Drake LeCourt awoke at seven sharp, as he always did.
His father had conditioned him to tune his body to the vibrations of earth and sun, to the circulations of the stars.
This explanation made no sense to him, but, as Maurice LeCourt often told him, "Explanations of a metaphysical sort are to be accepted without intellectual analysis."
It was the words themselves, their flavor and poetic resonance, that was important. Logic was a bugaboo. It interefered with the creative juices. Bankers, as much as artists, needed to go with their instincts, their gut feelings, if they were to achieve what he himself had achieved: great wealth and prestige.
Drake picked up a hand mirror from the nightstand beside his hotel bed and stared at his ruffled reflection. He wanted to know exactly how he looked after a night of sleep, so that he would have some idea how girls saw him after a bout of sex. Not that he had ever engaged in any of that sort of thing outside his brief marriage. He was 21. A fully grown man, he reminded himself.
He had married at 19, fathered two "females," and had his lawyer arrange the divorce so that he could be the type of man who makes his mark on elite society. He intended to have girlfriends. But he wasn't ready for that yet. Not quite ready. He needed a reputation, and just being the son of a self-made multimillionaire was not good enough.
He had plenty of money and could do what he liked, especially now that his father, from whom he was careful to keep his dark ventures secret, was on the verge of death. A full inheritance was weighing in the balance.
Drake smiled, linking his hands behind his head, confident that with one more clever act he would be the sole beneficiary of the family fortune. Then it would be just a question of seeding rumors in the right quarters, among the wealthy whose lives required the spice of hushed scandals and dastardly daredevil deeds. Yes, set the rumors going of his sauve brutality, a kiss-and-kill reputation. The rich playboy with ice water in his veins.
By force of habit Drake got out of bed at 7:10, and swaggering into the bathroom of the Carlton Regency suite in Gipfelhaus, he admired his better than average looks in the mirror over the blue porcelain sink.
He had strawish blond hair, pale brown eyes that he wished were blue, and a dimple in his chin. What annoyed him was his short stature. He was five eight and three-quarters. He would have gladly sacrificed his hair gene for six more inches of height. More than any other feature in a man, girls liked tallness. To compensate he kept himself in good shape and used just enough steroids to define his pectoral muscles.
While showering he contemplated his position as personal aide-de-camp to his father's expected successor at LeCourt and Bistro Financial Services, Glen Wong. Drake was a racist in every sense of the word, something his father was not, and it galled him to be a glorified lackey for an Americanized Chinaman. If he got away with this last project, he thought, he would look into the idea of getting rid of Wong.
He shaved, brushed his teeth, gargled with a mild minty mouthwash, and dressed in the most fashionable of winter garments for his day at Sonnenhut, the ski resort that had overtaken La Grave and Kitzbuhel as the most popular in Europe.
He had breakfast in the hotel restaurant with its fine view of the mountains and the bunny slopes where the young girls came S-ing down with an awkward sexiness and frequent falls. Drake himself had taken skiing lessons the year before, at Aspen where the family had a two-storey lodge. He was not skilled enough for the advanced runs and dared not try them for fear of making his future reputation more difficult to promote. He would enjoy the social life. He would await the arrival of a young woman he had never met. His sister, Tertia.
A French-German man he knew in Zurich, Francois Benz, had come through for him, supplying him with the splendid news that Tertia Fontenay was taking a week's vacation in Switzerland and had a reservation at the Sonnenhut Inn, for the week of November 20-27.
Today was the 20th, he told himself happily, excessively salting his fried eggs. His fortnight of careful planning, of greasing the palms of Francois and the mobster's contacts at Gipfelhaus, had not been in vain. He would have his chance, as he had had with the other two sisters whom he had never met prior to his killing them. Prima and Secunda. What a lark!
While the waitress was filling his coffee cup his cell phone vibrated. He waited until she had sauntered over to Robert Redford's table before he checked the text. It was in code, from Benz.
'Mary had a mean sleek wolf whose fur was stained with red,
and everywhere that Mary went the wolf would share her bed.'
Drake LeCourt put the phone back in his coat pocket and finished his breakfast.
He was not so happy now. Tertia was not coming alone. She had a bodyguard with her. Well, Drake had half expected that to be the case. Tertia's two sisters dying in freak accidents just a month apart, after their mother had plowed herself a grave using a Lear jet, was encouragement enough to hire a protector. And, as it turned out, a lover.
It crossed Drake's mind that the life of a bodyguard had considerably more glamor attached to it than that of a financier. Suddenly he looked forward to seeing the bodyguard. What was he like? Apparently attractive to women. Was he tall? Probably, Drake thought, then added defensively: 'but not necessarily. Maybe he has fine features and well-groomed hair.'
He paid for his meal, left a niggardly tip as usual, and went out to his rented Bronco for the short trip to the perfume shop owned by one of Benz's partners. He had a deal to make.
Earlier, while Drake LeCourt was sleeping, at just after midnight, his sister was sitting on the front left fender of her Land Rover.
Tertia was smoking and watching Sanguineus and the French-German man having an apparently jovial talk further down in the thick stand of trees behind the Beauty Stars Kosmetik and the head office of the Flying Teachers, in Zurich, not far from the university where Rolgo was a guest lecturer.
Tertia was very nervous. She lit another Sultan and blew the smoke in a long sighing plume that the chilly air made into a contrail that hung momentarily before the vehicle's antenna. She felt that her nerves ought to be as cold and steady as the smoke, but no, they were all over the place, like the smoke in the next moment.
"Ha-ha!" laughed Francois Benz, slapping Sanguineus on the back as they came walking leisurely over to where Tertia sat.
She was trying to absorb their good humor, an effort that was seen in her halfhearted smile. But no to that also. All she could think of was the Pakistani knife that her 'protector' had concealed over his left kidney, under his leather jacket; the knife, and what Sanguineus intended to do with it, for her benefit.
"I sent it just as you said, my friend," Benz replied, "and an excellent message it was. Ha-ha! But why you want LeCourt to be aware of a bodyguard is a thing of exquisite complication that passes high above my simple head. Ah, la femme!" he exclaimed, beaming at Tertia.
"Yes," remarked Sanguineus, "but not so large. Except in her ambition. Francois, tell me, what do you know about the death of Tanya Wilde?"
Benz coughed and patted his chest. He looked sideways at the solemn face of the assassin, a security light shining fully upon it from over a dwarf pine in the parking lot.
"I was not..." Benz shook his head. "Listen to me, my friend. No ass is more valuable than one's own. You know this. Sometimes we must do what we despise. It is a matter of--- oof!" he doubled over as the knife went deep into his stomach.
Sanguineus pulled out the knife, its twin holes making for an easy withdraw.
As Benz lay on his side, his feet kicking at the gravelly asphalt, Tertia staring down at him wide-eyed, Sanguineus explained: "A gut cut has the advantage of disturbing the diaphragm so that the victim can barely breathe, and hence can not call for help. If you must speed up the dying process, cut upward at forty-five degrees to the left or right, to sever one of the two illiac arteries. But I have my doubts that you will be able to kill LeCourt. I don't think it's in you to do it."
As he expected, she reacted angrily to his assessment of her.
When she jumped down off the fender and reached for his knife he let her take it, stepping back from her and turning his right side toward her, to better defend himself.
Tertia cut a deep gash in Benz's neck, then stood back, smiling at Sanguineus triumphantly. Blood pooled beside the head.
"So much for your doubts," Tertia said with a harsh laugh. "If I can kill a deer, I can kill a scumbag like Drake."
"You severed a vertebral artery," he observed. "That was a good cut. He'll bleed out in a few minutes. Now drop the knife."
"Maybe. But what will you do if I don't?"
"Break your arm, then your neck," said Sanguineus, "and put you in the arms of this known mobster."
"How's this," Tertia said, handing him the bloody blade hilt-first.
Sanguineus wiped the blade on the sleevecuff of Francois and put the knife back in its sheath. He stood looking at the girl in the corduroy short-waisted coat and Cossack cap, at the expanding breasts of her heavy breathing, the moistness of her parted lips, her eyes glancing appreciatively at the dying body at her feet; and in the depths of his groin a familiar sensation assailed his senses.
"I have just one question about you now," he said.
"Oh?"
"Are you any good in bed."
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