Destroyer of Worlds (ARKANE Book 8)

by J. F. Penn

  "If we can get a pickup," he said, "we'll get the sculpture piece to the ARKANE headquarters in Delhi. I know someone there who will help us on the quiet."

  "Maybe we can find out who has been following us," Morgan said, her mind still on Chetan.

  "Here we go." Jake stopped and dialed, providing details of where they were. The call finished and he turned to Morgan. "They're sending a local driver to take us back to Delhi. We just need to get to the main road further east."

  They walked in companionable silence through the lush green national park, one of the few places in Agra protected from the development that had turned the rest of the city into an urban sprawl. The sculpture piece weighed heavy in Morgan's pack. Now they had one of the pieces, there was no way the whole thing could be put together again. But she wondered at Marietti's involvement and why he had protected its secret for so long. What was it capable of?

  They soon reached the road to find an air-conditioned taxi waiting for them. They climbed in and the driver handed them bottles of water, frowning only slightly at their disheveled appearance.

  "Welcome," he said with a smile. "It will only be a few hours to Delhi on the express highway. Please relax and enjoy your trip."

  It was nearing lunchtime as they hit the outskirts of Delhi and the traffic was pretty much as expected for the gigantic Indian city. The sound of horns and Bollywood music permeated the cab even through the windows. The highway soon narrowed into smaller roads as they wound their way towards the central area.

  "I am to drop you at the Jantar Mantar," the driver said. "Is this correct?"

  Morgan looked at Jake, a question in her eyes. She had never been here before and she was still relatively new as an ARKANE agent, whereas Jake had been on global missions for years. He hadn't spoken of any past experiences in India, but then, they still knew so little about each other.

  "Yes," he said. "By the main entrance will be fine."

  They emerged into the heat of the midday sun in front of the Jantar Mantar, a huge complex of architectural astronomy instruments completed in 1724 by one of the Maharajas. The usual rush of merchants and beggars crowded about them as Morgan and Jake walked towards the entrance.

  A man in a white lungi sat cross-legged on the ground playing a wooden pipe. A woven basket lay in front of him and a small cobra peeked its head out, undulating to the music.

  "A real snake charmer," Morgan said as they passed. "I thought perhaps they were an urban myth."

  "No fangs," Jake smiled. "All the tourists love a good snake charming. Come on, the ARKANE entrance is inside, away from the hordes."

  They walked past the giant instruments, the terracotta shapes incongruous against the backdrop of towering office blocks that had sprung up in the wake of India's phenomenal economic growth.

  "We're only a short distance from Connaught Place," Jake said. "The former location of the headquarters of the British Raj. The ARKANE office here was established at the same time as the British Empire. After Independence, ARKANE went underground but even as some of the biggest companies in India developed buildings here, we still retained a foothold. This country has more than enough mystery to keep the local agents busy."

  He led Morgan to the very end of the complex, where a shabby breeze-block building sat, ignored by those who only had eyes for the ancient monument. It looked like a disused electrical plant or an abandoned guards' room.

  Jake pushed open the door to reveal a storeroom with discarded garden equipment and piles of old boxes. Morgan stepped inside and as she closed the door behind her, the room shifted and changed. Lasers flashed from the walls and scanned their bodies. After a moment there was an audible clunking noise.

  "This way." Jake opened a cupboard to reveal a lift inside.

  They descended quickly and Morgan felt her ears pop. As in Oxford and London, the ARKANE offices were deep below the earth. It occurred to her that she could really do with some sunlight after way too long underground today.

  She pushed that thought aside and focused instead on Trafalgar Square and how that had been breached. Were they putting this place in danger by bringing the sculpture piece inside?

  At the bottom, they emerged into a plain room. A door opened in front of them and a stunning woman stepped out. Her long dark hair cascaded to a slim waist, and her tailored burgundy trouser suit did nothing to hide her curvaceous figure. Perfect eyebrows arched over dark intelligent eyes that fixed on Jake.

  "It's been a long time," she said, walking over. Jake embraced her and the woman's hand lingered on the nape of his neck. The familiar touch made Morgan suspect that there was something more than professional between them.

  The woman stepped back. "I'm glad you're here at last, even under these difficult circumstances." She turned to Morgan and held out a slim hand, her manicured nails dark with indigo polish. "I'm Shilpa Aggarwal, Director of ARKANE here in India."

  "Dr Morgan Sierra." Morgan shook Shilpa's hand and met the woman's cool gaze, suddenly aware of the muddy clothing they wore and the smell of the river wafting off them. "I'm Jake's partner."

  Shilpa turned back to Jake. "There are rumors that you're working on something unsanctioned. People higher up are asking questions."

  "We need your help," he said. "And we have to keep it quiet."

  Shilpa nodded slowly. "What can I do?"

  Morgan pulled the wrapped package from her bag.

  "It's another piece of the Shiva Nataraja sculpture," Jake said. "We presume it's part of the same statue as the piece taken in the Trafalgar Square bombing, but we need it verified. We won't be here long. We don't want a repeat of London, but we could use your help with where the next piece might be." He pointed down at his disheveled clothing. "Plus we could use a shower and some new clothes."

  "Of course." Shilpa's eyes flickered over Jake's body and Morgan pushed down a flush of jealousy. What Jake did in the shower was no concern of hers, as long as he hurried up so they could get on with the mission.

  Shilpa led them through to the ARKANE labs, the setup similar to London with self-contained rooms where ancient artifacts were investigated as to their occult properties. Morgan wished they had more time here. There were mysteries in this country she would love to research further.

  But there was never enough time.

  They walked through into a changing area.

  "I'll leave you to freshen up," Shilpa said. "And I'll get someone in the lab to look at the sculpture piece immediately and verify its provenance." She held up a hand. "Don't worry. We'll keep it quiet and won't log anything official."

  Morgan handed over the oilskin package and Shilpa walked from the room.

  Jake began to strip off his clothes, a cheeky smile playing around his lips. Morgan turned away, not trusting herself to stay so close to him, and headed into the female showers.

  She sighed with pleasure as the hot water poured down upon her. It had already been a very long day and it was only lunchtime. She scrubbed the river mud from her skin and it swirled down the drain in grey trails. Her fingers lingered on the scars at her side and she thought of Jake and the scars on his body sustained at the bone church. Was Shilpa touching those scars even now?

  Don't be an idiot. She shook her head. Enough already.

  She got dressed quickly and walked to the communal area to find that lunch had been laid out for them. A number of small dishes filled with perfectly made vegetarian food were arranged next to a pile of roti bread. Morgan's stomach rumbled and she gratefully tucked into a gobi masala, a tangy cauliflower dish that exploded with flavor in her mouth.

  Jake emerged a few minutes later, his hair wet from the shower.

  "That looks good," he said, sitting down next to her and tucking in. He smelled spicy and fresh and she could feel his body heat next to her. Morgan quashed the innuendo that rose to her lips and they both ate with relish.

  The door opened and Shilpa came in. This time her beautiful face was marred with a frown, her expression grave.<
br />
  "We've run the sculpture piece through the lab and the radioactive signature is the same as the piece taken from the London vault. It's also a match to a secret cave discovered at Ellora. We suspect the original sculpture was found there. I've been on the phone to Martin in London and it seems that Marietti was in India in the '80s."

  "So that's two pieces we know about," Jake said. "But there are still two more. I'd feel more confident if we had another piece. Do you have any ideas as to where to search next?"

  Shilpa shook her head. "We're still looking for any other artifacts or places that resonate with that radioactive signature. But it will take time."

  Morgan sat silently for a moment. She hesitated to bring a friend into the mission but they were out of ideas.

  "There is someone I can ask," she said. "Someone who knew Marietti long ago."

  Chapter 16

  Father Ben Costanza walked through the narrow gate from St Giles and stepped into the heart of Blackfriars, a Dominican Permanent Private Hall of the University of Oxford. Despite the ever-changing matters of faith and internecine squabbles of the Church, not to mention the malleable face of the university, this small quad was one of the constants in Ben's life. Along with his morning constitutional walk around the University Parks, of course, and a neat espresso from Taylors on the corner of Little Clarendon Street. He hummed a few bars from Mozart's Benedictus, a smile on his face as he recalled the early-blooming flowers in the park. It was a blessing to have another day in this beautiful city.

  Ben rather liked Mondays. Sunday was always a workday if work related to the church, and his still did after all these years. On Mondays he only had one tutorial session with a Ph.D. student studying the history of the Dominican Order in Britain. Ben was a tutor for the Angelicum, the Baccalaureate in Sacred Theology granted by the Pontifical University of St Thomas in Rome. The session wasn't too taxing and he could soon return to his own private study.

  But despite the spring in his step, he was feeling the years more heavily these days, made worse by a spiritual weight caused by the rise in religious fundamentalism both in the East and West. He had seen such things before, of course, and time is ever cyclical. People forget the mistakes of the past so soon, but this time he didn't know if he would live to see the end of the cycle.

  As a former archaeologist, he mourned the destruction of the ancient city of Palmyra, recently blown up by Islamic State. But then, the religious had always destroyed what they called paganism. The Christian edict to destroy the great library of Alexandria back in 391 AD was one order he particularly regretted. The classical knowledge destroyed there and later repressed in Europe by vehement Christians could perhaps have prevented the Dark Ages. Even now, humanity continued to repeat those mistakes. Of course, he had the Bodleian, one of the greatest libraries in the world, here at Oxford University but Ben found himself coveting what had lain within those hallowed walls millennia ago.

  He walked across the quad and climbed the stairs towards his office, feeling the arthritis in his knees as he made his way up but refusing to let the pain show on his face. He was determined to keep this room where he could see the rooftops of Oxford. He didn't want one of those dark ground-floor offices but he knew some of the younger lot kept their eye on him, like vultures ready to pounce on the dead. But as long as he continued to be useful, he would find a place here.

  His phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket. Ben smiled as he accepted the call from Morgan.

  "I heard about the bombing in London," he said. "Anything to do with ARKANE?"

  "You know I can't comment on that." He could hear the smile in her voice. "But I do have a case to work on and I'm hoping you might be able to help. You'll need to ransack your memory though, and it's about someone you have issues with."

  "Marietti."

  Ben's shoulders slumped as he felt the veil of time swirl about him. Marietti was a similar age and their history went back years, back to the Vatican, back even to the archaeological digs at Ephesus years before. Ben had told Morgan about the dig where he had met her parents and about his own forbidden love for her mother, who had died from breast cancer years ago now.

  But Morgan didn't know everything.

  Marietti was bound up in Ben's own emotional history with the Church and at this time in his life, he didn't really want to dig it all up again. But he had promised Morgan's mother, Marianne, that he would always help her daughters, and he saw Marianne's face whenever he looked at her twin girls. As a priest, he would never have his own children, so Morgan and her twin sister, Faye, were the closest he would ever get.

  "Of course," he said. "What do you need?"

  Ben heard rustling as Morgan shuffled papers.

  "We think Marietti found something in India back in the 1980s, a Hindu statue of Shiva Nataraja. It has some kind of relationship to nuclear energy, but we're unsure of the details. The statue was broken into pieces and each hidden. Now someone is trying to put them back together, so we have to find them first. I wondered if you knew or could find out anything about Marietti's Indian trip."

  "You can't ask him yourself?" Ben said.

  "He was injured in the blast and we don't know when he'll be well enough to speak."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. Despite our differences, I still wish him well. But it's strange that the Vatican was even involved in a Hindu dig," Ben said. "I do know why Shiva Nataraja would be associated with nuclear power, though. There's a fable of a weapon, the Brahmastra, mentioned in the Mahabharata, the Sanskrit epic of ancient India. The text influenced Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who helped build the atom bomb. He learned Sanskrit and cited his visit to India as the most influential occasion in his life. The scriptures speak of an ancient battle where this weapon decimated entire armies, destroying crowds of warriors along with war elephants, melting their weapons. Hold on a second, I have the text here somewhere."

  Ben placed the phone on the table, switched it to speakerphone, and turned to his extensive shelf of books. The spines were well worn but despite the volume of titles, it was organized chaos of a kind. As an expert in interfaith matters, Ben had copies of many ancient texts sacred to different religions. He quickly located a translation of the Mahabharata, pulled it down and flicked through the pages.

  "Here we are. It talks of a weapon charged with all the power of the universe. A perpendicular explosion with billowing clouds rising in expanding circles. An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as a thousand suns, and the weapon as a messenger of death which reduced all to ashes. As a result of the explosion, people's hair and nails fell out and birds turned white in the air. Food was infected and soldiers had to immerse themselves in water to wash themselves clean of infection."

  "It certainly sounds like an atomic bomb and the resulting radioactive poisoning," Morgan said. "We need to find the pieces and stop the weapon being activated. Can you help?"

  In Ben's mind, he saw a mushroom cloud above the spires of Oxford that billowed out over the city destroying all in its path. There were secrets he had buried long ago, but now it seemed time to unearth them again. In his long years, many of those who knew of the past had died, and each time, Ben wondered if he would be the last one standing. With Marietti in critical condition, there were few remaining. Perhaps it was time to unearth this mystery.

  "Have you ever been to Goa?" he asked.

  Chapter 17

  The plane banked and the wing tipped and for a brief moment, Morgan stared down into the deep blue of the Arabian Sea. Goa was a coastal state, its long beaches famous for white sand, relaxation and escape from the city grind. Despite India's frenetic growth and economic boom, Goa still managed to hold on to a slower pace of life.

  Father Ben shifted in his sleep and Morgan pulled the blanket up around him. They had met him in Delhi and flown on to Goa together. He had slept most of the way and Morgan had been loath to disturb him, despite her curiosity about what he knew. Jake was reading, catchi
ng up on the history of western India, but they were still unsure as to exactly why they were heading for Goa.

  Martin Klein had sorted the flights quickly and discreetly, keen for them to pursue any new leads while he investigated who inside ARKANE was plotting against Marietti. The repair of HQ continued apace and Morgan imagined the vault and its precious contents disappearing under London again. Of course, the conspiracy message boards were going nuts about what was really under Trafalgar Square based on pictures taken just after the blast, and denials by MI6 and other British government agencies only intensified the speculation. Some of the more sensitive projects had been moved to the labs under the Natural History Museum in Oxford, but no doubt it wouldn't be long until the news cycle shifted attention again.

  Father Ben stretched and yawned.

  "We're almost there," Morgan said softly.

  "What time is it?" He pushed his sleeve back to reveal the vintage Rolex he had worn in all the years she had known him.

  "It's 2.15pm local time," Morgan said.

  Ben shook his head as he wound the hands forward. "I don't think I'll ever get used to jet lag. I'm sure part of my soul is still back in Oxford and it will take a day or so to get here."

  He smiled and Morgan noticed the lines on his face had deepened since she had seen him last. Was she responsible for the added stress in his life? She had certainly brought danger for him in the time she had worked with ARKANE, and she had dragged him into some crazy adventures. He had been almost blown up at Blackfriars, burned to death in the Freemasons Grand Lodge of England and now … well, she didn't even know where this would lead. But since the opening salvo of this mysterious group was to blow up Trafalgar Square, she didn't think it would be a quiet stroll through the backwaters of India.

  But Ben knew something about Marietti's early life, and they needed his help.