The SONG of SHIVA (9 page)

“That’s been my intention all along,” Lyköan agreed. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Which makes two of us,” Whitehall acknowledged weakly.

“Looks like we’re finished for now. Want to go downstairs and grab some lunch?”

“It might not be wise to be seen alone together at the moment,” Whitehall replied, “and risk raising suspicions. Someone might put two and two together. Gordon and Narayan are staying here at the hotel. I only asked you up this morning because P&J swept the room only yesterday. In the future, meeting outdoors would be safer. As always, the less said over the phone the better. And watch yourself on the way out.”

“Think I’ll take the stairs. Avoid the elevators.”             

“That’s the spirit,” Whitehall agreed. “See you at Primrose, Monday morning. Stiff upper lip now, lad.”

Leaving Whitehall at the door, Lyköan headed for the stairway. Once inside the stairwell, footsteps echoing crisply off the bare cement, he descended at a run. The transition from struggling businessman to corporate spy had been utterly seamless. It was doubtful that any of this could be considered either ‘Right Intention’ or ‘Right Conduct’ in the context of the eight-fold path. While he may have thought he had opened Whitehall like a can of tuna, Whitehall had just as surely turned Lyköan into his accomplice. If that were true, to what purpose?

Preoccupied with this inner discourse, he carelessly threw the ground-floor door open and stepped out into the hallway that ran between the hotel’s two main elevator banks. Once past the last elevator, he made a quick turn at full stride and stepped out into the lobby. Near the revolving doors at the front entrance, four men were standing in huddled conversation.

Lyköan recognized three immediately: Gordon, Narayan, and the Thai Minister of Health, Narit Intatha. The latter had become something of a local celebrity through innumerable TAI epidemic television interviews and newspaper photos. The fourth face was a mystery, but from his clothing Lyköan thought he might be another Thai official, businessman, or cop. As if an electrical current had pulsed through him, he instinctively sprang back, bolting into the first available open elevator door.

“Watch it!” a voice cried, an instant before he slammed full-body into one of three exiting passengers, crushing the instep of the woman who had shouted the warning and sending her laptop crashing to the floor. With irritated expressions, the other two passengers sidestepped around him and exited.

Damn it
,
damn it
,
damn it
! In a low, barely audible voice, he was finally able to get out, “Aw Jeez, I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking...”

“That hurt!” the woman announced in a voice sure to draw attention. He stooped to retrieve the computer, almost hitting her chin with the back of his head when he stood up again. He offered her the device with an apologetic grin.

Were the four men at the door entering or leaving the hotel? His heart was racing.
Fucking bad timing
,
bad timing
,
bad timing
… He was trapped ― couldn’t risk even a glance outside the closing elevator doors.
God-awful awkward
.

“Really, this was all my fault,” he attempted. “If your computer’s damaged, I’d be happy to pay for any repairs. Hope you haven’t lost any data.” Anything to keep the conversation from leaving the elevator. “Do you think you’re injured?”

“I don’t know, but it hurts like hell. What were you thinking?” Lyköan caught the American accent as the woman pushed the Open Door button and raised the foot behind her.

“I wasn’t paying attention ― preoccupied I guess.” The quartet he was trying to avoid still hadn’t passed the elevator. “What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to get out of this elevator, if you don’t mind,” she said, jockeying for position around him. This looked like the moment of truth.

“Sure.” He let her exit first and, entering the lobby behind her, observed a rear door close on a limousine parked at the curb outside the front doors. The four men were no longer in the lobby. Lyköan watched, relieved as the vehicle pulled out into traffic.

“I’m really sorry,” he repeated. “Can I call a doctor ― buy you lunch?” How had he connected the two offers? Only now, as his pounding heart slowed to a more normal rhythm did he notice that his unintended victim was by no means unattractive. Mid-thirties, auburn hair, porcelain complexion, well put together ― and no wedding ring. What was he thinking? He’d barely escaped with his skin.

“No. I’m fine, really. Anyway, it’s a shock resistant Ōkiinami,” she said, lifting the laptop. “The ads claim you can safely toss it out a second story window. Thank God you didn’t decide to test that claim. I think I’ll survive too.”

And she wasn’t running away. “Well, if you discover later that the computer is damaged or you need that foot looked at, you can contact me any time, here.” He reached into his jacket pocket, withdrew a thin gold case, opened it quickly and handed her a Lyköan IE business card. “I’m a local businessman. You can leave a message anytime.” Now that the reason for his panic had sped away he felt much more relaxed. “The offer for lunch still stands. I’m not usually this clumsy ― or dangerous. Really.”

“Is this your suave technique for meeting women, Mr. Ly…cone?” she attempted, glancing at the card.

“
Like-Owen
,” he corrected. “Well, actually it’s Mr. Debonair. Yep, that’s me. Break her foot and she has a hard time running away. And your name, Miz...?”

“It’s
Doctor
Carmichael,” Nora corrected. “but I’ll have to pass on your luncheon invitation. I’m already late for an appointment as it is. If you’re staying at the hotel, perhaps another time.” She turned away and headed for the front doors, limping noticeably.

CHAPTER TEN

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.

Will Durant :
Story of Civilization

Wow, that was strange
, Nora thought, as the taxi pulled out into traffic. It would be a long time before she forgot Egan Lyköan ― at least while her foot was still throbbing. The poor klutz seemed polite and innocent enough, genuinely apologetic, but God, was he ever nervous. She took one last look at the Lyköan Import-Export business card before idly slipping it into her raincoat pocket.

Wonder what he imports
? Removing her shoe in the cab’s back seat, she began massaging the bruise. Outside the taxi window a deluge was pouring down upon the dreary street. She made a mental note to thank her travel agent for insisting that she pack wet weather gear.

Jean-George had invited her to dinner the night before, but she had declined, returning instead to the hotel to file her daily report and give the crew in Atlanta a quick heads up. Hypothecated Modeling and the illogically embedded anti-telomerase antibody were just too important to keep under wraps.

Once the report was out of the way, she had called home. While often an absentee mom, it had never been by choice. Diane and the girls were just rising for the same Friday already coming to a close in Bangkok. Everyone on the home front sounded fine. It had been good to hear their voices, though here in the taxi, alone with her thoughts, being with them in Atlanta right now felt far more appealing than speeding through this driving monsoon.

The girls sounded happy to hear from her, though somewhat more excited about a Fourth of July fireworks display they were planning to attend at the Atlanta Sports Complex in Suwanee the following day. Independence Day! Nora had entirely forgotten. Falling on Saturday this year, the national holiday would be observed on Monday, but fireworks displays had been almost universally scheduled for Saturday night. The Saturday that had already dawned in Bangkok. Any celebrations Nora might be viewing would be limited to satellite broadcasts.

The traffic this morning, though lighter than the day before, was moving even more chaotically. More room for wild maneuvers at greater speed. The rain, the flashing windshield wipers, the roll of thunder, all combining in an unnerving flight through dark streets where visibility often fell to less than a single car-length ahead of the taxi’s front bumper.

Passing along the western edge of Lumpini Park on Thanon Rama IV, just before the Thai-Japanese Friendship Flyover, there was a sudden, concussive, window rattling jolt, that slammed her head against the back seat window.
What
?
Earthquake!
instinctively flashed through her head.

“What was that?” she asked. The driver didn’t answer. She peered out the rear window, in the direction from which the unexplained shock had come. A huge column of black smoke was blowing a cloud of white flakes into the overcast sky. It couldn’t be more than a quarter of a mile away. A thick cloud of debris, rolling across the soccer fields like a pyroclastic blast, struck the cab, covering everything in filthy lampblack muck and with it brought traffic to an abrupt halt.

A wail of sirens arose, followed by a parade of police, fire, and military vehicles, all attempting to converge on the spot where the menacing cloud continued rising into the leaden sky. Then, from the teeming clouds overhead a storm of uniform sheets of paper began falling, flitting to earth like enormous snowflakes. One stuck to the cab’s back window face down. It was letterhead stationary:
The Great Seal of the United States of America, Consular Office
.

Comprehension immediately gave way to throat-constricting claustrophobia. She was trapped ― inside a stalled taxi half a world away from home, wipers smearing black filth back and forth across a fouled windshield.

“Get me out of here!” she shouted. Her voice had cracked. She hardly recognized it. “I need to get to Sathon Tai –
NOW!
”

No reply. The driver was screaming into the taxi’s two-way, exchanging incoherencies with someone, probably his dispatcher.

For twenty panicky minutes the cab remained glued to the pavement as the sky grew darker and more threatening. Finally, the Thai military police arrived and began moving traffic from the scene, directing the cab south without explanation.

Pulling up in front of the Sathon Tai office tower forty-five minutes later, Nora paid the driver and jumped from the cab. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the sky was still darkly overcast. An odor, like burning plastic, hung heavy in the air.

Hurrying inside, she found the WHO offices as much in disarray today as they had been organized the day before. Small groups had gathered around OEL screens displaying variations on the same wild scene: pulsing emergency lights reflecting in dark pools of standing water alternating with unfamiliar, oriental talking heads addressing viewers in unsubtitled Thai.

On a rain-soaked sidewalk somewhere, a long line of black plastic body bags stretched into the off-camera distance. Some enterprising photojournalist had obviously placed a telephoto video camera on a direct line-of-sight rooftop. Far from the smoldering rubble a crowd had already gathered behind a barricaded perimeter.

Nora took in these snippets with little comprehension, racing down the corridor, not speaking to anyone until she reached Tardieu’s office. Rushing in, she encountered six individuals, eyes fixed on a single monitor, silent, expressionless. Tardieu acknowledged her entrance with a quick, impersonal nod.

“I tried to call, but all the circuits were busy!” It had been a single uninterrupted exclamation. “What happened?”

“There’s been an explosion at the US Embassy.” Tardieu answered without elaboration.

“An accident?”

“Nobody knows. At any rate, nobody’s talking.” 

“Any casualties?”

Tardieu paused before replying. “You know how these things go, Nora. Bangkok might as well be Atlanta ― or Paris, for that matter. The commentators will inform us how they’re standing ‘at the scene’, report where and when the disaster occurred, and then we all get to sit around glued to our monitors until the official word arrives from the authorities, which may not happen for some time. The Thai government isn’t known for its speedy disclosures.”

In the silence that followed, an even darker memory emerged, one Nora had kept hidden more securely and many levels deeper than the recently constructed vault holding her grief and guilt over Jack Cummings’ untimely death. Older and more powerful, rising with gleeful chthonic pleasure, it was threatening to break free and foul the here and now.

While she might watch the repetitive videos, a clearer image of that earlier disaster began looping uncontrollably through her disconnected thoughts. Like a long imprisoned jinn, it kept refusing to be shoved back into its bottle. Few people on earth knew that the brave heart she daily presented to the world had, for years now, hidden a dark truth that ceaselessly tormented her.

Today had been one more proof of the world’s limitless wickedness, by no mean’s the first. Nowhere on earth was safe anymore. She knew that, had known it for a long time. While one soul might be graced with the flame of life, another would be brought low and mocked, left cold and unrequited in a forgotten grave. That’s just the way it worked. No one could explain why. She felt the panic rising in her throat and forced it down, directing her attention towards today; struggling to redirect her thoughts away from the frightening past. For a moment she succeeded. But that one moment was a victory.

An emotive song from the aftermath of the original event came back to her, balancing mournfully between forgetfulness and its antithesis. Rain fell bleakly on both the former horror and today’s, playing repeatedly while stark images of the carnage assaulted her from both the present and the past, pierced by memory’s fearsome blade. The soundtrack, pure Zim Dixon, in one of his innumerable reinventions, released right after the great disaster: 2002’s
Perfect Fools
.

Prayed with eyelids squeezed tightly

Bold bolts bursting brightly

Fingers pressed hard against

A soot-stained windowpane.

Railed at all creators

All the other instigators

Whose power

Through this green fuse flows

Impossible to know

Even harder to explain.

Through stoked-fire eyes

Sharp-edged in youth

We stared at the pinnacles

Nuzzling the truth.

Experience has proven

Nothing’s built to last

Every fresh beginning is

Eventually a past.

Let hard luck

Tattoo from your instruments;

Sad eyes

Blaze open in despair;

Melodies composed

Within our discontent

Come whistling through the mysteries

From where?

Remembering the instant

When we ushered madness in;

How it exposed us,

Exposed us all so clearly

For the perfect fools we’d been.

After it had run its course, Nora let it go, admitting she too had been a perfect fool. That had been a different world, one that suffered fools. This new world did not ― and never would again.

* * *

Details emerged slowly: An eighteen-wheeled tractor trailer with Thai markings ― descriptions and recollections often conflicted ― filled with an unknown amount and type of explosive, had detonated on Thanon Witthayu directly in front of the United States embassy. Only a heap of grey soot-covered rubble remained.

Somber vignettes would play out in the shadow of chaos. Stories of cell phones ringing inside body bags. Reports of tractor cab and engine parts being thrown more than half a kilometer by the blast. In two instances these errant projectiles had proved lethal in their own right, killing five innocent passersby.

Worldwide, heads-of-state would inundate President Fremont with expressions of deepest sympathy for the victims and their families. Confirmed dead at day’s end: seventy-eight, including thirty Thai nationals. By the following week that total would reach 214.

A heretofore unknown group:
al-Qabas-e-Allah
, the Firebrand of Allah, would be the first to claim responsibility, beginning a flood of similar claims by other groups, large and small. A rogue’s gallery of shadow organizations, splinter groups and offshoots of the better known Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qu’ida and ISIS networks. Only al-Jezeera and government anti-terrorism task forces kept detailed tabs on the multitude of almost interchangeable names these days.

The rubble would smolder for days, coating every downwind surface with a layer of grime, smoke curling into the monsoon sky. Search dogs would be dragged away after forty-eight hours. Only recovery operations were left in the wrap up, search and extraction, a cataloging of remains.

Porous borders or seaports were suspected, the likely entry point for the estimated fifty tons of military-grade explosives would have been required to produce an explosion of this magnitude. The materials were thought to have originated in Indonesia or Malaysia and perhaps legally imported with a few well-placed bribes and smuggled into the country at little additional expense.

News of the embassy bombing was greeted with three nights of Muslim rioting in the southern Thai towns of Narathiwat, Yala, Hat Yai, Pattani, and Trang, before order could be restored. By the time martial law and a strict dusk-to-dawn curfew were imposed in the southern provinces, dozens of additional lives had been lost. The restive South had been a hotbed of seditious violence for years, at least since 2004, when a former Prime Minister, Thakin Shinawatra, had been forced to remove a non-Muslim southern province police chief to assuage anger over civilian deaths during a police crackdown on Islamic militants.

Politics abhors a vacuum, despises placation even more, and the result of the Thai government’s acquiescence to threats and violence had been even more violence. And now this.

By four that afternoon Nora had had enough. There would be no progress with the TAI virus today. With perfunctory goodnights, she left and, boarding an almost empty rail car at the nearest Skytrain station, collapsed into the nearest seat.

The train was soon speeding north past Lumpini Park, presenting a panoramic view of the embassy’s cratered wreckage. From the railcar, she watched as uniformed personnel sifted through the steaming moonscape. Heavy equipment was already picking at the ragged perimeter. Dogs might be listening and sniffing in the interior rubble, but the mood had shifted. Nora could feel it from two hundred yards away. The scene flashed by the window and was gone in an instant.

Minutes later the train arrived at the station overlooking the Ayutt Haya’s beautifully manicured gardens. A stiff breeze, smelling of tropical organics and acrid petrochemicals, greeted her as she stepped out onto the platform. Walking directly to her room, she tried her phone again. Both land and mobile links were still down. Low in the west, the tropical sun was gleaming through the clouds, silhouetting the Bangkok skyline in lava hues. Blowing softly from the southeast, a thick column of dark smoke swept diagonally across the sky. The rain had stopped for the moment. The bedside phone rang. It was the CDC. She looked at her watch ― seven in the morning in Atlanta.