Spook Country

As Brown completed his sequence, the door made a startling concise mechanical sound as it unlocked itself.

“In,” Brown ordered.

Milgrim grasped the curved brass handle, depressed the thumbpiece, and pushed. The door swung silently open. He stepped in, knowing immediately that the house was empty. He saw a long brass plate set with reproduction antique light switches. He pressed the one nearest the door, his finger covering the round dot of mother-of-pearl. A bowl of creamy glass lit, above them, its rim held in flowered bronze. He looked down. Polished gray marble.

He heard Brown close the door behind him, its lock making that sound again.

Brown pressed more of the buttons on the brass plate, illuminating further reaches. He hadn’t been too far off about Martha and Ralph, Milgrim saw, though the furniture wasn’t real. It was like the furniture in the lobby of a more traditionally minded Four Seasons.

“Nice,” Milgrim heard himself say.

Brown turned on the ball of one foot, staring.

“Sorry,” Milgrim said.

48. MONTAUK

T ito sat, eyes resolutely closed, within his music.

Aside from vibration and the noise of the engine, there was nothing to suggest forward motion. He had no idea of their direction.

He stayed within the music, with Ochun, who held him above his fear. He saw her, eventually, as the waters of a stream, crossing pebbles, descending a hillside, through thick growth. He became aware of a bird overhead, above the stream, beyond treetops.

He felt the machine turning. The Prada man, seated beside him, touched his wrist. Tito opened his eyes. The man was pointing, saying something. Tito removed the Nano’s earphones, but still he couldn’t hear, only the sound of the engine. Through a curved plastic window he saw the sea below, low waves rolling in to a rocky beach. In a wide grassy clearing, shaven into low brown woods, white buildings were arranged around a squared loop of beige road.

The old man, in the seat in front of Tito, beside the pilot, had a large blue headset clamped over his ears. Tito had scarcely noticed the pilot, having closed his eyes as soon as he’d managed to fasten his seat belt. Now he saw the man’s gloved hand on a bent steel stick, his thumb pressing buttons on a grip like the one on an arcade game.

The rounded, slightly irregular square of road, and the white buildings, grew steadily larger. The largest of the buildings, clearly a house, with lower wings extending from either side, stood beyond the loop, facing the sea, broad windows staring emptily. The other buildings, clustered as far away as possible on the loop, behind the house, seemed to be smaller houses and a wide garage. There were no trees or bushes, once the brown woods ended. There was a scoured quality to the buildings, which he now could see were made of white-painted wood. In this northern climate, he knew, wooden houses might stand for a very long time, as there seemed to be nothing to eat them. In Cuba, only the hardest woods from the Zapata swamp forests could withstand insects for so long.

He saw a long black car, stationary on one side of the beige loop, midway between the big house and the smaller ones.

They swung in over the beach, sand rushing past beneath them, low over the slanting gray roof of the big house. The machine halted, impossibly, in midair, then settled toward grass.

The old man removed his headset. The Prada man reached across, unfastening Tito’s seat belt. He passed Tito the bag containing his APC jacket. Tito’s stomach clenched, as the helicopter met solid ground. The tone of its roaring changed. The Prada man had opened a door, was gesturing Tito out.

Tito climbed out, and was almost knocked to the ground by the wind from the rotors. Crouching low, the wind tearing at his eyes, he grabbed the cap to keep it from being blown off. Prada man scrambled under the fuselage and helped the old man down from a door on the opposite side. Obeying the man’s gestures, still crouching, he scrambled after the two, in the direction of the black car. The pitch of the roaring changed.

Tito turned to see the helicopter lifting, like some clumsy magic trick. It swung suddenly toward the sea, out over the big house, then rose higher, receding, against the cloudless sky.

In the sudden quiet, he heard the old man’s voice, and simultaneously felt the stiff breeze, in off the sea: “Sorry about the uniform. We thought it would be better for you to make a specific impression at the heliport.”

Prada man bent, retrieving keys from beneath the left front wheel of the black Lincoln Town Car. “Lovely spot, isn’t it?” he said, looking toward the garage, the smaller houses.

“Underbuilt, by current standards,” the old man said.

Tito took off the sunglasses, considered them, decided against keeping them, and put them in one side pocket of the lawn-care jacket. He put the cap in the other and removed the jacket. He opened the black nylon bag, took out his APC jacket, shook it out, and put it on. He put the green jacket in the bag and zipped it shut.

“It was like this in the seventies, when it sold for a little under three hundred thousand,” said the Prada man. “Now they’re asking forty million.”

“I’m sure they are,” said the old man. “Nice of them to have allowed us to land.”

“The realtor suggested a lower offer, provided the terms are sufficiently simple. The caretakers, of course, have been instructed not to disturb us.” He pressed a button on the keys in his hand, opened the driver’s side door.

“Really? How wealthy am I, in this case?”

“Very.”

“By virtue of what, exactly?”

“Internet pornography.” Getting behind the wheel.

“Are you serious?”

“Hotels. A chain of boutique hotels. In Dubai.” He started the car. “Ride up front with me, Tito.”

The old man opened the rear door. He looked back at Tito. “Come along.” He got in, closing the door.

Tito walked around the long, gleaming black hood, noting New Jersey plates, and got in.

“I’m Garreth,” the man behind the wheel said, extending his hand. Tito shook his hand.

Tito pulled the door shut. Garreth put the Lincoln in gear and they rolled forward, crushed shale crunching beneath its tires.

“Fruit and sandwiches,” Garreth said, indicating a basket between them. “Water.” He followed the loop toward the garage and the smaller houses, then swung right, taking a beige road into the brown woods.

“How long will this take?” asked the old man.

“Thirty minutes, this time of year,” Garreth said, “through Amagansett and East Hampton, on Route 27.”

“Is there a gatehouse?”

“No. A gate. But the realtor’s given us the exit code.”

The car’s tires, on the shale, were muffled by dark pads of crushed dead leaves.

“Tito,” said Garreth, “I noticed you kept your eyes closed, on the way out. Don’t like helicopters?”

“Tito,” said the old man, “hasn’t flown since he left Cuba. That may well have been his first helicopter.”

“Yes,” Tito said.

“Ah,” said Garreth, and drove on. Tito stared into the brown depths of the woods. He hadn’t been so far from a city since leaving Cuba.

Soon the one who called himself Garreth stopped the car, its hood a few feet from a low, heavy-looking gate of galvanized steel. “Give me a hand with this,” Garreth said, opening his door. “It’s motorized, but when I was here with the realtor, the chain kept slipping.”

Tito got out. There was two-lane blacktop, passing just beyond the gate. Garreth had opened a gray metal box, attached to a white wooden post, and was using the keypad mounted inside it. The smell of the forest was rich and strange. A small animal ran through branches overhead, but Tito couldn’t see it, only a branch left swaying. An electric motor whined, and a chain like a very long bicycle chain, part of the gate, began to jump and rattle.