“What are you doing?” Allyson suddenly looked on guard.
“Relax. I’m getting my iPad. We need to search for his home, right? That often requires a device of some kind, and I don’t like doing a ton of that on my phone. My tablet is faster, and for our purposes, we need the bigger screen.”
“Our purposes?”
“Yes,” Adriana bent down, unzipped the rucksack’s main pouch, and slid an iPad out. It was protected by a black, leather-bound case. When she opened it, a wooden frame was revealed where the tablet was housed.
“That’s neat,” Allyson said, reluctant to offer a compliment. She still wasn’t sure about all this.
“Thank you. I bought it from a company in San Francisco. They’re in the old book-binding district. Each one of these is made by hand.”
Allyson sighed. “Spare me the whole story. I just said it was neat, okay? Looks like a book.”
Adriana shrugged off the comment and laid the device on the desktop. She pressed the home button, entered her password, and then tapped on the Google app. Finding Immelman’s home didn’t take long. He was quite the public figure in Zurich and had been featured in several local magazines for his business sense and for his charitable work.
“From the looks of some of those articles, I’d say you might be wrong about your boy. He’s kind of a big deal around here. Almost a saint. You sure about all this?” Allyson took a step back and left Adriana leaning over the desk alone.
“If you’d met him, you wouldn’t say that. It’s interesting how often the devil disguises himself as an angel.” She tapped an image and pulled up his address on Google Earth. A few seconds later, the screen processed the information, and Immelman’s home appeared. From the overhead view, the place looked as if it was made of a bunch of boxes all thrown together. She tried to get a street view, but none was available, most likely due to the wall and gate blocking the short driveway that led to the house.
She zoomed in a little more to get a closer look at something. It was hard to tell from the image, but she was certain she saw the shadow of a man near the inside of the gate.
“Getting into Immelman’s won’t be easy. Looks as if he has a security detail.”
Allyson was exhausted, but the comment perked her up. “I do enjoy a challenge.”
Adriana started to comment about how, so far, she’d done all the work and Allyson had just followed along, but she decided to leave it alone. If they were going to do this together, she’d have to let go of petty judgments.
“This one should be plenty challenging. That’s just one guard there,” she tapped the screen. “I wish I could get a closer look, but this is all we can find in the way of details and layout of the house. The big problem is that the painting could be anywhere inside.”
“And that’s part of the reason why you need me,” Allyson said, still staring at the image.
“If there are two of us, we can cover more ground during the search. And if there is a team of guards, two can fight them better than one.”
Allyson appeared skeptical. “Yeah, and if you find the painting before I do, you’ll take it and disappear.”
“You could do the same thing,” Adriana said. She stared at her counterpart with a hard gaze. “I’m going to trust you won’t do that.”
“Never trust a thief,” Allyson said with a wry grin. Her eyes went back to the tablet. “How do you suggest we do this? Smash-and-grab job? Or quiet?”
Adriana pressed both fingers to the screen and twisted them, causing the image to swivel to the right. “Quiet is almost always my preferred method. This man will have neighbors, though they’re not too close to his home. Anything like a gunshot or a scream will alert them.”
“Getting in the house will be tricky, though.”
“Immelman will have guards. Probably two at the front gate. Our best bet will be to go in through the back.”
“And then what? Once we’re in the house, if he or anyone else sees us, we’re toast.”
“I can’t say for certain, but I think he lives alone. No wedding ring on his finger, and the way the man acted, he’s all about business. I doubt he has much of a personal life. So there won’t be any wives or girlfriends over.”
“What about servants? More guards inside?”
“Yes,” Adriana nodded. “That is a definite possibility. And then there’s the problem of dealing with whatever security system he has in place for the painting once we find it.”
Allyson’s tired eyes stared at the screen. “I don’t like it,” she said finally. “Never go into a job blind like this. We need to know the layout, what we’re up against with his system, and how many guards there are. That’s at least a few days’ worth of intel, maybe more.”
“And you know as well as I do that we don’t have that kind of time. It isn’t as if we can call up these men and tell them we need an extra day. They’ll kill my father. And you’ll get no money. Then they’ll kill both of us.”
Allyson snorted. “No one is killing me.”
Adriana didn’t comment. She still wasn’t sure about the idea of teaming up, but they were running low on time, and going in on a blind job like this really did require two people — even if she knew the other one couldn’t be trusted.
“We wait until dark and then go in over the back wall. It won’t be as closely watched since it overlooks the lake. The drop-off here,” she pointed at the screen, “is too sharp for anyone to climb up. We go over in the corner and then cross the yard to the rear entrance.”
“What about cameras? Someone like this Immelman character will definitely have some sort of video surveillance going on.”
It was an issue Adriana considered but wasn’t sure how to deal with yet. Her initial thought was that they would simply have to move fast and quiet. Cameras would pick up their movements, though, no matter how quick they were. That could trigger an alarm. Another option was to take the cameras out. Taking the surveillance offline, however, would be easily noticed by whoever was monitoring the system. That, too, made the idea a no-go.
A clap of thunder boomed in the distance, startling both women.
“Great,” Allyson whined, “now we’ll have to do all this in the rain.”
Adriana walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. Dark clouds boiled in the sky several miles away. Her jaw wiggled back and forth as she thought about the additional element of weather. She pulled out her phone and checked the weather app. After eyeing the forecast, Adriana looked up. “Looks like a big storm is coming through. It’s probably going to last through the better part of the night.”
“Just my luck,” Allyson complained.
“Maybe it’s good luck. Rain will make it harder to see anything with the cameras, and if there’s lightning, that’s even better.”
Allyson realized where she was going with her line of thought. “Right. Surveillance cameras are set to a certain aperture. A bright flash of light, say from a lightning strike, will render them useless for three to ten seconds while the lens adjusts for the sudden brightness.”
“Exactly. We just have to wait for it and then ride the lightning to the main building. Once we’re there, we should be able to get inside without much difficulty.”
“Assuming the storms stick around.”
“Right. I guess we need to pray they do.”
Allyson thought for a second. She was keeping something from Adriana and was unclear whether she should share the information. Evan, Frank Shaw’s lackey and her savior in Mexico, had no doubt followed her all the way to Zurich. He was good like that. It was why Frank paid him handsomely. If Evan caught wind of their little cooperative operation, he’d report it to Frank. Then the boss might be tempted to pull the plug, as in kill both women. If her assumption were correct, Evan would be sitting outside the hotel right now, busily attempting to figure out where she’d gone. The place was too large to search room by room. And since she wasn’t the one that checked in, Evan wouldn’t be able to find any record of her being there. For the time being, he was in the dark, something that Allyson figured she could play to her advantage.