Shiva Read online

  Shiva

  Simon Sloane

  Contents

  Title Page

  I. CORRUPTION

  Chapter 1 The Sheik

  Chapter 2 Lucrezia

  Chapter 3 Neural

  Chapter 4 Sparkle

  Chapter 5 Tip Of The Curve

  Chapter 6 South Bank

  Chapter 7 Concussion

  Chapter 8 Higher Calling

  Chapter 9 MECCA

  Chapter 10 Exempted

  Chapter 11 Control

  Chapter 12 Daughter

  Chapter 13 Butterfly

  Chapter 14 Je Te Donne

  Chapter 15 Under The Weather

  Chapter 16 Pyramid

  Chapter 17 Sequence

  Chapter 18 Crillon

  Chapter 19 Countdown

  Chapter 20 The Fist Of God

  Chapter 21 Plague

  Chapter 22 Masterpiece

  Chapter 23 Geek-O-Matixx

  Chapter 24 Beneficiaries

  Chapter 25 Trigger

  Chapter 26 Elysian

  Chapter 27 Brave Boys

  Chapter 28 Disconnect

  Chapter 29 The Three Gods

  Chapter 30 Etienne

  Chapter 31 Swastika

  Chapter 32 Rebalance

  Chapter 33 Short Term

  Chapter 34 La Pute

  Chapter 35 Oberoi

  Chapter 36 Pierced

  II. DESTRUCTION

  Chapter 37 Pawn

  Chapter 38 Spa

  Chapter 39 Bamboozle

  Chapter 40 Qubits

  Chapter 41 The House Of Singh

  Chapter 42 Cupboard

  Chapter 43 L’Esplanade

  Chapter 44 Kamasutra

  Chapter 45 Temple

  Chapter 46 Spider

  Chapter 47 Purpose

  Chapter 48 Burst

  Chapter 49 Cattle

  Chapter 50 Innuendo

  Chapter 51 Vantage

  Chapter 52 Gardens Of The Wounded

  Chapter 53 Majorana

  Chapter 54 Surpass

  Chapter 55 I Am Shiva

  Chapter 56 Hostage

  Chapter 57 Cruise

  Chapter 58 The Circle

  Chapter 59 Top Of The World

  Chapter 60 Buddha Bar

  Chapter 61 Galaxy

  Chapter 62 Intruder

  Chapter 63 Ruined

  Chapter 64 Zoë

  Chapter 65 Out

  Chapter 66 Sofitel

  Chapter 67 Underwater

  Chapter 68 Behind The Throne

  Chapter 69 Life Insurance

  Chapter 70 Jilted

  Chapter 71 Fork

  Chapter 72 Juan

  Chapter 73 Garage

  Chapter 74 Prerogative

  Chapter 75 Cauldron

  Chapter 76 Touchdown

  Chapter 77 Caught In The Act

  Chapter 78 Delinquent

  Chapter 79 Shangri-La

  Chapter 80 Reshuffle

  Chapter 81 Testimony

  Chapter 82 Pariah

  Chapter 83 Swing

  Chapter 84 Silver Chain

  Chapter 85 Good Man

  Chapter 86 Platform

  Chapter 87 Chosen Caste

  Chapter 88 Charred

  Chapter 89 Origin

  Chapter 90 Transcendence

  Chapter 91 Paternity

  Chapter 92 Carcer

  Chapter 93: The Room Of The Three Gods

  Chapter 94 Notre Dame

  Chapter 95 Testament

  Chapter 96 Consummate

  III. RENEWAL

  Chapter 97 Nuclear

  Chapter 98 Motive

  Chapter 99 CCTV

  Chapter 100 Fiercer

  Chapter 101 Engaged

  Chapter 102 Surrender

  Chapter 103 Fainted

  Chapter 104 Laptop

  Chapter 105 Sole Owner

  Chapter 106 Split

  Chapter 107 Messenger

  Chapter 108 Embrace

  Chapter 109 Akasha

  Chapter 110 Kali

  Chapter 111 Mistake

  Chapter 112 Switch On

  Chapter 113 Seventy-Two

  Chapter 114 Reload

  Chapter 115 Chandelier

  Chapter 116 Rebirth

  Chapter 117 Lutetia

  Chapter 118 Arise

  Chapter 119 Immunity

  Chapter 120 Destruction

  Epilogue Ball Of Fame

  Copyright

  I. CORRUPTION

  “No society is more than three meals

  away from revolution.”

  Larry Niven

  Chapter 1

  The Sheik

  Friday, 10:30am CET (12:30am local time)

  Diana Holborn smiled. They had fleeced her, only to hand her a weapon. The Venetian mask would be sufficient to deal with her target.

  “The sheik will love you,” Farid said with a barely concealed grin as he pushed the top button on the chrome elevator panel. “His taste is exquisite.”

  “What is his taste exactly?” A grainy five-second video was all she had seen of the man.

  “You’ll see,” the staffer said, tight lipped once again.

  Diana let her hands glide down the snakelike patterns on the amethyst-coloured dress that had been tailor-made for the occasion. She feigned a shrug. “I just wonder how to address my client properly.” Surely, someone in the hotel had to know his bloody name!

  Farid tilted his bald head. “I’d be surprised if there was much conversation.” He squinted as if deliberating whether to let her in on a secret—a small secret in any case. “You’ll meet a man of extremes,” he said in a hushed voice. “The sheik even commissioned a life-size replica of the Holy Kaaba for his suite.”

  “Seriously?”

  Diana received the sort of leering grin she had seen too often from middle-aged Arabs. “The ceiling height of the penthouse is in excess of fifty feet,” Farid said. “It has a private pool, a gym, even a tennis court. That’s how we attract the most illustrious clients in the world.” The concierge grabbed Diana’s arm as they stepped out of the elevator. “We protect their privacy at any cost. And you better do the same.”

  Diana nodded. The five-quid-an-hour servant probably didn’t know he had provided more insight than her Oxbridge-educated analysts. Maybe he shared her suspicion that the sheik was the terrorist financier whom everyone had believed dead for months.

  The camera on top of the leaden gate swerved around and zoomed in on Diana’s face. Then the door unlocked with a click, and she put on her Venetian mask.

  “You’re on your own now. But it would be a privilege to meet you again.” Farid gave her an effusive bow after handing her a textured business card with his private number. “All my clients are distinguished gentlemen.”

  “I’m sure they are.” Diana’s high heels clicked on the Peruvian marble as she walked away.

  She dropped Farid’s card on the floor the moment the door closed behind her. Having expected an army of aides, instead, she was hit by a wall of silence. A musky scent filled the air, freshened by a whiff of lemongrass and jasmine. She ignored the dimly lit bedrooms to the right of the corridor as well as the pool on her left.

  Having walked through a maze of antechambers, she arrived at the lounge. Farid had told her the truth: the cube at its centre was as daunting as the one in Mecca. Wrapped in a silken black cloth like the original, the religious artefact was surrounded by a golden band of Arabic scripture: There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Allah is great, powerful and sublime ….

  The monolith’s sheer size pointed to a man whose capture would catapult Diana to the upper echelons of her profession. Her heart pounded at thought of standing within a few yards of
Nassor Sharkhor.

  She was taken aback when a young woman moved against the backdrop of the shrine. No one had told her this was going to be a threesome! Only when she approached the blonde from a slightly different angle did she spot the projector. The girl was a hologram, although a strikingly realistic one.

  “Over here!” a youthful voice called from the far end of the lounge.

  The sheik’s pronunciation revealed at least a few years of boarding school in southern England. Diana tried to place its melancholic timbre when a tall man in a thobe emerged from behind a U-shaped arrangement of computer monitors. She almost caught a glimpse of his face, but then he put on his Venetian mask as well.

  The sheik’s fingers ran through his waves of jet-black hair as he examined her with a predator’s smile. His beard was more fashionable than religious. After a moment of silence, he gestured at the beige leather sofa in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Maybe it was the panoramic views of Dubai that turned him on, making him feel like the king of the Gulf.

  Diana’s smartwatch vibrated. There was no message, but its background colour switched from black to violet.

  Damn! A rival team was closing in.

  But then anyone with state-of-the-art wireless decryption tools could have picked up the video and traced it to the oasis of luxury on the artificial island.

  Surely, Control would terminate Diana if she let her prized target slip away now. She smiled at the sheik as she held her watch close to the router beneath the glass table. Her team would require only moments to hack his network.

  Only then did she notice the water pipe beneath his desk. The sweet scent of opium revealed that the sheik had used it during the last half hour. Even men of great wealth and power needed to soothe their nerves sometimes.

  A humming sound drew her gaze back to the Kaaba replica. The noise reminded her of a data-processing hub she had visited in Vauxhall’s vaults.

  And then it hit her.

  The artefact didn’t serve a religious purpose. On the contrary, it was a powerful new technology, and the “sheik” was one of its most ardent purveyors. They would reward her beyond imagination if she brought him in. Even better, she would make the French look like a bunch of amateurs.

  Slowly, Diana’s target disposed of his thobe. Its V-shaped golden embroideries testified to his elevated social status. The scars on his torso revealed his struggles, adding to his masculinity. His toned body might have pleased her in other circumstances, even though she rarely enjoyed the act itself. Coitus felt like five minutes on a treadmill, but it was often the only way to place a prominent man in a vulnerable position while removing his security staff from the scene. Satisfaction in her job was the sight of life draining from her target’s eyes.

  Alas, not today.

  The sheik ogled Diana as she leaned against the sofa, her spine arched to enhance his view of her curves. He grabbed her waist and pulled her close.

  Her palms glided up his biceps as he unbuttoned her silken dress. “I’m Lucrezia.” She spooled off her introduction with the smoky voice she had practiced for years. She smiled when the garment slipped off her shoulder.

  The sheik responded in the non-verbal manner to which Farid had alluded. Diana knew she had to hurry when the distant clattering of rotor blades revealed she had only a couple of minutes left. She kissed her target but then withdrew her mouth when she spotted a Glock 17 beneath the sofa pillows.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, slightly bemused. He must have sensed he was in danger. His tint lightened closer to his hairline, making her wonder why an Arab would use spray tan. He was even more attractive than he had seemed on the low-resolution video, but ….

  Diana realised her intuition had been wrong. Someone else must have taken over Nassor Sharkhor’s network—a younger cousin, perhaps?

  Pressed for time, she grabbed the sheik’s shoulders and pushed him down on the sofa. Pinning down his torso with her thighs, she seized the Glock, pointed the barrel at his forehead, and ripped off his mask.

  No! This couldn’t be…

  Chapter 2

  Lucrezia

  Friday, 10:45am CET (12:45am local time)

  “So, shoot me!” Hugo Hyde dared the escort who tried to rob him. She held the gun steady even though their bodies had merged into one.

  “Why the masquerade?” the blonde asked with an unfazed expression. “Do you want to make the Arabs believe you’re Nassor Sharkhor?”

  Hugo wondered why she cared about that. “There’s still a certain ring to my old rival’s name,” he said, “especially in this part of the world. And frankly, I’d prefer the Global Enquirer to speculate about his return rather than mine.”

  The prostitute put her index finger on her lips when there was a sound at the door.

  “Someone lacks confidence in you, Lucrezia,” Hugo said in an attempt at levity. Maybe her pimp doubted whether she could pull off the heist on her own. Surely, hotel security staff would step in before anyone could breach his penthouse.

  “Do what I tell you, and we might survive,” she said, her lips an inch from his ear.

  Despair clenched Hugo’s stomach. This wasn’t a robbery. “How did you find me, Sarah?” He asked when a crash near the entrance revealed a break-in. It was outrageous. Why on Earth was he paying the hotel half a million quid per month if they couldn’t keep thugs at bay? “So, how did you find me, Sarah?” he asked once more.

  “It’s Diana, actually,” she hissed, cupping his mouth. Her apple-sized breasts were almost touching his pectorals.

  Hugo suppressed a laugh. “Lucrezia” suited her better, although she didn’t seem to have brought any poison. A slight familiarity about her face had nudged him toward selecting her from the premium escort agency’s menu. And the manner with which she handled his Glock proved he had made the right choice.

  Anxiously, Hugo peeked around the edge of the sofa when she opened fire on the assault team swarming into the penthouse in black gear and gas masks.

  Three bodies fell, their Uzis clattering to the floor.

  The next batch of attackers returned fire. Bullets crashed through the windows. Hugo tightened his grip on the sofa when the draft almost sucked him out.

  “Come!” Diana screamed. She jumped from the sofa and took cover behind the cube. Gunshots tracked her movement, but she felled two more of the intruders.

  The others regrouped, giving Hugo a moment to join her.

  “I’m out of ammo,” she whispered. “Got some?”

  Hugo shook his head. “I relied on the hotel’s security staff,” he said, trying not to appear panicked. “When did you find out I wasn’t dead?”

  “Only now,” Diana said with a straight face. She tapped the iron hull of Hugo’s forty-three-foot creation. “Can we hide inside that thing?”

  “No. It’s controlled from the console over there.” The way to the computers was blocked by half a dozen hitmen closing in on them.

  “Don’t shoot!” Diana shouted at the masked special forces. “We surrender!”

  Hugo could tell neither why she did it nor why she repeated the same in French. Her voice was drowned out by a rattling noise when a triangular shape appeared in front of the skyscraper.

  “Down!” she screamed, pushing Hugo’s face into the tiles.

  Panicked, he held his breath as a shadow swept above them.

  The rocket-propelled grenade vaporised the intruders with an ear-splitting explosion. Its concussion wave pushed Hugo even closer to the smashed windows.

  Chapter 3

  Neural

  Friday, 11:00am CET (10:00am UK time)

  Sarah Parker couldn’t believe what she had just seen. She rested her eyes briefly on the dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral on the opposite riverbank to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. Then she replayed the video on her laptop.

  A naked couple was hiding behind a giant black cube. They were attacked by a team of operatives carrying assault rifles. And when they surrendered, the lu
xury apartment was shaken by an explosion, ending the transmission.

  What surprised Sarah most was the source. The video had come through the encrypted messaging app they had used at Sibylon. Despite the company’s dissolution eight months earlier, Sarah had kept it on her phone as proof that she really had been part of Hugo Hyde’s team. Never would she have expected a former colleague to get in touch, particularly in light of how their venture had ended.

  Accepting Albert’s job offer had been the right thing to do. She was in need of some sort of therapy after the events of the past year, and another high-profile IT role might have killed her. Now she could hone her skills without the pressure or the politics of an office job. Software engineering had turned from a geek’s pursuit to a cutthroat industry. Instead of cool code, now it was all about money, status and fame.

  When she watched the video again, her first thought was of Khaled. The man on her screen had her Egyptian ex-colleague’s olive skin, black beard and wavy hair. His female companion, however, made Sarah think twice. The athletic escort knew how to handle a gun, but her Venetian mask prevented Sarah’s facial-recognition software from finding a match.

  The man who had procured the blonde’s services wasn’t in her database either. Sarah’s last resort was a neural network she was testing for her boss. Albert was convinced that it would offer crucial evidence they still lacked to justify the release of scandalous stories simmering on the servers of geek-o-matixx.

  The technical possibility of recognising a masked man by means of his gait was one of the few things that still excited the reclusive Scandinavian. Sarah had begun to worry about his receding enthusiasm. Something about his demeanour told her that the founder of the disclosure platform considered her efforts to be in vain.

  She exhaled when the neural network took only a few moments to make a match with the surveillance video she had picked up.

  And what it unveiled was incredible.

  For eight months, everyone had believed the scientist dead, exactly as predicted by the final prophecy of his abominable creation.