The SONG of SHIVA

by Michael Caulfield

  “I can believe that.”

  “More perceptive minds than yours or mine have worried about this for some time. Particularly the Thai government. There’s fear another outbreak, if not contained, might allow the already-unhappy southern Muslim population to break away from Thai control at a minimum ― perhaps even topple the government.”

  Lyköan wasn’t surprised. Totally plausible. Of course, Whitehall was only confirming one possible outcome if another Thai epidemic occurred. But knowledge was power and Lyköan was feeling more powerful with every revelation.

  “You don’t seem surprised or even upset, lad,” Whitehall observed.

  “I’d already run similar projections with an algorithm of my own,” Lyköan said, tapping his temple with an index finger. “Didn’t take rocket science to figure out Thailand’s worried. What else you got?”

  “We also believe there may have been a devil’s bargain struck ― between Innovac and the Thai Ministry of Health. If they can manage to control the approaching outbreak, direct it as it were ― well, there are a few areas of the country they wouldn’t mind seeing decimated.”

  “And how did you learn all this? If I didn’t know better I’d think you’d gone over yourself.”

  “I’ve had people ― no need to explain further ― infiltrating where we’ve been able. Spies spying on the spies. The Thai government, the military, Primrose, Innovac. Pandavas seems to have identified a Vietnamese province, where―”

  “And he should know,” Lyköan interrupted.

  “Of course, as I explained―”

  “Listen, Whitehall, I’ve got other suspicions ― that there might be a reason why Pandavas and Innovac know so much about where and when this virus is going to strike next.”

  “How’s that, then?”

  “Because they’re responsible for the epidemic.”

  “That’s money for old rope, Lyköan,” Whitehall said, shaking his head.

  “What do you mean?” Lyköan asked.

  Whitehall had hardly reacted, as though he had just discovered an irritating piece of lint on his dinner jacket. “How did you come by this?” he asked.

  Tapping his temple again, Lyköan answered, “Seemed to make sense once that TAI virus cure came out of nowhere the minute Innovac got involved.”

  “You may be right. We suspected as much, but no one can turn up any evidence. I don’t suppose you’ve stumbled across anything?”

  “Only my suspicion. But too much to be mere coincidence ― don’t you think?”

  “Then we’ll probably need to push our boat out soon, before Innovac acts, even if we don’t posses all the particulars. What have you done so far? Have you told anyone else about these suspicions?”

  “Not a soul,” Lyköan replied straight-faced. “Who would I tell and what could I tell them? That I have this funny feeling my boss might be manufacturing epidemics?”

  “Did Carmichael or the WHO team mention any similar suspicions?”

  “They seem totally oblivious to the possibility. Listen, this is way beyond my grade level. You’re talking with a simple warehouseman. You guys are the professionals. I feel better knowing it’s in your hands ― that somebody’s at least doing something ― but I doubt you want an amateur tagging along and getting in your way. Do you?”

  Whitehall’s expression was vacant. Lyköan gave him little opportunity. “I didn’t think so. Now that I know the score I’ll try to stay out of the crossfire. Let your more perceptive minds and muscle handle things. What a relief. Anything else you need from me?”

  “Silence for now. And your promise not to do anything stupid until the authorities can act.”

  “You’ve got that,” Lyköan said, throwing his sponge into the basin. “Right now I’ve got to get out of this heat. How much time did your average Roman grunt stay in here anyway?”

  “Generally no longer than twenty minutes at a stretch. We’ve probably exceeded that.”

  * * *

  Lyköan rapped softly at the door. By his watch it was one twenty-three in the morning. Nora opened immediately, as though she had been waiting for his knock. She was fully dressed and flew from the room, closing the door softly behind her.

  “Why don’t you walk with me down to Cairncrest Brook, Mr. Lyköan,” she whispered anxiously. “Now.”

  Hand-in-hand, they tiptoed down the hallway’s rear stairs without a word, exiting through the commercial kitchen doors and across the manicured hill until the lights of Cairncrest had faded behind them. Under a swirl of unobstructed stars, the moon now but a sliver near its quenching, they came to a path along the dark meandering stream, tree-filled on both banks, barely a ripple on its moonlit surface – night insects and their footsteps the only sounds.

  “Well, Philbrick, what did you find out?” Nora asked through the background buzz.

  “If I’m to believe Whitehall, British Intelligence has been onto Pandavas for some time. Jimmy Bond should be performing his customary dust-up any minute now.”

  “Whitehall really works for British Intelligence?”

  “Help me here, cause I’m confused, are they the good guys?”

  “And he admitted they know about the whole thing? The genetic experiments? The Übermensch finagling too?”

  “Not in so many words. I’m not sure they know anything about those last two items, but the made-to-order epidemic? Yeah, he seemed to know all about that.”

  “And for all this inside information what did you have to tell him?”

  “That’s the strange part. Absolutely nothing. Before our conversation I had already decided how I was going to deal with any unknowns from here on out ― and let me tell you ― Harry Whitehall is a major unknown.”

  “How are you going to deal with unknowns from here on out?”

  “Nil credum et omnia cavebo,” Lyköan said solemnly looking directly into Nora’s eyes.

  “What’s that?”

  “My new credo ― my new philosophy of life.”

  “―And it means?”

  “Loosely translated? Something like: Believe nothing and suspect everything. I didn’t tell Whitehall any more than what some suspicious hired hand might be expected to come up with. Tried to keep everybody safe – all our channels open.”

  “Does that include me?”

  “What?”

  “Trust nothing, trust no one either? Beware of everything, of everyone too?”

  “Of course not. All rules have to have their exceptions. You, a broken-down Buddhist mystic and a stray mutt are the full extent of my belief system right now – and you’ll notice I mentioned you first.”

  “So I’m at the top of that motley heap? What do you really think of me?”

  “A lot. That’s why I want you to leave tomorrow. Get out. Escape. Like you said earlier – go back to the States and your kids. One of us needs to avoid suspicion. Run for the cavalry, the CDC, the US government. Wherever you think safety may lie. We need to keep the feathers on this bird.”

  “You’ll have to translate.”

  “So it can still fly. If Whitehall’s lying, we’re the only ones who can blow the whistle.”

  Does he think he’s sending me packing? Nora wondered. No way. Not yet. She’d never taken kindly to being told how to act. “Sorry, but that ain’t gonna happen.”

  “Why not? It makes sense.”

  “I make my own decisions. You know absolutely nothing about me. What motivates me. My passions. What I’m willing to risk and why. Absolutely nothing.”

  “I know I care about you ― care about the future. Listen, I’ve already lost someone in what, at the time, seemed like far more secure circumstances. I’m not willing to risk you too.” There, he had said it ― and by doing so moved beyond the tragic but static past and into the very real and dangerous present. “And like I said, someone has to remain above suspicion, if for no other reason than to cry a believable ‘wolf’ if Whitehall isn’t playing on the level.”

  “Who did you lose?” Nora
asked, more defiantly than she’d wished. She had a tale of loss and personal guilt as burdensome as anyone’s; but true tales often explain motives.

  “A wife. A soul mate. A reason for living. All connection with existence.”

  “When?”

  “Almost five years ago now. The Platte River Nuclear Disaster. Karen was sent there on assignment, just never came back ― along with twenty-two thousand other lost souls. The price of freedom they tell me.”

  “I’m so sorry, Egan. But it only means we have more in common than I ever imagined.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nine-Eleven ring a bell, sweetheart? Jerry left for Singer-Kennedy on the hundred and third floor of World Trade One that morning. Sometimes even successful investment bankers don’t come home ― ever! What do they call it? A New York minute?”

  Lyköan couldn’t argue with such finality. What could he do? Like she apparently had now for some time, Nora would continue to make her own decisions. It was selfish to demand otherwise. All he’d ever offer from here on out would be suggestions. Maybe she’d accept a few of them. But they still needed to come to some agreement.

  “Does that mean you’d seriously consider Pandavas’s offer?”

  “Back to your feathered bird analogy, handsome. I remember reading once that the longest recorded flight of a chicken was something like thirteen seconds…”

  “Yeah, that may be true, but dead chickens don’t fly at all.”

  “But wouldn’t it be much easier, notice I didn’t say safer, if we were pulling off an inside job?”

  * * *

  Alone in his room, lying fully clothed on top of the covers, Lyköan stared at the ceiling, focusing on the shadow-strewn imperfections in the hand-troweled plaster, made monstrous by the starlight filtering through the bedroom’s multi-facetted leaded-glass windows. His mind continued to race, but it was less unsettled than earlier in the day. He had managed to keep his mouth shut when it mattered and open up when it counted.

  The barbells on his eyelids felt unnaturally heavy. He had planned to send Sun Shi a message before going to sleep, but this sudden exhaustion made that seem unnecessary right now. Tomorrow would be time enough and more. The sound of fog and a musky, earthy scent had entered the room upon some unseen draft, allowing him to sink below the surface of that vast ocean of anxiety. This sudden and utter fatigue was proof positive. Far in the distance the dolmen hummed ― or was it the drawn-out low moan of an opening door?

  Indistinct, a shadowy form stopped at the foot of the bed ― a comical caricature of the boar’s head from Lord of the Flies, its large reflective, bulbous eyes peering at him from above a perfectly cylindrical snout. Lyköan’s head was spinning or he would have laughed. He tried to move, but as in those nightmares where escape, even movement, is impossible, his body refused to obey.

  The room was expanding and contracting in some sort of temporal distortion, not unpleasant, but paralyzing and accelerating. Soon it had become the great pendulum of time and the three dimensions of space itself ― waves of volume, resonance and essence. Nothing mattered in the grand tide of events and lost arguments. The fact that the darkness had finally shown its teeth seemed inconsequential. Even if those teeth were to sink deep into his flesh, it didn’t matter. The heavens were collapsing, the earth erupting ― but in that veiled instant before the curtain fell, it all seemed so totally unimportant.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The New Arjuna

  Śri-Bhagavān said: I am Time, the great destroyer of worlds, and I have come to destroy everyone. With the exception of you, my faithful Arjuna, every warrior here today, on both sides of this battle, shall be slain.

  Bhagavad-Gītā : Text 32

  Nora awoke, still weary after a fitful night with little sleep because of her beef with Lyköan It couldn’t even be called an argument ― but it still hurt. What had it been, a difference of opinion? No. He had taken her measure and had judged her a lightweight. Covering her head with the goose down pillow, she turned her back to the morning light streaming through the window and hurrumped herself back to sleep.

  When she finally arrived on the patio for breakfast, the sun was already high in a cloud-dappled sky, the morning well on its way to equally high temperature and humidity. She had considered knocking on Lyköan’s door, but then thought better of it. Things between them could benefit from lying fallow a bit longer. Her mind was made up. She would speak with Pandavas and stay a few more days at least, using his job offer as a pretext to dig a little deeper, and mine the Innovac databanks for all they were worth.

  But to do that she would need Lyköan’s access program ― the product of the fertile mind of his Buddhist mentor. Who was this mysterious monk anyway? All she knew was a name, Sun Shi, and a location in Bangkok ― the Temple of the Sapphire Buddha, whatever that might be. Lyköan had never explained how some old mystic, squirreled away in a backwater Thai temple had ever produced such an elegant computer hack. It seemed unbelievable.

  Lyköan would just have to accept the route she had chosen. What choice did he have? The decision to stay might delay her a few days, but was necessary. Her sister and the girls would have to accept that. Whether or not they would understand was another matter. The CDC would require proof that this outrageous plot was more than just the product of an overworked imagination.

  No time for hurt feelings, Carmichael, she thought, burying the last vestiges of her bruised ego. The two of you should be spending breakfast together right now, planning your next move. Ready to tackle any apology doing so might demand, she finished the fruit pulp dregs lying in the bottom of her glass and pushed away from the table. Swallow the pride, sister. It’s time to powwow.

  * * *

  “Mr. Lyköan left on business this morning?” Nora repeated. “When did he say he’d be back?” This was preposterous. Lyköan wouldn’t have left without telling her. He wouldn’t have abandoned her like this. It didn’t seem possible.

  “I did not see him leave, Doctor Carmichael,” Prahn offered deferentially. “Doctor Pandavas said he left very early. Before dawn. An emergency.”

  “Where was he going?”

  “London, I believe. From there to Bangkok. You can ask the doctor more when he returns.”

  Nora intended to do just that. “Returns from where?”

  “He and Mr. Whitehall have gone to Bascombe Down.”

  “The military base?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “A meeting with government officials. They should be returning early this afternoon. Can Doctor Narayan help you perhaps?”

  “Is Ms. Prentice available?”

  “I will see.” The servant left Nora standing alone in the empty foyer.

  She had headed directly for Lyköan’s room after breakfast and, receiving no reply to her knock, had opened his door to find the room empty, the bed already made. There had to be more of an explanation than this. It wasn’t like him ― didn’t feel right. Not the Egan Lyköan she thought she knew.

  A short time later, Prahn returned with Julie Prentice, who, dressed for business, looked as though she was headed out on an errand of her own.

  “Julie. Do you know anything about Mr. Lyköan leaving this morning?”

  “Only that Atma said he left for London before first light. Why? Had you planned to say goodbye?”

  There was something more than interest, an insinuation, wrapped in that comment and Nora didn’t like it. Maybe reacting with such urgency hadn’t been such a smart idea.

  “Was it that obvious?” Might as well admit what could she could no longer deny. Doing so wouldn’t expose her as anything more than being a woman who was admitting her attraction to a man ― and that was the honest truth.

  “I’ll say,” Prentice confirmed. “Might have to start putting those stars back into the evening sky ― until you get another chance to rekindle whatever you think it was.”

  “I just thought that,
at the very least, he would have left a note.”

  “Can’t help you there, Carmichael. Atma might be able to give you more, but he won’t be back until this afternoon. I’m on my way out too. Is it safe to leave you here alone with Narayan? He’s unattached too, you know. I would have thought he’d be more your type anyway. That Lyköan seemed a bit rough around the edges. But to each her own, I suppose.”

  Nora tried to look hurt. To some degree, she really was. Still, something didn’t smell right and the odor hadn’t wafted in from across the Channel.

  * * *

  “Ah, there you are, Lyköan. Welcome back. I see the effects of the sevoflurane are wearing off. You really left us no choice.”

  Lyköan’s head was throbbing to the beat of his racing heart. That voice, coming through a long metaphorical tunnel, sounded like a bad tape with enough wowing distortions to render it almost unintelligible. He opened his eyes and was nearly blinded by the overhead lights, squeezing out tears that ran down his cheeks when he shut them again.

  “You’ve had us at a distinct disadvantage, you know. You must tell us how you were able to discover so much about our operation while, at the same time, were able to keep us completely in the dark about yours. Until last night we weren’t even suspicious. Very good work.

  “Shut the fuck up, will you? What the hell is this all about? Jesus, you’re killing me.” His head was splitting and ― for Christ’s sake ― once again, he seemed paralyzed, couldn’t even lift an arm.

  The voice ignored his plea, droning on, “We had planned to use more subtle persuasion, and far more pleasant surroundings ― but then you went and drove us to this turn. Who knows, if we had been given the opportunity, the strength of our argument might have been compelling enough, and this coercion would have been unnecessary.”

  “You mean so I wouldn’t have to be hogtied?” he said, finally realizing he had been immobilized, held flat on his back by a series of strategically placed tightly cinched straps. Operating solely on raw adrenaline, he attempted to test their strength by erupting in a frenzy of pure venom. But struggle as he might, he couldn’t move a goddamn inch. Was somebody sitting on his chest?