The SONG of SHIVA (41 page)

“General Wattanasin receive Innovac promise,” Jimmy cried. “Infection not leave southern provinces.”

“Innovac actually promised that?” Lyköan asked, standing at Fremont’s side. “How could they?”

“Had vaccine.”

“You inoculated?” Fremont demanded.

No answer.

“I asked you a goddamned question, fuckface.”

Jimmy nodded, pushing the gun barrel backwards.

“What was the point? What did they hope to accomplish?”

“Defend Thai sovereignty.”

“Against what?” Lyköan demanded.

“Terrorists.”

“What terrorists?”

“
al-Qabas-e-Allah
. Firebrand of Allah.”

Finally they were getting somewhere.

“General Wattanasin control Army. Ministry of Health listen to Pandavas.”

“And what about you? Who were you listening to ― you little piece of shit?” Fremont returned, spittle flying from his mouth.

“I just middleman. Make introductions: Wattanasin ― Innovac ― Primrose ― Ministry of Health ― others. That all.”

“I’ll bet ‘that all’,” Fremont said with a convincing sneer “How does ‘that all’ make anybody filthy rich, kiddo? Nobody pays millions ― baht ― dollars ― whatever ― for introductions. I’m getting a little impatient here,” Fremont said, turning to Lyköan. “You getting impatient, Lyköan? Think we got enough?”

“He’s playing ball, Fremont,” Lyköan pleaded on cue. “You
are
playing ball, aren’t you, Jimmy? C’mon Felix, you said no murder if we got to the truth. So far, it sounds reasonable to me. We’re getting there. Give the kid a chance.”

“Yes, yes!” Jimmy gasped, looking up at Fremont. “I tell everything.”

“We’re listening,” Felix said, displaying a diabolical grin.

“Innovac promise they can protect most of country from epidemic ― limit outbreak. General Wattanasin and Mr. Chaiprasit—”

“Who?” Lyköan asked.

“Inter-Provincial Health Minister,” Jimmy explained. “Want no link to questions. I am only negotiator. When first suggested—”

“Questions? What questions?”

“My questions. What illness kill most? Mutant malaria, SARS, Ebola, bird flu ― many others. How to contain. Can vaccine be made? At first I talk quietly to many companies ― look for information only. Promise ear of my uncle, husband of King’s sister. They all happy to pay. I even introduce some to my uncle.”

“Is he part of this?” Fremont asked.

“No. Is successful businessman. Work out for everyone. I ask more questions. Emergency quarantine ― how soon? How many die? Looking for—” Jimmy took a long breath.

“Keep talking,” Fremont commanded. “Looking for what?”

“Best solution to trouble in south.”

“Solution?” Lyköan asked.

“Stop uprising. End ― Mr. Chaiprasit call it ― ‘appeal’ of Firebrand of Allah.”

“So during your diligent search,” Felix asked in a calmer voice, “did you find Innovac ― or did they find you?”

“I meet Dr. Narayan when he come to Thailand to negotiate with Primrose. Later negotiate directly with Pandavas.”

“How convenient ― for everyone,” Lyköan said with a sarcastic chuckle. “A match made in heaven. So what went wrong?”

“Wattanasin worry. Not trust Pandavas. He want proof of Innovac promise. Want Primrose plans and ― your computer files. I agree. Primrose easy. Buy everything from old owners. But you ― I know you already ― know you would not just turn over files to me ― know how important you think Innovac-Primrose deal is. So I hire thieves from Laos.”

“Incompetents.”

“But they succeed. They get your Ōkii tablet.”

“That they did. And all I got was a fucking belly wound.”

“But general could not break coded files. So I ask Pandavas for more assurance.”

“And the old boy was only too happy to oblige. Anything the general wanted. Am I right?”

“Yes. Very, very satisfactory.”

“No doubt.”

“He provide map. Pinpoint outbreak source from computer model. Show path from Vietnam to Thailand. Provide vaccine for outbreak. Many doses.”

“As little good as it’ll do you,” Lyköan laughed ruefully, shaking his head.

“Flu already do job,” Jimmy countered. “In south. Kill troublesome element. Soon army reestablish order. Ministry of Health now savior of Thailand. Look for many years of peace.”

“And what did Innovac want in return?” Fremont demanded.

“Freedom to manufacture in Thailand. Purchase land for new research centers.”

Fremont was almost apoplectic. “And that didn’t seem even remotely unbalanced a bargain to you geniuses?”

“Innovac and Ministry of Health sign twenty year exclusive contract. Many drugs. Import and manufacture. Many billions of baht guaranteed. That no small matter.”

“Do you have any idea where Pandavas is now?”

“Army and police looking. No one knows.”

Jimmy was probably telling the truth. As he knew the truth anyway. As the clandestine elements of the Thai government believed it to be. And surely just as Pandavas had so attractively packaged it. The truth is beautiful. But lies have a compelling beauty of their own.

“That’s all of it?” Fremont asked. “Anything else?” To make certain, he cocked the weapon with a resounding click.

“Same-same. All I know. All I know. All I know...”

Jimmy’s pleading voice trailed off in a flare of fading
ignis fatuus
and the scent of decaying tropical fruit. Lyköan suddenly felt claustrophobic. The surrounding foliage was thick and exerting a wavering pressure as though he were in an undulating kelp forest, swimming thirty feet below the surface of an ocean.

Lowering the gun, Fremont stepped back, pulled out a phone and keyed in a three button message. In the center of Jimmy’s forehead a small, raw circular impression retained the image of the gun barrel. Beads of sweat, beginning at the plastered hairline, ran down the glazed forehead and around the mark. Collecting first in the eyebrows, they then continued around the outside of each ocular orbit, mixing with tears at the sunken cheekbones and from there trickled down the angular plane of each cheek. At the point of the chin each glistening droplet fell, disappearing one by one into the kaleidoscopic expanse of Jimmy’s sad, rumpled necktie. Lyköan watched, enthralled by this slow-motion ballet until the fluttering staccato of rotors interrupted. Through a storm of blinding chartreuse and roseate moiré damask he pushed Jimmy towards a larger clearing in the jungle canopy.

“C’mon, rabbit-heart. Time to scurry off for a well-deserved vacation. Give you a chance to cool your heels.”

CHAPTER FORTY

The minds of the everlasting gods are not changed suddenly.

Homer :
The Odyssey

“That’s the last of it, John,” Nora called from across the lab. “Once you get those antigen sequencers out of here, I’ll call Nettinger ― let him know he can have the space for MRT transcriptor culturing. So as quick as you can, okay?”

“Thirty minutes, max, doc,” the young man replied without looking up. “Two trips to plasminogen binding and this lab is all his.”

Walking over to the technician, who continued busily transferring electronic components into boxes on a rolling cart, she asked in a much lower register, “When you’re finished here, can you stop by my office for one last
unofficial
assignment?” They had been working together in the otherwise deserted laboratory since early morning; it was now nearly two in the afternoon.

“An unofficial  assignment?” Newhouse echoed tentatively. “What kind of assignment?”

“Something personal. I need somebody who I can trust to keep his mouth shut and follow instructions, no questions asked. You willing to do that?”

“Sure doc, anything.”

“Okay,” she sighed, looking past him, “then I’ll see you before you leave.”

“Why not now?”

“No questions ― remember?”

“I thought you were just being rhetorical.”

“No ― I wasn’t. Look, John, I want discretion. Don’t be obtuse. It’s something important ― and private. Isn’t that enough?”

“And I shouldn’t ask what it’s all about.” It was a statement, not a question.

“That’s right. You should just agree. Because you owe me. You know
why
you owe me, don't you?”

“For getting me a seat on the last plane out of Dodge?”

One by one, airports around the globe were shuttering their gates. Suvarnahbumi International had announced it would be suspending operations after five o’clock today. If not for Nora’s intercession, John Newhouse, low man on the CDC’s Thai influenza response team, would have been stranded in Thailand, unable to return to a pregnant wife about to deliver their first child. Nora had selected her target with considerable forethought.

“Getting you a ticket home was only a means to an end, John,” she explained. “And it’s not the most important reason you owe me anyway. Not by a long shot. You owe me far more for saving your life. If you had never come to Thailand ― had never been inoculated ― what do you think your prognosis would be right now?”

The young man’s gaze dropped.

“If not for me,” she explained, emphasizing her words by poking his chest with an index finger, “you’d be just another poor slob about to learn firsthand that no church pew ― no soon-to-be overcrowded hospital room, anywhere on earth, is capable of protecting anyone. The shit’s about to hit the fan, Johnny boy. You and I both know that. If not for my vaccine ― you tell me ― where would you be?”

“God, doc ― okay. You’ve made your point. Why are you acting like this?”

“Just looking for a little genuine gratitude,” Nora replied, ignoring this latest violation of her no question rule. “Put you in the right frame of mind so you will willing do what I ask, become my mule and carry something important back to the States for me. And I think you’ll do it once you recognize the golden opportunity you’re being handed.

“Tell me, John,” she went on, “besides your wife ― do you have any close family ― anybody you really care about?” She was giving the young man more than a hint of what she had in mind. If he was sharp, and she knew he was, he’d pick up on it soon.

“My parents are still alive. I’ve got an older brother in Memphis with a wife and three kids.”

“Would you like to protect them?”

“Of course…”

“I can’t believe you haven’t considered the possibility yourself ― already.” She paused, recognizing the glint of understanding ― or was it shame? ― in his eyes. “Oh I see. You have. Hey listen; I’m not faulting you, in fact, I’d doubt your humanity if you hadn’t. I just want the same chance for my own family ― you understand?”

Newhouse nodded.

“With multiple outbreaks now confirmed in North America, there isn’t much time. I know it sounds callous ― even selfish ― but I didn’t risk my life ― beat my head against the wall these past weeks ― only to leave my own kids defenseless. Not when I have the power ― right here in my hand—” she raised a box of vaccine vials “― to save them.”

“Then just give that to me now,” Newhouse suggested. “Why do we have to meet in your office later?”

“More questions? You know, Johnny, I’m beginning to worry. Maybe you’re
not
the right burro for this job. Not right at all.”

“No, I’m your boy, doc. Really. I am,” Newhouse insisted. “I’m more than happy to do whatever you say. Because ― like you said ― I really
do
owe you.”

“I hope you really believe that,” Nora sighed again.

“Look doc, I wasn’t trying to be difficult.”

“And you’ve got to promise to deliver them personally,” Nora continued, ignoring the interruption. “Do you understand? Even before the baby’s born. Within twenty-four hours of landing at HJA. Can you promise me that?”

* * *

The sun was about to plunge below the western skyline as Lyköan broke stride in front of Wat Tee Pueng Sut Taai. Finding the ornate cast-iron main gates thrown open against the temple’s outer masonry wall, he hurried inside. Greeting him as he passed into the inner courtyard was a startling scene, like something out of ancient history ― or scripture.

Across the sunlit grounds in every direction stretched a blinding sea of white canvas litters, hundreds of them, each holding a single forlorn occupant, some moving, moaning, coughing or crying out, others still and silent. A forest of fiery serpents’ tongues rose from the brilliant expanse, like flaming whitecaps tossing on a sunlit, storm-swept sea. Polarized and chromatic, each forked flame burned brightly above the living. Above the dead hung only barren and still air.

Abstractedly, he began estimating the number of gaps ― the vacancies ― in the sea of flames at a good thirty percent of the litters within view. Thirty percent right now. He sensed there would soon be more. Many more.

At odd intervals among the multitude, a few monks, shaven-headed and saffron-robed, carried water and were otherwise ministering to the afflicted. Often, this assistance consisted of no more than providing a brief shadow as they passed between the rows of unfortunates and the blistering sun. The odor of corruption was unmistakable and overpowering. Hemorrhagic splatters fouled the otherwise pristine fabric at frequent intervals.

Stepping carefully between two haphazard rows of coffin-sized rectangles, he made his way to Sun Shi’s chamber and there, with a good deal of apprehension, paused for a moment in the doorway. After half a dozen measured breaths, finding his voice at last, he called into the room, “Master Sun, may I speak with you?”

From inside the darkness, as though echoing across a wide, mist-muted valley with the raspy scratch of dead leaves being crushed underfoot the almost unrecognizable voice replied, “Always, my favorite apostate. Always.” A ragged, croupy cough racked the chamber immediately after the voice had faded away.

Ducking under the doorway lintel, Lyköan entered. Inside the tiny chamber, ghostly wisps of joss smoke danced towards a small hole in the raftered ceiling. A diffused shaft of sunlight sliced obliquely through the smoke, creating an angled column of glittering gemstone stars in the interior's otherwise obsidian night.

On an austere shelf against the far wall, barely visible through the smoke, a single squat votive candle sputtered, its dull saffron flame pressing tentatively into the darkness. On the bare floor in front of the shelf, Sun Shi lay shivering under a perspiration-soaked thin cotton sheet, his body little more than a knoll rising from the thin pallet thrown down upon the room’s bare, earthen floor. A rhythm of labored, shallow breaths echoed hollowly across the room. Walking over to the shivering figure, Lyköan sat down.

“How you doing, old timer?”

“I’ve been better,” came the weak reply.

His eyes slowly acclimating to the feeble candlelight, Lyköan looked down into the monk’s sallow face. Before Sun Shi had taken ill those now rheumy and darkly sunken eyes had always been bright and alert; the sharp contours of his now cadaverously emaciated skull had been merely aesthetic. Stretched tightly across bone and sinew, his flesh had been weathered, yes ― like strong, heavy parchment ― not this dangerously thin, almost translucent vellum on the verge of tearing. In only two days, the time it had taken to fill the wat’s inner courtyard with the sick and dying, the old monk had been frighteningly transformed.

Holding a skeletal hand in both of his own, heat radiating from brittle bone, Lyköan peered into the old man’s fever-tinged eyes and asked, “Can I do anything? Get somebody in here to take a look at you?”

“Another exercise in futility, my boy,” Sun wheezed, looking up at Lyköan with a grotesque death’s-head grin. “I appreciate the gesture. Honestly, I do. But we have more pressing concerns at the moment, don't we? There were thirty-five deaths here in the wat last night. The monks who have yet to fall ill are nearing exhaustion. Time grows short.”

“How can I help? Anything...” Lyköan whispered through a forced smile.

“Tell me, do you recall the four noble truths?”

If time was of the essence, why was the monk returning to lessons learned years ago? “Life brings suffering,” he obediently responded, almost by route, giving the old man his answer. “That is the primary truth. The cause of this suffering is our attachment. That follows. The cessation of suffering is attainable. This is the goal. The path that leads to the end of suffering exists and that should be our course.”

“So, have you learned the words but not their meaning?”

“Probably,” Lyköan replied. “I certainly don’t have your understanding ― or faith.” Staring far into Sun Shi’s fathomless, relaxing eyes, he knew he had answered the dying man as honestly as he had ever answered anything.

“Knowing the truths, then ― even with limited understanding ― you must realize that it would be the height of hypocrisy for me to sidestep this judgment simply because I find it ― inconvenient. Pain and life are synonymous. But pain is not the same as suffering.” The comment was punctuated by a long, hacking cough followed by two short, gasping breaths. “Do you also remember what I told you at Fifth and Fortieth?”

“You mean under the red and white umbrella?” Lyköan asked, attempting a smile. “Yeah, I remember. I've been wondering when you might bring it up again. So that was really you. How did you find me there?”

“What is your memory of that meeting?” Sun Shi asked, his eyes burning in earnest with a familiar inner fire.             

“Your advice was something like reality being an illusion. That it would be a mistake for me to hold onto Karen and that other life. That there is a reason each slice of existence is separated from the rest and follows the course it does. How am I doing so far?”

“Quite well. Those aren’t my exact words, but the essence is faultless.”

“You probably know then that I had no intention of following your advice.”

“Funny how things work out, isn’t it?”

“How
did
you manage to be there?”

“There are any number of techniques for manifesting beyond the immediate, my dearest acolyte. Few require the primitive technology Pandavas employed. Traversing the space between the leaves of existence, however, by any means, unerringly produces an identifiable trail. I simply followed yours.”

“Another of those secrets of the universe?”

“One of many. I have told you time and again how our being is not limited ― certainly need not be restricted to this plane of existence or even this point in time. You may not have believed this before, but I know you do now. It is only the static nature of our perception that causes suffering. Pain in life may be unavoidable, but suffering as a result of pain is an unnecessary, added burden. I do not desire it and so it has no claim upon me.”

“You’re just stubborn, old man.”

“I know you as well as anyone, Egan Lyköan. I know that you have spent half your life dabbling in philosophy. You must have learned something. Would you also call Socrates stubborn?”

“Hell yes.”

“Then in spite of all your seeking you still have not found wisdom.”

“Sacrificing your life just to prove a point? You call that
wisdom
?”

“Listen to me carefully. The eternal enmity between light and dark ― between presence and absence ― is a continuum ― the natural extremes of existence. It is possible to transform this dualism ― by a unified exertion of certain spiritual energies—”

A rapid staccato of shallow, labored breaths followed. Sun Shi threw off the cotton sheet covering his body. Lyköan could count every rib in the old man’s perspiration-soaked chest.

“Pandavas believes he is serving existence,” Sun whispered, the exertion needed to spit out the words obvious in his pain-wracked face. “That periodic cataclysms are natural and necessary. That a certain taint ― call it spiritual plaque if you like ― is best removed through the wholesale slaughter of souls…”