by Gregg Loomis
He led her out onto the piazza, gratified to see his table was still vacant. They sat, and Jason filled her coffee cup. “You speak excellent English.”
She smiled, showing a gap between her front teeth that was somehow rather sexy. “I should. My father was with the Italian diplomatic corps in Washington. I spoke English before I could even pronounce Italian.” She took a sip of the coffee, wincing from the bitterness. “In fact, I did my undergrad work in the States.”
“In volcanology? Seems an dangerous field, climbing up mountains, dodging hot lava, never knowing when things are going to blow up.”
She treated him to another glimpse of gapped teeth. “Dangerous for a woman, you mean. Your sexism is showing again.”
Jason held up his hands, palms outward. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean
…”
“Of course you did,” she said pleasantly. “And it is refreshing. Did it ever occur to you that women get just as tired of political correctness as men? Anyway, I got interested in geology, went to the Colorado School of Mines, came back to Italy with my parents, got bored, got married, got even more bored, and got divorced. I was looking around for something to do, something that would sufficiently shock my ex into finally accepting the fact that I was no longer his playmate. Studying volcanoes seemed perfect for all the reasons you mentioned, plus the fact that you get really grimy.” She reached into her purse, producing a pack of Marlboros. “Don’t suppose you speak any Italian?”
“Not much. Just a few situational phrases picked up in bad company.”
“Such as?”
Jason watched her light her cigarette. ” Muova quel rottame, cretino!”
She laughed, an almost musical sound. “You must have been driving in Rome. ‘Move that junk pile, you cretin!”’
Jason grinned. “Then I learned, ‘Ma perche e chiuso il museo oggi?’”
“Why is the museum closed today?”
” Ma perche il museo e chiuso domani?”
“Why is the museum closed tomorrow?”
“And ‘Quanto tempo starano in sciopero? “
She laughed again. ” ‘How long will they be on strike?’ What do you do for a living, other than Italian phrases?”
Jason was unprepared for the question. “Well, I have a business back in Baltimore…”
“One that involves the geographies of volcanic material?” She arched a skeptical eyebrow. “That is pretty lame, Mr. Young. Or whoever you really are.”
He grinned. “Dr. Kamito said you were the best. He didn’t say you were perceptive, too.”
“Being married to an Italian man makes you perceptive. Suspicious and skeptical as well. Remember Casanova?”
“The greatest of lovers, at least according to him.”
“Perfect description of my ex. But so much for my life and hard times. Exactly what is it you want me to do?”
Jason produced the vial of material Kamito had given him. “Tell me where this came from.”
She accepted the glass tube, holding it up to the light. “Where did you get it?”
“From Kamito.”
She sighed loudly. “I mean, what is its origin?”
“Apparently somewhere around the Mediterranean. Exactly where is what we want to know.”
She took the sample and stood, her coffee cup still full. “I hope you are more generous in paying for my time than you are with information. I have a crew checking monitors up on the hill”-she nodded toward Aetna-“and I need to make sure they do it right. One mistake and a lot of people around here would be unhappy.”
“Both, most likely.” She turned for the door. “But I should have whatever answer there is by the end of the day.”
Jason walked beside her, stopping to open the door that led to the postage stamp-size parking lot. “Figure out what I owe you. And if it isn’t too much trouble…”
She regarded him with a mocking expression. “Let me guess: you would like me to show you the town and have
Jason chuckled. “Close. I was going to ask you for your recommendations as to restaurants, but I like your idea
She opened the door of a dusty Ford Explorer, one of only two cars that nearly filled the lot. “I will be here about seven or so.” The door slammed shut and she cranked the engine, her head out of the window. “In the meantime, there is an old Norman fort at the top of the hill you might want to explore. At the bottom, there is a pretty well preserved Greek amphitheater. I would invite you to come up Aetna with me, but we would be in areas
“And as you said, it’s both dangerous and grimy.”
He watched as she backed out and drove downhill, shading his eyes until her car disappeared around the first of the series of hairpin turns that was Taormina’s
Chapter Twenty
Piazza del Duomo, Taormina
That evening
They sat in a cafe facing the piazza that was the center of Taormina. Since no motorized vehicles were allowed in this part of the town, the only sound came from the square’s baroque fountain, which, along with the fortresslike cathedral of San Nicola, was radiating with the Chianti red glow of sunset. A few blocks away, faint shouts came from a street soccer match between several boys, each of whom wore the jersey of a different team. Jason drained the last of a beer; he felt dehydrated from an hour’s tour that had included everything from Palazzo Corvaja, the Norman building that had housed the first Sicilian parliament in the fifteenth century, to the ancient Greek amphitheater.
Tourism, he decided, was thirsty work, particularly when every third building sold adult refreshment.
Maria nursed a glass of Sicilian white wine, a product Jason had determined would have better use in removing paint. Her streaked hair was down, giving a softness to her face. Her simple black dress was adorned only by a brightly colored scarf around her neck, an embellishment Jason instantly recognized as Hermes.
The signature blue and red of the silk had given him a shock he was not sure he had been able to conceal. Hermes-one of Laurin’s few extravagances. She had adored the colors and patterns unique to the French designer, keeping each in its signature orange box. At thirtyfive and a half by thirtyfive and a half inches, the square was large enough to serve as scarf, shawl, skirt, or even a top. Utilitarian as well as decorative, Laurin had described them.
Maria glanced down, checking the neckline of her dress. “I hope it is my scarf you’re admiring.”
“Uh, yeah,” Jason managed. “Hermes, isn’t it?”
She smiled. “Something men do not usually recognize unless they’ve bought several.”
“At three hundred per, they’re hard to forget.”
Would he ever find a place where Laurin was absent, somewhere a phrase, a landscape, a scarf wouldn’t remind him of her loss? He hoped not.
He forced his attention back to Maria. The dress she wore displayed her figure to more advantage than did her work clothes. Jason was deciding she was more than simply attractive. She was receiving admiring glances from almost every man who passed.
“Well,” she said, “you have now pretty much seen everything except the Wunderbar.”
Jason stopped watching men watch Maria and faced her. “Wunderbar?”
“Favorite haunt of your Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, movie stars.”
“Thirty years ago, wasn’t it?”
“People here still talk about it.”
Jason drained his glass, noting the surrounding buildings, some of which dated back to the Hellenistic period. “I don’t doubt it. Probably still talk about Ulysses passing thorough on his way home from Troy, too.”
She looked up from making concentric circles on the tabletop with the bottom of her glass. “I thought Americans loved their celebrities.”
“Want to try getting a waiter’s attention when Tom Hanks is at the next table?”
She laughed. “Point taken. But I doubt Liz and Richard are at the Wunderbar tonight.”
Jason signaled to the waiter. “Hungry? W
here’s a good place for authentic Sicilian cuisine?”
He paid the tab and she slipped an arm through his as they walked down the cobbled streets. Greek, Norman, Ottoman, all had left their imprint. They had gone only a few blocks when she veered into an alley, stopping in front of some tables in the street. From inside came recorded accordion music.
“Best spada alia ghiotta on the island,” she announced.
Jason started to ask for an interpretation, thought better of it, and pulled a chair out for her. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Over more white Sicilian wine and beer, he asked, “The samples, could you determine where they came from?”
She spoke to the hovering waiter in the harsh Italian dialect of Sicily and then nodded, digging in her purse. “The percentage of sulfates, the presence of certain igneous similarities such as the radiation level… they differ with each volcano.”
Jason shook his head. “Whoa! I appreciate your work, but I don’t need a tutorial.”
“No doubt about it, the Campania.”
He waited a moment for the sole waiter to set down the prima platte, a steaming plate of pasta con le Sarde. “Campania? You mean around the Naples area?”
She was spooning half of the macaroni, sardines, and wild fennel onto her plate. “Yep.”
He reached for what was left, noting it was considerably less than half. “What volcanoes are around Naples? I mean, Vesuvius hasn’t erupted since, what, 1944?”
She took a tentative taste, sighed with satisfaction, and said, “The sample was from a volcanic area, not necessarily an active volcano. Besides, the whole Bay of Naples has seen volcanic activity. The ancient Greeks and Romans regarded the thermo-mineral water that bubbled up in the Phlegraean Fields to be curative of a number of-”
Jason’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth. “The what?”
“Phlegraean Fields, in Baia.” She saw his puzzled expression. “At the northern end of the Bay of Naples. Mount Nuovo erupted there in 1538. Then there’s Lake Averno, a perfectly round lake that surely was a volcanic crater.”
“The whole Bay of Naples area is pretty large.”
He took a bite of the appetizer. Now he understood why the local wine had an astringent, puckering effect: the native food had a salty quality, sort of like anchovies out of a tin.
“Couldn’t you be a little more specific?”
She had nearly cleaned her plate and was eyeing his. “Just why would a Baltimore businessman want to know, Mr. Harold Young?”
He finished the last of his appetizer before meeting her gaze. “Does it matter?”
She sat back in her chair, fished around in her purse again, and produced a pack of cigarettes. “Do you object?”
“They’re your lungs.”
A lighter appeared and she puffed greedily. Blue smoke disappeared into the surrounding darkness.
“Does it matter?” she mused. “I suppose not, not if we say good-bye tonight.”
Jason was surprised to realize he very much did not want to say good-bye at all.
“On the other hand, as you Americans say, if we remain, er, friends, it matters very much. You see, Harold, or whoever you are, I was married to the ultimate liar. I think I mentioned him.”
“Casanova.”
“Yes, him. Just like some people have a violent reaction to, say, penicillin, I am allergic to liars. I know damn good and well some businessman from Baltimore didn’t come all the way to Sicily to see me just because he had a personal curiosity as to the geographic origin of some soil and rocks. I also listen to my colleague Dr. Kamito at various professional gatherings. I cannot say I know, but I sure suspect that he does work for some people who are not in it for the pure science.”
Jason started to interrupt but she went on. “No, let me finish. What Ito does and for whom is none of my affair. But I view with suspicion anyone he refers. I don’t really care what your ‘business’ is.” She made quote marks in the air with her fingers. “But I do insist on knowing who the hell you really are. Short of that, we will enjoy the meal, part on good terms, and I hope you enjoy your stay in Sicily.”
Jason was silent while the dishes were removed and the swordfish served.
“Answer enough,” she said, tearing off a piece of bread and dipping it in the small dish of olive oil. “I hope you like the entree.”
They ate in silence, the only sound music piped from inside. He would never know if he had eaten the best swordfish cooked in vegetables on the island, but he was certain that the meal would not be easily bested. He was even beginning to tolerate, if not enjoy, the local wine.
Leaning back on his chair’s rear legs, he looked up and down the narrow alley, where unevenly spaced streetlights created archipelagos of illumination in a sea of darkness. An old woman, dressed in the traditional black, leaned from an upper window to shake a tablecloth free of the evening’s crumbs. Another reached to tend to a window box of listless flowers. Men gathered around a pair of cardplayers inside gave grappa-induced laughs.
Jason broke the silence between them. “This is authentic, Liz and Richard notwithstanding. Seems like the real
Sicily. No TV, no iPods, no ringing cell phones. Totally un-Americanized.”
Maria looked up from her plate with mischief in her eyes. “You sure about that?”
“About what, that this is one of the most non-American-like places I’ve seen in Europe?”
She put a hand behind her ear. “Really? Just listen.”
The canned music that he had hardly noticed. It was the theme from The Godfather.
A few minutes later, they were walking back to Maria’s car when Jason said, “I’m at a bit of a loss: I know the samples came from around Naples, but that’s too large an area to be of any help.”
Maria stopped, turning toward him. “I would like to help, but I don’t even know your real name, let alone what you are looking for.”
” ‘Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.’”
“Milton, Paradise Lost. Knowledge is its own reward.”
“Ben Franklin?”
“Maria Bergenghetti.”
Jason grinned. “Okay, you got me…” He stopped midsentence, his attention drawn to the sound of an engine. “I thought you said cars weren’t allowed…”
Maria was looking over his shoulder, a question on her face. “They are not, only delivery vehicles and garbage pickup, both in the early morning.”
Jason turned and saw it: one of those trucks peculiar to European cities with narrow streets. Not as large as a small pickup, but larger than a conventional sedan, the truck filled the alley. Its headlights were dark, it showed no intent of stopping, and there was no room on either side for Jason or Maria.
Jason didn’t have time to think; he reacted.
Roughly shoving Maria into the first recessed doorway he saw, he began to run. There was no hope of outdistancing the truck, but the farther he got from Maria, the less likely the driver was to take the time to try to harm her also.
He thought of the SIG Sauer clipped to his belt and discarded the idea immediately. A bullet ricocheting from the sides of the buildings lining the narrow alley would be as likely to hit a resident as the truck driver. Besides, there was always the chance the driver had gone to sleep at the wheel, had a heart attack, or was motivated by something other than homicidal intent.
And there was the certainty that gunshots would bring the attention of the police, something that could end Jason’s mission as certainly as that truck.
The sound of the small engine at high rpms told Jason how fast the truck was gaining on him. At one point, he hoped he could make it to an intersection with a wider street, giving him more room to dodge the oncoming vehicle.
His pursuer was now so close, he imagined he could feel the heat of the engine.
And there was no intersection to be seen.
But there were window boxes like the ones he had seen from the dinner table.
W
ith hardly a break in stride, he gave a leap, adrenaline adding a Michael Jordan quality to his jump. His fingers touched the rim of a ceramic window box and managed to close before gravity reclaimed him. His prize was much heavier than he had anticipated, but at least he could move it using both hands.
Half running, half stumbling, he made it to the next recessed doorway. As anticipated, the truck swerved just enough to aim a fender at him.
At the last possible moment, Jason took advantage of the truck’s effort, stepping into the narrow angle between where the front bumper angled toward the door and the wall of the building. The truck was committed, although brakes screeched in futility against cobblestones before the left front fender smashed into the edge of the doorway at precisely the place Jason had been. At the instant of impact, Jason swung the window box at the windshield.
He was rewarded with the sound of crunching safety glass and a yelp.
Without stopping his forward motion, he had a hand on the truck’s door handle and wrenched. He didn’t slow to bend over and look. Instead, he grabbed the first thing he touched and snatched.
There was another yell and Jason held a man by the shirt collar. The man struggling in his grip had the same bulky build, the same slant to the eyes and shaved head as the man whose picture he had seen, Eglov. But it wasn’t the same man.
The man was reaching inside a pants pocket when Jason took a hand from the shirt’s collar to grab his assailant’s wrist. As Jason pulled it upward, light reflected from the long, thin blade of a stiletto.
Jason saw not only the knife but flames of that September morning. He heard screams, one of which could have been Laurin’s. The agony of his loss, coupled with his anger at nearly being run down like a dog in the street, ignited a fury that erased any rational thought.
Grabbing the hand with the knife, Jason snatched the arm level, at the same time bringing the heel of his other hand crashing down on the wrist.
Jason thought he could hear the ulna snap a split second before there was a howl of pain and the clatter of steel falling onto stone.
His former assailant was moaning as Jason changed hands to take the shattered wrist in his left hand while stooping to scoop the knife from the street with his right. Blade in hand, he drew back for the underhand stroke that would drive the blade under the protection of the rib cage and up into the heart.
