Gates Of Hades

Chapter Twenty

Piazza del Duomo, Taormina

That evening

They sat in a cafe facing the piazza that was the center of Taormina. Since no motorized vehicles were allowed in this part of the town, the only sound came from the square's baroque fountain, which, along with the fortresslike cathedral of San Nicola, was radiating with the Chianti red glow of sunset. A few blocks away, faint shouts came from a street soccer match between several boys, each of whom wore the jersey of a different team. Jason drained the last of a beer; he felt dehydrated from an hour's tour that had included everything from Palazzo Corvaja, the Norman building that had housed the first Sicilian parliament in the fifteenth century, to the ancient Greek amphitheater.

Tourism, he decided, was thirsty work, particularly when every third building sold adult refreshment.

Maria nursed a glass of Sicilian white wine, a product Jason had determined would have better use in removing paint. Her streaked hair was down, giving a softness to her face. Her simple black dress was adorned only by a brightly colored scarf around her neck, an embellishment Jason instantly recognized as Hermes.

The signature blue and red of the silk had given him a shock he was not sure he had been able to conceal. Hermes-one of Laurin's few extravagances. She had adored the colors and patterns unique to the French designer, keeping each in its signature orange box. At thirtyfive and a half by thirty-five and a half inches, the square was large enough to serve as scarf, shawl, skirt, or even a top. Utilitarian as well as decorative, Laurin had described them.

Maria glanced down, checking the neckline of her dress. "I hope it is my scarf you're admiring."

"Uh, yeah," Jason managed. "Hermes, isn't it?"

She smiled. "Something men do not usually recognize unless they've bought several."

"At three hundred per, they're hard to forget."

Would he ever find a place where Laurin was absent, somewhere a phrase, a landscape, a scarf wouldn't remind him of her loss? He hoped not.

He forced his attention back to Maria. The dress she wore displayed her figure to more advantage than did her work clothes. Jason was deciding she was more than simply attractive. She was receiving admiring glances from almost every man who passed.

"Well," she said, "you have now pretty much seen everything except the Wunderbar."

Jason stopped watching men watch Maria and faced her. "Wunderbar?"

"Favorite haunt of your Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, movie stars."

"Thirty years ago, wasn't it?"

"People here still talk about it."

Jason drained his glass, noting the surrounding buildings, some of which dated back to the Hellenistic period. "I don't doubt it. Probably still talk about Ulysses passing thorough on his way home from Troy, too."

She looked up from making concentric circles on the tabletop with the bottom of her glass. "I thought Americans loved their celebrities."

"Want to try getting a waiter's attention when Tom Hanks is at the next table?"

She laughed. "Point taken. But I doubt Liz and Richard are at the Wunderbar tonight."

Jason signaled to the waiter. "Hungry? Where's a good place for authentic Sicilian cuisine?"

He paid the tab and she slipped an arm through his as they walked down the cobbled streets. Greek, Norman, Ottoman, all had left their imprint. They had gone only a few blocks when she veered into an alley, stopping in front of some tables in the street. From inside came recorded accordion music.

"Best spada alia ghiotta on the island," she announced.

Jason started to ask for an interpretation, thought better of it, and pulled a chair out for her. "I'll take your word for it."

Over more white Sicilian wine and beer, he asked, "The samples, could you determine where they came from?"

She spoke to the hovering waiter in the harsh Italian dialect of Sicily and then nodded, digging in her purse. "The percentage of sulfates, the presence of certain igneous similarities such as the radiation level… they differ with each volcano."

Jason shook his head. "Whoa! I appreciate your work, but I don't need a tutorial."

"No doubt about it, the Campania."

He waited a moment for the sole waiter to set down the prima platte, a steaming plate of pasta con le Sarde. "Campania? You mean around the Naples area?"

She was spooning half of the macaroni, sardines, and wild fennel onto her plate. "Yep."

He reached for what was left, noting it was considerably less than half. "What volcanoes are around Naples? I mean, Vesuvius hasn't erupted since, what, 1944?"

She took a tentative taste, sighed with satisfaction, and said, "The sample was from a volcanic area, not necessarily an active volcano. Besides, the whole Bay of Naples has seen volcanic activity. The ancient Greeks and Romans regarded the thermo-mineral water that bubbled up in the Phlegraean Fields to be curative of a number of-"

Jason's fork stopped halfway to his mouth. "The what?"

"Phlegraean Fields, in Baia." She saw his puzzled expression. "At the northern end of the Bay of Naples. Mount Nuovo erupted there in 1538. Then there's Lake Averno, a perfectly round lake that surely was a volcanic crater."

"The whole Bay of Naples area is pretty large."

He took a bite of the appetizer. Now he understood why the local wine had an astringent, puckering effect: the native food had a salty quality, sort of like anchovies out of a tin.

"Couldn't you be a little more specific?"

She had nearly cleaned her plate and was eyeing his. "Just why would a Baltimore businessman want to know, Mr. Harold Young?"

He finished the last of his appetizer before meeting her gaze. "Does it matter?"

She sat back in her chair, fished around in her purse again, and produced a pack of cigarettes. "Do you object?"

"They're your lungs."

A lighter appeared and she puffed greedily. Blue smoke disappeared into the surrounding darkness.

"Does it matter?" she mused. "I suppose not, not if we say good-bye tonight."

Jason was surprised to realize he very much did not want to say good-bye at all.

"On the other hand, as you Americans say, if we remain, er, friends, it matters very much. You see, Harold, or whoever you are, I was married to the ultimate liar. I think I mentioned him."

"Casanova."

"Yes, him. Just like some people have a violent reaction to, say, penicillin, I am allergic to liars. I know damn good and well some businessman from Baltimore didn't come all the way to Sicily to see me just because he had a personal curiosity as to the geographic origin of some soil and rocks. I also listen to my colleague Dr. Kamito at various professional gatherings. I cannot say I know, but I sure suspect that he does work for some people who are not in it for the pure science."

Jason started to interrupt but she went on. "No, let me finish. What Ito does and for whom is none of my affair. But I view with suspicion anyone he refers. I don't really care what your 'business' is." She made quote marks in the air with her fingers. "But I do insist on knowing who the hell you really are. Short of that, we will enjoy the meal, part on good terms, and I hope you enjoy your stay in Sicily."

Jason was silent while the dishes were removed and the swordfish served.

"Answer enough," she said, tearing off a piece of bread and dipping it in the small dish of olive oil. "I hope you like the entree."

They ate in silence, the only sound music piped from inside. He would never know if he had eaten the best swordfish cooked in vegetables on the island, but he was certain that the meal would not be easily bested. He was even beginning to tolerate, if not enjoy, the local wine.

Leaning back on his chair's rear legs, he looked up and down the narrow alley, where unevenly spaced streetlights created archipelagos of illumination in a sea of darkness. An old woman, dressed in the traditional black, leaned from an upper window to shake a tablecloth free of the evening's crumbs. Another reached to tend to a window box of listless flowers. Men gathered around a pair of cardplayers inside gave grappa-induced laughs.

Jason broke the silence between them. "This is authentic, Liz and Richard notwithstanding. Seems like the real

Sicily. No TV, no iPods, no ringing cell phones. Totally un-Americanized."

Maria looked up from her plate with mischief in her eyes. "You sure about that?"

"About what, that this is one of the most non-American-like places I've seen in Europe?"

She put a hand behind her ear. "Really? Just listen."

The canned music that he had hardly noticed. It was the theme from The Godfather.

A few minutes later, they were walking back to Maria's car when Jason said, "I'm at a bit of a loss: I know the samples came from around Naples, but that's too large an area to be of any help."

Maria stopped, turning toward him. "I would like to help, but I don't even know your real name, let alone what you are looking for."

" 'Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.'"

"Milton, Paradise Lost. Knowledge is its own reward."

"Ben Franklin?"

"Maria Bergenghetti."

Jason grinned. "Okay, you got me…" He stopped midsentence, his attention drawn to the sound of an engine. "I thought you said cars weren't allowed…"

Maria was looking over his shoulder, a question on her face. "They are not, only delivery vehicles and garbage pickup, both in the early morning."

Jason turned and saw it: one of those trucks peculiar to European cities with narrow streets. Not as large as a small pickup, but larger than a conventional sedan, the truck filled the alley. Its headlights were dark, it showed no intent of stopping, and there was no room on either side for Jason or Maria.

Jason didn't have time to think; he reacted.

Roughly shoving Maria into the first recessed doorway he saw, he began to run. There was no hope of outdistancing the truck, but the farther he got from Maria, the less likely the driver was to take the time to try to harm her also.

He thought of the SIG Sauer clipped to his belt and discarded the idea immediately. A bullet ricocheting from the sides of the buildings lining the narrow alley would be as likely to hit a resident as the truck driver. Besides, there was always the chance the driver had gone to sleep at the wheel, had a heart attack, or was motivated by something other than homicidal intent.

And there was the certainty that gunshots would bring the attention of the police, something that could end Jason's mission as certainly as that truck.

The sound of the small engine at high rpms told Jason how fast the truck was gaining on him. At one point, he hoped he could make it to an intersection with a wider street, giving him more room to dodge the oncoming vehicle.

His pursuer was now so close, he imagined he could feel the heat of the engine.

And there was no intersection to be seen.

But there were window boxes like the ones he had seen from the dinner table.

With hardly a break in stride, he gave a leap, adrenaline adding a Michael Jordan quality to his jump. His fingers touched the rim of a ceramic window box and managed to close before gravity reclaimed him. His prize was much heavier than he had anticipated, but at least he could move it using both hands.

Half running, half stumbling, he made it to the next recessed doorway. As anticipated, the truck swerved just enough to aim a fender at him.

At the last possible moment, Jason took advantage of the truck's effort, stepping into the narrow angle between where the front bumper angled toward the door and the wall of the building. The truck was committed, although brakes screeched in futility against cobblestones before the left front fender smashed into the edge of the doorway at precisely the place Jason had been. At the instant of impact, Jason swung the window box at the windshield.

He was rewarded with the sound of crunching safety glass and a yelp.

Without stopping his forward motion, he had a hand on the truck's door handle and wrenched. He didn't slow to bend over and look. Instead, he grabbed the first thing he touched and snatched.

There was another yell and Jason held a man by the shirt collar. The man struggling in his grip had the same bulky build, the same slant to the eyes and shaved head as the man whose picture he had seen, Eglov. But it wasn't the same man.

The man was reaching inside a pants pocket when Jason took a hand from the shirt's collar to grab his assailant's wrist. As Jason pulled it upward, light reflected from the long, thin blade of a stiletto.

Jason saw not only the knife but flames of that September morning. He heard screams, one of which could have been Laurin's. The agony of his loss, coupled with his anger at nearly being run down like a dog in the street, ignited a fury that erased any rational thought.

Grabbing the hand with the knife, Jason snatched the arm level, at the same time bringing the heel of his other hand crashing down on the wrist.

Jason thought he could hear the ulna snap a split second before there was a howl of pain and the clatter of steel falling onto stone.

His former assailant was moaning as Jason changed hands to take the shattered wrist in his left hand while stooping to scoop the knife from the street with his right. Blade in hand, he drew back for the underhand stroke that would drive the blade under the protection of the rib cage and up into the heart.

"Stop it!"

Startled, he whirled to see Maria standing only a couple of feet away.

"Stop it!" she commanded again. "You are not going to kill that man!"

Something in the tone of her voice made Jason hesitate just long enough to think rationally. Lights were flickering on up and down the street. No doubt the sound of the truck's crash had drawn more than one person to their window. Poor light or not, Jason was not going to bet someone wouldn't be able to identify him to the police.

Instead of the coup de grace he had begun, Jason drew back his hand and threw the knife as far as he could before slamming the would-be assassin against the wall.

"A little something to remember me by," he said, delivering a kick to the man's groin.

There was a grunt, and the man melted into a groaning heap on the cobblestones.

Maria had Jason by the arm. "We must go. Someone's surely called the police by now."

As though to verify her observation, the pulsating wail of a siren could be heard.

Jason let himself be led down the alley and into another.

Damn, he thought. Someone must have found the plane on the Dominican shore. That discovery, coupled with a liberal application of cash to Dominican officials for a search of names on exit visas as compared with recorded entries, as opposed to mere stamps on a passport, would have revealed that a Mr. Harold Young was the only person within days to depart the Dominican Republic without having first entered it. Having apparently dropped out of the sky, Young then departed Santo Domingo for Paris via Air France. It would have taken simple hacking into reservation computers to determine that Mr. Young had taken Alitalia from Orly to Rome, thence onward to Messina.

They had arrived at Maria's Explorer. She was fumbling with the keys. "Whatever your real business is, somebody is displeased by it."

He took the keys from her shaking hand. "Apparently."

The lock popped open and he held out the keys.

She was staring as though seeing him for the first time. "You really were going to kill that guy."

Jason was walking around to climb into the passenger seat. "Think of it as returning the favor. He very nearly ran over both of us."

Now Maria was having trouble getting the key into the ignition. Jason got out and opened her door. "You're in no shape to drive. Let me."

Wordlessly, she climbed over the gearshift and brake and sat.

Jason started the engine. "Where to?"

For a moment he wasn't sure she heard him. Then: "You really were going to stab him."

She was looking straight ahead.

Jason bit back a retort and said, "Maria, we don't know that he was alone. I'd suggest we not hang around to find out. Where to?"

She shook as though the words had shocked her back into reality. "To? Your hotel, I guess."

Jason was turning the car around, stopping only to allow a blue-and-white police car, siren wailing, to pass, headed in the direction from which they had come.

"Not a good idea. If that guy knew where to find us, he-or one of his pals-must have followed us. They know my hotel. Next time they might get lucky. Where are you staying?"

She turned to look at him, the hint of a nervous smile tugging at her mouth. "I thought I had heard every come-on there was, but this is the first for 'I need to stay with you tonight because someone is trying to kill me.'"

"Delighted to have exhausted another possibility of human experience," Jason said. "I might remind you that truck driver was perfectly willing to kill you, too. Which way?"

Her eyes grew large. "Me? He had no reason to want to run me over!"

"You want to bet your life on that? Which way?"

She pointed. "Right, up the hill past your hotel."

They were quiet for a few minutes until she said, "I think it is only fair to warn you: I do not do sleepovers with men whose real names I do not know."

He nodded, keeping his eyes on the serpentine road but taking his right hand off the wheel to extend it. "Jason. My pleasure."

She shook it. "Certainly not mine. Nearly getting killed is hardly my choice of a date. This sort of thing happen to you often?"

He was steering around a hairpin turn to the left. "Often enough. Comes with the job."

"Which is?"

"Now a job description's a prerequisite to staying at your place, too?"

"Okay, so I can guess." She looked out over one of the turns. The town below was a handful of jewels. "You really were going, to kill him, were you not?"

Jason nodded. "Someone very like him and his pals killed someone very dear to me, along with about three thousand other innocent people, all in the same morning. They're terrorists, Maria, just the same mind-set as any other bunch willing to kill to achieve their political or religious aims. Civilization as we know it can't coexist with people like that."

" 'Civilization as we know it'? Don't you think you are being a little extreme?"

He took his eyes off the road just long enough to give her a questioning glance. "Extreme? I don't think so. There's only one way I see of solving the problem: exterminate them like any other vermin."

"I take it your business involves just that."

"You could say that."

"Surely there are good people with extreme ideas."

"Ideas are free. It's when someone is willing to kill anyone who doesn't share them that the trouble starts. Not to put too fine a point on it, but General Sheridan could have been speaking of fanatics, religious or political, when he defined a good Indian: a dead one."

"Turn right here." She pointed to a barely discernible path leading away from the road. "You don't really believe that."

He was squinting, trying to make sure he stayed on the dim track. "Let's say I believe most beliefs have their good and bad people. Culling one from another is the problem." A small building took shape in the headlights. "That it?"

She nodded. "The government rents it for staff when we are working at Aetna. There is a spare bedroom."

He turned off the lights and ignition. "Lucky me."

She looked over her shoulder as she reached for the door. "Lucky you, indeed. Believe me, it always was the spare room or the foldout."

Jason got out and shut the door. "And here I thought my charm, wit, and good looks would prevail."

She produced a set of house keys from her purse. "I am almost as allergic to violence as I am liars. I would say we have a real personality conflict."

She opened the door and flipped on the light. From behind her, Jason saw her body stiffen as she emitted a frightened squeak. In a step he was beside her, the SIG Sauer in his hand.

The single living room/kitchen/dining room was a wreck. Drawers had been pulled out, emptied, and left on the floor amid their contents. Drapes lay in heaps or thrown over chairs or a sofa from which the cushions had been removed.

Weapon in hand, Jason searched the two adjacent rooms.

" 'Fraid they've been tossed, too," he said, putting the gun away.

Tears were running down Maria's face, whether from anger, fright, or both, Jason couldn't tell. "Who… What did they want; what were they looking for?"

Jason righted a chair and picked up what looked like the matching cushion. "If I had to guess, I'd say they were looking for the samples I gave you."

She was still gazing around the room, dazed. "I left them at the portable lab, not here. But why would they…?"

Jason slowly raised his hands, nodding toward the still- open door. "I'm afraid we're about to find out."

On the threshold stood a tall, bald man, the one Jason had seen in the photograph, Eglov. He held what Jason recognized as a Colt M733, a true submachine gun not much larger than a pistol. Delta Force had used them in the jungles of Asia.

Jason's eyes cut toward a window.

"Don't bother, Mr. Peters," the intruder said in almost accentless English. "I'm not alone."

"Jason," Maria asked in an unsteady voice, "who are-"

"You can bet they're not among the 'good' idealists we were talking about."

The man with the weapon made a motion, and Jason heard a rear door crash open, making Maria give another frightened squeak. Rough hands grabbed Jason from behind, and he felt the weight of the SIG Sauer being lifted from his belt while a hand groped into his pockets.

A voice behind him spoke in Russian that Jason couldn't follow.

"Who are you? What do you want?" Maria had regained enough composure to start getting angry.

In a step, the man with the Colt was beside her. He slapped her with the back of his hand hard enough to send her staggering backward.

"Silence! You'll find out soon enough!"

Instinctively, Jason started to move toward her until he felt the jab of a gun's muzzle in his back. Maria slid down a wall, sitting splay-legged on the floor.

The man who had hit her motioned to whoever was behind Jason. The gun muzzle moved, and another man, this one with a mustache, carrying an AK-47 with a full clip, walked over to a table and deposited the contents of Jason's pockets along with the SIG Sauer.

"Okay," Jason said. "Now that you've made yourselves at home, exactly what is it you want?"

Eglov smiled, showing one shiny steel front tooth. "Allow me an introduction. My name is Eglov. Aziz Saud Alazar was a friend and business associate. You have caused considerable inconvenience, Mr. Peters. But I what I want is information. We will start with why you have consulted Dr. Bergenghetti."

"Consult?" He shrugged. "She's an attractive woman. I like attractive women."

A nod from Eglov sent Mustache over to where Maria was still sitting on the floor. She screamed as he yanked her to her feet by her hair. Transferring his rifle to his other hand, he ripped away the top of her dress and roughly grabbed her bra. Maria whimpered in pain and fright.

"Perhaps you will be amused watching my friend enjoy the woman," Eglov said. "I can assure you she will not find it pleasant. Or perhaps you will slice to the chase, eliminate the cow excrement." There was no warmth in his smile. "You see, I have mastered your American idiom." The smile vanished. "The information I seek, Mr. Peters. Or the woman suffers."

Jason sighed his resignation. "Let her go and I'll tell you what you want."

"Do you take me for a fool, Mr. Peters? I let the woman loose and the place swarms with police like angry bees defending a hive."

"You don't let her go and she dies here after you've learned what you want."

Eglov shrugged. "She lives; she dies. It is a matter of your choice."

"Yours, not mine."

"You are not in a place to argue, Mr. Peters. The degree of her suffering is in your hands. Now, why are you here?"

Jason had no illusions that either he or Maria was going to walk out of this house.

Unless…

"Look, leave her alone. The information you want-it's all on the BlackBerry." Jason was pointing.

Eglov stepped over to the table, picked the device up, and handed it to Jason. "Summon the data you say is here."

Jason punched a series of keys and scrolled up the beginning of a paragraph before handing it back.

Eglov scowled. "It is encrypted! Do not play games with me, Mr. Peters. You will have ample time to regret it."

Jason pointed again. "Those coins that came out of my pocket. One of them has the decoding key."

Alternating quick glances at Jason, the Russian used the hand not holding the Colt to sort through a dozen coins. "The American quarter?"

"That's it." Jason held out his hand. "Let me have it."

Once he held the twenty-five-cent piece, Jason turned it heads up, offered the closest thing to a prayer he had said in years, and pressed Washington's head. Pretending to concentrate, he said, "Look closely at the screen now."

Eglov brought the BlackBerry nearer to his eyes. "I see nothing but-"

What happened next was a phenomenon Jason knew well from combat: the brain's slowing things down to better comprehend what was happening. It was like watching a film in slow motion, where every movement was as deliberate and sluggish as though performed underwater, and there were one hundred twenty seconds to the minute.

With more of a whoosh than an explosion, a sound like a stove's gas ring catching, the BlackBerry erupted. A single yellow flame blew the front of the device into Eglov's face.

Between the detonation and the Russian's howl of pain, Jason had the SIG Sauer in his hand.

Mustache never had a chance.

Before the man could let go of Maria's bra and raise the rifle, Jason fired off two shots close enough to sound like one. The AK-47 flew across the room as though levitating on its own as Mustache slammed into the wall. He stood openmouthed before his head bent down as if he were contemplating the two bright red splotches that were blooming on his shirt.

He muttered something and fell face-forward to the accompaniment of Maria's terrified screams.

The other man had a chance but not enough of one. A third shot from the SIG Sauer doubled him over. No longer interested in combat, he staggered outside.

Less than a second had passed since the BlackBerry had blown up. Jason whirled to take care of Eglov. The machine gun, along with a puddle of blood on the floor, was all that remained. Other than Jason and Maria, the room was empty of life.

Jason dove through the open door into the darkness outside rather than present an illuminated target. Even before his eyes became completely adjusted to the dark, he heard hurried feet moving unevenly on the pebbles of the driveway and saw a form moving at a staggering run away from him.

He took two quick steps in pursuit and stopped. There was no way to know how many others might be out there, nor whether there would be another attempt made on Maria and him that night. He wanted little more than a chance to finish Eglov then and there, but prudence told him getting out of the area was the wiser move.

But where?