Gates of Hades (9 page)

Any semblance of normality ended with appearances.

Jason knew that while the car was waiting for the machine to spit out a ticket, scales set into the floor were weighing the vehicle. In less than a second, a computer compared the poundage to the manufacturer's specified weight, adjustments were made for a possible full tank of gas, and a formula applied for the number of occupants. Should the car exceed what the system deemed normal, a steel curtain would drop from the ceiling, preventing further access while probes extended from the walls to take air samples in much the same way bomb-sniffing dogs operated at airports.

The machine determined the rental car posed no risk, and Jason drove into a nearly empty basement. An elevator returned him to ground level, and he entered the three stories of smoked glass. Last night's rain was still a thousand diamonds on the carefully manicured lawn along the flagstone pathway to the entrance.

Almost all the buildings in the vicinity displayed signs announcing the services of one or more security companies. So did this one. Visibility was, after all, part of security. An intruder would, presumably, be less inclined to
invade the premises of an establishment guarded by the usual electronic devices.

There were certain differences from nearby similar structures, had one looked in the right places, differences of which no ordinary burglar would have ever heard. But then, it was not the ordinary burglar Narcom wished to deter.

Jason knew his image was being transmitted inside by a series of well-concealed cameras. One step off the path would trigger sensors buried an inch or so deep under lush grass, green despite the season. The glass of the exterior was reinforced sufficiently to withstand any projectile smaller than an artillery shell. Well out of sight from below, the roof sprouted a forest of antennae. Window shades were rubber lined. When pulled, as they were anytime an important conversation was in progress, they made it impossible for listening devices outside to pick up vibrations in the glass caused by words spoken inside.

An electric eye opened the door as Jason reached it. The lobby, the twin of hundreds of others in the area, contained the usual potted plants and a reception desk manned by a woman who, by any measure, should have made an appearance on one of those reality shows where looks compensated for lack of plot. She had the pale, clear skin that went with naturally blond hair, and blue eyes without warmth.

As Jason approached, she watched with cold disinterest. From a few feet away he could read the tag pinned to the black camisole-type top, which, though not transparent, gave the impression of frilly lingerie underneath. He was not surprised to learn her name was Kim, nor would Lisa, Lori, or Ashley have been a shock.

He knew from previous observation that her fingers were never more than a few inches from a panel of screens that, when touched, could do everything from locking every door in the building to lowering a steel curtain between the entrance and the receptionist. Behind her, a mirrored
wall was actually two-way glass, giving a complete view of the lobby to armed men who waited in perpetual readiness for whatever situation might arise. The place's security was second only to the White House's.

Kim imitated a smile, flashing teeth that would have inspired any orthodontist. “Help you, sir?”

“Good morning, Kim. I'm Jason Peters, and I'm expected.”

She gave Jason a slow inspection, making no effort to conceal the fact that she was appraising him in the same way she might decide whether an insect was likely to sting or bite. Under other circumstances he might have taken a lingering look like that as interest, but her manner was of one who had no intent of inviting personal overtures. An expensive fur coat draped over the far corner of the counter explained a lot. He doubted Kim could have purchased it on her salary. She already had a “friend” with a bankroll.

Girls like Kim got minks the same way minks got minks.

“If you'll just step over here, sir.”

Jason was familiar with the drill. Extending both arms, he placed the thumb of each hand on a screen that was part of the top of the desk.

She watched a monitor behind the desk. “Mr. Peters, I see you have a meeting in a few minutes. Know your way?”

“Indeed I do.” He walked to the left of the desk, bowing slightly. “A delight to have made your acquaintance.”

Kim had already returned to staring at the monitors in front of her.

A previously invisible door wheezed open, and Jason entered a small room, where he was patted down by one man while another, an M16A2 assault rifle in the crook of his arm, observed. A large dog of indeterminate breed sniffed for explosives.

The dog made Jason think of Pangloss, and he wished they both were back in the low-tech world of the Turks and Caicos. By now the day would be well under way
there, the sun up hours ago. Reality intruded and he sighed, aware that it was unlikely he would ever claim North Caicos as a residence again, not if he wanted to stay alive. The place would be under observation.

“You'll have to empty your pockets.”

Jason produced the rental car keys, a handful of change, and a small pocketknife.

The man not holding the rifle looked skeptically at the latter. “This some sort of weapon?”

“Not if you're attacking anything larger than a mouse. The blade is less than two inches long.”

A moment of indecision. Jason could almost hear the line of thought: if box cutters could be used to take over airliners . . .

Jason handed it over. “Tell you what: you hold it till I come back through. If I have to kill someone, I'll do it with my bare hands.”

“Thank you, sir.” The man was clearly happy to be relieved of having to make a decision. “It'll be waiting for you.”

As Jason stepped forward, there was a buzz, the snick of heavy bolts sliding, and the door on the other side of the room whirred open. A bank of two elevators faced him. Jason knew there were no buttons for selection of floors inside either. The cars moved at the direction of people elsewhere in the building.

Two floors up, another man greeted him with an expressionless face and voice to match. “This way, Mr. Peters.”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned to precede Jason down a corridor flanked with steel doors.

The hall was deserted, filled with only the faint hum of electronic equipment and the sound of four shoes squeaking on linoleum. At the end a door swung open, throwing a beam of light into the otherwise dim hall. Framed in silhouette was a woman whose features appeared clearer as he drew close. Not old but not young, either. She wore listless brown hair in a bun behind her long, thin face.

She dismissed his escort and extended a slender hand to touch Jason's. The feel of her skin was as arid and cool as the first autumn breezes along the Potomac. She wore the fragrance he remembered, something that smelled of dried flowers.

“Bond, James Bond, to see M,” he said in an overdone British accent.

She favored him with the threat of a smile. “Hello, Jason. Good to see you again. You're looking fit, all tan. The tropics must agree with you.”

“Certainly more than Washington, Miss Tyson.”

She clucked disapprovingly. “Now, now, Jason. We're happy to see you again.”

He wondered if the pronoun included her boss. He had never known the boss to be happy about anything that didn't involve death, destruction, and mayhem of some sort.

“Nice to see you again, too.”

Still holding his hand, she drew him across the threshold and the door silently swung shut.

Jason glanced around, noting the lack of change. The same bleak reception area, furnished with only a desk and secretarial chair that faced a worn leather couch. The walls were without windows or pictures. The room had the personality of a dial tone. He had often wondered how someone could spend time in such quarters, looking at nothing. Particularly if, as was the case with Miss Tyson, they never seemed to have anything to do. Perhaps she came in here only when her boss was expecting someone.

As though reading his thoughts, she pointed to the only wooden door he had seen in the building. “Go right in.”

He knocked briskly, the comparatively mellow thump of wood somehow soothing after all the steel, and the door opened.

On the other side, the office was as lavish as Miss Tyson's space was spartan. Jason stepped onto the muted blues and reds of an antique Khurasan that cost more
than most houses. The rug's colors were softly repeated in four original Renoirs whose gilt frames hung on fabric wall covering. An Edwardian breakfront occupied most of the far wall, behind its rippled glass a collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century first editions. Floating on the rug's center medallion like a ship adrift, a mahogany partners' desk was topped with hand-tooled, gold-edged leather.

Behind the desk sat an enormous black woman clad in a flowing caftan with an African print. With a hand the size of a catcher's mitt, she held the receiver of the telephone that was the only item on the desk. With the other, she motioned Jason into one of four Scalamandre silk wing chairs arranged in a semicircle in front of her.

He was unable to understand the language she was speaking, but, from the rare familiar word and hand gestures that accompanied each utterance, he guessed it was some dialect of Arabic or Farsi. He sat and waited.

Jason had to smile as he watched her, the ultimate minority-business-program beneficiary. An émigré from Haiti, she was simultaneously black, female, and non-Christian, embracing a belief in the African gods of voodoo and Santería. She was the poster girl for politicians espousing egalitarianism above all. Unlike many such recipients of government largesse, however, she had qualifications beyond race, sex, and religion. As former second in command of her native land's Tonton Macoute, she was skilled at interrogation, torture, assassination, and manipulation of the political process, a résumé the awareness of which no elected official could admit. Had anyone demurred at the government doing business with a person previously associated with an organization whose brutality made Hitler's Gestapo look like Boy Scouts, he would have been denounced not only as a racial and religious bigot, but sexist as well.

She served her only client well and was generously
compensated for taking on unsavory tasks to which no democratically elected government could admit, but which no government, democratic or otherwise, could do without. Any scruples she possessed related only to her “boys” and to the proper preparation of the fiery Creole cuisine of her homeland. Dealing with the nation's enemies of today required an unrelenting barbarity that made congressional stomachs churn. Narcom, Inc., provided the political antacid of deniability.

It was a marriage made perhaps not in heaven, but strong nonetheless.

In less than a minute she hung up and came around the desk. Jason stood to receive a hug that might have crushed the lungs of a man less fit.

“Jason! Good to see you again; always good to see one of Mama's boys!”

Mama's boys,
the name she gave all her operatives, although Jason had met very few. By its nature, Narcom's business was strictly compartmentalized.

She relaxed her embrace, allowing Jason to draw a breath before he sat down. She returned to her chair behind the desk before speaking.

“How you doin' on that island of yours?”

“I'm not there anymore. I had some visitors.”

As he related what had happened, she nodded. “Uh-huh. You stirred a stick in a bees' nest when you did Alazar down there in St. Bart's.”

“You know that wasn't my fault. Whoever mixed the tranquilizing solution overdid it.”

“I know, but somebody doesn't. Not that it matters. One less of those animals. I would have liked to ask him a few questions, though.”

Alazar was fortunate, Jason thought, to be dead.

Mama continued. “Sounds like six bad guys won't be a problem anymore.”

“At the cost of a damn nice house,” Jason grumbled.

“With what you get paid, you can afford it,” she said amicably. “But that's not why I invited you here.”

She reached into a desk drawer and handed him a sheet of paper. On it was a series of lines in what Jason recognized as Russian. “This came off the computer you sent me, the one you took from Alazar.”

Jason stared at the paper, unable to even guess what it was. “I speak a little Russian, but I don't read it.”

Mama took the paper back. “Appears to be some sort of shopping list, an order for something that he supplied that was successfully used by the customer; refers to a type of new weapon. From the context, military intelligence thinks it's some sort of biochemical warfare, since it refers to ‘containers.' ” She wrinkled a brow. “Also talks about ‘keeping it healthy,' like some sort of microbe.”

The most oxymoronic of all government bureaucracy: military intelligence.

Right up there with legal ethics.

Jason leaned back in the chair, crossing his legs at the ankles. “And?”

The woman on the other side of the desk shook her head reproachfully, sending gold chandelier earrings flashing with reflected light. “I'll get there, Jason; just show me the courtesy of listening. Thing that got the attention over to Langley was the date this new whatever-it-is was used, last June.”

Jason swallowed the urge to ask a number of questions, knowing Mama would answer most of them in her own way and in her own time.

“Last June, one of our coast guard boats in the Bering Sea found a Russian trawler, one of those supersize fishing boats. The whole crew had had their throats cut.”

Jason hunched forward in his chair, impatient to get to the point. “So? We're not in the business of protecting foreign fishing boats, particularly those poaching in our waters like I'd bet that one was.”

Mama nodded, multiple chins shaking. “Jason, you just
won't wait, will you? Whatever happened to manners? Anyway, this Russian trawler was just the beginning. Since then, there've been loggers in Georgia, a team of geologists looking for possible oil off Florida's west coast, an Indian chemical plant executive and his whole family, a Polish coal mine owner and . . .” She stopped and took a deep breath. “You get the idea. All found with their throats cut, no sign of any resistance.”