by J. F. Penn
They reached the steps of the mausoleum and Asha turned.
"So, how do we get into this ancient temple?" she said.
She stepped closer to Gopan. He was young, maybe twenty-five, with a poor excuse for a mustache and a straggly beard. Dried blood crusted around his nose and his right eyebrow where a well-placed blow had persuaded him to join the search.
"I … it …" Sweat beaded on his upper lip and his breath came fast as he struggled for words.
"There's no need to be scared," Asha said softly. She pulled a handkerchief out, dabbed at his bloody face and then motioned for the bodyguards to let the man go. They dropped their hands and stepped back, silent in obedience. "Your book was so brilliant and I need your help to find this ancient temple. Will you help me?"
Gopan took a deep breath. "It is only a theory," he said. "We might not find anything."
Asha gave a light smile. "I think you'd better try finding something. After all, I've come a long way for this."
Gopan pointed up towards the main entrance. "Then we must go into the main mausoleum and down to the place where the real tombs are. My sources say that the entrance is down in the crypt."
Asha began to walk up the steps.
***
Below in the tomb, Chetan vehemently shook his head. "This ancient Shiva temple is only rumored to exist," he said. "And I don't know how we could find it anyway."
"There must be something here." Jake began to search the small tomb again, playing his torch over the walls as he searched for hidden seams that might hide another entrance.
Morgan stood for a moment and watched him search. Something was bothering her. Something about the history of the Taj.
She pulled up the notes from Martin on her smart phone and skimmed the information about the CERN statue and the Taj Mahal. A moment later, she found what she was looking for.
"Look at this," she said. "The same man, Vishal Kapoor, was involved in both the UNESCO World Heritage Site transformation project of the Taj Mahal and the CERN statue. In his early career, he worked on archaeological digs including some for the Vatican. He had to have hidden the piece." She turned to Chetan. "So what was changed here when the Taj became a UNESCO site? Did they make any structural changes?"
"Maybe so." Chetan waggled his head in that Indian way of saying maybe yes or maybe no. "I think they shored up the side closest to the Yamuna River in case of flooding for safety reasons. There was some other minor work, but that would be the most significant. They had many experts here then. Perhaps this man was able to access the old shrine – if it existed at all."
Jake turned and walked to the northern wall of the tomb. "The river is on this side."
Morgan joined him and together they examined the wall more closely. They both ran their hands over the intricate inlaid marble design in the same way Chetan had done upstairs.
The seconds ticked by.
"There's nothing here," Morgan said with disappointment. "Perhaps the sculpture piece was hidden in some other part of the complex. There's more to the Taj Mahal than just the tomb."
"Give me one more minute," Jake said. He bent to the floor and began to examine the flagstones.
***
Asha walked into the mausoleum. The dawn penetrated inside now and she could see the cool gleam of the marble tombs in the half-light. She leaned close to the metal grating and gazed in at the two lovers, lying side by side. She had read of Mumtaz Mahal and how she was both wife and mother, but also a trusted companion of the Emperor. She was the equal of Shah Jahan and their marriage had been testament to how much a true partnership could achieve. Asha had once wished for someone to share her life, but the men her father had suggested were weak, with none of the ambition that burned inside of her. She would never be buried in a tomb like this, she would never be loved as Mumtaz had been, but she intended to be remembered for far longer.
She turned to Gopan.
"Where now?"
He walked over to a side panel and ran his hands along the wall. "The way down to the lower tomb is here." His face paled and he pulled his hands away in shock.
"What is it?" Asha asked.
"The door is open," Gopan said. "Someone else is here."
Chapter 14
Down in the crypt, Morgan and Jake froze at the sounds coming from above.
"There's no other way out," Chetan whispered, his voice wavering. "And I left the door open. They'll know we're here."
Morgan pulled her gun out and pointed it towards the steps leading down from above.
"Help Jake look," she said softly. "If there is a shrine, now's the time to find it. We can't have a shootout in the Taj Mahal."
Chetan fell to his knees and crawled along the marble slabs, sweeping his fingers across the stones as Jake worked his way from the opposite end.
"Here," Jake said suddenly. "There's a handle. We can pull this slab out. Help me, Chetan."
Together the men lifted one of the smaller marble blocks from the floor, revealing a dark hole below. Jake shone his torch in. It was about six feet deep and there was water and rubble in the bottom where a partially collapsed tunnel doglegged away from the access point.
"It doesn't look too good," Jake whispered. Morgan turned to look briefly, tearing her eyes from the staircase.
"We have to try," she said. "There's no cover in here. We're screwed if it comes to a firefight." In the moment of quiet, they heard the door creak open upstairs. "I'm going."
She clambered down into the hole and Chetan half fell down after her. Jake came last and pulled the slab over again. Just as he slotted it into place, he saw torchlight flicker on the spiral stairs. It wouldn't take those following long to find the entrance, and there was no way of blocking it from below.
They had to hurry.
***
Asha and Gopan followed the two bodyguards down the stairs into the tomb. The men reached the bottom and swung their torches around, tracking the beam with their guns.
"It's clear," one of them said. "There's no one here."
Asha walked into the middle of the room. The atmosphere felt unsettled somehow. The cool air had been disturbed. But there looked to be no exit … or was there?
She turned to Gopan.
"How do we get to this ancient Shiva shrine?"
"I … I don't know, madam. Truly, I don't." He grabbed hold of the nearest sarcophagus and leaned against it as he shook with fear. "My sources say it is under here but there's no telling how to get to it."
Asha walked closer to the man. She gestured to one of the bodyguards and he handed her a kukri – a Tibetan machete – from his belt. Gopan's eyes bulged at the sight of the weapon, its blade glinting in the torchlight.
Asha swung it around in two hands, adept in her weapon skills.
"I follow Kali, in her Destroyer aspect," she said. "You know the goddess?"
Gopan nodded.
"Tell me what you know." Asha took a step towards him. The blade flashed before her, torchlight flickering over the silver edge.
"She is garlanded with the skulls of the dead and holds a severed head in one hand." Gopan's voice shook with terror.
"She holds a knife, too," Asha said softly. "The weapon with which she dispatches her sacrifice."
Gopan backed away, his hands out in supplication.
"No, please."
He found himself up against the wall of the tomb, hemmed in by marble.
"If you don't know where the shrine is, then you only have one purpose remaining." Asha nodded at her bodyguards.
They grabbed Gopan and lifted him onto the sarcophagus of Shah Jahan. He struggled and screamed but they held him down as Asha stalked towards her prey. Her pulse pounded and she could feel the incarnation of the goddess rise inside her, hungering to feed.
The shrine would be found, but only through offering a sacrifice. The Aghori often found answers in blood. Perhaps she would be able to read it, too.
She stood at the side of the sarcophagus and lift
ed the kukri above her head. One of the bodyguards tugged Gopan's head back, revealing his bare throat.
Asha said a prayer to the goddess and asked for her guidance.
She brought the weapon down.
A dull thunk resounded in the marble tomb and Gopan's head was severed from his torso. The bodyguard stepped back from the corpse and the head rolled off onto the floor, its eyes wide and mouth open, frozen in a final scream.
Blood pulsed from the dead man's flesh and ran across the floor. Asha watched the blood trail as it trickled down into the seams of the marble slabs. Then she noticed it pooling around one in particular and she smiled. The goddess had shown the way.
"There," she said to the bodyguards. "Pull that up."
***
Morgan ran down the tunnel as Chetan and Jake followed close behind. She had to duck her head so it didn't touch the low ceiling which meant the men behind would be bent over even further. She could hear the professor panting as he struggled to keep up but they couldn't stop. Whoever was behind them wouldn't be delayed for long.
She shone her torch ahead to illuminate the simple structure that held the earth up above their heads. Wooden pillars shored up the sides of the tunnel. It smelled of mold and some of the wood was rotten and splintered from the river water that had seeped in over time. Morgan splashed through muddy puddles as she ran, and with every step she hoped that the tunnel would end up somewhere useful.
A minute later her torch flickered across an entranceway and she emerged into a chamber. The tunnel from the Taj Mahal had clearly been added more recently, but this place looked to be much older than the mausoleum above. Stone slabs had been used to create a circular space, the low ceiling held up by a large pillar. The atmosphere was damp and warm, a primal place where life could grow, and yet the stones were stark and deep grey, like the skies before monsoon rain. On one side of the chamber there was a lingam – a short pillar of stone representing the god Shiva in the phallic principle, the creative energy of God. On the far side, there was another tunnel leading away towards the river.
Chetan and Jake emerged from the tunnel behind her.
"Oh my goodness," Chetan sighed. "It really does exist."
"This place looks pretty old," Jake said as he walked around the main pillar, his eyes flicking over the empty space. "But we really need to find that sculpture piece. It must have been put here much later if indeed it was placed here by Vishal Kapoor during the UNESCO renovations."
Morgan bent down to the lingam and placed both hands upon it. The stone was cool but not as cold as she had expected, as if a latent warmth flowed through it from the earth. It was smooth and she felt an urge to rest her cheek against it, to stop for a moment in this calm place and just breathe.
She smiled at the thought, as she realized why this more austere representation of the deity made her feel more at home. The synagogues she had been brought up with in Israel had no graven images and this place reminded her of that simplicity of faith. She felt more at home here than in Catholic churches with their tortured saints, or in the more elaborate Hindu shrines with their colorful incarnations of the various gods. In contrast, this stone was elemental.
She ran her hands down the sides of the lingam to the base and then looked behind it. There was an oilskin package tucked flush against the wall.
"There's something here." She leaned in and pulled it out. The package was waxy and crinkled, but there was something hard inside.
She squatted on the floor and Jake aimed his torch at the package as Morgan gingerly pulled the edges apart.
"Careful," he said. "We know there's something strange about these pieces, so don't touch it."
Morgan used the side of her own torch to push the edges of the package fully open. She caught a glimpse of bronze in the torchlight before the sculpture piece was fully revealed.
It was the god himself, frozen in his cosmic dance. The detail was exquisite, each finger perfectly formed, each snake undulating around him, a calm smile on his face, even as he looked into the end of the world.
"This is what you came for?" Chetan asked. "I see it is Lord Shiva, but what–"
His words were cut off as a thump echoed down the tunnel.
Whoever was following them had found the entrance.
Morgan quickly wrapped the sculpture piece again and put it inside her pack.
"We'll have to take a chance that the tunnel will get us out of here." Jake pointed his torch into the blackness ahead.
Morgan again took the lead and ran into the tunnel. It angled upwards and as they drew closer to the river, the puddles turned into a more constant water flow and soon the water lapped around her ankles.
Suddenly she could see light ahead and she waded towards it, dragging her feet out of the mud, squelching with every step.
"Come on," she called back to Chetan and Jake behind her. "We're almost there."
They scrambled from the tunnel and emerged onto the bank of the Yamuna River at the northeast corner of the Taj Mahal compound. Dawn had broken and the early sun sparkled on the river. On the opposite bank, women were already out washing and people performed puja and yoga stretches on the riverbank, the daily rituals of the morning.
"We can go east from here into the wetlands national park," Jake said, as he pointed towards the edge of a green oasis. "It's a protected bird sanctuary and wild enough that there will be ample cover. It will be hard to follow us and we can hide in there while we arrange transport out of here."
Chetan bent over and wheezed, his breath ragged as he tried to recover.
"I cannot … go any further … I'll make my own way from here."
Morgan grabbed his arm. "No, you have to come with us. You could be in danger."
The professor shook her off and stood tall.
"I have friends here in the complex. I'll head back up to the main mausoleum and into the administration area to clean up. I'll be fine. You go ahead. Quickly now."
Jake looked back down the tunnel. "We don't have time to argue," he said. "We have to go."
"Please, Chetan," Morgan tried one last time. "We can protect you."
The professor spun on his heel and pulled a bidi cigarette from his pocket with a shaking hand as he stalked away. Morgan stared after him for a moment. Short of dragging him off, they couldn't stop him. But they couldn't stay any longer either.
Morgan and Jake ran together along the muddy bank and ducked into the wetlands foliage as soon as they could.
As they entered the green perimeter, Morgan turned and looked back. She could just make out Chetan's slight figure climbing the riverbank back up towards the mausoleum. She didn't want to leave him behind, but they had to get the sculpture piece away from here.
She turned and jogged after Jake until they lost sight of the river, cloaked by the thick protection of the national park.
***
Asha hurried through the tunnel flanked by her bodyguards, one ahead shining his torch to light the way and the other behind. She would have to call her contact in the Taj administration to clear up the mess in the tomb once they were back up top. She chuckled a little to think of the surprise they would have. But whatever she found down here, if indeed there was an earlier Hindu shrine, it would all be covered up and declared a conspiracy theory anyway. She wasn't worried about any bad press. But she was worried about who had found this place first. There were footprints in the mud and the air was disturbed. Had they found what she herself sought?
"Here, madam," the bodyguard in front said as they emerged into a round chamber buttressed by stone walls. A Shiva lingam was the only feature in the ancient space and Asha knew that the Aghori would appreciate its austerity.
She noticed a patch on the floor where the earth had been recently disturbed. Something had been found here, but somehow she knew it was gone with those who had been here just moments before.
"You." She pointed at one of the bodyguards. "Run up that tunnel as fast as you can. Detain anyone you find a
nd I will follow."
The bodyguard ran ahead, disappearing into the dark. Asha followed behind, relishing the exercise. It was good to be hunting, and she was so close to finding another piece.
She could feel it.
Minutes later, Asha emerged onto the riverbank, her feet muddy and her jeans wet with river water. The bodyguard was out of sight, but she could hear his voice threatening someone nearby and the answering cries of his victim.
"Please, don't hurt me. I don't know anything. I was just out walking before my shift."
Asha clambered up the riverbank back onto the grounds of the Taj Mahal complex. Her bodyguard held a tall thin man by the scruff of his shirt, fist pulled back as he threatened a blow.
"If you were just walking the grounds, why are your trousers wet with river water?" Asha said as she walked closer. Her eyes scanned over the man. "And why do you have earth on your shirt?"
The man's eyes widened in fear. He had been in the tunnel. She knew it.
"I … I was just–"
Asha nodded at the bodyguard. His fist pounded the side of the man's face and knocked him to the ground, then he kicked the man hard in the stomach with heavy boots.
The man moaned and curled on the ground. Asha walked towards him and pulled the kukri from her belt. Its blade was still stained with the blood of sacrifice.
"Look at me," she whispered. The man looked up to see the bloody blade. "You will tell me what you're doing here." Her voice was soft.
He bent his head and his shoulders slumped.
"I will tell you everything, madam."
Chapter 15
Morgan and Jake tramped through the wetlands and into the forest, sticking close to the cover of the tamarind and cypress trees. Birds trilled at their approach and the air was cool out of the sun. As they walked, Jake held up his phone to try and get a signal, but the reception was patchy.