.

Tadibya continued to crouch by the bike, not making eye contact with anyone. A few people called to her, shouting at her to move, to get away from the building – but the press of bodies from behind them kept them moving, and she continued to ignore them.

On the roof, a quiet alarm beeped, and Shimazu swung into action. He moved to the door, and crouched by the lock, going to work with the lockpicks. Moving slowly but surely, he inserted the picks carefully, manipulating and turning them just like he'd been doing for hours, questing for the pins and trapping them in place. The seconds passed and he worked his way through the tumblers one by one – commanding his body to remain calm and refusing to sweat. At least that level of somatic control didn't require any magical expression! Two minutes later the lock clicked and the door swung open.

He moved in slowly and cautiously, looking down the bare concrete stairwell and cocking his head to one side to listen for movement. He could hear the sounds of feet pounding on the stairs, but it was far below him. Moving down the stairs with careful and controlled steps, he reached the turn in the stair well, and paused again by the painted line on the wall, the transition point that could be seen from the top office floor and the facilities only section. Still nothing.

Now he accelerated, bounding down the stairs two at a time. It was possible he would be caught on camera now, either in the common area or the office itself, but with most people out of the building, and the building staff trying to deal with the smoke, speed was his best friend. He reached the landing, and barrelled through the door, crossing the vestibule in a few strides and then shouldering open the door into the office.

A quick glance around revealed a certain amount of disarray. By the looks of things, people had started to evacuate as if it was a drill, taking coats and bags with them – at least until the people at the front had reported smoke in the stairwells and lift shafts. From the knocked-over chairs, abandoned clothes and unlocked computers, it was obvious that they had suddenly become more aware that they were on the fifteenth floor of a building potentially on fire…

He quickly established his position against the map of the office they had studied, and then ran to the north-west corner, hitting the glass door with his hip and pushing through into the office. There! There was the picture, hanging on the wall, as expected, lit by a pair of spotlights. With a very quick check, he lifted the picture from the hooks on the wall, leaving an empty wall with a square of brighter coloured paint behind. Turning and heading to the door, his other arm shot out and grabbed the laptop on the desk, squeezing it shut and tucking it under his arm as he retraced his steps.

Less than thirty seconds later he was back on the roof, the picture flapping under one arm as the wind on the roof tugged at it. From around the top of the stairwell, the Condor drone motored forwards towards him Marius bought it to rest next to him, and Shimazu quickly grabbed the bag that was slung underneath the drone, sliding the painting into it. Once it was secure, he moved to the front of the drone, and gave an exaggerated two thumbs up gesture. Marius applied power, and the drone spiralled up into the air, heading back towards the truck to the east, whilst Shimazu headed across the rooftop to the west. Carefully climbing up onto the parapet, he ensured that he was clear of the reported position of the ward, and then looked down the side of the building, quickly spying Tadibya still crouched by the bike. He keyed up his microphone for the first time since he'd deployed this morning.

"Exit, please."

Tadibya glanced up, spotting the tiny figure balanced on the edge of the concrete parapet sixty-five metres above her. She concentrated hard, her fingers moving to shape the magical energies and control their form, still shielded from observation by the body of the bike. Shimazu felt himself lift off the parapet gently, then float out into the alleyway – a profoundly disturbing feeling to be lying on nothing but an immaterial support of magic, staring down at the concrete far below. Slowly at first he started to descend, then faster and faster, plummeting down with dizzying speed – it appeared that Tadibya was confident with the quality of her spell – or at least he hoped so. As he reached the ground he decelerated suddenly, grunting as he pulled several G's.

Tadibya climbed onto the bike and kicked it into life, and then turned and moved next to the floating body of Shimazu, before gently lifting him onto the back of the bike. She stopped concentrating on the spell, and the force of gravity returned to his body abruptly, and the bike sank on the suspension as his full weight lowered onto the pillion. Carefully she pulled away, onto the street and turned west, away from the truck. She accelerated smoothly and turned off the main road at the first opportunity, and started to make her way north and west, turning frequently. Shimazu kept an eye out behind them for pursuit – either ground vehicles or aerial drones, but they appeared to be away fine.

Back at the truck, Marius had just landed the drone onto the roof and was deflating the lifting bag when a security guard emerged from the building, and rapped on the side of the truck. Leaving Kai and Hunter to deal with the painting, he returned to the front seat, and waved at the angry guard, started the truck and began to reverse. The guard continued to gesture and shout at him, but as Tadibya had done, he ignored him whilst generally going about his business, hoping that the guard would just be happy he was no longer clogging up his delivery area.

In the back of the truck, Hunter and Kai unclipped the bag from the drone, and slid it into the protective box they had purchased, before sliding that box into the warded box they had used previously – hoping that would keep it safe not only from astral tracking but also prevent any radio trackers attached to it. Just to make sure, Aswon also activated both the jammer and the white noise generator, dialling the power down a little to avoid setting off alarms as their truck drove past systems in houses and shops. Like Tadibya and Shimazu, they got off the main road quickly, and drove in a north-easterly direction, taking random turns and keeping an eye out for pursuit.

When they were happy they were away cleanly, they pulled over in a quiet street, and Marius went to work with his bug scanner, shutting down the jammer and white noise generator and waving the sensitive electronic wand over the painting carefully. A thorough check revealed that there were no trackers on it at all – which seemed suspicious. So, they pulled out the painting and gave it a thorough visual inspection as well, looking for "activate on demand" trackers that could be triggered remotely, but that lay passive until triggered. No matter how hard they looked, they couldn't see anything though…

Kai called Germaine, pleased to get through in a few rings.

"Hello, Germaine? It's Kai. I just thought you might want to know that I managed to get into my garage after all, and I found some things that I would love to show you. I wondered if I could arrange to meet you?"

"You have? Oh marvellous! That's such good news. Well, it happens that I'm free now, and I can probably be with you in thirty minutes or so." Germaine seemed genuinely happy, and Kai couldn't help but smile at the enthusiasm in her voice.

"Ahh, that sounds good. Where shall we meet?"

"There's a small supermarket, on the old ring road to the north of Baku, just past the 12 prefecture. I'll text you the GPS now. See you soon, toodleloo!"

Kai waited a few seconds and then got the GPS location, and passed it over to Marius, then forwarded it onto Tadibya, with a brief message to meet there ASAP. Moments later, they were on the way to the rendezvous location. The late start for the people of Baku had a noticeable effect on traffic – the local rush hour also starting later than was common elsewhere, so they made good time, meeting up with Tadibya and Shimazu in the quiet side street behind the supermarket before Germaine arrived.

Shimazu showed the rest of the team the laptop he had lifted from the office along with the painting, and was somewhat surprised when both Aswon and Marius made a grab for it, before playing the sensor wand around it. As they got to the back left corner, a harsh buzzing sound came from the bug scanner, and their frowns became more intense. Aswon grabbed the toolkit whilst Marius flipped the laptop over on the table, and they went to work like a pair of surgeons, stripping down the chassis until they could get to the tracking chip and remove it, before snapping it in half. Another check with the wand, and the laptop came up clean.

Before they could say anything else, they were disturbed by the arrival of a vintage Range Rover, painted in British Racing Green. Nobody was surprised when the chauffer hustled around to open the door for Germaine, who strolled towards the truck holding a large folio case. She was wearing a tweed jacket, checked cap and green wellingtons over beige moleskin trousers – and it would not have looked out of place for a shotgun to be held in the crook of her arm.

Kai hustled over to greet her, and invited her into the rear of the truck. Germaine climbed aboard deftly, along with her chauffer and looked around the inside of the truck with interest.

"My my, this is homely isn't it?" Her glance flitted across the piles of bedding and spare clothes, and the few dirty dishes in the sink, then back to Kai. Kai followed the look, and couldn't help but feel a little shame – like a student away from home for the first time and having their parent come to visit and judging the state of the house. Dammit! That wasn't the type of relationship he was after!

"Well, it's mobile, and it will do – for now. But that's not why you're here, so let's see what we have, yes?"

He motioned to Hunter, who reached into the warded box and pulled out the stolen painting, making sure he had on the white gloves they had purchased earlier. He turned towards Germaine, holding the picture aloft for her to see. His eyes flicked to Kai in concern as Germaine wrinkled her nose in disgust and made a little noise that somehow conveyed that she was disgusted with what she saw.

"Knife!" she exclaimed, and held her hand out to her side. Kai managed to pull his survival knife out and lay the hilt into her hand before the chauffer had extended the blade on his flick-knife, and smiled at Germaine, but then his smile froze, along with his expression as she grabbed the knife and in one smooth motion plunged the blade down and into the canvas, ripping the blade from the top right of the picture to the bottom left. She then sliced up and around the frame, sawing away at the canvas and sending shreds of painting fluttering to the floor of the truck.

The rest of the team stared at her, several of them open-jawed with amazement or confusion as Germaine destroyed the painting that was last sold for over 100K. She continued to shave away the canvas, humming quietly to herself amidst the silence of the onlookers. She handed back the knife to Kai, who received it without a word – still watching Germaine to see if she had in fact lost her mind.

Germaine motioned for Hunter to lay down the frame gently on the table, before pulling out her own gloves from a pocket and donning them. She then opened her folio case, pulling out another canvas and carefully lifted it into position, onto the frame. It was a traditional painting, showing a pastoral scene with a horse and wagon in the water, and she smiled as she laid it over the frame. The frame style was certainly a more traditional fit for the style of artwork, and Germaine tipped her head one way, then the other before nodding in satisfaction.

"Excellent work Kai. Very well done. I'll have that rest of that rubbish taken out of the frame and get something worthwhile put in its place. And in excellent condition too – no marks or scuffs. Thank you. Now, let's see…" She moved to the side around Kai, until she could see Aswon clearly. "I think the darker blue for you, young man. Yes, dark blue, not the light."

Aswon pulled out the ties, and held up the dark blue to his neck, swapped to the light, then back to the dark again. The enthusiastic nodding and large beaming smile from Germaine made her face light up, and it was hard not to be swept along by the mood. More importantly from Aswon's point of view, it appeared that with that declaration he was most definitely "out of the dog house", though he was still unsure quite how he had ended up in there in the first place.

"Now, you've done me this little favour, which I very much appreciate. Might there be anything I can do for you?"

The rest of the team looked at Kai, watching as a broad smile spread across his face.

"Well, funnily enough, yes there might be. We'd really like to settle down somewhere for a while, and put some roots down. So we're looking for a building somewhere we can use as a base, or a safehouse. Perhaps you might know of somewhere…"

As Kai started to discuss their hopes with Germaine, Marius slipped out of the rear section of the truck into the front compartment, and then answered the incoming call he was receiving.

"Hello, Marius? It is Nadia. I am in town with my brother, he bought me shopping. But he has gone to the bar to drink with his friends, and left me in the shops. Can you come now? I have a little time to get away, before he will miss me?"

Marius gave a sigh, and told her to hang on for a moment, then turned and slid open the dividing door a few inches, and waited for Kai to notice him. When Kai saw him out of the corner of his eye, he raised his hand to the side of his head and made a "phone" gesture. He saw the nod, and returned to his call.

"Nadia, where are you, we should be able to get to you soon…."