There was a dead bolt on the low, arched door that slid open easily, but when she felt around she could find no light switch, just unfinished steps leading down into musty darkness. She dragged her fingers along the lumpy stone walls for guidance, but it wasn’t until she reached the packed-earth floor that she felt metal bounce against her forehead. It frightened her at first, as if a prehistoric insect had materialized deep inside the earth and found her—but, no. It was just a metal washer tied to a string. She grabbed it and pulled. With a click the basement was filled with dirty light.
In front of her was a broad, imposing rack of wine bottles. Floor to ceiling, it stretched in both directions nearly to each foundational wall. And hundreds—maybe a thousand—bottles. The Chinese investors, she guessed, were paying as much for this wine as they were for the house itself.
The collection, she saw from old, handwritten labels on the wood frame, was organized by country and regional appellations. Somewhere in FRANCE-LANGUEDOC she discovered a hefty bottle of Viognier covered by a skin of dust. She held it in one hand as she continued along, marveling at the effort and time that had gone into assembling all this. Had it been a single obsessive, or as a 1947 Château Cheval Blanc suggested, a project that had stretched multiple generations? Either way, these were people whose world was substantially different from her life on a civil servant’s wages. She felt only a brief jealousy, but it was strengthened by a sharp whiff of perfume, some unlikely remnant of a wealthy wife who had come down here to grab a bottle for guests and, perhaps, had decided to fight the moldy air with a few expensive squirts of Clive Christian.
Rachel stopped suddenly, sniffed again. That made no sense—an abandoned house with the fresh smell of perfume?
She turned to look behind herself. In the gloom, beyond the rickety stairs, were racks of tools, a work bench, and sealed plastic boxes full of life’s detritus. Her focus shifted, pulling back to the stairs, and she caught sight of spots scattered across the wood. Burgundy spots. They continued down to the floor, the spots sometimes smeared as if something had been dragged through them, or reshaped by the lines of a sole that had carelessly stepped on them.
She knew, of course, knew from the moment she saw the first spot on the steps. But that wasn’t what raised her heartbeat and blocked up her ears. It was where the drops of blood led. Straight along the front of the enormous wine rack, all the way to the far wall, and around the end of the rack. To the unseen other side.
She followed the path, but slowly, the expensive bottle in her hand now held upside down like a club. She sniffed—the perfume grew stronger. She raised the bottle, paused at the edge of the wine rack, took a breath, and stepped forward.
It was dim back here, the single bulb’s light diffused by the wines, but it wasn’t so dark that Rachel couldn’t make out the three figures lying on the dirt floor, three parallel lines. A man, a woman, a child—a girl.
She rushed to the girl first, squatted and checked her pulse. She was alive. Young—maybe seven—and dozing heavily. Rachel exhaled, then checked the adults, also both alive. Drugged, though—when she pinched the woman’s arm she didn’t stir. The blood she’d seen was from the man’s head, a gash above the temple. But he would live.
On her knees, Rachel sat back, looking down at them. Only then did she notice the noise upstairs, the stomping, either dancing or fighting, and the double bass drum wallop of some band she didn’t recognize.
She looked back at the bodies. The family: dark-haired elementary school girl; olive-skinned, plump mother in a dress that had been ripped on the path here; and the gaunt, balding father, long nose and loose jowls. She checked the adults’ pockets before finding the telltale lump of wallet inside the man’s slacks. Assorted cash and cards, including a business card for one Margaret Fowles, assistant director of the San Francisco field office of Human Rights Watch. But the man’s name she learned from his driver’s license: Grigory Orlov.