Gates of Hades

by Gregg Loomis

  Eglov abandoned any pretext of unconcern. "What are you doing?"

  Jason gave him a malicious smile. "Things are a little different when you are the one about to die, aren't they, Eglov? This time you're not slitting the throat of some unarmed fisherman or lumberjack. Makes you a little uncomfortable, doesn't it?"

  "You are a fool to pass up the money you could make working for me, even more of a fool to bring the wrath of my followers down upon you."

  Jason ignored him. Using the strips to bind the Russian hand and foot, Jason slung him over his shoulder. "Open the door for me, will you?"

  Adrian did as he was asked. "But what...?"

  "We'll send our pal Eglov to meet his much-loved natural world in fitting style."

  Jason headed for the back of the house.

  Adrian and Eglov guessed what Jason had in mind at about the same time.

  "Surely you're not...?" Eglov said.

  What false confidence Eglov had left vanished as he began to howl for mercy in English and Russian.

  "Surely you would not kill a fellow human this way!"

  "You'd rather I cut your throat?" Jason said, shifting the burden of the man's weight. "You're getting about as much of a chance as you gave your victims. Besides, letting nature's own creatures take care of you seems ... well, appropriate."

  The pigs grunted in anticipation.

  As Jason returned to the house, the squeals of delight were becoming louder than the anguished screams.

  Maria, pale and haggard, was leaning against the bedroom doorway. "I saw what you did."

  "Fitting end, I thought," Jason commented. "By the way, brilliant move, mixing water with the dry ice."

  "Huh?" Adrian asked.

  Jason explained. "Carbon dioxide, when mixed in confinement with water, forms a gas. When the gas has no more room into which to expand, it explodes its confinement—in this case, the water bottles. Like gunshots."

  "Bonny good!" Adrian applauded. "That little prank saved our lives."

  Maria shook her head slowly. "Had I known what would happen, I don't know if I could have done it." She examined her hands. "I killed someone."

  "If you hadn't, we all would have been dead soon," Jason said.

  "And you ..." She was pointing an accusing finger. "I saw what you did. That was ... was . . . inhumane!"

  "Inhumane? Like gassing unarmed workers so they

  could peacefully be murdered? Like planning to assassinate the president? And what do you think they would have done to you when they tired, of raping you?" Jason asked. "If you hadn't stabbed that man..."

  She was wringing one hand with the other as though washing them. "Whatever they might have done ... I cannot live with killing someone." She glanced at the door. "I want to leave. Now."

  "Maria," Jason reasoned, "give it a few days. We can—"

  "No!" she almost shouted. "There is no more 'we.' Because of you, I killed another human being. I watched you literally feed a man to pigs to be eaten alive. No, Jason, I cannot be around someone whose business is violence."

  "But—"

  She was unconscious of the washing motions, Lady Macbeth. "I love you, Jason, but I cannot live with what you do. The sooner I start trying to forget you, the sooner I will."

  It was then that Jason realized that, quite possibly, he, too, was in love. The thought surprised him. After Laurin, he hadn't thought he was capable of it.

  "Look, Maria, I don't have to keep doing this. I can ..."

  She shook her head. "No, Jason. I can never forget the things you have done, even though I suppose you had to do them. I will find some quiet college-professor type, get married, and have a dozen or so children. I could not live with a man who killed for a living."

  "A college professor like Eno Calligini?" Jason asked bitterly.

  "Perhaps similar to him. They seem all similar. It is none of your concern." She turned to Adrian. "Would you take me to the nearest place I can get a bus to the airport?"

  Adrian looked at Jason.

  "Go ahead," Jason said dully. "I can't make her stay."

  Maria followed Adrian out the door, then reappeared. Crossing the room with quick steps, she threw her arms

  around Jason and kissed him. "Do you understand, Jason? I cannot live with what you do or what your duty requires. Even if you quit, you would resent me as the cause." Then she was gone.

  Epilogue

  Ischia Ponte, Islade Ischia

  A year later

  Jason stood on the second-floor loggia of his villa as the triumphant clamor of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" boomed from carefully placed speakers. He was concentrating on a group of buildings sloping up a hill a half a mile away. Brush in hand, he squinted as he tried again to catch in acrylic the exact hue the sun tinted the gray-white stone Cathedral of the Assnta, a golden sheen that seemed to radiate from within the stone of its craggy heights itself. The electric blue of the sea beyond looked more painted than real. Transferring these colors to canvas was a Sisyphean task; they changed by the minute. The challenge, though, was one too beautiful for any artist to decline, and his previous efforts had sold well in the artists' market in town.

  His new house was an Italianate walled compound situated on a small hill. White with a red tile roof, it possessed little other than size to distinguish it from other island homes nestled among the rugged terrain. He loved the way the sun recolored its stucco every hour with a glow he had no hope of reproducing with mere earthly equipment.

  He put down his brush and inspected the canvas in front of him.

  Beyond the piazza enclosed by his own walls, he could see the sole approach to the tiny village of Ischia Ponte, a causeway dating back to 1438, joining it to the volcanic island of Ischia. The Argonese Spanish also built a castle, a monastery, and the cathedral, all protected by a shoreline too steep to harbor ships or land a hostile army. Subsequently, the island became a favorite of Bourbon royalty and, today, of landscape painters and tourists avoiding the more popular attractions of Europe by seeking the main island's black sand beaches or tumultuous terrain.

  Jason had all but convinced himself his choice of residences was based on the single means of ingress and egress rather than the island's proximity to Naples, where he knew a certain volcanologist spent a great deal of her time.

  He had moved there immediately after a week of debriefing by Mama and the various American intelligence agencies, all of whom owed him a debt they could never admit. Failure to timely access the Breath of the Earth project could have resulted not only in assassination of the president, but political recriminations that would have sent any number of department heads into early and obscure retirement.

  In addition to the fee paid him by Narcom, he had asked only that the State Department do what was necessary to ensure that he was no longer wanted by the British Colonial or Italian authorities.

  In the first instance, the British Colonial office was all too happy to forget the matter. After all, their Caribbean possessions were one of the world's vacation spots. Even the rumor of violence would frighten the tourists who were the islands' main source of income.

  The Italians, understandably thorny when it came to activity by a foreign power on their soil, simply did not acknowledge that any such exercise had taken place at all. No one was certain exactly what had inspired Inspectore

  Santi Guiellmo, capo, le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica, to lead men into a shaft closed since antiquity. As was his custom, he had confided in no one. The old archeological site was far too unstable to risk any effort at retrieving the bodies. A simple Mass for the dead was said at the mouth of the hole and the matter officially forgotten.

  Although the depth of the sea surrounding Ischia precluded scuba diving, the fishing from Jason's small skiff was successful enough. Dorado and other fish were plentiful, and what he didn't catch was available in the open- air market in Ischia Porto, the island's main town and ferry port. Pangloss seemed relieved that there were no crabs ly
ing on the trays of ice, but the claws of the large prawns gave him pause.

  Even with a dog, painful memories lingered.

  Otherwise, Pangloss loved the people, color, and, above all, the smells of the market. Jason got the impression the dog would have preferred a car to having to keep his balance between the front wheel and Jason's feet on the floorboard of the Vespa, though.

  Daily help was inexpensive and provided a form of company, once the old woman realized the dog was far more friendly than fierce. Her extended family basically adopted Jason, including him in an endless procession of weddings, saints' days, birthdays, and one funeral, all occasions for appropriate gifts to grandchildren, nieces, nephews, cousins, and others of whose relationship he was uncertain. The affiliation also provided him with numerous eyes and ears. Should someone come looking for him, he would know before they found him.

  He took Italian lessons twice weekly.

  At night he cooked, read, drank wine, or watched bad Italian soaps or, worse, American sitcoms on the rabbit- eared set the previous owners had correctly appraised as not worth taking with them.

  Almost by accident one evening, he found the dogeared magazine Adrian had given him, the one containing the condensed version of Eno Calligini's book. Only then did Jason remember he had not finished the misadventures of Severenus Tactus, the one facet of the Breath of the Earth operation still incomplete.

  A glass of wine at his elbow, he had begun to read.

  JOURNAL OF SEVERENUS TACTUS

  Two days I remained in Agrippa's household. I began to despair that he would ever have restored to me what I had lost, for he rarely left the house, instead conferring for hours with men, many of whom I recognized as among the most powerful in Rome.

  Late in the afternoon of the second day, I heard his guest depart and set out to speak with my host. I found him at the counting table1 of his treasure house.2

  He looked up as I entered and smiled with a greeting.

  I was about to inquire as to what had been done when I saw a small gold stature of Dionysus3 on a chest. The same figure had adorned the little temple at which my mother, unlike my father, had worshiped all and many deities. Like most of the household treasures, it had disappeared shortly before my father's death. Without thought, I reached out to examine it.

  Agrippa moved with greater celerity than his age would suggest, clasping my wrist in an iron grip.

  "That statue belongs to my family," I protested.

  He shook his head. "There are legions like it. You are mistaken."

  I lunged and knocked the litlle figure upon the floor. On its bottom was my family's mark.4

  He did not release my wrist but said, "Your father owed much before he died."

  As though delivered by the gods, the words of my father's shade from Hades only two days past came back to me: In the hand of the servant of the god. Not servants, not gods.

  A single servant.

  A single god.

  Augustus, the emperor, was a god.

  Agrippa was his most devoted servant.

  In the two years before he died, my father had hoped to do business with the imperial household, to have intercourse with government. It was an ambition never voiced before, nor hoped for.

  But, I surmised, it had been one for which he paid dearly.

  "You," I said. "You took my father's money on a promise to return commerce from the emperor and state. You used your high office to induce him to believe you could do such things."

  Agrippa finally released my wrist. "As Augustus's confidant I could. Your father was foolish enough to believe I would. Who told you?"

  "My father's spirit," I answered. "And to him you will answer."

  Agrippa laughed. "I answer to no one but Caesar. But I shall have a response

  to the priests who revealed my business to you."

  NOTES

  1. Abacus.

  2. The villas of many wealthy noble Romans included a treasury, or thesaurus (from the Greek thesauros) within its walls. Usually small and windowless, it would also be where business was transacted.

  3. Roman god of wine, equivalent to the Greek Bacchus.

  4. This would have been a simple picture, design, or mark not dissimilar to cattle brands in the United States.

  Author's Note

  The diary stops abruptly here. What may have happened to Severenus Tactus for confronting the second-most- powerful man in early first-century Rome is only a guess. We do know, however, that Agrippa had the Oracle of the Dead (Hades) filled in. Not buried—filled from the inside out, a task that occupied at least two years. We can only suppose that such thorough destruction was not the result of mere efficiency but to ensure that no more of the old general's schemes came to light, or as an example to others who might tend to reveal them.

  Of course, we can never know, but this is one answer to the mystery of why Agrippa took such action.

  Ischia, Bay of Naples

  Jason had put the magazine down.

  He had found a place to live and begun to enjoy life.

  He was home free.

  Almost.

  He thought about Maria every day. Sometimes he brooded on the cosmic unfairness of falling in love twice and losing both times.

  The affair with Maria, though, had had some positive results. He found himself painting again, as though his anguish at the loss of Laurin had been unlocked like some emotional jail. He also realized that, at least in principle, he might find romance again.

  But not here, and he had no real desire to leave. At least, not until the artistic possibilities had been exhausted.

  Pangloss's joyful barking almost drowned out Wagner, no trivial feat.

  Someone was at the gate to the piazza.

  Jason shaded his eyes and recognized Petro, one of his housekeeper's countless grandchildren, a young man who always had some small treat for the dog. Jason never was sure whether it was affection or tribute.

  "It's unlocked," Jason called down.

  Pangloss met the visitor before he could climb the steps to the second floor.

  "Signore..."

  The boy was nearly breathless. He must have run all the way from Ischia Ponte, a half mile uphill. Jason waited for him to finish gasping.

  The lad blurted out his brief story. Cousin Anna, who worked in a dress shop in Ischia Porto, had called Stephano, her husband's brother, to tell him to notify Antonio, Petro's father, that someone had gotten off the SNAV hydrofoil from Naples and begun asking questions about Jason. Where did he live? Where could he be found?

  No, no one had mentioned what the stranger looked like, only the questions.

  Jason pressed a twenty-euro note into the boy's grateful hand, thanked him, and shooed him off the premises.

  Someone had found him.

  Painting forgotten, Jason went into the bedroom and knelt beside the bed. He pressed on the series of tiles forming a colorful abstract mosaic and a section of the floor sprang open. Inside was a small arsenal. A reliable weapon with both automatic and single-shot options, accuracy not requiring the surgical precision of a scope, and enough range to effectively cover any part of the villa was required. Jason selected a standard U.S. Army M-14 rifle with flash suppressor and banana clip. If one person had risked attention by asking about him, it was a safe assumption that a number of others had already arrived.

  Jason inserted the clip as he lay on his belly, sighting the weapon on the gate as the most likely place of attack.

  Damn, but this was getting old. He could, he supposed, summon the local police. But what could he tell them? That some unknown person had been asking questions about him? Hardly a crime. By the time the peace had been breached, it would be far too late to seek help.

  Pangloss's ears perked up just as Jason heard it: the sound of a straining auto engine.

  A second later a battered Ford Fiesta poked its rusted grille around a turn a hundred yards downhill, the last turn before Jason's gate.

  The car sputtered
to a stop just before the bars of the gate, hiding its occupants behind the wall. A figure in khaki came into view, head turning, searching for ...

  Looking for the bell, a loud, jangling device so unpleasant Jason swore it made his teeth itch. Had he visitors on a regular—or any—basis, he would have replaced it.

  There appeared to be only one stranger. Others quite likely were surrounding the villa. As the bell clamored

  again with an angry insistence, he moved closer to the edge of the loggia in hopes of widening his view.

  The only thing he could see was the brownish form below, brightened by a flash of brilliant green and fire engine red.

  Red and green?

  Like a...

  Like a Hermes scarf!

  He stood, dropping eight and a half pounds of M-14 plus clip on his bare foot.

  "Shit!"

  From below: "Jason, is that you?"

  He was trying to pick up the weapon, hold his damaged foot, and not sound surprised, none of which he was achieving. "Yeah, yeah. I'll be right down."

  "You sound cross."

  Try a broken foot to improve your disposition.

  Pangloss was already dashing for the gate in anticipation of another potential friend bringing treats.

  Jason got almost to the stairs before he remembered the M-14. Leaving a weapon in view wasn't a smart move, not when he would be trying to explain how peaceful his life had become.

  "Hold on," he shouted. "I'm coming!"

  "So is Christmas!"

  His weapons cache again concealed, Jason stumbled down the stairs and across the piazza and opened the gate.

  "I thought I was being turned away," she said.

  "No chance," he said.

  Pangloss ran in circles, barking during what he clearly considered an unreasonably long embrace.

  The Fiesta drove off.

  Jason picked up a single suitcase. "I'll take it upstairs."

  "What makes you think I am staying?"

  "You've got a hell of a walk if you don't."

  "You will not take me back to town?"