Gates of Hades (17 page)

Tomorrow he would take a number of flights that would eventually end on the other side of the Atlantic.

Rome, then to Sicily, where Dr. Bergenghetti was currently doing some sort of research, according to Mama. He frowned.

Rome.

It was a city he and Laurin had planned to visit in the spring of '02. She had already begun the planning, looking at hotel brochures, reading guidebooks.

The glass in Jason's hand shattered before he realized how hard he had been squeezing it. He went inside and wrapped a towel around his bleeding palm, so absorbed in his mental anguish he did not feel the throbbing of sliced flesh.

 

 

Taormina, Sicily
Villa Ducale
Two days later

Taormina spilled down the side of a mountain, ending at the Strait of Messina. The slope upon which the town had its tenuous grasp was not what snagged the visitor's eye, however. The center of visual attention was Mount Aetna, a dark mass in the haze to the northeast. At eight in the morning, its white beard of heat-generated clouds was the only blemish in an otherwise blue sky.

Jason sat at one of only four tables on the hotel's piazza, sipping coffee with the consistency of molasses. He would not have been surprised had it sucked the spoon out of his hand. Probably enough caffeine to make Sleepy, one of Snow White's dwarves, into an insomniac.

He was just about to help himself to the breakfast buffet of fruit, cereal, cheese, and meats when the hotel's manager stepped outside. “Mr. Young?”

Jason's passport, the one with the Dominican entry and exit visas, proclaimed him to be Harold Young of Baltimore.

“Mr. Young, the package you asked about has arrived.”

The parcel was heavy for its size. Besides his name, it had no other markings. If the manager found the private delivery of a package to a foreign guest unusual, he didn't show it.

Giving the man a few euros as a tip, Jason abandoned breakfast for the moment to return to his room, a white plaster-walled backdrop for paintings of the flowering cacti that covered Sicily. Once alone, he tore the brown paper from a box made of heavy cardboard. Inside was a holster with a belt clip, a SIG Sauer P228, the same type of weapon he had carried on St. Bart's, and two clips loaded with thirteen rounds each. A quick inspection revealed a third clip, also loaded, already in the weapon.

Jason slid the extra magazines into his pocket and fastened the gun onto his belt at the small of his back, where it would be concealed under the loose-fitting guayabera he had purchased for that purpose. For the first time since arriving, he felt completely dressed.

Maria Bergenghetti was waiting for him when he returned to the lobby.

He had anticipated a middle-aged academic, perhaps with the dark skin and short stature of most Sicilians. Instead, he was looking at a young woman of five-nine or -ten whose sun-streaked hair was tucked into a bun under a pith helmet, the sort of headgear one would expect to see on a British archeologist of the last century. She wore khaki shirt and shorts, loose fitting but not enough to conceal a figure that would be perfectly at home on a beach on St. Bart's.

Blue eyes peered at him quizzically. “Mr. Young?”

Jason managed to shake off his surprise. “Er, yes, you must be Dr. Bergenghetti.”

“Well, I am hardly Dr. Livingstone. Do you stare like that at everyone you meet?”

He felt himself flush as he extended a hand. “Only the ones who look more like a swimsuit model than a volcanologist.”

She shook. Her hand was cool, as though it had somehow managed to evade the growing Sicilian heat. “I am not sure what a volcanologist looks like.” There was a sparkle in her eyes. She was obviously enjoying the repartee. “And that remark borders on sexism, something I understood you Americans abhorred.”

He couldn't place her accent, if indeed she had one. “Only unattractive women, Doctor. The pretty ones enjoy being admired, as they do in any country. Join me for breakfast?”

He led her out onto the piazza, gratified to see his table was still vacant. They sat, and Jason filled her coffee cup. “You speak excellent English.”

She smiled, showing a gap between her front teeth that was somehow rather sexy. “I should. My father was with the Italian diplomatic corps in Washington. I spoke English before I could even pronounce Italian.” She took a sip of the coffee, wincing from the bitterness. “In fact, I did my undergrad work in the States.”

“In volcanology? Seems an dangerous field, climbing up mountains, dodging hot lava, never knowing when things are going to blow up.”

She treated him to another glimpse of gapped teeth. “Dangerous for a woman, you mean. Your sexism is showing again.”

Jason held up his hands, palms outward. “I'm sorry; I didn't mean . . .”

“Of course you did,” she said pleasantly. “And it is refreshing. Did it ever occur to you that women get just as tired of political correctness as men? Anyway, I got interested in geology, went to the Colorado School of Mines, came back to Italy with my parents, got bored, got married, got even more bored, and got divorced. I was looking around for something to do, something that would sufficiently shock my ex into finally accepting the fact that I was no longer his playmate. Studying volcanoes seemed perfect for all the reasons you mentioned, plus the fact
that you get really grimy.” She reached into her purse, producing a pack of Marlboros. “Don't suppose you speak any Italian?”

“Not much. Just a few situational phrases picked up in bad company.”

“Such as?”

Jason watched her light her cigarette.
“Muova quel rottame, cretino!”

She laughed, an almost musical sound. “You must have been driving in Rome. ‘Move that junk pile, you cretin!' ”

Jason grinned. “Then I learned, ‘Ma
perche e chiuso il museo oggi?' ”

“Why is the museum closed today?”

“Ma perche il museo e chiuso domani?”

“Why is the museum closed tomorrow?”

“And
‘Quanto tempo starano in sciopero?
' ”

She laughed again. “ ‘How long will they be on strike?' What do you do for a living, other than Italian phrases?”

Jason was unprepared for the question. “Well, I have a business back in Baltimore. . . .”

“One that involves the geographics of volcanic material?” She arched a skeptical eyebrow. “That is pretty lame, Mr. Young. Or whoever you really are.”

He grinned. “Dr. Kamito said you were the best. He didn't say you were perceptive, too.”

“Being married to an Italian man makes you perceptive. Suspicious and skeptical as well. Remember Casanova?”

“The greatest of lovers, at least according to him.”

“Perfect description of my ex. But so much for my life and hard times. Exactly what is it you want me to do?”

Jason produced the vial of material Kamito had given him. “Tell me where this came from.”

She accepted the glass tube, holding it up to the light. “Where did you get it?”

“From Kamito.”

She sighed loudly. “I mean, what is its origin?”

“Apparently somewhere around the Mediterranean. Exactly where is what we want to know.”

She took the sample and stood, her coffee cup still full. “I hope you are more generous in paying for my time than you are with information. I have a crew checking monitors up on the hill”—she nodded toward Aetna—”and I need to make sure they do it right. One mistake and a lot of people around here would be unhappy.”

“Unhappy or buried?”

“Both, most likely.” She turned for the door. “But I should have whatever answer there is by the end of the day.”

Jason walked beside her, stopping to open the door that led to the postage stamp–size parking lot. “Figure out what I owe you. And if it isn't too much trouble . . .”

She regarded him with a mocking expression. “Let me guess: you would like me to show you the town and have dinner.”

Jason chuckled. “Close. I was going to ask you for your recommendations as to restaurants, but I like your idea better. What time suits?”

She opened the door of a dusty Ford Explorer, one of only two cars that nearly filled the lot. “I will be here about seven or so.” The door slammed shut and she cranked the engine, her head out of the window. “In the meantime, there is an old Norman fort at the top of the hill you might want to explore. At the bottom, there is a pretty well preserved Greek amphitheater. I would invite you to come up Aetna with me, but we would be in areas closed to the public.”

“And as you said, it's both dangerous and grimy.”

He watched as she backed out and drove downhill, shading his eyes until her car disappeared around the first of the series of hairpin turns that was Taormina's only road.

 

 

Piazza del Duomo, Taormina

That evening

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

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

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

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

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

“Uh, yeah,” Jason managed. “Hermès, isn't it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thirty years ago, wasn't it?”

“People here still talk about it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Best
spada alla ghiotta
on the island,” she announced.

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

for it.”

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

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

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

“No doubt about it, the Campania.”

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

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

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

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