“Will do.” Mike punched off and said to Phyllis, “I need everything you know about Dr. Bruce, especially where he might stay when he’s in London, and we need to get with your security folks and get a visual on him if at all possible.”
“Give me a moment.”
Phyllis picked up her phone, said, “Charlie? We have an emergency. We need all the video pulled from two o’clock to three o’clock Tuesday afternoon for the third-floor corridors and my office. Thank you. We’re on our way down.”
“Phyllis, where is your boss?”
“He was, well, honestly, he was distraught. I encouraged him to go home, or we would have been sobbing together all afternoon.”
“I see. Oh, and Phyllis, can I see the pages Isabella found? We will need to photograph them for evidence.”
“Of course. Let’s get them. It will give Charlie a moment to pull together the video.”
She led Mike down the hall. “Isabella’s office is small and cramped, but at least she has one. Many of our people share or are in cubicles upstairs. It’s a requirement that I have access to all the associates’ safes.” She consulted her notepad, then knelt down and inputted the combination, following with a key. The door opened, and she reached inside. Mike watch her riff through the papers inside, then she frowned. “They aren’t here. Surely she didn’t simply file them.”
Mike started going through the paperwork on Isabella’s desk while Phyllis checked the filing cabinets.
“Perhaps they’re in Persy’s safe. I have the combination. Let’s check, shall we?”
They hurried back to Dr. Wynn-Jones’s office. She unlocked the safe hidden behind a beautiful Renaissance nude statue. She spun the dial, opened the safe. The pages weren’t there. “But this doesn’t make sense. She wouldn’t take them with her. They are far too valuable.”
Phyllis looked at Mike. “But she must have. Now that I think about it, I thought something was wrong with Isabella after her conversation with Dr. Bruce. Do you think he took Isabella? Do you think he might have the lost quires, too?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Scotland Yard: The name derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became the public entrance to the police station, and over time the street and the Metropolitan Police became synonymous.
—Wikipedia
New Scotland Yard
4 Whitehall Place
Westminster, London
Armed with the videotapes Charlie had recorded for her at the British Museum and a trove of Laurence Bruce’s scholarly papers Phyllis had printed out for them, Mike took a taxi to Scotland Yard.
She called Nicholas to fill him in on what had happened. “I’m meeting with Gareth and his team. Can you make it?”
“Sorry, Mike. Remember when Adam and I accidently hit the kill switch and all the systems fried? Some are still on the fritz. Keep me posted.”
She stood under the rotating silver sign for a moment, then headed in. Gareth Scott was waiting for her in the lobby, as promised. He got her signed in and through the extremely tight security, then took her upstairs, walking her through a crowded bullpen that made her feel right at home. She relaxed. Cops were cops regardless of the locale. Where, she wondered, were the doughnuts and bad coffee? Not a whiff of either. People were on Mike’s heels, ready to be briefed.
Gareth showed everyone into his office, standing room only for most of them. She saw files stacked everywhere and a whiteboard organized by case numbers and dates. Gareth said, “No word yet on from our friends in Rome. They’re tracking down everything they can find about Laurence Bruce.”
Mike said, “Phyllis called while I was on my way over. She thinks Bruce stays at the Savoy when he’s in town. Said he likes their afternoon tea. We should get an officer over there right away to see if perhaps he was stupid enough to take her there.”
“On it.” He pointed a finger, and a female officer peeled off. Gareth’s mobile rang, and he picked it up. He punched off a moment later, and Mike dropped the rest on him. “Bad news, the lost quires are apparently lost again. They weren’t in either Isabella’s or her boss’s safe. You didn’t see anything related to the museum in Isabella’s apartment, did you?”
“No, but I wouldn’t know what to look for. There were a ton of pages on her desk, but she’s a scholar. I will call and have them cataloged. The last thing we need is losing something stolen from the British Museum.”
The female cop stuck her head back in. “No one by that name at the Savoy, but I’ll take a run over and have a look at their registration, show his photo around. Also, nothing remotely ancient on the desk at the crime scene. Everything was basic correspondence, pay stubs, and notes. Nothing relating to the Voynich.”
“Thanks, Ingrid. Keep us informed.” And to the rest of them, “You’ve all met Special Agent Michaela Caine. For those who might not know, she inherited Drummond from us, so we all owe her a huge debt of gratitude.”
Laughs all around, and she relaxed a little more.
Mike said, “Yes, it’s as bad as you think. He’s insufferably good at being an FBI agent.”
Gareth raised a hand. “Moving right along. Here’s what we know. Dr. Laurence Bruce came to the British Museum Tuesday to see the lost quires of the Voynich manuscript that Isabella Marin discovered. We’ll have to track down his movements once he left the museum. Did he look up her address before he left Wynn-Jones’s office or do research on her afterward? I don’t know, but it might help us discover if this is a crime of passion or one of motivation. The killing of Gil Brooks might have been an end goal, he might have been an impediment, or he could have been the target all along. Though my instinct says Isabella was the target and Gil was an unfortunate bystander, we need to look at all angles.
“The second issue is the quires the museum announced are now missing, as well. Logic says the two are related, since Dr. Marin is the one who discovered the quires and did the press conference. Since both are now missing, we’re going to work from the premise that they’re tied together.
“A bit of background. The Voynich manuscript was stolen from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University last year. At the end of her press conference, Isabella Marin made a plea for the thief to return the manuscript so it could be reunited with the lost pages. I believe Dr. Bruce stole the manuscript and decided he wanted these papers, too. Why did he graduate to murder and kidnapping? We don’t know yet.”
Gareth paused a moment. “As you already know, there was a very strange signature at the crime scene—the dual holes in the victim’s neck, directly into the jugular vein. It matches a number of European murders by someone Interpol calls the Vampire Killer or Dracula. All the victims were exsanguinated. However, in this instance, Gil Brooks wasn’t. Didn’t the killer have time? We don’t know. Dr. Bruce is now our leading suspect for these crimes, as well.”
Mike said, “Gareth, do you have access to a facial recognition system? I’d like to run the photograph of Bruce through and see if anything pops. Something about him feels familiar to me.”
Gareth nodded. “We do, but our Police National Database is more limited than yours in the FBI. Though if I have a direct match, I can certainly use it as confirmation. That said, I’d be happy to let you send the photo to your folks if you’d like.”
“I would, Gareth, thank you. The NGI database is cutting-edge and can work with a profile shot. I’ll send it in immediately if you have a computer I can use.”
“Use mine.” He unlocked the machine, and Mike got to work. The photo was uploaded into the system in a matter of minutes.
She said, “And now we wait.”
* * *
They didn’t have to wait long. The computer flashed a match two minutes later.
No wonder the photo of Dr. Laurence Bruce in profile felt so familiar to her. The falcon on the windowsill, it all mad
e sense.
Gareth was looking over her shoulder when the match appeared. “Holy crap.”
They looked at Roman Ardelean.
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.�
�
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
In November 1917, radical socialist Bolsheviks . . . seized power in Russia from a provisional government, establishing the world’s first communist state. The imperial family was sent to live under house arrest in Siberia. In the late night or early morning hours of July 16–17, 1918, the imperial family (Czar Nicholas II, his wife Czarina Alexandria, their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) and four attendants were executed in Yekaterinburg, a city on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains.
—History.com
Byelovvyezh Hunting Lodge
Spala, Poland
1912
He appeared before her as he always did—long, filthy black hair, beard tangled and crusted with dried bits of food, his black robes slovenly. Alexandra did not care he was called the Mad Monk, a debaucher, a drunkard. Even now, she smelled vodka on his breath, and his robes smelled of sweat and sex. It mattered not. He was holy, he had mystical powers no one else had. She believed to her soul this strange mystic was sent to her by God, and she trusted him implicitly.
Rasputin bowed low to her. It was an improper audience, he knew, but the czarina had bid him to come alone to the lodge, and in secret, away from the czar. She gave him her pale hand. He said in his soft, deep voice, “I understand the czarevitch is ill from the journey.”
Her hand tightened in his, and he saw the fear in her eyes, a familiar sight. But he saw now she was even more frantic than usual about her son. Her words burst out, “A friend, a trusted friend, has told me you have a new method to help Alexei. Is this true?”
Rasputin said slowly, “Yes, I have learned I can do more, perhaps heal him entirely.”
He’d saved Alexei before through his prayers, at least temporarily, and now he could heal him? Her heart leaped. “He is the future czar, my only son, among all the gaggle of girls. You know the physicians say there is no cure for his hemophilia, yet you say you can cure him? They say there is no hope, that soon he will die.” She clutched his black sleeve. “I cannot bear it. He must live—he is our country’s future.” She leaned close. “Tell me what you mean, what is this method you say will cure him? Is this really true? Why did you not tell me sooner?”
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