Gates of Hades (34 page)

“Aye, laddie, but a certain chance of bein' crushed if we dinna move quick.”

 

 

Hillwood
4155 Linnean Avenue, Washington, D.C.

Shirlee Atkins was no more than a cleaning lady. Oh, she had a free uniform furnished by the foundation that supported this big ol' house, an' she had the benefit of a union contract, an' she was called a “custodian,” whatever that was, but other than that, this job wasn't no different from the ones she'd had in homes of senators and representatives and them lobby people, houses some bigger than this one over to Georgetown an' Kalorama an' even Arlington. 'Cept Arlington wasn't really in Washington, was it? She wasn't sure.

Anyway, this job paid enough for a small apartment away from the projects where the kids could go to school without dodgin' between crack addicts, dope pushers, and hos, where the sirens didn't wail all night. Place like hers, the kids had a chance to grow up an' be somethin' more 'n a housecleaner.

But she'd never worked in a house furnished quite like this one. Ever' day she come to work, walk right up to the columned brick front an' into that room at the front door.
Foyer, yep, that was it, the foyer. Big, two-story entrance, whatever it be called. She never seen no chandelier like that before. Mr. Jimson, he say it be Louie somebody, some French king. Rock crystal, he tell her. An' those people lookin' down from their golden frames, most of 'em draped with more fur than your average black bear. Course, they be Russians, and Shirlee understood it got pretty cold in Russia. Still, it suit Shirlee jus' fine that most of them Russian pictures were out in the little house in the yard, the dacha, Mr. Jimson called it, a place Ms. Post built for her Russian art. Weren't no nesting dolls there, though. Jus' paintings and jeweled things.

Cabinets on either side of the foyer full of porcelain, too. Why anybody want to eat off somethin' painted with flowers 'n' stuff, she didn't know. Couldn't hardly tell if it be clean even when you wash it.

Mr. Jimson laughed when she said that. But then, he laughed at a lot of what she said. Not that shitty you-dumb-nigga laugh some folks had when she said somethin', but a warm chuckle, like she 'n' Mr. Jimson enjoyin' the same joke. He an' Shirlee, they had a lot of laughs together. Like the time he said Ms. Post done bought his place when she run out of husbands an' chose it over successive . . . monog, monag . . . mahogany. Shirlee hadn't unnerstood 'xactly what he meant, but she laughed anyways. It made Mr. Jimson happy for her to laugh. He understood when one of her kids needed to go to the doctor or had a problem at school, too. Ain't easy raisin' three kids with no daddy. Mr. Jimson understood that, too.

She sighed deeply and wiped away a single tear rolling down one fat cheek.

Mr. Jimson.

Done got hisse'f keeled by a car, steppin' off the curb two days ago. Driver never found. D.C. cops be lucky they could find the fly on their pants when they needed to piss.

This new man, the one called hisse'f some Russiansoundin' name, look like somethin' outta one o' her kids
comics: big guy, head shaved, and from some country other than this one. He hardly spoke to nobody, all nervous and such. Yesterday, he 'bout jump outta his skin when Shirlee come up 'hind him to ax if she could leave a few minutes early. Him standin' there, lookin' outta the dinin' room window into the rose garden.

Shirlee guessed he was thinkin' 'bout that meetin' gonna take place in that room. Must be some kinda meetin', needin' thirty chairs around the marble inlaid table.

She needed to vacuum that rug, polish the table again 'fore any meetin' started. She wasn't too sure 'xactly what sort of meetin' gonna take place, but she heard tell the president hisse'f gonna be there. She wasn't 'bout to have no president come in 'n' think Shirlee Atkins was no sloppy housekeeper, no, sirree, Bob.

Thing was, those men diggin' in the rose garden right outside the French doors. They prolly Russian, too, judging by the way they talk English jus' like the new man. Make sense, the house full of Russian art an' all. She'd have to keep watch on 'em, see they didn' track no dirt into her house. Funny thing was that most of the diggin' in the rose garden should be in winter, when the plants were dormant. She'd heard tell that some of the mens come to this meetin' wanted some plants of their own. Why? Them roses pretty 'nough for anybody.

 

 

Baia

Maria tugged at Jason's shirt. “This way.”

He could barely hear her over the increasing clatter of falling stones. “You sure?”

“You are the one who said we had a fifty-fifty chance. I'd prefer to take mine in the direction from which the air is moving.”

For the first time Jason noticed the swirls and eddies in the mistlike cloud of grit. They definitely had a consistent flow, a river of air that could come only from an opening to the outside.

But which opening? There could be unclimbable vertical shafts.

In which case he would be no worse off than he was.

Those odds he could live with.

With Maria leading the way and Jason holding Adrian's hand, the three made their way along the tunnel, pausing only as larger and more numerous rocks fell around them. No one spoke. The rumble of a shattering rock formation would have had made conversation difficult, and to open one's lips was to invite a mouthful of grainy dust. Jason
even managed not to swear when he barked his shin on a jagged boulder.

The echoes below the earth had made it impossible to tell with certainty the direction of the gunfire. Wherever it had come from, it had ceased. Jason supposed the combatants had exhausted their supply of ammo or people to shoot.

Or were trying to get out before the shaft collapsed.

He listened for the sound of feet on the rock floor behind them, but he doubted he could have heard a team of galloping horses over the sounds of the tunnel falling in.

The billowing dust seemed to grow lighter and lighter until its shine actually hurt. He was squinting, eyes as close to shut as possible, when the air he took in was suddenly free of rock particles and he felt a gentle, warm breeze on his face. Instead of a dark tunnel, he was looking at a bay, the gold dust of sunlight sparkling across its blue surface.

Using a shirtsleeve to wipe away what felt like layers of grime several inches thick on his face, he gulped in the clean, salty air. Maria slid down the rock face as though her spine and legs had turned to wet noodles. Adrian was alternately tilting his water bottle to his lips and washing out his mouth.

“Hey,” Jason said, “c'mon. We can't stay here. No matter who comes out of that entrance, they aren't going to be friendly.”

Maria struggled to her feet. “I understand the first group, the ones with gas masks, were the same people who tried to kill us in Sicily and Sardinia, some sort of ecoterrorists. But the second?”

Adrian pointed to a pair of plain but shiny black Lancias. “I'd fancy them to be police of some sort.”

“Makes sense,” Jason agreed. “Somehow they guessed we'd be here. Good thing they came when they did.”

“Good for us,” Maria said, watching dust belch out of the mouth of the cave. “Perhaps not so good for them.”

As though her words were prophetic, the hillside trembled
for an instant, then was obscured in a tornado of dust and rocks. None of the three said a word for perhaps five full minutes.

“Those policemen,” Maria finally said. “They are trapped inside.”

“So are Eglov and his thugs,” Jason added.

“Ye really think so?” Adrian asked.

“Who else would have been down there other than someone who was planning to use the gases emitted by the pumice? They were all equipped to deal with it.”

“But of what use to them would be nonlethal ethylene gas?” Maria wanted to know. “It is effective only in enclosures.”

“I don't know,” Jason admitted. “A hallucinogenic, nonfatal gas, usable only in enclosed space. But at least we now know what the “Breath of the Earth' business was about. I'll send the info to Washington and let them sort it out.”

“Do that on the way,” Adrian suggested. “We've na' business hovering aboot here like drunken sods after last call. You can be sure the local constabulary'll be on its way when those poor devils in the cave don't return. Let's get what little kit we left at that wee hotel las' night an' be gone.”

Jason turned to walk down the slope, sidestepping pebbles and rocks still tumbling downhill. “Better yet, let's not go back to the pensione. If the cops knew we were here, they're gonna look around. They'll find that an American and a woman fitting Maria's description checked in and never checked out. They'll assume we're in that cave, too.”

“Fine for you, laddie,” Adrian observed, fishing a plastic bag out of his back pocket. “But sooner or later the lass has to go back to her work, an' I'd like to go home m'self.”

“Easy enough for me,” Maria suggested. “I was duped by the handsome American spy who made me think he,
too, was a volcanologist. By the time I found out otherwise, I was his captive.”

Adrian had removed his pipe from the bag and blew through it with a wet whistling sound. “An' was madly in love, too blind to see the possible pitfalls.”

Jason looked at him skeptically.

“I'm na' 'round th' bend, lad. 'Tis the stuff of Italian fiction. They love it.”

“It might work at that,” Maria agreed.

“So, you just go back to work like nothing happened?” Jason asked.

The question did not come from idle curiosity. He remembered her vow to return to her job as soon as any volcanic exploration was over. He had managed to avoid thinking about it. Since Laurin's death, women had entered his life for an evening, occasionally a weekend, and exited just as casually. In most cases he had watched their departure with a relief he suspected they shared. They had made his life less empty by supplying a diversion or even an imitation of love, a masquerade that shriveled and died in the morning's light

Not Maria.

He admitted he did not want her to leave. For the first time since his wife's death, he could actually imagine a more permanent relationship. There was something about that gap-toothed smile, the tenderness they shared after sex, even the ludicrously expensive Hermès scarfs. Mostly, there was that unexplainable something, that feeling that defining it would reduce it to the banal.

But had she changed her mind since that night on the Costa Smeralda?

“ 'Twould be best if she put a day or so between here an' returnin' to her normal life,” Adrian observed. “Wee bit too coincidental, she manages to escape at joos' the time her captor is buried under a hundred tons or so of rock. I propose we leave the Volvo here, go back to Silanus for a
day or so. Nothing happens there without people knowing aboot it. I'll have m' neighbors sniff out what they can before you return to whatever volcano you're workin' on, lass. Give me time to see how much muck I've gotten m'-self into, too.”

Jason tried not to show his anxiety as Maria considered what Adrian had said.

He also tried not to show his relief when she replied, “You make sense. A few days, then. But how do we get back to Sardinia without being seen?”

Jason leaped in. “They won't be looking for us if they think we're under all that rock, particularly if we go separately.”

“Separately?” She looked apprehensive. “But what if some of those . . . people are still looking for us?”

“Eglov's people?” Jason asked. “I'd guess they're permanently entombed in Hades. Talk about just deserts! If not, another reason to lie low at Adrian's place for a few days. He can use his neighbors there to let us know if someone's looking for us.” He reached into a pocket and produced the BlackBerry-like device. “Right now I gotta phone home.”

Adrian put out a hand, tugging Jason's sleeve. “Not now, laddie. Give us long enough to get as far from here as possible before someone comes to check on the coppers we left in there.”