Le Meur touches her glass to that of Todd Stanton, formerly a CIA psy-ops officer, more recently an expert in the harvesting and manipulation of online personal data. Often described as the dark cardinal of the American far right, Stanton is widely believed to be the architect of the Republican Party’s recent electoral victories. Today, he’s wearing a wolfskin coat, which does little to flatter his corpulent frame or to distract from his florid complexion.
Beyond them, by the bar, three men and a woman circle each other warily. Leonardo Venturi, a tiny, wild-haired figure sporting a monocle, is an Italian political theorist and the founder of Lapsit Exillis, described on its website as ‘an initiatory guild for aristocrats of the spirit’. Venturi is explaining the guild’s mission in exhaustive detail to Inka Järvi, the statuesque leader of Finland’s Daughters of Odin. Adjacent to them, not quite part of their conversation, are two Britons. Richard Baggot, a paunchy figure with a crocodile grin, is the leader of the UK Patriots Party, while pencil-thin Silas Orr-Hadow is an upper-caste Tory whose family have furnished England with several generations of fascist sympathisers.
The other three figures Villanelle doesn’t recognise. They weren’t on her list of probable Felsnadel guests or she would certainly have remembered them. There’s an imperious, pantherine woman with a severe bob of dark hair, who flicks a briefly curious glance at Villanelle, and two sharply handsome men. All are probably in their late twenties, and are outfitted in black uniforms with a distinctly military edge.
‘Are you Violette?’ a voice asks at her side.
‘Yes.’
‘Hi, I’m Johanna. I’m from the agency too.’ She has close-set eyes, freckles and a substantial bust zipped into a pink quilted jacket. She looks like Khriusha the Pig, a puppet character from a TV series Villanelle watched as a child in Perm. ‘Have you ever worked at the hotel before?’
‘No,’ says Villanelle. ‘What’s it like?’
‘Amazing place, but the money’s shit, as you’ve probably found out. And the manageress, Birgit, is a real arschfotze. You have to work like a slave or she’s on your tits the whole time.’
‘What about the guests?’
‘Really fun. And some quite . . .’ She giggles. ‘I worked here last year when Max’s party came. There was a fancy dress party on the last night and it was like, crazy.’
‘So how long are you going to be working up there this time?’
‘Just a couple of weeks. I’m temporarily replacing an African girl. Obviously they couldn’t have an immigrant up there with these guests, so they laid her off.’
‘Without pay?’
‘Natürlich. Why would they pay her if she isn’t working?’
‘Right.’
‘See, Violette, the thing about Max Linder’s guests is that they like traditionally minded staff. Girls they can relate to. Some of the men can get quite frisky.’ She glances downwards at her chest with a complacent smile. ‘But maybe they’ll leave you alone.’
‘So who are those three? They look younger than most of the people here.’
‘The band, Panzerdämmerung. They played up there last year. Weird music, super-dark, super-loud, not really my thing. But the two brothers, Klaus and Peter Lorenz. Total geil.’
‘And the woman in the leather coat and the boots?’
‘Is the singer, Petra Voss. Apparently . . .’ – Johanna lowers her voice to a whisper – ‘she’s a lesbian.’
‘Never!’
Departure is announced, and the guests make their way through the glass doors to the helipad where the Airbus helicopter is waiting. Villanelle and Johanna leave last, and then have to edge past the other passengers to reach their seats at the back of the aircraft.
‘Don’t I remember you from last year?’ Richard Baggot asks Johanna as she passes, and when she smiles and nods, reaches across and pats her bottom. ‘Looks like I’ll be needing room service, then.’ He turns to Villanelle. ‘Sorry, love. Prefer a little more flesh on the bone, if you get my drift.’
Todd Stanton grins, Silas Orr-Hadow looks appalled, and the others ignore Baggot altogether. As she buckles herself into her seat, Villanelle entertains a brief fantasy of leaning forward and garrotting the Englishman with his golf club tie. One day, she promises herself, and glances at Johanna, on whose pink features a dimpled smirk has appeared.
The helicopter takes off with a roar and a shudder. Beyond the Plexiglas window the sky is steel grey. Soon they are above the snowline, and climbing. Gazing out at the face of the Teufelkamp, at the precipitous crags and blue-white icefields, Villanelle feels a prickling anticipation. To those present she is a menial, not worth a second glance, barely even fuckable. But inside herself she can feel the demon of her fury coil and uncoil. With the tip of her tongue, she touches the pale knot of scar tissue on her upper lip, feels its throb echoed in her chest, the pit of her stomach and her groin.
The helicopter swings upwards and rounds a vertical spur. And there, like a crystal set into the black rock face, is the hotel, and in front of it, a horizontal shelf marked out with lights as a landing area. The passengers applaud, gasp and crane towards the windows.
‘What do you think?’ asks Johanna. ‘Amazing, no?’
‘Yes.’
They touch down, the door opens, and frozen air blasts into the interior of the Airbus. Climbing out after Johanna, Villanelle steps into a flurry of wind-blown snow, and follows the other guests into the hotel, pulling her cabin bag behind her.
The entrance
