CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Mike called Nicholas immediately. “Roman Ardelean murdered Gil Brooks and kidnapped Isabella Marin. I ran a photo of the man from the apartment video through NGI. Ardelean’s been posing as a Voynich scholar using the name Laurence Bruce for years—and, Nicholas, he also has the Voynich pages Isabella found at the British Museum.”
He was silent for a moment, then, “Despite what my father says, it’s time to go public. I’m going to have Ian put together a release, and meanwhile, we will double our efforts to find where Ardelean lives. Anything on the tape that might help?”
“No. You’re going to have to work fast, Nicholas. Wherever he took Isabella, the quire is, as well. We need to find her, but we need to be careful. We don’t know what he wants with these pages from the Voynich, but he wanted them badly enough to kidnap her and kill her fiancé.”
Nicholas said, “Do you think he committed the vampire murders in his search for the pages?”
“I don’t know, but all I know is we’ve got to hurry. Why would he keep her alive if he’s got the pages? If that was his purpose?”
She heard Adam’s excited voice in the background. “I think I’ve got something. Nicholas, I’m sending it to your screen. Mike was right. The car was the key.”
“Hold on, Mike, let me see what this is.”
Adam had the video from the garage up and running. “Here’s Ardelean’s BMW i8. You can see him turn left out of the garage. Mike’s idea was brilliant. I cracked his GPS system and downloaded the last several days’ worth of coordinates. I can find him.”
“You heard that, right? Mike, get back over here as soon as you can. The moment we know where Ardelean is, we’ll go in.”
“On my way.” She hung up. “Gareth, any chance you can get me a lift to MI5?”
“I’ll take you myself. Let’s go.”
The command center of MI5 was up and running when Mike returned with Gareth Scott. She saw a large glass room with screens from top to bottom, advanced telemetry and visuals from overhead drones, CCTV feeds, and multiple people in headsets. Harry and Nicholas stood against the back wall, both with arms crossed, both looking deadly serious, ready to lower the hammer.
But when Nicholas saw Gareth, his smile was huge. “Good grief, why’d she haul you along? Mate, it’s been too long.”
They hugged, slapping each other’s backs. “That’s what happens when you run away. Have you found him yet?”
“We’re narrowing it down. Adam and the team are looking at the last-known GPS location from the car and plotting it on a map. We’re up to yesterday—”
Adam shouted, “Got it. Richmond—East Twickenham. On the river. He’s been at this address several times in the past week. It’s not in his name—it’s owned by a private LLC. This could be his place. I’ll have to do some more investigating.”
Nicholas said to Mike, “If it’s him, that’s forty-five minutes southwest of our current location.”
Adam said, “Wow, this place is huge. It backs to the Thames. Good, we have a river entry. Pulling it up now.”
Adam pinched his fingers on his screen, then opened them wide, and the house took over the four main screens.
Mike was astounded. The house was elegant and massive. “It looks like a mini White House, Nicholas.”
“It does. It’s designed in the same Palladian style,” he said, gave her a tap on the shoulder. He saw she was staring at his side, the heavy bandage obvious beneath his shirt. “I’m all right, forget it. The nurse got carried away. A Band-Aid would have been fine.”
“Yeah, right.” She turned to Gareth. “James Bond here got himself shot this morning.”
“It’s nothing,” Nicholas said, “forget it.”
Mike said, “How do we confirm it’s his place, and how do we know this is where he took Isabella?”
Adam said, “The GPS on the car. He was in Isabella’s neighborhood the night she went missing, close to her address, probably in an underground garage. The next coordinate is this house. It’s thin but possible. Whoa, considering the security, I’d upgrade that to probable.”
Harry said behind Gareth, “I assume its security rivals Kensington Palace?”
“You better believe it, sir. Look at this.” The screens went black, and a series of blue lines appeared. “There’s a laser field across the lawn and the driveway. The minute an unauthorized person steps onto the property, those will go off. The walls are concrete, and there are cameras all over the place, though they’re well disguised, in trees and bushes. Which means they have video, and I’m going to guess thermal, as well. You wouldn’t go to this extent unless you had something to hide.”
Nicholas said, “I don’t see dogs, that’s good.”
Mike was shaking her head. “But a place like this—it’s going to be fortified inside, too. We have to confirm Marin’s there before we try an assault.”
Gareth had a screen open on a desktop. “CCTV from the Richmond Bridge shows someone in the car. Can’t tell if it’s a male or female, but, for sure, he wasn’t alone.”
“It’s got to be Marin,” Mike said.
Nicholas turned to Harry. “What do you think, Father? Enough to go in?”
“Yes.” His dark eyes glittered. “Let’s do it.”
“Good. If we go in predawn attack, we’ll have enough time to prepare and find out who else might be in there.”
Mike said, “We can’t exactly take a team to the front door, even at predawn.”
“No, and that means coming in from the air. Adam, give us the top of the house.”
The screen twisted and shifted until the roofline appeared. Nicholas shook his head. “Not good enough. We’ll need to get a better look. Let’s get a satellite pass.”
Harry snapped his fingers at one of his techs, who immediately grabbed a phone and made a call.
“Nicholas, if it’s this well guarded electronically, wouldn’t they have physical security as well?”
“You’d think. I haven’t seen anyone moving about. But if he has drones on-site, they can be controlled remotely to attack, and might be better than physical security.”
Harry’s tech called, “Satellite’s rerouted. Putting it on screen in three minutes.”
Adam was typing furiously. “There are work orders for this address at a security installer based in London, and bless their hearts, they listed all the upgrades. The place is a fortress. Doors are bulletproof, windows are ballistic glass, there’s an internal core safe zone that takes up a whole section of the bottom floor. The wine cellar in the basement is also bombproof—in case of a dirty bomb, it has a separate ventilation system with scrubbers that will allow them to hide out for a couple of weeks if necessary. Man, Ardelean is seriously paranoid.”
Mike said, “Makes you wonder what, exactly, he’s doing inside of the house.”
Nicholas said, “I think we know the basics—he’s been building minidrones and distilling epibatidine.”
Adam said, “Hey, here’s something interesting. When the house was purchased back in 2004, Ardelean had a sophisticated lab built inside. We’re talking high-end, pharmaceutical-grade testing equipment. A clean room with PCR machines, thermocyclers, centrifuges—I get the epibatidine would need specialized equipment, but this?”
Mike said, “PCR—polymerase chain reaction—that’s for DNA analysis, right? He’s doing DNA testing in a home lab?”
Gareth said, “Maybe he’s trying to code the epibatidine to specific people?”
Mike shrugged. “Or he’s running a side business identifying baby daddies. This is too weird. The house is a fortress. He’s running a lab inside, he’s murdering people using drones and close-up and personal—Roman Ardelean is much more than a software genius, isn’t he?”
Harry called out, “Satellite’s ready. Here we go.”