The Colossus (14 page)

“If I didn’t call? What was supposed to happen then?”

“Eventually, I’d have called you. Hiram left that bit to me.”

Max was impressed with Kevin’s no-nonsense manner. It made sense that her idealistic, often emotional father had admired this man for his worldliness. “So, does ‘pea soup’ mean something?” she asked.

“Yes!”

“Is that the key to decode the research?”

“It could be. But I suspect that the key that never reached me may be a different one. Look, I don’t want to discuss this any more over the phone. Maybe I’ll see you in Hyderabad.”

“Hyd—” Max began but Kevin hung up.

She looked at Julian, who had turned pale.

“I know what 11:32 is,” he whispered. “It’s a chapter and verse reference from the Gita. This one.”

“Okay.” Max sat down beside him.

Julian’s face seemed tense with unanswered questions.

“Get your grandfather’s diary. First page.” Julian’s voice turned soft. “It’s the same verse, Max. I’ve been an idiot.”

Max looked at the verse written in her grandfather’s diary.

“This verse has been translated many ways, but given the context, I think this might be the translation we want,” Julian said. “
I am become death. Destroyer of worlds
,” he read aloud from her Gita.
“It’s what J. Robert Oppenheimer said when he witnessed the Trinity nuclear test.”

“That doesn’t sound very promising,” Max said.

“The joint work of the scientists at Los Alamos resulted in the first artificial nuclear explosion near Alamogordo in early 1945, on a site that Oppenheimer codenamed Trinity,” Julian said. “Apparently, Oppenheimer quoted this verse during an interview later on when he spoke of the incident. Point is, he knew he had been responsible for something that could destroy the world.”

Max lifted her tear-filled eyes to the ceiling. “It’s what I suspected.” Julian took her hand. Max went on, “If…if Opa had this verse on the front page of his diary, he must have believed he had done something really bad. He found heroin instead of aspirin.”

They sat still for several minutes.

“So is this the key to decode the research? The key that Lars never got?” Julian asked.

“Papa sent it to Kevin, too,” Max said. “The key and pill samples. But he didn’t get them, either. Berliner must have stolen his package, too.” She got up, put her hands on her hips, and exhaled deeply. “I have to go to India.”

She looked at Julian. His mouth tightened, his eyes narrowed and darted all over the room. Max could almost hear him thinking hard. About what, she wondered.

He went to her and brought his forehead close to hers. “I guess we both do,” he whispered.

She pulled away and looked at him sharply. “Julian, I need to know something. I couldn’t bring myself to ask before—I was afraid of your answer, but I need to know. Are you seeing someone else? Because if you are, leave now and never see me again.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he looked straight into her eyes. “I’m coming with you,” he said firmly.

Max wondered for a second or two about his hesitation and his oblique response but decided to put it out of her mind. She threw her arms around him and kissed him. “Be careful, Professor McIntosh,” she said. “I’m very fragile right now, and I may be falling in love with you.”

Rajiv Gandhi International Airport

Hyderabad, India

Aaron stood close to the airport exit and watched Max and Julian climb into the shuttle for the Hyatt Regency Hotel. He had been cooling his heels in Chicago, trying to accept that he may have lost the chance for some big bucks, when he had been asked to make preparations to leave for India. Max was going there. The papers were sure to be there, his employer had said.
Double pay
, Aaron had repeated to himself like a mantra. He had failed in London, but he was not going to be made a fool of twice.

The German. Aaron hadn’t seen
him
yet. He looked around, half-expecting him to leap out from behind every potted palm and stone sculpture. Blondie would definitely be here. His employer had told him to expect it.

He stepped out of the airport, his fist wrapped tightly around the strap of his backpack. A gush of hot air hit him and, for a few seconds, half his body was in the cool comfort of the air-conditioned baggage area and the other half engulfed by Hyderabad’s intense heat. He had expected to be greeted by cows and snake charmers. Instead the airport looked like most airports in the States. Globalization, he thought with a grin.

His shuttle arrived. The ride to the Hyderabad Royal Star Hotel was a short one. It wasn’t much better than staying at the Y, but it was a stone’s throw away from the Hyatt where Max and her boyfriend were staying.

Max put down the receiver. She had just informed Kevin that she and Julian had landed in Hyderabad.

See you in two hours, Kevin had said. Two hours was a long time. Her nerves were frayed and raw. She wanted
and
didn’t want to know the contents of the research. She wasn’t sure which desire was stronger. All she knew was that the two feelings were tearing her apart. She had pumped herself up about doing this, finishing what she had started, but part of her still wished she were back in her kitchen in Chicago.

Julian pulled her close. “We should be singing a Bollywood song and dancing around those beautiful trees. You’d look perfect in a wet red chiffon sari, gyrating your hips against mine—”

Max let out a grunt of irritation.

Julian held up his palms. “Okay, okay. They say we have to try the lamb biryani here.”

Max kissed his palms and nuzzled her face against his. “It’s frightening how well you know me,” she whispered.

Julian kissed her forehead. He said in a low, seductive voice, “Garlicky. Spicy hot. Meat that melts like butter in your mouth. Fragrant with saffron…”

Her mouth started to water. She moaned. “Oh, baby…how can I say no? And after, I want to buy the beautiful Indian outfit I saw in the hotel boutique.”

“Which you will wear and do a Bollywood dance with me on the lawn?”

Max leapt at him and smothered his face with kisses.

Seated by a small rock garden in the Hyatt’s Khazana restaurant, Max and Julian ate the spicy, savory lamb biryani with their bare fingers, just as the server had recommended.

After, they waited for Kevin in the lobby.

A plump, bearded man with a pleasant face entered and looked around. He was dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt. Upon seeing Max, his face broke into a huge grin. He strode toward her and held out both hands.

Max felt a sense of relief upon seeing Kevin. He was her father’s old acquaintance, even if he had been an estranged one.

Max extended a tentative hand toward Kevin. He grabbed both of her hands and encased them within his own. “Thanks for coming, Maxine. And thank you for trusting me. Helping you won’t wash away my sins as far as your father was concerned. But I’m hoping it might at least make them fade a little.”

Max nodded, not knowing what to say. “Dr. Forsyth, this is my…uh, this is Julian McIntosh.”

After exchanging introductions, they walked toward a sofa by a large window.

“You remind me of Hiram,” Kevin said to Max.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Max smiled. “Thank you.”

“Hiram was brilliant, but not a risk taker,” Kevin said in a conversational tone. “Perhaps he was too honest for the business world.”

“I think it’s only right to run a business honestly,” Max almost snapped. Normally she would have only thought such a thing. She was surprised the words had actually come out of her mouth, and with such force.

Kevin turned beet red. “Of course. I suppose I deserve that.”

“I’m sorry.” Max put a hand on his arm. “I don’t know what came over me.”

Kevin was perspiring. He took out a large handkerchief and wiped his face and neck with it. “Hiram always said it is unfortunate that kids have to bear the burden of their parents’ actions. He bore his father’s, and now you are bearing his. Which is why he chose to be ethical in all his dealings. There’s no gray area in ethics, he said.”

Max nodded with a sad smile.

“He once told me how strong he thought you are.” Kevin put a hand on Max’s shoulder.

She flinched a little. “It’s a fleeting strength, I’m afraid,” she said.

An awkward silence ensued. Julian nudged Max.

“Shall we look at the document?” Max said.

Kevin looked around. “Ah, there he is.” He raised his arm and waved. A young man glided towards them.

“You said you have the key,” Kevin said to Max.

“Well, we think so,” Max said with a glance at the young man at their side.

“This is Rishi, an encryption expert. He will help us.”

Rishi shook their hands and led them to an empty conference room in the hotel. He set up his laptop and looked at them expectantly.

“The research document is on this laptop,” Kevin said. “Shall we try your key?”

Max showed him the verse and its translation. She explained how they found the 11:32 and connected it to the verse in her grandfather’s diary.

“It would make sense,” Kevin said.

They typed the English translation of the verse into the computer. A while later, Rishi turned the screen toward them.

The document looked less like gibberish. Clear language started to emerge.

Kevin scrolled to the top.

“Hiram has written to you, it would seem,” he said.

Max peered at the screen.

Max gave a shudder. Luckily she was able to compose herself and not give way to torrents of waterworks. “Did the verse decode the whole document?” she asked, filled with a renewed sense of purpose.

“Only partially,” Rishi said, “Seems we need a second key.”

Kevin smiled and shook his head. “Dr. P.S. Oup,” he said. “Hiram was a clown. Pea Soup!”

“What does that mean?” Max asked.

“Your father was a clown
and
a geneticist. Gregor Mendel is the father of modern genetics. His groundbreaking work was based on the common variety garden pea. Hiram and I often talked about the ordinary pea soup with much respect because of this.”

“So the key is pea soup?”

“Possibly. Or some combination of pea soup and Mendelian traits, another term we used often. There are a few different phrases that come to mind.”

Max shuffled her feet and looked around the room.

Kevin smiled. “It’ll take us a while to do this. Besides, I’ll need some time to make sense of Hiram’s research once we get it decoded.”

“Of course,” Max said. She and Julian left the room.

Hans considered his reflection in the hotel room mirror. There were deep lines under his eyes that had appeared as if overnight. His hair seemed to be thinning, too, or was he imagining it? He moved closer to the mirror and looked with a grunt of dissatisfaction. His roots were starting to turn their natural dirty brown. And he had neglected to bring his—some said unusual, but he maintained striking—shade of hair dye.

He rubbed his eyes. The dry Hyderabad heat was leaving him exhausted and irritated. At least his room in the Hyatt, three floors below Max’s, was air-conditioned.

Hans had left London and returned to Germany knowing that no matter what Max and Julian decided to do, he would be able to take action. Herr Schultz had hoped that with Lars gone, Max might call upon Kevin for help. Ernst Frank couldn’t be useful to her other than serving as a sympathetic ear, they had decided.

Still, Hans hadn’t figured on Max making this much progress so quickly.

Hans left his hotel room, closing the door lightly behind him. He stepped outside the hotel and waited for his taxi to take him to the airport, where he knew Kevin and the others would soon be headed.

They would probably discuss the papers before they left for Karachi. There wasn’t enough time for much else; their flight was in a few hours. He didn’t need to listen in on their discussion. The content of the papers was well known to Herr Schultz.

Hans planned his moves with caution. The Pakistani and Indian police were known to be ruthless. Being thrown in jail to languish for months, even years, without a trial was not unknown in these parts. The last thing he wanted was to be arrested in a place where Herr Schultz’s influence held little value.

His wife had asked him how far he was willing to go for Herr Schultz.

Hans was starting to wonder about it, too.