by J. F. Penn
"You do not have it."
His voice was rough and guttural and it grated across her skin. There was disappointment in his tone and Asha felt his judgement like the stripe of the whip. She shivered a little even under the hot sun. This man had a direct line to the gods. He was a sadhu, a holy man, an Aghori, considered the most extreme of their kind and renounced by other sects for their use of the dead in ritual.
The Aghori believed that by transcending social taboo, they could pierce the illusion of reality. If Shiva was perfect and created everything, even those things considered disgusting and rotten must also be perfect and therefore brought the devotee closer to God. Being near the dead allowed the living to understand what really mattered.
Asha had met the Aghori a year ago, when she had attended a Hindu pilgrimage with her father. But they had brought a luxurious tent, fine linen and ample food with them. As Asha had watched the beggars calling out to the gods, she realized that they were closer to the divine than she could ever be in her rich lifestyle.
She had found him while wandering the pilgrim's camp one day, wearing only a simple cotton sari, no makeup, her hair loose about her face, disguised as a woman of simple means. His rejection of material things drew her to him and his devotion to the goddess Kali made her his disciple. Her father had hated the Aghori and while he was alive, her guru was banned, but now she kept him close.
"I have one piece," she said softly. "And I will find the others."
He opened his eyes, the dark pupils ringed with ash, flakes of blood dusting his eyelashes. Asha felt convicted in his gaze.
"You must hurry," he whispered. "The ritual must be performed on the most auspicious day, when the sacrifice will be the greatest, and the power of the weapon will demonstrate the might of Shiva."
"I will have the pieces in time." Asha's voice was strong and she met his gaze with an unblinking stare. "The statue will be whole. I promise."
The Aghori reached for the kapala skull and turned it over. He pulled out a sharp knife, then held his hand out and sliced his palm. He drew the blade slowly across his flesh so the blood welled and dripped into the skull.
Asha could hardly breathe as he clenched his palm and let the drops fall. The sight of blood excited her, reminded her of what awaited in the temple of Kali.
But that would have to wait.
The Aghori dipped his finger in the blood and then leaned forward. He pressed it against Asha's forehead, marking her with the crimson liquid. She smelled the coppery tang over the sweat of his body and she closed her eyes as he touched her. He was the only one who anchored her to what was real, and through him she would see God.
Chapter 5
"He's coding! Get the crash cart!"
As the high-pitched whine of the machines sounded the alarm, Morgan and Jake stepped back to let the medical team do their work. The doctor injected something into the line in Marietti's arm and a moment later, his body relaxed. He sank back on the bed, still once again.
The doctor turned.
"He's in a bad way so I've sedated him." He shook his head. "His body just needs time to rest and heal."
"How much time?" Jake asked.
The doctor frowned. "It's hard to say. His wounds are extensive. The blast shook his brain as well as his body. You'd better go. There's nothing you can do here."
At the door, Jake turned to look back at Marietti, now prone on the bed. His face creased with concern for the Director.
"We have to find out more about that statue," he said. "And why Marietti put that piece in the vault."
"We could go to his house," Morgan suggested. "See if there's anything we can find there about his past. If there's nothing in the databases, I can't see any other way."
Jake nodded. "Good idea. I visited once years back, the only time he ever had a party, apparently. It was an interesting gathering. Politicians, priests, and people whose names were definitely not their real ones. But then, he mostly kept his life private."
"It's our only option," Morgan said. "Marietti said that the pieces shouldn't come together again, and something about a weapon. We can't wait for him to recover."
"Let's go."
Marietti's house was in a quiet street north of Hampstead Heath. It was a simple two-up, two-down in a terrace and didn't look like much from the outside. It wasn't what Morgan would have expected from the Director, but then she hadn't really considered where he lived before. She associated him with his office overlooking Trafalgar Square, where the only personal touch was the fine art he borrowed from the various art galleries of London. Every time she went in there, he had a new one on the wall.
Spring was just beginning to show on the Heath, with the tips of daffodils starting to protrude from the renewed earth, and the white bells of snowdrops peeking out from under the hedgerows. This part of London had an edge of wildness and people came from all over the city for a glimpse of nature. Morgan could see how Marietti would find some kind of peace here, and she imagined him walking across the Heath in his quiet time, looking up at the trees, maybe smiling at the squirrels as they foraged. The Heath teemed with Londoners at the weekend, and perhaps it reminded him of why he worked for ARKANE. Why they all took the risks they did.
Jake took a set of keys from his pocket. They jangled as he searched through for the right one.
"He gave me a key a while back," he said, noting the inquisitive look on Morgan's face. He raised an eyebrow with a cheeky grin. "You can give me one of yours if you like. Just in case."
Morgan elbowed him in the ribs, smiling a little as they pushed inside. The reality was that they all knew so little about each other beyond the ARKANE missions. She and Jake had come close a number of times to taking things into the more personal realm, but their missions had gotten in the way.
And perhaps that was for the best.
Marietti's house looked like it hadn't been redecorated since the 1970s. The man was clearly more concerned with his work, and he certainly spent most of his waking hours at the ARKANE offices. It smelled musty, as if the windows hadn't been opened in a long time. There was a picture by the door, a young Marietti with a broad smile on his face, standing next to an archaeological dig. Morgan didn't recognize that smile, for the Director was known for being staunch, unsmiling, serious in the face of almost constant threat.
"So what exactly are we actually looking for?" Jake asked as they walked inside.
"Martin said that Marietti put the sculpture in the vaults in the 1980s," Morgan replied, walking softly down the hall. Every step felt like a trespass, even though she knew the Director would want them to pursue every lead. "We should look for something about his history back then. He said he didn't want the pieces to be put back together again, but where are the other pieces?"
Jake frowned. "Because whoever wanted the piece in the vault must surely want the others."
"Exactly," Morgan said. "So we need to get to them first."
They entered the main living area, evidently the room of a bachelor. A wingback chair sat near the window with a view out over the Heath. There was another chair near the door, but the place was not set up for conversation. A pile of books lay near the leather chair and Morgan crouched down to look at them. The history of nuclear war. The physics of nuclear weapons. An introduction to Hindu mythology.
"How do these relate to each other?" Morgan opened the book on nuclear weapons. "I would expect Hindu mythology, but why this interest in nuclear tech? It doesn't seem like something ARKANE would usually be involved in."
ARKANE investigated mysteries of the supernatural, those outside the auspices of other agencies and the police. They were called in when things weren't quite normal, when the explanation for an event couldn't be found in the rational world.
"Marietti was involved in so many things." Jake poked his head into the kitchen, adjoining the living room. "I don't think there was a limit to his curiosity, so this could have just been personal interest."
"But apart from the s
aber rattling over Iran and North Korea, the world is much safer in terms of the nuclear threat these days," Morgan said.
She picked up another book, a pop-science paperback on particle physics. She leafed through it, the words pretty much meaningless since her own speciality was psychology and religion and the impact of war on both. This leafy suburb of Hampstead was so far from the war zone of Israel, where she had grown up and begun her studies, but she felt the echoes of conflict here. The book had a few color images in the middle and she flicked through the pages to them. One immediately caught her eye.
"Jake, look at this." She held out the page. It showed a massive sculpture of Shiva Nataraja outside the headquarters of CERN, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, based outside Geneva in Switzerland.
"What is a Shiva statue representing the end of the world doing at a nuclear research lab?" Morgan said. "We need to check that out."
Jake nodded. "It's a start, but I think there's more to be found here."
He circled back to a shelf near the kitchen containing an eclectic range of books as well as a number of photo albums. They were old, from the time when photos were more precious, when film was expensive and people would take a roll and only one of the photos would be worth printing. Jake pulled an album down and leafed through it.
Morgan came to stand at his shoulder. She was so close that she could smell his aftershave and feel the warmth coming from his body. She was glad they were working together again. In their last mission together, he had been critically injured and she had finished the Gates of Hell mission alone. Then he'd gone to New York. He hadn't told her much of what had occurred there but he had certainly returned a stronger man, with no indication of the injuries he had sustained only a few months ago. Just another secret they kept from each other.
The photos in the album showed Marietti as a priest, standing stiffly in front of various famous world monuments. They were trophy photos, markers of his travels but nothing that could help them in particular. Jake picked up another album and flicked through. Then he stopped on a page.
"That certainly brings back memories," he said softly.
The photo showed a group of soldiers, both black and white, standing before a mud hut in a clearing. Marietti stood on the end of the line and Morgan could just make out the Vatican cross sewn on his uniform. Next to him was a younger Jake.
"When was that?" Morgan couldn't help but reach out to touch the photo. Jake's face had fewer lines and there was no corkscrew scar above his eye. But there was still a sense of the wild animal in the way he stood, a young lion holding his power in check, desperate for the hunt. These days, he was still lithe and muscular but he had learned to use that power more effectively.
"Early '90s," Jake said. "I met Marietti in the Sudan. The war was brutal but we were told not to intervene. Marietti was sent as a representative from the Vatican because the Islamic Front was slaughtering Catholics. He understood powerlessness at a time when I still believed that we could solve every problem the world had. I probably would have died fighting there without his counsel."
"Was he ever your friend?" Morgan whispered.
"It was never a two-way relationship, to be honest. He was more like my father back then but since he was made Director, we haven't shared so much personally." Jake turned to Morgan, his eyes bright. She could see his determination. "He will recover, I know he will. He's a fighter. And if he wants to stop the pieces of the statue being brought together again, we'll do that for him."
Morgan nodded. "Then we need to track down those pieces before whoever blew the vault finds them. We should look at the photos from the 1980s, before you met him."
Jake pulled all the albums from the shelf and together they searched through, trying to order them by year. There were no labels on the photos, no text describing the images. Either Marietti had a perfect memory of all these people in all these places, or he was trying to protect his past even as he held onto these tokens of what had once been. Morgan reckoned it was probably the latter.
A page fell open to show Marietti standing with a group at the edge of a mass grave, the outline of individual bodies blurred by the sheer number of them. Jake's face darkened.
"Rwanda," he said, his eyes clouding over. "Those were dark times."
"Why would he keep a picture like that?" Morgan asked.
"It's the most recent genocide in living memory," Jake whispered. "A testament to man's ability to destroy himself. Marietti believed that we all have within us the ability to create or destroy, and that battle can be individual or borne out at this tribal level. He told me once that it was a lesson he wished to remember always."
He turned the page to happier times.
"The Taj Mahal," Jake said, holding out the album to Morgan. "That smile suggests he knew the person taking the photo well. We need to find out what he was doing in India back then."
Jake took out his smart phone and took some pictures of the images. Then he closed the album gently and placed everything back on the shelf as they had found it.
"It's strange being in here without an invitation," he said.
"I know how you feel," Morgan replied. "But none of us share our personal space with each other right now. I've never even been to your place."
Jake stepped closer, his face only inches from hers. The chemistry between them had been building for so long now, and Morgan wanted to lean into him.
"Are you angling for an invitation?" he said softly.
Morgan's phone rang, the shrill tone breaking the moment between them.
Chapter 6
Asha changed into a simple yellow sari and cleaned off her expensive makeup. By adopting the posture and attitude of a lower-class woman and taking off the trappings of wealth, she could roam the streets of Mumbai without notice. Just another solitary figure in a city of millions trying to scrape a living.
Her father forbade such excursions into the city streets alone, but she had been doing it since she was a teenager, determined to learn about the city she lived in and not just from the side of the rich. Over the years, she had developed her own network and her own projects.
She emerged from the basement of Kapoor Towers to a blast of hot air from the street outside. The sound of tooting horns, ringing bells and vendors hawking their goods welcomed her into the bustling city. Mumbai was on a peninsula and so the city had stretched far north and across the bay as it grew. But here, in the oldest part, the only way to grow was to build up.
Asha adjusted her headscarf, pulling it over her face to obscure her fine features from anyone who looked too closely, and walked a few streets before hailing a taxi.
"Dharavi," she said. "Sion-Mahim entrance."
Soon, they pulled in next to the Dharavi slum, founded in 1882 during the British era and home to nearly a million people. Many workers ended up here when they arrived in the city from the rural areas seeking work, and like the rest of Mumbai, Dharavi was full of enterprising entrepreneurs. Pottery, textiles and tanning works crammed into the space along with other production sites and a growing waste and recycling enterprise.
The urban poor in Mumbai worked hard and Asha always found the people here to be an inspiration. She preferred their grafting attitude to that of the entitled young people she had grown up with, obsessed only with fashion and practicing the latest Bollywood dance instead of working. And while she could hold her own at the pinnacle of the Mumbai socialite scene, she actually preferred to walk the streets here in the slum.
She splashed through a puddle, lifting the hem of her sari to avoid getting it wet. The dank water smelled of chemicals used in the tanning process and the air reeked of rubbish and sewers, overlaid with the constant smell of cooking.
Asha weaved her way through the streets, head down in the manner of a good wife hurrying home to her family. She liked to walk unseen, and she had perfected the look of a downtrodden lower-caste woman since she had first started coming here years ago.
She turne
d a sharp corner and entered the health clinic. She was known here only as the go-between for a rich benefactor who provided funds for the clinic and the shelter for unwanted children and young mothers fallen upon hard times.
"Ms Shah." The receptionist looked surprised as she walked in. "We weren't expecting you today. I'll let the doctor know you're here."
Asha nodded. "Tell her to take her time. I'll be in the day room."
She walked through into a large open area where groups of young women sat, some with babies on their laps, others obviously pregnant. The sound of chatter filled the room as they wove baskets and gossiped as they worked.
The clinic was open to all religions and although the slum was mostly Hindu, it also had a large Muslim population. The girls here were often victims of abuse who had run from home fearing retribution in a culture that still blamed women for sexual attack.
Asha understood the feeling of being marginalized, but these women were part of her bigger plan – even if they weren't aware of it. Every woman and child had blood samples taken when they asked for help, and anything interesting was sent to her lab for testing. The slum was a melting pot and as Asha looked around the room, she saw myriad genetic codes in their faces. She smiled at the thought.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know you were coming." The doctor looked worried as she approached, a brown paper bag clutched in her hand. "I'm about to start surgery."
"I just came to see whether you needed anything."
The doctor looked at her more closely. "And presumably for the latest batch."
Sometimes Asha considered removing the woman, silencing her unspoken questions. But the doctor worked for a pittance and helped more girls here than seemed possible with the number of hours in one day. Asha admired her. In her softer moments, she wondered if she could have been this doctor in another life.
