Momma’s voice came across the vapor as mellifluous as if she were standing there. “Easy enough. I can have another over to you in an hour, hour and a half, with a coupla extra clips and National Security permit. Anything else?”
Jason didn’t want to ask how she could arrange for a concealed-carry permit when it took weeks of investigation, mounds of forms, vetting, and a biography almost pre-dating birth. City of Washington permits simply didn’t exist, no matter what the Supreme Court said.
“Yeah. I need a name of someone at the laboratory at the Department of Agriculture, as well as someone who can do a metallurgical analysis.”
There was the sound of a pen scratching on paper. Momma was a believer in making old-fashioned lists rather than relying on cyber entries that could disappear on a whim.
“Anything else? I mean, the PX got your brand of scotch? Your love life OK?”
“What love life? After you cooked up that expedition to get Maria out of the way, I’ll be lucky to see her in six months.”
A deep chuckle, the sound of logs crackling in a fireplace. “By that time, this problem be solved. She’ll never know what you did.”
Manipulative old woman!
But he said, “I hope not.”
The phone went dead.
Forty-five minutes later a package arrived by private courier. It included a business card of a Seymore Watt, PhD, Department of Agriculture. Jason had no idea how a firearm and ammunition got past the guard shack at the base’s entrance. He had just finished making sure the Glock was in good functioning order when his BlackBerry pealed off the ominous opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, his personalized ring tone.
Momma was as good as her word.
“Jason?” Maria’s voice was excited. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for hours!”
“Er, been in DC. No reason there’d be a reception problem. Things going well with you and …?”
“Pier Sevensen. They’re going great! Did you get the pictures I sent?”
“Haven’t checked for messages lately.”
“Well, you’ll see. This afternoon, we went out to a volcanic field, geysers all over the place, like your Yellowstone Park.”
A whole field of geysers? She sounded as excited as a child on Christmas morning.
“Jason, you have no idea! Iceland is a volcanologist’s dream, every kind of volcanic activity you can imagine!”
Not exactly a recommendation Condé Nast’s glossy travel magazines would give, Jason thought.
But he said, “And the expedition, how’s it coming along?”
“We should have it fully equipped in a week. Your friend Momma has been a perfect angel. Everything we need arrives almost as soon as we ask for it.”
I’ll bet.
“After it’s all set I’ll come home until Eyjafjallajökull has sufficiently … Speaking of home, where are we going to go if we can’t go back to Isola d’Ischia?”
A decidedly reproachful tone.
“I’m working on that.”
“In other words, you don’t know. Jason, I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Doing violent things only brings more violence. If you hadn’t gotten involved in that shooting in Africa, we would still be at our villa …”
And you wouldn’t be among all those geysers and volcanoes.
Gently, Jason put the BlackBerry down, reached across a small table, and unscrewed the top of a bottle of Balvenie single-malt scotch. A bargain at the PX at only seventy-five bucks a fifth. He could still hear her voice if not the words as he crossed over to the kitchenette, filled a glass with ice, and returned. Picking up the BlackBerry, he murmured assent, put it down, and filled his glass.
“… I don’t want to have to move for fear of our lives again. I just hope you’ll listen to me this time …”
“I always listen to you, Maria.”
She hmphed her indignation before changing the subject. “I hope so, Jason, I really do. Don’t forget to look at the pictures I sent you. Well, have to go. I’m having dinner with Pier.”
Herring, no doubt.
“Don’t forget: No more violence.”
“Don’t worry. I’m only gathering information.”
“Love you.”
“Me too.”
The BlackBerry went silent.
Taking the iPad from his overnight bag, Jason put his buds into his ears. He leaned back in the room’s most comfortable chair, sipped from his glass, and let the swift violin strokes of the opening concerto of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons take over. Priest, composer, violin virtuoso, the man left his native Venice for Vienna seeking the patronage of the emperor Charles VI only to die a pauper in a foreign city.
Jason supposed there was a cautionary tale there somewhere, something about leaving the safety of one’s native land for adventure abroad. If so, it thankfully eluded him.
23
The US Department of Agriculture is housed in two buildings connected by an enclosed bridge. Both are of an architecture a purist would describe as classicism. Jason thought of it as Government Gothic, the continually replicated, unimaginative cubes that house the bureaucracy along the National Mall. The sameness of the stone and minimum adornments were less than pleasant to his artist’s eye. That, he surmised, is what you get with the lowest bidder.
The uniformed security guard informed him Dr. Watt’s office was in the second building. Even if Jason had not known it was the south building that housed the laboratory, his nose would have tipped him off. The faint smell of chemicals permeated the air, the walls, and even the elevator he took to the second floor.
Chemistry had not been the highlight of his academic career. The second time he had been unable to recall whether water must be added to acid or vice versa had resulted in his banishment from a damaged college chem lab. Geology had proved a safer and less volatile fulfillment of his science requirements.
He hoped the next Jason Peters was not in the lab, at least not until the present one cleared the building.
Just as he stepped out of the elevator into a hallway, he was greeted with “Ah, Mr. Peters! I’ve been expecting you.”
A smiling, round-faced Asian woman with jet-black hair tied in a knot on top of her head was wearing an ankle-length lab coat. As she approached, she extended her right hand. “I’m Miriam Wu. Good to meet you.”
Jason looked up and down the hall. “I was meeting a Dr. Watt….”
Her smiled widened. “I know. He had an emergency of some sort. A corn fungus in Kansas, I think.” She frowned. “Or was it the return of the potato beetle in Idaho? No matter. He asked me to meet with you since I’m the one who did the research your foundation requested. Hope you don’t mind.”
“‘Foundation’?”
She looked at him, puzzled. “Yes. I believe it was the Food for the World Foundation or something like that, someone Dr. Watt knew.”
Rather than put his foot in his mouth, Jason said nothing.
He felt a firm grip as they shook. “I appreciate your seeing me, Dr. Wu.”
She did not let go of his hand but led him into a large room where beakers, vials, and other chemical paraphernalia were lined up on tables. Against one wall, bottles held liquids of all colors. At the front of the room were two smaller tables with microscopes.
“Our lab,” she said needlessly. “Not the sort of thing you’d see over at the FDA, but good enough. Sometimes we get ignored, you know.” She snorted. “Just because botanists aren’t searching for a cure for cancer, we get only the scraps from the budget.”