The SONG of SHIVA (22 page)

Lyköan put a finger to his lips. Nora froze. Panic followed understanding. Biting her tongue she stood her ground, silently wondering:
Are they watching us?

Quickly folding the keyboard and reinserting it into the yíb, Lyköan dropped to his hands and knees in the wet grass. Creeping slowly to the outer edge of the nearest pylon, he kept a close eye on the screen while extending a hand just above the level of the grass.

At first he saw nothing. “Isolate East Camera,” he spoke softly into the yíb. The other three views vanished, replaced by a full-screen pan just sweeping beyond the dolmen. When it returned seconds later, he extended his hand again. A cold shiver ran down his spine, far colder than the water running down his neck earlier had produced. Almost imperceptible, even in full format, but obvious to anyone looking for it, a small fluttering hand waved back at him from the screen.

“Play audio,” Lyköan whispered into the receiver.

Audio is not active at this time
, Julie Prentice’s ersatz voice replied.
Do you wish to activate audio?

“No,” Lyköan quickly replied.

Well, they
can
hear, but they’re not always listening.
Were the surveillance screens being monitored? He hoped not. But video files would probably be maintained automatically.

Maybe the surveillance cameras were only monitored when flights were moving in and out of the hangar. Had they been monitoring earlier this morning? Unlikely, or the boldfaced exchange with Pandavas would have ended much differently.

“Surveillance Center Camera.”

Cannot identify ‘Surveillance Center Camera’. Please rephrase and resubmit

“Damn!” Lyköan breathed angrily.

“List ― All Surveillance Cameras”

The list was exhaustive. Dozens of locations, most having unfamiliar acronymic names. Lyköan began by opening a few of the more identifiable line items, starting with
Hangar Bay 2
. The first selection turned out to be a wide angle ceiling shot of two rotor blades under which Lyköan could plainly make out an aircraft much like the one he had seen enter the portal this morning. Half a dozen men were loading crates on a conveyor belt and running them into the helicopter’s belly. Lyköan noticed numerals on the fuselage below the rear rotor and snapped a screen copy shot for future reference. He exited the hangar and tried five more cameras. All seemed to be laboratory environments.

“We may have stumbled on a project in development,” Lyköan said after a bit. “Some of this hornets’ nest is still under construction. May be a good sign. The Primrose Bangkok build-out must be part of it – along with who knows what else.”

“What an enormous facility,” Nora observed. “Why?”

“Not a question we need to answer right now. No military or corporate markings on the chopper, but they could still be involved. Maybe we can run down the aircraft ID numbers later. The question we
do
need answered is, ‘are any eyeballs watching the portal surveillance cameras?’”

“What about
SGN Admin
? Nora suggested, looking at the surveillance camera list.

“SGN?” Lyköan asked.

“Didn’t the entry window call this place the
Shiva Gamma Node
? Administrative offices might house security, don’t you think?”

“I was wondering why I invited you on this little picnic.”

Lyköan opened the camera. The panning view that emerged was of an empty office environment, divided into four large cubicles and two larger, open spaces.

“The lights aren’t even on. But this bank of screens against the wall,” he said, pointing to the screen, “sure looks like what we’re after. No one’s at the controls. Unless they review all unattended video files we’re probably in the clear.”

“What was that?” Nora asked, noticing a flash on the screen.

A man and woman in white lab coats, both carrying clipboards, entered the camera’s field of view. Moving from cubicle to cubicle, they appeared to be taking inventory, working from checklists of some kind. 

“They must have switched on the lights,” Lyköan said. Moving up one aisle and down the next, they would eventually arrive at the security control stations.

“C’mon. We’re getting out of here ― right now.” Taking Nora by the arm, he pulled her towards the horses.

“Head for Cairncrest, but keep the dolmen between you and the camera’s line of sight.”

Nora nodded. Wiping the residual raindrops from the saddle and mounting the stallion, she rode off down the hillside. Slipping the yíb back into the plastic pouch, Lyköan stepped into the stirrup and, holding the reins in one hand, swung into the mare’s saddle.

Looking over his shoulder as they descended the slope back towards the bridle path, he watched the megalith sink below the brow of the hill and commented, “That was probably our last trip to the dolmen.”

“No argument here, sweetheart,” Nora replied. “I just hope it wasn’t one too many.”

Far ahead, with the sun hot at their backs, Cairncrest gleamed, a volcanic crystal burning on the horizon.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

If it has teeth, sooner or later it will bite.

Anonymous

Lyköan swallowed hard, struggling to keep hope afloat in an ocean of danger and doubt, waves of misperception crashing threateningly upon the rocks of fear, casting their cold, hard spray into every crevice inside his soggy skull. Innocent comments carried unspoken threats, buffeting his frail craft as it bobbed upon a moonless, storm-tossed deep, tingeing every word with dark insinuation and life-threatening menace, every look adding to the penumbra of suspicion that now eclipsed even the man who, only weeks before, had saved his life.

Still working for the good guys?
Lyköan wondered, staring at Whitehall across the table. With the others present he couldn’t speak freely. Maintaining even this thin veneer of nonchalance demanded every bit of tuck he possessed. “Thanks for checking with my landlady about the mutt, Whitehall. I really appreciate it.”

“Only took a phone call,” Whitehall replied, demurring the thank you offhandedly.

“My life ought to be worth an extra two hundred baht a week, don’t you think? Or am I overestimating?” A mechanical smile pursued the comment. Did it look as strained as it felt?

“You could have negotiated,” Whitehall replied with a wink and a little of the old spark. Removing a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, he pulled a handkerchief from an inside jacket pocket and began cleaning the tiny lenses.

Holding the glasses up to the amber lights overhead, he continued, “Although for feeding, watering, and letting your animal in and out every day – my, my, it was quite an exhaustive list of obligations, I must tell you – your landlady, Mrs. Disatapon, feels she is being woefully under-compensated.”

“She’s not paying for the chow,” Lyköan explained. “Anyway, I can settle up when I get back ― if she really thinks I’m taking advantage of her.”

Whitehall shook his head and, replacing the glasses, chortled, “That penchant for obeying a manufactured guilty conscience is a dangerous flaw in a businessman, Lyköan. If I were you I’d take pains that it didn’t trip me up one of these days.”

What’s that supposed to mean?
Lyköan wondered. All he could manage in reply was, “You’re probably right. Maybe everybody is just somebody else’s chump.”

Dressed in a plain white summer suit, Whitehall had cleaned up amazingly well. He exhibited absolutely no hint of the exhaustion that the similar grueling flight had wrung out of Lyköan earlier in the week. But he was not exactly acting like himself either.

The past twenty-four hours had changed Lyköan’s perception of everything. Suspecting Whitehall at this juncture was as much a consequence of his paranoid imagination as any considered, even intuitive deduction. Although his suspicion was by no means certain, it would explain the man’s reticence about revealing why the morning’s urgent dash to London with Pandavas had been necessary.

There had been an opportunity for a few private words before dinner, but Whitehall had begged off when Lyköan tried to draw him aside, explaining that they could go over everything later, when there was more time and less likelihood of being interrupted. While this made perfect sense, in Lyköan’s present state, it reeked of something far more sinister.

Until they could confer privately, the real reason for Whitehall’s appearance here in England would have to remain unexplained. Lyköan had no choice but to let the fire of this conundrum smolder while he played oblivious pawn in the evening’s table-circling conversation. His only hope was that this subterfuge of ignorance might buy time. What was one more threat anyway? The bill from the palace intrigue would come due as the Fates ordained. If he was lucky, that would not be until after he’d had an opportunity to speak with Whitehall ― and bring the big picture a little more into focus.

Just about everything else was unrecognizable, had become completely unmanageable or gone horribly wrong. A worldwide pandemic was about to be unleashed, as lethal as anything unaided Nature herself could dish out, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. That seemed certain. And except for the conspirators themselves, apparently only two people on earth were even aware of the danger. Being one of them wasn’t any advantage.

On a much more personal note, there was still the uncertainty of what being the object of some tangential human genetic experiment really meant. For all he knew, he might already be beyond help ― already a dead man. There it was, the full extent of everything he and Nora knew. It really wasn’t much.

What they
didn’t
know, on the other hand, filled this vast ocean of doubt and fear. For one thing, they had probably not identified all the key players. Even if they knew who all was involved, what kind of meaningful response ― let alone a plan of attack ― could the two of them possibly launch?

But that was nothing at all when compared with the most blackly ironic element of all: being obliged to sit here impotently, trapped by circumstance right in the conspirator’s lair, forced to eat crumpets and engage in polite after-dinner conversation while the final pieces of the plot were undoubtedly being implemented. Lyköan felt helpless. He had information, but no idea what to do with it. Manic shoot-from-the-hip tactical ideas scudded from one lame scenario to the next, every one fraught with some glaring flaw.

With our access to Innovac’s neural network we could infect the LAN with a virus
―
though that might play our lone trump card too soon. The only leverage we’ve got is our knowing something no one at Innovac knows we know. We’ll only have one chance to act with surprise. Now’s probably not that time...  

I could continue to play dumb, lay low and return innocently to Bangkok, giving Nora a chance to blow the whistle at the CDC. But how long is that going to take? Even if she convinces them of the danger, the triggering infection might come before the US cavalry can come to the rescue. And in the meantime, the ongoing effects of this damned L-9 Genome research kills me…

No. We have to move faster. I need to talk to Whitehall
―
but what can I safely tell him? Maybe it’s best we just leave him out of the equation altogether
―
Nora and I continue to act secretly on our own
―
but that might leave us without some essential detail he may know… 

Admit it, Lyköan
―
you got no plan. And the longer you sit on your hands, the more likely ol’Pandi here discovers he’s been found out
―
by some misstep or something else. The clock is ticking. Nora and I are certainly no Peel and Steed.

While Lyköan studied Pandavas’s Cheshire smile, desperate thoughts racing, Nora was running a similar gauntlet, minus the personal implications of Innovac’s clandestine genetic experiments. She too was preoccupied, but forced to carry on an affable conversation with Eshwar Narayan, who had unexpectedly returned from London with Pandavas and Whitehall. Julie Prentice made it an even half dozen. No matter how Nora counted, the two of them were outnumbered.

Pandavas and Prentice had decided to throw an ambrosial continental feast for their four houseguests. The meal had been consumed in one of the mansion’s more intimate dining rooms, but moved to a candle-lit outdoor table on the veranda afterwards for demitasse and English pastries. If their heads were to roll tonight, Nora thought, Pandavas could never be accused of having tormented the palates of the condemned before their execution.

The evening’s conversation had danced for hours over feral terrain, pursuing a devious course between the antipodes of seriousness and hilarity and now, after eleven o’clock, was finally winding down. Hidden behind the mask of her bright smile, around the corners of her eyes, Lyköan was sure he detected hysteria rising in Nora’s face ― in the very speed and pitch of her voice. Was it as obvious to the others? Was the strain showing on his face as well?

“We’ve already broken camp here, Eshwar. Tomorrow or the day after I’ve
got
to go home. Tonight’s dinner was the perfect sendoff after these weeks at hard labor,” Nora admitted, turning to Pandavas. “I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done ― but all things come to an end.”

“It’s quite astonishing what you’ve accomplished in so short a time, Carmichael,” Narayan told her, cloying flattery dripping from every word.

“I’ve been away from my kids and the CDC for too long as it is,” Nora explained. “Besides, there’s no longer a reason to stay.”

“If you really wanted one, I’m sure Atma could dream up something. A special projects assignment perhaps?” Narayan’s well-oiled voice warbled the final three words as he glanced across the table at Pandavas. 

“Eswhar’s right,” Pandavas agreed. “We’d have absolutely no trouble finding a worthy assignment for someone with your rare intuitive skills. Innovac R&D is always looking for scientific instincts of your caliber. I know the CDC values you, but if you’re ever interested...” He left the statement an open question.

“Even if that’s an honest, no strings offer, Atma, you can’t really expect an immediate answer.”

“Oh, the offer’s quite genuine,” Pandavas assured her. “But as you say, serious consideration would demand more time. If you’d like, we can schedule further discussion ― at your convenience.”

“Who knows,” Narayan added, “writing your own research ticket might prove more rewarding all around: to you personally, to Innovac from a business and research perspective, and to the world at large. We’ve witnessed you under stress – we’re well aware of your capabilities. Innovac would be willing to bend over backwards in any and all particulars.”

Lyköan had heard every word of this soft sell turn hard, but didn’t know what to make of it. He looked at Nora for a clue. Was she blushing?

“You’ll never work for a more understanding or grateful boss,” Prentice sparkled.

And you’d certainly know, Julie
, Nora felt like saying.

Understanding of what
―
eugenics
? Lyköan wondered.
Maybe, if you’re really interested in a personal tour of hell, Nora.
W
-
9 Genome anyone?

* * *

“This is as private a spot as we’ll find at Cairncrest,” Lyköan said in the echoing shadows of the hot stone chamber. Reaching into the central basin, he withdrew a dripping sponge and squeezing it hard over his head, let the hot water flush the oils from his pores.

“You’re jolly well right, lad,” Whitehall said, surveying their surroundings. “I was beginning to think that damned chatty folderol would go on all night. This is just the spot for a touch of deviltry, don’t you think? And oh my word, the game’s afoot. If you don’t mind, though, I’d like to inspect the premises before we go any further.”

“Knock yourself out, Sherlock.”

Whitehall paced the perimeter of the room in wooden-soled sandals, running his hands along the hot
opus signinum
cement between each hollow terra cotta block, paying particular attention to the corners and arched ceiling. Lyköan watched silently, quite aware of what his mission was.

The two men had come in together a little before midnight. The
hypocaust
was a separate T-shaped windowless structure that stood to the north of the main house and was connected to it by a cool damp tunnel, nondescript except for its Greek key-mosaic floor tiles, various hues of inset alabaster squares and interwoven rope-like strands of a guilloche border, that led to the ancient
apodyterium
or changing room. From here, after disrobing and lighting two black pitch torches, they had strapped on the sandals and passed into the
tepidarium
or modestly heated room and then turned left and entered the separate floor-and-wall-heated
caldarium
, where Lyköan intended to hold his long-delayed debriefing. The only illumination came from the torches they had carried in, now mounted in brackets on the opposing shorter walls, the smoke from their flames escaping through open air vents in the dark arched roof above.

“Pandavas told me this corresponds exactly to the floor plan of the Valeria Victrix barracks hypocaust ― the Twentieth Legion ― during their occupation,” Lyköan explained.

“Forgive me, Lyköan, but I do know a little of the local history. In fact, I grew up not forty miles from here, what?”

“Sorry. Then you probably also know that the Romans bivouacked around these parts for a couple hundred years ― through the second and third centuries anyway. Pandavas had it rebuilt, to spec, on the exact footprint of the original, using as many original stones as he was able to unearth in the area.”

“No modern improvements whatsoever?” Whitehall questioned.

“So he claimed.”

“Just making sure,” the older man grunted. “Fine period work. Might last another two millennia, if properly maintained.”

“You an expert?”

“You could say that.” Whitehall admitted, slowly continuing his detailed inspection. Satisfied at last, he came and sat down next to Lyköan, drew another misshapen sponge from the central pool and squeezed it against the crown of his head. “Ah, the luxurious life of the ancients,” he said as the liquid ran down his torso.