Gates of Hades

CHAPTER FIVE

The silver column of bubbles floated lazily toward the surface, leaving tiny globs of air to hang momentarily on the lips of the barrel sponge and plate coral above Jason’s head. Despite the eighty-foot depth, the tropical sun was bright enough to make an artist’s palette of color of the wall, a natural drop that fell into the hazy blue hundreds of feet below.

His artistic eye was oblivious to the spectacular quality of his surroundings. Instead, his attention was focused on something else as he hung motionless over the abyss, concentrating on a small hole in which he could see a spider crab. Though it was small in body, the crustacean’s legs and claws were large enough to make a meal for two, a meal of the sweetest meat Jason had ever tasted. He wouldn’t taste this one, though, unless he could get it out of its lair. The crab had retreated far enough back that it was out of reach, and Jason had left his spear in the boat. Nothing to do but remember the spot and come back. That tangle of branchlike black coral would make a good marker, he thought as he flicked his fins and slowly moved on.

His dive watch told him he had still had a good twenty minutes before the pressure of depth presented any danger of the bends.

He watched a leopard ray glide by, its wings rippling in a graceful simulation of flight.

Then he heard it: an angry buzzing like the sound of an electric razor, growing louder. An outboard. Inside his mask, his eyebrows curved into a frown. On an island as sparsely populated as North Caicos, there were plenty of places for the natives to fish without dropping a line on the section of wall he was diving. Surely they could see the boat and would know he was down here. Maybe they’d go on by.

Somehow he doubted it.

As if to confirm his suspicions, he heard a splash and watched an anchor pull its line down to the sandy shelf forty feet above his head as the motor died. Jason waited, expecting to hear the thunk of a sinker on a hand line as it hit the water. He wanted to see where the treble hooks preferred by the locals were hanging rather than risk getting snagged. No fishing line, sinker, or hook was forthcoming.

Strange.

Unless the boat’s occupant wasn’t fishing. Unless somebody had come out here for him.

He bit the soft rubber of his regulator’s mouthpiece in annoyance. There would be only one reason for somebody to come out here after him, and they were supposed to leave him alone for the next three months. Two jobs a year — that was it, the max. It had been only weeks since the affair on St. Bart’s.

In fact, it would be fine if they overlooked him for a year or two. The work had paid well enough for him to retire as it was, enough to mandate that he reside someplace with no income taxation. His employer managed to satisfy the IRS by means Jason felt were best not inquired into, but sheltering his income where he lived was his responsibility. Hence his present residence. He had built the house as a vacation home, an excuse to claim residence in a tax haven. Now it was where he lived, had been home since his life had been turned upside down and shaken out as though the gods were emptying a paper bag. Ever since…

He pushed the thought out of his mind and glared up at the hull of the newly arrived boat. Well, if they were determined to intrude on his dive, they damn well could wait until he finished.

Maybe that crab was back on the edge of its hole.

A pair of passing jack rolled shiny button eyes at him in curiosity.

Twenty minutes later, Jason reached the surface and tossed the crab into his boat, followed by his flippers and weight belt. From the water he could see Pangloss, barking wildly, back into the stern, as far as the dog could get from the wildly thrashing crustacean. Pangloss hated crabs. His irrepressible curiosity had led to more than one painful experience involving the creatures’ massive claws. Regardless, the dog insisted on joining Jason on dives, running into the water with baleful howls every time Jason tried to leave him ashore. Apparently barking at dolphins and seagulls was sufficient compensation for sitting in the boat for an hour while Jason probed the wall for lobster or crab.

Jason climbed into the twelve-foot Boston Whaler, his back intentionally toward the small craft rocking next to his in the gentle swell.

On the horizon he could see a sportfisherman. A charter from nearby Providenciales, Jason guessed, some rich dude paying a grand or so a day to troll for marlin even though the big-billed fish weren’t expected in the area for months yet. The sun shot a brilliant reflection from something on board, perhaps the glass of a porthole, a woman checking her makeup in a mirror. There was something that didn’t fit, something not quite right about that boat. What—

His thoughts were interrupted by a voice that had the musical lilt of the islands in it. “ ’Lo, Jason! You don’ looks like you glad to see me.”

Jason loosened the straps and slid out of the backpack tank harness before he turned toward the other boat. He was facing a black man whose age was indeterminate but whose disposition was always as bright as the smile he wore. It was annoyingly difficult to remain waspish around such cheerfulness, and Jason felt guilty for keeping the man waiting. He was, after all, only the messenger.

“I’m always glad to see you, Jeremiah. It’s just you always bring bad news.”

His mood undiminished, Jeremiah nodded. “Dat be right, I ’spose. But mon, you don’ keeps no phone in yo’ house; how else folks gonna get a’holt of you?”

Jason restrained a tart comment that the absence of a phone was fully intended to discourage contact. “I had a phone, Jeremiah, I’d never get to see you, now, would I?”

Jason was grinning in spite of himself. Jeremiah’s smile was as contagious as the plague. As North Caicos’ representative of the island’s postal system, as well as UPS, FedEx, and DHL, he took his duties seriously. If a customer had paid for personal delivery, Jeremiah would see to it the service was performed as requested. Besides, occasional deliveries provided an excuse to visit with the constituency of his seat on the island’s governing council.

Jason held out a hand and leaned over toward the deliveryman’s boat. “Okay, give it to me and I’ll sign for it.”

Grateful he wasn’t going to get any trouble from the reluctant recipient, Jeremiah handed over a cardboard envelope, using his other hand to rub Pangloss’s nose. “I ’spect you be goin’ like always when the package come.”

Jason nodded absently, tearing the cardboard open. Inside was a Hallmark card, an invitation to a child’s birthday party filled in for three days from now. Someone at the home office had a sick sense of humor.

It took Jason twenty minutes to navigate the convoluted, unmarked passage through the half-mile reef of fang-toothed coral that ringed the shallow lagoon in front of his house, tie off the Whaler to the buoy, and wade ashore with Pangloss splashing behind.

His house consisted of two structures elevated above potential flood tides by stilts. Between the buildings was a wooden walkway roofed with bougainvillea vines.

Pausing at the bottom of a flight of steps, Jason used a length of hose to wash sand from his feet while Pangloss lapped at the stream of cool, fresh water. Finished, both man and dog climbed stairs up to the building that served as kitchen/living room/studio. Years of island living had taught Jason the benefit of exposing as many surfaces as possible to potential breezes, as well as the wisdom of segregating light-requiring daytime activities from sleeping quarters that could be closed off against the tropical sun.

Inside, Jason ignored the panorama of golden beach and turquoise sea to glance again at the child’s invitation in his hand. He had rarely been to the company’s office. Most previous assignments, never more than one or two a year, had been hand-delivered. Idly, he wondered why the change. He tossed the card onto a table and looked out of the tinted glass that formed the building’s front wall.

The houses’s exposure to sea and sand had not been entirely for aesthetic purposes. The height of the walkway above the pancake-flat terrain gave him a 360-degree view of any possible approach. In front was the lagoon and its silent sentries of coral that would tear the bottom from any craft unfamiliar with the path through. Behind was a salt marsh, a saline, gelatinous muck soft enough to swallow even the occasional iguana unfortunate enough to wander there. To Jason’s left, the beach ended in impenetrable mangrove at the point of a tidal stream’s juncture with the ocean. To his right, sand the texture of powdered sugar stretched in a three-mile crescent without intersecting so much as a path connecting it to any of the three small native settlements.

The latter approach was the only practical one, the house’s single vulnerability should someone choose to trek miles across scrub bush and sharp rocks to reach the shoreline. Discouraging as such a journey might be, Jason had done his best to foresee the possibility.

Jason had not been surprised that Jeremiah had chosen to deliver the packet by boat rather than the long walk along the beach to a house that, to the untrained eye, was only an attractive beach home somewhat difficult to reach. In Jason’s business, the more difficult, the better.

He walked into the kitchen area, pulled out a large pot, and filled it with water from the cistern. Dumping the still-thrashing spider crab into the water, he turned next to rinsing out the dive equipment. Finished, he went to a pine cabinet that housed the sound system. Seconds later, notes of the first movement of a Mozart concerto grosso filled the room.

Jason turned around and faced the glass that framed the beachscape a few yards away. Between him and the view, just inside the glass, was a canvas on an easel. Part of a gecko, vibrant green, was staring back from a half-completed cluster of bougainvillea. Tubes of acrylic paint and brushes lay in the tray at the bottom of the easel. The unfinished painting and art supplies were exactly as he had had left them a lifetime ago. He and Laurin had gone back to the States together without a suspicion that she would never return.

Jason stared mutely at the canvas, as incomplete as his own life. How many times had he picked up the brushes to start again? More than he could count. Each time he saw not lizard and flower but Laurin beside him, fascinated as the canvas filled with paint. Each time he had replaced the brush in the tray, unable to concentrate. Twice he had vowed to toss the unfinished picture; twice he had been as unable to destroy the last thing she had watched him create. Not only was he incapable of finishing or destroying this specific canvas; it was as if his ability had drained away along with whatever passions and feelings he had formerly possessed. Brushes had become foreign objects, as strange and unfamiliar in his hands as an ancient war club.

There were times he feared he had lost the talent to paint forever. Other times he didn’t care.

As though only partially aware of what he was doing, he went outside and followed the walkway to the building that housed his bedroom. Shuttered against the heat of the day, the room had a slightly musty smell that Jason knew would disperse as soon as he opened the windows to the evening’s breezes. Overhead, a fan lazily churned the warm, humid air as he flipped on a light switch and entered a walk-in closet.

The space was more bare than occupied. On one side hung a few sundresses, the sort of beach casual wear appropriate for a place where shoes were optional at most. Repeatedly, Jason had vowed to remove them, to donate the lot to the local church for distribution. Each time he had removed one from its hanger to box it up, he remembered the last time she had worn it: the white with red polka dots she had on the night surprisingly rough seas had nearly swamped the Whaler on their return from a visit to a neighboring island; the green one with the exceptionally short skirt she wore to a friend’s birthday party, provoking clucks and head shakes among some of the older native women; the blue stripe that she… Real or imagined, her clothes still had the scent of her, that musky, sweet odor he had come to associate with sex. Years later and the closet still smelled like she had just left it.

No use. He had given up, unable to part with the last physical vestige of the woman he still loved. He not only couldn’t remove her clothes; he couldn’t go into the closet without tears blurring his vision.

Turning his back on the rack of dresses, he unzipped the clothes bag that contained what little remained of his business wardrobe. He slung a lightweight wool suit over one arm and, with some effort, extracted a cashmere overcoat. Jason scowled. In spite of his effort to stave off moths as ravenous as the sharks outside the reef, the insects had gotten to it. He’d better take it along, moth holes included, until he could replace it. It was likely to be cold where he was headed.

It took a few minutes longer to find his only two dress shirts and a tie. Now if he could only remember where he had put his suitcase…

CHAPTER SIX

The number of things that had to be done before leaving the island always surprised Jason. Arrangements had to be made to refuel the house’s generator every few days so that the contents of the freezer would keep; the bed linen needed to be stripped to prevent the mildew that bred in the humid air in any darkness; the cistern level must be checked to ensure a water supply upon his return. The alarm clock would have to be found so Jason could wake in time to take the Whaler over to Providenciales to catch the twice-weekly flight to Miami. Pangloss, along with appropriate rations, would have to be delivered in the morning to the native family who would keep him.

Pangloss.

The dog was scratching at the door, eager to enter where Jason was packing. Jason knew better than to let him in. The mutt recognized a suitcase and its purpose. With canine logic, the dog figured that if he unpacked the luggage, scattering its contents as wide and far as possible, Jason would not leave. It had taken Jason only one evening retrieving his underwear from the beach and his socks from the mangrove thicket to determine that Pangloss should be excluded from any area in which packing was taking place.

Closing the suitcase, Jason began to search for the tin of shoe polish he was certain he had bought only a few months ago. He found it under the sink in the bathroom. He sat on the floor to begin to try to remove the green mold that seemed to be devouring his only pair of toe caps.

In the background, Offenbach’s overture to Orpheus in Hades cancanned through the sound system. Although he had never had any musical training, there was something about the symmetry of classical composers that Jason found restful. Contemporary pop, rock, or — worse — rap seemed to focus on the vocal, usually repetitive, and banal, with sharp elbows, rhythm without meaning. Or, in Jason’s very private opinion, mere noise. He could endure the big band sound, the tunes of pre— and post — World War II, mostly long forgotten, but the classics of centuries past entertained him, setting a mood without the effort of trying to understand any particular lyrics.

He called it music to think by.

The heaviness of his eyelids told him it was well past his usual bedtime.

Pangloss had added a low growl to his persistent scratching. Putting down a shoe, Jason opened the door. Hackles raised, Pangloss had his lips pulled back, exposing long teeth. As if to make his point, the dog gave two sharp barks.

Then Jason heard it over the dancing violins: a low series of beeps coming from the system he had rigged in every room except the bath. The sound was what had so disturbed the dog, sound from wireless transmitters in the weight detectors he had buried at random intervals along the beach. Each device gave off a sound slightly louder than the previous one the closer someone got to the house.

Jason was not expecting visitors.

The sportfisherman he had seen that morning popped into his mind. What had made him notice it? There was no bone in its teeth, no white wake as it cut through the water. It hadn’t been moving. The flash he’d seen had come from a telescope or binoculars. Instead of trolling for marlin yet to arrive, it had been observing him. Oversight like that could get a fellow killed.

But how…?

The keys to the sailboat he had rented in St. Maarten’s to sail to St. Bart’s. The keys Paco had when he was captured. The float had the name of the rental company, and the rental company had… what?

Jason had used his employer’s credit card, which matched his false passport, to rent the sailboat. Someone in Alazar’s organization knew his face and recognized the fuzzy copy the rental company had made of his passport. The thought was less than comforting, but not as immediate as his present intruders.

In a single motion Jason removed something resembling a television remote and a pair of strangely configured binoculars from a dresser drawer and stooped to retrieve from under the bed a large wooden box clasped shut by a combination lock. Quickly touching a series of numbers, Jason opened the lid to reveal three fully assembled weapons with a loaded clip for each.

“Close,” he said aloud, as though addressing Pangloss. “They’re gonna get real close.”

Letting the potential proximity of the intruders dictate his choice, he passed over a Chinese version of an AK-47 assault rifle and a stubby Heckler & Koch MP5A2 machine gun, a weapon designed to fill very small spaces with a maximum number of nine-millimeter Parabellum bullets, to select the bulkiest of the three, the military model Remington twelve-gauge fully automatic shotgun. The weapon had been designed for urban riot control, hence the name “Street Sweeper.” At twenty-five yards or less it could fill an area fifty by fifty with painful but relatively harmless rubber projectiles or, using the loads in Jason’s clip, deadly lead shot.

Outside, the moonless sky was black silk paved with diamond chips. Ducking below the railing of the deck to prevent presenting his silhouette against the stars, Jason scooted back to the other building, followed closely by Pangloss. Once inside, Jason went to the kitchen and out what served as the back door and down steps to a room originally designed as a garage. From there, man and dog went outside and circled the house to face the front.

Straining his ears, Jason could detect only the soft lapping of the tide at the beach and the wind’s sigh through the few scrubby trees. He put one reassuring arm around Pangloss, using the other to hold the pair of night-vision binoculars to his eyes as he swept the beach. At the moment he could see only interlocking fields of dull green, the color the glasses used to concentrate all available light. Jason wished he had taken the time to buy the newer technology, vision aids that picked up heat to display images. Deep shadows might momentarily conceal something from the equipment he was using, but there was no hiding body heat from infrared.

He forgot his discontent as a green blob emerged from the darkness and took form. A man carrying… carrying… a long-nosed handgun. No, a handgun equipped with a silencer. Why go to the trouble of using a silencer when the nearest neighbor was miles away? Jason wondered. His curiosity was replaced by awe as four more figures followed the first silently up the stairs to the house’s deck.

Five men for a single kill? In other circumstances, Jason would have been flattered his enemies took him that seriously. At the moment he had other things to think about.

Before moving, he swept the area a final time, to be rewarded with the green image of a sixth man standing guard a few yards between the beach and the house.

“Taking no chances, Pangloss,” he muttered to the dog. “Damn! Too many!”

In any action movie worth a box of popcorn, Bruce Willis or Arnold would have successfully taken on all six assailants, defeating each in a spectacular display of strength, marksmanship, and agility, Jason thought ruefully. Unfortunately, neither of those two heroes was available tonight. Six men, each armed, presented impossible odds in the real world.

He could simply flee, disappear into the night. But where? Anyone who had tracked him this far was not going to be discouraged by not finding him at home, and the islands presented few hiding places. No, he was going to have to terminate this venture here and now, giving himself plenty of time to find another place to live. Subliminally, he had known this moment would come no matter how much he hated the idea of leaving these islands. He had hoped he would not need the preparations for defense even as he had made them.

Jason sighed. His fight had been from the first very, very personal. He had taken satisfaction from the expressions on the faces of men who knew they would be dead within the next second. Satisfaction and a small degree of revenge, a minute reprisal for his loss. Tonight there would be only impersonal killing, from which he would derive little vindication.

Well, with one exception.

Commandolike, Jason crept forward on his knees and elbows, the plastic device between his teeth and the shotgun held in both hands. When he was close enough to see the sentry against the sky, he stood.

“Welcome to North Caicos,” Jason said softly.

He waited just the split second it took for the man to spin around and begin to raise his weapon, that nanosecond of hope he might survive.

The shotgun’s muzzle flash burned into Jason’s retinas the image of the impact of six ounces of lead shot in the midriff, a blow that sent the man stumbling backward, hands flung outward if in one final, desperate supplication to his maker.

Before he could see clearly, Jason pushed one of the buttons on the remote. Instantly every light fixture or lamp in the building came on. Jason was standing just outside the rim of light that turned the surrounding sand a glossy silver.

Startled by the blast of the shotgun and the sudden brilliant illumination, two of the intruders ran out onto the deck, their weapons pointed in different directions. Even at this distance, Jason thought he could see shock and surprise on their faces. One had his mouth open, a black O in the bright lights.

“Come ’n’ get it!” Jason shouted. “I’ve got a hell of a welcome waiting for you!”

Two more men joined the first pair in searching the darkness. Jason waited until one pointed at him before he dove headfirst into the sand at the instant he pressed another button.

Even with his face buried under his arms and eyes closed, the brilliance of the explosion lit the back of Jason’s eyelids. He felt rather than heard the blast. By the time he raised his head, small pieces of debris and ash were floating down like a sprinkling of snow. Where the house had stood, timbers burned, sending sparks aloft in a Fourth of July fireworks show. There was no chance any living thing, including a recent infestation of mice, had survived.

Beside him, Pangloss whimpered.

He stood, running a hand up and down the dog’s back. “Pangloss, looks to me like we’re moving.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dirty rags of clouds squeezed oily moisture into rivulets that streaked the window of the 717. Jason gave his seat belt another hitch as the plane bucked in turbulence before thumping onto the runway. Winter-dried grass, shiny black pavement, and drab buildings emerged from the cloying fingers of fog.

Had he really begun the day with the glory of a Caribbean sunrise in his face, albeit diminished by the stench of the charred wood of his former home? Was it the same day he had dutifully reported to the island’s sole constable, Stubbs, about checking a leak in the lines from his butane tank, the undoubted cause of the explosion? Had it been only this morning when he had counted out money under the gaze of the head teller at Barclays Bank, stuffed his sizable withdrawal into a money belt, and headed for the airport?

Pangloss, living up to his namesake, had eagerly sniffed the oversize dog carrier and even wagged his tail as he was locked into it. Now that they knew where he was, Jason couldn’t risk leaving the dog until the unknowable time when his return could be made safely. The mutt would have to come along.

Jason felt he had traveled not only across space but also time. How often had he arrived back here? Hundreds? That was the difference, the disorienting factor. He was not returning home this time. The house in Georgetown and Laurin — neither was his anymore, no more than the life they had had.

He eased back in his seat and watched his fellow passengers stand and push into the aisle as the plane came to a stop. Idly, he watched as overhead compartments were opened and emptied. He hadn’t brought much more than the clothes on his back, the rest having burned with the house. No problem. He could stop at one of the city’s men’s stores and outfit himself. With the money in the belt at his waist, he could dress himself however he wished.

The aircraft was almost empty when Jason finally stood. A blast of cold air from the open door made him thankful he had cleared customs in Miami. All he had to do was collect Pangloss and find a cab. There would, of course, be one stop, no matter what the weather, before he reached his hotel or a clothing store.

Reaching into the overhead compartment, he extracted his only luggage, a soft bag that contained toilet articles, extra socks and underwear, and a clean T-shirt, all purchased at West Indies Trading, North Caicos’ only dry-goods store. He had declined to check the bag for two reasons. First, as an experienced traveler, he was all too aware of the chance of baggage taking an excursion of its own once entrusted to the airlines. The second was recent habit. A man waiting for his luggage to arrive on one of the crowded carousels was a man who could not move in a hurry if circumstances dictated. He saw no reason to break habits old or new.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Stop! Pull over for a minute!”

In the rearview mirror, the cabdriver’s face was incredulous. “It’s the Pentagon, mista. No stoppin’ here.”

Jason was already out of the cab, oblivious to angry horns as he dodged his way through traffic. He stood looking at what was arguably the world’s ugliest office building as though experiencing rapture.

Along the west side, a single charred capstone was the only marker. In front of it were flowers, singly or in bunches, but Jason had no trouble recognizing the long green stems of white gladioli, her favorite. He had a dozen placed there every week.

The simple gold band he wore on a chain around his neck was the only trace of her found. There was no grave for him to visit, no other physical place to vent his grief. It was here, across a busy street around unattractive architecture, where she had spent the last seconds of her life, that he came to be as close to her as the living might get to the dead.

If you weren’t looking for it, the repairs would go unnoticed. On that bright late-summer morning that had become America’s darkest day, an airplane had slammed into the building.

It was like recalling an incident from childhood, so far away did 9/11 seem. First Lieutenant Peters, J., of the little-known and less discussed Delta Force, had been on temporary assignment here. His wife, Laurin, junior partner in one of the multitude of D.C. law firms specializing in lobbying activity, was in the building for an early morning meeting with the firm’s largest client, the army.

The experience of going to work together was unique. Jason frequently was in places with classified names for indefinite periods of time. Laurin missed him, and the assignments were rarely to locales that could be described as garden spots. His paintings were acquiring a regular market, and her real estate investments, inherited from her mother, had become too large and profitable for her to manage and continue to work full-time.

They had decided to quit their present jobs in the next twelve months, spending the cold, wet Washington winters in the British West Indies and enduring the hot, equally wet summers in their Georgetown home. They built the house on North Caicos and spent an idyllic month there. They both loved it.

They were already counting the days.

Shortly before eight A.M. on September 11, 2001, he had shown her his temporary office in the Pentagon’s second ring. She had a few minutes before her meeting.

“Can I bring you something from the canteen?” she’d asked.

It was much later he realized that most last words were probably equally banal.

“Sure. A large cup of coffee.”

Nodding, she had set off, never to be seen again. Had she remained with him for the next five minutes, she would still be alive. The thought tortured him on nights he could only toss and turn with survivor’s guilt.

It had taken a minute or two after the crash for Jason to learn what had happened and where. A number of firemen suffered varying degrees of injury from a wild man trained to kill before MPs had succeeded in pulling Jason away from the inferno that had consumed his wife.

Once the adrenaline flow stopped, he had sobbed like a brokenhearted teenager. His rage was one of loss and impotent fury. Delta Force kept a more or less current brief on the world’s nasties. Even before the presidential announcement, he had no doubt one or more of the terrorist groups had done this. He would, by God, get even.

But how?

His reverie in front of the Pentagon was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. He spun around to look into the sympathetic face of a cop.

“Look, mister, I know you probably lost someone there, ’cause I see ’em all the time. But your cab’s blockin’ th’ road. If you want, I’ll hold up traffic an’ let the taxi get to the parkin’ lot. You can at least argue with them military assholes to let you stop there for a few minutes. Besides, you look like you’re freezin’.”

Jason, clad in only a T-shirt and a pair of light cotton trousers, had been oblivious to the mid-thirty-degree temperature. Even his moth-eaten overcoat would have provided some warmth had it not been consumed in the fire.

Jason managed a weak smile. “Thanks, Officer, but I’ll be going.”

He could feel tears that were not caused by the cold on his cheeks as he climbed back into the cab.

CHAPTER NINE

Jason had found a hotel in Crystal City with a kennel for Pangloss. Both had spent a morose evening: the dog in unhappy confinement, Jason considering calling to get a table at Kincade’s, one of the capital’s better seafood places, before deciding the restaurant was too infested with memories. Instead, he elected to avoid his room’s ever-remindful view of the Pentagon and eat in a dining room that justified every joke that had ever been made at the expense of hotel food.

A morning sky unmarred by clouds and a sun that turned a city of glass into gold improved Jason’s spirits. Better weather did nothing for Pangloss, who barked most pitifully when Jason left the kennel after checking on him. Renting a car, he was at a nearby men’s store when it opened. After purchasing two sweaters, slacks, and a Burberry raincoat with removable lining, Jason got on the Beltway and headed north.

When he exited the multilane road, he picked his way carefully, relying on memories two or three years old. Where quaint towns had dotted the landscape, strip centers and outlet malls competed for space. Rolling farms had become subdivisions of McMansions on tiny lots. By equal parts navigational skill and blind luck, he finally saw the snaking brick wall that formed the boundary of the office park he sought.

Jason scanned the uniform plaques outside each building until he found the one he wanted: Narcom, Inc., one more acronymically named entity whose title did nothing to inform the observer of the company’s function or distinguish it from its neighbors. Its one unique feature was a subterranean parking lot, a seemingly superfluous amenity in an office park where space was readily available. At the entrance to the down ramp, a wooden arm blocked passage until a ticket was taken.

Any semblance of normality ended with appearances.

Jason knew that while the car was waiting for the machine to spit out a ticket, scales set into the floor were weighing the vehicle. In less than a second, a computer compared the poundage to the manufacturer’s specified weight, adjustments were made for a possible full tank of gas, and a formula applied for the number of occupants. Should the car exceed what the system deemed normal, a steel curtain would drop from the ceiling, preventing further access while probes extended from the walls to take air samples in much the same way bomb-sniffing dogs operated at airports.

The machine determined the rental car posed no risk, and Jason drove into a nearly empty basement. An elevator returned him to ground level, and he entered the three stories of smoked glass. Last night’s rain was still a thousand diamonds on the carefully manicured lawn along the flagstone pathway to the entrance.

Almost all the buildings in the vicinity displayed signs announcing the services of one or more security companies. So did this one. Visibility was, after all, part of security. An intruder would, presumably, be less inclined to invade the premises of an establishment guarded by the usual electronic devices.

There were certain differences from nearby similar structures, had one looked in the right places, differences of which no ordinary burglar would have ever heard. But then, it was not the ordinary burglar Narcom wished to deter.

Jason knew his image was being transmitted inside by a series of well-concealed cameras. One step off the path would trigger sensors buried an inch or so deep under lush grass, green despite the season. The glass of the exterior was reinforced sufficiently to withstand any projectile smaller than an artillery shell. Well out of sight from below, the roof sprouted a forest of antennae. Window shades were rubber lined. When pulled, as they were anytime an important conversation was in progress, they made it impossible for listening devices outside to pick up vibrations in the glass caused by words spoken inside.

An electric eye opened the door as Jason reached it. The lobby, the twin of hundreds of others in the area, contained the usual potted plants and a reception desk manned by a woman who, by any measure, should have made an appearance on one of those reality shows where looks compensated for lack of plot. She had the pale, clear skin that went with naturally blond hair, and blue eyes without warmth.

As Jason approached, she watched with cold disinterest. From a few feet away he could read the tag pinned to the black camisole-type top, which, though not transparent, gave the impression of frilly lingerie underneath. He was not surprised to learn her name was Kim, nor would Lisa, Lori, or Ashley have been a shock.

He knew from previous observation that her fingers were never more than a few inches from a panel of screens that, when touched, could do everything from locking every door in the building to lowering a steel curtain between the entrance and the receptionist. Behind her, a mirrored wall was actually two-way glass, giving a complete view of the lobby to armed men who waited in perpetual readiness for whatever situation might arise. The place’s security was second only to the White House’s.

Kim imitated a smile, flashing teeth that would have inspired any orthodontist. “Help you, sir?”

“Good morning, Kim. I’m Jason Peters, and I’m expected.”

She gave Jason a slow inspection, making no effort to conceal the fact that she was appraising him in the same way she might decide whether an insect was likely to sting or bite. Under other circumstances he might have taken a lingering look like that as interest, but her manner was of one who had no intent of inviting personal overtures. An expensive fur coat draped over the far corner of the counter explained a lot. He doubted Kim could have purchased it on her salary. She already had a “friend” with a bankroll.

Girls like Kim got minks the same way minks got minks.

“If you’ll just step over here, sir.”

Jason was familiar with the drill. Extending both arms, he placed the thumb of each hand on a screen that was part of the top of the desk.

She watched a monitor behind the desk. “Mr. Peters, I see you have a meeting in a few minutes. Know your way?”

“Indeed I do.” He walked to the left of the desk, bowing slightly. “A delight to have made your acquaintance.”

Kim had already returned to staring at the monitors in front of her.

A previously invisible door wheezed open, and Jason entered a small room, where he was patted down by one man while another, an M16A2 assault rifle in the crook of his arm, observed. A large dog of indeterminate breed sniffed for explosives.

The dog made Jason think of Pangloss, and he wished they both were back in the low-tech world of the Turks and Caicos. By now the day would be well under way there, the sun up hours ago. Reality intruded and he sighed, aware that it was unlikely he would ever claim North Caicos as a residence again, not if he wanted to stay alive. The place would be under observation.

“You’ll have to empty your pockets.”

Jason produced the rental car keys, a handful of change, and a small pocketknife.

The man not holding the rifle looked skeptically at the latter. “This some sort of weapon?”

“Not if you’re attacking anything larger than a mouse. The blade is less than two inches long.”

A moment of indecision. Jason could almost hear the line of thought: if box cutters could be used to take over airliners…

Jason handed it over. “Tell you what: you hold it till I come back through. If I have to kill someone, I’ll do it with my bare hands.”

“Thank you, sir.” The man was clearly happy to be relieved of having to make a decision. “It’ll be waiting for you.”

As Jason stepped forward, there was a buzz, the snick of heavy bolts sliding, and the door on the other side of the room whirred open. A bank of two elevators faced him. Jason knew there were no buttons for selection of floors inside either. The cars moved at the direction of people elsewhere in the building.

Two floors up, another man greeted him with an expressionless face and voice to match. “This way, Mr. Peters.”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned to precede Jason down a corridor flanked with steel doors.

The hall was deserted, filled with only the faint hum of electronic equipment and the sound of four shoes squeaking on linoleum. At the end a door swung open, throwing a beam of light into the otherwise dim hall. Framed in silhouette was a woman whose features appeared clearer as he drew close. Not old but not young, either. She wore listless brown hair in a bun behind her long, thin face.

She dismissed his escort and extended a slender hand to touch Jason’s. The feel of her skin was as arid and cool as the first autumn breezes along the Potomac. She wore the fragrance he remembered, something that smelled of dried flowers.

“Bond, James Bond, to see M,” he said in an overdone British accent.

She favored him with the threat of a smile. “Hello, Jason. Good to see you again. You’re looking fit, all tan. The tropics must agree with you.”

“Certainly more than Washington, Miss Tyson.”

She clucked disapprovingly. “Now, now, Jason. We’re happy to see you again.”

He wondered if the pronoun included her boss. He had never known the boss to be happy about anything that didn’t involve death, destruction, and mayhem of some sort.

“Nice to see you again, too.”

Still holding his hand, she drew him across the threshold and the door silently swung shut.

Jason glanced around, noting the lack of change. The same bleak reception area, furnished with only a desk and secretarial chair that faced a worn leather couch. The walls were without windows or pictures. The room had the personality of a dial tone. He had often wondered how someone could spend time in such quarters, looking at nothing. Particularly if, as was the case with Miss Tyson, they never seemed to have anything to do. Perhaps she came in here only when her boss was expecting someone.

As though reading his thoughts, she pointed to the only wooden door he had seen in the building. “Go right in.”

He knocked briskly, the comparatively mellow thump of wood somehow soothing after all the steel, and the door opened.

On the other side, the office was as lavish as Miss Tyson’s space was spartan. Jason stepped onto the muted blues and reds of an antique Khurasan that cost more than most houses. The rug’s colors were softly repeated in four original Renoirs whose gilt frames hung on fabric wall covering. An Edwardian breakfront occupied most of the far wall, behind its rippled glass a collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century first editions. Floating on the rug’s center medallion like a ship adrift, a mahogany partners’ desk was topped with hand-tooled, gold-edged leather.

Behind the desk sat an enormous black woman clad in a flowing caftan with an African print. With a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt, she held the receiver of the telephone that was the only item on the desk. With the other, she motioned Jason into one of four Scalamandre silk wing chairs arranged in a semicircle in front of her.

He was unable to understand the language she was speaking, but, from the rare familiar word and hand gestures that accompanied each utterance, he guessed it was some dialect of Arabic or Farsi. He sat and waited.

Jason had to smile as he watched her, the ultimate minority-business-program beneficiary. An émigré from Haiti, she was simultaneously black, female, and non-Christian, embracing a belief in the African gods of voodoo and Santería. She was the poster girl for politicians espousing egalitarianism above all. Unlike many such recipients of government largesse, however, she had qualifications beyond race, sex, and religion. As former second in command of her native land’s Tonton Macoute, she was skilled at interrogation, torture, assassination, and manipulation of the political process, a résumé the awareness of which no elected official could admit. Had anyone demurred at the government doing business with a person previously associated with an organization whose brutality made Hitler’s Gestapo look like Boy Scouts, he would have been denounced not only as a racial and religious bigot, but sexist as well.

She served her only client well and was generously compensated for taking on unsavory tasks to which no democratically elected government could admit, but which no government, democratic or otherwise, could do without. Any scruples she possessed related only to her “boys” and to the proper preparation of the fiery Creole cuisine of her homeland. Dealing with the nation’s enemies of today required an unrelenting barbarity that made congressional stomachs churn. Narcom, Inc., provided the political antacid of deniability.

It was a marriage made perhaps not in heaven, but strong nonetheless.

In less than a minute she hung up and came around the desk. Jason stood to receive a hug that might have crushed the lungs of a man less fit.

“Jason! Good to see you again; always good to see one of Mama’s boys!”

Mama’s boys, the name she gave all her operatives, although Jason had met very few. By its nature, Narcom’s business was strictly compartmentalized.

She relaxed her embrace, allowing Jason to draw a breath before he sat down. She returned to her chair behind the desk before speaking.

“How you doin’ on that island of yours?”

“I’m not there anymore. I had some visitors.”

As he related what had happened, she nodded. “Uh-huh. You stirred a stick in a bees’ nest when you did Alazar down there in St. Bart’s.”

“You know that wasn’t my fault. Whoever mixed the tranquilizing solution overdid it.”

“I know, but somebody doesn’t. Not that it matters. One less of those animals. I would have liked to ask him a few questions, though.”

Alazar was fortunate, Jason thought, to be dead.

Mama continued. “Sounds like six bad guys won’t be a problem anymore.”

“At the cost of a damn nice house,” Jason grumbled.

“With what you get paid, you can afford it,” she said amicably. “But that’s not why I invited you here.”

She reached into a desk drawer and handed him a sheet of paper. On it was a series of lines in what Jason recognized as Russian. “This came off the computer you sent me, the one you took from Alazar.”

Jason stared at the paper, unable to even guess what it was. “I speak a little Russian, but I don’t read it.”

Mama took the paper back. “Appears to be some sort of shopping list, an order for something that he supplied that was successfully used by the customer; refers to a type of new weapon. From the context, military intelligence thinks it’s some sort of biochemical warfare, since it refers to ‘containers.’ ” She wrinkled a brow. “Also talks about ‘keeping it healthy,’ like some sort of microbe.”

The most oxymoronic of all government bureaucracy: military intelligence.

Right up there with legal ethics.

Jason leaned back in the chair, crossing his legs at the ankles. “And?”

The woman on the other side of the desk shook her head reproachfully, sending gold chandelier earrings flashing with reflected light. “I’ll get there, Jason; just show me the courtesy of listening. Thing that got the attention over to Langley was the date this new whatever-it-is was used, last June.”

Jason swallowed the urge to ask a number of questions, knowing Mama would answer most of them in her own way and in her own time.

“Last June, one of our coast guard boats in the Bering Sea found a Russian trawler, one of those supersize fishing boats. The whole crew had had their throats cut.”

Jason hunched forward in his chair, impatient to get to the point. “So? We’re not in the business of protecting foreign fishing boats, particularly those poaching in our waters like I’d bet that one was.”

Mama nodded, multiple chins shaking. “Jason, you just won’t wait, will you? Whatever happened to manners? Anyway, this Russian trawler was just the beginning. Since then, there’ve been loggers in Georgia, a team of geologists looking for possible oil off Florida’s west coast, an Indian chemical plant executive and his whole family, a Polish coal mine owner and…” She stopped and took a deep breath. “You get the idea. All found with their throats cut, no sign of any resistance.”

Jason leaned back, letting the chair’s softness envelop him. “Overfishing, timber cutting, petroleum exploration… All ecological hot buttons. We’ve seen people chain themselves to trees, lie down in front of earth movers, even blow up some labs where animal experimentation is going on. But murder?”

“Not the first time. There’ve been occasional acts of violence by the lunatic fringe. This time, though, it looks like a well-organized, concerted effort.”

“And why does the client want to dump this in our lap?”

“I don’t ask questions, Jason. I just take the money and perform the service. That’s part of the company’s success. If I had to guess, though, I’d say the present administration doesn’t want to get involved with anything looks like opposition to environmental causes, even violent ones. This is, after all, right before an election year, and the president isn’t the tree kissers’ hero. On the other hand, the Feds can’t just sit by while people get killed.”

Jason thought that over. Made sense. “And none of them seemed to put up a fight? I mean, someone was trying to give me that close a shave, I’d at least try.”

“That’s part of the problem.”

“Or a clue.” Jason uncrossed his legs and sat up straight. “Any idea why they didn’t put up a fight? Drugs, poison?”

Mama placed the report on her desk, sausagelike fingers squaring the edges. “Not a glimmer. Autopsies on the Russian crew and the loggers were no help. Only thing unusual was that each person had a slight amount of sulfates in the lungs and bloodstream, probably less than they would have inhaled from auto exhausts in any large city. And ethylene gas in the lung tissues.”

“There aren’t any cities in the Bering Sea. And what, exactly, is ethylene?”

“Dunno. Part of your job’s gonna be to find out.” She slipped the report across the desk. “Take this with you. It’s classified, of course.”

“Of course.” Jason would not have been surprised if the people at Langley classified their grocery lists.

“That’s jus’ a summary. They got a complete one they’ll deliver to you, a report on ‘the Breath of the Earth.’ ”

“The Breath of…?”

“Breath of the Earth. At least, that’s how the note on Alazar’s computer refers to whatever it is.”

Jason recrossed his legs, this time at the knee. “Breath of the Earth, sulfur, ethylene… sounds more like halitosis to me. But then, halitosis is better than no breath at all.”

Mama leaned forward, the desk groaning under her bulk. “Make all the jokes you like; our client takes this very, very seriously.”

“So, you want me to do what?”

Mama shrugged. “First, we need to ascertain exactly what happened to those men on the fishing boat, the loggers, the others, see if there’s any threat in this Breath of the Earth, whatever it might be. Then destroy it and whoever is using it.”

“I don’t suppose we have a name, an idea of who’s behind this?”

Mama leaned farther forward, her elbows on the desk. “Matter of fact, we have an idea.”

“Want to share it, or you’d rather I find out myself?”

She slowly shook her head in disapproval. “Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Jason. There’s an organization — if you can call it that — called Eco. Maybe you didn’t know it, but the various conservationist groups around the world raise more money than the economy of a lot of third-world countries. Eco has gotten rich from unwitting but well-meaning green groups. Every concert in Japan to cease whaling operations, every T-shirt sold in Germany bearing the Grün logo, every contribution to a conservationist cause, even the sale of some ecology-friendly devices such as recycling bins and biodegradable trash bags, Eco gets a cut, either by contract or just plain, old-fashioned extortion. You know, ‘We’ll “guarantee” your rally for the three-toed tree frog will be peaceful’ et cetera.

“Eco’s agenda, so far as we can tell, certainly includes the industries where people have been killed, and they have the money. We don’t have anything more concrete than that.”

“So, why not infiltrate and see what they’re up to?”

“Easier said. They don’t have members in the conventional sense. The only reason they came to our client’s attention was a large transfer of cash to Alazar’s Swiss account from a number of banks around the world, all within twenty-four hours.”

Although the Swiss still prided themselves on bank secrecy, they could do nothing to prevent a record of any wire transfer of funds by SWIFT, Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, the Brussels-based clearing center for all electronic transfers. Most of the world, including international criminals, were ignorant of SWIFT’s existence or its post-9/11 cooperation with the CIA, FBI, Interpol, and other agencies. Fortunately, so were American politicians, whose rush to expose the arrangement in televised displays of righteous indignation would have compounded the country’s security problems.

“And the CIA traced those accounts.”

Mama treated him to another gleaming grin. “Anytime that much money changes hands, they know about it.”

And the American people still thought privacy existed.

“Anything else?”

“Running some cross-checks, our customer believes Eco is run by a man name of Boris Eglov and some buddies from the Russian Mafia. They have the money to finance something like this but haven’t been heard from since the Russian police were hot on their trail a few years back. Not likely they all became honest businessmen.”

“They don’t get involved in causes other than their own pocketbooks. What’s in it for them besides skimming and extorting toad lovers?”

“Most of the ecology-friendly groups are honest and nonviolent, but the word gets around when Eco strikes a real blow — something other than chaining little old ladies to bulldozers. You’d be surprised how many activists secretly cheer them on. After the murders on that fishing boat, contributions jumped forty percent to worldwide causes — and Eco gets a cut, remember. They want that sort of cash. Also, when Eglov was running black-market fencing and extortion schemes in Moscow, he was fanatic on the subject of the ecology. May have something to do with the fact that his parents and younger sister died from radiation at Chernobyl when the nuclear plant blew. He’s suspected of personally strangling two of the surviving plant managers with his own hands.”

Jason was impressed. “You’ve done your homework.”

She reached into the same drawer and slid two sheets of paper across the desk. “I try. Here’s what our friends in the Moscow police tell us.”

Jason studied the picture stapled to the top right-hand corner of the first page. Though the image was grainy, he saw a broad-shouldered man with a shaved head. The eyes were hooded, slightly Oriental, while the rest of the face had a Slavic flatness. Below was a list of attributed crimes. Murder in one form or another was the most frequent offense, with strong-arm extortion or robbery a close second.

“I’m surprised they let a guy like this stay on the streets,” Jason observed, still reading.

“You’ll notice he wasn’t convicted of any of those charges.”

“I also notice a high mortality rate of witnesses.”

“Some people are just lucky.”

“Not if the police want you to testify against this guy.”

Jason finished the list. “Professional criminal, vegetarian, and passionate friend of the environment. Somehow it doesn’t seem to add up.”

Mama retrieved the papers and returned them to the drawer. “What? You saying a criminal can’t be a nature lover? Seems to me the man has set up a worldwide scam of conservation organizations to fund his own agenda.”

Jason groaned. “You’re saying we’re dealing with an idealist here, someone who kills in pursuit of his own utopian ideals. Or, not to put too fine a point on it, a nutcase.”

“Perhaps, but a deadly one.”

Jason stood, circling his chair. “The customer didn’t hire us to do a job unless they need to be able to deny any involvement. What is it you’re not telling me?”

The woman’s eyes widened with mock surprise. “Are you suggesting I wouldn’t tell you everything?”

“Not suggesting — clearly stating. Come clean; what’s the hitch?”

Mama put her hands on the desk, fingers interlocked. “If we are talking about a chemical agent here, chances are Alazar’s buddies didn’t manufacture it — at least, not in his part of the world. Not much chance of setting up a laboratory when you’re on the run.”

“So, our clients figure whatever it was, it was concocted somewhere else, maybe some sovereign nation that might just resent foreigners conducting an operation on their soil.”

Mama nodded. “You’re smart, Jason. Looks like mebbe Langley finally figured out the sovereignty thing.”

Both remembered the international outcry raised when an undetermined number of CIA operatives had snatched a terrorist suspect right off the streets of Milan. The Italian authorities had indicted six names on credit card receipts that indicated the kidnappers were American. Luck, rather than tradecraft, had stymied the prosecution when no real people could be matched with the credit cards. The only clue to surface so far was the fact that the cards involved were all Diners Club, a less than helpful discovery, even if the CitiCorp card did constitute less than three percent of the world’s credit card charges.

Jason walked over to study one of the Renoirs, a woman lounging in the bow of a boat being rowed by a man in shirtsleeves and a straw hat. He was forever fascinated by the works of the earlier impressionists, pictures more likely created with palette knife than brush. At a few feet, the subject was clear. At close range, the whole thing dissolved into meaningless globs of paint. Only one of many things that didn’t withstand minute inspection at Narcom.

He managed to forget late-nineteenth-century France and turned to face the desk behind him. “So, what now?”

Mama shrugged. “You’re the one makes the big bucks. You know what facilities we have. They’re all available.”

Few third-world countries had the intelligence and military resources of Narcom, Inc.

He paced over and stood directly in front of the desk. “For a starting point, I’d like to see whatever reports were made, see if they took specimens, fluids, any of that really gross stuff. Run ’em by that spectroanalyst we use…”

Mama stood, handing him a plain white envelope. “Here’s your contact.”

Jason opened it, annoyed but not surprised to see what he took to be a single name and a phone number.

“Password is fife,” Mama added.

“Fife, as in Barney?”

“As in fife and drum. Drum’s the countersign.”

“Don’t these guys know we’re on their side? Or at least they’re paying us a hell of a lot of money to be.” Jason held up the envelope. “Tell me this isn’t going to burn a hole in my new suit when it self-destructs.”

Mama grinned, one gold incisor sporting a diamond. “This isn’t Mission Impossible, you know.”

Jason nodded. “Yeah, I know. Question is, does the CIA? I wouldn’t be surprised which bathroom is the men’s and which is the women’s is classified over there.”

Mamma chuckled, her massive bosom quivering enough to shake the desk. “That might lead to interesting results.” She swallowed, serious again. “You need anything, call.”

Jason had been dismissed.

He was reaching for the door when she said, “Jason, I almost forgot.”

He turned to see her holding out what looked like an ordinary BlackBerry, the combination cell phone and computer that had become the badge of anyone who wanted to be considered important.

“Thanks, but I have one.”

She motioned him back with the hand holding the BlackBerry. “Not like this you don’t. It’s straight from the Third Directorate.”

The CIA was divided into four compartmentalized divisions: Operations, or Ops, included the actual spycraft, cloak-and-dagger activities. Intelligence consisted of the satellite-picture-searching, communications-monitoring computer nerds. Supply, the Third Directorate, functioned somewhat like Q of James Bond fame. They had actually developed a gas-spraying fountain pen, a belt-buckle camera, and a poison-laden hyperdermic needle concealed in an umbrella. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the need for these “toys” had diminished to the point that Jason had had to search his memory to recall exactly what Supply did. The Fourth Directorate, Administration, included the bean counters, the cost analysts, procurers of equipment and the like.

Jason looked at the BlackBerry with renewed interest. “And it does what?”

“Functions just like an ordinary BlackBerry.” Mama opened her other hand, revealing what appeared to be a newly minted quarter. “When you squeeze this, though, it goes bump in the night.”

Jason took both, examining them closely. “How much ‘bump’?”

“Enough that you don’t want to be holding it.”

Jason slid them both into a pocket. “I’ll try to remember that.”

“And keep the two in seperate pockets or you’ll be singing soprano the rest of your life.”

“I’ll definitely remember that.”

As he passed through the lobby, he waved to Kim. She ignored him.

In the garage he sat in the car a moment, planning his course of action.

He remembered his first job for Narcom, Inc.

After 9/11, after Laurin had… disappeared, the days and weeks had blended into a haze of equal grief and impotent fury. He was part of the most elite small-engagement organization in the world, Delta Force. He had dropped into inky darkness to places so deserted, so void of life that even the appearance of a scorpion had provided relief. He had slipped across borders into jungles that stank of decay, where boots rotted away in a week and both animals and plants were equally likely to be poisonous.

But no place had been as near to hell as the empty house on P Street in Georgetown, the home he and Laurin had shared. No encounter was as bad as being able to do nothing other than accept that she had been taken from him and there was nothing he could do about it. Getting even was out of the question; no life would equal hers. Still, he would gladly give years of his for just a chance at those responsible for her death.

Then Mama had called.

At first he had thought some prankster was playing a cruel joke. Then he remembered she was calling on a secure line, a phone that not only was unlisted but did not exist as far as any phone company knew.

It was as if she were intentionally playing Mephistopheles to his Faust.

The soft woman’s voice named the members of his last squad and the code name of their mission, information so classified that less than a dozen people knew it. Would he be willing to take a high-paying job that desperately needed doing but carried far too much risk for politicians, a job ignoring national boundaries to stamp out international terrorist organizations, those who were perfectly willing to kill the innocent to impose their politics or religion on others?

Did a bear shit in the woods?

Did he have qualms about killing extremists, no matter their sex or nationality?

Did a shark ask questions before it fed?

A week later, Jason handed in his resignation from the army and Delta Force amid the sounds of debris removal at the Pentagon. That night he was on a plane for Munich, from where he would travel to a small town just across the Austrian border to a place the leaders of three European cells of Hamas were meeting.

Two days later he was on his way home, his rage at his loss partially slaked and his newly opened Swiss account over half a million dollars fatter.

It took the Austrian officials over a week to conclude that they would never find all the body parts.

Narcom had given Jason two things: wealth and revenge. There might be enough of the former in the world, but never the latter.

So much for Memory Lane. He had a new job to do.

CHAPTER TEN

Dressed in a new sweater and slacks as well as a warm and moth-free coat, Jason had cruised the Kalorama District, an area of restored mansions bordering Dupont Circle known locally as Embassy Row. Despite a number of sudden and unsignaled turns that brought the blasts of angry horns, he was still not sure he was not being followed. There was simply too much traffic to be certain.

Checking his watch for the third time in as many minutes, he was aware he was likely to be late for a rendezvous Jason considered useless at best. In typical CIA fashion, the phone number Mama had given him was answered only by the countersign, a time, and the bar of this Hilton as a meeting place. Simple courier delivery of the material Jason wanted would have served. The organization frequently reminded Jason of a group of kids playing at being spies, secrecy and stealth their own rewards. That love of the cloak-and-dagger mystique meant that if Jason were late, he’d miss his contact and have to go through the elaborate process of setting up another clandestine meeting.

He pulled to the curb in front of one the embassies, this one flying a flag he didn’t recognize. As expected, a D.C. cop cruiser was behind him in less than a minute. In a world where alliances shifted like sands in a windstorm, the municipal government of the District made every effort to ensure that international antagonisms took only verbal form in its jurisdiction.

One cop stood just outside the driver’s window of Jason’s rental car. Another was checking the license plate.

The one beside the car made a motion to roll down the window. “You got a problem, mister?”

Jason shrugged. “Lost, I’m afraid. Can you direct me to the Hilton?”

The policeman shook his head in disgust. “Take a look to your left. And remember, visitor to the city or not, we enforce the no-stopping signs in front of these embassies.”

During the brief encounter, Jason had seen no other vehicle stop to observe. It was the best he was going to do.

He was reluctant to hand over the rental car to the hotel’s valet. Not having the keys in his possession eliminated one means of escape if something went wrong. That made him nervous.

Get a grip, he told himself. What could possibly go wrong with a simple delivery of papers, material Jason had requested?

But then, he knew Murphy had been an optimist.

His overcoat slung over his arm, he followed the sound of a piano mingled with voices. Just before the bank of elevators, he found a large, crowded room with an oak bar at one end. The sole entrance was clogged with customers coming and going. Tables surrounded by upholstered captain’s chairs shared the rest of the space with a baby grand and banquettes against the wall opposite the piano. Jason skimmed the room with a glance. Drum, the voice on the phone, had given no clue as to how he might be identified.

Groups formed and re-formed like swarms of bees; no one seemed to be accompanied by anyone else. It was only after noting that there were roughly equal numbers of men and women that Jason realized it was Friday evening and he was witnessing that uniquely American mating rite, a singles bar. Had he given it any thought at all during the last several years, he would have guessed AIDS, herpes, and other unpleasant possibilities had culled the herd of unmarrieds seeking companionship, if not a relationship, in a saloon. Had he been asked, he would have assumed the ritual had joined the tea dance and church social on society’s ash heap.

Jason grinned at snatches of conversation he could not help but overhear, words and phrases he had heard during his bachelorhood fifteen years ago: No woman ever came to such places except tonight, when she had simply agreed to accompany a friend. No man was driving anything less than a Porsche.

He smiled again, this time returning one from a shapely woman, her face surrounded by pageboy curls. It was too dark to distinguish all her features, but it would have been hard to miss the flat stomach that peered with a single eye over pants glued to her pelvic bone, or cleavage that threatened to spill out of a blouse utilizing less than half its buttons.

Undressed to kill.

Her interest looked a lot more personal than Kim’s had been. She started in his direction, and for an instant Jason wished he were not here on business.

“Fife?” The voice came from behind him.

Jason reluctantly turned his head to see a man who, at least in the bar’s dim light, looked no older than a college sophomore. More and more people seemed younger and younger, a sure sign Jason was experiencing what the advertisements euphemistically described as the maturing process.

Mature or not, he gave the low-riders another look. She was already talking to someone else.

“I have a room upstairs,” the stranger announced.

Wordlessly, Jason followed him out of the bar and onto an elevator. The bright light confirmed Jason’s impression that the guy was young. The heavy horn-rimmed glasses and dark suit did more to make him look out of place than older.

Still without speaking, the two men got off and trudged down a hall, stopping in front of one of a series of doors while the young man inserted his plastic key. Other than an overcoat draped across one of the beds and a briefcase on a table, there was no sign the room had been occupied.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to simply courier over the reports?” Jason bantered, throwing his coat beside the other and taking a seat in one of the two chairs. “You could have saved a pair of code names and the time you took to study my picture.”

The other man sat in the remining chair across a small table, produced a key, and unlocked the briefcase. He handed Jason a form for his signature. “I assume you know the rules: classified documents are not entrusted to persons without appropriate clearances, and all copies have to be signed for.”

The agency employment profile did not require a sense of humor.

Jason took a thin manila folder and quickly skimmed it. “This is the complete report of the incidents in the Bering Sea and Georgia?”

The young man was already relocking the empty briefcase. “It was what I was given.”

“And if I have further questions about something?”

The agent’s face betrayed confusion. “No one told me. My instructions were to deliver that file and have you sign for it.”

Originality of thought was not a requisite, either.

Jason stood, stuffing the file under his belt at the small of his back and pulling his sweater down over it. “It’s been a real pleasure to meet someone as charming and witty as you. I don’t know what I would do without all your help. You want to leave first?”

Clandestine meetings broke up one at a time because single departures did not advertise the fact that there had, in fact, been a meeting.

The still-unnamed agent also stood, scooping a coat from the bed. “I’ll leave first. Give me five minutes.”

Then he was gone.

It was only when Jason picked up the remaining coat that he saw the young man had taken the wrong one. Instead of the tartan design of the Burberry’s lining, there was dark faux fur. The remaining raincoat also lacked the belt that gave Jason’s garment its distinctive shape.

The guy had been in too big a hurry to get away to notice.

Shit.

Snatching up the coat, Jason rushed for the door.

Screw procedure. Jason wanted to retrieve his coat without having to drive all the way to Langley.

The hall was empty, and the elevator seemed to take forever.

As the doors sighed open, the vestibule containing the elevators was packed with a seething, shouting crowd, most of whom looked like they had come from the bar. A woman screamed; several men shouted.

Jason edged his way toward the hotel’s exit, turning to a young woman. “What’s happening?”

“Someone’s been shot,” the man next to her said. “Shot right here.”

The pulsating wails of police sirens were becoming increasingly audible above the crowd as Jason worked his way through the lobby. Near the revolving door that led onto the arrival porte cochere, the crowd had formed a rough circle.

Jason felt as though he had stepped into a blast of arctic air as he peered over the heads of the people in front. He was looking at a man sprawled on the floor, a dark pool seeping into light carpet.

The man was wearing an overcoat.

Jason’s overcoat.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jason had made no effort to retrieve his rental car. Instead, he had again fought the crowds in the hotel lobby until he found his way to a side exit. Forcing himself to move at a normal, non-attention-getting pace, he took an irregular course for several blocks until he found an overhanging awning that afforded deep shadows.

For a full five minutes he waited, watching the way he had come, before crossing the street to a Metro station. He really didn’t care where the train was headed. He simply wanted to put maximum distance between him and the overcoat-shrouded body in the hotel lobby.

The bullet that had killed the young man from the agency had been meant for him. They could simply have traced his credit card, one issued by Narcom in the same name as his alternative passport, the same one used to rent the boat, the same boat with the key in Paco’s pocket. It would have led them straight to the hotel in Crystal City. Then all they had to do was follow him embedded in the mass of Washington traffic, almost impossible to spot.

At some point, Jason exited the Metro and took a cab to the venerable old hotel across Lafayette Park from the White House. The woman at the desk was unable to conceal her surprise when he paid for the room in cash. It would draw unwanted attention, but the credit card would attract notice even less desirable.

One of the reasons Jason had selected this particular hotel was its dining room. The fare was good, but the location better. Seated at any one of several candlelit tables on the floor below the lobby, he had a clear view of anyone descending the well-lit stairs or exiting the elevators under overhead illumination. His first thought was to have a cup of coffee and tarry thirty minutes or so, observing. After only ten, the siren aroma of a passing dish reminded him he had not eaten in a long time. He asked for a menu.

His room was furnished with reproductions of late-eighteenth-century American pieces, a period reminiscent of the building’s origins. The cabinet containing the TV and minibar was a highboy with brass pulls. The bed had both steps and canopy. Just to make sure, he checked the bathroom, satisfied the faux antiques did not include these facilities. Sitting in a Martha Washington chair at a Federalist desk, Jason began to read the report he had been given.

There were a number of items that had not been included in the briefer document Mama had given him, and one very interesting addition.

When he finished, he reread it, puzzled, before taking the BlackBerry-like device Mama had given him out of his pocket. The resemblance ended largely with the physical case. Although the gadget could receive and send voice and text messages, it could do so in nanosecond garbled bursts that both defied decoding without appropriate equipment and sent false satellite coordinates that would foil the most sophisticated GPS. In short, communications were secure both as to location and content.

He punched a button on the back that activated the special features and then a series of numbers, beginning with the 202 D.C. area code, well aware that the actual phone he was calling might be on the other side of the world.

Jason waited. There was no sound of ringing in the conventional sense. He was calling his agency contact whom he used when he needed information on anything. Anything included pertinent weather updates in any part of the world, scientific data, or impeding coups or assassinations.

The latter two, Jason mused, had been on a decline in inverse proportion to increasing congressional inquiry. Gone were the halcyon days when a people’s revolution conveniently removed a leftist-leaning dictator of some banana republic, or a rival clansman used a single bullet to end the anti-Western ravings of some sheikh or mullah.

The more moral American foreign policy, the more chaotic the world became.

There was no salutation, no mention of a name, simply a “Begin.”

Jason was used to the abruptness. In fact, he had long suspected he was speaking to a voice mechanically generated to make electronic identification impossible should the conversation somehow be recorded. Machine or person, he had no idea with whom he was speaking, only that the voice was always the same.

“Reference”—Jason held the written pages up to the light—“document echo-tango-four-zero-two. Question: The bodies found all had traces of silica and ethylene in the lungs, though in quantities that should not have been fatal. Couldn’t that have come from natural surroundings?”

Pause.

“Unlikely with silica on the Bering Sea incident. Possible in Georgia, but the soil had low silica content. Unless there were a sandstorm. There was no record of a sandstorm in the area.”

Only a machine would exclude that possibility, given the locales. No, knowing the CIA…

Jason ran his eye down the page. “I note sulfates at almost uniform levels in all the victims’ lungs, too. Isn’t it unusual that persons with different-size lungs would have almost identical amounts?”

“Very.”

Not exactly helpful. “Any explanation?”

“As stated, tissue studies show nitrogen also, as well as trace carbon. As in some sort of smoke inhalation.”

“Smoke from what?”

“Unknown. Subsequent photographs of the ship and logging camp depict some sort of brush or scrub as the only flora nearby. One in a pot, the other beside the bunkhouse. None of it appears to have burned.”

“Then what did the smoke come from?”

“Good question.”

Jason thought for a moment. “Let’s go back to the silica. That’s a common element in rocks as well as sand, right?”

“Right.”

“Any chance they breathed silica in the smoke?”

“Only if a rock was burning. Not likely.”

“Okay,” Jason went on, “any idea why they would be gassed at all? I mean, shooting would have been a lot more efficient.”

“We don’t know. That, Mr. Peters, is why we hired your company.”

Jason thought for a moment. “Anything else that’s surfaced since the report was written?”

Pause.

“There were traces of radiation. Very low rads, but ascertainable. Also some evidence of hydrocarbons in the blood, and ethylene.”

Jason paused, trying to pry loose a distant memory. “Ethylene is an anaesthetic, isn’t it?”

“Was. Its use was discontinued in the sixties.”

Jason stood, idly glancing around his hotel room. “Don’t suppose you have any explanation for the presence of the hydrocarbons, either.”

“You are correct.”

Swell.

Jason was dealing with a form of anaesthesia mixed with what amounted to sand, one or both radioactive, origins and purpose unknown. The agency needed a geo- or biochemist, not a spy. “You’ve been a big help.”

Pause.

“Always pleasure, Mr. Peters.”

Was that a trace of mechanized sarcasm?

CHAPTER TWELVE

Shortly after sunrise, Jason had dropped by the Crystal City hotel to check on Pangloss. That had been a mistake. The big mixed-breed managed such a pitiful look from behind the bars of his kennel that Jason let him out and watched as the dog streaked for the backseat of the rental car Jason had just retrieved. What the hell? Jason rationalized. They both would be leaving Washington today, anyway.

The question was, for where?

At the moment, Jason was one of a number of people walking their dogs on the grassy mall in full view of the capital building. Restrained by an unaccustomed leash, Pangloss made a halfhearted lunge for a tourist-fattened squirrel, an effort Jason saw as more instinctive than motivated. Tail flicking indignantly, the intended prey unleashed a string of chattering rebuke while head-down on the trunk of a bare oak tree.

Jason gave the leash a tug, “Come on, Pangloss. You wouldn’t know what to do with him if you caught him.”

By now man and dog were in front of the original Smithsonian building, the redbrick Victorian pile that for years had housed the basis of the collection that now occupied most of the mall. Across the lawn was an unimposing structure, neither particularly modern nor classical. Its best architectural feature was that it was not of the type so common in Washington, a style Jason referred to as “Federal Massive.”

Jason checked his watch and slowly walked over, watching the parade of joggers, dogwalkers, and bureaucrats scurrying to standard-issue desks in buildings that were visually indistinguishable from one another. Stopping as though to make certain where he was, Jason appeared to read the words above the entrance that informed him he was entering the National Museum of Natural History.

No one in sight paid him any attention.

He pushed his way through a revolving door and came face-to-face with a man in the uniform of the Smithsonian’s security service. His name tag labeled him as W. Smith. Had Jason been asked, he would have guessed W. Smith had recently shaken Jim Beam’s hand. Red-rimmed lids were puffy, almost closed over piglike eyes. He winced at any sound as though magnified, and hands were shoved into pockets, perhaps to conceal shaking.

“You can’t bring the dog inside,” the man said sternly.

The man’s breath confirmed Jason’s suspicions. He hoped W. Smith would stay away from open flames.

Jason glanced around furtively, a man not wanting to be noticed, although the foyer was devoid of tourists. “It’s okay, Officer. This is a bomb-sniffing dog.”

The man with the badge seemed little less assured. “Bomb?”

Jason shook his head, lowering his voice. “Nothing to worry about; just a practice run.”

The guard glared at Pangloss. “Nobody said nothin’ to me ’bout any dog, bomb-sniffin’ or otherwise.”

Jason managed a look of surprise. “Really?” He nodded toward a telephone hanging on the wall beside the door. “Why not give Dr. Kamito a call, tell him Jason Peters is here with the dog.”

With one suspicious eye on the tail-wagging Pangloss, W. Smith punched in a three-digit number and grunted into the phone before turning to face Jason. “He says you know the way and for you and the dog to come on up.”

It was clear W. Smith did not approve as man and dog walked across the entrance hall to a single elevator. If ever Pangloss were to break house-training, Jason thought, Lord, let it be now.

Prayers unanswered, Jason stepped into a long hall at the top of the building. He and the dog drew curious stares but no comments from people in white lab coats bent over microscopes, chipping at rocks, or working in a huge chemistry lab.

Unknown to most, the CIA was one of the largest contributors to the Smithsonian, particularly its natural history and aerospace subsidiaries. In return for its generosity, the agency had access to a number of the museum’s scientifically oriented staff on a consulting basis.

For example, who better than a seismologist to predict, as far as predictions were possible, an upheaval of the earth’s surface likely to disrupt or distract an uncooperative government for a few days? Even less known, for example, was the prediction within seventy-two hours of the Afghan-Pakistan-Indian earthquake of October 2005. The resulting destruction and chaos enabled a thorough search for terrorists camps in an area of Pakistan that the United States supposed ally had insisted the Pakistan Army had secured.

Jason had previously used the services of Dr. Ito Kamito, head of the museum’s geology division and a specialist in geochemistry. Two years ago, Narcom had taken a rare job for someone other than the agency. The De Beers consortium of diamond fame was faced with rumors of gems allegedly mined in the Siberian permafrost. Knowledgeable sources told of gems indistinguishable from those of South Africa and half as expensive. The tension in the voice of the De Beers representative indicated that they took the threat very seriously.

The prospect of the loss of a few euros was one of two events that could provoke emotion from a Dutchman. Jason wasn’t sure what the other was.

Posing as an international jewel dealer of shady repute and enormous resources, Jason had managed to smuggle one of the Russian stones from a mine inside the arctic circle and bring it to Dr. Kamito. Within a week he ascertained that the gems were not formed by carbon under intense geological pressure, the definition of diamonds, but were a form of Mesozoic era glacially ground glass with the same weight and spectrographic properties as the real thing.

The De Beers company expressed its gratitude by paying Nacom’s bill promptly and without haggle, perhaps a first for the diamond consortium.

Near the far end of the hall, a small man stepped out of a door. Had Jason not recognized him, he would have mistaken him for a child in his parent’s lab coat. Myopic eyes peered through bottle-bottom-thick glasses. An almost perfectly round face was split by a megawatt smile as he bowed slightly and extended a hand. There was only a trace of his native Japan in his speech.

“Jason! Good to see you again!”

Dr. Kamito might be Asian, but he was anything but inscrutable. Jason had never seen him in anything but a good mood.

The man clearly did not understand his world.

The two met with the doctor’s usual enthusiastic handshake, a gesture that reminded Jason of pumping water from a very deep well. With his other hand, the scientist was scratching between Pangloss’s ears, incurring a potentially enduring friendship.

“So, this is the dog you told me about? Can he truly smell explosives, as you told Mr. Smith?”

“Don’t see why not; he sniffs everything. Whether he would know to alert us if he found any is another matter.”

As he indicated that they should enter the open door, Dr. Kamito’s slightly slanted eyes narrowed; he was unsure whether Jason was joking. “Bomb-sniffing or not, welcome.”

The office was as Jason remembered it: imitation wood desk in front of a wall paved with diplomas, certificates, and other documents in multiple languages, including what Jason guessed was Japanese. Two prints, both depicting Revenge of the Ronin, added primary color. Between the desk and wall were a chair on casters and a small credenza, which left scant space for the sole visitor’s chair. Nestled on the papers scattered across the desk was a plastic box, the sort that contained take-out food. Through the clear lid, Jason could see several slivers of what he gathered was raw fish.

Dr. Kamito followed his glance. “Some of the best-seeing — looking — tuna in a long time; makes a great breakfast.”

Jason sat, certain his face didn’t show the heave his stomach gave at the thought of raw fish first thing in the morning. “Better for you than a bagel, I guess.”

The chemist smiled broadly, exposing more teeth than Jason had seen since Jimmy Carter. “You are familiar with sashimi?”

Jason managed a weak grin. “I grew up with it.”

He managed not to add, Except when I was a kid, we called it “bait.”

The doctor proffered the box. “I have some chopsticks here somewhere.”

Jason put up a protesting hand. “Mighty generous of you, but I’ve already eaten.”

Pangloss wasn’t quite as eager to turn down the offer, but a gentle pull on the leash made him sit in front of the chair. Soon he was stretched out on the bare linoleum floor, snoring.

Kamito was digging around under the debris on his desk. “If I can just find chopsticks…” He produced an ivory pair from under a file folder, opened the box, and scissored a piece of fish into his mouth. “If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure. Thanks.”

Kamito smacked his lips in pleasure as he pursued another cut of tuna. “If you didn’t come for the sashimi, you must have come for the company.”

Jason reached into the pocket of his new jacket, producing both the report he had gotten from Mama and the one given him by Drum, or whatever the CIA man’s name had been. He handed them across the desk, and Kamito read as he finished the tuna.

“That explains it,” he said upon completing the reading of both papers.

Jason raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question.

“Your people, the agency…”

“Not my people, Doc. I’m just an independent contractor.”

Kamito shook off the distinction as though all people in Jason’s line of work were the same to him. “Ah, so. Yesterday some guy walked in here and handed me a package. Nothing unusual about that; we get samples of rocks and stuff all the time. This one, though, had no return address, no nothing other than a typed note asking that I do a chemical analysis with special attention given to trace ethylene. Just a test tube of what looked like clay, soil of some kind, with a few pebbles mixed in.”

The chemist shook his head in puzzlement. “It would have been easy enough to at least let me know what to look for, who it was from, something. Sometimes I think you guys believe in secrecy for its own sake. Who else would send stuff like that anonymously? I’m surprised you people sign your Christmas cards.”

“Not my people,” Jason corrected again. “We just do jobs for them, same as you.”

Kamito actually winked, two small boys sharing a secret from adults. “No worry. I can keep very tight mouth.” He continued as he carefully placed the food container in the trash. “I went ahead and did tests….”

Jason straightened up in his chair. “And?”

“I found silica, the usual thing you’d expect in any soil or clay, the ethylene, too. I also found traces of sulfides, slight radiation, the kind you’d assume around volcanic activity.”

“But there aren’t any volcanoes anywhere near where those samples came from.”

Kamito shrugged. “You asked for an analysis; you got an analysis. And that’s not even the real puzzler. I had to guess, I’d say the soil came from somewhere around the Mediterranean basin.”

Fascinated, Jason leaned forward, waking up Pangloss. “Lemme get this straight: you do tests on soil and a few pebbles from Georgia and a trawler’s rock garden and determine they came from halfway around the world? How did they get there?”

Kamito leaned back in his chair. “That’s what your employer pays you to find out.”

Jason sighed, despairing that the scientist would ever accept that he, Jason, was not employed by the CIA. Elbows on his knees, he said, “You’re probably right. Let’s start with how you came to the conclusion that this stuff is from the Mediterranean.”

Kamito stared at the ceiling a moment, as though the answer might suddenly appear there. “Although most soils contain common elements, the proportion of those elements varies. For instance, I would expect the water-leached soil of, say, a rain forest to be very low in chemical nutrients like nitrogen. On the other hand, desert sand would be high in nitrogen but, without life-sustaining water, low on hydrocarbons.”

Jason leaned back, aware that he had opened the jar and now the genie was going to take its time getting out.

“This particular sample is very rich in sulfides, which suggests past, present, or future volcanic activity.”

“Yeah, but there are volcanoes…”

Kamito held up a silencing hand. “To my knowledge, only one of the tectonic plates of the world contains these exact proportions of sulfides, sulfur nitrates, and the like.”

Jason searched his memory. “Tectonic plates? You mean those pieces of the earth’s surface that more or less float on a sea of lava?”

A smile, almost condescending. “Not exactly, but very, very close. There are a number of plates that rub up against each other. One may override another or submerge under it, usually with cata… cata…”

“Catastrophic,” Jason supplied.

“Ah, so. For instance, the plate that is the Indian subcontinent slid under the larger Asian plate a few years ago, causing a massive earthquake. The San Andreas Fault is the line between the plate to which North America belongs and that of the Pacific Ocean. One day — tomorrow, aeons from now — everything west of that line is likely to slip into the sea.”

Submersion of the Hollywood glitterati was a pleasing thought. Likely to raise the average IQ of both the Pacific and United States.

“Along these fault lines, the magma below sometimes boils to the surface. Volcanoes are least common where there is no fault line activity.”

“I don’t recall any volcanoes in the western United States.” Jason said.

Kamito grinned yet again, explaining as though to a small child. “Possibly the largest volcano in the world is in the western United States, We call it Yellowstone National Park.”

It took Jason a moment be sure he had heard right. In the meantime, the chemist continued. “Not all volcanoes are above surface to begin with. If you consider the amount of thermal springs that regularly erupt under pressure — Old Faithful, for instance — there must be huge amounts of pressure in the area. It can go dormant or, in days or aeons, erupt, taking Montana and Wyoming with it.”

Not as gratifying as California dropping into the ocean.

“Okay, I get the picture, but the Mediterranean basin is a little large. Could you be more specific?”

Kamito shook his head, the overhead lights shooting rainbow-colored streaks from his glasses. “Afraid not — not my area of expertise.” He reached into a desk drawer, fumbled around, and produced a card, handing it across the desk. “Call Maria Bergenghetti; take her what’s left of what you people sent me. She’s one of the world’s top volcanologists.”

Kamito stood, extending a hand; the interview was over.

Jason studied the card, hardly surprised it was in Italian. Like those of most of her countrymen, her business card bore a bewildering list of phone numbers. “Exactly which one of these should I call?”

“The agency surely knows how to find people. Or you could try calling her office and asking where she is.”