Jason pulled onto a grassy embankment that fell steeply off into a lake the color of midnight despite the sunny blue sky above. The few vehicles that passed paid them no attention.
Adrian and Jason exchanged puzzled looks before the latter said, “Guess we weren't followed after all.”
The Scot shook his head slowly. “Aye, but dinna be dropping your guard yet.”
Maria stretched her arms and yawned. “Where first?”
“Cumae, I think,” Jason answered. “I know Eno's book attributed epilepsy to the Sibyl, but I'd like to check to
make sure her cave isn't a source of that ethylene, too. How far?”
“Maybe four or five kilometers. Let me drive.”
The reason for her request became quickly obvious. Climbing and descending, she took what seemed a haphazard course. From one hill, Jason could see the lakes, from another the sea in the opposite direction.
At last she pulled into a small unpaved parking lot with no indication as to its purpose, turned off the ignition, and got out.
Jason followed, staring up at the surrounding low hills. “This is it?”
Maria nodded, walking around to the trunk. “It is.”
“But there's no . . .” He was looking at a deserted ticket booth and an iron gate hanging open on the last of its hinges.
“No tourists?” She filled in the blank. “Cumae is not one of the popular destinations. Few people other than archaeologists come here.”
Cumae must be remote indeed if no one was selling tickets, picture brochures, or cheap souvenirs. Jason suspected that, in Italy, tickets would be printed for a dogfight if it could be anticipated in time.
Maria was digging through the trunk. “I doubt we will encounter the gas you seek here, but we will test the air.” She held up a device with a meter attached to a hand pump. “This will tell us if ethylene is present.” She handed a miner's helmet to both Jason and Adrian. “And you will need these.”
She led Jason and Adrian along a dirt path that skirted the base of the hill to their left. After the trail made a ninety-degree turn, she stopped. The trio were looking at a passageway cut along the side of the hill. The exposed rock was yellow in color, the tufa Maria had explained was native to the region. Rather than round, the opening was square for its first three or four feet, then towered upward about eight feet in a lopsided A shape. Like floor-to
ceiling windows, open spaces alternated with stone. Even from outside, Jason could see the effect of equal areas of light and dark as the end of the tunnel vanished into shadow.
“You're right,” Jason said. “Too open. No gas could be held there.”
Maria entered. “The Sibyl's cave is not so open.”
The passageway was not quite wide enough for two abreast. Gauge in hand, Maria led the way, followed by Jason and Adrian. Without looking behind him, Jason rested his hand on the SIG Sauer in its holster, and he sensed Adrian also was prepared for whatever might happen. Although only a few feet away, Maria appeared and disappeared in much the same way described by Severenus Tactus two millennia ago.
Jason wondered what other parts of the Roman's account would prove accurate.
The alternating spaces that admitted light came to an abrupt end. Jason and Adrian put on the helmets, turning on the light on each. The artificial illumination gave the yellow walls a reddish tint as though washed in blood. Every few feet a niche was carved into the stone, stands for ancient lamps, judging by the halo of soot above each.
A few more steps brought them to the end of the passage. To their left was a cavern, a low-ceilinged, square room carved into the rock. Lamp niches were on three of the four walls.
“The Sibyl's cave,” Maria said, as she worked a small hand pump. “No sign of anything but normal air here, oxygen, nitrogen . . .”
Adrian held up a hand, a signal for silence.
Jason heard only the echo of his own breathing, then . . . a scrape, the sound of a shoe on stone or something hard against rock.
Maria and Adrian needed no signal to turn off the lanterns on their helmets as Jason did the same. “Any other way in?” he whispered.
He could only see Maria's dull silhouette shake its head, no. “Not that has been discovered.”
Taking each by the arm, Jason eased Maria and Adrian back the way they had come. Even if they had no other means of escape, they had one advantage: the location of the Sibyl's cave would force whoever had entered the passage to enter successive squares of light, while Jason, Adrian, and Maria remained in concealing darkness.
Pressing the two others against the wall, Jason drew his weapon. The slight rustle of clothing told him Adrian had unslung his Sten. Jason thumbed off the safety and heard the echoing snick of the Sten's bolt being cocked.
Though he knew better, an eternity seemed to pass before Jason saw indistinct shapes flitting between the light and dark sectors of the long passage. Had he not reined it in, his imagination could easily have seen long-robed priests leading a young Roman to hear his fate foretold.
Instead, he made out four distinct figures, each moving with hands clasped in front as though carrying a weapon at the ready, each progressing in synchronized movements designed for a minimum of exposure to the sunlight and a maximum of coverage by his comrades.
Jason pushed Maria toward the first opening, speaking with his lips to her ear. “When they move next, you go through outside.”
He felt, rather than saw her nod.
When the four figures simultaneously slipped from one patch of dark to the next, Jason shoved Maria, knocking her forward and out of the corridor. He lunged after her, half expecting shots.
There were none.
Outside, Adrian stood, dusting himself off while holding the Sten, its stock still folded. He had it trained on the passage they had just exited. “Get a look at 'em?”
Jason shook his head. “No. But they move like they've been trained, not some pickup gang of thugs.”
He wasn't sure if that was better or worse.
Adrian helped Maria to her feet. “Any way out of the area without passing by the entrance?”
Instead of speaking, she motioned. Jason followed, keeping the gun's muzzle pointed at the slots in the cave's side. Where were they, the people who had entered? Was it possible they were only tourists visiting an obscure place?
Not moving in concert, as he had seen. More like military.
Then why . . . ?
Possibly they had been blinded by emerging into light; possibly they hadn't seen Jason, Adrian, and Maria's exit.
Possible, but unlikely.
They were walking up a stone-paved path that wound its way around the hill into which the Sibyl's cave had been carved. Idly, Jason wondered if the rocks had ben worn smooth by the feet of ancient Romans. The trail ended at steep stairs carved into naked rock and long ago polished by use and the elements.
“Temple of Jupiter, highest point in the site,” Maria announced. “We should be able to see them when they come out of the cave.”
Jason started to reply and decided to save his breath for the ascent.
Minutes later they stood among broken and tumbled columns. From the stubs still in place, Jason guessed there had originally been six to a side, with two across the front and back. Rubble of columns and pediment were strewn around a large stone platform atop crumbling stairs that had led into the floor of the temple. To his right, Jason could see a number of figures slowly working in a field beyond two large arches.
“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”âshe pointedâ“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 shootin', 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 tagâthe 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 aboutâhe 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.