Stolen Memories

Van den Broeck had placed it on a rolling table between a copy of the plan seized in Berchem and a white envelope Mara had signed eight days earlier. The stopwatch screen remained black. Under plastic, the plan showed a corridor half of whose dimensions had now been crossed out by the depot itself. Since the alert, Vandenberg had changed procedures, relocated two checkpoints, and sealed a maintenance exit. The plan for a heist that had never happened was aging faster than an architect’s drawing.

She remembers the heist of the century—and its failure.