Gates of Hades (22 page)

Jason edged away from the stream of smoke that insisted in drifting into his face. “Don't know, but a good guess would be that having some natural substance make an enemy helpless has a certain appeal to radicals, those who believe they alone can save the earth. Sort of like Mother Nature's revenge.”

“How involved is your . . . friend, Dr. Bergenghetti?”

“With me? She's not. I mean, she's a leading volcanologist. I asked her to do some tests and those bastards are threatening her to get at me. Seemed expedient not to leave her.”

“Expedient because she's a bonny lass or because she's really in harm's way?”

Jason told him about what had happened in Sicily.

Adrian smiled around the stem of his pipe. “The one who got away—Eglov—he'll not be on your trail?”

“I booked a flight to Rome, swapped IDs, and took a charter over here. I'd guess it will take Eglov a few days before he discovers we aren't in Rome. By that time, I'll no longer be imposing on your hospitality.”

Adrian was tapping pipe on the heel of a boot, knocking the contents onto the ground. “Aye, let's hope.”

Jason grinned. “Hope what? That they won't find us, or we'll be gone in a few days?”

Before Adrian could answer, Maria came out of the house, lighting a cigarette. Clare's ban on smoking applied uniformly.

 

 

Office of Aero Tyrrhenian

Aeroporto Calabria

At the same time

The two men were not from Sicily. Their Italian was unlike any Enrico had ever heard. Or, rather, the Italian of the one who spoke. Guttural and harsh, with little distinction between the soft and hard Cs, as though he had learned the language from a book without speaking it.

There was something about them that made Enrico uncomfortable. Perhaps the bandage that covered the whole right side of the face, including the eye, of the man doing the talking, the mispronouncing. He must have been in some sort of accident recently, because bloody splotches were showing through the gauze.

Enrico was also uncomfortable about what the man wanted: information concerning a woman and an American man who might have chartered one of Aero Tyrrhenian's planes.

Had they?

Where?

When?

Although no actual threat was made, Enrico got the feeling that the consequences of withholding information might be unpleasant. Very unpleasant.

Enrico had struggled for six years to establish his flying business, his one true love (besides Anna, his wife at home, and Calla, his secretary and mistress, of course). He had built the company up from one four-seat Cessna to a fleet of four aircraft, including the turbo-prop, twelve-seat Islander. Someday he would be able to afford a used jet.

He ran a business, not an information agency. To give out the information these men sought seemed like a betrayal of a customer. If a man had no integrity, he had nothing.

Enrico's resolve was solidifying when the man with the bandaged face put a stack of hundred-euro notes on the counter.

The resolve became a little mushy around the edges.

“Mille,”
the man said.

There was no problem understanding the number. A thousand euros.

The old Beech 18E, the radial-engine twin he used to haul cargo, was going to need the number two overhauled after a few more hours of flight time, and Enrico was fairly certain it would require one or more new pistons, very expensive pistons. A thousand euros wouldn't cover the cost, but it would sure make it less painful.

Still, there was the matter of integrity.

The man with the bandage doubled the number of bills on the counter.

“Due.”

Enrico could feel Calla's eyes burning into his back from her desk behind him. Two thousand euros would not only cure the Beech's problem; it would pay for the dress Calla had seen in the window of the shop just off the Quattro Canti in Palermo last week.

The bills disappeared into Enrico's pocket.

 

 

Silanus, Sardinia

1840 Hours (6:40
P.M
.)

The same day

Adrian shared Jason's taste in both music and drink. The two men sat in front of the empty fireplace, glasses of single-malt whiskey in hand. Violins were singing the first movement of Handel's Second Symphony. The only thing preventing Jason's serenity was the odor coming from the kitchen. Whatever Clare and Maria were preparing for dinner smelled suspicious enough to make him verify that Jock, the dog, was still alive and well.

“Haggis,” Adrian commented, obviously aware of his friend's apprehension. “For you, we've killed the fatted calf. Or, in this case, the fatted sheep.”

“You really shouldn't have.”

Jason could not have been more sincere.

The thought of a sheep's heart, liver, and lungs minced with suet, onions, and oatmeal and boiled in the animal's stomach was less than appetizing.

Adrian licked his lips in anticipation. “ 'Tis the dish of the Highlands, of all Scotland, for that matter.”

And Jason had always thought it was Scotland's abysmal weather that had caused centuries of Scottish incursion southward.

Maria came in from the kitchen and sat beside Jason. “Clare does not need any more help.”

The expression on her face betrayed feelings similar to Jason's regarding the impending meal.

“ 'Tis a complicated dish,” Adrian said, fishing his pipe from his pocket. “Sometimes it's easier to do it yoursel' rather than teach another.”

Like mixing a Borgia poison.

“I am sure I was more hindrance than help,” Maria offered, her tone unable to conceal gratitude at being released from the experience.

Forbidden to light up, Adrian was making sucking noises on the pipe. “So, tell me exactly what it is you seek, Jason. You mentioned that the poor sods on that fishing boat appeared to have traces of sulfur and various hydrocarbons, including ethylene, in their blood, and that Maria here says the mineral samples are linked to the area of the Bay of Naples.”

“I'm to find out exactly what this ‘Breath of the Earth' business is all about, see what these extreme nuts have come up with, where they got it.”

Adrian took another sucking draw from the pipe, removed it from his mouth, and regarded the empty bowl sadly. “Damn nuisance, having to go outside to light a pipe I've been smoking thirty years. Things we do to please the womenfolk.”

Jason was tempted to remind his friend of his comment about demonstrating who was boss, but said, “So far, only thing I've learned is that this guy Eglov takes keeping a secret very seriously.”

“Bad sport, that lad.” Adrian tapped the pipe's stem against his teeth. “You think the sailors were gassed?”

“Only way I can think of to get those chemicals into the body short of an injection.”

“And if th' bleedin' Ecos were that close, they bloody well didn't need all those chemicals.”

“Exactly.”

Pipe temporarily forgotten, Adrian stared into space for a moment. “Y' know archeology is my passion.”

Puzzled as to the connection, Jason leaned forward in his chair. “Yes, but—”

“Subscribe to the magazines, popular and some academic.” Adrian stood and went to kitchen. “Clare, where've you been puttin' me archeological journals 'n' stuff?”

“Try lookin' in th' shed,” came the disembodied answer.

Adrian turned away, grumbling. “Shed, indeed! All my valuable research material in a leaky auld building . . .”

“If it's leaky,” came Clare's voice, “it's not because I haven't asked you a score of times to see to th' roof!”

Adrian was still griping as he walked out of the door.

Moments later he returned with a stack of magazines.

Dumping them in front of the chair he had occupied, he sat and began to page through each. “Year or two ago, I saw an article on Greek Baia. Two or three millennia after the Bronze Age dwellings here in Sardinia, so I didn't give much mind to it.”

“Baia?” Jason asked. “What's Greek Baia?”

“Oldest Greek settlement in Italy.” Maria spoke for the first time. “It is in the Naples area.”

Adrian was still turning pages. “Had something to do with gases, I think.” He held up a gray-backed journal. “Ah, here it is. Written by a Professor Calligini, translated by one of your American chaps.”

“Eno Calligini, of the University of Turin?” Maria asked.

Adrian moved the magazine a little closer to his face. “Aye, a professor at Turin. Y' know th' man?”

Maria smiled. “Our fields, volcanology and archeology, are not unrelated, at least not here in Italy. He and I participated on a symposium on the Vesuvius eruption of
A.D.
79, the one that buried Pompeii.”

The look on her face told Jason it was likely she and the
professor were, or had been, more than professional colleagues. He felt a twinge of jealousy. Irrational, but nonetheless real.

Adrian glanced from Jason to Maria. “Y' may want to read what th' professor has to say, Jason. I recall it, he speaks of hallucination-producing vapors.”

Clare appeared in the kitchen door, holding a serving tray. “Supper's ready. I—”

The first bar of “Scotland the Brave” chirped from Adrian's pants pocket and he pulled out a cell phone.

“Sorry. Only have the bloody thing so th' kids can keep in touch.” He snapped it open. “Graham here.”

His face went blank as he listened before a single, “Grazie.”

From Clare's expression, Jason guessed they didn't get a lot of phone calls from their kids or anyone else.

The phone disappeared back into Adrian's pocket. “Peppi.” He turned to Jason in explanation. “Runs the local trattoria, closest thing about to a pub. A man was asking directions here.”

Jason squinted through the windows at the collecting darkness. “Any description?”

Adrian nodded. “Big, shaved head, didn't speak Italian like a local. Or an Italian, for that matter. Had half his face bandaged.”

“How many others?”

“Peppi didn't see anyone else. I gather this chap is an acquaintance of yours?”

“I'd guess he's the same one I told you about. You can bet he's not by himself. How long would you guess it'll take him to get here?”

Adrian gave a grim smile. “Depends on how long it takes him to figure out that Peppi's directions are leading him astray.”

“Your friend gave him misleading directions? Why?”

Adrian shrugged. “Could be because Peppi knows we don't have many visitors. Could be because he dinna like
the cut o' the man. Probably was a combination of the locals' distrust o' strangers an' the perverse Sardinian sense o' humor.”

“He sent the guy out to the boonies as a joke?”

Adrian nodded as he crossed the room toward Clare, taking the tray and setting it on the table. “Aye, havin' a stranger lost in these hills would be very funny to th' natives, particularly a stranger Peppi'd taken a dislike to.” He looked over his shoulder at Clare. “Mother, if you'd gather some bottled water from the shed, along with a few tins we can open for supper later . . .”

Clare left the room.

Adrian went to a low chest, removing several blankets. Underneath them was a long object wrapped in an oil-spotted cloth. Jason inhaled the familar smell of Hoppe's gun oil. It took only a moment before Jason was looking at SAS's favorite weapon, a Sten Mark IIS. From the silhouette, Jason noted that his friend had the model with a lengthy silencer built onto the barrel. The machine gun was clearly recognizable from the thick canvas sleeve around the rear of the silencer, the only protection a shooter had from a heated barrel. With the Sten, automatic fire was unadvisable except under the direst circumstances. Still, the British commandos had had an affection for the gun and its predecessors since before World War II, when it had been manufactured by British Small Arms along with the oil-spitting, brake-failing BSA motorcycle.

The British saw romance in ineffective machinery; hence the long life of the Jaguar automobile.

Adrian slammed one of two thirty-two shot clips into the gun. “Looks like we're about to have company.”

Jason took the SIG Sauer from its holster in the small of his back, checked the magazine, and put it back. “I don't know how they found us unless they went to the charter service.”

Adrian was stuffing the Sten's extra clip into his belt.

“ ‘Th' best laid plans of mice and men gang af't a‘wry.' Or so th' bonny bard Bobby Burns tells us. Reason enough to keep me old weapon handy and ready.”

Jason was in no mood to discuss either alliterations or Scotland's most beloved poet. “I doubt we have the firepower to fend them off.”

Adrian tossed one of the blankets to Maria and pulled out a Savage Model X20 nightscope, something any hunter in America could purchase at his local gun shop. “Wasn't plannin' on a fight, not with women around . . .”

“Don't let me keep you boys from your fun,” Maria snapped.

Adrian cocked an eyebrow. “An', as I was about to say, only th' Sten an' a pistol between us.”

Unspoken was the fact that, unlike in Bosnia, retreat was not an viable option.

Clare reappeared, carrying a military knapsack. “I've got enough water and food to last us a day or two.”

Motioning Jason and Maria to follow, Adrian headed for the door. “We'll not be going far, but we need to hide the car, make it look like we're gone, perhaps off on holiday.”

“What about that?” Clare was pointing to the tray with the still-steaming haggis.

“Canna leave hot supper around, now, can we?” Adrian thought for a moment. “Much as I hate it, we'll have to let the swine have it.”