Full Circle (14 page)

“But I digress. James, as I said, managed to escape the guerrilla slaughter, and he finally made his way to the mill, even though he was wounded. He would have died, except for the girl. Purely by chance, my Central American representative and his wife were visiting the mill at the time, and they saved the boy from being murdered by the soldiers that guarded the mill. The wife insisted on taking the boy—a late teenager, actually—to the States for medical care. At the time, I had a Guatemalan couple living here on the grounds. She helped clean the house and her husband was a gardener. They were childless, so it was a natural combination. They took James, and cared for him. Shortly thereafter, when James was about eighteen, the woman died, and the man decided to return to Guatemala. But James had no papers. If he left the States, he couldn’t get back in. So he stayed, and did gardening. That’s how it started. Then I began letting him ride with my bodyguard, in a second car. I won’t go into the rest of it, Mr. Bernhardt. Suffice it to say that, on at least two occasions, James showed himself absolutely fearless. If there’s such a thing as a dedicated killer, it’s James. So far as I know, he’ll do whatever—
whatever
—is required to protect me.”

“And he’ll be going with us when we make the exchange.”

“Yes.”

“And if I should succumb to temptation…” Amused by the theatrics of his own words, Bernhardt smiled. “James will know what to do. Is that it?”

Gravely DuBois nodded.

I
T WAS PRECISELY IN
a situation like this, Andrea knew, that disaster could strike. Steal a fortune in jewels, execute a masterpiece of tactics, plan the perfect getaway, and a tire could go flat.

Or, in the present event, two ostensibly innocent weekenders, she and Harry, on a Saturday morning hike through Benedict Canyon, amiably trespassing, cameras slung, sandwiches and wine in their backpacks. But they could run afoul of a security guard, one of dozens, certainly, hired by affluent local residents. “The binoculars?” she would say. “Oh, they’re for bird-watching.”

“And the tape recorder?” the six-dollar-an-hour guard might inquire.

“Music while we hike,” Harry would say, flashing his all-American smile.

“Yeah, but—” The guard might frown, puzzled. “What kind of a tape recorder is that, with an antenna?”

As, through the tiny Lucite earpiece, she clearly heard:

“Sit down, Mr. Bernhardt.”

“Thank you,” Bernhardt’s voice replied. “Magnificent house.”

“You’ll find Grace in the hallway,” she heard DuBois say. “She’ll familiarize you with the house and grounds. You’re free to go anywhere you like. At two
P.M.
, we’ll talk again.”

“Yes, sir.”

Through the binoculars, Andrea watched Bernhardt leave the deck railing and disappear through the study’s sliding glass doors. She switched off the tape recorder, retracted the antenna, then ejected the cassette. She slipped it into a jacket pocket, then handed the recorder and binoculars to Harry, who put them in their knapsack. Like her, his gaze was fixed on the DuBois house, an architectural marvel built in five levels down the steep slope of the canyon. Across the quarter-mile that separated them from the house, without binoculars, the solitary figure of Raymond DuBois sitting in his battery-operated wheelchair was tiny as a doll. Harry shifted his gaze to Andrea’s face, in profile. It was a perfect face. Would he ever see this face profiled as she lay beside him in bed? The answer, he knew, was no. Andrea’s body was meant for barter, playing for high stakes. She didn’t believe in fraternizing with the help.

The face that launched a thousand ships
… It was a line remembered from high school English. Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, the most precious prize in a game played only by kings.

Helen, the Grecian beauty who’d caused a war…

Andrea, the South American beauty who’d turned Ned Frazer into a corpse.

Andrea Lange, hardly thirty, stalking one of the richest men on earth, her next victim. Andrea Lange, who’d somehow managed to bug DuBois’s study and the small deck adjoining, where DuBois conducted his most important, most highly classified business.

“How was the reception?” he asked.

“Fine. No problem.” She checked the time. “Let’s go.”

“Right.” In a crouch, he moved into a screen of trees and began slipping and sliding down the red clay soil of the hummock that had given them enough elevation to see DuBois and the tall man over the high wall that completely surrounded the estate. The wall was at least eight feet high; six feet of brick and two feet of continuous, interlaced, black wrought iron topped with sharpened fleur-de-lis. Every ten feet, according to law, small black and white plastic placards attached to the wrought iron warned that the fence was electrified.

Off the knoll now, with the DuBois house no longer visible, they were walking erect down the canyon slope on a footpath that bordered the brick wall. This unfenced land, Andrea had said, belonged to the estate that adjoined the DuBois estate to the south. The terrain here was lightly wooded, and crisscrossed by trails like the one they now traversed: animal trails, deer and raccoon, even fox—

—and dogs, she’d said. Guard dogs, some of them.

They’d left their cars in a parking area near the bottom of the canyon, then walked up the slope to the knoll. For days Andrea had scouted the terrain while he waited in the car. The first day, he’d been angry. Taking orders—taking money—from a woman, how had it happened to him? Of all people, him? Two days ago, looking for trouble, a way out, fuck it, he’d started an argument. Her face unreadable, nothing given away, she’d listened to him. When she’d finally answered, her voice had been as cold and calm as a judge’s: “You can’t get out, Harry. It’s too late to get out.” They’d been parked in her BMW, at the bottom of Benedict Canyon. She’d been sitting behind the wheel, staring straight ahead. She’d let him think about it, about what she’d said, how she’d said it. Then, speaking very softly, her voice hardly more than a whisper, she said, “Ned—he wanted out.”

A short, precisely timed pause. Then, still very softly: “You remember Ned.”

And, as she’d known it would, the instant’s vision had flashed across his consciousness: the Lincoln town car, its rear windows tinted, moving slowly across Park. Ned Frazer, carrying flowers, for God’s sake, flowers meant for Andrea. The rear window sliding smoothly down. Ned, halfway into the intersection. Ned’s face turned toward him. Then the deafening crash of the shot, the flash of orange flame. Ned, clutching the flowers as he fell to his knees in the busy intersection.

One shot, in the center of a walking target’s chest, perfect shooting. Ten thousand dollars for a thirty-second job. Twenty thousand per minute, more than a million dollars an hour, he’d once calculated.

Meaning that, if he walked away from this job, it would cost her another million dollars an hour to take him down.

Unless, pinching pennies, she did the job herself.

They were on level ground now, no longer slipping and sliding down the slope. Ahead was the tall cyclone fence that separated private land from Benedict Canyon Road and the public land along the bottom of the canyon. A heavy padlock and thick chain secured a gate set into the fence. Four days ago, early in the morning, he and Andrea had stood lookout for Frank Youmans, who’d learned about locks in prison. It had taken more than an hour, but Youmans had finally made a key that worked. Predictably, Angela had kept the key. She’d been careful not to—

From the right and behind, he heard a growl.

“Jesus.” It was Andrea, close behind him. Moving slowly, with great deliberation, Harry turned to face the German shepherd squarely, at the same time gesturing gingerly for her to stand beside him. The dog was in a crouch, ready to spring. Its tail was flicking. Harry raised his left hand, index finger extended, as if the finger were a weapon in direct line of fire with the dog’s yellow eyes. The growling diminished.

“Don’t move,” he breathed. “Stay right there.” As he said it, still with his left hand raised, momentarily immobilizing the shepherd, he moved his right hand to the hip pocket of his jeans and his switchblade knife. As the dog followed the slow, deliberate movement of the right hand, its growl came from deeper in its throat. Harry finally touched the knife, cautiously working it free. The dog dug its claws into the pine needles carpeting the ground, gathering itself, ready to spring.

“Stay.” It was a sharp, sibilant command. The left forefinger came up, once more an instrument of command, of domination. The dog’s eyes shifted, sliding into full eye contact. As he moved forward one tentative half-step, Harry eased the knife free of his pocket. As, still, he held the dog’s gaze fixed on the left forefinger that was angled forward between man and beast, a witching wand, moment-to-moment magic.

“Don’t move,” he whispered again to the woman. Then he coughed to cover the click as the knife blade snapped open. The dog’s eyes tracked the sound, but then returned to Harry’s left forefinger. Five feet separated him from the dog.

“Stay,” he breathed. “Stay right there.” With the knife free, in plain view, he advanced on the dog. His voice dropped to a deeper, more compelling note. Three feet separated them. Two feet. Now, for the first time uncertain, the dog blinked, then seemed to frown. The initiative had passed from animal to man.

The left hand, fingers extended, was now only a foot from the shepherd’s snout. The dog blinked again—once, twice. The deep, menacing growl had changed to a low, tentative whine. Moving with infinite caution, Harry slowly extended his left hand to touch the shepherd on the right side of the head, just behind the bulge of the jaw. The dog’s only response was more whining. The dog wore a leather collar. Harry touched the collar, then gripped it with two fingers and his thumb.

“Stay …” Then, with a smile, “Good dog.”

The dog’s response was another whine. The yellow eyes were shifting; the dog was puzzled.

“Good dog,” Harry crooned. “
Good
dog.”

As, with his right hand, Harry used the knife to lay open the dog’s throat on the left side of the head, just below the ear. The dog yelped once, took two steps forward as Harry stepped quickly back. Then, whining, the dog fell heavily on its right side. The lightning-quick slash had been perfectly executed.

As Andrea watched him clean the knife on the carpet of pine needles and return it to his pocket, she spoke in a low, awed voice: “Jesus, Harry. You enjoy your work, don’t you.”

“You do the planning,” he said. “I’ll handle the killing.” He turned downhill toward the cyclone fence that ran at an angle to DuBois’s brick wall. “Come on. Usually guard dogs work in pairs.”

As she followed him down the thickly wooded path she said, “We always had shepherds when I was growing up.”

“Well, now you’re grown. Aren’t you?”

“M
R. DUBOIS ESPECIALLY WANTS
you to see the bottom floor,” the secretary said. “That’s the fifth level down—the workshops and the laundry, things like that.”

They were standing in the large room that opened immediately off the main entry hall. Here the walls were paneled in rich natural wood. The floors were planked oak, scattered with Oriental rugs. One wall was entirely field-stone, with a huge fireplace set into it. Hand-hewn beams were intricately joined overhead to support the lofty wooden ceiling. French doors opened on a large deck that offered a view to the northwest, a vista more heavily wooded in the foreground than the view from the smaller deck off DuBois’s study. Eyeing the architecture and the massive furniture that was arranged at random, Bernhardt decided that the room could have been the lounge of a world-class hunting lodge. Compared to the art hung in the central exhibition hallway, the paintings here were less abstract, more recognizable as landscapes and cityscapes.

“I gather,” Bernhardt said, “that Mr. DuBois spends a lot of his time in his study or on his deck.” It was a test question. In their marathon talks before she’d fled the country, Betty Giles had often mentioned that DuBois received special visitors either in his study or out on his deck. Because, she’d explained, the study and the deck were periodically swept for listening devices. The deck in particular offered few places to conceal a bug. Therefore, in the whole establishment, it was only on the deck that DuBois felt secure enough to discuss his most profound secrets.

“Mr. DuBois also spends time with his art collection,” Grace Campbell answered.

Bernhardt looked at her sharply, an involuntary reaction. Which art collection—the public collection or the art in the secret room? Was it possible that the stolen art was an open household secret, actually no secret at all? Was DuBois delusional? Without doubt there was always at least one employee present in the mansion at all times, if only to be there if DuBois collapsed. During the four months since Betty had left, how could DuBois have managed to visit the secret room without being seen? Even though entrance to the windowless secret gallery was possible only through two locked doors, certainly the servants must speculate what lay behind the first door.

Was it possible that DuBois was playing an intricate double game, creating an illusion to serve some secret agenda?

Covertly Bernhardt studied Grace Campbell as she stood quietly apart from him, as if she awaited his pleasure. In her forties or early fifties, the secretary spoke with restraint, dressed with restraint, behaved with restraint. She was a small, compact woman. Her brown hair, simply worn, was flecked with gray. Behind professorial tortoise-shell glasses her eyes were calm and watchful. Plainly Grace Campbell accepted anonymous self-effacement as the terms of her employment.

Grace Campbell runs the house
, James had said. Meaning that whatever secrets the other servants knew, she would also know. But, by temperament, she would always know more than she chose to reveal.

“What else did Mr. DuBois want me to see besides the workrooms?” As he spoke he moved to sit on a nearby sofa, gesturing for her to sit in a facing chair. She nodded as if to thank him for inviting her to be seated. She sat with her legs primly crossed, and spoke as she’d spoken before, calmly and precisely, in a cadence that was certainly the product of good schools: