Hell, yeah, she thought, but she merely shrugged, worried about appearing overly eager to engage in this criminal act, even with his approval. “Sure.”
Pierce passed over the tool set and then moved aside, removing the light from between his teeth and holding it low, to illuminate the lock.
“Tell me about the Herculean Society while you do it,” Pierce said, flashing a grin.
“What? Why?”
“Since tonight is an initiation of sorts, your first field mission, I want to be sure you know what led us here.”
“You want a history report while I pick a lock?”
“Mind and body on separate tasks.” He nodded. “It’s an important skill.”
Fiona inserted the pick. “The Herculean Society was formed in 800 BC, maybe earlier, by Hercules, hence the name. But he wasn’t a demi-god. He was a man who used science to extend his life, tapping ancient secrets—and DNA, long before modern scientists even discovered it—to make himself immortal.”
She raked the pick’s tip along the keyway, feeling the pins move against the springs. She then removed a small tension lever from the kit and placed it in the cylinder, applying gentle but steady pressure, just enough to hold the pins in place as she teased them up, one by one.
“Over time, Hercules witnessed how mankind abused certain powers, and he realized that most of us couldn’t be trusted with certain knowledge, artifacts or creatures. So he created the Society to hide, alter and protect history from humanity, and sometimes humanity from history. And he protected his own existence by exaggerating the truth about his life until it reached mythological proportions.”
Each move of the lock-pick was second nature. One of her father’s friends had taught her how to do this years ago. She had practiced until it was drilled into her muscle memory, along with hand-to-hand combat, shooting and some simple computer hacking techniques—all useful skills for cat burglars and government agents. Her father and his friends were the latter, all members of an elite paramilitary special operations team.
“In more recent years, Hercules went by the name Alexander Diotrephes, who I first met four years ago, under...interesting circumstances. Not long after that, he passed leadership of the Society on to my father, and he passed it on to you, what, six months ago? With that turnover rate, I’ll be in charge by the time I’m nineteen.” The cylinder rotated. The bolt slid away with a click. She grinned. “So are we here to protect history from people, or people from history?”
Pierce returned her smile. “It’s usually a little of both.”
She reached for the door knob, but Pierce shot out a restraining hand. “Alarm,” he whispered.
She grimaced. Of course there’s an alarm. Stupid.
Pierce reached into a pocket and took out a black plastic box that looked like a cross between an ohmmeter and an electronic stud-finder. It wasn’t the kind of thing the average professor of archeology carried, but he wasn’t the average professor of archeology. Not anymore. Those calm days were long behind him now. He missed the quiet sometimes, but he had no regrets. He was living every archeologist’s dream, which sometimes included breaking into a museum. He held the device close to the door and moved it along the edge of the frame. As he swept the device across the top of the door, a red LED began to blink, and then it remained steadily bright. Pierce gave a satisfied nod and pressed a button on the device. When he lowered his hand, the device remained in place, magnetically affixed to the door.
“Open it,” he said. “Slowly.”
She turned the knob and eased the door open an inch, then another. There was no clangor of bells or sirens alerting the world to their unauthorized presence. The door was equipped with a contact-circuit—the idea was that when the door was opened, the circuit would be broken, triggering the security alarm—but the electromagnetic induction field generated by the black box ensured that the circuit remained unbroken, even though the contacts were no longer touching. Of course, the alarm was not the only security measure they would have to worry about. The museum also employed a night watchman.
Pierce pressed his face close to the gap. “All clear.”
He gripped the door and slipped inside. Just before he disappeared completely, he waved her forward. Once she was inside, Pierce reached up to the top of the door and carefully slid the black device around to the inside of the door frame. With the door firmly shut and locked, he deactivated the box and removed it, slipping it back into his pocket.
The service door opened into what appeared to be a supply room. Pierce shone his red flashlight around until he found a door leading deeper into the museum. He motioned for her to follow.