01_-_The_Alchemyst

CHAPTER TWENTY
Even for Bel Air, the area of L.A. renowned for its extravagant
properties, the house was extraordinary. Vast and sprawling, built entirely of
white travertine marble, and accessible only by a private road, it occupied a
sixty-acre estate surrounded by a twelve-foot wall topped by an electric
fence. Dr. John Dee had to wait for ten minutes outside the closed gates
while an armed security guard checked his identity and another guard
examined every inch of the car, even scanned beneath it with a small camera.
Dee was glad he’d chosen a commercial limousine service, with a human
driver; he wasn’t sure what the guards would have made of a mud Golem.
Dee had flown in from San Francisco late in the afternoon on his private
jet. The limousine, booked by his office, had picked him up from Burbank—
now renamed Bob Hope Airport, he noted—and driven him down to Sunset
Boulevard through some of the most appalling traffic he had encountered
since he’d lived in Victorian London.
For the first time in his very long life, Dee felt as if events were
slipping out of his control. They were moving too quickly, and in his
experience, that was when accidents happened. He was being rushed by
people—well, not people, exactly, more beings—too eager for results. They
had made him move against Flamel today, even though he’d told them he
needed another few days of preparation. And he’d been right. Twenty-four
more hours of planning and surveillance would have enabled him to snatch
Nicholas as well as Perenelle, and the entire Codex. Dee had warned his
employers that Nicholas Flamel could be tricky indeed, but they hadn’t
listened to him. Dee knew Flamel better than anyone. Over the centuries he
had come close to catching him—very close—but on every occasion, Flamel
and Perenelle had managed to slip away.