'Makes sense,' Jason agreed. 'Somehow they guessed we'd be here. Good thing they came when they did.'
'Good for us,' Maria said, watching dust belch out of the mouth of the cave. 'Perhaps not so good for them.'
As though her words were prophetic, the hillside trembled for an instant, then was obscured in a tornado of dust and rocks. None of the three said a word for perhaps five full minutes.
'Those policemen,' Maria finally said. 'They are trapped inside.'
'So are Eglov and his thugs,' Jason added.
'Ye really think so?' Adrian asked.
'Who else would have been down there other than someone who was planning to use the gases emitted by the pumice? They were all equipped to deal with it.'
'But of what use to them would be nonlethal ethylene gas?' Maria wanted to know. 'It is effective only in enclosures.'
'I don't know,' Jason admitted. 'A hallucinogenic, nonfatal gas, usable only in enclosed space. But at least we now know what the 'Breath of the Earth' business was about. I'll send the info to Washington and let them sort it out.'
'Do that on the way,' Adrian suggested. 'We've na' business hovering aboot here like drunken sods after last call. You can be sure the local constabulary'll be on its way when those poor devils in the cave don't return. Let's get what little kit we left at that wee hotel las' night an' be gone.'
Jason turned to walk down the slope, sidestepping pebbles and rocks still tumbling downhill. 'Better yet, let's not go back to the pensione. If the cops knew we were here, they're gonna look around. They'll find that an American and a woman fitting Maria's description checked in and never checked out. They'll assume we're in that cave, too.'
'Fine for you, laddie,' Adrian observed, fishing a plastic bag out of his back pocket. 'But sooner or later the lass has to go back to her work, an' I'd like to go home m'self.'
'Easy enough for me,' Maria suggested. 'I was duped by the handsome American spy who made me think he, too, was a volcanologist. By the time I found out otherwise, I was his captive.'
Adrian had removed his pipe from the bag and blew through it with a wet whistling sound. 'An' was madly in love, too blind to see the possible pitfalls.'
Jason looked at him skeptically.
'I'm na' 'round th' bend, lad. 'Tis the stuff of Italian fiction. They love it.'
'It might work at that,' Maria agreed.
'So, you just go back to work like nothing happened?' Jason asked.
The question did not come from idle curiosity. He remembered her vow to return to her job as soon as any volcanic exploration was over. He had managed to avoid thinking about it. Since Laurin's death, women had entered his life for an evening, occasionally a weekend, and exited just as casually. In most cases he had watched their departure with a relief he suspected they shared. They had made his life less empty by supplying a diversion or even an imitation of love, a masquerade that shriveled and died in the morning's light
Not Maria.
He admitted he did not want her to leave. For the first time since his wife's death, he could actually imagine a more permanent relationship. There was something about that gap-toothed smile, the tenderness they shared after sex, even the ludicrously expensive Hermes scarfs. Mostly, there was that unexplainable something, that feeling that defining it would reduce it to the banal.
But had she changed her mind since that night on the Costa Smeralda?
' 'Twould be best if she put a day or so between here an' returnin' to her normal life,' Adrian observed. 'Wee bit too coincidental, she manages to escape at joos' the time her captor is buried under a hundred tons or so of rock. I propose we leave the Volvo here, go back to Silanus for a day or so. Nothing happens there without people knowing aboot it. I'll have m' neighbors sniff out what they can before you return to whatever volcano you're workin' on, lass. Give me time to see how much muck I've gotten m'self into, too.'
Jason tried not to show his anxiety as Maria considered what Adrian had said.
He also tried not to show his relief when she replied, 'You make sense. A few days, then. But how do we get back to Sardinia without being seen?'
Jason leaped in. 'They won't be looking for us if they think we're under all that rock, particularly if we go separately.'
'Separately?' She looked apprehensive. 'But what if some of those
… people are still looking for us?'
'Eglov's people?' Jason asked. 'I'd guess they're permanently entombed in Hades. Talk about just deserts! If not, another reason to lie low at Adrian's place for a few days. He can use his neighbors there to let us know if someone's looking for us.' He reached into a pocket and produced the BlackBerry-like device. 'Right now I gotta phone home.'
Adrian put out a hand, tugging Jason's sleeve. 'Not now, laddie. Give us long enough to get as far from here as possible before someone comes to check on the coppers we left in there.'
Jason was staring at his communication. 'Something must have hit it. It's not working.'
'Anything that canna wait?'
Jason shook his head. 'Can't think of anything.'
Chapter Forty-six
I-95, between Richmond and Washington
At the same time
Rassavitch's eyes felt as though they were full of sand, and his back was telegraphing pain all the way down his leg, but he was thankful for the safe trip.
He forced his eyelids open a little wider to read the address the man had given him at the convenience store a few miles back, the last place on his primary instructions: I-95 to the Beltway, to Rock Creek Parkway to…
He rubbed the back of a hand across his face and bit his lip in hopes the pain would keep him awake.
He would complete this mission.
PART VII
Chapter Forty-seven
Naples, Cagliari Ferry
Later the same day
The ferry provided overnight accommodations, but, unlike a hotel, no passport was required; nor was there a metal detector to screech at the weapon Jason was carrying. Jason stood at the boxy stern, watching the sun sink into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Maria would be following tomorrow morning with Adrian on the afternoon ferry. After a day or so Jason would be leaving, even though he was unsure as to where. Washington, certainly, for a debriefing. He supposed he had rid the world of Eglov, entombing him with a number of his radical environmentalists.
But what else? He had discovered a very strange plant and a rock that gave off a nonlethal anesthetic, the hallucinogenic gas ethylene. Hardly a threat like a nuclear or biological weapon.
In fact, some might even enjoy the high.
More questions remained than were answered. Why would Eglov and his fellow eco-nuts commit the time and effort to exploit something of such limited use, Breath of the Earth notwithstanding? As a practical, rather than ideological matter, it made no sense.
He shrugged, a man with no explanation. His job was over. Time to find a place to get on with his life, as the
