“We need a piece of him,” Maya Khan said, her voice hushed in the back room of the clinic.
William paced the small office. This was the only place Alistair couldn’t bug–the headquarters of the “Resistance”. “I can’t exactly ask him for a blood sample, Maya. He has his own medical team now.”
“I don’t need blood,” Maya corrected, pulling up a diagram of isotope analysis. “I need hair. Or a toothbrush. Something with biological history.”
Julian Sterling stepped forward. “Hair retains a chemical record of the water you drink and the air you breathe. If Alistair was truly held in a dungeon in South America or Eastern Europe as he claims, the oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in his hair will reflect that geography.”
“But,” Maya added, pointing to a map of the Swiss Alps, “if he was living in luxury in Zurich running the Syndicate, his hair will show the isotopic signature of glacial water and high-altitude air.”
William stopped pacing. “You can prove he wasn’t a prisoner.”
“We can prove he was a King in hiding,” Julian nodded. “But you have to get the sample, William. And you have to do it before he suspects we’re looking”.