The prize as a simple piece of mountaineering equipment, a pick axe roughly a foot long with a sawn off wooden handle and metal pick, nothing obviously special about it apart from a slight, brownish tint to its point. The blood was of Lev Davidovich Bronstein or as he was later known Leon Trotsky.

There was no time to waste; the job had to be completed tonight. There was a myriad of methods of obtaining the item from the case, Phantom tended to opt for the more elaborate or technical just to exercise his mastery of his profession but the window of delivery was becoming increasingly smaller. So he settled on his method of entry, scoring the glass around the lock and smashing it through with a compact chisel. Not the most subtle or skilled but the low tech nature and execution of this current heist had the opportunity take the limelight away from himself and onto one of his less accomplished brethren.

Minus the lock the large glass fronted cabinet swung open revealing the glorious bounty within. His gloved hands gripped around the handle and though he would never admit it a slight thrill surged through his body, it was quickly quashed. He slipped the pickaxe into a harness inside his jacket lining and silently left the room.

The prize wasn’t his usual faire for he tended to favour accolades that carried historical military merit but the though of acquiring one of the most famous murder weapons of modern history, he had to admit, did prick his interest.

After Leon Trotsky was deported from the Soviet Union in Feb 1929, for openly objecting to Stalin’s running of the Communist Party, he spent the next 16 years drifting from one country to another (Turkey, France, Norway to name a few), were attempts were made on his life. Before finally settle in Mexico in 1937, were he met his end on the 20th August 1940 at the hands and pickaxe of an undercover NKVD agent Ramon Mercader.

Phantom’s exit was no grand feat he simply walked out of room, removing he device and keys from the locks, meandered through the galleries, back down the flight of stairs. Bypassing the guard post to leave a small padded envelope containing a thank you note and a small tip of gratitude, it was always advisable to keep hired help sweet in case a future ventures required there assistance or lack of it.

He casually relocked the basement door as he descended the stairs, there was no point making his entry to obvious, the detectives need to work for there salary too. He spent around a minute to disconnect his bypass circuit from the fuse panel before effortlessly sliding himself back through the window.

He stood up in the shadows of the alley and dusted himself off. He took a cigarette from his pocket, positioned it between his bandages, the smoke filled his lungs with the smell of a successful heist. With his hand in his pockets and his spirits on high he melted into the darkness to find his buyer.

The basement was pitch black but Phantom’s night vision was acclimatising quickly, allowing him to manoeuvre relatively unhindered around the general clutter and box’s that littered the space. Within seconds he found what he was searching for, the building’s fuse box.

Gently scraping the insulation away, he exposed two of the live cables (one supplying the box and one leaving it) and carefully attached a piece of wire between them, forming a bridge. Now this was in place he could afford to remove the breaker which fed the main security system, without trigging its back up (or ‘black out’) supplies. He then removed the breaker that fed the CCTV system, no point leaving any evidence.

Now was the moment were he found out if the guard had lived up to his end of the bribe, conveniently going for an extended coffee break. The seconds ticked by, nothing, he was safe.

He cautiously made his way up the stairs to the ground floor and slid a mirror between the door and the floor, an empty security post and a disserted hallway, perfect. Phantom made light work of the doors feeble locking mechanism and prowled his way through the ground floor, always alert for any noises that were out of the ordinary.

Not trusting the lift, for its confined space and possible added security features, he settled for the stairs, senses at there highest state, testing each step before putting his full weight to it.

He wound his way through the maze of corridors and gallery’s each lined with portraits of the long since dead. Until he came to a grand set of heavy wooden doors and here came his first real challenge. The doors themselves had simple enough locks to them but they were synchronised, positioned on either side of the double doors, a design for two people.

Now it would have been easier to simply bring a partner in on the caper but Phantom mistrusted everyone else’s competences and knew of the temptation of greed to the weak minded, to allow anyone to tag along on ‘his’ heist.

The solution to this problem was found in an outside contractor, a watchmaker to be precise. Who, under phantoms designs, created a curious device, no larger then a matchbox with a slit running through its centre.

Prior to this heist, phantom had spent a lot of effort in blackmailing the curator, who had a taste for large bets on slow horses, and acquired a set of the door keys. He placed one of these said keys into the device then slid the key into the lock. Turning the device three times, it began to emanate a quiet ticking sound. Phantom strolled over to the second lock, inserted his key, and upon the count of three turned the lock.

Both locks opened simultaneously and the two doors opened, revealing the main gallery hidden behind.

The gallery was akin to most, easy clean floors, benches for the weary patrons, life size portraits of the great military leaders and row after row of glass cabinets. Phantom would of like to have spent some time perusing the various artefacts of war but his paid window was running out. The job was still at hand. And there it sat, pride of place, in the centre of the exhibits. The Prize.

The light breeze displaced the closeness of the summer night’s air which was oddly cooling as it licked the folds of his bandages. On the whole Phantom hated summer, the nights were too short, the days too bright and even in the dead of night it was hot.

He was leaning against a graffiti plastered wall at the corner of a blind alley, the stench of rotting garbage filling his nostrils which he tried to combat with cigarette smoke, the garbage was winning.

He had been stood at this corner for around an hour, the dog ends littering his feet were evidence of this. That was when the sign he had been waiting for revealed itself. A light from the building opposite was extinguished, phantom stirred, crushing the cigarette he was currently entertaining under the sole of his hand made Armani shoes and slowly strolled over to the building in question. And walked straight passed it, cautiously glancing up as he passed by, an innocent gesture from the point of view of anyone watching.

He rounded the corner and down a darken alley to the rear of the building, he was sure to pay a group of youth thugs to smash all the street lamps in the alley, to give him the cover of darkness. The stage was set, now for the play itself.

Lowering himself to street level he found what he was looking for. A small window barely four foot across by a foot and a half tall, the window to the basement. This was his entry point. Phantom pulled a curious looking blade from his jacket pocket and gently scored along the edges of the glass. Then, after taping a criss-cross pattern across the pane in thick masking tape, he gave the window a sharp blow with his elbow, a spider’s web of cracks etched itself along the glass, a touch thuggish for Phantoms usual methods but the goal was met none-the-less. He silently removed the pane and placed it to his side as he slithered his way into the tiny hole.

Grabbing a ceiling beam as he crawled, he pulled his body weight up until his feet were clear and the dropped gingerly onto the balls of his feet, sending a cloud of dust into the air. He was in.

The night out side was bitter cold, the wind beating against the windows, threatening to break in and reap vengeance on those inside for daring to be warm. The common room was strangely busy for an evening.

Sarah Nade was curled into a puffy armchair, headphones blaring out some heavy bass line while here foot twitch in time with it. Patty Larceny was lounging out stretched on the floor her fingers racing over the key pad of her mobile phone at a tremendous speed as she updated and re-updated her facebook. Vic was lazily playing solitaire at the planning table with a deck of cards with a suspiciously large amount of aces in it. Various other people sat around doing whatever they could to fight the boredom of waiting for a job, not that Phantom really cared what the others were doing but he watched anyway.

Phantom was sat bolt upright in his armchair, the only corner in the whole room that had it’s lamps extinguished, and the bulbs removed just to make sure, bathing it in a the warm embrace of darkness. His jammer sat idly on the small table, turned off due to the sheer amount of complaints he’d received from the other patrons of the common room. He wasn’t even smoking due to torrents of abuse that was cast his was, why were villains so health conscious these days, how times changed he supposed, it was there choice of coarse but why were they so preachy about it. So denied his few pleasures that were ‘socially impolite’ he simply sat there, gloved fingers interlocked, eyes half closed behind there blue tinted surrounds, he watched, waiting.

Phantom finally stood up from his chair, a slight groan emanated from his chair, a few face around the room flicked towards his direction and just as quick to flit back once there eyes met with Phantom’s. He slid his suit jacket off the back of his chair and eased himself comfortably into it, which was when he noticed it.

A scarlet envelope peeking out of one of the pockets, the seal of his employer stamped across it. Curiosity blew through the room like an unwanted draft; eyes returned to his corner as he sliced open the letter and quickly studied his assignment. A minute had crept by as a plan began to form itself. The room alight with hushed tones awaiting Phantom to proclaim his task, they were sorely disappointed when phantom merely grunted.

Removing his silver cigarette case from his inside jacket pocket he placed a cigarette between the bandages to his teeth behind. The curious looks became looks of disapproval as he lit it, a curl of smoke mirrored in the glass that covered eyes. An ember splintered from the glowing cherry, floating on an air current in the room. Phantom swatted it with the envelope, with the flare of a magician it burst into flames. Without a word to anyone he flicked his collar up and left the room, a trail of smoke marking his movements and a cloud of ash hanging in the air around his chair.