The Mahabharata Secret

by Doyle, Christopher C

  ‘Fine. But be careful. Bheem Singh is powerful and has connections in the government. And the Haryana Chief Minister is close to the Prime Minister. Don’t rub either of them the wrong way. I don’t want the Home Minister calling me.’

  Blake suppressed a grin. He figured that Imran had got into trouble before and Vaid had had to bail him out.

  Imran smiled grimly. ‘I will. I just want both my questions answered. Nothing more. And I’ll only meet Bheem Singh and the Haryana Chief Secretary if we get a positive ID on Farooq.’

  Vaid nodded. ‘Let me know how it goes.’

  18

  April 2000

  The Temple of the Tooth, 200 miles from Lhasa

  Pema Ngodup shivered as he crouched in the little closet in the main hall of the monastery adjoining the Temple of the Tooth. The temple itself was 400 years old, having been built upon the ruins of a much older temple, which was rumoured to be over 2,000 years old.

  Pema didn’t know it, but the ancient temple whose ruins formed the foundations of this Temple of the Tooth had been built over 2,000 years ago by a courtier of Asoka the Great. A courtier who had travelled from Pataliputra to spread the word of Dharma, and had carried with him texts that spoke of the brotherhood he belonged to—the Nine Unknown Men. These texts had been hidden away in a vault below the ancient temple, safeguarded through the centuries by the monks who had lived in the monastery adjoining the temple.

  Through the sliver of a crack in the ancient wooden door of the closet, Pema had a clear view of the main hall. Twenty-two monks inhabited the monastery; 10 of them were lined up in the hall, kneeling with their heads bowed.

  The terror had begun 10 minutes ago when the staccato beat of helicopter rotors had broken the stillness of the morning. The monks, unaccustomed to visitors, had flocked to the courtyard, curious to see who was aboard the two large helicopters that slowly touched down.

  Pema had been completing his morning chores—as the youngest member of the monastery, just 12 years of age, he had yet to be initiated into the routine the other monks followed. On hearing the choppers, he had rushed to the closest window, driven by the same curiosity as his brothers. He watched wide-eyed as the two large flying machines descended and landed on the thin carpet of snow; residual evidence of the light snowfall the previous day.

  Then, the shooting started.

  Men armed with automatic rifles poured out of the choppers. Five monks dropped where they stood, dead before they hit the ground, their lifeless bodies riddled with bullets.

  The few remaining monks scattered, shouting warnings to their brothers inside the monastery.

  As Pema watched, horrified, the armed men pursued the fleeing monks, lobbing grenades. The pristine white snow turned red in patches, greedily soaking up the blood of the fallen monks.

  With great difficulty, Pema tore himself away from the terrifying and rushed to find a secure hiding place. He knew exactly where he would hide. Two months after he had been brought to the monastery to join the order, some six years ago, he had discovered a loose wooden panel in the wall of the main hall, which concealed a small closet. He had no idea what its original purpose had been, but unless you knew it was there, it looked like just another wall panel. He squeezed in there just before the attackers began herding the monks into the hall.

  As he watched, the men rounded up the monks, ejecting them from the places where they had sought refuge.

  When ten monks were lined up in the main hall, Pema saw a tall man enter. He was clearly the leader of the attackers and was the only one not wearing a ski mask. He walked slowly over to the monks and asked the man in the ski mask standing next to him.

  ‘Are these all?’

  The masked man nodded. ‘Ten dead. Ten here. We’ve scoured the monastery and the temple. There’s no place left to hide.’

  The leader’s voice was sharp. ‘The intel was that there were 22 monks. Where are the other two? You sure you’ve looked everywhere?’

  ‘We’ll run another check to be sure.’ The man barked orders and a group of armed men left the room on a run.

  ‘So, who’s your leader here?’ The tall man asked the monks, looking each one in the eye. He turned to the man in the ski mask as he came to the end of the line. ‘Make them kneel.’

  Men stepped forward to force the monks to their knees.

  The tall man took out a gun from a shoulder holster and aimed it at the head of the monk nearest to him.

  ‘I’ll ask again. And this time, if I don’t get an answer, I’ll shoot. Who is your leader?’

  Again, silence greeted him.

  Pema held his breath as the moments passed. Would he shoot?

  An ear-splitting sound broke the silence and monk sagged to the ground; the bullet had shattered his head like a watermelon. ‘Don’t shoot!’ An elderly monk spoke up. ‘Our leader is dead— he was shot in the courtyard—but I am the eldest here.’

  ‘Finally! An answer.’ The man walked to the monk and stood before him. ‘Where is the vault?’

  ‘I don’t know of any vault,’ the old monk quavered. ‘Shoot me if you want, but I’m telling you the truth.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t need to shoot you. Not yet.’ The man pointed his gun at a young monk who knelt beside the elderly monk. ‘So you don’t know about the secret vault that was part of the older temple and which was preserved when this temple was built? That’s funny, since someone saw the vault a few decades ago. Perhaps this will jog your memory.’

  The man fired at the young monk who collapsed to the ground in a pool of blood.

  Pema covered his mouth with his hands, stifling a scream; his blood ran cold.

  The man knelt before the old monk and gazed into his eyes. ‘See, I’m going to find that vault. And if you don’t tell me, I will kill each one of your remaining monks before your eyes. One by one.’

  A tense silence followed his words.

  Then, the elderly monk bowed his head as if ashamed at what he was about to do. ‘If you promise to spare the others, I will tell you where the vault is.’

  ‘Great.’ The man with the gun turned to the masked man. ‘Take him and empty the vault. Ensure that you get all the documents. Leave nothing behind. And take care that none of them are damaged. These are ancient texts and have to be treated with great care. And let me know if you find a metal disk.’

  The man nodded and left with the elderly monk and a handful of men, heading in the direction of the temple.

  The group that had left the room earlier returned. ‘Negative,’ said one of the men. ‘No one else.’

  ‘So where are the other two?’ Their leader gazed sharply at the remaining seven monks.

  Another elderly monk looked up at him. ‘They went to Lhasa yesterday. To get supplies for the monastery.’

  The man with the gun looked at him suspiciously and was silent for a few moments, as if considering this possibility. Pema knew the elderly monk had lied. Only one monk had gone to Lhasa the previous day.

  The moments passed in agonising silence, each minute seeming like an hour to the young monk. His leg had begun to develop cramps and he was not sure how much longer he could hold out in his tiny hiding place.

  Just when he thought he couldn’t bear it any longer, the men returned with the elderly monk.

  ‘Got everything,’ the man who had led them out reported to his leader. ‘No metal disk, though.’

  The leader frowned, then whipped out a satellite phone and dialled a number. ‘Murphy here. Mission accomplished,’ he spoke into the phone. ‘But no disk. What do you want us to do?’ He listened to the reply then disconnected the call and put the phone away.

  ‘Now that you have what you wanted, let us go,’ the elderly monk pleaded.

  ‘Oh, I will,’ Murphy smirked. He gestured to his men, who immediately opened fire on the kneeling monks.

  The elderly monk looked on horrified. Then, a scream came from somewhere inside the wall. Pema could take it no longer; horror and panic had
overcome him.

  Murphy looked surprised. ‘Find him,’ he barked.

  Four men went to work, ripping out the wooden panels until they found Pema, cowering and shivering in his little closet. They pulled him out roughly and flung him on the floor. Pema lay there, sobbing and trembling.

  ‘He is only a child. Have mercy,’ the elderly monk pleaded.

  Murphy smirked. ‘My orders are to leave no survivors. There’s no age bar.’ He aimed his gun at Pema and pulled the trigger.

  Tears ran down the old monk’s cheeks as Pema’s body lay sprawled on the floor, his blood pooling with the blood of his brothers. He knew that the contents of the vault would not help these men achieve their objective. That was his only consolation as he watched Murphy point the gun at his head and pull the trigger.

  19

  Present Day

  Day 6

  Bairat

  Radha led her father down the stairs with Colin bringing up the rear, holding the lamp to light their way. As they reached the foot of the staircase and stood beside Vijay, they stared at the sight that greeted them in the combined light of the two lamps.

  They were in an immense circular cavern. But what was striking wasn’t just the size of the cavern. It was the appearance of the walls. Rocky shelves had been carved into the walls, so that the entire cavern was lined with pigeonholes carved into the rock. Only the wall opposite the staircase was bare.

  Vijay shone the light of his lamp on the floor and they gasped. Etched on the floor in bold relief was an exact two dimensional replica of the gear wheel that lay above. In the very centre of the wheel stood a square pedestal; about four feet high. On the smoothly polished surface of the pedestal was carved a familiar symbol: the nine-spoked wheel.

  This cavern had obviously been made by the Nine or at least used by them for some purpose, now long forgotten.

  Below the nine-spoked wheel on the pedestal was an inscription.

  Shukla once more assumed his role as translator and read out the words etched on the slab.

  Four Brothers

  Offered by the Emperor

  The eldest brother

  The first of the four

  Echoes the secret

  Of the Nine.

  A riddle.

  ‘The metallic disk, a key, a ball of rock and a riddle,’ Shukla mused, recalling the entry in Beger’s diary. ‘Is this the riddle?’

  ‘What do you think this place is?’ Colin asked, shining his lamp into the pigeonholes.

  No one spoke for a while.

  Then, Shukla offered: ‘I suspected this when I heard Chunnilal’s tale of the Pandavas and the dice this afternoon,’ he said slowly. ‘I’d say we’re looking at what must have been a secret library of the Nine, perhaps the one described in the documents that Beger had transcribed. And the legend of the dice that Chunnilal narrated to us today would support this possibility. This hill was supposed to have powers that enhance knowledge and learning. Could that have been another way of saying that a library of ancient knowledge once resided here? The legend about the dice could have been a convenient way of hiding the true secret that was hidden here, just as the legend of the treasure was meant to keep people from looking for it.’

  Shukla gestured to the pigeonholes. ‘These must have been the receptacles where the texts belonging to the library were stored. In those days, they used bark to write on. The bark was dried in the sun and then these strips were used to write on and then bound together to form what we would call books.’

  Vijay nodded. ‘This does seem an extremely likely place for a secret library. The rock would have sheltered the documents and the dry, arid nature of the soil here would have ensured the texts didn’t decay.’

  ‘So what happened to the library? Where are the texts?’ Colin wanted to know.

  ‘Bark wouldn’t survive two thousand years even in a place like this,’Shukla explained. ‘There has been no record of any written texts from 2,000 years ago, apart from the inscriptions of Asoka’s edicts, which were carved into rocks and stone.’

  ‘Or,’ Radha suggested, ‘the library may have been removed by subsequent generations of the Nine, for safekeeping.’

  Shukla looked around in wonder, tinged with visible disappointment. ‘Imagine the knowledge that must have lain in this cavern; centuries of accumulated wisdom. Who knows what we might have found in those texts’? ’

  ‘Hey, what’s this?’ Colin had wandered off towards the far wall of the cavern. He was peering closely at something on the wall.

  The others joined him to see what he had discovered.

  ‘Look at this.’ Colin trained the lamp on a section of the wall and they saw a hairline crack tracing the outline of a rectangle bounded on one side by the floor of the cavern. ‘It’s a doorway, an entrance of some sort,’ Colin concluded excitedly. ‘There must be a hidden chamber behind this wall.’

  ‘How do we open it?’ Vijay frowned. The doorway itself was barely discernible and he had seen nothing in the cavern that looked like a mechanism to open a hidden door.

  Something struck Radha. She abruptly grabbed Colin’s lamp and hurried back to the pedestal with the inscription on it.

  ‘What’s the matter...,’ Colin began to protest, but was cut short by Radha as she trained the lamp on the surface of the pedestal.

  ‘I thought the nine-spoked wheel looked a bit different.’ She beamed at the others, who hastened to join her.

  In the light of the lamp they all noticed what had escaped their attention earlier. In their excitement at finding the riddle, they had failed to observe that there was a hollow at the centre of the wheel. Where the hub should have been, there was, instead, a depression scooped out of the rock and lined with black metal.

  Vijay and Colin looked at each other. They were thinking exactly the same thing.

  ‘Do you think...’

  ‘Try it and see.’

  Both men spoke together and smiled. Vijay reached into his bag and pulled out the key they had used to decipher the verse on the disk. He inserted it into the hollow and gently turned it clockwise. It fitted perfectly and locked into place with a click.

  ‘Here we go,’ Vijay grasped the key and twisted it. Nothing happened. He twisted it in the opposite direction. There was still no result. He frowned and tried pulling the key out but it wouldn’t move. It was stuck.

  ‘Why isn’t it working?’ Frustration crept into Vijay’s voice.

  ‘Perhaps we’re being too optimistic,’ Radha suggested. ‘This cavern and the doorway are over 2,000 years old. And we are assuming that the doorway will open through a system of gears and levers activated by the turning of the key. In books and Hollywood movies you find trapdoors and hidden entrances that work even after thousands of years, but that doesn’t happen in real life. It would be surprising if that doorway opened after all.’

  ‘Hush!’ Vijay hissed, suddenly. ‘Quiet! I hear voices.’

  For a few moments there was no sound to be heard. Then, the sound of voices came to them, faint at first and then growing louder. Someone was climbing the stairs from the lower terrace to the level on which the platform lay.

  ‘The light from our lamps must be streaming through the open trapdoor,’ Colin guessed.

  ‘Who could it be?’ Vijay whispered.

  There was a loud exclamation and a hurried exchange of words. The newcomers were probably at the platform and had seen the open trapdoor. Their voices were loud now and they were making no effort to be stealthy. But the words were unintelligible.

  A thought crossed Vijay’s mind and he looked at the others in dismay. He didn’t need to voice his thoughts. They understood immediately. As if to confirm their suspicions, Farooq’s voice cut across the other voices, speaking in a strange language they didn’t understand.

  ‘What do we do?’ Radha looked worried.

  They were trapped. The group of four backed up against the wall as men appeared at the foot of the staircase and advanced into the cavern. They
were carrying Uzis. Vijay and Colin recognised Maroosh. He had a nasty bruise on his right temple, swollen and purple.

  Maroosh saw them, too, and grimaced; whether from pain or anger they couldn’t tell. But a grim purpose entered his stride and he marched menacingly towards them. Farooq appeared behind the men, walking calmly and slowly down the staircase. As he stepped off the final stair onto the floor, he stopped and swivelled around, taking in the contents of the cavern. Then he nodded to himself and walked towards the group from Jaungarh.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he smiled unpleasantly. ‘If it isn’t the innocent young men who didn’t know anything about the clues in the emails or the key to the disk! I suppose you found your way to this chamber by sheer chance?’

  He advanced until he stood before Vijay. ‘So, you fools thought that you’d discovered the secret of the Nine? Look around you. What do you see? Empty pigeonholes.’

  One of the men gave a shout. He had spotted the inscription on the pedestal. Farooq turned immediately and walked over to the pedestal. Without taking his gaze off the inscription, he barked an order. Maroosh grabbed Shukla by the arm and dragged him roughly to where Farooq stood.

  ‘Don’t hurt him,’ Radha screamed, tears welling up in her eyes as her father winced in pain.