The Barrier

by Shankari Chandran

  ‘Whenever there is decay of righteousness . . .

  and a rise of unrighteousness,

  then I manifest myself.

  For the protection of the good,

  for the destruction of the wicked and

  for the establishment of righteousness,

  I am born in every age.’

  The old man opened his eyes. ‘I can’t remember the rest. I don’t even know who wrote it. But I think the virus has a purpose – all disease has a purpose. It manifests at a particular time in a particular person – or a particular place – for a reason.’

  Noah was silent. His head full of questions: What was the purpose of my daughter’s disease? How were the good protected and the wicked destroyed?

  He didn’t ask Khan anything.

  Instead, he repeated his words: ‘For the establishment of righteousness.’

  Khan nodded.

  Could he be talking about the Sixth Virus – remembering it? Feeling it? He had said belief, Noah was sure of it now.

  Crawford and Garner caught up with them at the mouth of the stupa.

  ‘You all right, Chief?’ Crawford asked.

  ‘I was just explaining to Noah that, in ancient times, this structure was used to house important objects,’ Khan said. ‘Although no one knows what kind of objects. When we found it, it had already been raided and emptied; local robbers no doubt.’

  ‘We should go, sir,’ Garner said. She’d found something.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Noah. I’m glad I got the chance to show you what we do. I must attend to my patients, there are so many today.’

  Khan departed with his customary awkward nod of the head and then stopped, stripping off his gloves and shoving them in his pocket. He walked back to Noah and put his arms around him, holding him tight. Noah hugged him back and then laughed to disguise his confusion and comfort, before pushing the old man away.

  Chapter 20

  Inside the car, Garner rolled out her laptop and talked fast. ‘We went back to the MRI room, sir – it was General Rajasuriya in the scanner. He was having an MRI of his brain done. We couldn’t see him at first but then the bed moved out of the tunnel and – it was him.’

  She typed as she talked. ‘I can’t access his Haema Scans or medical results. His records are within their high security firewall. Let me try something else . . .’

  ‘What is he doing here with Khan?’ Crawford asked.

  Noah thought about Khan’s palliative care ward. ‘Did he see you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Garner. Stop typing for a minute, you won’t be able to touch those records. Did he see you?’ Noah repeated.

  ‘I don’t think so – no, Chief. We were at the door – there were people everywhere. He couldn’t have seen us,’ Crawford answered. ‘But can we get out of here, before that changes?’

  Vijay drove them past the cluster of small buildings that Khan had converted into clinics.

  They went deeper into the ruins, the jungle on one side and the remains of ancient palaces on the other.

  ‘Slow down, Vijay. If we climb up there,’ Noah pointed to a building, ‘we could get a good view of the entire complex.’ Noah remembered something his father had told him about the Buddhist kings of Sri Lanka – they were called the reservoir kings because they had excelled at hydrology, taming water to feed their people. Water, in a dry country, was power. Noah was curious to see what remained. Vijay eased the car to the side of the unpitched road. He got out and looked around.

  ‘We walk from here, please.’ He guided them onto a damaged stone staircase. ‘We climb to the top, three storeys.’ He pointed up and then along. ‘Each building is connected to another by stone bridges in the sky. See –’

  He motioned to the tall grey arches between the buildings. Each one was made of a single piece of carved stone, long and heavy.

  Noah couldn’t fathom the engineering that would have been required to lift stone like that. Human ingenuity was limitless when it came to palaces and temples.

  And war.

  Vijay was leading them somewhere. Noah and Crawford took big strides to keep up with him. Garner held back, often stopping to take photos.

  Tree roots had pushed through the broken stones, warping their path. One side was flanked by a wall of granite. It was discoloured – as though someone had tried to scrub away a layer of paint but couldn’t obliterate it from the pores of the stone.

  ‘This must have been very beautiful once.’ Noah traced the faint lines of what would have been a mural depicting the life of the Buddha.

  ‘It was, sir, my grandfather told me. He said our people used to have folk tales and legends. They passed on their stories through art.

  ‘Some of the older people – they remember what it looked like before the war. There are no photographs or records so we must guess. I think a great king lived here.’

  ‘It’s so vast, I suspect many great kings lived here – generations of kings and their subjects,’ Noah replied. The afternoon heat had intensified. Sweat pooled under his armpits and his shirt clung to his body. He opened his water bottle and grimaced at its iodised taste.

  ‘Yes, a long time ago we were a proud and accomplished civilisation. So many stories.’

  ‘Do people talk about this place?’ Noah asked.

  ‘People try not to talk about anything. Talking is dangerous. Walking is better for health.’

  Vijay started up the last segment of stairs. He leaned against a broken column at the top, before stepping over the threshold onto a wide platform that overlooked the hills around them.

  Noah followed him, his hand on his side-arm. The platform formed the hub of a giant wheel. Long stone bridges radiated outwards like spokes, towards the rooftops of other buildings. He turned and counted them – eight bridges connecting eight buildings. It was impossible to see the mathematical perfection of the design from the ground. From the sky it would look magnificent – the Buddhist wheel of righteousness built out of stone.

  A massive tree towered over them from the centre of the platform, its roots clawing through the earth, creeping up its trunk, like a tangled mass of veins and entrails.

  ‘This is Sri Maha Bodhi,’ Vijay slipped into his tour guide persona. Noah looked up sharply at the name.

  ‘A sapling of a great tree in India was brought here to this island and planted thousands of years ago.’

  ‘Why?’ Noah asked.

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  Noah knew. It was a sapling from the tree under which the Buddha had achieved Enlightenment: the tree of liberty.

  ‘Do you like the view, sir?’ Vijay asked.

  From this vantage point, they were surrounded by the anatomy of an old city and its temples, some parts subsumed by the encroaching jungle. But sometimes bones jutted out defiantly, wanting to be seen. The complex extended for kilometres.

  As his eyes adjusted to the glare, Noah noticed large pits of freshly turned earth between the ruins. He focused his binoculars on one and then another. The binoculars’ scale function gave him numbers in the corner of his vision. The pits were as big as tennis courts. There was a rusted bulldozer next to them.

  ‘What’s that over there, Vijay?’ He handed the binoculars to the driver and pointed. ‘Past the aqueduct – see the bulldozer? Are they excavating the site?’

  Vijay looked through the binoculars and then muttered under his breath. ‘New ones.’

  He pushed the binoculars back at Noah.

  ‘New ones? New what? What am I looking at?’ he demanded. Crawford and Garner stood beside him, their own binoculars focused on the patchwork of fresh earth, the dark pigment contrasting against the green skin of the jungle.

  ‘Four new graves,’ Vijay whispered. ‘No one comes here anymore, except Khan and his patients. And sometimes the army. The smell was too strong. I knew as soon as we arrived.’ He shook his head. ‘You explore here, sir, or rest for a while. I need to check the car. Make sure she is ready for drive bac
k to Colombo.’

  Vijay turned and scrambled down the steps before Noah could reply.

  He recognised the squares of darkness now, the purpose of the bulldozer. He’d been a part of that purpose before. He had dug the earth more than once when he was young. Rolling bodies into a pit, a mask hiding his shame.

  ‘The army has been here.’ Noah repeated Vijay’s words.

  ‘Doing what?’ Crawford asked.

  ‘Hiding the dead. This is where they put the bodies.’ He turned back towards the team. ‘You two get back to the car. Make sure Vijay is okay.’

  ‘Anything wrong, sir?’

  ‘No, all good. I’ll meet you down there.’

  He looked at the graves again through his binoculars. Panning east, there were at least ten more stupa domes, white and red, rising from the earth like welts. Each one had been a place of worship only fifteen years before.

  Worship. He stood under the tree and closed his eyes, but he refused to pray the way his father had taught him. Instead he chanted the names of the dead: the people he’d killed, the lives he’d ruined; always starting with his father’s name and always ending with his daughter’s. He wore their deaths like a penance.

  A voice barked in his earpiece.

  It was Crawford. ‘He’s gone!’

  Noah’s eyes snapped open. ‘Repeat!’

  ‘The car, it’s gone. Vijay’s gone – tracks leading back the way we came.’

  Noah jumped up and ran to the edge of the platform, stopping at the first bridge. He saw the plume of dust trailing behind the green sedan as it hurtled towards them, closing the distance rapidly.

  ‘Incoming. Green sedan.’ He raised the binoculars. ‘Three passengers, armed. Take cover, I’m coming down.’

  ‘Shit. Weapons hot, Garner,’ he heard Crawford shout. ‘Where the fuck is Vijay?’

  ‘Crawford, take cover,’ he repeated. ‘Evasive action only, we’re barely armed.’

  ‘Got it, Chief,’ Garner replied in his ear. ‘They’ve seen us. Three men.’ He could hear her running as she spoke. ‘Heading to the scrub, south-east of your location.’

  He drew his weapon and turned towards the stairwell. Footsteps coming fast. Someone shouting commands. He turned back towards the bridge and holstered his gun. He would need both hands if he fell. If he could get across it, he could escape through the connected building. He ran hard, heart pounding, his lungs sucking in air.

  He crossed the first bridge without looking down, skidding to a halt on the second platform. In the corner of his eye he saw someone emerge under the boughs of the tree. Only one bridge between them. The man stepped onto it tentatively, arms stretched out. He inched forward and shouted.

  Noah didn’t stop. He turned and bolted along the rim of the wheel, across to the next platform. He found the stairwell and plunged down. The first bullet hit the stone behind him. And then another, but he was gone. Running; scared but in control.

  He reached the bottom of the landing just as a shadow fell across it. Noah saw the man first and didn’t break the rhythm of his run, charging forward instead. The man’s face turned from surprise to fear, his hands lifting but not in time. Noah grabbed him by the shirt, drove his knee into the man’s gut and heard the air whistle out. The man groaned but held onto his weapon. He raised it in both hands. Noah gripped the man’s wrists together and pushed them away as the gun fired by the side of his head, deafening him for a moment, the silence replaced by a ringing in his ears.

  He smashed the man’s hands against the unforgiving stone of the stairwell and kicked the gun away. The man tried to follow it, bending down. Noah dropped his elbow between the L3 and L4 vertebrae, heard the familiar crack, and shoved the man out through the swinging shutter that covered the window opening.

  He didn’t look back, already moving through the room, arms outstretched, his gun an extension of his body, his finger ready to pull the trigger as soon as he detected movement.

  He remembered something Sahara had said: You look first and then shoot. You trust your reflexes.

  He took refuge against a pillar, the coolness of the stone comforting against his sweaty back. Across the room he could see another staircase to another bridge, another part of the wheel rim. To reach it he would have to expose himself to whoever was still out there. Two more people, definitely armed, hopefully short range. The ringing in his ears subsided. He could hear the sound of his own breathing again.

  He wiped the sweat from his forehead and eyes with one hand. He checked the gun and pulled out his second weapon from his ankle holster. That was his nervous tic. Check and check again. It calmed him. Three deep breaths and he ran.

  He was halfway across the room, lunging behind broken statues, when bullets ripped through, spraying shards of stone and wood around him. He ducked and ran, firing his gun and then diving behind a heavy wooden table that lay on its side. He used it to shield himself, shooting towards the origin of gunfire. Bullets came back. He listened, waited, then fired once and listened again. The shooter moved. Shooters. He heard heavy, even footsteps and a shuffle. One man was dragging an injury. Noah’s odds were improving. He turned his body, threw a hand above the table and shot again, twice. One gun out, the other ready. He swapped, listened and waited – one, two, three steps closer. Patience. Four steps. He shot.

  A man screamed, another shouted. Someone called for help. And then the staccato sound of bullets again, only one source now but ricocheting in every direction. Wild, panicked fire, not targeted. Even so, any bullet could be fatal.

  He reached the stairs and slipped, a mistake that saved his life as another barrage of bullets and shrapnel hit the wall next to him.

  Leaning on his right side, not lifting his head, he fired two rounds in the direction of the shooter, not sure if he hit anyone. A fleeting regret for what he was destroying once again. Then a fire ripping across the nerves on his left side as one bullet and another slashed him carelessly. He stumbled again, crying out in pain and anger, feeling the warmth of fast-flowing blood, the cold rush of adrenaline as his brain urged his body to flee. It hurt to breathe. Bruised ribs were acceptable. Blood was not.

  Gunfire again – but this time the low, muffled sound of a silencer. And then another one. That wasn’t right.

  He pressed his earpiece. ‘Garner, there’s another shooter. Can you see anything? I need eyes, I’m hit.’

  ‘Negative. I’m looking.’

  He scrambled up the stairs, his hands still gripped around his weapons in a rictus of fear but not panic. He didn’t panic. Fear would drive him forward. Fear would get him from the stairs, three flights to the platform to the bridge. There was an aqueduct near the fourth spoke of the wheel – if he could reach it, he could dive into the lake below.

  Or he had to run back now and take out the rest of these men – two, maybe three. He didn’t have enough bullets. He needed to keep going. At the top of the first landing, he stopped. The stairwell was not like the others. It had caved in on itself. It led nowhere.

  Shit.

  He looked around the room searching for a way out.

  Another shot – again, like a bullet passing through water or the metal cylinder of a silencer. He ducked as he heard a man scream below him.

  Another bullet, close range; the crying stopped. He turned to the stairwell, gun raised. He controlled the tremor. He waited for the shooter. He was ready.

  Garner’s voice came through his earpiece, loud but calm. ‘I see you, sir, you’re on the first floor.’

  ‘Exit to the roof blocked,’ he whispered.

  ‘North-west window. It opens onto scrub not stone. You can jump. We’ll be there.’ He ran to the window, his side burning.

  It was jammed shut. He dropped his guns, turned his body on one leg, lifting the other simultaneously, breaking through the rotten wood and pushing out half the frame with it.

  He ignored the pain surging through his side. The room lurched. He bent down and grabbed his weapons. One empty, one half empty
. He shoved them back in their holsters. He wouldn’t die unarmed. He had felt a silencer to his head before. Execution was no way to go.

  He pulled himself onto the ledge, stopping just in time to judge the distance to the ground. Not too far to jump but he needed the scrub. Ten metres to the left. Not exactly under the window. He cocked his head for a moment, listening for footsteps rushing into the room. He couldn’t hear anything above the sound of his own heavy breathing, a blood beat hammering in his ears. Where was the last man? What was he waiting for?

  He had to move. He pushed his body against the wall, the heels of his boots pressed into the stone, his arms and hands splayed to grip and balance himself, feet shifting quickly but carefully towards the corner of the building. He left a thick stain, a comet’s tail of brilliant red against the wall. He stopped at the corner – underneath him was a large cluster of banana trees, their fan-like leaves reaching up towards him.

  The voice in his ear shouted, ‘Jump, Chief – now!’

  He jumped, the leaves catching and collapsing under his weight but buffering his fall. The pain in his side radiated up towards his chest. A car screamed towards him. He tried to roll himself out of its path but floundered in the crushed branches and fruit, its sugary mucus sticking to his body. He was blinded by the headlights and tried one more time, desperately, to roll left.

  *

  Sahara stood at the edge of the window and peered out. She saw the car brake hard and a door fling open. Crawford was dragging Noah and shoving him inside. Vijay was swearing. Someone barely closed the door before the car accelerated, skidded past the spot where she had hidden her motorcycle and then blazed down the dirt road of the ruins, towards the highway.

  He was alive, she was sure of it. For the first time in many years, it mattered to her. She relaxed her shoulders and allowed her right arm to drop to her side, the silencer cold and heavy in her hand.