The Mahabharata Secret (13 page)

‘Colin is right,’ Radha agreed. ‘If someone was trying to decipher the verse and didn’t know that they had to follow the edicts, they wouldn’t get too far. And they’d also need to know a lot about Asoka and his edicts.’

‘So, we go to Bairat?’ Colin enquired, looking at Vijay.

‘That’s logical, isn’t it?’

Radha pulled out a sheet, from the printouts, and read from it. ‘Bairat is a small town in Rajasthan, forty two miles northeast of Jaipur. This little town has the distinction of having the oldest freestanding Buddhist structure in India – the ruins of a third century bc
chaitya
.’

‘What’s a
chaitya
?’ Colin wanted to know.

‘Broadly speaking, a Buddhist chapel,’ Shukla informed him.

‘There are also brick and timber shrines of the same period,’ Radha continued. ‘A fragment of the rock edict of Asoka is now housed in the building of the Asiatic Society in Kolkata.’

‘It’s gotta be Bairat,’ Colin said. ‘It can’t be coincidence that there was a rock edict of Asoka
and
remains of structures from his time at this location, especially when it lies at the intersection of these two lines on this map.’

‘It can’t be too far from here,’ Radha remarked. ‘It’s on the Alwar-Jaipur highway, so it shouldn’t be more than an hour’s drive.’

‘Let’s go then,’ Colin’s eyes shone with anticipation. The others nodded, sharing in his excitement at the thought of finding a 2,000-year old secret.

‘What do we do if we find the secret?’ Shukla asked quietly, bringing an element of sobriety into the atmosphere.

‘We’ll inform the Maharaja,’ Vijay replied, promptly. ‘He’ll know what needs to be done to keep the secret safe.’

‘So why don’t we tell him now?’ Shukla pressed.

Vijay frowned. ‘I don’t know. Suppose we are wrong and there’s nothing there? What if we’ve read the clues all wrong and got the wrong location? I’m not sure we should tell anyone until we find out for ourselves. But I’ll call Greg and ask him if he’d like to join us. I’m sure he’d love to be a part of the discovery of a 2,000-year old secret.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m going to pack a few things. See you down in the hall in half an hour.’

15

Day 6

Intelligence Bureau Headquarters, New Delhi

Michael Blake sat in Imran Kidwai’s office. Imran had called him, with no explanation other than a statement that they had come across some information that Blake might find interesting.

‘It was a stroke of luck,’ Imran began. ‘A hunch that paid off. Nothing more.’

‘Regarding Farooq?’

Imran nodded. ‘When I saw the report on Murphy, I got an idea. Murphy had checked into a hotel in Gurgaon. Why Gurgaon? Why not Delhi? It was quite possible that there was no particular reason and it was a random choice. But what if it wasn’t?’

Blake frowned. ‘I see what you mean. Murphy could have chosen Gurgaon simply because the LeT team was also based there.’

‘Exactly. Which includes Farooq and, perhaps, the member of the “Order” who was mentioned in the call you guys tapped into. So I got this crazy idea. While the Gurgaon police was engaged in trying to locate Murphy, I also put out a call to locate anyone whose name began with Farooq or ended with Siddiqui.’

‘And something came up.’

Imran nodded, beaming. ‘Yes. You’re not going to believe this. The Gurgaon police actually had a case registered with them against a person named Farooq; a kidnapping case. Apparently this Farooq and an accomplice, named Imtiaz, had been involved in the kidnapping of two men and holding them captive in Gurgaon. But here’s the interesting part. The case was referred to the Gurgaon police by the SHO of Jaungarh, which is a small village en route to Jaipur from Delhi. It seems that the two men, who were kidnapped, live there.’

Blake looked thoughtful. ‘And you think this might be Farooq? But why would he kidnap two men from an obscure village? It doesn’t make sense.’

Imran picked up a folded newspaper from his desk and handed it over to Blake, who unfolded it and gazed at the headlines.

‘Read the leading byline.’

‘
Mysterious murder of nuclear scientist
,’ Blake read aloud and scanned the contents of the news article. ‘So, this prominent retired nuclear scientist was murdered under mysterious circumstances. No clues were left at the murder scene. A Pakistani hand is suspected.’ He shrugged and grinned. ‘That’s normal isn’t it?
Police are investigating but have little to go on
.’ He folded the newspaper and placed it back on the desk and waited. He knew there was more to come.

‘One of the kidnapped men from Jaungarh was the nephew of the murdered scientist.’

Light dawned on Blake. ‘I get it. So you think that Farooq Siddiqui may have been involved in the murder of the scientist and the kidnapping of the nephew. But why would he murder this scientist?’

‘I haven’t been able to figure out what LeT is doing in India. We are making a lot of assumptions, but if our conclusions based on the video and the phone tap are correct, then LeT and Murphy’s employers are working together on some project in India. Farooq is leading that project. He is also a nuclear scientist. Both he and Vikram Singh, the murdered Indian scientist, were involved in the production of their respective country’s nuclear bomb. Too many coincidences! What if Farooq was after something that Vikram Singh had? Information, plans, designs...I don’t know. And the nephew may know something too, which is why he was kidnapped. But he managed to escape and filed a police report giving the names of two of his captors.’

‘What’s the plan, then?’

Imran grinned at him. ‘We go pay Vijay Singh, the nephew, a visit at Jaungarh. Let’s find out if our deductions amount to anything.’

Bijak-ki-Pahari

Radha drove slowly along the highway connecting Delhi and Jaipur. Trucks, cars and jeeps whizzed past them at high speed. Vijay sat in the passenger seat next to Radha and Colin and Shukla were seated at the back. White had expressed his inability to make the trip as he was accompanying the Maharaja to a meeting. He had sounded quite miserable at being left out of what would definitely be a momentous discovery. But since Vijay was quite insistent that the Maharaja shouldn’t know about Bairat until they had returned, there was no excuse White could think of that would be strong enough to excuse himself from the meeting with Bheem Singh.

According to the map of Rajasthan they carried with them, they realised, there should be a left turn that led to Bairat but they had seen no road leading off the highway, except for a few dirt paths that snaked though the fields. Nor were there signs along the highway marking the road to Bairat.

Vijay gazed at the map. ‘We passed Pragpura just now. The turn on the map lies between Pragpura and Shahpura. Those are the only landmarks on the map.’

‘It should be somewhere here, then.’ Colin had been gazing out of the window, studying the milestones they passed. ‘We’re just fifteen kilometres from Shahpura.’

‘Let’s ask someone.’ Radha spotted a cluster of trucks parked next to a row of rustic wood and thatch buildings.

Vijay and Colin alighted and walked towards the nearest hut. Inside, they saw truckers lounging about on rough
charpoys
.

‘How do we get to Bairat?’ Vijay asked the nearest trucker in Hindi.

‘Keep going straight along the highway for around six kilometres and you’ll come to a left turn which will take you to Bairat,’ the man replied, studying them curiously. ‘The left turn’s just before the market.’

After getting the directions, they resumed the drive until they came across signs of habitation, probably the outskirts of Shahpura. As instructed, Radha turned into a road to the left.

A rickshaw driver confirmed they were on the right track and they sped down the road, which was smooth to begin with, but soon degenerated into a patchwork of potholes . On either side of the road was scrubland—expanses of sandy soil with thorny bushes.

Beyond the expanses of sand rose the Aravali hills; low, rocky hills upon which little vegetation grew. Boulders were stacked in clumps upon each hill and there was no sign of habitation around them.

Colin wondered aloud why Asoka had thought of choosing such a desolate region for one of his edicts.

‘It was different in those days,’ Shukla answered ‘Two thousand years ago, Bairat was probably an important confluence of trade routes. Asoka had wanted his edicts to be read by as many people as possible. He had them set up at ports, important towns and places where travellers would have stopped to rest on their journey. Bairat must have been one such place.’

There was little traffic on the road. Twenty minutes later, fields on either side of the road replaced the sand and bushes. As the fields gave way to clusters of mud houses, they realised they had reached the village of Bairat. At this time of day, few people could be seen.

‘Where do we find this hill?’ Colin wondered.

‘
Bijak-ki-pahari
,’ Shukla murmured, recalling the name of the hill where the Asokan edict and the ruins of the
chaitya
and the monastery were located, according to the information they had downloaded from the internet.

‘Hang on, there’s a sign here.’ Vijay craned his neck to read the minute inscription on a three-foot-high sandstone plaque planted alongside the road.

‘Department of Tourism.’ Vijay read out. ‘According to this, the
Bijak-ki-pahari is four kilometres from here.
’

Radha grinned mischievously. ‘I could have saved you the trouble.’ She indicated another sign mounted on a wooden post and shaped like an arrow. Upon the sign, crudely written in white paint, were the words
Bijak-ki-pahari
. The sign pointed down a mud track that branched off to their right.

Vijay looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure that sign is right? That doesn’t look like a road leading to a historical site.’

But Radha was already pulling onto the track. It was a narrow path, just enough to accommodate a single car, and walled in on either side by thorny plants with sharp, spiked leaves, that rose to a height of around 20 feet.

Radha negotiated the track cautiously. It was potholed and rutted by years of use by camel-drawn carts. The track wound right and left, and they occasionally, saw a small child standing in a break in the foliage, looking curiously at the car as it bounced along the path.

After being jolted around for a while, they came to a small clearing to the right of the path in which stood a small mud hut with whitewashed walls. A man was standing next to the hut.

Radha poked her head out of the window and hailed him in Hindi. ‘Where is the
Bijak-ki-pahari
?’

He approached them and pointed down the track. ‘I’ll show you the way if you want,’ he offered.

He introduced himself as Chunnilal and asked them to drive on while he joined them on foot.

The path changed from a mud track to a concrete road which had seen a lot of wear over the years. Eventually, , the road opened up into a large clearing paved with smooth stones. A small pillared structure occupied one corner of the clearing. All around them, small, misshapen rocky hills rose to a height of two to three hundred feet.

Chunnilal came up as they got out of the car and stretched their legs.

Groups of small monkeys with little black faces frolicked on the roof of the pillared building as they followed Chunnilal up the nearest hill, along a path, paved with stones and thorny bushes. The stone paved track soon gave way to a mud path and then to a well-paved stone path, that led to broad stone stairs that ascended the hill.

‘The government constructed this stairway recently,’ the well-informed Chunnilal told them.

The stone stairway skirted boulders that towered ten feet above them and passed under rocky overhangs; turning at sharp angles as it wound up the hill. The hillsides were strewn with rocks and immense boulders inclined at almost impossible angles. Stunted trees with spiny leaves and dry, thorny plants were the only signs of vegetation, as far as the eye could see.

Vijay and Colin bounded along ahead of the others. Shukla was helped along by Radha.

The stairway finally ended, opening up into a natural terrace dotted with huge rocks. To the left of the stairway stood a stone wall around five feet in height; it was evidently a recent reconstruction. Clinging to this were the remains of an ancient brick structure, not more than a couple of feet in height. The bricks had blackened with age and appeared to form a stairway leading to the terrace which lay behind the stone wall and was not visible to them from where they now stood.

‘That’s probably where the
chaitya
is,’ Vijay whispered to Colin, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

Chunnilal gestured to follow him as he walked away from the stone wall and, to their right, a long, oblong-shaped rock leaned at an angle of 25 degrees upon a smaller rock. Its raised tip had a large indentation in it, giving it the appearance of a rather angry looking giant slug that gazed out over the hills around.

As Radha, supporting her father, reached the terrace, she looked around but there was no one in sight. She yelled out for Vijay and he appeared from behind the slug-shaped rock.

‘Come here,’ he gestured to them. ‘You’ve got to see this.’

They followed him and came upon a cemented platform constructed outside a natural cave beneath the slug-shaped rock. Colin was sitting crosslegged on the platform, looking distinctly uncomfortable, and before him sat Chunnilal and another man, dishevelled, his hair unkempt and his beard straggly. Both men were smoking
bidis
.

‘The old man is the baba who looks after the temple within the cave,’ Vijay explained quietly. ‘He’s completely blind and lives on donations from the villagers and tourists who come by.’

Colin grinned at Radha as they joined him. ‘This is amazing,’ he remarked. ‘Apparently this cave has a 5,000-year-old history. It’s connected with the characters from the Mahabharata, which you told me about. Awesome, isn’t it, how we’ve been talking about the Gita and the clues and now we come across a site connected to the Nine and Asoka the Great, which also has a legend about the Mahabharata? Apparently the five brothers had come here; what was their name?’