by Gregg Loomis
"Archeological dig," Maria explained, following his line of sight.
Adrian was looking the other way. "And that would be?" He was pointing to a similar collection of ruins slightly below and across a dirt path.
"Temple of Apollo."
Adrian took a step back as four men emerged from below, turning their heads in deferent directions. The dark suits they wore were out of place, both as to location and climate.
"Th' lot look like coppers," Adrian observed.
"Whoever they are, we can bet they're not here to help," Jason said, squinting against the reflection of the afternoon's sun on the ocean to his left. "Is there another way to get back to the car?"
Maria nodded. "We can go down to the excavation site"—she pointed—"and then around the bottom of the hill."
"No good," Jason observed. "They've split up. We'd run into at least two of them."
"So much the better," Adrian said. "We ken where they are. They dinna have but an idea as to us. I say we divide up, too, an' take 'em on."
Maria looked nervously from Jason to Adrian and back again. "Surely you are not going to shoot these men when you do not even know ..."
Adrian grinned. "Na need to be shooting lass, if we right surprise 'em." He pointed. "Jason, you 'n' Maria go back th' way we came. I'll go 'round."
Jason wasn't wild about the idea, but it made more sense than waiting to be surrounded. He nodded, and he and Maria set off down the hill, his hand on the weapon at his back as they descended the stairs.
They had just reached the last step when two men rounded a bend in the path below. Both were red-faced from the exertion. The older of the two, overweight and white-haired, was puffing loudly and was watching carefully where he placed each footfall.
His companion was the first to see Jason and Maria. His right hand went inside his suit jacket. Jason glimpsed a flash of blue steel.
The advantage of carrying a weapon in the small of the back rather than a shoulder holster was that the shooter could assume a firing position without waiting for his gun to come to bear. Jason was in a two-handed stance, the SIG Sauer covering both men, before the other man had cleared his Beretta.
Both of the suited men slowly raised their hands.
Jason turned his head in Maria's direction, unwilling to take his sight off the men for an instant. "Tell them to use their left hands to take their guns out and drop them on the ground."
They complied, the older man speaking angrily as Jason kicked the two automatics well out of reach down the slope.
"He says they are National Security Service and that you will never see the outside of prison if you do not put your gun down immediately and surrender."
Italians knew the second-person form of the verb?
"Ask him to show identification. Slowly."
Before Maria could translate, both men were holding wallets with badges attached. Jason looked carefully, aware that he wouldn't recognize the bogus from the real. Again the older man spoke irately.
"He says you are Jason Peters and you are wanted for questioning by the British and Italian authorities. He also wants to know about an incident that occurred on the highway in Sardinia day before yesterday."
Sardinia? How could he...? The Volvo's tag—the car was registered in Sardinia. Jason leaned closer to read the name on the official ID. From the men's quick response to the request for identification, he suspected one or both understood a fair amount of English. "Please tell Signore Belli he's not exactly in a position to make demands, and ask him what makes him think I'm the person he's looking for."
This time, Maria translated in full before there was a response. Belli jutted out a defiant jaw in a manner reminiscent of pictures Jason had seen of Mussolini. In fact, take away the white hair and he might have been looking at Il Duce himself.
Maria translated. "It is no consequence how he knows who you are. You are arrested."
Jason's gaze followed the line from his gun muzzle to the security man's head. "Maybe. But I'm the one holding the gun." He jabbed it forward in a threatening manner. "And I'm not afraid to use it. Tell him he's got about ten seconds to answer my question."
Jason was now certain the older man understood English. He puffed out his chest in the pose that had become associated with the Italian dictator, as he spoke to Maria.
"He doesn't, er, submit to threats from criminals. To do so would dishonor his country, his service, and himself."
With studied indifference, Jason squeezed off a shot that missed Belli's ear by no more than an inch, close enough that the man could feel its hot breath as it whined by and chipped a piece of rock from the incline behind him. Both Italians were flat on the ground before the first echoes bounced from hill to hill like a volleyed tennis ball.
Maria's eyes were larger than Jason would have imagined nature allowed.
"Tell him the next two will take his ears off one at a time."
Dishonor, it seemed, was preferable to disfigurement.
Belli spoke quickly, shifting an uneasy glance from his prone position from Jason to Maria as he talked.
"The chief of their agency was notified of the body of what appeared to be a Russian in the house in Taormina. Since the bureau I work for is the owner and I had suddenly taken holiday time, they wanted to question me. Then that wreck in Sardinia with all those bullet shells and more dead lying about—he made a connection. You were the only person Interpol suspected of killing Russians, at least outside of Russia, and ..."
Jason held up a hand. He had heard enough.
Maria was looking at him warily. "Jason, what are you going to do ...?"
"Do?" A voice came from behind them. Adrian was marching the other two suits in front of a pointed pistol Jason recognized as a government-issue Beretta. The Sten was again slung over his shoulder. One of men looked somewhat worse for the wear. "We'll leave 'em in their bleedin' car an' toss the keys."
"Good idea," Jason concurred.
Moments later the four Italians were stripped of their cell phones and handcuffed inside a black Lancia from which the radio had been removed.
Adrian stuck his head in the open window, making sure all were secure. "Nice 'n' comfy, 'r ye?"
" Vaffancula!" the oldest one muttered.
Adrian grinned. "He's suggestin' I commit an anatomical impossibility."
The tone had suggested as much to Jason. "C'mon; let's get outta here before more show up."
"But they have our license plate number," Maria protested. "Will we not be stopped by the first policeman we see?"
Jason was already climbing into the driver's seat. "It's not the tag that helped them find us, believe me. Besides, isn't Baia just over those hills? We'll be there before dark."
Minutes later, Jason pulled off the pavement beside one of several roadside restaurants, partially shielded from view by a row of plane trees. He waited until two cars, a Smart and a Fiat 1500, parked and disgorged what looked like local workmen.
"On th' way home from work, I'd guess," Adrian said, stuffing his pipe. "Stoppin' by f their pint."
"Grappa's more like it," Jason observed, hoping the pipe wasn't going to get lit until he could get upwind.
He was disappointed. He smelled the sulfur of a match, followed by a sour stench that reminded him of the time Pangloss had gotten too close to a charcoal grill. On second thought, he was maligning the aroma of scorched dog hair.
It was as if Adrian had read his mind. Or seen the wrinkled noses of both the other passengers. "Na' t' worry."
He got out of the car and lay down to look under it.
"There she is!"
He stood, the pipe clinched in his teeth, puffing in exultation. He exhibited a small square of metal about the size of the bar of soap Jason would expect in a hotel bathroom. He trotted off across the parking lot, smoke trailing behind him like a locomotive. He stopped and knelt beside the Fiat.
"What is he doing?" Maria wanted to know.
"Replanting the bug."
> Her expression said he might as well have been speaking in Aramaic, Swahili, or jet-propelled Sanskrit.
"The bug, that little black thing he took from under this car. The reason the police didn't have to follow us is because they had a homing device stuck somewhere underneath. Some satellite did their surveillance for them. Good thing about that kind of satellites, though, is that they only 'see' the impulses from the tracking equipment. They don't see whose car it may be attached to."
"But where ...?"
"My guess is at the observatory."
"Why not arrest us there?"
"Then they wouldn't know where we were going or if others might be involved in whatever they think we're doing, would they?"
"I guess not. But that car over there, the one Adrian is attaching—"
"Somebody's going to have a real surprise on the way home."
Chapter Thirty-seven
Via Delia Dataria
Rome
That night
Inspectore Santi Guiellmo paced the floor of his office, oblivious to the late hour. Zuccone! Belli was a fool! Had it not been for a couple of teenagers on bicycles looking for a deserted place to fornicate, Belli and his men would have spent a miserable night handcuffed to their own police car. Guiellmo almost wished they had. They certainly deserved it!
Belli had followed that farce with an even greater one.
He had commandeered one of the lovers' cell phones, checked in with his headquarters, and called every available polizia and carabiniere within a hundred kilometers in the name of the forze dell'ordine, a security force that was now the joke of every cop south of the Alps. It had required nearly thirty armed officers to apprehend two elderly, unarmed, and grappa-besotted stonemasons on their way home from work in a Fiat.
Guiellmo had little sense of humor, none where his agency was involved. Under Italy's civil service, firing someone was even more impossible than it was in the private sector, but Belli would reach retirement in Italy's remote northeastern Adriatic coast, the Marche, chasing Gypsy sheep thieves.
No doubt they, too, would outsmart him.
At least the imbecile had been able to give descriptions. The woman was certainly Dr. Bergenghetti, something already known. What remained a question was her involvement with the two men, and in what were they involved? Judging by the Volvo's registration, one of the men was a Scot named Adrian Graham, who had retired from the British army and resided in Sardinia. Belli had heard the woman call the second man Jason, confirming his identity.
What was going on? Peters was likely responsible for the death in Sicily and four more in Sardinia. But why? Surely the man was not on some campaign of his own, simply out to reduce the Slavic population. Such a goal might be commendable, albeit illegal, but certainly profitless. Peters was after something else.
But what?
Guiellmo spread a map of the Bay of Naples across the top of his desk, his forehead wrinkled in thought. What was Peters doing at Cumae, seeking aid from a Sibyl who had not been in residence for two thousand years? What else was there at Cumae other than ancient Greek ruins that could be of interest? He ran a finger along the crescent of the coast. If archaeological sites were of some sort of significance, the closest to Cumae would be Baia.
There was something about Baia.... He couldn't remember.
Stepping across his office, he opened the drawer of a small table, taking out a number of tourist guidebooks. He had always intended to take a summer vacation, exchange the sauna that was Rome in August for the sea breezes of the Amalfi coast. These books were the closest he had come to fulfilling what he now realized was little more than fantasy.
He flipped pages of bright photographs until he came to Baia. What he read sounded more like myth than fact. Fact or fiction, whatever had brought Peters to Cumae was likely to take him to Baia or Pozzuoli next. Both were sites of significant Greek ruins. Only one, though, was likely to require self-contained breathing apparatus.
He went back to his desk and picked up the telephone. This time he would lead the operation himself, confide in no one, and have only himself to blame for failure.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Port of Savannah
Savannah, Georgia
0942 EST of the same day
The rusty freighter left a creamy wake in the mocha- colored waters as its Liberian flag hung limply in the morning's increasing humidity. There was nothing to distinguish the ship from any of the others plowing along within yards of the cobbled streets of the city's historic waterfront area, certainly no clue that the ship was owned and operated by Pacific Oriental Shipping, a partnership of entities that included the Sheikh of Dubai and Hutchinson-Whampoa. HW had controlled ports at both ends of the Panama Canal since one of America's lesser lights had used his presidential office to give that waterway to Panama. The idea could have come to him only as dementia from a peanut field's heat and been mistaken for divine inspiration. After all, God frequently gave him personal direction.
What had not been revealed from on high was that Hutchinson-Wampoa was owned by the Chinese army, hardly a force friendlier to the United States than its partner from the United Arab Emirates.
The containers stacked on deck, equally ordinary, would draw no attention, either. Specially ordered form plastic and auto parts from Japan, exotic wood from Malaya, and reproduction antiques from Taiwan (the Chinese saw no reason to let a political quarrel with the latter interfere with Western-style profit).
The ship's log included a stop at Naples, where a single container had been taken on board, marked simply, landscaping goods. The question of why any shipper would detour across the globe for such a small and mundane cargo might have caught the attention of port authorities had their union not repeatedly told them that questioning logs and cargo manifests was Uncle Sam's job, not theirs, and performing such a task gratuitously could only jeopardize the next contract negotiations.
Once quayside, the landscaping goods were lifted off the deck by a crane like any other bit of cargo and stacked on the dock five or six containers high. There was approximately a one in one hundred chance its contents might actually be inspected. The funding of the Transportation Security Administration was far too stretched to permit both the high-profile confiscation of passengers' cigarette lighters at the nation's airports as well as the far lesser known investigation of the millions of tons of shipping entering ports annually.
Few voters passed through marine ports of entry.
A large German shepherd, trained in detection of explosive material, did lead his handler down the corridor of stacked containers. Whether he discerned something or felt only the urge to leave a pee mail message for the next canine to pass this way, he cocked his leg as he panted in the increasing heat.
That was as close an inspection as the crate would receive in Savannah.
JOURNAL OF SEVERENUS TACTUS
My journey is to me a dream, as I see it now. The tiny craft, weighted by two men and the spare form of the Sibyl, wallowed precariously across a river that so reeked of rot,1 I put a cloth over my nose.
Charon had hardly touched the far bank with his oar to hold the little boat in place when the Sibyl jumped to shore with a nimbleness I would have expected in a much younger woman. As I have said, all the underground was enveloped in a dark haze, but I saw this other side of the river as though through a veil as well as eyes that did not want to remain open.2
We were in a domed cavern of some sort, the size of which I was unable to measure. The landscape was one of the most scant of features I had ever encountered, scattered sparse bushes and huge rocks. Surrounding us were faceless forms, spirits of the departed clad in hoods that shadowed faces. All were unknown to me but moaned in a manner most pitiful. As the Sibyl led me past them, many held out supplicating arms as though they suffered some torment I might relieve.
We had not gone far when the Sibyl held up a hand to restrain my further progress. In front of me stood a figure silhouetted in the fuzzy l
ight. He was as tall as my father, but his face, like the others, was concealed by a hood. Yet I could see light reflecting from his eyes and make out the line of the wound he received when as a hoy he fell from a horse.3
He said nothing hut gazed at me with a steady look.
"Father," I said, "it is I, your son, Severenus, come here to the place of the dead to speak with you."
If he heard, he gave no sign.
I tried again. "Father, my mother— your wife, Celia—sends you greetings, as do your other children."
Again there was no response and I was beginning to wonder if the dead had no ears.4
"Father" I said, raising my voice to be certain it might be heard above the moans of the other shades. "At your death, the granary was near empty; there were few goods in the storehouse and less in the treasury. Surely you removed these things elsewhere. Pray share with your family that location."
I feared, once again, that I would receive only silence as an answer.
Instead the form spoke in a whisper that could have been my father's voice or that of the wind in the spring leaves. "What you truly seek has been removed beyond your reach5 to be placed in the care of the servant of the god."
This made little sense. My father, although careful to offend no deity, was not a religious man, worshiping only Augustus, the man-god emperor.
He turned and began to walk away.
This was no answer but a riddle. I had not journeyed this distance nor spent funds that my family needed for other purposes to leave with only an enigma. I started after him, but the Sibyl stood in my way. I stepped aside to get around her.
Just then there were flashes of fire and I could see the flaming bushes were burning. As before, they consumed not themselves, but there were rocks placed next to each plant that began to glow from the flames. I thought I saw a mist emanate from stone, as though a spirit therein were being liberated.