“It is easy to conclude that everyone in India is poor, but that is not the case. It is an understandable misconception.”
Allie nodded, chastened, and decided to cut her losses. “Thank you so much for all the help, and I’m sorry about the professor. He was very sweet. What a tragedy.”
Moisture welled again in Divya’s eyes. “Yes. It is.”
Drake was standing in the shade of one of the trees when Allie emerged from the building. She rushed to him and took his hand, surprising him, and they walked together to the main road while Allie described her meeting. Drake listened in silence and then stopped before they reached the boulevard.
“You said there’s another icon?” he asked.
“No, I said she believes the dagger is a miniature sword that was clutched in the hand of another icon – probably Kali, if she’s right.”
“Kali. Isn’t she the goddess of death?”
“No. She’s the Hindu deity of quite a few things, including destruction of evil.”
“Why do I keep thinking death?”
“Probably from bad B movies.”
They resumed walking and, when they reached the sidewalk, began the process of attracting the attention of a passing rickshaw or taxi. Drake glanced at Allie as they waited for the light to turn.
“So what’s the next step? We know there’s a cave mentioned, but the rest is nonsense – what’s your professional assessment, Dr. Allie?”
“If the dagger had script on it, maybe the other relic does, too.”
“The sword, you mean,” he said, patting her bag.
“Potato, potahto. We need to find the other relic.”
“Kali.”
“Missing a sword.”
“Uh-huh. That should be a piece of cake. Because we don’t have enough on our plate.”
She swatted his chest. “You wanted adventure. This is adventure.”
“I thought it would be easier. Maybe involve more eating and drinking. And air conditioning.”
“Whatever.”
“How are you planning to find it?”
“I haven’t figured that part out yet.” She waved at a cab streaking toward them from the light, and smiled back at Drake. “But maybe it won’t be that hard. Because if we can figure out where the dagger came from, that should lead us to Kali.”
“The sword,” Drake corrected.
“And there’s one person who probably knows.”
Drake’s eyes lit with understanding. “This sounds like a job for Indiana Singh!”
“Who seems to like his money well enough.”
“Root of all evil.”
She nodded. “The love of it, anyway.”
Chapter 32
Spencer’s new phone rang and vibrated on the hard surface of the computer station where he was working, and he snatched it up and held it to his ear, looking around the crowded Internet café as he did so. The place was filled with teenagers gaming or fiddling around on social media, and nobody seemed interested in a male twice their age doing historical research.
“How’d it go?” he asked, his voice low, ignoring the din in the background on Allie’s end of the line.
“Good.” Allie gave him the rundown on Divya’s revelations and their thinking. “What about you?”
“I’m about halfway through my list of mosaics and going cross-eyed from staring at them. They all start looking the same after a while.”
“Sorry to hear that. I’ve got another idea, though. Pull up all the information you can on the Shiv Khori cave. I want to understand the best way to get there, any legends surrounding it – photos, if you can find them, the works.”
“Will do. When you want to meet up?”
“Where are you? I just left a message for Indiana,” Allie said.
“About four blocks from the hotel.”
“Are we missing anything?”
“The pleasure of my company and some of the worst coffee this side of Zimbabwe.”
“Sounds charming. What’s the address?”
“I don’t know. But I can tell you how to get here from the hotel.”
“Shoot. We’re in a taxi.”
He described the route he’d taken and she repeated it to the driver, who sounded less than confident in his assurance he could find it.
“What’s the name of the place?” Allie asked.
“Lotus Lightning Café.”
“Catchy. Be there in a few.”
“Congratulations on getting the script translated, Allie. That’s a major win,” Spencer said.
“Thanks. But it only raises more questions.”
“Yeah, only now we know that the path starts at the cave.”
“Assuming she’s right. She qualified that it was her opinion, not that it was a lock.”
“It fits with what Carson told me.”
Allie’s voice lowered. “He had to know it was the Shiv Khori, Spencer. Why do you think he didn’t just tell you?”
“Maybe he enjoyed the suspense. Or maybe he was holding stuff back in case I flaked or couldn’t deliver. Who knows?”
“Not exactly reassuring, in any case.”
“Nothing we can do about it now but keep plugging away. I’ll see you when you get here.”
“Don’t hold your breath. You know what traffic’s like.”
Allie hung up and her phone immediately rang, catching her by surprise. She looked at the screen and frowned, the number a new one.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Why are you so interested in where it came from?” Singh asked, his voice tight.
“Just because. There’s a reward in it for you if you can tell me.”
“I’ll give you some free advice. Leave on the first flight out, and never look back. I’m serious. You don’t know what you’re mixed up with.”
“Right, you already said that. Curses. Spooky mystery bad guys. But I’m still willing to pay to know where you got it.” Allie paused. “If nothing else, for its historic value in the chain of possession.”
“That sounds like bullshit to me.”
Allie sighed. “All right. We know that it came from another statue. We’re trying to track it down.”
“You’re out of your minds. Really.”
“Crazy enough to pay you to tell us. From there, what do you care?” She hesitated. “Unless you can get us the other relic, in which case the payday could be much larger.”
“Not a chance. I won’t tempt fate twice.”
“Then sell us the information.”
“It’s worth a lot.”
“It’s worth what we’re willing to pay. I’m thinking twenty-five thousand. Easiest money you’ll ever make.”
She could practically hear the wheels turning in Singh’s head. No hassles, just free cash for a few words. “Fifty, and I’ll meet you and tell you. Same mechanism as before. Bitcoin, and I’ll watch to ensure you aren’t followed.”
“How soon can you meet?”
“That’s a function of how long it takes you to get the payment together.”
“I already have it. You’re cleaning out my bank account,” Allie lied.
“I’ll call you back. I need to figure out a safe rendezvous spot and create another private key for you to send this payment to. You should do the same. You don’t want to use the same key twice – it increases the chance of you being traced, as you discovered with mine.”
“How did you know how we found you?”
“Your new friend at the magazine gave me a heads-up. I’m a valued customer. Apparently there was a security breach. At least, that’s how he framed it.” Singh paused. “How long have you been using this phone number?”
“I just got it…yesterday.”
“Who else have you called on it?”
“Why?”
“You can be tracked,” Singh said derisively.
“Only you…and a couple of other people.”
The line went dead. She pocketed the phone and turned to Drake. “You heard the discussion. He’s pretty skittish.”
“As long as he’s willing to play ball, who cares?”
“I know. But…he still sounds scared. Greedy, obviously, but worried. And not about us. He’s terrified we’re going to lead someone to him inadvertently. I think he trusts us, as much as he trusts anyone. He’s afraid we’re being tailed.” She called out to the driver over the radio music he was humming along to. “Make this left, please,” she said, and turned to watch the vehicles behind her.
“This will take us out of the way,” the man protested, eyeing her in the rearview mirror.
“Just do it.”
The cabbie twisted the wheel and made a sharp turn, and both Drake and Allie turned to stare at the traffic, searching for any hint of pursuit. Several rickshaws made the turn, and then a white SUV swung into the lane behind them.
“Now take this right,” Allie said.
The driver pumped his brakes to slow, having to cut across oncoming traffic in order to follow her instructions. The rickshaws and SUV slowed behind them and much outraged honking ensued at the driver’s maneuver. The cabbie ignored the protests and careened ahead of an oncoming van, which missed taking off the taxi’s rear fender by a hairsbreadth. The taxi driver exhaled tensely and then accelerated away.
The SUV continued straight, as did the rickshaws. Allie and Drake exchanged a relieved look. “Would you care for some extra paranoid with your paranoid?” she whispered.
“No way we’re being followed after that.”
“I need to get rid of this phone and buy another one. He thinks it’s a liability. He may be right – we gave Helms the number, remember?”
“Damn. That’s right. Maybe he’s not so dumb after all.”
She pulled a pen from her purse and jotted down the numbers for Singh, Reynolds, and Spencer, as well as the professor’s office phone so she could give Divya her new contact info, and then removed the battery and SIM chip from the little phone and pocketed them.
“You should keep your regular phone off at all times, too. Just in case.”
“I’m way ahead of you. I’ve been taking the battery out when I’m not using it.”
“What now?” the driver asked, easing off the gas as he approached an ocean of brake lights.
“Change of plans.”
Chapter 33
The taxi dropped them off in the center of the business district. Buying a new phone proved as easy as the last two, and when it was activated and had a signal, she called Singh back.
“This is my new number,” Allie said.
“I put that together all by myself. Where are you?” he asked.
She glanced up at a street sign and told him. He thought for a moment and gave her instructions. She repeated them back to him and he hung up. Drake raised an eyebrow and looked to her expectantly.
“We have half an hour to get to the Delhi Junction Railway Station. We’re to find the train that arrives in forty minutes from Buxar and wait on the platform.”
“That’s it? Wait?”
“You heard me.” Allie whistled loudly at a green and yellow rickshaw, and the driver skidded to a halt beside them. “Delhi Junction train station,” she said as they climbed into the cab. The driver nodded and took off like a scared rabbit, cutting off another rickshaw, which earned several curses and the inevitable horn assault.
The railway station was typical Indian pandemonium: people milling about, blaring announcements from overhead speakers echoing off the stone slab floors, groups of bewildered tourists milling around like lost puppies as a never-ending rush of locals made their way to and from the platforms, dressed in a dizzying array of colors.
Drake checked his watch as Allie searched for a working monitor that announced arriving trains. She pointed at one mounted on the far end of the station, and they fought their way through the human tide.
“Our platform’s that way,” she said after a quick scan, gesturing to their right.
“I see it,” Drake said, and they set off, skirting a group of chanting religious celebrants all dressed in the same bright shade of orange. “We only have a couple of minutes.”
“We’ll make it.”
They arrived at the platform, where it seemed several hundred other passengers had the same idea, and waited as a distant spotlight neared from down the track. Drake shaded his eyes in order to see the train and nearly jumped when something tugged at the bottom of his shirt. He looked down at where a boy, no more than six years old, gazed up at him with eyes the size of golf balls, his clothes tattered and stained – the uniform of the city’s homeless.
“Sahib, sahib,” the boy said, his voice thin.
“No. Go away,” Drake said.
Allie’s new phone rang and she answered it. “Yes?”
It was Singh. “Follow the boy.”
Allie glanced down at the urchin and whispered to Drake, “Singh sent him.”
The boy’s face had the deadly serious cast of an old man, hardship having already aged him beyond his years. Drake nodded to him and the boy pirouetted and scampered away, pausing occasionally to look back to ensure they were still behind him. Drake took Allie’s hand and they edged through the press of locals until they were opposite the restrooms, where the boy ran outside through one of the arches and made for the street.
“Another goose chase,” Allie said, and they took off after him, dodging vendors and porters as they sped toward the cars.
Allie’s phone trilled. “Yes?”
“I don’t see anyone following you. Come back to the station. I’m outside the restaurant in my Sikh getup.”
They returned to the two-story red depot and spotted Singh, who was leaning against a wall, a pair of cheap knockoff sunglasses covering his eyes and his blue turban slightly askew. When they neared, he spoke under his breath. “Keep walking to the other end of the station. Wait for me outside.”
They did as instructed, and Singh joined them two minutes later. He led them around the corner and began walking quickly toward the main avenue, giving a dirt rotunda with several dozen unfortunates sleeping on towels and blankets a wide berth. “Transfer the bitcoin to this address,” he said, handing Allie a slip of paper. She did her best to enter the characters on the move, and when she’d verified they were correct, approved the transfer.
“Done.”
Singh’s phone beeped three minutes later, and he stopped abruptly in front of a street market. A cart piled impossibly high with boxes, easily the size of a pickup truck bed, creaked by on the rutted road, drawn by a man on a bicycle, followed by an oxcart that could have been out of the Middle Ages. Singh stepped closer to them, his voice barely audible.
“The dagger came to me from a man who was part of the inner circle at an ashram in Bhiwani – a spiritual center of great fame there, operated by a guru called Swami Baba Raja. He didn’t come out and say it, but it appears that he might have liberated it from the ashram as his last act before leaving it for good.”
“Bhiwani?” Drake asked. “Where is that?”
“Look it up,” Singh said. “Anyway, this man left the ashram under a cloud. He’d had a disagreement with the swami, and in that world, it would be akin to disagreeing with the Pope. The next day his body was found floating in the river, and I narrowly escaped the same fate at my shop that morning. It was strictly luck that my assistant told me two men had come looking for me, and she’d gotten a bad feeling about them. Then, when I saw the news about the swami’s acolyte… I called her and told her to close up the shop at lunchtime and to leave.” He looked away. “I…I never heard back from her after that.”
“You think those men were sent by the swami?”
“Either him or one of h
is many powerful devotees. Half the Indian government has made pilgrimages to Baba Raja’s ashram over the years, so it could have been someone he told about the loss of the dagger, whose help he enlisted. I don’t know, and I don’t care. All I know is that it’s too hot for me anymore in Delhi, so I’m retiring and getting out of town for good.”
“With a quarter mil, you should be able to live pretty well,” Allie said.
“A little more than that, but your point is taken. Yes, there are myriad places I can live like a maharaja for the rest of my life, leaving no trace to follow.” He looked hard at Allie. “As I’ve said, you would be well advised to forget the dagger and go back to your country before they find you. Believe me, they will do the same to you both as they did to your friend, and no amount of wealth and fame will help you.”
“You think the relic is in the ashram?”
“Swami Baba Raja is rumored to have quite a collection, so anything’s possible. But the truth is I have no way of knowing. Only the trusted few have ever seen his hoard, my contact one of them – and he’s not talking.” Singh paused.
“Why did he sell it to you?”
“He didn’t sell it to me. He entrusted it to my care, for me to broker a deal. He knew that I have a decent clientele of foreigners, and wanted to sell it to someone who wasn’t Indian.”
“Why would he trust you with it?” Drake asked.
Singh swallowed hard and looked away. “The man who brought me the dagger was my older brother.”
Chapter 34
Singh began walking through the market, his stride slow, his head down. Allie moved to his side.
“I’m so sorry, Indiana,” she said. “I know what it’s like to lose.”
When Singh spoke again, his voice was tight. “He practically raised me from the time I was ten. He was seven years older and stepped in when my parents were killed in a bus accident. He made sure I went to school, and did whatever he had to in order to see to it that we were provided for.” Singh stopped at a stand selling incense and religious icons and inspected the wares without interest. “Some of his activities were illegal, but he didn’t care – at seventeen, with two mouths to feed and no parents, he did what he could, and we got by. But I know that once I received a scholarship to university, he had a change of heart and decided to follow the swami to atone for his misdeeds.”
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