In memory she heard Travis’s voice. I knew right away it was good luck.
She smoothed her thumb across the soapstone portrait, palmed the charm, and held it tight in her fist.
After a moment, she pocketed the cameo and drove through the gates with the expectation that she would have to fight her way out.
3
* * *
BORISOVICH HAS a three-room suite with a private bathroom on the ground floor of the mansion. It is very comfortable. He is given everything he needs. He is happy. His life is without stress.
Volodin has a ground-floor suite of his own. Volodin, too, is given everything he needs. He is happy. His life, too, is without stress.
Borisovich and Volodin are playing cards at the dinette table in Borisovich’s rooms. They are competitive players, though they do not play for money. They have no need of money.
Much of their time is spent in games. All kinds of card games. And backgammon. Chess. Mah-jongg. So many games.
In the communal game room, they often play billiards or darts, or shuffleboard. And there is a bowling alley with an automatic pin-setter.
Members of Aspasia never use the game room. It is provided for Borisovich and Volodin and the girls.
Their employers are thoughtful and generous. Borisovich feels fortunate to have been hired for this job. He knows that Volodin likewise feels most fortunate. And grateful. Their employers are thoughtful. And generous.
In the morning, between nine o’clock and eleven o’clock, when members are not welcome, Borisovich and Volodin will each choose a girl to service him. There are currently eight girls in residence. They are very beautiful girls. They are submissive.
Borisovich and Volodin may do anything with the girls—except hurt them. Borisovich and Volodin are not members.
On this occasion, they are playing gin rummy.
Each of them has a glass of Coca-Cola.
They were once heavy drinkers. Neither man indulges in alcohol anymore. They do not need it.
That sad life is far behind them. They do not dwell on it. They hardly remember.
They are happy now.
Borisovich does not talk much as they play. Neither does Volodin. When they do speak, their conversation is mostly about the game or the girls, or what they had for dinner.
For many people, conversation is mostly complaint and worry. Borisovich and Volodin have nothing to complain or worry about.
They do not leave the property. The travails of life in the world beyond these walls no longer affect them.
Within reach of each man is a Wilson Combat Tactical Elite .45 fitted with a sound suppressor. In the ten months that this facility has been in operation, they have needed to kill and dispose of only two intruders who entered the grounds together on the same night.
It felt good to kill them. A change of pace.
As Volodin lays down a full set of matched cards, earning bonus points, Borisovich hears the pleasant female voice of the official enunciator: A member has been admitted at the gate.
The enunciator is not a person. It is a mechanized monitoring system of important developments at Aspasia.
Volodin also receives the message. He stiffens, and he cocks his head as if the words come to him by virtue of his ears, which they do not.
There is nothing for the two men to do. They have no authority over—or interest in—the members.
Volodin records the score.
Borisovich shuffles the cards.
4
* * *
BEYOND THE GATES, the long driveway passed between colonnades of up-lighted phoenix palms, their massive cascading crowns forming a roof over two lanes of paving stones. This spectacular approach raised in Jane the expectation of the grandest of grand hotels at the farther end or perhaps an ornate palace.
In fact, something rather like a palace appeared: an enormous Spanish-themed villa. Under the barrel-tile roof, the textured stucco walls were either a pale gold or the exquisitely staged landscape lighting painted them that shade. An imposing balustrade outlined the generous terrace in front of the Roman-arched entry.
Overton had told her to drive past the house to a secondary but imposing structure with ten garage stalls. One of the doors opened automatically to receive the Bentley.
Jane was reluctant to park in the stall, for fear that once the door closed, she would not be able to get it open and retrieve the car in an emergency. But supposing this adventure turned sour, the front gate would be a greater problem than the garage; she could never drive through that barrier. If her luck went bad, she would most likely have to escape on foot, over the high estate wall.
Overton had said that in foul weather or fair, a club member could use an underground passageway between garage and house. In Jane’s circumstances, such a route sounded like a death trap.
When she stepped out of the garage stall, the segmented door descended behind her.
She carried the pistol openly, though she held it down at her side, the silencer-elongated barrel reaching to mid-calf.
Here in the gentler precincts of the valley, the quiet of the night was almost deep enough to suggest that the metropolitan hive lying to every point of the compass had been largely depopulated.
The moon seemed to smoke like a chalice of volatile venom.
She climbed three steps from the driveway, between sections of the balustrade, onto the front terrace.
The solid-wood door was contained within the Roman arch, which was flanked by columns. Above the arch and the spandrel, capitals supported an architrave, above the architrave a fluted frieze, and above the frieze a cornice on which stood two carved-stone life-size conquistadors, each holding a shield and a lance.
Across the fa?ade of the house, light warmed the bronze-framed windows and made jewels of the beveled panes between the muntins.
The great house had a fairy-tale quality as it stood among the palm trees, but in spite of its beauty and its magical aura, Jane thought of Poe’s “The Haunted Palace” and its hideous throng.
No camera focused on the threshold, but beside the door was a keypad like the one that had gained her entrance at the main gate. Again she entered Overton’s membership number and the name Vidar.
The bolts in an electronic lock retracted, and the door swung open to reveal a deep foyer with an elegant parquetry floor in two marbles—black veined with gold, white veined with black.
Pistol at her side, Jane stepped inside.
The automatic door swung shut behind her, and the lock bolts shot home.
5
* * *
IN A VOICE NO EAR CAN DETECT, the enunciator declares, A member has been admitted to the house.
Borisovich deals the cards.
“Will there be another disposal?” Volodin wonders.
“There will or there won’t,” says Borisovich.
“Never before twice in one day. Or at least not that I recall.”
“Never twice in one month. Disposals are rare.”
“They are rare,” Volodin agrees.
“They are very rare.”
Volodin reviews his cards. “Do you really want to play more gin rummy?”
“I’m all right with it.”
“We could bring out the chess set.”
“I’m all right with either.”
“Me, too,” Volodin says.
“Stay with the gin rummy?” Borisovich asks.
Volodin nods. “For a little while. Why not?”
“Why not?” Borisovich agrees.
6
* * *
BEYOND THE FOYER, the main hall soared twenty feet to a coffered ceiling, and the floor featured French-limestone tiles. The house was constructed in a U, embracing three sides of a courtyard that could be seen between limestone columns, through floor-to-ceiling bronze-framed windows. The outdoor space was softly lighted by antique lampposts, and in the center of it, a swimming pool the size of a lake glowed as blue and sparkling as an immense sapphire, from which undulant currents of steam rose like yearning spirits.
The house stood in preternatural silence, a more profound quiet than Jane had ever heard before.