Secret of the Himalayan Treasure

by Divyansh Mundra

  ​ Aanya sometimes looked at him, confirming to herself that Aarav was indeed staring at Shayna continuously. Rehann, on the other hand tried to catch his gaze so as to alert him, only to be disappointed. Shayna herself felt his gaze from the corner of her eyes and only turned towards him when she felt the need for it.

  ​ “Would you like to add something to that?” she asked him. “Mr. Kohrrathi?” she spoke formally as Aarav slowly drifted out of his dreams and saw the faces of an astonished Aanya and an exasperated Rehann.

  ​ “Sorry?” he spoke.

  ​ “Would you like to add anything to what I just said? I think I was comprehensive when narrating the details.”

  ​ “Me… umm… no. It was… great. The thing you said… about the Broods. That was umm… perfection.”

  ​ Rehann rolled his eyes to hide his embarrassment.

  ​ “Very well. I’ll be back soon. I have a call to make”, Shayna said as she got up and left for her room while gazing one last time at Aarav.

  ​ “Since we are friends again”, Aanya spoke while getting up herself. “You should try to control your staring. Statistically speaking, girls are likely to fall for guys who don’t stare at them like a creep”, she passed him a lovely smile before walking away.

  ​ Aarav looked at Rehann and knew at once what he would say. “Save it”, he uttered before asking an attendant for another glass of lemonade.

  ​ “No, no, no, no, no, no. I was just thinking, that I was with you when we came to this place. Then I was there with you when we had our dinner. Then I was still in hall, working on my pad for more than an hour before I went to sleep. You went to your room at around eleven so I might have gone back to mine at around half past twelve”, Rehann recounted.

  ​ “Are you making minutes of a meeting in a company, Rehann?” Aarav said irritably, taking the glass of lemonade from the attendant.

  ​ “I woke back up at around eight and checked in on you to see how you were doing, but you were asleep. And you finally woke up at two in the noon after retiring in your room at eleven in the night.”

  ​ “This is the most boring conversation of my life, Rehann.”

  ​ “So I am wondering, when did Shayna exactly manage to share the story about the Broods of the Bulls with you, if you were asleep the entire time?”

  ​ Aarav rolled his eyes as he got up and started climbing up the stairs to his room without replying to Rehann, who curiously followed him.

  ​ “Are you following me Rehann? Seriously, grow up.”

  ​ “Hmm”, he spoke with an evil smile as they both entered Aarav’s room. “God what have you done to the floor?” he said as he looked across the abundant hand written notes Aarav had placed on the floor the previous night.

  ​ “I was working on something.”

  ​ “Is that an R?” he questioned.

  ​ “Yes. Thank You”, Aarav replied.

  ​ “Looks like an S or an A to me.”

  ​ “Why are you here?” he got irritated.

  ​ “I had a question. You never answered”, he said as he sat on the bed and darted his dark eyes to meet Aarav’s brown ones.

  ​ “Fine. Yes. She came at around one last night”, Aarav gave in to his stares.

  ​ Rehann’s face lit up all of a sudden.

  ​ “What?” Aarav asked him, a sudden burst of blush flashing across his cheeks.

  ​ “My boy has finally grown up”, Rehann spoke with a laugh.

  ​ “We just spoke about our day.”

  ​ “That’s what couples do buddy.”

  ​ “We spoke about the Ring of the Seven and Broods of the Bulls. I didn’t even know that an ancient league of assassins like that existed. Never heard of their mention after the fall of Ashoka.”

  ​ “Didn’t you get drunk?” Rehann continued with his deductions since it was more fun for him than Aarav talking about history.

  ​ “Yes. But it is irrelevant.”

  ​ “But you couldn’t have emptied that bottle of Macallan all by yourself.”

  ​ “You have never seen me drink.”

  ​ “Oh I have. I offered you your first beer in college, remember? I know your capacity. You couldn’t have possibly emptied that bottle.”

  ​ “I did.”

  ​ “No, you didn’t.”

  ​ “Okay, she might have drunk a little as a courtesy”, Aarav spoke trying to end Rehann’s line of questioning.

  ​ “What else did she do as a courtesy?” Rehann spoke with an evil grin on his face, which was met by a pillow thrown by Aarav.

  ​ “Shut up”, he yelled.

  ​ A phone placed in the room suddenly rang.

  ​ “SHUT UP”, he yelled at it too, only to look at Rehann’s puzzled face.

  ​ Rehann picked it up and was met by Shayna’s voice, who called the both of them down in the hall.

  ​ They both reached back near the dining table soon, and were greeted by a brown book lying on it, which read ‘Book of Finance’. Aanya stood there along with Shayna, who had dismissed all the attendants for the day.

  ​ “The Book of Finance. I’m assuming you won’t allow us to read it”, Aarav said while stealing a glance at Aanya and chuckling to himself.

  ​ “Oh I bet you won’t understand half of it”, Shayna spoke confidently.

  ​ “My father is a chartered accountant. Trust me, I would have been excellent at finance, had I applied my mental faculty to it.”

  ​ “Says every ignorant man on Earth”, she retorted.

  ​ Rehann had a smile on his face and so did Aanya. Shayna went ahead and opened the last page of the book which read:

  I solemnly swear to watch over The Healer, who is in possession of The Book of Medicine.

  “Harsha Jayaratne”

  ​ “Harsha Jayaratne”, Aarav spoke slowly.

  ​ “Who?” Rehann asked.

  ​ “Is that the…” Aarav tried to speak.

  ​ “Director General of the World Health Organization? Yes”, Shayna completed his sentence.

  ​ “When I said who earlier that’s what I meant. WHO not who.” Rehann spoke only to receive stares from everybody.

  ​ “She has been active in Sri Lankan politics for over two decades; was the Minister of Health and Child Welfare before she took up the big job in Geneva. I have met her thrice. Once when I was there and twice when she came to India a couple of months ago.”

  ​ “You can call her then?” Rehann spoke to Shayna.

  ​ “I have been one of the biggest donors of their polio eradication campaign in India for years. Unlike the other books, the Book of Medicine is different you see. Most of the masters follow the practice of passing over their secret to the one they choose. This book however remains with the head of WHO, whoever he or she may be and cannot be freely passed.”

  ​ “So we are going to Switzerland to meet her?” Aanya asked.

  ​ “I spoke with her this morning and gave her a broad understanding of the things that have happened lately. She is currently on a visit to Nigeria, after which luckily, she’ll reach her hometown of Mannar in Sri Lanka tomorrow. We can leave in my jet tonight and meet her there”, Shayna said as she looked at the three of them.

  ​ “What if she is the evil master?” Aarav asked, finally getting his mind in the game. “What if she is the one who has been playing us this whole time? What if she is the one who resurrected the Broods of the Bulls? What if we go there tomorrow and instead of her, we are greeted by an army of men in masks, ready to make us bleed fountains of blood?”

  ​ “Trust me Aarav, she is not that evil master”, Shayna said.

  ​ “Why? Because you met her thrice and became an expert judge of her character?”

  ​ “What?” she was stumped as he suddenly raised his voice.

  ​ “For all we know she’d welcome us in her home, understand whatever we have learned so far, bury our bodies in her garden and leave with all the books.” He looked in
tensely at Shayna. “Isn’t that what people do? Leave?” Aarav spoke coldly as he started searching something on his mobile phone.

  ​ Shayna wasn’t expecting his outburst and was left with her mouth open. Aanya knew something was up but struggled to figure out what exactly was happening. And Rehann knew that Aarav was trying to be arrogant, so as to push Shayna away and concentrate back on the hunt.

  ​ “If that is the case”, Shayna continued. “Then what if I am the evil master? What if I was the one who ordered the Bulls to kill you all?”

  ​ “He didn’t mean to offend you”, Rehann jumped in to save Aarav.

  ​ “No. I am genuinely asking him”, she raised her voice too.

  ​ “Your own hit men would never shoot a bullet at you”, Aarav uttered coldly.

  ​ “But what if they have never seen my face? I am an evil master after all.”

  ​ “Every move has a motive. You are already a billionaire; you wouldn’t care about a treasure and murder people. Someone who stole money from the houses she worked at when she was a teen and whose husband has been accused of homicide just might”, Aarav pulled up Harsha Jayaratne’s Wikipedia bio and showed it to Shayna.

  ​ “I’m sure that she is not the evil master”, Shayna spoke while calming herself down.

  ​ “How?” Aarav asked her again.

  ​ “Because if you would look at the bio that you are shoving in my face more closely, you’ll see that she took charge at WHO only about ten months ago, while the first murder of Indira Chatterjee happened over a year ago.”

  ​ Aarav looked at the bio again and realized his mistake. His face was left red as he slowly mustered courage to look up at Shayna again.

  ​ “Know your facts first Mr. Kohrrathi before you come out throwing accusations on my judgment”, she spoke blatantly.

  ​ “I’m… sorry”, Aarav admitted his fallacy.

  ​ “You should be”, she remarked coldly before grabbing her book and taking the Book of Alchemy from Aanya. “I’ll keep them in my safe here. I don’t see a point in taking our books to Sri Lanka.”

  ​ “I should probably go. I’ll go to some mall and shop for clothes”, Aarav muttered as he tried to lighten the mood.

  ​ “And get yourself killed”, Shayna was quick to reply. “They’ll follow you as soon as you’ll leave this building. My attendants’ numbers are available next to the telephone in your room. Ask one of them to buy clothes for you. They’ll deliver them by the evening.” She gave a hurtful yet emotionless stare to Aarav before walking away to her room.

  ​ “My body is aching badly. I should probably get some sleep”, Aarav fumbled out words to hide his embarrassment before climbing up the stairs and locking the door of his room.

  ​ “What happened?” Aanya asked Rehann once they were gone.

  ​ “I’m sure that I don’t even know half of it”, he said looking back at the stairs.

  ​ “Did something happen between the two of them?”

  ​ “I don’t know. I have never seen him with a girl before. When it comes to women, he gets paranoid. He doesn’t connect with them. He has this ego and self-obsession than just drives them crazy.”

  ​ “I mean he is such a humble man most of the times”, Aanya continued. “But then he suddenly gets angry and says all these things. He was a perfect gentleman to me until I refused to give him the book. He was more than a perfect gentleman to her but snapped as soon as he had a disagreement with her. I wonder how you handle him.”

  ​ “He is complicated. Yes. But I have admired him since we first became friends in school. He used to be really shy, probably that is why he has a problem in connecting with people. There was a time in seventh grade when a girl he really liked asked him out and you won’t believe what he did.”

  ​ “He ran?” she guessed.

  ​ “Well, you won’t believe what he did after that.”

  ​ “What?”

  ​ “He ran to the principal and told her that the girl was trying to seduce him.”

  ​ “What?” she chuckled as she pulled a chair and sat down.

  ​ “Yes. He has these things since childhood. I consider it his superpower. He will probably call it a curse.”

  ​ “What?” she asked.

  ​ “Whenever he sees visuals or hears noises, his brain picks them up without him realizing it. He watches a lot of TV series and could recite their dialogues to you, scene by scene. Same things happen when he watches movies. He read an encyclopedia or a book on the history of the world when he was really young, and since then he has been in love with history. When they taught us about the Battles of Independence or French Revolution, most of us would sleep through the lecture; but he would live in it. No matter how sad he is, no matter how angry he is, you start throwing in random questions about world history to him and he would behave like a child wanting more and more of trivia. He has memorized the dates of every major event that has ever happened in history and never forgets it.”

  ​ “Amazing”, she remarked. “Does he have like, photographic memory?”

  ​ “Oh definitely not”, Rehann chuckled finally grabbing a chair for himself. “He would have failed in his Math exams if I hadn’t shown him my answers. He has the highest of passion for the subjects of his liking; but pays no heed to the ones he disregards.”

  ​ “And which are the subjects he liked?”

  ​ “Oh. He is a master with history and languages; taught himself passable French and Korean just by watching movies in those languages. He is fluent in Marwari and Mewari, both native Rajasthani languages, probably because his family has roots from there. He also has a deep knowledge of Sanskrit. These three helped us immensely while finding the treasure in Chittorgarh. He is also fluent in Portuguese, which he learned hardly in a few weeks before we set out to find the sunken Portuguese fleet. He calls himself a fan of the languages of the south. He developed this crazy fascination with Tamil in high school. He can read and write in both Tamil and Telugu. He also tried to learn Elvish from Lord of the Rings and Dothraki from Game of Thrones. Although I have never heard him speak them, or maybe that’s what he says when he talks of historical facts. But his knowledge of prominent Indian languages helps him immensely in his work. Other than that, he is excellent at Geography, was really good in Biology till tenth standard. He always scored the highest marks in the subjects he liked without even having to study them. And then I had to save him with Mathematics and Computers.”

  ​ “That day when we first met, how did he recognize the cipher in my father’s note?”

  ​ “Oh he loves his puzzles and codes. He could solve them an entire day and still ask for more. But you have barely seen him at his best. His mind races faster than a machine when it comes to something he likes; but stops entirely when it comes to computers or finance or…”

  ​ “Women”, she laughed. “Enough about him. What about you?”

  ​ “What about me?”

  ​ “I know that you are a hacker. I know that you are good with computers. But what else?”

  ​ “Well I’m a data extractor; I don’t prefer to call myself a hacker, that’s too lame. Yes, I am good with computers and mobiles and practically anything that runs on electricity. I was actually placed with Google and was about to leave for US when one fine day, at two in the night, Mr. Kohrrathi knocked at my door and somehow convinced me to help him get to a treasure I had never even heard about and give up my job.”

  ​ “And you did it?”

  ​ “I postponed it. Don’t tell him that, I always say that I left a million-dollar job for his treasure hunt, so he owes me big time. That hunt required me to hack into government’s systems and extract a lot of data. But it worked and even though we didn’t make much, I realized that I enjoyed being a treasure hunter rather than just a coder. We went on to find the treasure of the sunken Portuguese fleet next. That hunt paid me more than two years’ worth of salary that I would have got at my job. And then the tr
easure hunt of Chittorgarh happened and it made us millionaires”, he said with a smile.

  ​ “That is amazing.”

  ​ “What about you?” Rehann asked.

  ​ “Well there isn’t anything of interest about me”, she replied.

  ​ “Come on.”

  ​ “I never really experienced difficulties while growing up you know. Being the heiress to one of the richest man in the world has its own perks. I was a brat, to be honest. I was so used to all the attention and luxuries while growing up that I was spoiled by the time I was in high school. For me, life was all about parties and hanging out with friends and foreign trips every couple of months. I would have ended up being a complete wreck had I not fought with my father.”

  ​ “Come on. You fought with him for what you were passionate about. That shows your strength.”

  ​ “I was never passionate about fashion”, she confessed. “Passion is what I see in you when you are working on computers, or in Aarav’s eyes when he is chasing history. It is the thing with girls who have rich fathers. We always say that we are passionate about fashion or jewelry designing or event organizing, because we cannot do anything better than that. We shop in a day what many families make in more than a year. No wonder we are good with brands.”

  ​ “You are clearly underestimating yourself”, Rehann spoke.

  ​ “Well I did. After I fought with my father, I decided to not take a single Rupee from him. I supported myself in London, organized EDM parties by night and went to college by the day. Soon enough, I started making quite some money.”

  ​ “That is fantastic. See I would have never been able to do something like that. If my father cut me off, I would rather declare a hunger strike till he broke”, he chuckled.

  ​ “Well that’s all about me. Nothing adventurous like chasing a sunken treasure. I did sky dive once; that was intense.”