“And what did you say?” Aanya asked him.
“I agreed instantly of course. The treasure money will be used for public benefit just like your father wanted. And I asked him to let me in on the committee that will conduct analysis and research on any artifacts that we might find, including the books. It is a win-win”, he said with a smile.
“And you’re okay with not getting any share of the treasure?” Rehya asked.
“Of course. It’s not the money that I am after. It’s the history which draws me.”
“Good”, Rehya continued. “Then what are you doing here in Nepal? Found your treasure yet?”
“We might have found something”, he spoke. “And I think we just might need the strength of your men to know what it is.” Aarav smiled devilishly and looked all around. “Oh and they will have to do some shopping. You guys happen to have a hammer?”
Within half an hour four of Rehya’s men had abandoned their coats and picked up hammers as they proceeded to break the tiled flooring of the black monastery. Aarav and Aanya stood outside with Rehya while Rehann had excused himself and went ahead to visit the Swayambhu stupa. The sun was already hidden behind the mountains and it had started getting darker. The crowd had reduced as the chilling cold had gripped the atmosphere.
“So how did you do it? How did you escape the Taj Hotel? The guards found sheets which went out from the window”, Rehya asked Aarav.
“But?”
“But even if you jumped from its end, you’d have definitely broken your legs.”
Aarav smiled. “I never jumped out of the window. That was just a ruse to confuse the guards and buy me more time in case things went south. I simply went down through the fire exit.”
“But they never saw you leaving the room.”
“Rehann hacked the cameras. It was easy”, Aarav spoke as he saw her expressions change. “You know he might appear cold, but deep down he is happy to see you.”
“If you don’t mind me asking”, Aanya interrupted. “What happened between the two of you?”
Rehya didn’t speak and tried to evade her eyes.
“Ah it’s nothing. Childish sibling quarrels, nothing more”, Aarav saved the conversation from getting awkward. “You should see me fight with my brother.”
“You have a brother?” Aanya was surprised to find this revelation.
“Yes. Two years younger to me. I’m glad that he is still in college.”
“Why?”
“Because once he graduates, he will be the greatest devil this world will see. I hate him so much. He always got everything good; new bicycles before me, new cricket bats, girlfriends, you name it. Once he is back, he’ll try to bend me to his wishes.” He looked towards the tall snowcapped mountains in the distance. “He is evil in its purest form.”
“I have met him. He is adorable”, Rehya spoke with a smile.
“And a pretender”, Aarav ended his rant. They all looked towards the gates of the monastery as one of the men came out and informed them that the tiles are broken and they would start with the digging. Rehann returned back too after his visit to the stupa.
“Found your peace of mind?” Rehya asked.
Rehann gestured with his eyebrows and carried a fake smile as he went past them and stood on the other side, his sarcastic and positive demeanor affected by the presence of his elder sister. Aanya excused herself and followed him. As soon as they were both gone, Aarav asked Rehya about something that had been bothering him for quite some time.
“Shayna Maheshwari. Where is she?”
“She woke up even after us. She had a splitting headache and was confused as to what had happened. But once we assured her that the Bulls were all killed, she was happy to know that the treasure would be safe. And of course we informed her about your plan. Trust me, she was definitely pissed about the fact that you used her to make your way to the hotel room, so that you could steal the Prime Minister’s book.”
“Where is she now?”
“She left back for Delhi. We promised her to keep her informed about the treasure once we find it.”
“Does she know that we are in Nepal?”
“No. Why?”
“Nothing”, he looked away, memory of Shayna Maheshwari making him flinch from the inside.
All of a sudden the men came out, four of them carrying something heavy which was covered in a cloth. “Ma’am, we found something”, one of them spoke as they placed the artifact on the ground and unwrapped the cloth surrounding it.
“Unbelievable”, Aarav uttered as he laid his eyes on the artifact, others gathering all around him. It was the sculpture of a lion, settled comfortably on his hind legs and opening his mouth wide as if ready to roar. Dust and time had withered its appearance but it unmistakably resembled the figures of one of the four lions of the Lion Capital of Ashoka, which was adopted as the national emblem of India after its independence.
“Ashoka’s lion”, Rehann uttered.
Aarav looked at the carvings all around the three-foot-tall figure. He almost had a visible smile on his face as he saw a circular line running across the neck of the lion. “It’s a lid”, he spoke as he asked one of the men to help him unravel it. They put their hands on the lion’s glorious face and applied force towards their right. After about thirty seconds, the lion’s head turned. They unscrewed it and kept it rolling as the face of the lion lifted up from his body and ultimately came off completely only to reveal a hollow opening inside. Aarav put his hands down and brought out a cylindrical, metallic object with the face of a lion adoring one of its ends. The cylinder was sleek and about twenty centimeters long, but its purpose confused everyone who stood around.
“That’s not it”, Rehya spoke as her eyes found something else. She put her hands down the lid that Aarav had pulled up and drew out a fiber roll stuck inside the head of the lion before handing it to Aarav.
Aarav unrolled the ancient cloth and his eyes cheered up as he looked at the contents that it held. “And here lies the way to the treasure, the way that Aanya’s father spoke about”, he said with a smile. “Behold the treasure map.”
Chapter 11: The Final Problem
They were back in India the next day, driving the narrow mountain roads in the state of Uttarakhand. Aarav sat in the back seat trying to figure out the exact location of the treasure. The scroll was vivid and carried an illustrated map of the Himalayas, the location of the treasure being marked with the face of a lion. However due to the absence of the present day borders and the unskilled cartography of the time, the map had got various things wrong. The rivers were shown taking unnatural bends and few mountains didn’t even exist. However, Aarav was able to narrow down the location of the treasure of the gods to the state of Uttarakhand judging the maneuvers of the rivers near the Lionhead and the height of the mountains depicted in the map. It further carried a hint to the location; another riddle which Aarav had translated:
Hidden amongst the highest of mountains, it lies;
Shielded by the holy waters, it rests.
The greatest blessing of the Gods, the greatest secret of mankind;
Shall never be found, shall never see light.
Yet the worthy who seeks the secret,
Shall cross the treacherous waters adorned by the dead,
Cross the three guards of gods, who stand straight and proud.
And once they see the sisters, the little one holding onto the eldest;
Their ears will hear the noise,
To the supreme treasure a man will see with his eyes.
Aarav was puzzled again. He wasn’t able to understand what the riddle was trying to speak to him. He kept gazing at the illustration and the writings again and again, but hadn’t been able to crack it throughout their journey.
“Still no clue?” Rehya, who sat next to him, asked.
“Why can’t they just tell it to me already?” Aarav barked in frustration. “They had to put in these puzzles, hoping that someone will understand their lame directions written in another language after more than two thousand years. I solved the Swayambhu mystery. It said that the worthy shall find the way, well guess what, I found it. I proved my worthiness to the souls of the dead people who wrote these riddles, and just when you think that they would actually point out the way, they decide to make your day worse by giving another puzzle.”
“I thought you liked puzzles”, Rehann who sat on the front seat next to Aanya, spoke up.
“Not the ones I’m unable to solve.”
“Not everyone is as patient as you, little brother”, Rehya passed a smile and uttered to Rehann only to receive no response from him. She shifted her gaze to the black SUV behind them, her guards following their car.
“The first five lines are borrowed from the inscriptions that we found on the books. Just these four lines stand between us and the treasure.”
“Shall cross the treacherous waters adorned by the dead, cross the three guards of gods, who stand straight and proud. And once they see the sisters, the little one holding onto the eldest; their ears will hear the noise ”, Rehann narrated the lines.
“Treacherous waters adorned by the dead”, Aarav closed his eyes as if trying to locate the place. “Cross the three guards of gods, who stand straight and proud. Once they see the sisters, the little one holding onto the eldest, their ears will hear the noise.”
“Treacherous waters could be a river”, Rehya provided her input. “But what about the three guards and the two sisters?”
“That is the riddle”, Rehann spoke to her rudely without looking back.
“I’m trying to help Aarav”, she said.
“Oh he thinks well when others are not barking in his ears.”
“Is that what I am doing?”
“Yup! Still barking.”
She sighed with fury. “You always were the jealous little brat, weren’t you?”
“Oh I have been jealous of many people in my life. But trust me, you aren’t one of them. Actually, why are you even here?”
“To help you find the treasure.”
“Oh I can see how big of a help you’re being, but that’s not what I’m asking. Why are you sitting here? Why don’t you travel with your pooches in that fancy car behind us?”
“That’s enough Rehann”, Aarav opened his eyes and tried to calm his friend down.
“Really? That is enough? After everything that she did, that is enough?”
“Rehann don’t”, Aarav spoke hinting towards Aanya, who was doing her best to not let the talks distract her from her driving.
“Oh let her know”, Rehann howled, getting furious than ever. “Let Aanya know. Let Rehya’s guards know. Let the entire valley know. I don’t care.”
“Rehann stop overreacting”, Rehya uttered, trying to overpower his voice.
“Overreacting?” he yelled as he turned his head back to glare into her eyes. “You murdered your own daughter and you expect me turn a blind eye towards that?”
“Rehann c’mon. That is not what happened”, Aarav tried calming him down.
“I did not murder my child”, Rehya shrieked. “She was the only person in my life. She was the only one in my life who kept me alive. How can you even say something like that?”
“I warned you that they would come for you”, he shrieked harder. “We all warned you that you weren’t safe. You promised us to leave everything. If you’d have backed down at the time; if only you’d have listened to us. My niece would still be alive.”
“You don’t even know what I did, and why I had to do it. You sit there comfortably in your armchair, dropping advices and judging other people’s actions when you don’t even know how the real world works.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “You think I didn’t want my family to be safe? You think I didn’t want to see my daughter grow up? You don’t think that I wanted her to have a normal life, and drop her to school every morning? You cannot even comprehend the magnitude of sacrifices that I had to make so that the people of this country can carry the smile that they do.”
“Stop the car Aanya. I have had enough of her”, Rehann yelled.
“Yes. Stop the car indeed”, Rehya reiterated.
Aanya pulled up the car towards a side on the narrow road. Rehann was the first one to rush out and he stood angrily towards the other end, overshadowed by a cliff. Rehya moved towards her left, stopping by the railings on the end that overlooked a chasm; a deep steep sided opening facing a river below. Aanya slowly gazed back towards Aarav, who rolled his eyes and dug his head back in frustration.
“She murdered her own daughter?” Aanya asked Aarav, terrified.
“Only in Rehann’s mind. It’s not what you think.”
“What happened?”
Aarav took in a deep breath, his mind was still racing, trying to decipher the riddle. “Look. I knew Rehya from the time when I used to go to Rehann’s house back in our school days. She was brilliant, a scholar herself. She was working with the Indian Foreign Services at the time and soon married the love of her life, someone she met at her office. Theirs was a happy family, they had a beautiful daughter together. It was a good life.”
“Then?”
“Then one day, her husband went missing. Rehya’s parents panicked and they urged her to lodge a complaint with the police but she never did it. Few days later a disk arrived in the mail, showing a video of her husband caught by terrorists.”
“What?” her eyes widened.
“As it turns out, Rehya and her husband were spies. They were working with the government, trying to dismantle the Mumbai mafia. They had evidence that the mafia was receiving funds from terror cells in Pakistan. He tried to follow the lead and was caught unfortunately.”
“What happened to him?”
“We never got to know. The government wasn’t able to make it public. And so she had to follow the protocols and live her life like nothing had happened. Few days later, she received a threat from the mafia to stop her investigations. Rehann and his parents, made her promise that she would end it all and leave her job. She agreed to, but secretly kept on working to uncover the terror plots. Turns out that the mafia were planning to conduct multiple bombings in Mumbai, and she single handedly managed to foil their plan. The evidences which she gathered helped the police put the mafia bosses behind bars and dismantled the Mumbai underworld network. She saved the city and countless lives which would have been lost had she not done that. But all of it came at a cost. Some rogue goon, who was upset that his leader was put behind bars, decided to take the matter in his own hands. He paid her a visit. Fortunately, Rehya wasn’t at her home. However, her three-year-old daughter and the caretaker was.”
Aanya was silent, tears almost welling up in her eyes.
“Rehann never forgave her”, Aarav continued, speaking sadly. “He thinks that if she would have stopped pursuing the case further, her daughter would have been alive today. Her parents eventually understood, but Rehann completely cut her off from his life. She was soon called up on higher orders and is currently serving in the Prime Minister’s Office while also assisting the National Security Adviser.”
“I cannot imagine what she had to go through”, Aanya uttered.
“She is the bravest woman I know”, Aarav replied slowly before opening the door and getting out of the car. Aanya watched him go ahead and speak to Rehya first, as he soon led her back inside the car. He then went to Rehann and spoke to him for some time, and soon enough, Rehann broke. Aanya could see him crying vehemently. He cried and wept and Aarav had to put his arms around to comfort him and bring him back inside the car.
“You can drive now”, Aarav uttered to Aanya as they all settled inside.
; An uncomfortable silence ensued as none of them spoke for the next few minutes. Their car kept trotting on the narrow road, only the car of Rehya’s guards following them behind.
“I’m sorry”, Rehann spoke slowly after a while to his sister.
“It’s okay”, she took some time to reply before lifting her hand ahead and placing it on Rehann’s shoulder, bringing a little smile to his face.
“Now”, Aarav finally spoke after some time. “If all the weeping and shouting is done, you people would like to know the fact that our little puzzle has been cracked.”
“What?” the three almost said simultaneously.
“Stopping the car actually came as a blessing in disguise”, Aarav spoke calmly. “When I got out of the car and saw the chasm down from this height, my mind was still processing the fact that what would I have done if I was the one who hid the treasure. I’d make a map of course, but how would I identify it? What would be my markers?”
“What?” Rehann asked.
“Nature itself. The rivers and the mountains. What Rehya said about the ‘treacherous waters’, was right.”
“It’s a river then?” she said.
“Well almost right”, Aarav continued. “See if I had drawn this map, I would have placed the most significant markers that my eyes could see, in the riddle. So what about the three guards and the two sisters?”
“They are markers?”
“Yes. Look at the lines. Cross the three guards of gods, who stand straight and proud. What do you think stands straight and proud in a place like this?”
“The mountains”, Aanya said lighting up.
“Exactly. Those are three mountains that the riddle is talking about. And once I thought of mountains, the third part of the riddle became crystal clear. And once they see the sisters, the little one holding onto the eldest. It had to be a huge mountain with another, shorter one adjoining it.”
Secret of the Himalayan Treasure Page 18