Gates of Hades by Gregg Loomis Page A

policeman shook his head in disgust. “Take a look to your left. And remember, visitor to the city or not, we enforce the no-stopping signs in front of these embassies.”
    During the brief encounter, Jason had seen no other vehicle stop to observe. It was the best he was going to do.
    He was reluctant to hand over the rental car to the hotel’s valet. Not having the keys in his possession eliminated one means of escape if something went wrong. That made him nervous.
    Get a grip,
he told himself. What could possibly go wrong with a simple delivery of papers, material Jason had requested?
    But then, he knew Murphy had been an optimist.
    His overcoat slung over his arm, he followed the sound of a piano mingled with voices. Just before the bank of elevators, he found a large, crowded room with an oak bar at one end. The sole entrance was clogged with customers coming and going. Tables surrounded by upholstered captain’s chairs shared the rest of the space with a baby grand and banquettes against the wall opposite the piano. Jason skimmed the room with a glance. Drum, the voiceon the phone, had given no clue as to how he might be identified.
    Groups formed and re-formed like swarms of bees; no one seemed to be accompanied by anyone else. It was only after noting that there were roughly equal numbers of men and women that Jason realized it was Friday evening and he was witnessing that uniquely American mating rite, a singles bar. Had he given it any thought at all during the last several years, he would have guessed AIDS, herpes, and other unpleasant possibilities had culled the herd of unmarrieds seeking companionship, if not a relationship, in a saloon. Had he been asked, he would have assumed the ritual had joined the tea dance and church social on society’s ash heap.
    Jason grinned at snatches of conversation he could not help but overhear, words and phrases he had heard during his bachelorhood fifteen years ago: No woman ever came to such places except tonight, when she had simply agreed to accompany a friend. No man was driving anything less than a Porsche.
    He smiled again, this time returning one from a shapely woman, her face surrounded by pageboy curls. It was too dark to distinguish all her features, but it would have been hard to miss the flat stomach that peered with a single eye over pants glued to her pelvic bone, or cleavage that threatened to spill out of a blouse utilizing less than half its buttons.
    Undressed to kill.
    Her interest looked a lot more personal than Kim’s had been. She started in his direction, and for an instant Jason wished he were not here on business.
    â€œFife?” The voice came from behind him.
    Jason reluctantly turned his head to see a man who, at least in the bar’s dim light, looked no older than a college sophomore. More and more people seemed younger and younger, a sure sign Jason was experiencing what the advertisementseuphemistically described as the maturing process.
    Mature or not, he gave the low-riders another look. She was already talking to someone else.
    â€œI have a room upstairs,” the stranger announced.
    Wordlessly, Jason followed him out of the bar and onto an elevator. The bright light confirmed Jason’s impression that the guy was young. The heavy horn-rimmed glasses and dark suit did more to make him look out of place than older.
    Still without speaking, the two men got off and trudged down a hall, stopping in front of one of a series of doors while the young man inserted his plastic key. Other than an overcoat draped across one of the beds and a briefcase on a table, there was no sign the room had been occupied.
    â€œWouldn’t it have been easier to simply courier over the reports?” Jason bantered, throwing his coat beside the other and taking a seat in one of the two chairs. “You could have saved a pair of code names and the time you took to study my picture.”
    The other man sat in the remining chair