The Eye of Rudra

By Tom Sturm

Nick Callaghan is a former mercenary, Marine Sergeant and N.S.A. operative who finds himself embroiled in a stew of corporate deception, terrorist plots and Hindu mythology when his fellow agent/ex-lover is found dead on the shores of the Persian Gulf.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483536446

Book preview

9781483536446

1

Washington, D.C.

Pain was a cruel, measured teacher from whom Nick Callaghan had learned a variety of unpleasant lessons, though in his present position one might ask, and quite logically, whether he had indeed learned anything at all. Over the past twenty-odd years he’d been shot several times in every region of his body, stabbed, slashed, punched, kicked, poisoned, burned, shocked, tortured in a myriad of sadistic manners, partially hanged and nearly drowned. In the same span of time, he had managed to shatter, fracture or otherwise break one hundred and eighty-seven of his two hundred and six bones from falling, being crushed, crashing cars, boats, small planes and motorcycles, and having been beaten almost to death with a heavy steel pipe. No, Nick Callaghan was no stranger to pain.

His present position was painful, but not insurmountably so; after all, this was just a game. He was temporarily blind and deaf, and his head was ringing—stunned by a standard-issue Quantico flash/concussion mine. It was embarrassing, really; he was, technically, the instructor in this training maneuver, having retained the rank of Marine sergeant since his days of active duty, and even from his perspective, at forty-four years of age, he’d pegged this latest lot for a bunch of pansies. What could a nineteen-year-old know about urban warfare anyway?

Well, he thought to himself, at least one of them knows quite a bit, ’cause I can feel him sitting on my fucking chest.

Gradually, his vision returned. Nick struggled to focus on the face looking down at him, a handsome, bronze-skinned face framed by thick, dark black hair, a familiar face...

Aw, shit! He coughed, blood from his nose spattering as his lips moved. He let out a laugh, exhausted, like the loser in a playful wrestling match who had just had the rest of the fight taken out of him. Benji! Ha! Whadda you fuckin’ want!?

Stovepipe wants to see you, the younger man said, with a smile so slight it made the Mona Lisa’s look painfully obvious. Subtle as the expression was, though, it quickly turned serious. There’s some bad news.

*

The ride to the Pentagon was sobering. Nick hadn’t seen Benji—Benjamin Oppenheimer—since they’d crossed paths in Tehran back in ’03. Benji had been top-tier Mossad even back then, and barely thirty. Nick was pretty sure he was some kind of C.I.A. spook now, though Admiral Stephen Stovepipe Willis, whom they were rushing to see, was naval intelligence, so either Nick’s hunch was wrong about the mysterious Mr. Oppenheimer, or some joint operation was in effect. Shit, he thought. I hate joint operations. They always get fucked up.

Whatever sort of operative Benji was currently, he had no shortage of Pentagon clearances. Their black SUV slid through checkpoints like butter and down into the vast bowels of the defense building’s parking garages, swerving into a space with Stovepipe’s placard on it. Nick had hurriedly dismissed his training unit and made a quick change into cleaner clothes, but he had just stopped his nose from bleeding, and his head was still ringing like a sixty-inch church bell. They exited the vehicle and headed for the nearest elevator. Oppenheimer walked like someone who had a clear purpose, so clear it seemed almost personal. Nick wondered what had happened as he tried to shake off the double-visioned image of his friend’s finger pressing the appropriate elevator button.

You don’t... have any aspirin, do you Benj? he asked as the doors slid closed behind them.

No, Nick, I’m afraid I don’t, Benji replied coldly.

The rest of the trip was silent but for moments wherein one of them would acknowledge a Pentagon acquaintance that they passed in the seemingly endless stretches of hallway. They walked briskly, and by the time they reached the admiral’s office, Nick’s head had finally begun to clear. Linda, Willis’ secretary, gave them some coffee and asked them to have a seat.

Admiral Willis will be right with you. She smiled in a way that made Nick feel slightly nauseated, though more likely it was just his probable concussion talking. Nick thought briefly about Ramona, his daughter, who was graduating from middle school tomorrow, and he sincerely hoped he wouldn’t be sporting two black eyes for the occasion.

Who the hell ‘graduates’ from middle school, anyway? Nick dabbed at his nose with the tissue he’d been carrying. We were just happy to get out of there and be high schoolers.

I don’t know, Nick, Benji replied, though the question had been more of an out-loud thought Nick was asking himself. I might have got some certificate myself, in Tel Aviv. He quickly returned his gaze to the issue of Jane’s he’d been flipping through, whose cover promised an in-depth article on armed predator drones. Nick recalled that some al Qaeda in the mountain villages of Pakistan had a word for those things—he couldn’t recall the Pashtun, but it translated roughly to something like Hell Hound.

Presently, the back office door opened and a very large, bearded black man appeared, trailing pipe smoke that clung briefly to the half-rolled collar of his Navy-issue turtleneck sweater. At six foot four, he was a prime physical specimen, despite recently having passed the age of sixty, and looked much more vital than Nick currently felt. His smile faded when he spotted them, however, and his countenance hardened.

Nick, he said, shaking hands, I’m sorry I had you pulled right out of maneuvers. Nick shook his head and waved feebly. I wouldn’t have done it if this wasn’t important— and I know Ramona’s got a big day tomorrow.

Yes, sir, she does, Nick replied. Damn spooks know everything. I forgot.

Come on back and have a seat. Willis gestured toward the inner chamber of his office. I’m afraid I have some news that you’ll be sorry to hear.

So Benji tells me, Sir. Nick was beginning to get nervous.

Once they were all seated, the Admiral gripped his hands together and spoke.

Margot’s dead.

Tidal wave. Dead? No, you can’t hear yet. He must have said something else.

Her body washed up out of the Gulf of Oman, near Suhar. Willis slid an eight by ten photograph across his desk, which Nick’s eyes fell upon reluctantly. Pro job. Mossad thinks it was I.S.I. What do you think?

Nick picked up the photo and stared. He felt his mouth start to water and his heart beating slow and hard like a sledgehammer on a fifty-five gallon drum. He let out a huge sigh. No stranger to pain. Margot Wylie had been MI6, working the Waziristan tribal areas a couple of years back when he had met her. He’d weaseled himself into an N.S.A. gig briefly, through a fellow Blackwater merc who knew somebody who knew somebody. They’d worked together trying to flush out al Qaeda sympathizers in the Pakistani Inter-services Intelligence, or I.S.I., and they’d made plenty of enemies in Pakistani Intelligence—Stovepipe had been in on that one, too. The Navy had an undercover guy named (ironically) Osama, who ran with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed out of Islamabad. For a time, Nick and Margot had been in love, or maybe just in lust—in any case, between their affair and his cancer scare he’d managed to wreck his marriage to Cindy. Fuck! his brain screamed. How can she be dead?!

Nick put the picture down and bowed his head into his hand.

Yeah, probably, he replied as emotionlessly as he could. Very neat—they always... put one in the throat like that—shuts people up in a hurry.

Willis nodded and puffed on his pipe, opening a desk drawer and pulling out another piece of paper.

This is a fax we received from her, approximately eighty-five minutes before her body was recovered. Ben and I can’t make much of it, but cryptography confirms it’s her handwriting.

Nick took the paper and studied it. Basically, it was a hurriedly scribbled number, thirteen digits long, with a hastily drawn symbol next to it that looked like some sort of pitchfork or trident. The stationery it was on was perhaps the best clue to its origin—though it had no text, it bore a professionally designed logo of a stylized bull with a sort of a curly tail.

It wasn’t from Merryll-Lynch, said the admiral, following his thought pattern. We traced the bull stationery to a Dubai-based oil industry company named Nandi. Apparently, they’re in the business of making drill bit parts for most, if not all, of the big rigs. Some big money players, he pulled out a thick folder from the drawer, looks like they own all sorts of shit. The folder plopped onto the desk as he puffed his pipe, raising an eyebrow. Shipping, aerospace, construction, real estate, a considerable stake in small arms weaponry, investment banking—frankly, Nick, these guys have a scheme set up that makes Enron look like a bunch of street chumps playing three-card monte. They own more than three hundred companies.

We’ve got an army of accountants having at them already, Benji cut in, but it could literally take years to unravel.

Nick picked up the fax and folded it.

Let me take this home. I’ll try to dig up some memories and see what I come up with.

Nick, Willis stated imperatively, leaning forward over his desk, I’ve had you transferred to my command. We need you on this one.

Yeah, Nick sighed again. Yeah, okay, I’m on it. Of course I’m on it, for Margot. Just give me a day for Ramona’s thing.

You both leave for Riyadh tomorrow night.

Nick and Benji looked at each other and nodded somewhat solemnly. They shook hands with the admiral after the briefing and wasted no time in leaving the building. Since 9/11, being in the Pentagon discussing things like al Qaeda and Pakistani assassins was sort of like talking about atom bombs in Hiroshima or Nagasaki—it sort of felt like you were tempting fate.

Should I drop you at your place? Benji asked as they cleared the last checkpoint.

Yeah, I guess, Nick offered, scratching his head and looking at the fax sheet in his hand. Pick me up tomorrow at seven-thirty—and ditch the company ride.

Nick, I’m... sorry, Benji stuttered. I mean, I know you and Margot were... close.

Yeah, thanks. Damn spooks know everything.

*

Silver Spring was far from the inner-city hell-hole that Nick called home, but it was where his wife and daughter lived, though perhaps, he thought, I should be calling Cindy my ex-wife by now. He didn’t live in such total denial that he couldn’t admit he still had feelings for her, and had still not signed the divorce papers that had been sitting on his dresser for almost a year now despite multiple pleas from her to get on with it. Though it was he who had chiefly been the architect of their marriage’s destruction, Nick still took pleasure in the fact that her shmoozy-ass political spin doctor boyfriend had not moved in with her yet. It probably had more to do with Ramona than with him, but he was content to partially delude himself in the service of his ego on this topic.

It was the ghost of Margot that had haunted him last night, however, sabotaging his sleep with images of pain and torture. Sure, it wasn’t a total shock; theirs was a dangerous business, and the Middle East was no place for a pretty white woman with an effete British accent, especially one who tended to, as they say, meddle in the affairs of dragons. But she was so good at it! Not good enough, evidently, or rather, as it usually goes in the spy game, not as good as the next person up the food chain. Nick swore an oath to himself to find her killer, whatever it took. He swerved with a vengeance into an empty parking space, grazing the curb with the wheel of his dingy Toyota Camry.

Ramona was indifferent to him when he arrived at the door.

You’re late, she said.

I’m sorry, ’Mone, Nick offered. Let’s hit it, okay?

Ramona nodded and turned, calling her mother.

Mom! Dad’s here! Can we go now?!

Cindy appeared a minute later, pulling on a light summer jacket and fumbling with her keys while she closed the front door. She gave Nick a quick peck on the cheek and nodded him toward her car, a sleek, new-ish Lexus with, Nick noticed, new diplomatic plates.

Did you sign the papers? she asked as she hustled them into their respective seats.

No, Cind. I’m sorry, I keep meaning to, I’ve just been incredibly busy.

Nick, you’ve been ‘incredibly busy’ since I’ve known you, and not just with work. It’s been almost a year. If you can’t get it done in the next month, I’m going to have to do something about it myself. She turned the ignition and the car started immediately, then she began pulling out of the space, three cars up from Nick’s. And if you can’t figure out what that means, I’ll tell you later, she finished, deferring to their daughter’s presence.

Nick knew well enough what it meant. Most likely she would play dirty, taking out some restraining order against him on their daughter’s behalf so that he wouldn’t be able to see Ramona. It was a lose-lose situation for Nick Callaghan, but he was accustomed to this, at least in the hopelessly ambiguous world of civilian life. He gritted his teeth and tried to redirect the conversation.

Are you excited to go to high school, honey? he chirped over his shoulder.

I guess, Ramona ho-hummed. At least I can go out for more sports.

Are you still playing hockey?

Duh, of course not, Dad. I quit that two years ago—not that you noticed.

Oh, Nick said sheepishly. Right.

I just run track now— she went on, perking up somewhat, but I want to try out for the volleyball team.

Volleyball’s cool. Nick went with it. I used to play some in high school, on the beach. Nick had grown up near Miami, so this was, in fact, true.

I know, Dad. I’ve seen all the pictures of you.

Yeah, well, your dad was a real looker back then, you know. Shut up, you asshole.

"Whatever," Ramona huffed.

"Yeah, whatever," Cindy echoed, turning onto New Hampshire Avenue, where the small Quaker school their daughter attended was located and scanning for parking. Of course, there was none.

Why don’t you two just get out, Cindy decided, pulling over. Save me a seat. I’ll find a spot eventually.

*

The ceremony was grueling. After an intense mental debate with himself, Nick came to the conclusion that yes, he actually had had more fun waiting in line at the R.M.V. Teachers droned on about how the children were fortunate to go to such a nice school, that many (including Ramona) would go on to exclusive private high schools as well, and that each child must always remember the responsibilities that accompany privilege. When he began, uncontrollably, to doze, Nick’s mind flashed back to the previous night, when in between terrifying fantasy images of Margot being killed, he had put his semi-conscious mind to work on the fax sheet he had taken from Willis’ office.

The number was likely a code of some sort—perhaps a phone number, account number, computer key or even a physical address or post office box, though these last were unlikely for so large a number. The geeks in the Pentagon basement were probably plugging it into every conceivable variant, so he would leave that clue to them.

The bull was the Nandi logo, and though, oddly enough, Nick had never heard of the company in spite of its apparent breadth of diversification, his brain had registered the image as something familiar, and he resolved to investigate Nandi further. Of course, this was most likely the crux of the mission he was about to be sent on, so this would be addressed soon enough anyway.

The scrawled image was what stuck most in Nick’s memory. Obviously, the pitchfork/trident symbol had been used in places as diverse as nuclear submarines and chewing gum, but the fact that it was found in relation to Margot and possibly Pakistani intelligence had activated some particular synaptic bridge in the wiring of his occipital lobe. It seemed somehow just too familiar. Though Nick’s memory wasn’t certifiably photographic, it was pretty damn close. He could still remember the exact number of stories on many downtown Miami skyscrapers, the layout of Taliban cave tunnels at Tora Bora and the look on his ex-wife’s face when she was having an orgasm.

He tried to wipe the last image from his mind as he watched Ramona receive her diploma. He clapped somewhat mechanically, and did his best to approximate the behavior of the hundred or so other parents in the room, though in reality his life and mind were so totally alien to theirs. Cindy looked genuinely happy at least.

The rest of the day was a bit blurry, in the same way that background noise is—gray, filtered and drowning ever so slightly in its own mundane hum. They had taken Ramona out for pizza, and for ice cream after that. The action rewarded her for her achievement, in standard American fashion, but these were odd things to try to relate to for Nick. He had eaten cats and dragged bleeding companions out of minefields in one hundred and twenty-degree heat, breathing an atmosphere largely composed of burning gasoline and oil. To guys like Nick, dining at Chuck E. Cheese was more like a bizarre hallucination than a meaningful experience. Hopefully his daughter had had fun.

Parting with his family had been equally surreal. He did get a hug from Ramona, who had warmed up to him a bit throughout the night and now wanted to know when he was coming back again, a question which he could not answer. Cindy was slightly more at ease as well, though she still made sure to remind him to sign the divorce papers for the sixth or seventh time that evening.

The Camry ran rough back to Nick’s place. It had a hundred and eighty thousand miles on it and had needed a timing belt sometime last century. It puffed out a mild addition of bluish smoke from its tailpipe due to leaky piston rings, and Nick knew somewhere deep inside that its life would soon be over. Too bad, he thought. We’ve had some good times, Camry. Bullet holes notwithstanding, this was probably true, though not necessarily from the car’s perspective.

Nick’s apartment was in an area that most people would term ghetto. He lived in a one-bedroom hole-in-the-wall just off of Sixteenth Street Northwest, near the Columbia Heights Station, a location that made him pretty much the only white guy for several blocks. For a man with his Foreign Service experience, however, this was par for the course, and, for better or worse, he had carved himself out a little slice of neighborhood respect. Whether living in the slums was good for him was another question; he was certainly a fan of scratch tickets, cheap malt liquor and the occasional hooker, distractions his mother would have labeled as not only sinful but a waste of time.

Saeed, Nick’s large gray tabby cat, greeted him at the door. He had found the poor bastard about four years ago in a dumpster out back of the pizza place down the block, maybe six weeks old. Now he was a hefty fifteen-pounder, and muscular, a regular Mike Tyson of a cat, even for the Heights. He had named him after Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, the former Iraqi Information Minister who had kept insisting, on Iraqi national television, that Saddam’s fierce warriors in the Republican Guard were winning the battle, even as American forces were almost literally bashing down the doors to the studio from which he was broadcasting. Nick had named him this because he had been, essentially, full of shit—that is, he had left an unusually large number of turd piles at several locations throughout the apartment immediately following his adoption. Fortunately, litter box training had worked with relative ease, involving perhaps ninety percent litter box and ten percent training.

Hey, Saeed. He greeted his only housemate as the cat rubbed up against his leg. What’s the good word?

Saeed meowed his familiar where the hell have you been?! meow and stared at him like the stranger he was. Nick filled his self-dispensing food dish to overflowing and gave him a scratch behind the ears before pulling out his travel bag. He almost always kept