‘And get eaten by the protectors of the treasure or whatever monster guards the secret of the Nine? Have you watched “The Mummy”? No way!’
Sighing, Vijay bent and entered the doorway. It was the entrance to a small tunnel. In the light of the lamp, he could see that even the walls of the tunnel were as smooth as glass and reflected the light at him.
After a few feet of stooping and walking through the passage, he emerged into a chamber. While the outer cave was larger and had a barrel vaulted roof, the inner chamber in which he now stood had a roof that was hollow and semi-spherical.
The chamber was empty.
He shone the light back through the doorway and called out to the others. ‘Come on in. It’s alright.’
He noticed that this chamber didn’t have an echo.
The rest of the group emerged from the tunnel. As they regrouped they found Vijay staring at the wall opposite the entrance.
‘You’ve found something,’ White observed as they came up to him.
‘Yes,’ Vijay answered. ‘Do you notice anything about these walls that set them apart from the walls of the outer cave?’
White squinted at the wall. ‘No inscriptions?’
‘Exactly.’ Vijay shone the light on the walls on either side of them and the wall behind them. ‘None of these walls have inscriptions; except for this one.’ He trained the lamp on the wall opposite the entrance and it jumped out at them.
A nine-spoked wheel. The symbol of the Nine.
They looked at each other. Whatever they were seeking, it was hidden in this inner chamber. All they had to do was locate it.
The Ominous Threat
‘We’ve contained the media and they’ve agreed to cooperate... for now,’ Imran reported.
Vaid stared back at him and rubbed his eyes as he stifled a yawn. The two men had been up since a little past midnight. He nodded. ‘Good work. But we still need to monitor them. There’s no saying when some journalist will decide that this is a career-boosting opportunity for him or her, and we can’t afford any loose cannons right now.’
‘We’re on it. I’ve got men in the studios and offices of every major television channel and media network that received the email. A couple of television channels played hard to get initially, but fell in line when we told them a few things we knew about them.’
‘I don’t want to know what you threatened them with.’ The shadow of a smile creased Vaid’s face. He had seen Imran stretch the boundaries on previous occasions.
‘Oh, I didn’t threaten them,’ Imran grinned. ‘I gave them, you know, friendly advice. Just so I was sure they wouldn’t put this on air the moment my back was turned.’
Vaid glanced at his watch. ‘Time for my meeting with the Home Minister. I’ll let him know that things are under control.’ He looked pointedly at Imran. ‘Are you sure you want to continue with your plan? This threat takes top priority. And your hunch about Bheem Singh has nothing to do with the threat. Remember, it’s still a hunch.’
Imran nodded. ‘I won’t get another opportunity like this to get in there. Don’t worry, it won’t take long. I’ll just take a look around and get out of there. It should not take me more than half an hour.’
‘Keep me posted.’ Vaid left the room and Imran followed him out.
As he walked down the corridor to his office, Imran’s thoughts turned to the mysterious email they had received at midnight. It had been sent to 10 major news networks, both electronic and print media. But what perplexed him wasn’t the source or the intention of the email. Both were very clear, surprisingly, for a terror threat.
He opened the door of his office and gave a start. Blake was sitting there waiting, his face haggard and worried. He, too, had been up since midnight, working with his colleagues in the CIA and with other government agencies in countries where similar threats had been received.
‘We were wrong about all of this. We should have seen it coming. We saw the video clip,’ said Blake as he settled down with some coffee.
Imran shrugged. ‘There was no way we could have guessed. And don’t forget, the video clip wasn’t about LeT. It was about Al Zawahiri and Al Qaeda. What’s the final word on the threat?’
‘Twenty countries.’ Blake looked at Imran significantly. ‘All belonging to the G20. But we’ve managed to put the lid on the news in all 20. The media, for once, have behaved themselves.’
‘And the message is the same?’
‘Broadly the same with some variations. The common theme is the attack on the G20 economic summit in three months’ time in Washington DC, which will be attended by all the G20 heads of state. And then, each mail goes on to list selected targets in each country that will be attacked on a specific date; like the targets identified in India in the mail sent to your media—nuclear installations, airforce bases, oil refineries, power plants. If you put them all together, there will be four attacks every day for a period of 10 days after the attack on the G20 summit. The intention is clear. Bring down the governments of the G20 member countries by killing their leaders at the summit, and then cripple their economies.’
Imran pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘That’s quite evident. Look what they say in the email we received. And I presume this is common to all the twenty messages. If the G20 summit is called off as a result of this threat, they will attack every single G20 member nation individually and destroy the seat of government in each country. There’s no mistaking their objective—they’re targeting the governments. It’s an ambitious plan. Plunge the world into chaos and precipitate a global political and military crisis.’
Blake nodded. ‘This will make 9/11 look like child’s play. And it will catapult LeT into the big league, right up there with Al Qaeda. So far, we’ve always viewed them as having a narrow focus on Kashmir. Only recently has the CIA begun to recognise that their ambitions are more global. But I don’t see how they plan to pull it off.’
‘That’s exactly what I was wondering. Firstly, LeT doesn’t have the kind of muscle that Al Qaeda has. Where would they get the kind of funding and resources required for an operation like this? Secondly, what’s the point of publicising a terror attack so far ahead? They’ve literally given a time table for each target. Where’s the element of surprise? Forget about the individual governments, how are they going to attack the G20 summit when security is obviously going to be beefed up after this?’
‘Beats me,’ Blake agreed. ‘The US will be on high alert. The USAF and Navy will step up their patrols around the east coast, right away, and until the summit is over. And every government in the G20 is going to be on high alert as well.’ He frowned. ‘Why issue this threat three months in advance? I don’t get it either.’
‘There’s something else I don’t understand.’ Imran’s face creased with thought. ‘What does LeT achieve by destabilising these 20 countries? As a terrorist group, they achieve more by creating an atmosphere of uncertainty. But they aren’t anarchists. So what exactly are they after?’
The same thought struck both men almost simultaneously. ‘Good Lord,’ Blake said quietly. ‘The unknown partner of LeT. The ones who sent Murphy to India to work with Farooq Siddiqui.’
Imran nodded numbly. ‘Yes. It ties in neatly with the Murphy tap and the video clip. But what is it that Farooq is doing in India that will help them execute this plan?’
The two men stared at each other, unable to unravel the riddle. One thing was clear to both. They had to find Farooq. And fast.
There was just one problem. They didn’t know where he was.
26
Day 8
The Barabar Caves
‘We found it.’ Radha could hardly contain her excitement. She walked up to the sign and studied the wall in the light of the lamps. There was a hole in the wall, a perfect circle, approximately one foot below the nine-spoked wheel. She hesitated for a minute then shoved her arm into the opening.
‘What are you doing?’ Vijay was horrified. ‘There may be a trap inside.�
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Radha pursed her lips and shook her head as she withdrew her hand. ‘Nothing there. It’s empty.’ She grinned sheepishly at Vijay and Colin, both of whom wore expressions of shock.
‘That was silly,’ Colin remarked. ‘Hey, what’s this?’ He swung his lamp lower and trained it on another section of the wall below the hole.
There was a second, perfectly round, hole visible in the rock wall, one foot above the ground and slightly to the left of the hole above.
‘Now don’t go sticking your foot into that one,’ Colin grinned at Radha.
White frowned. ‘Why would they leave two holes in the wall? If something had been hidden away in either hole, it would have been taken out long ago.’
They stared at each other, puzzled, their hopes sinking. Had they come all this way to find a dead end? Was this the end of the trail?
‘In the movies,’ Colin said slowly, ‘putting your hand into one of the holes would have triggered a lever that would have opened a section of the rock wall, revealing another hidden cave. Of course, in the movies, you also tend to lose the part of your hand that goes into the hole.’ He grinned. ‘But Radha’s already tested that for us, hasn’t she? And she’s still got her hand.’
Radha slapped his shoulder lightly in mock exasperation. ‘Your Hollywood fixation,’ she muttered. ‘This cave is from ancient India, not a Hollywood set.’
Colin grinned back at her, unfazed.
A thought suddenly struck Vijay. He passed his lamp to White and took something out of his bag. As he brought it into the light of the lamp, the highly polished spherical rock in his hand gleamed, reflecting the light and lighting up the chamber with an eerie glow. It was the rock ball they had found in the secret chamber at Bairat. He had been convinced that it had a purpose, though he wasn’t clear what it was, and had carried it along, just in case. It was only now that he realised that the appearance of the rock ball matched the polished surface of the cave.
‘Do you think that’s from here?’ White wondered.
‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’ Vijay held the ball, trying to work out what they should do with it.
‘Here, let me try.’ Radha took the ball from him and carried it to the wall, her forehead creased in thought. The others watched her, guessing what she was going to do. She slowly inserted the ball into the hole just below the wheel carved into the wall. It rested there, fitting perfectly.
Radha then gently pushed the ball into the hole.
With a rumbling sound, of stone grating against stone, the ball disappeared into the blackness of the hole. There was a loud click, as if the ball had hit the back of the hole, but instead of stopping, the rumbling grew in intensity and became louder.
As they looked on, wondering, the grating noise of the ball rolling within the wall rose to a crescendo. Suddenly, the ball shot out of the lower hole and landed on the floor of the cave, rolling to a stop a few feet away from the wall.
For a few moments they stared at the ball as it lay there, unmoving.
Colin shook his head. ‘A chute for a ball of rock. Now I’ve seen everything!’
‘This doesn’t make sense,’ Vijay agreed. ‘There’s obviously a tunnel within the wall connecting both the holes. But why?’ He trained his lamp on the ball of rock. The light glanced off the rock, almost as if the rock was challenging them to unearth the secret it concealed.
‘Wait a minute.’ Shukla bent down and picked up the ball, turning it around in his hands to get a better look. ‘There’s an inscription on the ball. Where did that come from?’ He looked at Vijay. ‘It didn’t have an inscription when we got it from Bairat, did it?’
‘I’m sure it didn’t,’ Vijay asserted.
‘Then it’s not the same ball.’
For a few moments, they digested this.
Then Radha spoke. ‘If it isn’t the same ball, then there must have been another ball hidden in the tunnel, with this inscription on it. When I rolled the first ball into the tunnel through the upper hole, it dislodged the hidden ball, but got trapped itself within the tunnel somehow. And the hidden ball was ejected through the lower hole.’
‘Ingenious,’ White raised his eyebrows. ‘You’d never discover the second ball if you didn’t have the first one.’
‘Like the rest of the puzzle the Nine created,’ Shukla commented.
‘What does the inscription say?’ Colin wanted to know.
‘It’s the riddle,’ Shukla answered. ‘The fourth part of the puzzle. We’ve got the metal disk, the key, the ball of rock. All that was missing was the verse that is inscribed here.’ He read out the verse.
From the chambers that echo
As we lift our eyes to the south
To the harbinger of the Lord’s birth
In a dream
Passing over the Mother
Who lies amidst the forests green, reposing,
Holding within her bosom,
Hidden for Millennia
The Secret of the Nine.
‘That’s just great.’ Colin’s voice betrayed his exasperation. ‘What does it mean?’
Shukla shrugged. ‘This is the final clue. We know that from Beger’s diary, from the texts he copied that spoke of the Nine and their puzzle. And this is the first time the secret of the Nine has been explicitly mentioned. But I haven’t the slightest idea what it means.’
‘All I can figure out is that the secret lies in a forest,’ Colin remarked. ‘But who is the Mother? If we can work that out, we’ll find it.’
‘There’s a lot of forest area in India,’ Vijay scratched his head. ‘Why don’t we drive back to Patna and see if we can work this out?’
The others agreed.
Bright sunshine greeted them outside. The sun was still high in the sky and the brightness outside the cave hurt their eyes after the dark interiors they had left behind.
Wordlessly, they walked back to the X Trail. Vijay climbed into the driver’s seat and started the long drive back to Patna.
Dangerous Discoveries
Imran shifted nervously in his seat, as the motorcade accompanying the Vice President of the United States of America made its way through the grand main gates of Bheem Singh’s farmhouse. Yesterday’s visit was fresh in his mind and he hoped that he wouldn’t bump into the Maharaja. The commandant of the commandos, who formed the Indian section of the Vice President’s security force, looked at Imran sourly. He hadn’t been told why Imran was part of this team; only that one of his men had to be pulled out at the last minute to accommodate this special request from the Home Ministry. While he was unhappy about Imran’s presence, he was curious about it. What was worse, he had been instructed to allow Imran to detach himself from the security team once they were in the farmhouse; to allow him to carry out his mission. What that mission was, of course, hadn’t been disclosed.
The motorcade came to a halt. Three vehicles ahead, Imran saw Steve Buckworth alight from his limousine and greet the familiar figure of Bheem Singh. Both men disappeared inside the farmhouse, closely dogged by the US Secret Service agents.
‘Ok, everyone out,’ the commandant barked. They had orders to secure the farmhouse, but were not supposed to enter.
Imran took a deep breath and stepped out of the van. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he nodded to the commandant. ‘This is where I leave your team.’
The commandant nodded back curtly and Imran headed off in the opposite direction. There was no way the US agents would allow him to follow Buckworth and Bheem Singh through the front door. He would have to scout around and find another way into the farmhouse.
This was easier said than done, he realised. The place was a virtual fortress, swarming with black clad guards, Bheem Singh’s personal security force. Imran’s blue camouflage uniform, the same as that of the commandos, identified him as part of the security team, so he wasn’t stopped. But more than once, the security guards he passed flashed him questioning glances, though no one challenged him.
As he rounded the corner of
the house, he noticed an open window with no grills. He looked around quickly. Unencumbered by an assault rifle, unlike the other commandos, he found it easy to vault over the low window sill and into an ornately furnished study. He adjusted the Glock in a holster at his waist, the only weapon he carried, and looked around.
It was the study; the same room where he had interviewed the Maharaja.
He glided to the door of the study and opened it a crack to look up and down the corridor. It was deserted. He stepped into the passage.
Which way should he go? He quickly made a choice and turned to his right. Where would Bheem Singh keep his secrets? Definitely not in the study or the rooms here; they were too accessible, too public. Large paintings by Indian and international artists hung on the walls of the passage and each doorway leading off the corridor was framed by antique-looking sculptures of stone and metal on ornate pedestals. The corridor ended in another passage perpendicular to it. Imran turned left and a short walk brought him to a stairway going downstairs.
A basement! Imran decided it was worth exploring.
Cautiously, he made his way down the stairs. As he descended, he realised that the stairway wasn’t lit up. Neither was the basement. He cursed. The light from the corridor above barely reached this level, creating a murky gloom. He wished he had thought of bringing a torch with him.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realised that the basement extended in one direction, to his right, as the stairway ended. To his left was a wall. He made his way slowly down the corridor, discerning three doorways. He tried the doors to his left and right but both were locked. That left only the door that was directly before him.
He turned the handle. The door opened silently. He realised he had been holding his breath, and exhaled with relief. For a few moments, he stood still and let his eyes adjust to the deeper gloom within the room.
It seemed to be some sort of conference room. A semi-circular table occupied the space before him, with a few chairs around it. Beyond the table seemed to be a wall.
But he didn’t have time to wonder. Voices floated down the stairway and he realised, with a shock that they were heading straight for this room.
The Mahabharata Secret Page 17