“To that end, you’re first task for your new employer will be the transfer of a substantial amount of my liquid assets into his possession — the reason you’ll soon be leaving the country.”
“Assets…? What kind of assets…?” Brandis had been counting on the likelihood that mentioning financial matters would capture his PA’s attention and bring them back to the main thrust of the business at hand, and the ploy had worked perfectly.
“I’ve lived here above this warehouse for many years, Rupert… for many years before you came to work for me…” he began again, effectively defusing any further possible emotional fallout concerning what they’d just discussed. “In fact, this same warehouse has been owned under the ‘Brandis’ name since it was built in 1802, if originally constructed to a somewhat different design. It didn’t start out with all these storage racks…these came along a little later, and I’ve added to them as the years have passed. By the time you started with me, most of these were already filled, so I doubt you’d have even noticed a new pallet load appearing every now and then.”
“It’s the only part of the business you’ve always insisted on handling personally, without any involvement on my part,” Rupert observed softly, forcing a smile and inwardly also happier to have changed the subject somewhat. “It was clear from the start that all this was your project, and that you didn’t want myself or anyone else prying into it… I’ve always respected that.”
“I know you have, although you must’ve been curious,” Brandis gave a genuine smile in return. “To your credit, you’ve never asked me or made any attempt to find out for yourself what I’ve been up to down here. I hired you because I knew I could trust you implicitly, and you’ve never let me down.”
With a smile, he turned on his chair and lifted the desk’s roller shutter lid right to the top, leaving it wide open. Reaching beneath the front edge of the desk with one hand, he found the button he was looking for and there was a soft ‘click’. A small, secret drawer popped open at the rear of the desktop and from it, Brandis removed a small key.
“Let’s head downstairs… there’s something I need to show you.” Brandis suggested, glancing up at his PA once more as he pocketed the key and ignoring the renewed look of surprise on the man’s face.
“I’ve sat at that desk a thousand times…!” Rupert muttered, attempting to mask a wry smile with indignant incredulity. “What else do you have hidden in there?”
“Come on downstairs,” Brandis grinned widely, not answering. “I promise we’ll do our best to make sure you don’t get your suit dirty.”
They descended the stairs and stepped onto the main floor of the warehouse a few moments later. A large bank of knife switches was fixed to the wall near the bottom of the staircase, and Brandis, in the lead, immediately worked his way along the entire panel, manually pulling each one down in turn to engage its contacts with a small spark of electric current. Throughout the warehouse, powerful arc lamps suspended above the level of the highest storage racks burst into life with the faint but distinct crackle of electricity, bathing the entire floor in stark, cold illumination.
It was rare for the lights to be on at all — Rupert had only seen them fully turned on twice in the ten years he’d worked for Brandis — and he shielded his eyes momentarily as they adjusted to the sudden brightness. Still wearing his tinted spectacles, Brandis seemed unperturbed by any of the changes in lighting and immediately walked across to the nearest storage rack, Rupert following the moment his eyes had adjusted properly and he realised his boss had moved away.
Brandis reached out and laid a hand gently on one of the metal boxes, the pallet carrying it stored on the first level of shelving and standing just a metres high. Below it, an identical loaded pallet sat on the concrete floor and above it, three more levels of the same were held by similar shelving, as was the case all the way along the racks on that aisle and on all the others. Underneath the thick layer of dust that’d been disturbed where he’d laid his fingers, stencilled black lettering that was otherwise mostly obscured proclaimed only the figures: ‘BOX 10,141 — MACHINE PARTS — 79AU31011894’.
“I’ve no doubt you’ve thought about what’s down here,” Brandis began, his smile becoming a faint, wry grin. “What wild suppositions have you come up with over the years?”
“It could only have been something extremely valuable,” Rupert shrugged, answering without any hesitation, and this time leaving Brandis a little surprised.
“The logic behind that conclusion…?”
“Other than not hearing your immediate denial?” Rupert’s own smile was more genuine now as he began to feel more relaxed. “Apart from the mostly unseen but nevertheless quite extreme security you protect this warehouse with, the one single thing that makes it obvious is the fact that nothing ever leaves. You’re right, James: I haven’t really noticed the odd pallet or two being added to the stocks here over the years, but I’ve certainly noticed that nothing ever gets removed or taken away. Rather strange, I thought, that there are never any shipments out of here at all considering this is, after all, an import dock intended to receive goods from overseas and distribute them to London and the rest of the country.” He shrugged again as if it were all rather simple. “The only logical conclusion I could think of was that you’re storing something very valuable here. The level of security you’ve hidden inside these walls would put some banks to shame, and to my way of thinking that’s exactly what this warehouse is: one huge, secret bank vault that you’ve managed to hide mostly in plain sight.”
“It’s that kind of intelligence that made me want to hire you in the first place!” Brandis beamed as he took the small key from his trouser pocket, incredibly pleased that Rupert had worked all that out for himself. “It’s also that level of intelligence that I need for the mission I’m sending you on next.” He held the key up between his fingers and gave the young man a sly wink. “After all this time, how about I show you what you’ve wondered about all these years?”
Each 50 x 30 x 12cm steel box was flat-sided and featureless, save for folding hand-holds of steel tube welded at the ‘long ends’, each handle recessed slightly so as to leave no protrusions that might prevent the boxes being tightly packed. The lid was hinged, and each trio of boxes was carefully placed to align those hinges back-to-back down the centreline of their respective pallets. A large padlock made from heavy-gauge steel ensured every box was kept securely locked.
“I have a second ‘master’ copy of this key hidden somewhere else,” Brandis explained as he turned his back to Rupert and approached the racks. “I’ll make sure you know where that is and how to find it.” Standing by the box he’d just touched, he carefully inserted the key into the padlock and turned it. “Now,” he continued as he removed the lock and placed it on top of the pallet to his immediate right, “come and see what the fuss is all about…”