The SONG of SHIVA

by Michael Caulfield

  “You can call me anything you like ― so long as you agree to help us.”

  “And who is ‘us’?”

  “Aside from Langley and State, only the British Home Secretary—”

  “That was a mistake. Probably one of plenty you’ve already made. Innocently or not. Why’d you get the Limey spooks involved anyway?”

  “We’re obligated by treaty, Mr. Lyköan. Before instigating any covert action on British soil, we’re pledged to consult with ― not simply inform ― British Intelligence.”

  “So the fact that Innovac has a mole inside Brit Intel doesn’t trouble you in the least.”

  “Let me explain something, Egan. You don’t mind me calling you Egan now that we’ve dispensed with the formalities, do you?” Lyköan experienced a momentary shiver of déjà vu. He shrugged it off.

  Hard-nosed negotiating could be a two-way street. “After 9/11,” he began, “America found her dependable friends could be counted on one hand. For good or ill, John Bull was and still is one of them. So my hands are tied. We can’t risk threatening that special relationship. You can understa—”

  “No I can’t,” Lyköan interrupted. “And I don’t need to. Not another word to MI-6, MI-5, any of them. You hear me?”

  “No can do, Mr. Lyköan. I’m sorry, but that part of our arrangement is nonnegotiable. Look, if we wanted to screw with you ― if we had no intention of negotiating honestly and in earnest ― we’d simply agree to all your demands just to get our hands on you. And renege on any inconvenient detail as soon as you had delivered the information we needed. Under the circumstances ― in your present predicament ― how would you ever find out? I’ll answer that one. You wouldn’t. At least not until it was too late. This way you can see from the get-go that we’re shooting straight. In any honest negotiation ― by definition ― both sides should be willing to compromise. The way I see it, the next move is yours.”

  Lyköan finally had heard something he could respect. Mutual respect is the first step towards resolving any dispute. There were other ways to find out if Felix Fremont could be trusted.

  * * *

  A stiff breeze was blowing chill and rough out of the barren Scottish hills. Sitting atop sod-covered Hadrian’s Wall at Steel Rigg promontory, heels tapping the cut stone’s lichen-surfaced southern face, Egan and Nora found themselves huddled together again. Massive Whin Sill, the rugged dolerite ridge that crosses the whole of England from Newcastle-on-Tyne to the Irish Sea and serves as the foundation for much of the wall’s nearly one hundred twenty kilometer course, stretched majestically away into the indigo haze at both eastern and western horizons. Down the gentle southern slope of the ridge that broke almost perpendicular at their backs, Lyköan surveyed the eastern distance through a powerful pair of Zhumell compact field glasses.

  “Nothing yet,” he said, lowering the binoculars.

  There was a pronounced chill in the August air and the black metal glasses felt uncomfortably cold in his hands. Laying them in his lap, he stuffed his hands into his armpits, and raising his head, surveyed the sky.

  Nothing. It was a good sign.

  In the shadow of Whin Sill to the east, Crag Lough’s dark waters rippled. Overhead, clouds raced south towards a smoky horizon, their underlying shadows gliding over the contours of the rolling countryside. Lyköan opened the thermos of leek and carrot soup, took a mouthful and offered Nora the container. She shook her head, preferring to keep her hands warm inside her jacket pockets. Lyköan gave her a have-it-your-way shrug.

  “Here comes something,” she said, nodding towards a moving speck cresting a rise in the ribbon of macadam to the southeast, a mere glint beneath the rising sun. Lyköan trained the binoculars on the spot. A late model rental ― shiny beige and coming fast. It turned south at the Vindolanda exit. As the sun flashed through the car, Lyköan could see the driver was alone.

  “This looks promising,” he said.

  Half a klick south, the car made another left and drove to the end of the historic site’s narrow gravel road. Part of the National Trust, the excavation wouldn’t open for sightseers until ten. At this hour, the parking lot was deserted. Turning into the lot, the car came to a stop. The driver’s door opened and a man emerged. Lyköan tapped the temple piece of the double-bud, heard a crisp ring, and watched through the binoculars as the distant visitor lifted a hand to his ear.

  “Hello. This is Fremont.”

  “Did you enjoy the drive from Hexham, Felix?”

  “It was fine, Lyköan.” The man sounded tired ― in no mood for banter. Good.

  “Nice to see you’ve stuck to our script. Pay close attention now – I’m only going to give you one chance to get it right.”

  “I’m listening,” Fremont acknowledged flatly.

  “Hope you brought decent shoes. It’s going to be a long pull ― all of it uphill.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Okay. Leave your car. Right there in the lot’s fine. Walk back up the Stanegate ― that’s the road you came in on. At the second intersection there’ll be a Roman mile marker ― a weathered marble column about two feet high ― in the farmer’s field off to your left. Turn right at the marker and head uphill to Twice Brewed ― the National Trust Visitor Centre and bus stop along B-Sixty-Three-Eighteen. There’ll be further instructions across the road, stuck behind the brown sign for the Roman Army Museum.”

  “That’s it?” Fremont asked.

  “For now. We’ll be watching every step so keep to the script. Leave your phone in the car. I’m warning you ― no electronics ― not even a goddamned calculator. Got that? Okay. Better get started.”

  Lyköan touched the temple key with a finger and cut the connection.

  “Now what?” Nora asked.

  “Now we watch ― and wait.”

  They had hiked the ten klicks from Haltwhistle to Steel Rigg, almost all if it on the well-trodden path that shadowed Hadrian’s Wall, starting before dawn and reaching this point overlooking the distant Vindolanda ruins an hour before Fremont had been instructed to arrive. Near the stile steps of a tattered fence that intersected the wall not far away, they were perched on the wall under an enormous solitary oak bursting with full summer leaf. As they waited, Lyköan warily watched and listened. In the background a marvelous tinkling music was playing, like elegant high-pitched chimes, the product of the stiff breeze blowing through the thick foliage overhead. There was something strangely familiar about the tune. Somewhere deep within the melodious rattling leaves he imagined he heard whispering.

  Looking up into the tree’s manic branches, he watched as the entire canopy began vibrating in mad scintillation, reflecting back the morning sun, flashing surreal peacock feather teal, turquoise, and heliotrope ― each individual leaf imbued with its own unique inner light. He blinked and all at once, like his recent fractal immersion experiences, the scene suddenly became all too stark, too grating, too immediate, like a contrived cinematic scene. The wind blowing over the Whin Sill ridge could have been fan-generated, in fact felt as though it was. The dawn’s muted lighting and every angle of perception was suddenly forced and unnatural, and all of it accompanied by the most unbearable buzzing in his head.

  “Beware the unseen danger,” Sun Shi clucked from somewhere within the rustling leaves. “It is not the footfalls of this approaching stranger that you need fear, nor the arcane workings of the government he serves. A new peril now threatens, the true power currently orchestrating our existence has taken notice of your activities and, I assure you, that is a far more dangerous thing.”

  Lyköan felt weak. His hands were trembling. The universal refractive was again piercing the placid surface of reality, twisting it into something horribly skewed. Unbidden, the fractal program had invaded the real world. Or maybe it was really the other way around. Maybe the true underlying reality was now leaking through the faux creation he had always mistakenly believed was real.

  Fremont looked minuscule, even through the Zhumell’s 1
8X magnification. The world around the approaching figure was wildly active and madly tinted ― shadow and light completely polarized, distorted and grotesque. Looking away, as suddenly as the scene had gone haywire, it returned to its normal, recognizable aspect. Turning to Nora, he searched her face, hoping to discover in it some sort of explanation.

  “What?” she asked, recognizing the unasked question in his startled expression.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The Hounds of Heaven

  These cloud-cap’d towers and gorgeous palaces,

  The solemn temples, even the great globe itself,

  Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

  And, like an insubstantial pageant faded,

  Leave not a rack behind.

  Ascribed to William Shakespeare : The Tempest, Act IV, Scene I

  (Other Claimants Include: Francis Bacon; Christopher Marlowe; Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford; and an Infinite Number of Chimpanzees Pounding Away upon an Equally Infinite Number of Keyboards for All Eternity.)

  “This is a direct NSA feed of the Cairncrest Brook and Temple Burn coordinates,” the camo-clad officer announced, standing to the side of a full wall, hi-def screen, his lightpen circling an area zooming into crisp focus. The overhead angle looked only vaguely familiar to Lyköan, distorted in some indefinable way from the ground-level view he remembered. “You’ve been there on the ground, Lyköan. Anything noteworthy about the terrain along this creek bed here at the hangar door lip?”

  “Not really. A lot of slick, soggy grass down to the uneven, cemented-rock seam ― closes tight ― almost invisible even when you’re standing right on top of it. And those trees shadowing each side of the opening ― gives you some idea of the door’s outer dimensions. It’s huge. The hangar itself is buried much farther into the hillside.”

  “And immediately behind the aircraft bays, colonel,” Nora pointed out, “separated by a thin airtight membrane, is a sterile manufacturing envelope. Extremely fragile. One tiny perforation from a single errant bullet and the virus escapes into the ambient environment ― you end up triggering the very catastrophe you’re hoping to prevent.”

  “Believe me, Doctor, we’re aware of the danger,” Colonel Bremer replied, raising an acknowledging palm. “We’ve incorporated the contamination risk into every aspect of our planning. Once things are set in motion, however, no matter how careful we are, nothing can be guaranteed. Still, if you give me a minute I’ll outline the whole of our strategy. Afterwards, feel free to open fire with any concerns.” Then with a smile, “I don’t doubt you’ll have more before I’ve finished.”

  Only five hours had passed since Fremont had huffed those last few difficult meters to their oak-shadowed perch on blustery Whin Sill. True to his word, there had been no funny business. Hiking along the windy path paralleling the ancient fortification, Lyköan’s eyes had anxiously scanned a thankfully empty sky while Felix set to work at once, laying his cards out in the open and in convincing detail, flatly insisting that while two paranoid fugitives might find it difficult to believe, when threatened with a danger of this magnitude, the US government could act honestly and without ulterior motive. It took a while, but by means of resourceful argument and a disarming demeanor, at times simply through sheer force of personality, he eventually succeeded in winning them over.

  After days of hiding and more than one narrow escape, they were ripe for a conversion. As Nora had pointed out only the night before, if they ever hoped to succeed against Pandavas, at some point they would have to trust someone.

  For now, that someone was Felix Fremont, who by concise explanation and forthright admission, quickly countervailed every facet of his public Beltway-buffoon façade. That persona, he happily explained, had been designed by the NSA as a blind, behind which an honest, hardworking and no-nonsense bio-terror analyst could operate in relative secrecy. It was time, Fremont insisted, for the two fugitives to come in from the cold. Time to stop running and bare their teeth ― join the pack of hounds determined to bring Pandavas down.

  The colonel clicked his handheld remote, laying a ghosted schematic over the satellite image. “From your data files, Doctor: The hangar layout. The hill’s exterior surveillance cameras are the points you see flashing in red.”

  Sweeping his lightpen diagonally up from the screen’s lower right corner, Bremer laid out the mission. “We’ll approach low from the southwest ― set our boys down out of camera range here on the far side of the hill ― and wait.”

  Coming to a stop, the laser ember burned at the tree-lined bank of Cairncrest Brook, the dolmen’s long capstone shadow standing midway between it and the invisible hangar door like the gnomon of an enormous sundial.

  “A dozen individuals,” Bremer explained. “Two six-man squads. Small arms and minimal body armor.”

  “No hazmat gear?” Nora questioned.

  “Too cumbersome,” Fremont answered, looking earnestly across the table. “We weighed every alternative, Doctor. If we could reasonably anticipate there’d be no resistance from the occupants we’d be going in fully protected. Unfortunately, that’s not the greeting we’re likely to encounter. Considering the time and logistical constraints, safety must defer to speed and mobility.”

  Already an NSA operative when his brother took office, Fremont had revealed, he had personally volunteered for the covert assignment, part of the recently-created National Biosurveillance Initiative, an adjunct HHS agency formed only the year before. With seeming embarrassment he admitted that this had required the president to pull a few strings. Doctor Kosoy, as head of the CDC, had been one of only a handful of government officials aware of the Citizen Liaison to the Executive Branch’s true intelligence role. Once Marty had recognized the threat Nora’s transmission revealed, he had immediately run the evidence to Fremont. Whatever had caused Kosoy’s death, Felix insisted, the NSA had not been involved. And listening to Fremont, illuminated by his disarming aura, Nora and Lyköan had believed. By the time the military helicopter landed outside Haltwhistle to whisk the three of them to the USAF installation at Fairford, their sights had already been redirected. Tossing their packs into the Blackhawk’s dark belly, Nora and Egan had eagerly followed Fremont aboard.

  “Once in position,” Bremer continued, “we wait for the approach of the next incoming aircraft. Satellite reconnaissance has observed a marked increase in air traffic in and out of the Node in the last two days ― a compelling argument for urgency.

  “As the hangar door opens, we take out the surveillance cameras,” the lightpen’s red ember flew from one flashing dot to the next, “hop the hill,” its burning arc passed over the dolmen, “and enter the Node before the aircraft arrives. Start to finish this part of the operation should take no more than ninety seconds. And that’s where you two come in.”

  “We come in?” Lyköan asked.

  “These schematics only provide a two-dimensional rendering,” Bremer explained, drilling into Lyköan with cold, steel-grey eyes, “not the real look and feel of the place. Infiltrating the Node’s interior presents an unknown set of obstacles. Things like door and lock configurations, sentry patrol coordinates, interior surveillance cameras. None of these things were in Doctor Carmichael’s data files. So anything you noticed when you were inside could prove crucial to the success of the mission. Anything that can help us achieve our primary objective: taking control of the Node’s control and command center before the alarm can be sounded.”

  “I want to help you, colonel. We both do,” Lyköan replied, watching Nora’s profile, her own eyes fixed on the huge screen which still displayed the hilltop aerial view. “We can give you descriptions of locks, doors, all that ― but how useful will any of those things really be? The actual mechanics of the locking mechanisms or the gauge of the steel used in the doors ― things like that ― things that might really be useful ― we don’t know any of it. Nora, do you have any idea ― about sentry patrol routes for instance?”

  Nora shook her head.
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  To the left of Bremer’s empty chair sat two stone-faced squad leaders, one a young, taciturn USAF Special Forces lieutenant, the other, except for the uniform, his RAF twin. Beside them, Fremont leaned on his elbows, fingers interlocked under his chin. Next to him, an NSA communications specialist was busy at an open laptop, closely accompanied around the circular table by personal representatives of His Majesty’s Home and Foreign Secretaries, each man sitting wizened and erect in perfectly tailored matching-grey Savile Row suits and opulently splashy ties. On the nearer side of the empty seat, Colonel Aden Metcalfe, Fairford’s CO, idly drummed the table with his fingers. Next to him, Egan and Nora peered at Fremont from across the table, feeling isolated and far too closely scrutinized.

  “Once we achieve our initial objective of securing both the hangar and the arriving aircraft, half the force will proceed directly to the Node’s command center. We’re prepared for resistance en route: locked doors and armed guards at a minimum. Even the most well-executed plan rarely goes off without a hitch. This one will be no exception. But successfully securing the control center should allow us to lock down the entire facility from the inside.”

  “You know how to do that?” Lyköan interrupted. “Which switches to throw ― what buttons not to push?” Bremer sounded too optimistic, his plan too dependent on good fortune.

  “Forgive me for interrupting, Mr. Lyköan,” Nora said, flashing Egan a knowing glance, then turning to Bremer, after a short pause, she continued coyly, “but I think the colonel is asking us if we’d like to tag along.”

  “Something like that, Doctor,” Fremont acknowledged, before Bremer could reply. “You anyway. Not necessarily Lyköan.” He looked at Lyköan with a deferential shrug. “We were hoping you’d agree to accompany the second wave of security personnel and help us make those decisions – once the Node is fully secured of course. After all, laboratory protocols and equipment – deadly pathogens ― that is your area of expertise.”