'Interesting,' Jason said without commitment. 'I'm not sure Greco-Roman mythology is going to be helpful in finding what I want.'
Eno turned to Maria, obviously seeking a translation.
They exchanged sentences Jason didn't understand before she said, 'It is no myth. He believes that the Roman's journal is an accurate representation of what happened.'
Jason lowered the coffee cup he had almost put to his lips. 'It's real; he thinks it's real? That there really is a hell?'
Eno apparently understood the gravamen of that. He shook his head. 'No 'hell.' Hades.'
'There's a difference?'
' Si. Difference.'
The professor ignored his coffee to speak rapidly to Maria. His gesticulations confirmed Jason's belief that an Italian unfortunate enough to lose both arms would be struck dumb also.
When he had finished, or at least subsided, Maria said, 'There really is-was-a Hades, complete with River Styx and all. It was the place of departed spirits, a place of darkness, of heat and volcanic activity, hence the fire and brimstone the Christians associate with hell.'
Jason leaned back in his chair, unconvinced. 'If it was real, where was it?'
'Baia, or in the old Roman Latin, Baiae.'
'The place in the article.'
She nodded.
'But how-'
Eno interrupted with another stream of italian.
When he finished, Maria said, 'General Agrippa blocked it in, perhaps on the orders of Augustus Caesar, his friend and patron. That would have been sometime a.d. 12 or before.'
Coffee completely forgotten, Jason rested his chin on open palms, elbows on the table. 'You mean they sealed it off?'
She shook her head. 'No, they tried to completely fill it in. Like Nero's Golden House in Rome.'
He shook his head.
'When Nero died, years after Augustus, Vespasian filled the palace with dirt. It's been excavated for only a few years. Hades at Baia was the same, filled in.'
'Then how…'
She held up a hand, rushing on. 'A chemical engineer, an Englishman by the name of Robert Paget, retired to Baia and became interested in the local antiquities. In
1962 he and a native crew excavated part of it. They could work only in fifteen-minute shifts because of the heat and the gases, but he cleared the passageway to an underground river, the Styx. Along the way were sacrificial altars-'
'Gases?' Jason's interest quickened.
'They did no analysis, but there was some kind of gas that made them sleepy as well as prone to hallucinations.'
'Ethylene?' Jason was twisting his cup around on the tabletop.
Maria shrugged. 'Possibly. They were amateur archeol- • ogists, not geologists.'
Eno was following the exchange closely. 'The Inglese, Paget, he want to find Greek Hades, no geologist.'
Jason straightened up, palms flat on the table. 'Okay, so it looks like I'll have to go to… where?'
'Baia,' Maria and Eno said in unison.
'Not so easy,' Eno added. 'After Paget explore there, Italian government…' He made a motion of touching his hands together in silent applause. 'How you…?'
'The Italian government shut up the entrances, said it was too dangerous,' Maria said.
'Nobody's been in there since 1962?' Jason was incredulous.
Eno explained something to Maria, who turned to Jason. 'Another archaeologist, Robert Temple, convinced the authorities to let him explore further in 2001. He reported the gas levels had subsided, as had the intense heat reported by Paget. He took some pictures and wrote a book about it, Netherworld. Then the government sealed it off again.'
Jason drained the remains of what was by now very cold espresso. 'Why? I'd think the archeological value of the real Hades would be worth keeping it open.'
Eno motioned to the waiter for refills and joined in. 'Government say too dangerous. My guess, Church wanted closed.'
'Despite what the politicians say, the Catholic Church has tremendous influence on Italian politics,' Maria explained. 'Having a secular or pagan model of hell open for inspection would not be something the Holy Father would have supported.'
Jason thought about that for a moment. 'According to Eno's book, or at least the English summary of it, this place at Baia was filled with hallucinogenic gases, which a sect of scheming priests used to basically fleece people who believed they could meet the dead. The gases were there naturally, so the priests created Hades centuries before Christ. But why not in Greece?'
'Cumae oldest Greek city in Italy,' Eno said.
'Besides,' Maria added, 'they had little choice. Just the right gas combination was at Baia, so they had to create the Netherworld there. It was probably the only place in the Greek world with just the right characteristics: a cavern, gases, an underground river, and easy accessibility.'
Jason nodded. 'Disney World for wealthy ancients.'
Maria lifted her head to nod thanks to the waiter as he set another cup in front of her and whisked away the old one. 'Natural gases that were the product of a system of underground volcanic activity.'
'Part of the 'fire and brimstone' of the Christian hell, as Eno noted in his book,' Jason said, exchanging his cup for the fresh one. 'The physical evidence indicates that whatever minerals were involved in the Bering Sea incident and the Georgia National Forest came from around Naples, so I'd have to guess the ethylene blend did, too.'
Maria dunked the sugar-encrusted stick that came with her coffee. 'Which raises a truly interesting question.'
No doubt the same question that had been nagging at Jason's subconscious, an unexpressed idea that had first lurked in the back of his mind like a wild animal at the edge of a campfire until his conversation with Adrian.
Maria voiced the issue Jason had thought about since Adrian had made his suggestion. 'Why would the terrorists go to the trouble to find the source of a hallucinogenic gas? Why not simply kill their victims rather than gassing them first?'
'These people want to make a statement. Having something from the earth incapacitate the victims, in their minds, is a sort of revenge by nature.'
'But whatever it is does not kill anyone,' Maria protested. 'These men, these eco…?'
'Ecological terrorists,' Jason supplied.
'These men do the actual murder of helpless people.'
Jason leaned back in his chair. 'There's no understanding the thought process of lunatics, fanatics, but making a natural product of the earth they believe their victims are destroying makes the ecology-nature-a partner in revenging what they see as an evil done to the earth.'
Both Maria and Eno were giving him skeptical looks.
'Okay, Okay, so I'm just guessing. We may get the real answer at Baia.'
'Or Cumae,' Eno added.
'Cumae?' Both Jason and Maria were staring at the professor.
'Cumae,' he repeated. 'The gases, they could have come from there. The Sibyl, she maybe… how you say? High? Yes, she maybe high on some sort of gas when she give future statements.'
'Your book suggested epilepsy, not gas,' Jason noted.
Eno shrugged. 'A guess. Who for sure know why make statements?'
'Prophecies,' Maria corrected.
