Day 234 - Repeat Offenders - Chapter 10.1 - (1330 words)

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REPEAT OFFENDERS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 10.1

“Are we ready gentlemen? Or is high tea more pressing?” Harold asked with a pronounced snobbery in his voice.


“Come now Mr White, surely you must appreciate the need for decorum when it comes to tea? I mean to say, we found these in your office after all.” Ivan countered with a heavy southern accent, all but saying the words 'I do declare' in addition to his response.


Harold smiled. “Not mine, sorry men.” he shrugged his shoulders.


“They were in your office.” Michael said pointedly.


“That's because they are a gift for a client, the same legal firm that manages the box that we are repeatedly taking from, over and over again. The irony, notwithstanding, these is their tea set, the senior partner is a big fan of English Breakfast I understand.” A fourth cup and saucer was laid on the counter, next to a steaming teapot and was obviously set for Harold to join them if he so pleased.


Harold picked up the cup and turned it over and over, throwing the bag of gems to Ivan who caught it deftly while transferring the saucer to the cup hand, balancing all three objects without spilling a drop. “Adding insult to injury I suppose?” Harold burst into motion, throwing the teacup at a nearby pillar of stone, shattering it with a loud bang and sending china shards in all directions.


“Jesus!” Brian jumped as a sliver went whizzing past his head.


Michael laughed and then returned to his tea, draining it and then throwing his own cup and saucer at a pillar a little further away. He mustered a similar force but that was fuelled by his own strength, not the uncorked rage that Harold White Prime had suddenly exploded with. “Like a Greek dinner!” he mused aloud and looked at the other two. Brian shook his head and put his down without incident while Ivan hurled his, still half full creating a rainbow of brown as the cup spun and delivered the hot contents in an arc across the floor before bouncing off the pillar and crack landing on the hard flooring.


“Enough of this nonsense, time to go.” Brian pulled up this device and the four men huddled together. They waved to the camera, a ritual they practised in each 'robbery' for their own amusement. The distance between the four men was very small, none of the wanting to share the fate of the missing fingered Harold Two, knowing that on this side of the anomaly reset field, there was no forgiving cessation of existence to take away that loss. No one wanted to be without a hand, foot or part of their body they could not afford to lose, which was of course, all of it.


Brian hit the switch and the four men were instantly back in the warehouse and ready to have a rest, Brian, Michael and Harold all took a seat and breathed heavily together glad to be 'home' as they were beginning to call the warehouse.


“Come on, one more time!” Ivan said, waving his arms, “How long have we got?”


Brian shook his head, and then held up both hands. “I need a rest and we have enough, enough already.”


“Oh come on, we can never have enough, we only get this opportunity once, if we rest too long we will miss our window and who knows what will happen? You'll be kicking yourselves then!” Ivan was jumping about and eager to move on the bank once more, displaying the dangerous energy that got him out of sync with the gang just over a day ago, in warehouse time.


Michael put a hand on Ivan's shoulder and pushed him down into a chair. “We don't NEED to go anywhere, we never really needed to go again after the first.”


“You're kidding right? I mean that's a couple of million in that first haul, but now we have almost what... fifty million? More?” Ivan was staring at his 'boss' in disbelief. How could he not see that this was ten times better than the first haul, they could keep going until they were billionaires.


“No, think about it.”


“I AM THINKING ABOUT IT!” Ivan's voice and temper rose in frustration, and Michael saw the party going down the same track as before, the one that ended up with wiping out a version of Ivan and replacing him with an un-exploded version. This time he was ready though and instead to thumping him into unconsciousness, he spun him around to face Brian who was loading the gems from the latest bag into the much larger lock box which was now full of gems, like a cartoon drawing of Richie Rich with an obscene amount of wealth on display.


“I don't think you've thought this through. We have been a dozen times over and taken a dozen times that original haul of 3 million odd of gems. That's only thirty six million, and since we are selling them black market, probably to the very people we technically stole them from, we won't get more than fifty cents on the dollar, so it's more like seventeen or eighteen million dollars worth, once we convert it.” He was laying the path for Ivan to follow.


“See? All the more reason to get MORE and not LESS, I mean COME ON!?!” Ivan fell for the trap laid for him.


“Yes, we have seventeen or eighteen million dollars worth right there, and if we moved that to our own vault tomorrow morning when the bank opens? We'll have that in the bank. Right?”


“Yes, but that's all we'll have.”


“OK, but then let's say tomorrow night we, excluding our friend here, go back to the bank, and withdraw our gems, and then reset ourselves to a few hours before that, and then...” Michael sat back and let Ivan settle on the plan, the plan dawning on him.


Brian was nodding to himself on his seat. “Tomorrow, after a good nights sleep, we go again maybe another ten or eleven times, we don't even need to go after hours, we can just ...”


“You're not leaving me behind thank you!” Harold added suddenly fearing for an existence that the would not technically know had stopped being real.


Michael moved to clam him his fears, “No, there's no need for that and at some point we'd need help managing this level of money and assets, so you remain part of the deal. We get you a new identity, and you get us the expertise on money management, legitimate like you do for this client.”


“And we go from seventeen million to … fucking hell. A hundred and seventy?” Ivan whistled, “Why didn't I think of that?”


Brian rolled his eyes and Ivan saw him do it, causing him to blush suddenly, reddened with embarrassed rage he filed the look into his memory, there would be payback when they had thirty or forty million dollars worth each, maybe even more. The idea occurred to him, as it had to the others. “So we could actually double it every time we do it, that would mean what? I can't even work that shit out, billions? We could be billionaires?”


“Within reason, we may need to invest a little wisely and make the money work for us, if we flood the market with too many gems too fast, they devalue, we need to use them over time and make the money work for us. We have years to work this plan.” Michael gave a reassuring look to Harold White Prime and they were both thinking about the future.



Brian said nothing, but he knew that they really did not have years ahead of them, the end was going to be sooner than they thought, but it was not time to tell them just yet.