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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?”
