Gregg Loomis - Gates Of Hades

He managed to forget late-nineteenth-century France and turned to face the desk behind him. "So, what now?"

Mama shrugged. "You're the one makes the big bucks. You know what facilities we have. They're all available."

Few third-world countries had the intelligence and military resources of Narcom, Inc.

He paced over and stood directly in front of the desk. "For a starting point, I'd like to see whatever reports were made, see if they took specimens, fluids, any of that really gross stuff. Run 'em by that spectroanalyst we use…"

Mama stood, handing him a plain white envelope. "Here's your contact."

Jason opened it, annoyed but not surprised to see what he took to be a single name and a phone number.

"Password is fife," Mama added.

"Fife, as in Barney?"

"As in fife and drum. Drum's the countersign."

"Don't these guys know we're on their side? Or at least they're paying us a hell of a lot of money to be." Jason held up the envelope. "Tell me this isn't going to burn a hole in my new suit when it self-destructs."

Mama grinned, one gold incisor sporting a diamond. "This isn't Mission Impossible, you know."

Jason nodded. "Yeah, I know. Question is, does the CIA? I wouldn't be surprised which bathroom is the men's and which is the women's is classified over there."

Mamma chuckled, her massive bosom quivering enough to shake the desk. "That might lead to interesting results." She swallowed, serious again. "You need anything, call."

Jason had been dismissed.

He was reaching for the door when she said, "Jason, I almost forgot."

He turned to see her holding out what looked like an ordinary BlackBerry, the combination cell phone and computer that had become the badge of anyone who wanted to be considered important.

"Thanks, but I have one."

She motioned him back with the hand holding the BlackBerry. "Not like this you don't. It's straight from the Third Directorate."

The CIA was divided into four compartmentalized divisions: Operations, or Ops, included the actual spycraft, cloak-and-dagger activities. Intelligence consisted of the satellite-picture-searching, communications-monitoring computer nerds. Supply, the Third Directorate, functioned somewhat like Q of James Bond fame. They had actually developed a gas-spraying fountain pen, a belt- buckle camera, and a poison-laden hyperdermic needle concealed in an umbrella. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the need for these "toys" had diminished to the point that Jason had had to search his memory to recall exactly what Supply did. The Fourth Directorate, Administration, included the bean counters, the cost analysts, procurers of equipment and the like.

Jason looked at the BlackBerry with renewed interest. "And it does what?"

"Functions just like an ordinary BlackBerry." Mama opened her other hand, revealing what appeared to be a newly minted quarter. "When you squeeze this, though, it goes bump in the night."

Jason took both, examining them closely. "How much 'bump'?"

"Enough that you don't want to be holding it."

Jason slid them both into a pocket. "I'll try to remember that."

"And keep the two in separate pockets or you'll be singing soprano the rest of your life."

"I'll definitely remember that."

As he passed through the lobby, he waved to Kim. She ignored him.

In the garage he sat in the car a moment, planning his course of action.

He remembered his first job for Narcom, Inc.

After 9/11, after Laurin had… disappeared, the days and weeks had blended into a haze of equal grief and impotent fury. He was part of the most elite small-engagement organization in the world, Delta Force. He had dropped into inky darkness to places so deserted, so void of life that even the appearance of a scorpion had provided relief. He had slipped across borders into jungles that stank of decay, where boots rotted away in a week and both animals and plants were equally likely to be poisonous.

But no place had been as near to hell as the empty house on P Street in Georgetown, the home he and Laurin had shared. No encounter was as bad as being able to do nothing other than accept that she had been taken from him and there was nothing he could do about it. Getting even was out of the question; no life would equal hers. Still, he would gladly give years of his for just a chance at those responsible for her death.

Then Mama had called.

At first he had thought some prankster was playing a cruel joke. Then he remembered she was calling on a secure line, a phone that not only was unlisted but did not exist as far as any phone company knew.

It was as if she were intentionally playing Mephistopheles to his Faust.

The soft woman's voice named the members of his last squad and the code name of their mission, information so classified that less than a dozen people knew it. Would he be willing to take a high-paying job that desperately needed doing but carried far too much risk for politicians, a job ignoring national boundaries to stamp out international terrorist organizations, those who were perfectly willing to kill the innocent to impose their politics or religion on others?

Did a bear shit in the woods?

Did he have qualms about killing extremists, no matter their sex or nationality?

Did a shark ask questions before it fed?

A week later, Jason handed in his resignation from the army and Delta Force amid the sounds of debris removal at the Pentagon. That night he was on a plane for Munich, from where he would travel to a small town just across the Austrian border to a place the leaders of three European cells of Hamas were meeting.

Two days later he was on his way home, his rage at his loss partially slaked and his newly opened Swiss account over half a million dollars fatter.

It took the Austrian officials over a week to conclude that they would never find all the body parts.

Narcom had given Jason two things: wealth and revenge. There might be enough of the former in the world, but never the latter.

So much for Memory Lane. He had a new job to do.

Hilton Hotel K Street, Washington

That evening

Dressed in a new sweater and slacks as well as a warm and moth-free coat, Jason had cruised the Kalorama District, an area of restored mansions bordering Dupont Circle known locally as Embassy Row. Despite a number of sudden and unsignaled turns that brought the blasts of angry horns, he was still not sure he was not being followed. There was simply too much traffic to be certain.

Checking his watch for the third time in as many minutes, he was aware he was likely to be late for a rendezvous Jason considered useless at best. In typical CIA fashion, the phone number Mama had given him was answered only by the countersign, a time, and the bar of this Hilton as a meeting place. Simple courier delivery of the material Jason wanted would have served. The organization frequently reminded Jason of a group of kids playing at being spies, secrecy and stealth their own rewards. That love of the cloak-and-dagger mystique meant that if Jason were late, he'd miss his contact and have to go through the elaborate process of setting up another clandestine meeting.

He pulled to the curb in front of one the embassies, this one flying a flag he didn't recognize. As expected, a D.C. cop cruiser was behind him in less than a minute. In a world where alliances shifted like sands in a windstorm, the municipal government of the District made every effort to ensure that international antagonisms took only verbal form in its jurisdiction.

One cop stood just outside the driver's window of Jason's rental car. Another was checking the license plate.

The one beside the car made a motion to roll down the window. "You got a problem, mister?"