Gates Of Hades

Chapter Thirty-one

Piazza San Carlo

Turin, Italy

Late afternoon

The cobblestoned square had become world-famous from television coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympics. The only differences were that the red tile roofs were not snow covered and the crowds were nonexistent. As Jason and Maria sipped espresso in front of a trattoria, he studied the white limestone baroque churches of San Carlo and Santa Christina at the southern end of the piazza, his fingers drumming a nervous tattoo on the table. Somewhere nearby was the small cafe where, supposedly, vermouth had been invented, a mecca for martini drinkers worldwide. In the distance, purple shadows were blurring the jagged edges of the Alps.

This time there had been no unusual requests for rooms at the small hotel just off the arcaded Via Roma, the main street of the historic district. They had left a message for Adrian before Maria had called Eno Calligini, whose arrival they now awaited.

Maria glanced around the piazza as she took a Marlboro from her purse without exposing the pack. She ignored Jason's grimace of disapproval as she lit up and exhaled a jet of blue smoke. "Did you watch the Olympics here?"

Jason shook his head. He had not owned a television since he left Washington. "Missed it." He swiveled his head, scanning their surroundings. "This professor friend of yours usually on time?"

Punctuality was not an Italian virtue.

She leaned back in her chair, squinting through the smoke drifting into her face. "My, are not you the chatterbox?"

His attempt at a smile was a failure at best. "Don't like sitting out here where we can be seen by people we can't see. Makes me nervous."

Maria took a long drag as she looked around the square. "You are paranoid."

"I'm still alive."

They sat in the silence of an uneasy truce until Jason leaned forward to pull the magazine containing the summary of Dr. Calligini's book from his pocket. He had read all but the last two chapters on the train they had taken after the boat back to the mainland. Flying would have been quicker but would have involved security likely to turn up his weapon. The SIG Sauer would have been hard to explain.

"I appreciate Adrian giving this to us." He held it out. "Want to read it?"

She stubbed her cigarette out in a small glass ashtray. "Read the book when it first appeared. I do not know if…"

She stood, leaving the sentence unfinished. Jason followed her gaze across the piazza to where a tall man was striding toward them. Hatless, with a full mane of shoulder-length silver hair that reached a shabby cardigan. Faded jeans were stuffed into rubber-soled boots. As the man approached, Jason saw tanned features, the skin wrinkled from exposure to wind and sun.

It was not until he stood at tableside, his long face split by a dazzling smile, that Jason realized the man was more than old enough to be Maria's father. That did little to diminish a twinge of jealousy as the two embraced.

Jason stood as Maria turned to him. "Jason, I want you to meet Dr. Calligini…"

The doctor extended a hand with a firm grip. "Eno, please." He immediately returned his attention to Maria with a stream of Italian before stopping and turning back to Jason. " Mi displace. I'm sorry. I have not seen little Maria long time."

Jason arched an eyebrow, looking at Maria. "'Little' Maria?"

Eno nodded. " Si. Beeg Maria, she my seester, marry to Maria's poppa."

For reasons quite understandable, Jason felt relieved. "A pleasure, Dr., er, Eno. You speak good English."

Jason was treated to a smile that could have served as an ad for toothpaste as the doctor held thumb and index finger an inch or so apart. "Only a leetle."

The three sat, and Eno barked Italian at the waiter, who scurried away, returning almost immediately with a tiny cup of espresso.

The professor's eyes fell on the magazine on the table, and he smiled even wider. "You read?"

"Interesting," Jason said without commitment. "I'm not sure Greco-Roman mythology is going to be helpful in finding what I want."

Eno turned to Maria, obviously seeking a translation.

They exchanged sentences Jason didn't understand before she said, "It is no myth. He believes that the Roman's journal is an accurate representation of what happened."

Jason lowered the coffee cup he had almost put to his lips. "It's real; he thinks it's real? That there really is a hell?"

Eno apparently understood the gravamen of that. He shook his head. "No 'hell.' Hades."

"There's a difference?"

" Si. Difference."

The professor ignored his coffee to speak rapidly to Maria. His gesticulations confirmed Jason's belief that an Italian unfortunate enough to lose both arms would be struck dumb also.

When he had finished, or at least subsided, Maria said, "There really is-was-a Hades, complete with River Styx and all. It was the place of departed spirits, a place of darkness, of heat and volcanic activity, hence the fire and brimstone the Christians associate with hell."

Jason leaned back in his chair, unconvinced. "If it was real, where was it?"

"Baia, or in the old Roman Latin, Baiae."

"The place in the article."

She nodded.

"But how-"

Eno interrupted with another stream of italian.

When he finished, Maria said, "General Agrippa blocked it in, perhaps on the orders of Augustus Caesar, his friend and patron. That would have been sometime a.d. 12 or before."

Coffee completely forgotten, Jason rested his chin on open palms, elbows on the table. "You mean they sealed it off?"

She shook her head. "No, they tried to completely fill it in. Like Nero's Golden House in Rome."

He shook his head.

"When Nero died, years after Augustus, Vespasian filled the palace with dirt. It's been excavated for only a few years. Hades at Baia was the same, filled in."

"Then how…"

She held up a hand, rushing on. "A chemical engineer, an Englishman by the name of Robert Paget, retired to Baia and became interested in the local antiquities. In

1962 he and a native crew excavated part of it. They could work only in fifteen-minute shifts because of the heat and the gases, but he cleared the passageway to an underground river, the Styx. Along the way were sacrificial altars-"

"Gases?" Jason's interest quickened.

"They did no analysis, but there was some kind of gas that made them sleepy as well as prone to hallucinations."

"Ethylene?" Jason was twisting his cup around on the tabletop.

Maria shrugged. "Possibly. They were amateur archeol- • ogists, not geologists."

Eno was following the exchange closely. "The Inglese, Paget, he want to find Greek Hades, no geologist."

Jason straightened up, palms flat on the table. "Okay, so it looks like I'll have to go to… where?"

"Baia," Maria and Eno said in unison.

"Not so easy," Eno added. "After Paget explore there, Italian government…" He made a motion of touching his hands together in silent applause. "How you…?"

"The Italian government shut up the entrances, said it was too dangerous," Maria said.

"Nobody's been in there since 1962?" Jason was incredulous.

Eno explained something to Maria, who turned to Jason. "Another archaeologist, Robert Temple, convinced the authorities to let him explore further in 2001. He reported the gas levels had subsided, as had the intense heat reported by Paget. He took some pictures and wrote a book about it, Netherworld. Then the government sealed it off again."

Jason drained the remains of what was by now very cold espresso. "Why? I'd think the archeological value of the real Hades would be worth keeping it open."

Eno motioned to the waiter for refills and joined in. "Government say too dangerous. My guess, Church wanted closed."

"Despite what the politicians say, the Catholic Church has tremendous influence on Italian politics," Maria explained. "Having a secular or pagan model of hell open for inspection would not be something the Holy Father would have supported."

Jason thought about that for a moment. "According to Eno's book, or at least the English summary of it, this place at Baia was filled with hallucinogenic gases, which a sect of scheming priests used to basically fleece people who believed they could meet the dead. The gases were there naturally, so the priests created Hades centuries before Christ. But why not in Greece?"

"Cumae oldest Greek city in Italy," Eno said.

"Besides," Maria added, "they had little choice. Just the right gas combination was at Baia, so they had to create the Netherworld there. It was probably the only place in the Greek world with just the right characteristics: a cavern, gases, an underground river, and easy accessibility."

Jason nodded. "Disney World for wealthy ancients."

Maria lifted her head to nod thanks to the waiter as he set another cup in front of her and whisked away the old one. "Natural gases that were the product of a system of underground volcanic activity."

"Part of the 'fire and brimstone' of the Christian hell, as Eno noted in his book," Jason said, exchanging his cup for the fresh one. "The physical evidence indicates that whatever minerals were involved in the Bering Sea incident and the Georgia National Forest came from around Naples, so I'd have to guess the ethylene blend did, too."

Maria dunked the sugar-encrusted stick that came with her coffee. "Which raises a truly interesting question."

No doubt the same question that had been nagging at Jason's subconscious, an unexpressed idea that had first lurked in the back of his mind like a wild animal at the edge of a campfire until his conversation with Adrian.

Maria voiced the issue Jason had thought about since Adrian had made his suggestion. "Why would the terrorists go to the trouble to find the source of a hallucinogenic gas? Why not simply kill their victims rather than gassing them first?"

"These people want to make a statement. Having something from the earth incapacitate the victims, in their minds, is a sort of revenge by nature."

"But whatever it is does not kill anyone," Maria protested. "These men, these eco…?"

"Ecological terrorists," Jason supplied.

"These men do the actual murder of helpless people."

Jason leaned back in his chair. "There's no understanding the thought process of lunatics, fanatics, but making a natural product of the earth they believe their victims are destroying makes the ecology-nature-a partner in revenging what they see as an evil done to the earth."

Both Maria and Eno were giving him skeptical looks.

"Okay, Okay, so I'm just guessing. We may get the real answer at Baia."

"Or Cumae," Eno added.

"Cumae?" Both Jason and Maria were staring at the professor.

"Cumae," he repeated. "The gases, they could have come from there. The Sibyl, she maybe… how you say? High? Yes, she maybe high on some sort of gas when she give future statements."

"Your book suggested epilepsy, not gas," Jason noted.

Eno shrugged. "A guess. Who for sure know why make statements?"

"Prophecies," Maria corrected.

"Prophecies," Eno continued, grinning. "She only one high in Vatican."

Jason looked at Maria, puzzled.

"The Sistine Chapel," she explained, "Michelangelo included the Cumae Sibyl in the group of prophets around the edge of the ceiling. According to readers of Virgil, she foretold the coming of Christ; at least, the emperor Constantine thought so. She's the only pagan figure on the ceiling."

Jason absorbed this information before saying, "Another question: how did Alazar, the Moslem who sold whatever this is to Eco, find out about gases in an ancient Greek religious site, one that wasn't even in Greece?"

Eno shrugged. "Arabs long know Greek culture," the professor began before lapsing into Italian.

Jason waited impatiently for Maria to translate.

"When Rome fell to various hordes of barbarians," she began, watching Eno, "much of the Greco-Roman knowledge was in danger of being lost, in addition to what the Greeks and Romans had learned from the Egyptians, Babylonians, Sumerians, and whoever else. A lot of wisdom was lost forever. The Moorish traders in the Mediterranean, the Arabs along the ancient Silk Road, the Byzantine, then Ottoman emperors saved what they could use. Had it not been for them, Greek and Roman sciences-and the ancient knowledge before that-in medicine, astronomy, mathematics, would have been lost. We would not know the geometry of Euclid, Ptolemy's geography or astronomy, or Pliny's history. During the so-called Dark Ages, much was forgotten that had originated in Europe and been learned by the Muslim merchants. It was only during the crusades that some of this knowledge began to filter back west. Even then, most forms of science were bitterly opposed by the Church, hindering even further the restoration of ancient learning in the Christian world. Eno says he wouldn't be surprised if the Arabs haven't known of Baia and Cumae longer than current Western civilization. After all, the stories of Virgil and Homer, the plays of Euripides, were known and enjoyed in the Mideast while most of Europe was divided into tiny, warring principalities run by kings who could not even read their own languages. An Arab arms dealer was only passing along something adopted by his culture a long time ago."

Jason was quiet for a few seconds. He turned to Eno. "Any chance of the government giving us grief about going down into whatever it is in Baia?"

Eno shrugged, a man asked a question to which there was no apparent answer. "They have it closed, but I do not know if they guard it. Entry is prohibited."

If the country observed that law to the same degree as traffic laws, there would be no problem.

"Obviously somebody's been there. That's where the ethylene seems to have come from," Maria observed.

"Perhaps," Eno said. "Many such places are closed but not guarded. This one may not be watched by the authorities, but these people you seek will be watching, I theenk."

Jason said, "I'll keep that in mind when Adrian and I get there."

"Adrian, you, and I," she added.

"Thought you were through as soon as you'd helped me with Eno here."

"And miss a chance to observe an underground volcanic system that, with two exceptions, has been closed off from study for two thousand years?"