Chapter 55 - The Heist at Belgravia
"They haven't opened the safe yet," Alexander said ten minutes later, looking up from an encrypted tactical terminal in the command center. "The safe in the master suite is a Bismarck Mark IV—solid tungsten carbide with a rotary biometric dial calibrated specifically to Julian’s retinal scan. Arthur’s men are currently drilling through the secondary wall, but with diamond-tipped carbide drills, it will take them at least three hours."
"We have two hours," I said, strapping an encrypted communicator to my wrist and slipping into a dark kevlar-reinforced tactical coat.
"Katherine, you cannot go into the field," Alexander urged, stepping into my path, his face rigid with protective concern. "Julian’s penthouse is swarming with Arthur's eastern mercenaries. If you fall into their hands, the children lose their only shield."
"Arthur doesn't want me dead yet," I replied with cold clarity. "He wants me broken at the Baden-Baden Conclave. He thinks I am cowering here with my children, waiting for his forty-eight-hour clock to expire. He expects a defensive turtle maneuver. He does not expect an assault."
"Mom," Leo’s voice came through the intercom. "I just tapped into the Belgravia street surveillance feeds. There are eight operatives inside the penthouse and two spotters on the roof. But Maya and I just found a backdoor into the building’s centralized HVAC and fire suppression systems."
I looked at the monitor. Maya gave me a determined nod from her console.
"I can flood the entire penthouse floor with inert fire-retardant gas," Maya said, her young face illuminated by the green glow of terminal code. "It will deprive the rooms of oxygen within forty-five seconds without causing an explosion. Anyone without a closed-circuit rebreather will lose consciousness in less than a minute."
A fierce pride ignited in my chest. "Alexander, prep the rebreathers. Falcon Unit moves in four minutes."
"Understood, Boss," Alexander said, a grim, admiring smile touching his lips.
Thirty minutes later, our convoy of three blacked-out SUVs pulled into the subterranean garage of the luxury residential tower in Belgravia. Rain lashed the pavement outside, masking the low hum of our tactical engines.
"Gas deployed in three... two... one," Maya’s voice crackled through our earpieces.
Above us, on the thirty-second floor, the building’s emergency alarm clicked silently into diagnostic mode. The vents hissed as hundreds of liters of nitrogen-argon gas flooded the penthouse.
We breached the private elevator doors with silenced kinetic charges. The heavy oak double doors blew inward with a muffled *thud*.
Inside, the grand marble foyer of Julian's former home was filled with a dense, white fog. Four heavily armed mercenaries lay sprawled across the floor, their weapons clattering beside them, completely unconscious from hypoxia.
Alexander and two Falcon operatives cleared the rooms with lethal efficiency, zip-tying the operators and securing their sidearms.
I walked straight into the master bedroom. In the far walk-in closet, two technicians were collapsed over a heavy industrial drill rig. The tungsten drill bit was smoking, halfway through the outer plate of the Bismarck safe.
I stepped over the technicians, reached into my coat, and pulled out the small glass vial containing Julian’s post-mortem corneal sample, which Alexander had preserved from the morgue before Julian's quiet cremation.
I pressed the sample against the optical scanner.
*Beep. Beep. Biometric verified: Julian Vance. Access Granted.*
The heavy four-ton safe door swung outward with a deep hydraulic hiss.
Inside, sitting on a velvet pedestal, was the gold locket Julian had given me during our third year of marriage—the very year Eleanor had insisted I undergo the fertility treatments in Zurich.
I snapped the locket open. Inside was not a portrait of Julian, but a micro-laser etched crystalline drive containing the sovereign founder private keys.
"We have it," I whispered into the comms.
May you like
Suddenly, the screen on the Bismarck safe blinked red. An automated broadcast override activated, and Arthur Vance’s face flickered onto the monitor.
"Clever Katherine," Arthur's voice boomed through the safe’s built-in speakers, smooth and utterly unbothered. "You found the locket. But did you really think I wouldn't track the retinal scan of my dead son?"
