Gates of Hades

CHAPTER THIRTY

Inspectore Santi Guiellmo, capo, le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica, chief of Italy’s security force, removed his glasses and glanced down from his third-story corner office at the Piazza del Quirinale and its obelisk and fountain flanked by equestrian statues of the twins Castor and Pollux. Crossing to the other side, he noted the dress-uniformed carabinieri standing at attention outside the Palazzo del Quiriale, the old papal palace that now housed Italy’s president, the man whose security, along with the rest of the country, Guilellmo was sworn to protect.

The Chief, as he liked to be called, returned his attention to the hand-tooled, gilt-edged leather top of the boulle desk that rumor attributed to Victor Emmanuel I, the first king of a united Italy. Royalist sentiment had become unfashionable after the last Victor Emmanuel’s abrupt departure from Rome in 1944 in the face of determined German defenders and the equally resolute Allied advance. The desk had been relegated to oblivion until the Chief had restored it, if not to its former glory, then at least enhanced status above that of the petty bureaucrat in whose office he had found it.

Guiellmo replaced his rimless glasses and scowled at the papers that blemished the usually immaculate desktop. He picked up the top of the stack as he plopped into a leather swivel chair.

As chief of national security, he had the job of keeping the country… well, secure. Secure from invasion, subversion, or infiltration, though it was hard to imagine by whom. After all, Italy had had sixty-plus governments in the last sixty years. Fascists, Communists, socialists, and everything in between, including a female porn star elected to parliament.

In this country, everyone’s allotted fifteen minutes of fame was their term as president.

Now this.

A week or so ago, the police in Taormina had found a man, apparently not Italian, shot to death in a rental house. Scorched paint hinted at some sort of explosion. A Chinese version of the Russian AK-47 automatic rifle had been nearby. Not the usual baggage for a tourist, a visitor to Sicily with no driver’s permit, no passport, no identification whatsoever. Nearby bloodstains suggested at least one other person had been wounded.

At the time, Guiellmo had paid scant attention. This was, after all, Sicily, home of the Mafia, which tended to settle quarrels on a permanent basis.

But the dead man in Taormina wasn’t Mafia. At least, not in the traditional sense. The cut of the clothes, the facial structure made it almost certain the man was from Eastern Europe. The poor quality of dental work — iron fillings, one steel false tooth — made Russia likely. The ideology of Marx and Lenin had produced dentists more qualified to repair Oz’s Tin Man than teeth.

Okay, so there was the possibility the Cosa Nostra boys had had a falling-out with one or more of the organization’s heroin suppliers from the poppy fields of Turkey, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, trade the Russians crime cartels largely controlled. It was a guess, but a reasonable one.

One less narco trafficker, a slightly better world.

Then, two nights ago, the local polizia in the wilds of Sardinia had come upon a multifatality wreck. Nothing unusual about that in itself, either. After all, every Italian male fancied himself a Formula One driver.

But in Sardinia, all fatalities, all four, had been foreigners. Again, no identification but bullet holes and empty shell casings in abundance, as well as the AK-47s common to third-world militia, terrorists, and anyone else seeking the most inexpensive and easily obtained automatic the international arms market had to offer.

Again, dentistry that few who could find better would choose, dentistry peculiar to the USSR before its collapse.

Coincidence that there would be a double instance of Russians armed with automatic weapons? Mere chance that they had been shot?

Unlikely.

Then there were the reports of some sort of explosions earlier that same evening. Investigation had been cut short the next day when the American Embassy announced apologetically that somehow one or two of its special aircraft drones carrying little more than training fireworks had broken their electronic tethers and crashed in Sardinia somewhere in the neighborhood of the auto accident. Brief as it had been, the probe of the scene had revealed harmless amounts of pyrotechnics but no trace of aircraft, drone or otherwise.

A fluke?

Why was it every time the Americans apologized for some sort of incursion across Italian boundaries, Guiellmo’s imagination could see Uncle Sam, his index finger just below his eye, tugging the lower lid down ever so slightly, the Italian equivalent of a knowing wink?

One was an isolated incident; the second part of a pattern.

A pattern of what?

The Chief hated mysteries and puzzles, be they involving words, like the English crosswords; numbers, like the current rage for Sudoku; or multiple homicides, like the reports in front of him. Mysteries and puzzles represented a form of disorder. Unlike his countrymen, he found confusion and turmoil to be anathema. He hated the snarled traffic, comic corruption of government at all levels, social disarray. He suspected somewhere in his ancestry lurked a non-Italian.

Perhaps a German.

He straightened the papers back into a perfect stack. He hated disarray. That was why he had never married. Sharing a dwelling with another human being, let alone one with lace underwear, hose, cosmetics, and other unimaginable accessories, was to invite bedlam into his well-ordered life.

As was letting these killings go unsolved.

The answer, of course, was to look at the problem logically.

First, although Italy had sent a small contingent to fight with the coalition in Iraq, there was no national enemy as far as the inspector knew. The killings, then, had to be either based on something else or committed by a non-Italian. For that matter, the shell casings and slugs in Sicily and Sardinia were definitely not all from Czech, Chinese, or Russian versions of the AK-47.

So far, he was unsure what that meant.

He had few leads as to who the warring factions might be.

Little clue, but not no clue.

He looked at the e-mail that had come in from Interpol at his request that morning.

A week or so ago, five, perhaps six men had perished in a fire someplace in the Caribbean. He thumbed the corner of a page. The Turks and Caicos Islands, a British crown colony. In itself, that was insignificant. The interesting fact was the only parts readily identifiable were dental work.

Russian dental work.

The house’s owner, one Jason Peters, holder of an American passport, had been suspected of setting the fire to conceal the deaths. A search of the ashes also turned up a number of firearms, both AK-47s and a couple of other, somewhat more exotic specimens. Even more intriguing was Mr. Peters’s escape from the local jail by stealing a plane under a barrage of gunfire from unknown gunmen who had made their own disappearance before the Royal Police, or whatever they called themselves in that part of the world, could arrest them.

Whatever was going on, there definitely was bad blood between this Peters and an as-yet-unknown group of Russians, a feud the island authorities had done little to squelch.

Guiellmo indulged himself in a snort of contempt. Ineffective police work was offensive to him no matter where.

The plane Peters had stolen turned up in… He turned another page. The Dominican Republic and Interpol concluded he had fled from there to parts unknown, presumably under some other name.

Jason Peters, American.

Guiellmo leaned back in his chair and stared out of the window without actually seeing the Roman skyline framed in fire by a setting sun. The Cold War was over. Why would Americans want to strew the landscape with dead Russians? Yet, it appeared that, in at least one instance, this Jason Peters had done just that.

A guess, admittedly. But then, few things were certain in the Chief’s line of work. The time line fit. He had found someone with an apparent if unknown reason to do violence to Russians. Now all he had to do was find Mr. Peters. And if the Chief were a betting man — which he most certainly was not — he would have bet a lot that Peters would be found in Italy, where the Russian fatality rate had taken a large jump.

Exactly where he might be was unknown, but, happily, there were leads.

The house in Sicily was owned by the Italian government, some obscure bureau that dealt with the study of volcanoes. The chief moved a couple of sheets of paper. The Bureau of Geological Studies, that was it. At the time of the incident, one of its employees, a Dr. Maria Bergenghetti, had been in residence, studying Aetna. The morning the local authorities found the shooting scene, she had called in to announce she was taking a few of the sixty or so vacation days enjoyed by government employees.

An explanation for the glacial speed at which the government accomplished anything.

Dr. Bergenghetti, though, had taken no leave for two years. This must be special.

He thumbed sheets of paper until he came to a photograph. Black-and-white, slightly fuzzy from being faxed. Still, the doctor was an extremely attractive woman — attractive enough, he hoped, to be remembered by the countless law enforcement officials to whom it had been distributed, along with the notation to notify him immediately if she were seen. Report, not detain.

Nor had there been an explanation as to the source of the Chief’s interest. He had learned the painful lesson that sharing information about an investigation was the same as calling a press conference. The story wound up in the papers either way.

Inspectore Guiellmo was curious as to the company she might be keeping.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

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

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

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

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

Punctuality was not an Italian virtue.

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

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

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

“I’m still alive.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jason arched an eyebrow, looking at Maria. “ ‘Little’ Maria?”

Eno nodded. “Si. Beeg Maria, she my seester, marry to Maria’s poppa.”

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

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

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

The professor’s eyes fell on the magazine on the table, and he smiled even wider. “You read?”

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

Eno turned to Maria, obviously seeking a translation.

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

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

Eno apparently understood the gravamen of that. He shook his head. “No ‘hell.’ Hades.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Si. Difference.”

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

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

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

“Baia, or in the old Roman Latin, Baiae.”

“The place in the article.”

She nodded.

“But how—”

Eno interrupted with another stream of italian.

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

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

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

He shook his head.

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

“Then how…”

She held up a hand, rushing on. “A chemical engineer, an Englishman by the name of Robert Paget, retired to Baia and became interested in the local antiquities. In 1962 he and a native crew excavated part of it. They could work only in fifteen-minute shifts because of the heat and the gases, but he cleared the passageway to an underground river, the Styx. Along the way were sacrificial altars—”

“Gases?” Jason’s interest quickened.

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

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

Maria shrugged. “Possibly. They were amateur archeologists, not geologists.”

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

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

“Baia,” Maria and Eno said in unison.

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

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

“Nobody’s been in there since 1962?” Jason was incredulous.

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

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

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

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

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

“Cumae oldest Greek city in Italy,” Eno said.

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

Jason nodded. “Disney World for wealthy ancients.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ecological terrorists,” Jason supplied.

“These men do the actual murder of helpless people.”

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

Both Maria and Eno were giving him skeptical looks.

“Okay, Okay, so I’m just guessing. We may get the real answer at Baia.”

“Or Cumae,” Eno added.

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

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

“Your book suggested epilepsy, not gas,” Jason noted.

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

“Prophecies,” Maria corrected.

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

Jason looked at Maria, puzzled.

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

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

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

Jason waited impatiently for Maria to translate.

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

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

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

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

“Obviously somebody’s been there. That’s where the ethylene seems to have come from,” Maria observed.

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

Jason said, “I’ll keep that in mind when Adrian and I get there.”

“Adrian, you, and I,” she added.

“Thought you were through as soon as you’d helped me with Eno here.”

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

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Jason’s head was buried alternately in the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times, and the Washington Post’s English-language newspaper distributed throughout Europe. He was sitting in the hotel’s small dining room, where a buffet breakfast of breads, sausages, fruit, jams, cereals, and juices was lined up on white tablecloths. Across the table, Maria was finishing her third coffee.

Jason lowered his paper long enough to glance at the one inches away. Like an old married couple, he thought, each too engrossed in the morning’s papers to engage in conversation. Just as well. Other than ecological extremists trying to kill them, exploring hell, or last night’s sexual acrobatics, what did they have to talk about?

An article on the front page drew him back to the news. He read, then re-read it, then sat in silent thought for a moment. He folded the Herald Tribune’s front page and shoved it over the top of Maria’s paper like an invading army breaching a castle wall.

She lowered the barrier long enough to give him a peevish look. “I thought you read that paper only for the comics.”

“It’s the only one that still carries ‘Calvin and Hobbes.’ ”

“Oh, that makes a difference.”

He used the hand not holding the paper to point. “Look at this.”

Frowning like a primary school teacher accommodating one of her less bright pupils, Maria scanned the article. “So?”

“The man’s nuts,” he said. “He’ll never make peace with those people any more than you could placate a rattlesnake.”

She finally laid her paper down, regarding him with a mixture of annoyance and amusement. “Your president is ‘nuts’? And to think how many Americans got angry when we Europeans first made the observation. Do you think he is any different from any other politician? A politician would be willing to forgive and forget the biggest mass murder in your history if he thinks it will get him reelected.”

“Like Jimmy Carter trying to negotiate with Iran to free American hostages? It lost him the next election.”

She smiled. “Perhaps now it is your role to give political advice?”

She stood, went to the buffet and selected a pear, and returned to her chair. She took a noisy, moist bite before sitting down. “And so?”

He put the paper down, subject exhausted. “If Adrian and I go…”

She held the pear out to him for him to sample. “If you, Adrian, and I go.”

The fruit seemed to turn to a mellow syrup in his mouth. Like most Italian fruit, it was fresh, flavorful, and just ripe enough — So good that Jason suspected there was an official Italian fruit manufacturing agency that produced synthetic goods. He’d never sampled anything that good from Mother Nature.

He swallowed before saying, “Your choice. Eno was right: if Cumae or Baia is a supply of the gas, somebody will be watching.”

“Is that a fact?”

Neither Jason nor Maria had seen Adrian emerge from his hiding place behind another paper in the far corner of the room.

“Truly alert you are, laddie,” he gloated to Jason. “Coulda killed you a dozen times. Ye’re na’ payin’ attention t’er surroundin’s.” He pointed to the half-eaten pear. “Or too busy wid the forbidden fruit in this garden.”

The SAS man was right: Jason had given scant notice to the other diners, any one of whom could have been Eglov himself hiding behind a copy of la República. He had felt so good, so happy as a result of last night’s lovemaking, he had momentarily forgotten a darker world where inattention was frequently a capital offense.

As Adrian planted an avuncular kiss on Maria’s cheek, Jason dared envision, just for a second, a life where it wasn’t necessary to get neck cramps looking over your shoulder. A life… well, a life pretty much like what he and Laurin had planned before she was taken from him.

The reflections shattered like crystal dropped on bricks when Jason realized Adrian was asking questions.

“Was Professor Calligini helpful? Be we off, then? Where to? Baia? Will we be needin’ special kit?”

It was the latter question that had brought Jason back to reality. “According to the last explorer, the gas wasn’t a problem. Still, I asked Maria to request air tanks so we won’t be taking the risk. They should be waiting when we get there.”

“And where would ‘there’ be?” Adrian wanted to know.

“Naples. We can be there in a few hours.”

As they left the room, Jason looked back to where the Herald Tribune lay in the chair he had occupied. There was something about that meeting in Washington that he knew without being aware of his knowledge, something… Past experience told him the thought was not yet ripe enough to fall into his full conscious. It would become clear in its own good time.

He only hoped that would be soon enough for… what?

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Rassavitch had no trouble blending into the enclave of Russian emigrants. Every evening and twice on Sunday he attended the concrete-block building that had begun life as a grocery store and now served as an Orthodox church. It still had a faint odor of spoiled fruit. He was a religious man, a man convinced he had survived the communists to serve God by restoring the Master’s will on earth.

He did God’s will, and he had been called here by like-thinkers to make certain others did, too. At the moment, God was displeased with the use being made of the Earth, the despoliation of His greatest gift to man. It was far past time someone, some group, wreaked vengeance on those who defiled the Earth.

Rassavitch had finally found just such an organization. That was God’s will, too.

If there was one thing distinctly Russian, it was a peasant’s love for the land, a commodity for centuries owned exclusively by the State, by the Czars, then the Party. Now, at least in theory, any Russian could own a few hectares. The catch — and in Russia there was always a catch — was that only the wealthy could afford to buy, the very people who raped the earth with poisonous fertilizers, who polluted the rivers with chemicals and defiled even the air all had to breathe.

The injustice of it made Rassavitch grind his teeth.

But the Russians here didn’t seem to care. Oh, a few of the old babushka tended thumbnail-sized patches of sickly vegetables, but most of the populace had no interest in the land that had been the sustenance of the Russian people since before the czars. Instead, the young people would rather work at jobs in the city and spend their leisure time wearing American blue jeans, the dye from which Rassavitch was sure polluted some stream, and listening to the noise they called music.

At first, he worried his fellow Russians who had shed the old ways might notice him, perhaps report him to the authorities. Then it dawned upon him that nobody cared. In America, everyone was far too busy making a dollar and watching television to be interested in what someone else did.

Including defiling the earth, the water, the air.

Soon, very soon, Americans would realize the earth could and would strike back.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Unlike most Romans, Inspectore Santi Guiellmo did not leave work between one and four o’clock, the hours when offices, museums, shops, and even churches were closed for employees to enjoy a long lunch and, perhaps, a restorative nap. A crisp salad brought to his desk to eat while he scanned the day’s headlines was all the break he required from routine. The lengthy recess in the city gave him time to think. It silenced the disruptive telephone and halted the parade of subordinates seeking answers to questions they were too lazy to find for themselves.

Even had the Chief been in the habit of taking the allowed time off, he would not have done so today.

This morning, Dr. Maria Bergenghetti had surfaced. Well, perhaps not surfaced, exactly. She had telephoned a coworker at the Bureau of Geological Studies, requesting certain equipment: six air tanks with three regulators and backpacks, as well as spelunking gear such as miners’ helmets, harness, and rope. She also wanted some scientific apparatus, the function of which was unclear, something the names indicated had to do with detecting, analyzing, or measuring gases.

Guiellmo stared at the inventory as though ordering it to give up its secret. The volcanologist was going to explore the crater of a volcano or a deep cave. Unfortunately, Italy was riddled with both. Since no fire retardant clothing had been requisitioned, it was a safe bet the woman and her companions were not headed for the caldera of an active volcano. Yet why else would she want a source of breathable air?

If she was, in fact, in the company of this American, Peters, what interest did he have in caves, volcanoes, or gases? It was not likely he would find more Russians to kill in such places.

Not that Guiellmo was particularly sympathetic to Russians. Their national image since the fall of communism was one of lawlessness, of crime, corruption, and violence that made the old American West look tame. Although many people decried stereotypes as based on prejudice, Guiellmo saw them as based on observation. And observation of crime in Russia was not encouraging for law enforcement.

But Italy was not going to tolerate its soil being used to stage an open season on Russians or anybody else, lawless or not.

He stood and went to look down on the Piazza del Quirinale, now empty other than the presidential guards, still as statues, and the resident pigeons, busily searching for the last crumb of pizza crust dropped by the morning’s horde of tourists.

Breathable air in a cave? Unlikely it would be needed. That left extinct volcanoes. The most obvious was Vesuvius, killer of Pompeii and Herculaneum, inactive since 1944. Was it considered extinct?

He returned to his desk and sat heavily. No matter. Bergenghetti had requested the equipment be assembled at the old Vesuvius Observatory, the nineteenth-century structure that served as a base for recording data, the research facilities having moved to Naples. A good choice. The building was known by few, and there would be only one or two technicians present.

As usual, Guiellmo preferred the involvement of as few people as possible in an investigation.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The drive from Turin had been exclusively on the Autostrada, Italy’s equivalent of the interstate system, until the last thirteen kilometers south of Naples. They parked in front of a red-and-white neoclassic building that resembled a wealthy family’s villa more than a structure dedicated to scientific endeavors. Other than the Volvo, the spacious square in front held only one car, a motor scooter, and a tour bus chugging diesel fumes. Maria, Adrian, and Jason climbed out of the Volvo, stretching and yawning from hours on the road.

Jason worried that the car, lacking its rear windshield and sporting suspiciously round holes in the coachwork, might draw attention.

“In Rome, mebbe,” Adrian assured him. “In Naples, many o’ th’ cars are rolling junk heaps.”

Perhaps. But did they look like the former owners might have been Bonnie and Clyde?

Jason paused to admire the view of vineyards and small settlements nestled in the folds of the volcano’s verdant slopes. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s worried about another eruption anytime soon.”

“The soil’s rich in alkali and phosphorus,” Maria said, turning to share the view. “Perfect for grapes. The Lacryma Christi wine comes from here.”

“It’d suit the growin’ of malt f’ good whiskey, too,” Adrian observed. “But it’s na’ for the bonny scenery we’re here.”

Inside, the building housed an impressive polyglot library and a huge collection of minerals, presumably the vomitus of the mountain itself. Maria led them around a group of thirty or so white-haired tourists, listening intently as a blond tour director lectured in German as she pointed with an umbrella to indicate a large boulder.

Maria paused in front of a small elevator until its door slowly parted, revealing an open platform designed to carry freight more than passengers. Inside the shaft, a simple switch gave a choice of only two floors, the main one and one above. They exited the elevator after a wait that made Jason wonder if the contraption really was moving. A short, dimly lit corridor ended at an open door.

A twelve-by-twelve-foot office managed to contain two metal desks back-to-back, computers, and an array of machines that seemed to be drawing graphs, recording temperatures, and completing functions at which Jason could only guess. A man and a woman interrupted a conversation as the three entered, looking up in surprise.

Or was it guilt?

Maria’s smile faded as she asked a question, “Dove Guiedo?”

Where’s Guiedo?

The two technicians exchanged glances before the man replied.

Maria nodded her head, asked another question, and received a slightly longer response. “Our gear is on the loading dock around back. One of the people who usually works here packed it for us.”

The woman gave Jason and Adrian a stare that was far more steady than curious before she asked another question, to which Maria responded by introducing Jason and Adrian with an explanation that Jason’s very limited Italian couldn’t follow.

This time the man inquired, to which Maria shrugged before answering.

The number of queries were making Jason uncomfortable. He sensed Adrian shared his feelings when the Scot said, “Best we’re off, lassie. Bid your friends farewell.”

As they were loading the gear into the back of the Volvo, Jason asked, “What was all the question-and-answer about?”

Maria opened a canvas bag, removing and returning three regulators. “The man was curious about where we will be using the equipment. I told him there are a series of caves around Lake Averno that we were investigating.”

“Lake Averno?”

“I mentioned it that night in Sicily. With what happened, I can understand your not remembering. One of the Phlegraean lakes near where we are actually going. Lots of underground volcanic activity. In fact, there are places where the ground itself is hot. The Greeks thought the entrance to Hades was nearby, as we learned from Eno that it is. ‘Averno’ comes from the Greek a-ornom, without birds. Apparently in ancient times, the vapors were suffocating, deadly to anything flying over it.”

Adrian hefted an air tank in each hand. “That’s why we would need to get kitted out. Good thinking.”

Maria started to lift a third and nodded gratefully as Jason took it. “I certainly was not going to tell them we were going someplace forbidden by the government, even if Guiedo had been there.”

“You knew those two?” Jason asked.

“Never saw them before. There are not that many people who work for the bureau. I thought I knew them all by sight.”

Adrian put down the tank he was lifting as Jason asked, “And Guiedo, the one you made inquiry about, he was someone you know?”

“Known him for years. The woman said he’d gone to Rome to see to his sick mother.”

An hour later, Jason was driving the Via Nuova Marina, a wide, six-lane boulevard skirting Naples’s harbor. The water was to his right. On his left, the city’s hills swept upward abruptly, festooned with apartments displaying the day’s wash on a thousand clotheslines.

He had expected the traffic of Rome, the mostly absent stoplights, kamikaze dashes through busy intersections, and the use of horns rather than brakes. Naples presented different but equally traumatic hazards: Without warning, cars would pull over to park two or three deep along the curb, doors opening into traffic. Or a vehicle would simply choose to park in the middle of the street, occupants stepping fearlessly into lanes of moving cars, trucks, and scooters. Jason not only feared hitting someone nonchalantly getting out of an automobile, but that the casual merging of pedestrians and cars would conceal an ambush until the last second.

By the time the Nuova Marina became Via Cristforo Columbo (having already been Via Amerigo Vespucci), Jason was certain of two things: they had exhausted the list of Italian navigators, and Neapolitans all had death wishes.

He felt relief as the Volvo began to climb the ridges that seperated the city from the inland. At the top, Maria promised they would find another Autostrada, this one heading west to Cumae.

As the number of vehicles began to thin out above the city, Jason noticed a lone motorcycle keeping a consistent distance behind them, always at least two cars back. Jason lifted his foot and a Fiat passed with an angry horn blast. But the bike simply slowed and fell in behind an eggshaped Smart.

“We’ve got company,” Jason said, putting out a hand to prevent Maria from turning around.

Adrian knew better than to telegraph the fact that their tail had been spotted. “How many?”

“A single motorcycle.”

In the rearview mirror Jason could see Adrian nod. “We’re only being observed, then.”

“Looks that way.”

“Y’ ken how long?”

Jason shook his head. “Dunno.”

“Since the observatory,” Maria said.

Jason risked cutting his eyes from the road to her and back again. “The observatory? How do you know that?”

“Guiedo.”

“Your friend who was visiting his mother in Rome?”

Maria nodded slowly. “Yes, but I just remembered, Guiedo’s mother lives in small town just outside Bologna.”

“How well do you know him?”

She shifted uncomfortably in the seat. “Not too well. He was young, just out of university. I think he… what did we say? Yes, I think he thinks I’m hot.”

Guiedo at least had his priorities in order.

Jason flicked a glance to the rearview mirror. The bike was still two cars back. “Any chance she could have moved since you last talked to him, maybe to a nursing home or something?”

She was staring straight ahead. “Italians, most of them, would be humiliated to pack a parent off to let someone else care for them. It is possible the woman moved, though, I suppose.”

“Not bloody likely,” Adrian piped up from the backseat. “Having not one but two sods that Maria didn’t know back there, we can bet we’re being followed.”

“By who?” Maria wanted to know.

So did Jason.

“I dinna think we want to be findin’ out,” Adrian observed, unfolding a road map. “Try exitin’ yer nex’ chance.”

Jason wasn’t surprised when the motorcycle followed. “Still there.”

“Bastard’s not ’xactly subtle,” Adrian growled. “Doesn’t give a damn if we know he’s there.”

“Or he thinks we won’t notice.”

“I’ll…” Jason stopped midsentence. “He’s gone!”

“Gone?” both Adrian and Maria chorused.

“We turned right; he turned left.”

“Guess we became excited over nothing,” Maria ventured.

“Maybe,” Jason said. “But I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“We were meant to see the laddie on the cycle,” Adrian explained. “Long as we concentrated on him, we wouldna ken there was another when the first turned away.”

Jason stopped, backed up, and returned to the Autostrada. There were several suspicious cars, but each eventually passed the Volvo.

“Unless they’ve got multiple tails, I can’t identify any,” Jason admitted.

“So, let’s flush ’em out,’ Adrian suggested.

Once again, Jason left the multilane highway system with cars both in front and behind. Minutes later the Volvo was laboring up a steep hill behind a truck. Several automobiles were strung out along the winding road for half a mile or so. Without giving a signal, Jason pulled onto one of the periodic overlooks that gave the casual traveler a panorama of Naples across an azure bay.

The rumble of passing traffic faded from Jason’s mind as he imagined the pigments he would use to transfer the scene to canvas.

If he ever painted again.

No one seemed interested in the Volvo. Jason elected to continue along the scenic if narrow two-lane that skirted the northwestern corner of the Bay of Naples. He was growing less certain they had been followed at all.

Then an idea evaporated what little complacency he had enjoyed.

“Maria, you’ve traveled this road before?”

She glanced at him, curious. “One or two times, yes.”

“It goes where?”

“Miseno, both the lake and the town. The town sits just south of the ruins at Baia and farther south of the ruins at Cumae.”

“Are there any turnoffs, roads that go somewhere else?”

She pointed to the slopes above and the steep dropoff into the water below. “Where would one build any such towns? Other than a few private villas, I think there are no crossroads till we get to Miseno.”

From the backseat, Adrian voiced what Jason was thinking.

“There’s no need to follow us. Have someone wait ahead, another to make sure we dinna double back, and we’re like beetles in a bottle.”

The analogy was less than comforting.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Miseno looked like a resort. Roads branched off in seemingly random fashion like spaghetti, leading to cottagelined small lakes. The almost perfect circles of the shorelines gave a clue as to origins as volcanic craters. Large restaurants were flanked by even larger parking lots. The area anticipated a successful tourist season.

For now, traffic was light.

Jason pulled onto a grassy embankment that fell steeply off into a lake the color of midnight despite the sunny blue sky above. The few vehicles that passed paid them no attention.

Adrian and Jason exchanged puzzled looks before the latter said, “Guess we weren’t followed after all.”

The Scot shook his head slowly. “Aye, but dinna be dropping your guard yet.”

Maria stretched her arms and yawned. “Where first?”

“Cumae, I think,” Jason answered. “I know Eno’s book attributed epilepsy to the Sibyl, but I’d like to check to make sure her cave isn’t a source of that ethylene, too. How far?”

“Maybe four or five kilometers. Let me drive.”

The reason for her request became quickly obvious. Climbing and descending, she took what seemed a haphazard course. From one hill, Jason could see the lakes, from another the sea in the opposite direction.

At last she pulled into a small unpaved parking lot with no indication as to its purpose, turned off the ignition, and got out.

Jason followed, staring up at the surrounding low hills. “This is it?”

Maria nodded, walking around to the trunk. “It is.”

“But there’s no…” He was looking at a deserted ticket booth and an iron gate hanging open on the last of its hinges.

“No tourists?” She filled in the blank. “Cumae is not one of the popular destinations. Few people other than archaeologists come here.”

Cumae must be remote indeed if no one was selling tickets, picture brochures, or cheap souvenirs. Jason suspected that, in Italy, tickets would be printed for a dogfight if it could be anticipated in time.

Maria was digging through the trunk. “I doubt we will encounter the gas you seek here, but we will test the air.” She held up a device with a meter attached to a hand pump. “This will tell us if ethylene is present.” She handed a miner’s helmet to both Jason and Adrian. “And you will need these.”

She led Jason and Adrian along a dirt path that skirted the base of the hill to their left. After the trail made a ninety-degree turn, she stopped. The trio were looking at a passageway cut along the side of the hill. The exposed rock was yellow in color, the tufa Maria had explained was native to the region. Rather than round, the opening was square for its first three or four feet, then towered upward about eight feet in a lopsided A shape. Like floor-to ceiling windows, open spaces alternated with stone. Even from outside, Jason could see the effect of equal areas of light and dark as the end of the tunnel vanished into shadow.

“You’re right,” Jason said. “Too open. No gas could be held there.”

Maria entered. “The Sibyl’s cave is not so open.”

The passageway was not quite wide enough for two abreast. Gauge in hand, Maria led the way, followed by Jason and Adrian. Without looking behind him, Jason rested his hand on the SIG Sauer in its holster, and he sensed Adrian also was prepared for whatever might happen. Although only a few feet away, Maria appeared and disappeared in much the same way described by Severenus Tactus two millennia ago.

Jason wondered what other parts of the Roman’s account would prove accurate.

The alternating spaces that admitted light came to an abrupt end. Jason and Adrian put on the helmets, turning on the light on each. The artificial illumination gave the yellow walls a reddish tint as though washed in blood. Every few feet a niche was carved into the stone, stands for ancient lamps, judging by the halo of soot above each.

A few more steps brought them to the end of the passage. To their left was a cavern, a low-ceilinged, square room carved into the rock. Lamp niches were on three of the four walls.

“The Sibyl’s cave,” Maria said, as she worked a small hand pump. “No sign of anything but normal air here, oxygen, nitrogen…”

Adrian held up a hand, a signal for silence.

Jason heard only the echo of his own breathing, then… a scrape, the sound of a shoe on stone or something hard against rock.

Maria and Adrian needed no signal to turn off the lanterns on their helmets as Jason did the same. “Any other way in?” he whispered.

He could only see Maria’s dull silhouette shake its head, no. “Not that has been discovered.”

Taking each by the arm, Jason eased Maria and Adrian back the way they had come. Even if they had no other means of escape, they had one advantage: the location of the Sibyl’s cave would force whoever had entered the passage to enter successive squares of light, while Jason, Adrian, and Maria remained in concealing darkness.

Pressing the two others against the wall, Jason drew his weapon. The slight rustle of clothing told him Adrian had unslung his Sten. Jason thumbed off the safety and heard the echoing snick of the Sten’s bolt being cocked.

Though he knew better, an eternity seemed to pass before Jason saw indistinct shapes flitting between the light and dark sectors of the long passage. Had he not reined it in, his imagination could easily have seen long-robed priests leading a young Roman to hear his fate foretold.

Instead, he made out four distinct figures, each moving with hands clasped in front as though carrying a weapon at the ready, each progressing in synchronized movements designed for a minimum of exposure to the sunlight and a maximum of coverage by his comrades.

Jason pushed Maria toward the first opening, speaking with his lips to her ear. “When they move next, you go through outside.”

He felt, rather than saw her nod.

When the four figures simultaneously slipped from one patch of dark to the next, Jason shoved Maria, knocking her forward and out of the corridor. He lunged after her, half expecting shots.

There were none.

Outside, Adrian stood, dusting himself off while holding the Sten, its stock still folded. He had it trained on the passage they had just exited. “Get a look at ’em?”

Jason shook his head. “No. But they move like they’ve been trained, not some pickup gang of thugs.”

He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

Adrian helped Maria to her feet. “Any way out of the area without passing by the entrance?”

Instead of speaking, she motioned. Jason followed, keeping the gun’s muzzle pointed at the slots in the cave’s side. Where were they, the people who had entered? Was it possible they were only tourists visiting an obscure place?

Not moving in concert, as he had seen. More like military.

Then why…?

Possibly they had been blinded by emerging into light; possibly they hadn’t seen Jason, Adrian, and Maria’s exit.

Possible, but unlikely.

They were walking up a stone-paved path that wound its way around the hill into which the Sibyl’s cave had been carved. Idly, Jason wondered if the rocks had ben worn smooth by the feet of ancient Romans. The trail ended at steep stairs carved into naked rock and long ago polished by use and the elements.

“Temple of Jupiter, highest point in the site,” Maria announced. “We should be able to see them when they come out of the cave.”

Jason started to reply and decided to save his breath for the ascent.

Minutes later they stood among broken and tumbled columns. From the stubs still in place, Jason guessed there had originally been six to a side, with two across the front and back. Rubble of columns and pediment were strewn around a large stone platform atop crumbling stairs that had led into the floor of the temple. To his right, Jason could see a number of figures slowly working in a field beyond two large arches.

“Archeological dig,” Maria explained, following his line of sight.

Adrian was looking the other way. “And that would be?” He was pointing to a similar collection of ruins slightly below and across a dirt path.

“Temple of Apollo.”

Adrian took a step back as four men emerged from below, turning their heads in deferent directions. The dark suits they wore were out of place, both as to location and climate.

“Th’ lot look like coppers,” Adrian observed.

“Whoever they are, we can bet they’re not here to help,” Jason said, squinting against the reflection of the afternoon’s sun on the ocean to his left. “Is there another way to get back to the car?”

Maria nodded. “We can go down to the excavation site”—she pointed—“and then around the bottom of the hill.”

“No good,” Jason observed. “They’ve split up. We’d run into at least two of them.”

“So much the better,” Adrian said. “We ken where they are. They dinna have but an idea as to us. I say we divide up, too, an’ take ’em on.”

Maria looked nervously from Jason to Adrian and back again. “Surely you are not going to shoot these men when you do not even know…”

Adrian grinned. “Na need to be shootin’, lass, if we right surprise ’em.” He pointed. “Jason, you ’n’ Maria go back th’ way we came. I’ll go ’round.”

Jason wasn’t wild about the idea, but it made more sense than waiting to be surrounded. He nodded, and he and Maria set off down the hill, his hand on the weapon at his back as they descended the stairs.

They had just reached the last step when two men rounded a bend in the path below. Both were red-faced from the exertion. The older of the two, overweight and white-haired, was puffing loudly and was watching carefully where he placed each footfall.

His companion was the first to see Jason and Maria. His right hand went inside his suit jacket. Jason glimpsed a flash of blue steel.

The advantage of carrying a weapon in the small of the back rather than a shoulder holster was that the shooter could assume a firing position without waiting for his gun to come to bear. Jason was in a two-handed stance, the SIG Sauer covering both men, before the other man had cleared his Beretta.

Both of the suited men slowly raised their hands.

Jason turned his head in Maria’s direction, unwilling to take his sight off the men for an instant. “Tell them to use their left hands to take their guns out and drop them on the ground.”

They complied, the older man speaking angrily as Jason kicked the two automatics well out of reach down the slope.

“He says they are National Security Service and that you will never see the outside of prison if you do not put your gun down immediately and surrender.”

Italians knew the second-person form of the verb?

“Ask him to show identification. Slowly.”

Before Maria could translate, both men were holding wallets with badges attached. Jason looked carefully, aware that he wouldn’t recognize the bogus from the real. Again the older man spoke irately.

“He says you are Jason Peters and you are wanted for questioning by the British and Italian authorities. He also wants to know about an incident that occurred on the highway in Sardinia day before yesterday.”

Sardinia? How could he…? The Volvo’s tag — the car was registered in Sardinia. Jason leaned closer to read the name on the official ID. From the men’s quick response to the request for identification, he suspected one or both understood a fair amount of English. “Please tell Signore Belli he’s not exactly in a position to make demands, and ask him what makes him think I’m the person he’s looking for.”

This time, Maria translated in full before there was a response. Belli jutted out a defiant jaw in a manner reminiscent of pictures Jason had seen of Mussolini. In fact, take away the white hair and he might have been looking at Il Duce himself.

Maria translated. “It is no consequence how he knows who you are. You are arrested.”

Jason’s gaze followed the line from his gun muzzle to the security man’s head. “Maybe. But I’m the one holding the gun.” He jabbed it forward in a threatening manner. “And I’m not afraid to use it. Tell him he’s got about ten seconds to answer my question.”

Jason was now certain the older man understood English. He puffed out his chest in the pose that had become associated with the Italian dictator, as he spoke to Maria.

“He doesn’t, er, submit to threats from criminals. To do so would dishonor his country, his service, and himself.”

With studied indifference, Jason squeezed off a shot that missed Belli’s ear by no more than an inch, close enough that the man could feel its hot breath as it whined by and chipped a piece of rock from the incline behind him. Both Italians were flat on the ground before the first echoes bounced from hill to hill like a volleyed tennis ball.

Maria’s eyes were larger than Jason would have imagined nature allowed.

“Tell him the next two will take his ears off one at a time.”

Dishonor, it seemed, was preferable to disfigurement.

Belli spoke quickly, shifting an uneasy glance from his prone position from Jason to Maria as he talked.

“The chief of their agency was notified of the body of what appeared to be a Russian in the house in Taormina. Since the bureau I work for is the owner and I had suddenly taken holiday time, they wanted to question me. Then that wreck in Sardinia with all those bullet shells and more dead lying about — he made a connection. You were the only person Interpol suspected of killing Russians, at least outside of Russia, and…”

Jason held up a hand. He had heard enough.

Maria was looking at him warily. “Jason, what are you going to do…?”

“Do?” A voice came from behind them. Adrian was marching the other two suits in front of a pointed pistol Jason recognized as a government-issue Beretta. The Sten was again slung over his shoulder. One of men looked somewhat worse for the wear. “We’ll leave ’em in their bleedin’ car an’ toss the keys.”

“Good idea,” Jason concurred.

Moments later the four Italians were stripped of their cell phones and handcuffed inside a black Lancia from which the radio had been removed.

Adrian stuck his head in the open window, making sure all were secure. “Nice ’n’ comfy, ’r ye?”

“Vaffancula!” the oldest one muttered.

Adrian grinned. “He’s suggestin’ I commit an anatomical impossibility.”

The tone had suggested as much to Jason. “C’mon; let’s get outta here before more show up.”

“But they have our license plate number,” Maria protested. “Will we not be stopped by the first policeman we see?”

Jason was already climbing into the driver’s seat. “It’s not the tag that helped them find us, believe me. Besides, isn’t Baia just over those hills? We’ll be there before dark.”

Minutes later, Jason pulled off the pavement beside one of several roadside restaurants, partially shielded from view by a row of plane trees. He waited until two cars, a Smart and a Fiat 1500, parked and disgorged what looked like local workmen.

“On th’ way home from work, I’d guess,” Adrian said, stuffing his pipe. “Stoppin’ by f’ their pint.”

“Grappa’s more like it,” Jason observed, hoping the pipe wasn’t going to get lit until he could get upwind.

He was disappointed. He smelled the sulfur of a match, followed by a sour stench that reminded him of the time Pangloss had gotten too close to a charcoal grill. On second thought, he was maligning the aroma of scorched dog hair.

It was as if Adrian had read his mind. Or seen the wrinkled noses of both the other passengers. “Na’ t’ worry.”

He got out of the car and lay down to look under it.

“There she is!”

He stood, the pipe clinched in his teeth, puffing in exultation. He exhibited a small square of metal about the size of the bar of soap Jason would expect in a hotel bathroom. He trotted off across the parking lot, smoke trailing behind him like a locomotive. He stopped and knelt beside the Fiat.

“What is he doing?” Maria wanted to know.

“Replanting the bug.”

Her expression said he might as well have been speaking in Aramaic, Swahili, or jet-propelled Sanskrit.

“The bug, that little black thing he took from under this car. The reason the police didn’t have to follow us is because they had a homing device stuck somewhere underneath. Some satellite did their surveillance for them. Good thing about that kind of satellites, though, is that they only ‘see’ the impulses from the tracking equipment. They don’t see whose car it may be attached to.”

“But where…?”

“My guess is at the observatory.”

“Why not arrest us there?”

“Then they wouldn’t know where we were going or if others might be involved in whatever they think we’re doing, would they?”

“I guess not. But that car over there, the one Adrian is attaching—”

“Somebody’s going to have a real surprise on the way home.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Inspectore Santi Guiellmo paced the floor of his office, oblivious to the late hour. Zuccone! Belli was a fool! Had it not been for a couple of teenagers on bicycles looking for a deserted place to fornicate, Belli and his men would have spent a miserable night handcuffed to their own police car. Guiellmo almost wished they had. They certainly deserved it!

Belli had followed that farce with an even greater one.

He had commandeered one of the lovers’ cell phones, checked in with his headquarters, and called every available polizia and carabiniere within a hundred kilometers in the name of the forze dell’ordine, a security force that was now the joke of every cop south of the Alps. It had required nearly thirty armed officers to apprehend two elderly, unarmed, and grappa-besotted stonemasons on their way home from work in a Fiat.

Guiellmo had little sense of humor, none where his agency was involved. Under Italy’s civil service, firing someone was even more impossible than it was in the private sector, but Belli would reach retirement in Italy’s remote northeastern Adriatic coast, the Marche, chasing Gypsy sheep thieves.

No doubt they, too, would outsmart him.

At least the imbecile had been able to give descriptions. The woman was certainly Dr. Bergenghetti, something already known. What remained a question was her involvement with the two men, and in what were they involved? Judging by the Volvo’s registration, one of the men was a Scot named Adrian Graham, who had retired from the British army and resided in Sardinia. Belli had heard the woman call the second man Jason, confirming his identity.

What was going on? Peters was likely responsible for the death in Sicily and four more in Sardinia. But why? Surely the man was not on some campaign of his own, simply out to reduce the Slavic population. Such a goal might be commendable, albeit illegal, but certainly profitless. Peters was after something else.

But what?

Guiellmo spread a map of the Bay of Naples across the top of his desk, his forehead wrinkled in thought. What was Peters doing at Cumae, seeking aid from a Sibyl who had not been in residence for two thousand years? What else was there at Cumae other than ancient Greek ruins that could be of interest? He ran a finger along the crescent of the coast. If archaeological sites were of some sort of significance, the closest to Cumae would be Baia.

There was something about Baia…. He couldn’t remember.

Stepping across his office, he opened the drawer of a small table, taking out a number of tourist guidebooks. He had always intended to take a summer vacation, exchange the sauna that was Rome in August for the sea breezes of the Amalfi coast. These books were the closest he had come to fulfilling what he now realized was little more than fantasy.

He flipped pages of bright photographs until he came to Baia. What he read sounded more like myth than fact. Fact or fiction, whatever had brought Peters to Cumae was likely to take him to Baia or Pozzuoli next. Both were sites of significant Greek ruins. Only one, though, was likely to require self-contained breathing apparatus.

He went back to his desk and picked up the telephone. This time he would lead the operation himself, confide in no one, and have only himself to blame for failure.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The rusty freighter left a creamy wake in the mochacolored waters as its Liberian flag hung limply in the morning’s increasing humidity. There was nothing to distinguish the ship from any of the others plowing along within yards of the cobbled streets of the city’s historic waterfront area, certainly no clue that the ship was owned and operated by Pacific Oriental Shipping, a partnership of entities that included the Sheikh of Dubai and Hutchinson-Whampoa. HW had controlled ports at both ends of the Panama Canal since one of America’s lesser lights had used his presidential office to give that waterway to Panama. The idea could have come to him only as dementia from a peanut field’s heat and been mistaken for divine inspiration. After all, God frequently gave him personal direction.

What had not been revealed from on high was that Hutchinson-Wampao was owned by the Chinese army, hardly a force friendlier to the United States than its partner from the United Arab Emirates.

The containers stacked on deck, equally ordinary, would draw no attention, either. Specially ordered form plastic and auto parts from Japan, exotic wood from Malaya, and reproduction antiques from Taiwan (the Chinese saw no reason to let a political quarrel with the latter interfere with Western-style profit).

The ship’s log included a stop at Naples, where a single container had been taken on board, marked simply, LANDSCAPING GOODS. The question of why any shipper would detour across the globe for such a small and mundane cargo might have caught the attention of port authorities had their union not repeatedly told them that questioning logs and cargo manifests was Uncle Sam’s job, not theirs, and performing such a task gratuitously could only jeopardize the next contract negotiations.

Once quayside, the landscaping goods were lifted off the deck by a crane like any other bit of cargo and stacked on the dock five or six containers high. There was approximately a one in one hundred chance its contents might actually be inspected. The funding of the Transportation Security Administration was far too stretched to permit both the high-profile confiscation of passengers’ cigarette lighters at the nation’s airports as well as the far lesser known investigation of the millions of tons of shipping entering ports annually.

Few voters passed through marine ports of entry.

A large German shepherd, trained in detection of explosive material, did lead his handler down the corridor of stacked containers. Whether he discerned something or felt only the urge to leave a pee mail message for the next canine to pass this way, he cocked his leg as he panted in the increasing heat.

That was as close an inspection as the crate would receive in Savannah.