by James Becker
For the next few minutes Angela scoured the internet, copying the information she found on some websites, discarding others. Finally she found one that held her attention for several minutes.
‘You ever heard of somebody called Holger Kersten?’ she asked.
Bronson shook his head.
‘Or Nicolai Notovitch?’
‘No. He sounds Russian.’
‘He is Russian. And how about Hemis Gompa?’
‘Never heard of him, either.’
Angela sighed. ‘It’s a place, not a person.’
‘Can you stop the twenty questions routine and tell me what you’ve found?’
So she did.
Ten minutes later, Bronson sat back in his seat, his face a mask of disbelief. ‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you?’
Angela leaned towards him and took both his hands. ‘Damn right I am. Most of this information’s been out there in the public domain for years, but without the translation of the Wendell-Carfax Persian text, it’s just been a story, and a tall story at that. But when you add the Persian text into the equation, absolutely everything changes. We simply have to check this out.’
‘What about the “valley of flowers”?’
‘If Mohalla is where I think it is, I’ve got a good idea where the valley is, too,’ she said. ‘The difficulty is going to be getting there. It’s not what you might call a particularly hospitable part of the world.’
Bronson nodded slowly, recognizing the determination in her eyes. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’
India
43
In his apartment in New York City, a man called Nick Masters sat upright and looked at the illuminated display of his bedside alarm clock: 3.17. He’d been in bed for less than two hours. ‘Have you any idea what time it is?’ he said.
‘How long have we known each other?’ JJ Donovan asked.
‘What? You call me up in the middle of the night to ask me that?’
‘This is important. How long?’
‘Ten years, maybe twelve, I guess. Why?’
‘And do you trust me?’
‘As much as I trust anyone else in this goddamn country, yes.’
‘And I trust you, Nick, which is why I’m calling. We go back a long way. We know each other, and we’ve worked together before. I need some help. I need somebody who can handle whatever’s about to kick off out here.’
‘Where are you?’ Masters asked.
‘India. I need you and I need some of your men as well. Men who know what they’re doing. Guys with combat experience.’
‘All my people know what they’re doing. That’s why I recruit them. So what do you want from me?’
In his small hotel room in Mumbai, Donovan looked at the list he’d prepared, wondering if there was another way to achieve his aims. Then he shrugged. He had to prepare for all eventualities, and that meant assuming they might have to fight when they got to the search area. He figured that the more firepower his team could muster, the better.
‘I need at least half a dozen men on the ground, plus personal weapons and two or three four-by-four jeeps or trucks.’
Masters was scribbling notes as he listened.
‘What’s the target?’
‘I’ll get to that in a moment. I’m following two people, and they’re getting real close to something that I’ve been looking for.’
Donovan quickly explained about Bronson and Angela Lewis, and the trail he’d been following.
‘Whereabouts in India are they heading?’
‘They’ll have to fly to either Mumbai or Delhi, but they’ll be making for Kashmir, right up in the north, heading for a place called “the valley of flowers”. What I don’t know is exactly where in that valley we should be looking. That’s why you have to locate them as soon as possible. I’ll send you an email with all the data I’ve got. There’s even a photograph of Bronson. Check your inbox in five minutes.’
‘OK,’ Masters said, thinking fast. ‘The quickest way to get to Kashmir is to fly to Islamabad or Lahore, and then cross the border. I’ve got a couple of friends in the Pakistan military machine, which should solve the problem of getting weapons and vehicles into India. I’ll borrow everything I need from them, and then find a nice quiet place to slip over the border. And I’ll try to get a couple of my guys to Mumbai or Delhi right now, see if they can pick up Bronson’s trail. Whatever happens, I’ll have some of my people out there within twenty-four hours.’
‘Good. And just tread softly, will you? That part of India’s a sensitive area – I don’t want any official entanglements.’
‘I always tread softly,’ Masters replied. ‘Like the saying goes, I walk softly and carry a big stick – except that these days that normally means an assault rifle or a Browning fifty cal.’
He looked over the notes he’d scribbled down on the pad beside his bed. ‘You still haven’t told me what the target is,’ he pointed out.
Even over the satellite telephone link, there was no mistaking the suppressed excitement in Donovan’s voice.
‘You remember that tiny piece of papyrus I bought at auction ages ago? The one I named the Hyrcania Codex?’
‘Yeah,’ Masters replied, smothering a yawn. ‘You thought it might be a clue to …’ His voice died away as he recalled what Donovan had told him a couple of years earlier. For a few moments he sat there in silence. Suddenly he knew exactly what his old friend was talking about and, despite himself, he felt a sudden chill as he realized the implications.
‘You mean you’ve found something that might lead you to it?’
‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ Donovan said. ‘You know that I’ve been looking for it ever since I read the translation of the papyrus text, how I’ve had my people scouring the web, checking museum databases, doing everything I could to track it down. Now I’m real close to finding it – or rather Bronson and Lewis are, because they’ve got more information than I have. And when they do find it, I’m going to take it from them.’
‘But surely it would have turned to dust after all this time?’
‘For a while, I thought so too. But now I reckon that it could still be viable, just because of where it’s hidden. If I’m right, this would be the greatest archaeological discovery in the history of the world, more important than anything that’s ever been found before. And the implications for science are just mind-blowing.’
‘You’re serious about this, JJ, aren’t you?’ Masters said slowly.
‘You’re damn right I’m serious. To recover this object, I’ll risk everything. It’s been a long search but now – right now – the end-game has just begun.’
44
In his hotel in downtown Mumbai, Bronson had just woken up. After he’d had a shower and a shave, he announced that he felt a bit better but Angela didn’t think there was much visible improvement, and told him so.
‘You still look like a jet-lagged zombie,’ she said, putting her arms round him. ‘Just a clean-shaven zombie, which is only marginally better. Come on. Let’s go and find the business centre.’
Downstairs, the receptionist directed them to a small room off to one side of the lobby. Inside were two desktop computers, a fax machine and a laser printer. Angela sat down in front of one of the desktop machines, and plugged a memory stick into one of the USB ports. A few moments later, the printer hummed and began feeding pages into the output tray.
Angela and Bronson knew they had to act as tourists and join the increasing numbers of Westerners drawn to the Leh region of India by its stark and untamed beauty. But they realized that two Westerners wandering about unescorted in some parts of that area, which had a massive military presence because of the sensitivity of the nearby borders with China and Pakistan, might well attract attention – official and otherwise. They also knew they would have to leave the tourist routes to find what they were looking for, so Angela had come up with a cover story that might help.
She had already prepared a mission
statement on her laptop, basing it on one of several previous documents she had stored on her back-up disk.
The printer fell silent. Angela retrieved her memory stick, clipped the printed sheets together and tucked them in her handbag. The finished document ran to about a dozen pages and, together with her British Museum identification, it would, she hoped, be enough to satisfy any official who stopped them. According to the statement, the purpose of their journey was to carry out a preliminary survey of the evidence for pre-Indus Valley civilizations in the Jammu and Kashmir regions of India, and to determine whether a full-scale investigation in the area would be justified. The Indus Valley itself ran just to the south of Leh, so it was a plausible explanation.
Such initial explorations occurred on a regular basis all over the world and that would hopefully be enough to keep them out of trouble. Of course, one telephone call back to the British Museum would immediately destroy their cover story, because nobody there had the slightest idea about where Angela was or what she was doing. Neither was there any official approval for any museum investigation in Kashmir, or anywhere else in northern India, for that matter.
The hotel restaurant was closed, so they stepped outside. Bronson was surprised to discover that it was late evening – his biological clock was telling him something completely different. The evening air was pleasantly cool, and they found a decent-looking restaurant that was still serving dinner without having to walk very far.
‘The first thing we have to do is get ourselves up to Leh,’ Angela said, unfolding a map of the Indian sub-continent on the restaurant table between them and pointing at a spot right up in the Jammu and Kashmir territory, at the very northern tip of India. This area was bordered by China to the east and by Pakistan to the north and west. ‘We’ll have to use Leh – or somewhere very near it – as our base, I think.’
Bronson studied the map, measuring distances by eye and using the scale that ran across the bottom of the sheet.
‘How do we do that? Fly up to Delhi and then take a train?’ he asked.
‘No – we can fly straight there. Leh’s been open to visitors – by which I mean tourists – since the seventies, and it’s actually a fairly big town. The whole area has become really popular with what you might call “adventure tourists” – the kind of people who don’t expect hot water or comfortable beds at the places they stay. There’s an airport, for domestic flights only, a few miles south of the town.’
‘Let’s see if we can take a direct flight tomorrow morning. Once we’re in Leh, we’ll have to hire a four-wheel-drive jeep because I think we’ll find there are very few roads or even tracks once you start climbing.
‘Now,’ Bronson continued, ‘you spent ages on the internet but you still haven’t told me what you’ve found out.’ He looked at her meaningfully.
Angela sighed. ‘I now know who “Yus of the purified” was, and how he acquired that name. In fact, he was called Yus Asaph, or sometimes Yuz Asaf. Yus or Yuz simply meant “leader”, so his name translated as “the leader of the healed” or “leader of the purified” – and that specifically meant lepers who’d been healed.’
‘I didn’t know you could cure leprosy.’
‘I’m just telling you what I found out, or at least what the records told me.’
‘And what about Mohalla? Did you find out where it was?’
‘Yes, and you won your bet. The only “Mohalla” that makes sense in this context is Mohalla Anzimarah, which was located in an area called Khanyar or Khanjar, which is near Srinigar, in Kashmir.’ She pointed at the map. ‘It’s some distance from Leh, maybe a couple of hundred miles, so that ties in quite well with your estimate of how far a small band of travellers could cover in about a week.’
‘And the man they called Yus Asaph was definitely there?’ Bronson asked.
‘According to two completely different sources – and one of them is pretty unimpeachable – yes, he was. And there’s a slightly spooky element I read about which might be related. According to another source, round about the time that the treasure was hidden away a story started to circulate about the so-called “Ghosts of the Silk Road”. That name was tagged on to the story a lot later, of course, because it wasn’t actually called the Silk Road until the nineteenth century. But this source claimed that a small caravan was attacked by a gang of bandits as it made its way up a valley. The leaders of the caravan were hit several times by arrows, but the missiles had no effect on them, and the bandits ran away in terror.’
‘I guess it could be a legend that was embellished over the years,’ Bronson suggested. ‘Maybe they only suffered flesh wounds, or were wearing some kind of armour. Or possibly it never happened at all?’
Angela frowned. ‘But for the story to have survived this long, there had to be a grain of truth in it. What I found interesting wasn’t actually the story about the leaders being bullet-proof, but the fact that the caravan was heading up into the hills well to the north-east of what later became known as Leh, because that area wasn’t part of the normal trade route. I think it’s possible that the story might even have been an eye-witness sighting of the caravan hauling the treasure itself.’
‘And you’re still convinced it’s worth following this up?’
‘Absolutely. If there’s even the slightest chance of finding it, we simply have to take it.’
45
The next morning Bronson and Angela stepped out of their hotel to look for a cab to take them to the airport.
Their senses were assaulted in every possible manner and from every possible direction. Above them, the sun blazed down, baking the still air to the point that it almost hurt to breathe. Dust clouds surrounded them, kicked up by the feet of what looked like hundreds of people milling around and the tyres of the dozens of vehicles – everything from trucks and buses down to cars and motorcycles – and literally hundreds of bicycles. And above all was the cacophony of yells and shouts from beggars, hawkers, taxi drivers and numerous other professions, interspersed with the roaring and grumbling of car and truck and bus engines, which virtually deafened them.
‘Dear God,’ Bronson muttered, pulling their two suitcases to one side of the uneven pavement. He stood there for a few moments with Angela, just looking at the scene in front of them.
‘It all looks like total chaos to me,’ Angela agreed.
‘Well, the sooner we’re in a taxi the better,’ Bronson said, ‘so keep your eyes open.’
He made sure Angela was clutching her handbag and laptop bag, then grabbed the handles on their two suitcases and stepped closer to the edge of the pavement, scanning the road in both directions. Pedestrians thronged the pavements and the edge of the road itself, many of them flapping handkerchiefs ineffectually in front of their faces or fanning themselves with their hats. Some even sported umbrellas against the sunlight.
‘It’s not just us,’ Angela murmured. ‘Even the locals are feeling the heat.’
‘We mustn’t get in any cab unless it’s air conditioned,’ Bronson instructed. ‘I’m not sweltering in a tin box in this heat.’
‘How will I tell?’
‘Simple. If all the windows are closed, it’s got air-con. If they’re open, it hasn’t.’
A couple of minutes later, they saw an elderly Mercedes draw up beside them, all the windows wide open.
‘Ignore it,’ Bronson said, looking down the street, watching out for another cab.
The next cab also had its windows open, but then he saw a fairly new taxi going the other way, all its windows closed. He whistled and waved, and was rewarded by the brake lights flaring red as the driver hauled the vehicle round in a tight – and probably illegal – U-turn.
‘Here’s our ride,’ Bronson said. He seized the handles of their suitcases and walked forwards as the car drew to a stop. The driver stepped out, opened the boot and helped Bronson lift their suitcases inside. Angela climbed into the back seat and Bronson sat beside the driver, revelling in the blast of cold air coming ou
t of the dashboard vents.
‘Where to, sir?’ the driver asked, pulling out into the traffic, his English accented but clearly understandable.
‘The airport,’ Bronson said. ‘We need to fly up to Delhi.’
‘Very good. Domestic terminal. I very well know which way. You enjoy ride.’
The drive wasn’t perhaps the most enjoyable experience of their lives. Rush hour in Mumbai made the chaos of Cairo seem almost tame by comparison. Several times Bronson was absolutely certain a collision was imminent, and he’d close his eyes, only to hear a squeal of brakes and simultaneous bellowing of horns, and realize they’d somehow managed to scrape through without hitting anything. But the air conditioning in the taxi worked well and, despite the terrifying driving all around them, they were both almost sorry when their journey ended and they had to face the heat and humidity once again.
Bronson paid the driver, retrieved their bags from the boot and together they walked into the terminal building in front of them.
The flight to Delhi left on time, which slightly surprised them both, and they then had a two-hour wait in the domestic terminal in the capital before their onward flight to Leh.
When their flight was finally called, they picked up their bags again and walked towards the departure gate, and the last leg of their journey.
As they stood up, two middle-aged men of European appearance who’d been sitting about twenty feet away stood up as well. One of them looked down again at the picture displayed on the screen of his mobile phone, comparing that tiny image – showing a man lying apparently unconscious on the flag-stoned floor of a room – with the face of the man in front of him. Then he nodded to his companion. The identification was certain.
As Bronson and Angela walked away, the two men followed about fifty feet behind them, joining the back of the queue for the flight out to Leh, a flight for which they’d already bought tickets. As they waited to pass through the departure gate, the man holding the Nokia flipped it open and then made a twenty-second call to a US mobile number.