Gates of Hades (18 page)

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

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

“The whole Bay of Naples area is pretty large.”

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

“Couldn't you be a little more specific?”

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

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

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

“They're your lungs.”

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

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

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

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

“Casanova.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jason broke the silence between them. “This is authentic, Liz and Richard notwithstanding. Seems like the real
Sicily. No TV, no iPods, no ringing cell phones. Totally un-Americanized.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ ‘Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.' ”

“Milton,
Paradise Lost.
Knowledge is its own reward.”

“Ben Franklin?”

“Maria Bergenghetti.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And there was no intersection to be seen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Stop it!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He took the keys from her shaking hand. “Apparently.”

The lock popped open and he held out the keys.

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

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

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

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

Jason started the engine. “Where to?”

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

She was looking straight ahead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You want to bet your life on that? Which way?”

She pointed. “Right, up the hill past your hotel.”

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

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

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

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

“Which is?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I take it your business involves just that.”

“You could say that.”