Rio De Janeiro;

The Brazilian evening was warm and damp with just a hint of sour brine calmly sucked in off the coast. The infamous Copacabana beaches were sleepy; the ocean waves lazily lapped up the pearly sands, leaving foamy slobber in the downing sun.

A furious seizure at midday, the shudder of steely drums and spirited serenades calmed. The sea of exotic coffee-skinned goddesses seeped slowly into the sidewalks and crossways as the carnival spectacle lost luster.

The swarm of buzzing bumble-bee taxis followed the tourists from the produce markets and side-street vendors as they scurried from the historical Centro District out toward the resort-lined coasts. The city was finally lulling to sleep.

Seventy stories above, the black form-fitting suit cut his shadow from the sun-bleached purple sky; his humanness disappearing into the jungle of large towers and skyscrapers. He dotted his sweat jeweled forehead with the back of his hand, annoyed, then stared over the parapet.

His watch beeped. He was behind schedule.

He only had a narrow window to succeed; just after the flashbulb nation rested their cyclops eye, but before the first twinkle of neon romanced the ink-well sky, Rio went ghost town.

He watched as the sun tucked slowly into the thin blankets of deep purple, orange and mahogany for its slumber. His watch read 9:30. The window was closing quickly and if it did, he would fail. That was something Johann Margrave didn't do.

The roar of artificial thunder ruptured the relentless chatter of seagulls swooping in from the seaside. Margrave looked up to see the nine o'clock Rio to London pass closely overhead. Prepared for the violent rumble, he tucked black plugs deeper into his ears and prepped his gear. Once the airliner took to the sky, he had only thirty seconds before the thunderous cover disappeared for Heathrow Airport, ruining his plan.

The coarse ledge crackled under his weight as he stepped up and glanced across the street. Sun shimmered off the narrow, black-scaled Matador Telecommunications building which hide itself well amongst the other--much larger--buildings in the South Zone of Rio. Margrave defended his eyes from the sun; he continued to compare the actual exoskeleton of the building to the blueprints he saw in his mind. The roofline formed an "L" shape with the taller section facing him; this was the safest infiltration point.

Margrave inhaled deep, raised his arms out in front of his chest over the ledge, lowered his head and spat the excess oxygen out cooly. Fastened to his left forearm was a carbon fiber launcher, a wide open mouth at the front, and a nylon braided tail at the rear. Two wires, black and blue from the center of the cylinder ran along his wrist, down into his palm and then up to a flat red trigger over his thumb. He checked the serpentine nylon rope snaking out the back of the launcher, into a slinky coil near a structural piece of the roof that it was secured to.

He mashed his thumb against the side of his knuckle. A high pitched buzz hummed through the launcher; layers of coil unwound quickly one by one until it disappeared. A small silver dart no larger than a stack of quarters broke the satin black skin of the Matador building; it opened up and six fangs sunk into the meaty flesh beneath. Chunks of mangled plastic, concrete and iron flaked from the wound and skittered down the face of the building; the loud painful groan deadened by the rumble of the passing airliner. The braided line tautened.

Margrave placed his right hand on the launcher and fell from the ledge.

As he zipped down the line, he glanced to the streets below. They were empty; nothing but gray asphalt and white street paint. Everything was going as planned.

He came to a stop when his feet slammed into the side of the Matador building. He reached up with his right hand, slithered to the roof and unsnapped the launcher from his left arm. He rocked from his belly to his knees and popped out his ear plugs; from now on hearing would be vital.

Margrave rose to a crouch and scurried quietly across the tallest roof in the "L". He had surveyed the building for the last three days from the ground and also from a private plane he rented so he knew that on the lower roof there would be two guards protecting the two obvious entry points; the stairway from the roof and the air conditioning fan. While they were obvious entries, neither of them were practical; while the locked door to the stairs could be easily picked, the stairway was likely brightly lit and lined with surveillance. The locked fan could be picked just as easily, but if Matador was smart the shut off for the fan would be nowhere near the roof. The only way to then shut if off then, would be an electro-magnetic pulse which would also short out every electronic in the building; not exactly inconspicuous.

That left a non-obvious solution. At the opposite side of the building, the top three floors were offices; no surveillance, and only periodic guard patrols. He would enter the building there.

Margrave memorized the routine of the guards from his belly above. He pulled himself to the edge of the roof and crawled down; as he fell headfirst he threw his legs around and fell feet first silently to the lower roof. Before he was spotted he sidestepped through the narrow bands of shadow and thinned himself behind a giant back-up generator; his black human shape disappeared into shadow.

A minute later the first guard passed Margrave, lost in the blackness of the generator. Margrave stepped out, grabbed a handful of hair and smashed the guard's skull into the point of his knee. The guard tumbled on his back and Margrave dropped his knee into his chest; reaching into his vest he pulled a roll of duct tape, tore a strand free and slapped it over the guard's mouth. Margrave pivoted off the guard, rolled him onto his back, clasped his hands together and wound the silvery spool around the wrists; he then did the same at the feet. Margrave grabbed the guard by the shoulders and propped him as tightly against the generator as he could. He then poked his head around to see where the other guard was in his rotation; there was only so long before he realized his partner was missing.

Margrave's black shadow slid across the burgundy evening backdrop like a wraith; a limber dance across the roof that fizzed and popped like firecrackers under his feet. The guard turned to make another round of the rooftop and Margrave slipped in behind him, unnoticed. He drew in his footfalls to mimic those of the guard as he came closer; the four feet acted as two, a synonymous cadence; partners dancing in rhythm.

Margrave reached a hand gently out to the guard's shoulder, he snapped around and the fist struck him in between the side of the nose and cheek. Dazed but not useless the guard suffered a sharp knee shot to the side; a blow through the ribs to the lungs. He crumpled like soggy newspaper.

Margrave crouched over the guard who gasped manically air like a suffocating fish. Margrave ripped off a piece of tape and slapped it over the guard's mouth.

"Long, controlled breaths through your nose and you'll be fine, pal." Margrave winked, slapped the guard's cheek playfully twice and then rolled him on to his stomach. Silver tape was quickly wound around his wrists and ankles in the same fashion as the other guard.

Margrave drug the guard over to the first and piled him on top. Margrave used the tape to knot the two together. Margrave smiled.

He made his way swiftly to the opposite side of the roof nearest the Rio beaches and looked blankly over the edge. Here, on the top floor would be a conference room; completely blind to the rest of the offices and soundproof, it would also be on its own ventilation system to prevent eavesdropping from the main unit. When dealing in trade secrets a company can never be too careful.

Margrave ripped free a velcro pouch on his suit; long strands of sable nylon rope flopped to the roof. he clipped one end of the rope into the harness saddled around his crotch and ran the other end ten feet back to the generator. He wrapped a loop around the generator, cinched it tight and the clipped the open end of the loop to the line itself; he gave it a hefty tug to test. Using reconnaissance photos taken from the air, he marked off where the generator was and then used the scale on the blueprints to count off exactly how many feet of rope he would need; he just hoped his math and the scale were both correct.

He walked slowly back toward the beaches and stepped to the edge. He turned his back to the fifty-story fall, closed his eyes and pushed off. Six feet of black rope sizzled through his gloved hands until his groin tightened and force echoed through his whole body; he came to a stop. He reopened his eyes; staring back at him was a matte black grille about four feet wide and three tall lined with six angled blades that helped suck air from the outside.

Margrave kicked his legs up to the side of the Matador building for stability in the wind, reached over his left shoulder and ripped off its velcro nest a primer grey power tool. It was no larger than his forearm and was angled no more than forty-five degrees. At the head was a circular empty socket that allowed various bits to be attached. Margrave reached into his vest, pulled out a screwdriver bit and clicked it into the socket. He placed his left hand placed over the top-left corner of the grille to hold it in place, and quickly began unfastening the screw in each corner. He gently took the grille off the vent and placed it in his lap; he replaced the tool and bit. He grabbed his roll of duct tape, bit off four small strips for each corner of the grille and stuck it to the side of the building.

Like clockwork each phase of the plan ticked away as expected.

Margrave let his feet dangle, snared both sides of the vent and pulled himself into the tight space. Once his thighs were inside the vent he reached under his pelvis and unclipped the rope from the harness.

After two minutes of slithering on his belly like a reptile through the ducting, he came to the end; a spider-webbed plate that opened up into the conference room. He removed the cover and set it in the duct on the other side of the hole. He poked his head from the vent and looked around the room.

At the center of the room and just below him was a large conference table made out of ebony glass, on each long-side of the table sat six overstuffed black leather chairs and on the short-sides sat one. Behind the six chairs the dying sunlight bled magnificent crimson into the room; a truly breathtaking sight. What impressed him the most, though, were four solid walls, no cameras and no guards as expected. He lowered himself softly onto the glass table. He stepped off the table and crept toward the exit.

"I'm here to rob you!" he screamed at the door as loud as he could. He then slimmed himself on the wall adjacent. He waited for three long minutes, not one guard checked into the room. Still soundproof.

He stepped back toward the center of the room and looked hard at the wall opposite the window. He knew that the elevator shaft on the other side ran the length of the wall, but there was no telling how deep the coach itself was. If he went too close to the coach he could be spotted, heard, or picked up on cameras. If he went too far away he would have to climb down the shaft over fifty stories without a harness.

He decided the best place was just below a painting hung in the conference room; an impressionist painting of the Rio carnival by some unknown painter. Margrave pulled off his forehead a pair of black safety goggle with a velcro and neoprene frame. He then fit his multi-bit power tool with a torsional saw head.

After only a few minutes of cutting, a three and a half foot tall square had been cut through the drywall; soundproofing, think, dusty confetti wafted into the room. Moments later he cut through the wooden beams and lined them inside the room against the wall. He took a quick break to wipe away brown dots of sweat, a thick layer of dust and wood shrapnel from his forehead.

The only thing standing between him and the shaft now was a thick wall of steel that armored the room from the elevator. He unsnapped a rubber suction used for scaling vertical surfaces from his belt and pushed against the wall until the rubber forced a juicy sucking sound from the steel. Next he grabbed a spindly wand from his back. At one end was a nozzle that looked very similar to a shower head; at the other end of the pipe was a red reservoir like a fire extinguisher with various bring yellow and orange warnings on it. The tool was a thermal lance; it spat controlled streams of extremely hot flames and could be used to cut cleanly through thick metal armor, like girders, stubborn safes, or in this case, an elevator shell.

Margrave pulled down his goggles and returned to work slowly jigging the volatile flames around the opening in the wall. The process was long and inexact, but rewarding as the hardy steel began to burn orange and melt away. He cut counter-clockwise and when he started across the top he relied on the suction cup; as the lance touched the final corner and the steel plate gave way, wanting to fall outward, he pulled it into the room. Margrave peered happily down into the vacant, dark shaft.

He stepped back, took three cool breaths, then looked at his watch; 10:20. His ride would be here in ten minutes. Every night at precisely 10:30, the janitor takes the elevator up to clean the top floor. The conference room was the last to be cleaned at around seven in the morning, two hours before the offices were opened. That gave Margrave more than enough time to get what he came for and escape.

Matador Communications was a Fortune 1000 company that dealt in prototype satellite technologies. Not exactly the sexiest stuff, but lucrative enough to warrant a peek inside their vault.

The plans for the building Margrave swiped from the city were intelligent enough not to designate where the Matador safe was located but things were still going his way. He suspected that the safe--like most--was underground because of an an anomalous amount of open space in the subterranean sections of the blueprints. The only other anomaly on the plans was an oversized elevator shaft--the very one he now had access to--which generally meant one thing: a two sided-elevator; one that opened up to the vault room when either a key was placed into the regularly functioning elevator, some key code was entered, or some other security function was passed. If he played the game right--and he always did--at the very bottom of this shaft would be the vault.

Margrave gathered his things; the multi-bit tool, the thermal lance and his suction cup and the climbed into the back of the elevator shaft and waited. At 10:29 the elevator moaned and pulled itself warily up to the top floor. Margrave heaved off the back wall and stepped with his right foot onto an inch wide stoop on the back of the elevator. He locked both his hands into suction cups and attached them firmly on the rear wall of the elevator; he then pulled the rest of his body onto the narrow stoop.

He didn't know for sure, but chances were the top of the elevator was lined with infrared or miniature cameras to prevent infiltration via the shaft. What he did know was that the rear of the elevator wouldn't be, after all it was impossible for someone to pull of what he just had. Margrave smirked.

The elevator groaned and mumbled, turning over in its sleep. With a final yawn the coach began to plummet steadily, an ignored passenger riding piggyback. Intermittent splashes of white-hot color bathed Margrave's shadow, lost in the otherwise infinite black in the shaft. Each time the brilliant flash rose past like a fallen star returning to the sky; the elevator passed another floor. He began to count them down; 49, 48, 47, 32, 21, all the way down to one. As the coach fell upon the first floor the brakes clapped the elevator lines several times; a small shiver ran up the spine of the coach that contested Margrave's footing on the slender stoop. His left foot buckled and that side of his body slumped into the dark pit below. Margrave glanced down at his feet dangling over the nondescript shadow below. Hanging to the elevator with only his right hand he slowly refocused, kicked his legs up to the to the skinny ledge and reached up, replanting his hand into the left suction. If that was his only slip in an otherwise perfect job, he would count his blessings.

On the left side of his head, attached to a thick nylon halo was a fluorescent flashlight; he clicked it on. The bleached spot of light traced up and down the back of the elevator, looking for the slightest weakness; he had to know what kind of security measure to forge for access to the vault. There was a split down the middle for the rear door but he knew if he tried to open it an alarm would sound. He also couldn't see inside the elevator from the top for fear of cameras or infrared.

As he contemplated quietly for a solution he heard a muffled voice inside the elevator; he dismissed it as nothing. They hadn't picked up any passengers so the coach should have been silent. Then he heard it again, this time in combination with a much more familiar sound; the tickling of ivories. Margrave tucked his ear to the elevator; the sour croons of poor lounge music filtered faintly through.

Another gift had fallen into his lap. Music in the elevator meant speakers in the elevator. That would hand him the weakness he was after. By reading the sounds and vibration through the elevator wall Margrave deduced that the two speakers were on the sides of the elevator as opposed to the rear or the top. He carefully unsnapped his right suction and reached around the side of the elevator, fastening a new hold there. He fumbled blindly with the darkness; groping at any piece of the elevator he could while negotiating his tiptoed steps on the ledge; slowly he pulled himself over to the right side of the elevator and secured the left suction. With a renewed vigor the wan cone of light scrolled the side of the elevator.

A wingspan above his head a narrow groove outlined a thin rectangle; stenciled in white at the center read various wattage and volume measurements in Portuguese. Between the stenciled words was a dial; Margrave reached up and toggled it counterclockwise. Unlocked, he pulled the flimsy metal faceplate off and sandwiched it between his thighs. He reached to his belt and what appeared to be a carbon fiber snail shell clipped onto it; at the head of the shell a single glass eye the size of a quarter glared out. He grabbed the eye with his middle finger and thumb and then pulled; the device hissed as he pulled out an arm's length of slinky black cable and stuck it into the speaker box. On the other side of his head opposite the flashlight was another modular cylinder; a camera. He applied pressure to a soft plastic lever behind the eye of the cable which synched it with the camera on the side of his head; a monocle the size of his pupil slid out from the camera allowing him to see what the cable camera saw in the speaker.

He fed the camera more line, snaked it past the speaker full of 40's lounge music, past a tangled nest of black and red wires to the edge of the box and a thin mesh of grey fabric. Through the hazy web of cloth the interior of the elevator car was slightly visible. Margrave noted the modest contemporary stylings; cold and lifeless stainless steel covered all six sides of the box, the only warmth coming from the orange neon bubbling under the call buttons and a cheesy view screen with animated LCD fish swimming around in a virtual sea of sparkling blue. He swiveled the camera head, taking it all in.

At the back of the car, on the opposite wall he noted a four inch wide and six inch tall door with a key lock on it. Just large enough to hide a keypad behind it. He admired their security, both for its logical approach, and also it's downfall; with a keypad behind a locked panel, a thief, in theory, had to first steal the key from one of the company's uppity-ups, and then hack the keypad, unlike the less expensive approach of a single key lock near the call buttons which mean all a thief had to do was get the key, or pick the lock and they were in. However, that meant the thief had to sneak into the elevator and risk being picked up on the cameras. A keypad, on the other hand, was frequency based; a successful key code emits a command to the receiver and requests access. All a thief with the right gear had to do was reverse engineer the frequency and then ping it back to the receiver. The thief could do that from anywhere nearby, for instance, stealthily from the elevator shaft.

Margrave slowly retracted the camera from the speaker box back into the shell-shaped case. The communication between the two cameras canceled and the eye piece slid back. He grabbed the plate from between his legs, put it back over the speakers and dialed clockwise.

With his free hand he fondled a zippered pouch over his left ribcage. Inside was the half-million dollar beauty that all remote electronics lusted for; all were weak under her spell. No secret--not even a trusted key code--was safe from the device he affectionately called "The Temptress." He thumbed open the thick foam sleeve from the zippered pouch and slipped The Temptress into his hand. He woke her up; her olive screen blinked awake. A quick scan of all remote devices returned with four distinct frequency bands. At the lower end were things he recognized: his own remote network and the cameras on the elevator. Slightly above that on the scale, in the vicinity of security grids was a single frequency which he decided were the elevator trip lasers. That left the highest frequency band which had to be the keypad. He now controlled the frequency of the keypad itself; all he needed was the correct trigger.

He tapped a few buttons on The Temptress, wiped away the other three frequency bands and focused on the keypad. They keypad only registered a peak and a valley in the band, probably an on and an off; the rest were dormant, which meant possible key code frequencies. Within the low and high value were literally thousands, maybe even millions of possibilities; it would take a single person days to find a single correct frequency. The Temptress, however, could queue hundreds upon hundreds of possibilities at a time until one of them bounced back active. Like flipping a thousand possible light switches at once until the light finally turned on.

Margrave put her to work, slipped her back into the sleeve and then stuck that into the zippered pouch. While she worked, he would start trekking down to the lower levels. He slid back to the rear of the elevator car, on the opposite wall there was a ladder. He pivoted off the back of the coach, one hand holding a suction cup and the other craning down toward a ladder rung. When his gloved hand managed a strong enough hold on the slick, oily and rusty rung he let go of the suction, his upper body caved toward the ladder and he snared the side of the ladder with the other hand. Next to come over were the feet; he kicked each one by one over to the ladder making sure as little stability as possible was trusted to the unsure ledge.

He stepped down rung by rung deeper into shaft unsure of just how far he was going or when he knew when he would get there. Below the first floor their were no lights dotting his path; only the narrow cone of light from his flashlight cut through the thick blackness. About thirty five rungs down The Temptress chirped twice; two chirps meant that one of the near-thousand frequencies she tried had turned one frequency from dormant to active. Next she would clear all the other frequencies and focus on the last several hundred. She could test these in quick succession and have the correct frequency in no more than another fifteen seconds. He descended down only another ten rungs before she chirped once; she had locked onto to the correct frequency.

"Good girl," he praised.

It was only another set of ten rungs before his feet discovered he was out of rungs to climb down. He pointed the flashlight down between the ladder and his stomach at his feet and anything below. Three feet below the end of the ladder bleached in a small spot of light was a wide metal corridor birthed from the wall.

Margrave pushed off the ladder and fell the three feet to the corridor; he landed in a crouch to dampen the sound of impact. He quickly hopped off the top of the corridor, through the dark onto the floor below. He took a quick survey of the area around him with the flashlight. A door at the end of the shaft, and presumably into the vault was guarded by thick steel teeth that would take about a day and a half to drill through. He directed the flashlight to his ribcage and took out The Temptress. With a triumphant stab at the only green button on the device the correct frequency was sent to the receiver; the mouth of the corridor growled, the massive jaws blocking entry slid apart.

A stale breath of air injected with an artificial scent of pine burped from the room, the constant electric hum inside calmed and a intermittent drum beat clicked in rhythm as the security system stood down and the back up power system initiated.

Margrave peered down the dimly lit short walk; his mouth twisted into a smile exposing cocky white. Six feet in front of him stood the vault.

He briskly jogged across the soft velvet rug, through the airy tiled cabin and put his hands on the vault. He looked up excitedly at her mountainous bosom which held back his spoils. She was a Beauford 212, something he knew intimately well. Not nearly as impressive as her bigger sister the 481, she was just the right kind of safe for Matador who didn't hold gold or cash or larger riches, but only blueprints, plans and documented trade secrets. What was best about her was she could be wired to a timer and if the safe wasn't opened in--about five minutes he guessed--the security grid would switch back on and the vault room would shut tight.

He moved quickly to the safe dial and began rapidly spinning combinations he had memorized. All safes come from the manufacturer prepackaged with one of several standard combinations. He knew that the Beaufords were delivered with one of only five. His experienced hand went in and out through all five combinations rapidly. At the end of them the 212 still wasn't pleased. He would have to try something else.

Being a Beauford he didn't have enough time to go to by feel, and, he wasn't sure how much more cutting the thermal lance could handle. It would be close on the time limit, but he was left with drilling.

Legitimate safecrackers are often left with only one solution; to drill through the armor above the dial and lock until they can read the combination as it spins by.

Margrave ripped free the multi-bit tool and quickly ratcheted on a drill bit. He placed the gold auger two inches off the dial and flicked the trigger. His only saving grace was the 212 was the thinnest-skinned of the Beauford vaults, with each higher model increasing the density of the armor over the locking unit. The 212 also didn't have a glass pack. Some vaults and safes have a plate of glass around the dial that if busted; impenetrable bolts slide into place and it will never open. If he didn't snap any bits he could penetrate the 212 and have her open within another four and a half minutes.

A jubilee of orange fireworks danced off the vault's shiny skin as the bit forced its way inside. Curly strings of flaked steel peeled away as Margrave strong-armed the drill. A high-pitched murmur filled his ears. He continued to drive the bit deeper despite the protest. The drill began to shiver, a hollow gagging sound escaped the hole.

"Come on, just a bit longer."

He gave one final shove; the perverse squeal died. The dull sound of the bit spinning dutifully through nothing took over. Margrave wrenched the drill from the hole and held it up to his eye; the bottom of the bit was flattened and wound down past the gold coating into the nickel center. The middle of the bit was bent to an eighty degree angle and and crack had split two thirds through the meat of the bit.

"Whew, close one."

Margrave set the drill at his feet and crouched closer to the dial, the solutions to the vault now exposed. He spun clockwise until the gap lined up over the number 15, he then rolled it back counterclockwise to 22 before shifting it clockwise over the final number 6; 15-22-6.

The chaste bolts on the safe unbuttoned and she opened up with an elated moan.

Margrave stood back, wiped his fingers successfully through his snowy brown hair. His record remained unblemished; never backed down, never failed, never caught and only a handful of suspicions and dead-end leads. Whatever Johann "The Alchemist" Margrave wanted to steal got stolen.

The safe door pushed all the way open; a domino effect of twenty-five semi-automatic rifles being shouldered echoed in the safe. Footsteps rushed in from behind him.

Margrave resigned, placed his hands above his head.

"We've been expecting you."

// disclaimer

The characters, concepts and ideas presented within Johann Margrave: One Night at the Opera and the Johann Margrave: One Night at the Opera artwork are the intellectual property of Mike Rasbury and are © 2006-2007. Grapefruit: Pulp with a Twist, Grapefruit logos, and site design are all ™ and © Mike Rasbury 2005-2012 Any reproduction or use is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved.

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