IT WAS EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCISCAN PADRES at the San Carlos Barromeo Mission, outside what would become the city of Carmel, that gave the vast, cragged stretch of the central California coastline its original name: El País Grande del Sur, or the Big Country to the South. As U.S. western expansion brought the wagon wheels of American settlers rolling into this territory, its Hispanic friars, their numbers and influence already on the wane, must have been chagrined to hear the place name anglicized, abbreviated, and vulgarized to Big Sur. But then, it may be surmised that waves of gold-rushing Forty-Niners, and the subsequent annexation of California by the Colossus of the North, would have soon made any consternation over such a thing seem trifling to the manifestly destined extreme.

The rental cabin Kuhl’s sleeper agents had acquired for him in Big Sur perched on the edge of a precipitous gorge three thousand feet above sea level, its western windows offering a wide view of the Pacific Ocean beyond the canyon, its isolation guarded by a thirty-foot-tall iron entry gate a full mile down the ridge’s eastward slope. Built in 1940 as a secret getaway by one of the state’s early millionaire lumber barons—and currently assigned by family heirs to the management of a real-estate company specializing in wilderness properties—the furnished cabin was a large two-story structure of stone and Douglas fir logs with open interior spaces, a central spiral staircase, French doors, and upper and lower balconies that extended past the sheer western cliff to overhang the long, empty plunge of the canyon. Access from the limestone gateposts was confined to an unmarked strip of winding dirt road circumscribed by thirty private acres of oak and redwood forest, vertical shale outcrops, rolling fields, and scattered swift-moving streams that ceaselessly chattered, splashed, and tumbled down deep, steep cuts in the wooded mountain slopes.

Behind a high west window on the second floor, Kuhl sat in a supple leather chair watching the commercial van’s arrival through his binoculars. It pushed uphill between the trees at an engine-grinding crawl, its wheels occasionally sinking into loose, crumbly ditches in the access road. The road’s narrowness would not have allowed even two small vehicles to pass in opposite directions, and it had recently become rutted and washed out after a spate of heavy late summer rainfall. The Realtor’s offer to fill and regrade its surface had been declined by Kuhl’s representatives. Their employer sought a period of complete escape from distraction, they emphasized. The noisy repair work would have impinged on the first week of his stay at the very minimum, and he was adamant about requiring uninterrupted solitude.

A ten-thousand-dollar deposit left on his lease had ensured that complete deference was given to his wishes.

Now the van came jolting and bumping over the final few yards of the path. Kuhl wondered whether its rough trip up had agitated the occupants he assumed were riding in its cargo section. This was no bit of idle musing. He must have absolute confidence in their reliability. If they showed any sign of unrest he would notice it, apologize for the driver’s trouble, and send him back on his way.