by Grimm, thedoctor, The Eurostar and I'm Not Mister Mxypltk
Galileo Galilei International Airport, Pisa, Italy:
The passengers began disembarking from Flight 435, including a man with a ponytail and beard, wearing a large hat and dark glasses. He was followed by a muscular man with blond hair and a teenage boy. They began to enter customs.
"Welcome to Italy. Your name, sir?" the attendant asked in Italian.
"I am Professor Guido Sardella," replied the man, also speaking Italian. "I am on my way to the Museum of Antiquities with a unique find for their oddities wing."
"And your friends?"
He indicated the tall blonde man next to him wearing a tweed suit. "This is my associate and partner, Professor Butterfield, and this," he reached an arm around Danny's neck, "is my adopted son, Marcus."
After making their way through customs, the three procured a rental truck and waited as a forklift loaded the large crate onto the back.
"I hope Grimm's okay in there," Danny said.
"Eh, I am sure he will be fine, Daniel. He seems at time to be unreal in what he does," Edulcore Cicciotto, alias Professor Sardella, responded.
"We should get to the museum and find the painting, guys," Kristofer Schanz said, sliding behind the wheel of the rental.
"You think Dirk's there yet?" Euro asked as Danny closed the door of the truck and locked it.
"No telling with him," Danny said.
"Welcome back to Italy, Mr. Heinlein. It's been a long time since you last visited us." The stamp made its mark on Dirk Bell's passport.
"Haven't had much business here in quite some time," he responded. Ed, Danny, and Kris had to go through customs to get Grimm. Something about how he wouldn't be able to get through the gate or something. Dirk really wasn't paying attention. He did wonder, though, how Grimm was going to be able to breath in that box for that long of a flight. Oh, well.
Not having to go through customs allowed Dirk the extra time he needed to pick up his supplies. A van sat in the parking garage next to the airport. It just so happened that Dirk had the key. Inside were all the little toys that he had hoped to see. The quickly began to don his weapons in the same fashion that he had hundreds of times before. He pulled his black trench coat out of his bag and pulled it over his shoulders. His fedora crowned his head as he went behind the wheel of the van and drove off.
Since he was the first out, the others wanted him to go to the museum first. Whatever. A little time away from the group couldn't be a bad thing.
"Hmmm. Metal detectors," he mumbled underneath his breath as he entered the museum lobby. "Untrusting bastards, aren't they?" He quickened his pace to get up beside an elderly balding man. Unseen and unnoticed, Dirk slipped a small pocket knife into the man's coat pocket and stopped.
As the unsuspecting stranger set off the alarm, guards quickly circled him. As they tried to deduce the situation, Dirk quietly stepped over the velvet rope and into the museum. He quickly took to the Authorized Personnel Only section. At least, that's what he guessed it was. He wasn't fluent in Italian. But areas where outsiders weren't welcomed were universal. And he was good at tracking them down.
No one tried to stop him either. It was odd. Dirk was so used to military installations where they put twenty bullets in you to keep you from crossing a white line. Most of the people here were young, probably interns from the nearest university. The older people just seemed to concentrate on what they were doing rather than the world around them. He was just waltzing into whatever room he wanted without resistance. Dirk felt that he would feel more at ease having militia men taking pot-shots at him.
Uffizi Museum, Florence, Italy, 6 p.m.
"Signore, dove va?"
Dirk Bell, hearing the foreign language, had a hard time to get into his shooting position. Instead, he turned quietly and, with the most innocent face, said, "Do you speak English, sir?"
"Yes, I do. This part of the museum is not for visitors. I have to ask you to leave immediately, sir."
"Oh, sorry. I think I got lost through all those corridors."
"Yes, it happens all the time with foreigners. Guess we need better multilingual signs."
Dirk Bell mumbled some unintelligible words and headed for the exit. The place was not a military installation, sure, but still it held many world-famous treasures of arts, and it was well guarded.
But Bell's intentions were not to find the painting now, all by himself. He was checking for hidden security cameras, for all entrances and exits, and, lastly, to hide several instruments here and there that would be useful later that night, when the time for the mission came.
Meanwhile, a few yards away from the museum, in the Piazza della Signoria, a rental truck parked in front of the museum. There was a forklift ready to take a large crate within. Inside, three man were talking.
"Can you explain to me how Kit arranged to have this crate sent to the museum?" asked Ed to the other two. "I still don't understand how he did accomplish it."
"Ah, it was easy," said Danny. "We bribed the La Perdita Minister of Culture. It didn't even cost us much money."
Ed made his best astonished expression. "But... but that's illegal!" The van exploded into a general laugh.
Danny pointed his index finger toward the main exit of the museum. "Dirk's arriving..."
Ed replied, "Okay, now we go to a good restaurant I know and wait for the night. Then Grimm will open the door for us."
"Hey, poor Grimm will not eat this evening," said Chance.
Ed stroked his head, a little perplexed. "Well... I don't think he needs to eat. He's dead."
Sometime later:
The forklift took the crate into the museum and set it down inside the storage room. Two workers conversed in Italian.
"Hey, where are we supposed to put this?"
"What is it?"
"Some new exhibit we just got in. Supposed to be some old legendary warrior from an island in the Atlantic. A Professor Sardella discovered his body and had it flown back here. He's supposed to be here in the morning to set it up, I think."
"Hmm. Let's take a look."
The two men pried open the crate with a crowbar and pulled out the sarcophagus inside.
"Do you think there's really someone in there?"
"Let's have a look."
They lifted the lid off of the sarcophagus and saw the body lying in it. It was large, muscular, and pale skinned and had a slight grayish tinge to it. It was wearing a traditional La Perditan ceremonial outfit and headdress.
"Pale guy for an islander."
"Eh, maybe he was an immigrant, a European who went to the island and passed himself off as a god or something."
"One way to find out." The first man reached down and lifted off the headdress. "EEuughh."
"What is it?"
"Whatever they used to preserve this guy apparently didn't work on his face. What little skin there was came off with this mask, and there are no eyes. He is just a skull."
"Eh! Put the mask back! We don't want them to think we have damaged this new exhibit!"
"You are right. It's almost time for our break, anyway."
The men walked off, leaving the sarcophagus behind.
Damn. Sounds like my face decayed again. Oh, well... nothing to do now but wait for the signal, then open the doors for the others, Grimm thought to himself in the darkness.
Bangkok, a few days ago:
Tom walked down the streets on Bangkok with one thing on his mind: He had to go to Italy. He was wearing nothing but a bathing suit, slippers and sunglasses. He had decided to put sunglasses on when he noticed that everyone on the street stared at him, because light was coming from his eyes, and that made him uncomfortable. Now they still stared at him sometimes, mainly at night or when it was raining or snowing, because he was in a bathing suit, but it didn't happen as much as it did before he started using the sunglasses.
He hadn't actually walked all the way from Philippines to Bangkok. He'd taken a few shortcuts here and there that made the trip shorter. He would go into an alley in one country and suddenly appear in a public bathroom in another country. He hadn't known about these shortcuts before. Something just told him where they were, the same something that told him he had to go to Italy.
Shortcuts or no shortcuts, he'd walked for entire days. Tom was very tired and very cold, but he didn't know it. Something prevented him from knowing it. For now, the only thing in his mind was that he had to go to Italy.