A few minutes later, Inez was opening the door to a suite consisting of a bedroom, dressing room, lounge and bathroom. Heavy curtains, which were pulled closed, were hiding a large balcony that most people would call a terrace. The air conditioning was silent and discreet.
Mike had never stayed in such unadulterated luxury. Any time she had seen pictures of places like this, they were owned by Mexican or Colombian drug lords whom she was pursuing from her CIA base in Seattle, Washington or Los Angeles. Typically, there were hippos roaming the grounds. It wouldn’t surprise her if Charles had a menagerie outside. Everywhere she looked was a mixture of old and new, seen through a gifted designer’s eye and applied without financial restrictions. She could see Maria’s influences – an odd mixture of old Spanish, Mexican and her years in private education in Switzerland – and all of this with the limitless money through her marriage to Charles.
Mike’s eye was immediately attracted to her embarrassingly awful bags that were already on a bench near the door, along with her crash helmet and leather jacket. She clasped her face as it registered that – having ridden her motorbike to Northolt, where she had handed over everything – they had put it all on the plane. For a millisecond, she wondered if her motorbike was already in the garage here in Spain. Actually, it might have proved useful.
She pulled the cords that opened the two pairs of double curtains; this almost involved leaning back as they were so heavy. The view across the gardens to the sea was breath-taking. It was cosmopolitan. There were palm trees that, unbeknown to her, had been flown in from Hawaii aboard a cargo Boeing 747, and pencil cedars more reminiscent of Lombardy in Italy. The collection of very tall cacti was, probably, the most dramatic. There were opuntias and saguaros straight out of the Mojave Desert – literally.
It was then that she noticed the smell. A deep fragrance that she associated with Arab men. Was it in the air conditioning? Oh, and the music. The Spanish guitar gently but passionately coming from where? Small speakers in the ceiling.
She felt like a fish out of water – one in the baking heat of southern Spain.
Having temporarily lost herself, she came back to reality. She had a job to do – actually, two: protect Charles and find Randy.
She opened her small backpack and took out her laptop, together with a couple of small pieces of hardware that helped her access places that were normally out of reach. She pulled out her washbag and the liquids in a see-through, small plastic bag. Her feet finally reached terra firma when she pulled out her red and what was best described as ‘mousey-brown’ wigs; the latter being a new purchase. She didn’t have her polystyrene heads, so she moved two blue-and-white vases and a bust of Caesar to be together on a table and used them instead. She temporarily took off her black wig and rubbed her itchy scalp.
She went into the bathroom to freshen up before going down for lunch. It wasn’t the size of the bathroom or the selection of all of the most expensive perfumes that caught her eye, rather it was the black remote control. She picked it up and pressed the red button; the music stopped. She looked into the mirrored wall and wondered whether she should go downstairs without her black wig. Hmm, probably not. Her dark eye make-up was still fine, but her pock-marked skin was showing through her greasy, thin foundation. Whatever, she thought. The scar on her nose from where it had been broken on her previous job for Charles seemed to be more prominent under the downlights. She was ambivalent about her appearance. Some minutes it mattered, but at others, she wanted to show herself off in the raw.
Mike was hungry before she set off from her bedroom, with Inez having reappeared to escort her down, but by the time she had followed Inez down the corridors and flights of stairs, she realised she was ravenous.
Charles was waiting for her in a cool and airy dining room with a side wall made of glass. The table was at the back, away from the light, under two contrasting paintings. Mike walked up to them before she sat down. One was a loud, crazy mix of graffiti with primitive heads and the other a rather enigmatic woman in Edwardian clothes who was smoking a cigarette while sitting on a rattan chair.
“Basquiat and Ramon Casas, respectively,” Charles said, without her having asked who they were by, “not entirely to my taste. Especially the Basquiat.”
“Too off-the-wall for you, I expect,” she concluded.
“Not far enough off-the-wall, in my opinion.”
There was a love of the literal and obvious that probably explained why he didn’t like Basquiat.
“And who wants to stare at a woman smoking?” he continued his musings.
I wish you could, Mike thought to herself. Her craving for a cigarette, especially before she ate, was getting strong.
A man she hadn’t seen before, Paco, who was wearing a white shirt and black trousers, brought in two trays of warm tapas. The table was already covered to bursting with salad and breads. Inez was not far behind, carrying two bottles of wine that she handed to Paco before retreating.
“White or rosado?” Charles asked.
“White, please.”
Paco poured them both a glass. After a glance at his employer, he left the room.
“Here’s to a long life.” Charles was not only proposing a toast but also being provocative.
“Charles, I came out here to make sure you’re taking this threat seriously.”
“Paco and Inez have been with me for over five years. So have most of the others. The villa and gardens have every security device that money can buy. I’m careful without limiting what I do.”
“This is all great, but you either don’t know – or aren’t telling me – who’s behind this threat. If I knew this, we could deal with it at source, not after the threat has been attempted.”
“I genuinely do not know. I don’t know this Walter chap. He didn’t say what was on the card. It was a very short phone call.”
“What do you mean? What card?”
Charles adopted an enigmatic look that Ramon Casas would have enjoyed painting and realised that he had perhaps relaxed while having the upper hand on Mike. An easy trap to fall into when you receive someone into your thirty-room villa. “He said that he had my number from a business card.”
“You said he didn’t say what was on the card.”
“No, well, it’s both a memory card and business card. It’s just a sales gimmick. It’s, like, the thickness of two credit cards stuck together. Plastic … with your name and number on it.”
“Where did he get one?”
There was a pause. “From Johnny Musselwhite.”
“What was on this card you gave Johnny Musselwhite?”
“Details of potential projects.” Charles conveniently left out quite a lot, including the recording of phone conversations.
“PEGASUS?”
“Yes.”
Mike leant forwards and put her head in her hands. Her black wig formed two black curtains on either side of her head. What was it about shits like Charles and Leonard that they couldn’t tell you the fucking truth up front? You were expected to help them with one hand tied behind your back. “How did this Walter get hold of the card?”
Charles took a sip of his Penedès. “He said he had found it next to Johnny’s bed. Johnny had been using it to cut coke.”
Neither the gifted Jean-Michel Basquiat or Ramon Casas i Carbó could have done justice to Mike’s face, which was frozen in some strange other-worldly look. Actually, it was probably better to go with Basquiat.
“For fuck’s sake. What are you involved in? And you think the lovely Inez and state-of-the-art motion sensors are going to save your life? And, yes, I did see them. I came out here to protect you, but I’m now worried about all of us in this villa.”
