Why have a gate if people can just drive around it?
He looked out his side window and saw why people could not just drive around this gate. Three feet from the side of the car a stone curb marked the side of the road. Beyond the curb there was a precipitous drop-off; he could not see the bottom.
Well, since there’s a granite mountain on the left and nothing but air on the right.
I guess that if they don’t open the gate, you either blow it up or you don’t get in.
The gate swung inward as they approached it.
There was another Model A pickup with another man holding a rifle just inside the gate, and again Clete recognized him as one of his men from Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. This one didn’t salute as the Lincoln inched carefully past the Ford.
The road now was so steep that the estancia manager did not shift out of low.
They turned a curve and suddenly were on a level plateau perhaps three hundred meters wide and two hundred meters long. A low stone wall on three sides suggested—it was too dark to see—a drop-off like the one beside the gate.
At the far end of the plateau, with what looked like a light in every window—and there were a lot of windows—was the house and its outbuildings.
The main house was three stories and red-tile-roofed. The third floor had dormer windows, and the roof extended over a verandah whose pillars seemed vine-covered. The Andes Mountains were on the horizon behind it, bathed in moonlight.
And now we know why they call it Casa Montagna.
That is indeed a mountain house.
“It’s beautiful!” Dorotea said from the backseat.
Enrico Rodríguez, Madison Sawyer, and Gonzalo Delgano were standing on the verandah.
If they’re waiting for us, they knew we were coming, and that means there’s a telephone at either or both gates.
Nobody’s going to get in here by surprise.
“No nuns?” Sawyer greeted them as he waved them into the house.
Inside the door was a foyer. In the center was a fountain in a circular pool.
“Classy,” Frade said.
“This whole place is classy,” Sawyer said. “And that fountain has no pumps. Enrico showed me. It’s fed by a mountain stream. There’s a tank, and that provides the pressure. And after the water goes through the fountain, it’s fed back into the stream and goes down the mountain.”
“Fascinating,” Frade said.
Enrico showed him how the fountain works? That means that Enrico knows this place pretty well.
And never told me about it.
What the hell else can I own?
“I don’t suppose that at a vineyard there’s a pump spitting out wine?” Frade said.
“No, but there’s a very nice bar in there,” Sawyer said, pointing.
“Why don’t we have a look at that?” Frade said.
“The nuns should be here any minute,” Dorotea said.
Translation: Now is not wine time.
“Where’s Frau Frogger?” Frade asked.