Abruptly, the door to the study swung open and a man with a pleasant, clean-shaven face and sharp eyes walked in, followed by three burly, bearded men and a shorter, slender, sallow-faced man bearing a black duffel bag.
‘Good to see you again, Vikram,’ the leader of the group greeted him affably. ‘Though I don’t suppose you will reciprocate.’
Without waiting for a response, the stranger settled into a chair across the desk. ‘I was expecting you, Farooq.’ Vikram forced his voice to stay calm.
‘Where is it then? Perhaps you have it ready to hand over to me?’
Vikram said nothing but gazed defiantly at the stranger. His right hand quietly slipped over the mouse and he clicked on it.
The movement didn’t go unnoticed by Farooq, whose eyes flicked to the mouse and back to the scientist’s face.
‘Where have you hidden the key?’ Farooq persisted. ‘Surely the secret isn’t worth dying for!’
Vikram took a deep breath and exhaled, as if to steel himself. ‘The key doesn’t belong to you, Farooq. And you won’t find it by killing me anyway. Your options are limited. You need me alive.’
A soft ping sounded from the laptop. Farooq pulled it towards himself and Vikram made as if to stop him, but the three henchmen immediately pinned Vikram to his chair. Farooq studied the laptop screen for a moment then reached for the mouse.
For a few minutes, silence hung heavy in the room, unbroken except by the click of the mouse.
‘No options?’ Farooq finally looked up from the laptop. ‘I think you’ve just delivered the key to us.’ He smiled. ‘And this makes you dispensable, after all.’
A hollow feeling took hold of Vikram.
They had discovered his ruse! Would they succeed in finding the key as well?
But he put on a brave front. ‘You’re never going to find it. You need all the parts of the puzzle. It is why the secret has remained undisturbed for over 2,000 years.’
A flicker of doubt crossed Farooq’s face, but was almost immediately replaced by a smug look.
‘You’ll be surprised at what we’ve managed to achieve with less than that.’ He gestured and the sallow-faced man reached into his duffel bag and pulled out something metallic and black, which he handed to Farooq.
Vikram gasped when he saw what was in Farooq’s hand. ‘That is not possible!’ There was panic in his voice as he gripped the side of the desk for support.
Farooq smiled unpleasantly and glanced from the metallic object to Vikram, ‘I see you know what this is. I hope you are a religious man. It isn’t everyone who gets to die with an ancient weapon used by a God.’
Vikram fervently hoped that he had planned well enough to thwart them. It was too late for him now to do anything more.
2
Day 1
San Jose, California, USA
Vijay frowned at his laptop as it pinged five times in quick succession, announcing the arrival of fresh mails. He had spoken to his uncle just 15 minutes ago. What could he be emailing him for at this late hour?
Curiosity got the better of him. Setting aside the report he was reading, he opened the mails in the order in which they arrived. He gaped as he read the first mail. It bore just two characters.
9!
He stared blankly at the mail, unable to comprehend it. Then he opened the second one, hoping that it would help him understand the first one. But this was even more baffling.
Everything isn’t always the way it looks. Sometimes you need to look deeper within. Study, the Bhagavad Gita, it is the source of much knowledge. The subject of the Gita, though mixed up, is a mark upon us for our future lives and will lead you through the door to knowledge, which you must unlock. In an ocean of maya, there is always an island of satya.
Slowly, he clicked on the third mail and sat back puzzled. It was as obscure as the first two.
I have always followed the edicts of Asoka the Great. I urge you to follow them as well. They have served me well in my life and, believe me, they will lead you on a voyage of discovery.
Vijay shook his head, as if it would help him work out why his uncle was sending him gibberish about the Bhagavad Gita and a legendary Indian king who had ruled in the third century BC.
He hesitated at the fourth mail, then willed himself to click it open. As he read it, his bewilderment turned into utter confusion.
If something happens to me, you must seek out the Nine. If you look for a deeper meaning, you will find it. Two thousand years of history, which I have safely guarded for the last 25 years, is yours to unlock. Follow the path of truth and you will find your way through any illusion.
Now, he was concerned. His uncle had been fine when they spoke minutes ago. There had been nothing in his tone to indicate that he was anticipating trouble. And what had he been safeguarding for 25 years? He knew that, in addition to being a nuclear physicist, his uncle was a noted scholar of the languages of ancient India. Was the reference to 2,000 years of history related to an ancient language? He frowned, unable to work it out.
The old man was definitely not senile. They had spent time discussing the progress of his company’s project to create a solar-thermoelectric device and his uncle’s faculties had been as sharp as ever.
Vijay’s hand hovered over the mouse, uncertain. There was one mail left. He hesitated for a few moments and then opened it. It was a cryptic message, again, consisting of four words.
Talk to Greg White.
It made no sense to him. He wondered why his uncle was sending him such ambiguous messages, when it was well past 11 pm in India. The phone buzzed. It was Joan, his assistant, reminding him about the project review meeting, which was due to start in the next five minutes.
Vijay looked at his watch. His uncle would have turned in for the night and his butler would have retired to his apartment as well. He decided that he would call him later that evening, when it was morning in India. The mystery behind the emails would have to wait.
Day 2
New York, USA
Terence Murphy awoke to the strident sound of the telephone ringing. He swore as he stretched out a hand for the receiver. He’d just got back on a red-eye flight from an assignment in Central Asia and had hoped to catch up on some sleep. At the sound of the voice on the other end of the line, however, he was instantly awake and alert.
‘Murphy,’ the voice was sharp and crisp, with a hint of a European accent. ‘I have a job for you. It’s urgent.’
‘India!’ Murphy exclaimed, as he took in the details.
‘Yes. I need you to fly to Delhi immediately. You leave on tonight’s flight to Delhi from Chicago; American Airlines.’
‘The objective?’
He listened intently as the caller spoke, giving him instructions.
‘And I report back to you?’ Murphy asked finally. He wasn’t surprised when he heard the response.
Murphy sat in quiet reverie for a while after his call ended. He had worked for his current employers for the last 10 years. His missions had taken him all over the world and had entailed surveillance, assassinations, kidnappings and coercion. But he had never been assigned a mission like this one.
3
Day 4
Jaungarh Fort
Vijay sat in a daze. He was still trying to come to terms with his uncle’s death—his uncle’s murder, he corrected himself, and his face flushed with anger.
He had got the news on the same day that he had received the bizarre emails. Homi Mehta, his uncle’s lawyer, had called to inform him that they had found his uncle in his study. His head was severed from his body.
The study had been ransacked but none of the other rooms had been touched. Vijay had taken the first available flight to Chicago and flown direct to Delhi from there, arriving just the previous evening. Colin, his business partner, was scheduled to arrive tonight after taking care of a few things at the office.
There had been little time to recover from the jetlag. Vijay had performed the funeral rites thi
s morning. The funeral was sparsely attended; his uncle had few friends and his reclusive life over the last few years had only served to distance him from his former colleagues and acquaintances in scientific circles. His death, however, had made news headlines and kept the news channels busy.
The last of the mourners had just left, leaving a handful of people behind. Apart from Homi Mehta, the lawyer, there was Dr. Shukla, a close friend of Vikram Singh, and his daughter, Radha. Shukla was 65 and had sharp and alert eyes. His daughter was in her late 20s, slim, with long black hair and large almond-shaped eyes that gazed with commiseration at Vijay from under thick eyelashes. She had a finely chiselled face.
‘I don’t understand why...’ Vijay finally voiced his confusion but his voice faltered and choked as he wrestled with a storm of emotions. He had been close to his uncle since he was a child, listening to stories of ancient India, and the death of his parents had served to draw them even closer.
The lawyer, Homi, had spent most of the previous day at the fort liaising with the local police, who were woefully ill-equipped to investigate this case.
The Jaungarh police post was manned by just three policemen and led by a sub inspector who had immediately thrown up his hands, saying he needed help from the state capital, Jaipur. A special investigation team from Jaipur had descended on Jaungarh. By the time Vijay returned from the funeral, they had completed their inspection of the murder site and collected all the evidence they could find, which they admitted was precious little.
‘There are many unanswered questions,’ said Homi, ‘Nothing that could provide clues to the motive of the murderers. It was a perfectly planned break-in. They knew that the butler had his day off and chose a time when all the servants had left for the day. The strange thing is, nothing seems to have been stolen except for Vikram’s laptop, which is missing. The study was a mess; books and files had been left scattered all over the floor but none of the other rooms seem to have been disturbed. It seems they were searching for something specific. Something that they thought was in the study.
‘Each level of security has been breached without any obvious signs of a break-in. The police believe that the intruders knew their technology.’ Homi shrugged. ‘It beats me, though, why your uncle installed such an advanced security system. He must have spent lakhs on it.’
‘Do you think uncle knew them?’ Vijay frowned as he tried to sort out the possibilities through his jetlag. ‘Perhaps he let them in?’
Homi shook his head. ‘The police team from Jaipur brought a tech expert with them when they heard about the security system at the fort. I think they suspected foul play before they even got here. The records from the security log clearly indicate that each level was manually overridden from the outside, indicating a break-in.
‘And then, there is the manner of his death!’ Homi seemed to be having trouble hiding the horror in his voice.
‘I know,’ Vijay muttered, ‘They decapitated him.’ His voice choked again.
‘There’s more to it,’ Homi persisted, struggling with words. ‘I’m really sorry to bring this up, but I didn’t—I couldn’t—tell you this before.’ He paused again.
‘They decapitated him, but there was no blood on the floor’!
There was silence as the others digested this information.
Finally, Shukla spoke up. ‘Perhaps they mopped up the blood before they left,’ he suggested, though he sounded as if he didn’t really believe that the murderers would go to the trouble of cleaning up after a murder.
‘No. There was no blood to mop up.’ Again, Homi hesitated.
‘Then what...?’ Vijay frowned.
Homi replied slowly, choosing his words carefully, almost as if he thought they wouldn’t believe him. ‘The blood vessels in the neck were sealed.’
‘What do you mean?’ Vijay demanded, not comprehending the meaning of the lawyer’s words.
‘It was as if they’d been cauterised at the same time that they had been cut, without a single drop of blood being spilt. A physical impossibility; yet, there’s no denying it.’
Vijay didn’t react to this news. A thought had begun to form in his mind. His uncle had secured the fort against intrusion. But the security system had been breached. And then there was the puzzle of his uncle’s emails. When he considered the details Homi had provided, it seemed that his uncle had shot off the emails around the time of his death; probably just minutes before his murder.
Had his uncle been trying to tell him something? Was there a hidden message in his emails? And how was he to find out?
The Diary of Bruno Beger
Greg White sat down on the soft, white oversized sofa. He adjusted his tall and lanky frame on the comfortable sofa and glanced around the room. It was simple but elegantly furnished. He reflected on the flurry of events that had brought him here; to this farmhouse on the Delhi border. Three days ago, he had received a call in his office at Boston University, where he was a professor of archaeology and history. An invitation to visit India had been extended to him, with the condition that he had to leave Boston the very next morning. Under normal circumstances, he would have politely declined such an outrageous offer, but two things had made him agree. First was the prospect of a funded visit to India. His special interest was ancient Indian history, with a focus on the Magadha empire. He couldn’t possibly turn down an opportunity like this. The second reason had been provided by his host, in whose farmhouse he now sat. It was a reason that no archaeologist could ignore—an opportunity to research one of the greatest myths of ancient India, dating back to the time of Emperor Asoka the Great. This, more than anything else, had been the trigger for his acquiescence.
A large man entered the room. He was tall, well over six feet in height. Though his hair was grey, he was fit, with just a hint of the softening of muscles with age. White noted the fine cut of his suit and the silk tie and was suddenly aware of his own casual attire.
‘Welcome to India!’ His host boomed in a deep baritone with a strong British accent. He extended a large hand and shook White’s hand with a vice-like grip.
‘Er...thank you,’ White replied, hesitantly, not sure how to address Indian royalty. For his host was none other than the former Maharaja of Rajvirgarh; a prominent businessman who had taken to politics two decades ago and now commanded significant respect and influence in the government.
The Maharaja noticed White’s dilemma. ‘I am Bheem Singh,’ he offered, ‘Please call me Bheem. I don’t believe in all the formalities. Though if we meet in public, I’ll request you to address me as “Your highness.” It won’t do for my subjects to know that I am so accessible to anyone.’
White nodded, noting that Bheem Singh had not said his ‘former subjects’.
‘Thank you for flying down to India at such short notice,’ Bheem Singh said, as he picked up a silver bell from the table and shook it, gently.
As if waiting for the cue, a liveried waiter entered bearing a silver teapot and two cups on a silver tray.
Bheem Singh dismissed the waiter with a wave of his hand when he had served the tea, and continued,
‘I truly appreciate your acceptance of my offer. We desperately need your expertise on this project.’
White decided to come straight to the point. ‘What is the “significant evidence” that your secretary mentioned when we spoke? He said you’d stumbled upon something that conclusively proved that the myth is grounded in reality.’
The Maharaja didn’t reply, but reached for the bell again. The waiter reappeared.
‘Get me that book,’ Bheem Singh pointed to a leather-bound notebook, old and worn, that was lying on a side table, not two feet from him. Its pages were frayed at the edges and the leather was creased and dirty.
White was amused. It seemed to be beneath the Maharaja’s dignity to pick up a book from a table. He didn’t understand. But then, he had never met a Maharaja before.
‘Go ahead, take a look,’ Bheem Singh invited him after the waite
r left, placing the book on the table before them.
White did as instructed.
‘This notebook was acquired by an acquaintance of mine from the family of a former US army officer. He had been a part of the US Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality at Nuremberg, during the proceedings of the war crimes trials. It was part of a trunk full of Nazi documents that the officer had brought back with him when he returned home from Germany.’
‘It’s not in English,’ White observed. ‘It is a diary, written in German. Though there are a few notes in English in a different hand.’
Bheem Singh nodded. ‘Yes. We got the entries translated into English.’
‘And whose diary is this?’
‘Have you heard of Bruno Beger?
‘The German anthropologist who was interested in racial research? The one who conducted his research in Tibet, believing that there were clues to the origins of the Aryans in Tibet?’
‘The same Beger. This is the diary in which he kept records of that expedition to Tibet. What drew our attention were the entries that described their stay at the Temple of the Tooth, located around 200 miles from Lhasa.’
‘Read it out loud,’ Bheem Singh said pointing at an entry in the diary.
White cleared his throat and complied. Found a 400-year-old temple called the Temple of the Tooth, 200 miles from Lhasa. Discovered ancient documents from India, in a secret vault one of the monks showed us. Don’t think he was allowed to, since the head monk was furious with him. The documents are in Sanskrit, approximately from 500 ad, according to the monk. He says the vault belonged to an ancient, ruined temple upon which the present temple was built. Apparently, the texts are copies of much older documents that were brought to the original temple by a member of some brotherhood in India.
White looked up from the diary. Bheem Singh was studying him closely, searching for a reaction.
‘Intriguing, but not really conclusive.’ White wasn’t yet convinced.
The Mahabharata Secret Page 2