Gates of Hades (6 page)

“Boy, I bet this causes an uproar,” the first spectator observed as casually as though commenting on the nightly news. “A murder isn't going to do the island any good. Particularly one this grisly.” He sounded as if he were enjoying the show.

“Murder?” the second man asked sarcastically. “What murder? It was a boating accident.”

Jason turned his back on the following snicker. Where had these people become so emotionally calloused that they could view a decapitation with such equanimity? Violence had been part of his life for a long time, and he would never become accustomed to sights like that on the dock. Did American television and movies put
that
much bloodshed in the lives of normal people?

He looked for a place to throw up unobserved.

Almost unobserved.

One man in the crowd watched closely. Jason was too busy losing the afternoon's beers to note the small digital camera with its enhanced light lens.

 

 

Costa Rica

December 26

It was unlikely anyone would have come upon the building. It was so well concealed in the rain forest that at first sight it seemed like a jungle cat pouncing from the green curtain of growth.

Otherwise, it was remarkable only in that it had a veneer of concrete rather than the cement block from which most native homes were built. What could not be observed in the remote chance of a passerby was that the structure was not a house at all. It concealed the entrance to an underground network. The massive ficus tree whose branches seemed to embrace the modest edifice concealed a dozen or so high-tech antennae. The strangler fig vines, thick as a man's wrist, that draped from the tree like ropes anchoring a balloon were actually electrical wires that ran to a generator far enough away that its gentle hum could not be heard here.

Not that sound mattered. The nearest settlement, a native village, was miles away, and the increasing number of tourists visiting the Costa Rican rain forest were content
to remain in their vehicles on what served as a road on the opposite side of the mountain.

The government, always in pursuit of U.S. dollars, had happily allowed the construction of a nature laboratory to study and preserve the local flora and fauna. No one in San José had questioned the necessity of using nonlocal labor to build the facility, workers who melted away like mountain mist in the morning sun as soon as the job was complete. As long as certain officials received their monthly “consulting fee,” no one questioned what was going on in the rain forest.

Only ten feet below the surface of volcanic rock, a room of roughly a thousand square feet was as brightly lit as an operating room. Two men sat in front of a computer screen.

Both were dressed in guayabera, the loose-fitting, four-pocket shirt the Latin America peasant wore outside rough white canvas pants rolled almost to the knees, with thong flip-flops. Notwithstanding the native attire, neither man would have been mistaken for a Costa Rican. Both were bulky, with the bodies of athletes from some sport where hurting someone was part of the game. The light from the computer reflected a bluish glow from two shaved scalps.

“You're sure that's him?” one asked the other.

“You can see the harbor of St. Bart's in the background,” the other responded.

The first man shifted his position for a better view. “What do we know about him?”

The other touched a key on the board in front of him and read from the screen. “Very little so far. He was at one time employed by the army—we hacked into the military's files—but not much since he left in 2001.”

“Echelon?”

The man referred to the supereavesdropping program that, from its place in England, monitored every e-mail and most telephone calls worldwide. The information gleaned
was shared only by England, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The satellites and the system they made work had been in operation long before the American public learned that their communications could be intercepted. The sheer volume of transmissions made it highly unlikely that anyone would be listened to without already being of interest to one of the governments involved.

“Our person there has secretly tagged Peters's name, although that's more difficult than watching for a specific phone number or e-mail address. He may use an encryption device. In any case, we're tracing what we took from his companion. Is he a threat?”

“He or his employer has Alazar's computer.”

The other man, perhaps a year or so younger than the first, reached into a bowl containing the small, sweet bananas grown nearby. He began to peel. “Surely he wasn't so careless as to . . .”

The older man snorted. “Alazar was not part of our cause. He was only in it for the money.”

The other finished the banana in two bites. “We've found the location of his secret; we no longer need him. Perhaps his death was providential.”

“Perhaps. But keep our people looking for Peters. We can't risk what might be on that computer. The secret he sold us is our greatest weapon against the despoilers of the earth.”

Cave of the Sibyl

Cumae, Gulf of Naples

Campania, Italy

Nones Iunius (June 1), Thirty-Seventh Year of the Reign

of Augustus Caesar (
A.D.
10)

1
. Other than Virgil, Homer, and other Greco-Roman poets, this is the first account of such a journey, certainly the first by a nonheroic personality or in the first person, although there is little doubt that real persons in addition to legendary ones (Aeneas, Odysseus, etc.) risked such a venture. Then, of course, there was Persephone, who, kidnapped by Pluto, lord of the underworld, was allowed to return to the earth each spring for a visit.

2
. The modern name for the town, used for convienince's sake. The Roman name was Bauli.

3
. The selling of sacrificial livestock was a mainstay of the priests and attendants at oracles and sibyls throughout the ancient world. Not all the animals purchased for this purpose were slaughtered, allowing any number of resales.

4
. Cumae is the oldest Greek settlement yet found in Italy. The Cumae Sibyl was regarded as one of the two or three most important sources of divination in the ancient world and was held in equal or higher esteem than the oracle at Delphi in Greece.

5
. The easy solution would seem to be simply asking the Sibyl, but oracles dealt only with secrets
of the future, not the past. Possibly this division of labor kept more priests profitably occupied, not unlike the strict division of tasks favored by today's labor unions.

6
. The cave of the Sibyl at Cumae may be visited today. The approach is a number of equally wide pillars of stone and open space. In the afternoon sun, a person walking along this corridor would enter darkness and light at identical intervals, giving the illusion to the observer outside of alternately appearing and disappearing. We will further examine other tricks of showmanship designed to dazzle, or better yet, frighten, those who dealt with the cult of priests.

North Caicos, Turks and Caicos Islands

British West Indies

January

The silver column of bubbles floated lazily toward the surface, leaving tiny globs of air to hang momentarily on the lips of the barrel sponge and plate coral above Jason's head. Despite the eighty-foot depth, the tropical sun was bright enough to make an artist's palette of color of the wall, a natural drop that fell into the hazy blue hundreds of feet below.

His artistic eye was oblivious to the spectacular quality of his surroundings. Instead, his attention was focused on something else as he hung motionless over the abyss, concentrating on a small hole in which he could see a spider crab. Though it was small in body, the crustacean's legs and claws were large enough to make a meal for two, a meal of the sweetest meat Jason had ever tasted. He wouldn't taste this one, though, unless he could get it out of its lair. The crab had retreated far enough back that it was out of reach, and Jason had left his spear in the boat. Nothing to do but remember the spot and come back.
That tangle of branchlike black coral would make a good marker, he thought as he flicked his fins and slowly moved on.

His dive watch told him he had still had a good twenty minutes before the pressure of depth presented any danger of the bends.

He watched a leopard ray glide by, its wings rippling in a graceful simulation of flight.

Then he heard it: an angry buzzing like the sound of an electric razor, growing louder. An outboard. Inside his mask, his eyebrows curved into a frown. On an island as sparsely populated as North Caicos, there were plenty of places for the natives to fish without dropping a line on the section of wall he was diving. Surely they could see the boat and would know he was down here. Maybe they'd go on by.

Somehow he doubted it.

As if to confirm his suspicions, he heard a splash and watched an anchor pull its line down to the sandy shelf forty feet above his head as the motor died. Jason waited, expecting to hear the thunk of a sinker on a hand line as it hit the water. He wanted to see where the treble hooks preferred by the locals were hanging rather than risk getting snagged. No fishing line, sinker, or hook was forthcoming.

Strange.

Unless the boat's occupant wasn't fishing. Unless somebody had come out here for him.

He bit the soft rubber of his regulator's mouthpiece in annoyance. There would be only one reason for somebody to come out here after him, and they were supposed to leave him alone for the next three months. Two jobs a year—that was it, the max. It had been only weeks since the affair on St. Bart's.

In fact, it would be fine if they overlooked him for a year or two. The work had paid well enough for him to retire as it was, enough to mandate that he reside someplace with no income taxation. His employer managed to
satisfy the IRS by means Jason felt were best not inquired into, but sheltering his income where he lived was his responsibility. Hence his present residence. He had built the house as a vacation home, an excuse to claim residence in a tax haven. Now it was where he lived, had been home since his life had been turned upside down and shaken out as though the gods were emptying a paper bag. Ever since . . .

He pushed the thought out of his mind and glared up at the hull of the newly arrived boat. Well, if they were determined to intrude on his dive, they damn well could wait until he finished.

Maybe that crab was back on the edge of its hole.