Gregg Loomis - Gates Of Hades

At some point, Jason exited the Metro and took a cab to the venerable old hotel across Lafayette Park from the White House. The woman at the desk was unable to conceal her surprise when he paid for the room in cash. It would draw unwanted attention, but the credit card would attract notice even less desirable.

One of the reasons Jason had selected this particular hotel was its dining room. The fare was good, but the location better. Seated at any one of several candlelit tables on the floor below the lobby, he had a clear view of anyone descending the well-lit stairs or exiting the elevators under overhead illumination. His first thought was to have a cup of coffee and tarry thirty minutes or so, observing. After only ten, the siren aroma of a passing dish reminded him he had not eaten in a long time. He asked for a menu.

His room was furnished with reproductions of lateeighteenth-century American pieces, a period reminiscent of the building's origins. The cabinet containing the TV and minibar was a highboy with brass pulls. The bed had both steps and canopy. Just to make sure, he checked the bathroom, satisfied the faux antiques did not include these facilities. Sitting in a Martha Washington chair at a Federalist desk, Jason began to read the report he had been given.

There were a number of items that had not been included in the briefer document Mama had given him, and one very interesting addition.

When he finished, he reread it, puzzled, before taking the BlackBerry-like device Mama had given him out of his pocket. The resemblance ended largely with the physical case. Although the gadget could receive and send voice and text messages, it could do so in nanosecond garbled bursts that both defied decoding without appropriate equipment and sent false satellite coordinates that would foil the most sophisticated GPS. In short, communications were secure both as to location and content.

He punched a button on the back that activated the special features and then a series of numbers, beginning with the 202 D.C. area code, well aware that the actual phone he was calling might be on the other side of the world.

Jason waited. There was no sound of ringing in the conventional sense. He was calling his agency contact whom he used when he needed information on anything. Anything included pertinent weather updates in any part of the world, scientific data, or impeding coups or assassinations.

The latter two, Jason mused, had been on a decline in inverse proportion to increasing congressional inquiry. Gone were the halcyon days when a people's revolution conveniently removed a leftist-leaning dictator of some banana republic, or a rival clansman used a single bullet to end the anti-Western ravings of some sheikh or mullah.

The more moral American foreign policy, the more chaotic the world became.

There was no salutation, no mention of a name, simply a "Begin."

Jason was used to the abruptness. In fact, he had long suspected he was speaking to a voice mechanically generated to make electronic identification impossible should the conversation somehow be recorded. Machine or person, he had no idea with whom he was speaking, only that the voice was always the same.

"Reference"-Jason held the written pages up to the light-"document echo-tango-four-zero-two. Question: The bodies found all had traces of silica and ethylene in the lungs, though in quantities that should not have been fatal. Couldn't that have come from natural surroundings?"

Pause.

"Unlikely with silica on the Bering Sea incident. Possible in Georgia, but the soil had low silica content. Unless there were a sandstorm. There was no record of a sandstorm in the area."

Only a machine would exclude that possibility, given the locales. No, knowing the CIA…

Jason ran his eye down the page. "I note sulfates at almost uniform levels in all the victims' lungs, too. Isn't it unusual that persons with different-size lungs would have almost identical amounts?"

"Very."

Not exactly helpful. "Any explanation?"

"As stated, tissue studies show nitrogen also, as well as trace carbon. As in some sort of smoke inhalation."

"Smoke from what?"

"Unknown. Subsequent photographs of the ship and logging camp depict some sort of brush or scrub as the only flora nearby. One in a pot, the other beside the bunk- house. None of it appears to have burned."

"Then what did the smoke come from?"

"Good question."

Jason thought for a moment. "Let's go back to the silica. That's a common element in rocks as well as sand, right?"

"Right."

"Any chance they breathed silica in the smoke?"

"Only if a rock was burning. Not likely."

"Okay," Jason went on, "any idea why they would be gassed at all? I mean, shooting would have been a lot more efficient."

"We don't know. That, Mr. Peters, is why we hired your company."

Jason thought for a moment. "Anything else that's surfaced since the report was written?"

Pause.

"There were traces of radiation. Very low rads, but ascertainable. Also some evidence of hydrocarbons in the blood, and ethylene."

Jason paused, trying to pry loose a distant memory. "Ethylene is an anaesthetic, isn't it?" "Was. Its use was discontinued in the sixties." Jason stood, idly glancing around his hotel room. "Don't suppose you have any explanation for the presence of the hydrocarbons, either."

"You are correct."

Swell.

Jason was dealing with a form of anaesthesia mixed with what amounted to sand, one or both radioactive, origins and purpose unknown. The agency needed a geo- or biochemist, not a spy. "You've been a big help."

Pause.

"Always pleasure, Mr. Peters."

Was that a trace of mechanized sarcasm?

The National Mall, Washington, D.C.

The next morning

Shortly after sunrise, Jason had dropped by the Crystal City hotel to check on Pangloss. That had been a mistake. The big mixed-breed managed such a pitiful look from behind the bars of his kennel that Jason let him out and watched as the dog streaked for the backseat of the rental car Jason had just retrieved. What the hell? Jason rationalized. They both would be leaving Washington today, anyway.

The question was, for where?

At the moment, Jason was one of a number of people walking their dogs on the grassy mall in full view of the capital building. Restrained by an unaccustomed leash, Pangloss made a halfhearted lunge for a tourist-fattened squirrel, an effort Jason saw as more instinctive than motivated. Tail flicking indignantly, the intended prey unleashed a string of chattering rebuke while head-down on the trunk of a bare oak tree.

Jason gave the leash a tug, "Come on, Pangloss. You wouldn't know what to do with him if you caught him."

By now man and dog were in front of the original Smithsonian building, the redbrick Victorian pile that for years had housed the basis of the collection that now occupied most of the mall. Across the lawn was an unimposing structure, neither particularly modern nor classical. Its best architectural feature was that it was not of the type so common in Washington, a style Jason referred to as "Federal Massive."

Jason checked his watch and slowly walked over, watching the parade of joggers, dogwalkers, and bureaucrats scurrying to standard-issue desks in buildings that were visually indistinguishable from one another. Stopping as though to make certain where he was, Jason appeared to read the words above the entrance that informed him he was entering the National Museum of Natural History.

No one in sight paid him any attention.

He pushed his way through a revolving door and came face-to-face with a man in the uniform of the Smithsonian's security service. His name tag labeled him as W. Smith. Had Jason been asked, he would have guessed W. Smith had recently shaken Jim Beam's hand. Red-rimmed lids were puffy, almost closed over piglike eyes. He winced at any sound as though magnified, and hands were shoved into pockets, perhaps to conceal shaking.