westland ltd
The Mahabharata Quest:
The Alexander Secret
Christopher C. Doyle is an author who transports the reader into a fascinating world where ancient secrets buried in legends blend with science and history to create a gripping story.
Brought up as a boy on a steady diet of books ranging from classical literature to science fiction and fantasy, Christopher has been writing since his schooldays. Since childhood, his literary mentors have been Jules Verne, H G Wells, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, JRR Tolkein, Robert Jordan and Terry Brooks.
Along the way to publishing his debut novel, The Mahabharata Secret, Christopher pursued a career in the corporate world after graduating from St. Stephens College, Delhi with a degree in Economics and studying business management at IIM Calcutta. Over the course of his corporate career, he has worked with leading multinational organisations as a senior executive and CEO before setting up a strategic consultancy in India in partnership with a US based consulting firm.
Over the course of his corporate career, Christopher has written articles on management and business for Indian and international publications and is also a regular invited speaker for international conventions and conferences. He is a certified Executive Coach and now works with senior executives to help them achieve success and better results in their organisations.
Work aside, Christopher is a musician and lives his passion for music through his band called Mid Life Crisis, which plays classic rock.
Christopher lives in Gurgaon with his wife Sharmila, daughter Shaynaya, and two dogs, Zach and Cody.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/authorchristophercdoyle
Website: www.christophercdoyle.com
The
Mahabharata Quest:
The Alexander
Secret
Christopher C. Doyle
westland Ltd
westland ltd
61, 2nd Floor, Silverline Building, Alapakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600 095
No. 38/10 (New No.5), Raghava Nagar, New Timber Yard Layout, Bengaluru 560 026
93, 1st Floor, Sham Lal Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002
First published by westland ltd 2014
First ebook edition: 2014
Copyright © Christopher C. Doyle, 2014
Christopher C. Doyle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-93-84030-59-9
Typeset by PrePSol Enterprises Pvt. Ltd.
DISCLAIMER
This book is work of fiction and all characters in the book are fictional. Any resemblance to real life characters, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing by the publisher.
The jewel, the illuminator, shone in his hand;
Khizr looked down; what he sought, he found.
That fountain appeared like silver,
Like a silver stream which strains from the middle of the rock.
Not a fountain,—which is far from this speech;
But if, verily, it were,—it was a fountain of light.
How is the star in the morning-time?
As the morning star is in the morning,—even so it was.
How is the undiminished moon at night?
So it was that it was greater than the moon.
CANTO LXIX - ESKANDAR NAMA
Other books by Christopher C. Doyle
The Mahabharata Secret
For
Ajay Mago and Dipa Chaudhuri
For their faith in my writing
Their guidance while writing my first book
And for giving me my first break as an author.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book owes its existence to many people without whom it would never have been written. I am grateful to each person for their contribution towards its writing.
First and foremost, my wife, Sharmila and my daughter Shaynaya, who put up with my long absences while I wrote the book and researched it for well over a year. I could never have written it without their support and understanding. Shaynaya also helped me with the research for this book, as she did for my last book, especially with the mythology and history.
Artika Bakshi, Asha Michigan, and my wife, Sharmila, who read the final draft of the book and gave me valuable inputs that ensured the book stayed true to its promise.
Dr Rajesh Bhatia, Director — Department for Communicable Diseases at the WHO Regional Office for South East Asia, who patiently put up with all my queries and theories around the science that is presented in this book. By critically reading the draft and straightening out errors in my understanding, his support was invaluable in ensuring the accuracy of the scientific and medical facts, concepts and evidence presented. His aid, while ensuring the final hypothesis and speculation is plausible and supported by scientific evidence, in no way implies that he agrees with any or all of the theories, hypothesis or interpretations that I have presented in this book.
Mrs Jyoti Trivedi and Mrs Asha Michigan who not only provided help and expertise with the Sanskrit language, but also patiently answered all my questions on the interpretation of the original Sanskrit shlokas and verified that the meanings I attributed to some of the Sanskrit words were correct.
Anand Prakash, who designed the brilliant cover of this book and made the story within these pages spring to life.
My thanks go out to Gerald Nordley, Jacqueline Schumann, Phyllis Irene Radford, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Christy Marx, Pat MacEwen, Barritt Firth and Dave Trowbridge, fellow scribes in my writers’ research group, who answered all my questions on topics that were hard to research, to ensure accuracy in the book.
Mayank Mehta for creating the maps in this book that depict the route that Alexander took over two thousand years ago, and the locations featured in this book. Priyankar Gupta for the brilliant illustrations that brought my descriptions to life.
A big thank you to all the people at Westland, especially Gautam Padmanabhan, who also read the final draft and provided valuable inputs on the plot and story. And to Sanghamitra Biswas, my editor, who has done such a wonderful job of polishing my writing and keeping the narrative true to the plot.
While the books, articles, blogs and videos that I researched are too numerous to be listed here, as they would make up a book by themselves, I must acknowledge every reference that I researched while writing this book. Without the wealth of information about the history and the science behind the speculation I have presented in the book, it would have been very difficult to propose theories backed by evidence and research, which made my job so much easier.
Finally, while I acknowledge the contribution of everyone who has supported me, I take full responsibility for all errors and omissions of fact or detail in this book.
PROLOGUE
316 BC
Gabiene, Persia, present day Iran
Eumenes lay on the bed in his prison tent and brooded on his fate. He knew he was doomed. He was a prisoner of Antigonus, the One-Eyed, with whom he had crossed swords before. This time he had been betrayed in the final battle. His own satraps had handed him over to the one-eyed general, in exchange for their baggage train which had been seized by Antigonus.
The capture of Eumenes had been celebrated publicly by Antigonus as the end of a long, bitter rivalry. But later that day, as the sun set, Antigonus had paid Eumenes a private visit.
It was then t
hat Eumenes realised that Antigonus knew the true reason behind Alexander’s determination to march to the land of the great Indus; about what Alexander had found there. And he knew what had led the great conqueror to his death just two years later.
Eumenes had first served Philip, Alexander’s father, as a friend and secretary. After Philip’s assassination he had been Alexander’s chief secretary. It was Eumenes who had maintained the King’s Journals—the royal diaries, keeping daily records of the State. But it was what Eumenes had left out of the journals that was more important: a record of Alexander’s true ambitions and the great secret that had made him a god.
Sixteen years earlier, Eumenes had accompanied the conqueror to the Temple of Zeus-Ammon in the Siwa Oasis, where Alexander had been told that he was the son of Zeus-Ammon. And, therefore, a God himself.
Alexander had lost no time in proclaiming his divinity and began his march further east, towards the Indus River, to the ultimate goal that would truly make him a god. The stories he had heard about the great secret that would enable him to achieve that goal drove him relentlessly forward, even as his soldiers yearned for their homes.
Eumenes had stood with Alexander outside the underground cave where the secret of the gods was hidden. But Alexander had entered the cavern alone. When he returned, his face was flushed with triumph. He had found what he came for.
Proof of Alexander’s success in his secret mission came during the siege of the Mallis, during the journey back home along the Indus. Alexander had led the attack, scaling the wall using a ladder which broke and left him among the barbarians and separated from his army. So radiant was his face and so bright his armour that the barbarians had, at first, fled in fright, thinking a god had arrived in their midst! They had, however, recovered fast and charged. But Alexander had fought on with two guards by his side. Despite being struck by an arrow that lodged in his ribs, he put up a valiant stand, until the Macedonians made their way in and rescued their king.
But while the operation to extricate the arrow was under way, stories had spread in the camp that the conqueror was dead. Eumenes had waited anxiously for days outside Alexander’s cabin on his boat, for news of the conqueror’s health until, at last, Alexander emerged on deck, weak but alive. Whispers reached Eumenes’ ears about the miracle that had saved Alexander. The wound should have been fatal; a lot of blood had been lost. The physicians had given up – there was nothing they could do to heal the internal wounds or stem the blood loss.
But, even as they sat by helplessly, awaiting their king’s death, Alexander’s wound had begun to heal. The healing process was slow but it had started spontaneously. Observing Alexander’s recovery, the physicians had promptly tended to him in an attempt to accelerate the healing. And in a matter of days, the conqueror had recovered, his wounds healed, and he had insisted on showing himself to his men despite his weakened state.
Eumenes did not know what to think of the rumours. But on that day, like the rest of the army, he, too, believed that Alexander was a god. Immortal. Impervious to any weapon known to man. And Eumenes knew that Alexander’s visit to the cavern of the gods had a role to play in this transformation.
But now he was also convinced that, whatever the great secret that had lain in the cavern, whatever Alexander had done that night when he entered the cavern alone, it had something to do with the affliction which had left the conqueror delirious with fever, hoarse with thirst and unable to speak during his final days in Babylon. Alexander’s ambition to become a god had been achieved, but ironically at the cost of his life.
Eumenes also knew that it was this secret of Alexander’s that had been the reason the conqueror’s body lay in death for six days without decomposing, as fresh and white as if Alexander was alive and merely sleeping.
And, now, here he was, a prisoner to one of Alexander’s generals, who would surely execute him.
His only consolation was that Alexander’s great secret was safe. Eumenes had faithfully recorded all of the information from Callisthenes’ book, Deeds of Alexander. But he had removed from the official journals the portions of the book that referred to the secret mission that Callisthenes had undertaken on behalf of Alexander, in the land of the Sogdians, before the conqueror executed the historian. He had, instead, recorded his personal account of his experience with Alexander, along with Callisthenes’ mission, in his own secret journal, which he kept concealed in his tent as he campaigned.
He had also destroyed all his papers and documents before the great battle with Antigonus, denouncing his satraps as a “herd of wild beasts”. The secret journal had been despatched through a trusted courier to Olympias, Alexander’s mother, who was busy protecting the Macedonian throne from the ambitions of Cassander.
Antigonus would get nothing.
He drew a satisfied breath. He had done his duty by his conqueror. Antigonus, Ptolemy, Cassander – the men who were carving out Alexander’s empire amongst themselves – would never know Alexander’s great secret from the land of the Indus.
And neither would the rest of the world.
391 AD
Burial of a Secret
The empty wagon trundled along the lonely country road, its journey illuminated by the weak light of a half-moon. The horse trotted along, seemingly in no hurry, as if it knew that its mission was over and there was no longer any need for urgency. For the wagon had, until three days ago, carried something precious. Something valuable. Something that the world had worshipped for the last 500 years.
It was no longer safe. The new religion that had arisen in the Middle East was spreading rapidly across the world. Based on the life and death of a man called The Christ, it had reached Egypt, where the relic had lain for over 500 years. The new converts, who called themselves Christians, after their leader whom they believed to be the Son of God, were questioning the old gods. Statues were being torn down, temples were being destroyed, and images were being defaced.
It would have been a matter of time before the tide reached the sacred spot in Alexandria where the object of worship had lain buried, undisturbed for five centuries.
It had to be protected. And the Order had taken it upon itself to discharge this responsibility. The contents of the now empty wagon had been transported from its resting place in Alexandria, across rivers and oceans — borne in boats, ships, carts and wagons that bore the symbol of the Order.
A single serpent with five heads raised as if to strike.
It had been this symbol that had kept curious eyes and inquisitive minds away from the treasure on its journey. For the symbol was feared by all who saw it. The Order was secret — no one really knew what the Order was or who its members were; or even what its origins were—but its deeds were not.
Finally, its duty complete, the wagon and its driver were making their way towards the desert. The driver, Karmal, had one last stop to make.
The wagon passed through a village, hushed and silent. Asleep. Though the silence could have equally been on account of the serpent symbol painted on the sides of the wagon.
Presently, it reached the boundary wall of a large house and entered the gates, which were open, as if Karmal’s arrival were expected. At the end of the driveway stood the house, a multi-storeyed structure, built of stone and brick.
The wagon stopped before the main door of the house and Karmal dismounted. He didn’t have to wait long as the door opened and a tall figure emerged, hooded and cloaked.
‘Is it done?’ the hooded stranger asked in deep tones.
Karmal nodded wearily. It had been a long journey and he was tired.
‘Good. Then you know what you must do.’ The man turned to go.
‘Wait,’ Karmal held out his hand.
The figure spun around, clearly surprised. ‘What is it?’
‘Keep this.’ Karmal placed something in the man’s hand and resumed his seat on the wagon. He had one final task to complete.
The man stared after Karmal as the wagon exited the gate and
disappeared from view, his hand clenched tight around the metal object Karmal had handed him. Then, he hurried into the house and threw off the hood, revealing a lean face with deep-set eyes and thin lips.
He unclenched his fist and stared at the small copper capsule that lay in his palm. Then, closing his fist around it once more, he bounded up the stairs and entered a study on the first floor.
After latching the door of the study, he sat down at the desk. His face was pale and he found his hands trembling.
What had that fool Karmal done?
He knew that Karmal would not fail the Order. He would faithfully drive the wagon for a few miles and then abandon the horse to trudge deep into the desert where he would slit his own throat. For no one should know the location of the relic. The Order had decreed that, to protect it, the relic should disappear forever.
Using a knife, he carefully prised open the cap that covered one end of the capsule, and shook it over the desk.
A thin strip of vellum fell out. He groaned. Even without looking at it, he knew.
It was a map!
He quickly rolled it up and stuffed it back into the copper capsule. The Order should never get to know about the existence of this map. It was the only clue to a location that was supposed to have been secret; hidden away forever.
He contemplated destroying the map then decided against it. He was the only one who knew of its existence. It could come in useful later, if he was ever in trouble with the Order.
But the map would have to be artfully concealed in a place and manner that only he knew of. And after him, the location would stay secret.
And he knew just the place to hide the capsule away.
June 1990
St. James College, Philadelphia, USA
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