by S Venkatesh
CHAPTER 34
Kolkata, Tuesday, 5.30 p.m.
Sam was just about to ask Bani some tough questions about the Great Agonies when a stab of pain shot through Bani’s body, causing sharp convulsions.
Sam shouted for the nurse, alarmed.
The nurses and doctor rushed in to take charge. ‘You need to leave now,’ the nurse glared at Sam. ‘He’s already strained himself too much.’
***
Sam walked slowly towards the cafeteria.
Garden of Heaven.
People afraid to go somewhere. The greatest moat of them all.
The Chamber of Torture.
Sam paused for a moment as he walked. Somehow these images seemed oddly familiar.
He dismissed the thought. His mind, short on rest, must be playing tricks on him. There was no way an esoteric historical puzzle should seem even remotely familiar.
Yet, the potpourri of words swirled around unforgivingly in Sam’s head, creating a cacophony.
There was some association with all this, but it seemed to be from Sam’s distant past, a past which he had tried hard to bury.
He decided to go for a walk to clear his head. He walked out of the hospital, hailed a cab, and got off at the Kolkata Maidan. It was starting to rain lightly, but Sam did not mind.
He was too engrossed in his thoughts to notice a somewhat grungy man getting off a bike behind him.
***
ACG office, Mumbai, Tuesday, 6 p.m.
Back in Mumbai, a somewhat chastened Damini had continued her efforts at being heard. But, as with her previous attempts, her entreaties had fallen on deaf ears.
Damini was desperate. She picked up her satellite phone and started to dial Bob’s number. Maybe she could warn the US contingent instead.
No sooner had she dialled Bob’s number than a couple of ACG agents walked into the room and held out a pair of handcuffs.
The last thing the ACG agents did before Damini was sent to a detention cell was to confiscate her satellite phone, the one that she had asked Sam to call on in case of any emergency.
***
Delhi, Tuesday, 6 p.m.
The cricket match would start in exactly twenty-four hours.
Sylvan had a satisfied look as he inspected the three pairs of sealed cylinders in his possession.
The mechanism to unleash the pathogen was very simple. There were only two steps.
First, Sylvan would have to lock the two cylinders together and wait for thirty seconds. In which time, the contents of the two cylinders would mix and form a toxic cocktail of spores, live bacteria and toxin, primed to kill.
Then all Sylvan would have to do was press a trigger, and KaalKoot—the deadliest toxin known to man—would be released into the atmosphere.
***
Kolkata, Tuesday, 6 p.m.
Sam was walking around the Maidan, oblivious to the grungy man tailing him, when the first flash of realisation came to him.
Seventeen years ago . . . he must have been eleven then. His father, the Colonel, was still in his forties; still young. Unknown to them then, just a few months later, they would receive news that would change their lives forever.
That evening, unmindful of the turn that fate was about to take, they were in high spirits. Colonel Rajan was with his son on their fourth trek together. This trek was in north Sikkim, and they had hiked from a town called Lachung to a place called Yumthang, known as the ‘Valley of Flowers of the East’.
Yumthang valley was lush green in the spring, with a gazillion flowers covering it like a delightful, multicoloured carpet. There were red rhododendrons, pink primroses, yellow poppies, pink louseworts, yellow buttercups, and a dozen other varieties.
The Colonel had remarked that the place seemed like a playground of the gods.
The Garden of Heaven.
There was a Valley of Flowers in Uttarakhand as well, but it was Yumthang that fitted the description in the verse.
The rest of the stuff then fell into place.Yumthang was around a hundred thirty kilometres from Gangtok. The Gupt-Kandara, too, was supposed to be around a hundred thirty kilometres from Gangtok.
Sam felt a surge of excitement. He was close to cracking the third verse.
Verse 3
Climbing unwaveringly up the path beyond the Garden of Heaven
Walking by the river through blinding mists
Crossing the greatest moat of them all
The lion’s mane shall meet the scorpion’s claws.
The river Lachung Chu passed via Yumthang. So, he would have to continue uphill and follow the course of the Lachung Chu or one of its tributaries.
That was when Sam had his second flash of realisation.
Some locals at Yumthang had mentioned a legend about terrible things happening to those who attempted to traverse the treacherous, inhospitable mountains west of Yumthang.
Sam had not fully understood the local legend then, but now it all made sense. This was the greatest moat of them all; the moat of human fear, more effective than any weapons or rivers.
So he would have to go to Lachung, then to Yumthang, and then walk in a westerly direction along the Lachung Chu river, or maybe one of its tributaries, up the snow-clad hills.
And there the lion’s mane shall meet the scorpion’s claws.
Whatever that meant!
***
Sam’s mind was made up.
He had to get to Sikkim. Fast. He hopped into a cab to get to Bani’s hospital. On the way, he dialled Damini’s satellite phone number.
A terse ‘Hello’ from a male voice came through the line.
Sam hesitated. This did not make sense. Damini had been clear that she would not pick up the phone. He was to leave two rings and then she was to call him back.
Sam quickly hung up. Clearly, Damini was in some trouble.
He switched off the satellite phone’s power button. He could not afford to be tracked by whosoever it was that had gotten hold of Damini’s phone.
He called Dev, a resourceful acquaintance from his college days, who was based in Darjeeling and specialised in Himalayan treks.
After the usual pleasantries and ‘long-time-no-see’ stuff, Sam got straight to the point. ‘Dev, I need some permits to travel around Sikkim. And I need to get to Gangtok quickly, from Kolkata.’
‘Bro, I will arrange for the permits. But getting to Gangtok quickly will be a problem. There has been a sudden onset of strong winds and heavy rainfall in north Bengal and Sikkim, apparently triggered off by a high pressure zone over the Tibetan plateau. Gangtok airport is closed, and flights to Bagdogra airport, near Siliguri, are delayed. Meanwhile, a passenger train en route to Jalpaiguri has gotten derailed, so all train traffic to north Bengal is running at least eight to ten hours late.’
‘What then?’ Sam asked, frowning.
‘Your best bet is to take a rocket bus from Esplanade bus terminal in Kolkata. It will take you to Siliguri, from where I will arrange an SUV to get you to Gangtok. You’d better hurry; I think there’s a rocket bus that leaves Kolkata at 7 p.m.’
Sam looked at his watch; it was 6.05 p.m. ‘Rocket bus, huh?’
‘Let me warn you . . . it’s not the most pleasant of rides, but it will get you there. Fast.’
***
Bani was still woozy, but conscious enough to understand that Sam had cracked the riddle.
He spoke with a huge amount of effort. ‘Hats off to you,’ he croaked. ‘Though we still need to figure out the bit about the lion’s mane meeting the scorpion’s claws.’
Bani coughed, lightly at first, but then as he coughed again, he could not get back his breath.
Sam’s eyes widened in horror as Bani’s face turned progressively blue. He rushed closer to Bani, thumping his chest loudly as he shouted for the nurses.
Thankfully, Bani had only fainted. The nurse gave Sam a stern look. ‘I thought I told you not to talk to him.’
Sam backed off from the ICU and went into the waiting ar
ea.
The TV was showing some ‘breaking news’. China had tested an intercontinental ballistic missile, while the US had conducted military exercises precariously close to Chinese waters. Meanwhile, a German private aircraft had mistakenly entered Russian airspace and had been shot down. Five civilians were dead.
‘The world is on a knife’s edge ahead of the GSS tomorrow, to be followed by the cricket match in the evening, and the press conference at the International Convention Centre on Thursday.’ The news anchor spewed out the entire sentence without breaking breath.
Sam sighed. Even assuming no delays due to the rains, it would take eleven or twelve hours to get to Siliguri, a further four hours to Gangtok, then over five hours to Lachung and then heaven knew how many hours after that to get to the Gupt-Kandara near Yumthang and crack the Agonies.
The world might go up in fumes before then.
Sam could not wait for Bani to regain consciousness. The rocket bus would leave Kolkata at 7 p.m. It was already 6.20 p.m. He barely had time to pick up some supplies for the trip.
***
ACG office, Mumbai, Tuesday, 6.45 p.m.
A livid Damini clenched her fists and brought them down crashing against the door of the detention cell at the ACG office.
She knew that she would end up being confined to this cell till the GSS got over. She felt a surge of anger against the Chief, but could not feel too righteous about it. After all, many a times, she had herself subjected others to exactly the same routine.
Was it Kunal who had given her away? She never did like him. Or was she just being her usual, suspicious self?
She was angry with the Chief. And with Kunal. And with society. And with her relatives in Mirzapur. And with patriarchy. And with authority. And with things in general.
Damini let out a scream.
She could not believe that it had come to this.
She was just a fireball of rebelliousness and anger. Was there anything else to her at all?
She found that disturbed feeling coming back to her once again.
We become what we repeatedly do.
***
Kolkata, Tuesday, 6.58 pm
A breathless Sam reached the Esplanade bus terminal just before 7, with a heavy backpack complete with climbing boots, woolen clothes, lip balm and medication for acute mountain sickness.
‘Are you going to Mount Everest, dada?’ asked the clerk at the ticket counter.
‘Something like that,’ Sam replied tersely.
***
Kolkata, Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Sam took a look at the passengers in the rocket bus.
There was a craggy, tramp-like guy who seemed to belong either in a prison or a de-addiction centre. There was a couple who seemed to have just had a really bad argument. There were only two other passengers—a boy who seemed to be in his teens and a pot-bellied man with a roving eye.
Not a particularly inspiring bunch. Sam wondered how the rocket bus company managed to make ends meet.
He did not know that the grungy, tramp-like guy had been shadowing him from the time he had shown up at the hospital to meet Bani. Or that, with Damini now grounded and incommunicado, the ACG men in Kolkata had gotten off his trail.
Sam was assailed by a splitting headache and a nauseating feeling in the stomach as the images of Vivaan, Riyaa and the puppy, the corpse at the Mumbai ATM, and the photo of the Maestro, all churned rapidly in his head. He seemed to be stuck in a maze; there was no escape from it, and he was no closer to finding Ananya either.
Sam decided to use the night on the rocket bus to get some sleep. He needed to have his wits about him if he had to crack the Great Agonies.
I hope this bus doesn’t rocket me straight to heaven, he murmured as he closed his eyes.
‘…or hell,’ he found a voice in his head completing the sentence.
PART V:
WHERE THE LION’S MANE MEETS THE SCORPION’S CLAWS
EASTERN HIMALAYAS
CHAPTER 35
North Bengal, Wednesday, 4 a.m.
The rocket bus rocketed through the highway, subjecting its hapless passengers to an extreme version of the bump-and-grind routine. The rains had abated, helping the bus maintain a high speed.
Sam was dreaming about a ferocious lion chasing him through a jungle of trees and hills. As with many dreams, the world of reality intersected seamlessly with the world of his subconscious mind. Each bump of the rocket bus coincided with Sam jumping over a bush or hurtling down a hillock in the dream.
As Sam ran through the forest of his dreams and made his way up a hill, the lion snapping its jaws close to his heels, his ascent was rudely stopped by a horrifying sight ahead. A gigantic scorpion, almost the size of an elephant, was positioned right along his path. It had an eerily perfect set of claws.
If Sam wanted to avoid the scorpion, he would have to break step immediately and risk being mauled by the lion. As his mind wavered for a split second, he tripped on a boulder and fell to the ground.
The lion continued at its momentum and overshot him, heading right towards the massive scorpion. For a second, the lion’s mane met the scorpion’s claws, and then, suddenly, everything froze over, covered in snow.
The impact of Sam’s crash over the boulder in the dream was mirroring the rocket bus actually stopping with a massive gush of deceleration. Sam awakened from his dream just as the lion’s mane and the scorpion’s claws froze in the snow.
Bleary-eyed, he looked around. It was the hour before daybreak. All the passengers were asleep. The bus driver was heading towards a small chai shack by the roadside.
And then it struck him.
The lion’s mane shall meet the scorpion’s claws. Frozen in snow.
Maybe this line in the verse referred not to a local legend, but to the physical appearance of a hill or rock formation.
He would have to go to Yumthang, walk along the Lachung Chu river or one of its tributaries, and look along the westerly direction for a rock formation resembling a lion’s mane meeting a scorpion’s claws.
That was probably where he would find the Gupt-Kandara.
***
Delhi, Wednesday, 6 a.m.
On the D-Day, Sylvan woke up as usual, freshened up and headed down to the hotel coffee shop for breakfast.
A half-amused smile spread across his face as he read the morning newspaper. News about the GSS and poor Chinese economic data shared space with actress Megha’s preference for ‘men with taut butts’ and an expose about yet another cricket match-fixing scandal.
He wondered what tomorrow’s headlines would read like.
An ancient verse from the Bhagavad Gita came to his mind. Sylvan had first seen it in a calligraphed version at the Maestro’s office. This was the same verse that Oppenheimer was supposed to have quoted to describe the first nuclear test in Los Alamos many years ago.
I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
***
Rocket bus, Wednesday, 6.15 a.m.
The rocket bus rocketed Sam into Siliguri at 6.15 a.m., well ahead of schedule, complete with a sore back, a churning stomach and a feeling of having been mauled by a bear.
Not exactly my idea of a holiday, Sam thought as he tried stretching his aching back.
He spotted the Land Rover arranged for him by his acquaintance, Dev.
As Sam got into the Land Rover, he stole a look around in all directions, checking for any obvious tails. There were none.
He was not aware that the craggy guy had planted a micro GPScum-audio transmitter in Sam’s backpack when he had gotten off the bus that morning during the driver’s tea break.
***
ACG office, Mumbai, Wednesday, 8.30 a.m.
Damini had not been able to sleep in the detention cell, having spent the entire night feeling frustrated and angry.
She looked up as she heard the sound of the key turning in the lock of the cell.
It was Kunal, and he had come to surreptitiously let her out of th
e detention cell.
‘Why are you disobeying the Chief’s orders?’ she asked defiantly.
Kunal gave Damini back her satellite phone. ‘Much as I hate your guts, I think you might have a point about the bio weapon stuff.’
Damini’s jaw dropped in surprise.
‘I need your help to get to the bottom of this shit,’ Kunal continued. ‘Now get cracking.’
He added, ‘I’m the lead agent, so I’m authorised to offer you the use of the ACG’s resources. But you’ll still need to lie low. I don’t want the Chief grounding me, too.’
‘Maybe I’m not such a jerk after all,’ Kunal added.
Damini, overcome by surprise, was tongue-tied.
‘Spare me the thanks,’ Kunal grinned. ‘I’m still going to take credit for your work.’
And with that he walked away, leaving her open-mouthed.
Damini felt a wave of guilt and self-doubt creep up on her.
She had been quick to suspect Kunal, and equally quick to accept his act of generosity when it suited her.
What did that say about her?
***
Along the road from Siliguri to Gangtok, Wednesday, 8.45 a.m.
The Land Rover was speeding along the narrow mountain road from Siliguri to Gangtok. It was raining lightly, and the weather had gotten distinctly cooler as Sam proceeded towards higher altitudes. The view was breathtaking even through the mild fog, with green hills on one side and a steep drop to the roaring Teesta river on the other.
But Sam was not quite enjoying the view, consumed as he was by a burning impatience to get to Yumthang and take a shot at finding the Gupt-Kandara.
Desperate to find an anchor for his anxiety, he was tempted to call Damini. Should he take a chance and try to reach her through the satellite phone again? Or would that be walking straight into a trap, considering that somebody was probably tracking the satellite phone signals?
Sam’s itchy fingers got the better of him before he could even finish his ruminations. He ended up switching on the phone and dialling Damini’s number.
To his surprise, she picked up.
‘What the hell are you doing near Sikkim?’ she asked, her tracker registering Sam’s location.