Sally moved quickly across the roof of the building opposite the one she actually wanted to get into. The cops were a few blocks away still, but if she was still on this building by the time they turned into the street below, she’d be toast. More importantly, though, she knew that somewhere beneath her, Edgar was also running in the same direction. Two clocks ticked for her, one of which was far more important.
She skidded to a halt at the edge of the roof and looked down. Off to her right, she could see the red-blue flashes of the police. Their sirens muffled by the buildings between. They werent going to be an issue. To the left, the city went about whatever it did at two in the morning of a Tuesday in July. Straight ahead, though, was the prize.
From the outside, it was just another modernish building sandwiched between two others. Sure, it was a few storeys shorter, but there was nothing in its outward appearance that should make it special. Right now its lights were off and the front door, swinging plate glass with long brass handles, was closed. Unless someone had been rather sneaky, she would be the first.
As she had planned, next to her feet was her bag of tricks. One of which would get her over the six lanes of traffic below.
When you’re bored and you have a large amount of money, sometimes you do things that people – your peers – may not understand. Even if you are very wealthy, the kind of wealthy where you pay someone to worry about how wealthy you are for you, you still feel the unwanted tickle of boredom down your spine more often than you care to admit.
It was in one of these fits of boredom that a man named Gerald Lovington, formerly of some small patch of land in the wilds of England, now living in a large tower of concrete, steel and glass in the US, offered a prize. A prize for whoever could gain him ownership of a small red-green gem.
The gem was not his, and even the cleverest of lawyers could not find a way to argue otherwise. But that was part of the fun, wasnt it? How would whoever won this little challenge achieve this seemingly impossible task?
The gem, you see, was – at the time the challenge was laid down – sitting on a velvet stand under several bright lights, behind an inch of perspex in a museum in Dublin. It was, in fact, the prize exhibit.
As soon as the challenge was made public – and it was made very public deliberately – the gem was taken into storage. Hidden. And that is where it all started to go wrong for everyone.
Vernon slowed his breathing, smoothed out his suit and put his game face on. The next step in this little adventure was behind the door in front of him. In many ways it was an unremarkable door. It was the front door and main entrance to a normal suburban house somewhere in New York. Far from the noise and activity of the city, this house sat surrounded by happy families and strip malls. The door was painted a dark green and brass numbers had been drilled into it. 3487. Next to the door was a simple white-on-black doorbell button. It was clean – as was everything about this house – and Vernon knew that he merely had to press it for the next chain of events to be set in motion.
He pressed it. Immediately the door swung open and the person he expected stood before him. His father. Vernon Senior.
“Hmph,” the older man said, stepping aside and widening the door. “Youre the last person I expected to see.”
“You know me,” Vernon Junior said, entering and standing as tall as he could before the imposing figure of his father. “Always with a surprise.”
“She’s out the back,” Senior said, without acknowledging his sons remark.
“Im sure she is,” Junior said, flicking his eyes down the hall that led straight from the front to the back door. “For a change, though, Im here to see you.” He brought the briefcase he had been holding to his chest and tapped it a few times. “Business,” he said with a more serious demeanour.
The gem had once belonged to someone who had called himself the King of Ireland. Or, if not those exact words, words that meant the same thing. As with many other valuable things that had been found on the island of Ireland over the years, the gem found its way into the hands of the English Crown, and there it stayed, part of a Royal Collection that was travelled around the Commonwealth every few years and put on display.
From a purely aesthetic point of view, the exhibits were incredible. And people flocked from all corners just to catch a glimpse of them. The Irish gem was never a particular favourite; it was small – barely the size of an average sized strawberry. Some people said it looked like two pieces of plastic melted together – and its not hard to see why – the gem was ruby red at one end and jade green at the other. In between the two extremes, the colours swum and merged with each other in a beautiful pattern. Something that had been achieved many times over with epoxy resin and dyes. But this was the real deal. This wasnt plastic, or a social media gimmick. As simple and overlooked as it was, there was still no explanation for how the gem formed in the way that it did, allegedly, some 40 million years ago.
The bus pulled up alongside the curb and a dozen or so people exited, some pulling heavy suitcases behind them and a dozen more got on in their place. One of the women who exited the bus looked furtively around the group of milling people for anyone she recognised. When no one jumped out at her straight away, she ducked inside the bus station building that the bus had parked in front of and strolled up to the counter.
“How can I help?” the young man behind the counter said, as he finished typing something into a terminal she couldnt see.
“I was wondering about the timetables for the upcoming public holiday?” she asked. Her voice was timid, yet expressive. It gave the air of someone who would rather not deal with anyone, but still needed someone to give her the information anyway.
“Of course,” he said without giving her a second look, pushing back in his wheelie chair to a bank of filing cabinets against the wall behind him. He ruffled through some papers on the tops and came back with three pages of printed timetables on plain A4 paper. “This should cover everything,” he said, sliding the paper under the perspex shield between him and her and returning his attention to his terminal. “Is there anything else I can help you with?” he asked.
“No, thank you,” she said, taking the paperwork and sliding it into her purse. She left the building as quickly and as unnoticed as she had entered and started walking down the road, a shadow of a smile on her face. This was far too easy.
Of course the Irish had never stopped fussing about their stolen artifacts being shown off for one and all with not even the barest hint at where they had come from – obviously, it wasnt just the small red-green gem; there were other items as well – but the Crown kept fobbing them off with excuses and empty promises.
So the Irish took matters into their own hands and when the exhibition was on tour again, a group of masked men with weapons broke into the museum it was on display at and took back all the artifacts that were taken from Ireland.
The Irish government swore up and down that it had no idea who did this, and if they were ever found, they would be tried with the full force of the law. But they also said the diplomatic version of ‘well, what did you expect?’ and added on that if the artifacts were to ever surface within the Republic of Ireland borders, thats where theyd stay. On permanent display for anyone – not just the Irish – to marvel at. Another step closer, they said, to rebuilding Irish history. Not long after that, the little strawberry sized red-green gem appeared in a big museum in Dublin, put in pride of place, almost daring the English to come and take it back, and for thirty years, thats where it sat. Until that one day when an upstart English ‘Lord’ asked someone to give it to him.
Edgar knew he was running out of time; he had always been at a disadvantage, but now the feeling of falling behind was everpresent. He had no idea what the girls name was, but she had read him like a book and played him like a fiddle. Still, though, he admitted to himself as he struggled with the knots that secured him to the bedframe, not a bad night.
She had made sure not to tell him anything important. That he knew. In fact, she had said as much openly to him. As with most people these days, small talk almost invariably moved to the gem. He hadnt said that he was after it himself, but he did let it slip that he knew people who would be able to fence it to people who were after it. She had made a similar comment, but he could tell she was bluffing; trying to buy time so she could leave. Obviously his tie and her stockings fixed that problem for her.
But she had said something he didnt think she noticed. She had said that her flight, which was – he struggled to grab his watch off the nightstand – in three hours, was heading to New York City.
He had also heard a lead that suggested NYC was where most of the serious hunters were convening, and if she knew why, she made a very good effort at keeping that a secret from him. He was almost entirely sure she had no idea. Which was good. If no one knew why they were all heading to NYC, then no one actually knew where the gem was. Which meant that it still could be in Ireland. Time to be bold, he thought as the tie loosened and he freed himself, scrambling to put on his underwear while the maid awkwardly busied herself in the other room after finding him a few minutes earlier. It was time to head over to Dublin and see what had been kicked up in the dust left behind.
There was no myth behind the gem. It was merely held, at one point, by someone claiming to be the King of Ireland. No one could say whether he was actually a King, or if anyone of that age heralded him as such. Beyond this small snippet of a young nation long ago, the gem doesnt appear.
Gerald knew this. Or, rather, he had people who knew this on his behalf. It didnt matter of course. What mattered was the chaos. The fun. What mattered was the press he was getting. He was front and center of every magazine and newspaper across the world as almost every criminal enterprise rose to his challenge. Every small time thief and two bit conman. He loved to show off all the fake gems he had received in the mail. He relished the attention.
But beneath this outgoing shell, this chaotic mess of a human, was something more. There was a rhyme to his reason and while reporters and gossip journalists danced around the question, hinting at it, but never actually asking, he sat back and pictures of what he would do with that gem flooded his mind.