The Charmers: A Novel(56)

He had no idea how to get into the bunker. There was no door where you might knock, no bell to be pressed. But there were tiny cameras and they were all pointing at him so he had no need to knock. A wall slid back, revealing a steel slab of a door. There was no handle, it simply opened as he stepped up to it. He glanced nervously behind him. He wasn’t used to this high-tech shit, he needed a door he could open and close himself, he needed his escape route and he realized the Boss was not allowing him one. Too late to go back.

“Come in,” the Boss said.

The Russian could see him, or at least the back of his head. He was sitting facing a giant bank of television screens that showed the entire property. The Russian realized that nobody could make a move in this place without being caught on one of those cameras. And no doubt those images would be kept in perpetuity for the Boss’s use. With those cameras, those images, and with technology, the Boss could put any person anywhere on his property he wanted. Their image, that is. If he wanted, for instance, someone on the beach, throwing Verity into the sea, he had it.

The Russian’s throat went dry just thinking about it. He had never had any compunction about killing, well, only the once with the old woman, Aunt Jolly, but that was because murdering old ladies was not his business and he had regretted it ever since. Especially as he had yet to receive payment. Fuck it, he was getting his money and he was out of here. Gone. The thought gave him sudden courage and he walked boldly up to the Boss and put the painting on the desk in front of him, awaiting the words of praise, or even thanks.

The Boss got up. He looked coolly at him, one brow raised. “So?”

Cocky f*cker, the Russian thought. Believes he has it all, that he owns the world. Well, he doesn’t own me. He said, “I got everything you want.”

“You screwed up royally. One young woman is in the hospital, only half-drowned. The other is still walking around very much alive.”

“Fuck them.” The Russian was impatient, confident. He pulled the string of pearls from his pocket. They slid through his fingers and fell to the floor with a surprisingly noisy crash. Pearls were heavier than he’d thought. He bent to pick them up.

“Leave them.”

The Boss’s voice was ice. The Russian glanced up, surprised.

“And where is the ring?”

The Russian frowned. All the Boss had asked for were the pearls and the painting. No, wait a minute, there was also the big sapphire Mirabella wore, that’s what he’d wanted too. Greedy bastard, as if enough wasn’t enough for a billionaire like him who could easily go out and buy bigger and better. Why did he need all this shit, anyway? Especially that dreary little painting.

“It’s on her f*ckin’ finger,” he snarled. And then his head snapped back with such sudden force he thought his neck would break, and he was on the floor, with the Boss standing over him, dark eyes burning into his.

“Get up,” the Boss said.

The Russian knew he’d better, though it was difficult to get his feet back under him.

“Now, get out.”

The Russian had not lost all of his senses, though he was afraid. “I want my money.”

“It’s already in your Swiss bank. I don’t cheat with money, though you cheated with your job. Now, go.”

The Russian went. As fast as he could get his numbed legs to move, he went, telling himself he had to keep on going, get away from here, away from that crazy bastard who he’d swear to God would kill his own mother, if he’d ever had one. He had looked into the devil’s eyes and he was afraid. It occurred to him to wonder why the Boss was letting him go. Wasn’t he dangerous? Couldn’t he go to the cops? Or simply the TV stations? Tell his tale to the world. Denounce the Boss.

Then he realized, understood more like it, you did not simply denounce a man with that kind of power. The Boss held all the cards. You would get nowhere. He wasn’t even significant enough for the Boss to have killed, which he could easily have done, right there and then.

Relieved, he picked up his pace, walking across the grassy cliff toward the lights of the Villa Romantica.

The dog got him from behind. One of those police canines, they said later, though nobody seemed sure which one it was or why it had attacked him, other than he was a man walking alone in the dark in a place he wasn’t supposed to be. And after all, that was what the cops had been on the alert for.

It did not kill him, though. They pried its teeth open, got it off him, but it had mauled his face badly, simply taken his entire head into its mouth. That’s what it felt like, to the Russian anyway.

Later, in the hospital, his head completely wrapped in bandages so he looked like something from Ghostbusters, they told him he’d been lucky that Dr. Chad Prescott was around.

“One of the best neuro-cranial surgeons in the world,” they said. “It’s Dr. Chad you can thank that you not only have two eyes but you’ve still got some gray matter. Brains. If you ever had any to begin with.”

The Russian wondered, over the next painful days, whether in fact he had.





47

Verity

I had never felt like a princess before, but I was rapidly sure I was becoming one. The Boss’s guesthouse was small but perfect, a white villa with a coral tile roof. Double glass doors were flanked by pink oleander bushes. The whole area was surrounded by fields of lavender and the scent took my breath away. Inside, though, an almost-familiar perfume hung in the air. It was from another era, but still I recognized it. Evening in Paris. I remembered the cobalt-blue bottle from my girlhood, behind the drugstore counter along with lipsticks in bright pink, and nail polish in sparkly white. Drugstores had everything in those days, which after all were not so long ago. Now they seem more commercialized, with so few specialty brands a teenager can afford and feel she is “special” too.