The Mahabharata Secret (16 page)

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.

Farooq gestured to the inscription, his eyes glued to the pedestal. ‘Dr. Shukla, I know you are a linguist and a specialist in ancient Indian languages. Please translate this verse for me.’

Shukla stood his ground, his face white but determined. ‘And what if I refuse?’

‘You won’t.’ He barked another order and two men advanced towards Radha. One grabbed her by the hair, the other gripped her arm and together they dragged her away from the rest of the group.

‘Don’t hurt her!’ Vijay advanced two steps and three Uzis were immediately trained on him. He froze, knowing that Farooq wouldn’t hesitate to give the command to cut him down. He would be of no help to Radha and the others if he was dead. ‘For God’s sake, Dr. Shukla, give him the translation!’ He was beside himself with rage and fear now and he felt his hands trembling.

‘I’m sure you value the safety of your daughter.’ Farooq resumed his study of the pedestal.

Shukla’s lip quivered as he watched Radha struggle against the iron grip of the men who held her. They sneered. Radha yelped in pain as one of them pulled her hair and jerked her head back.

Farooq looked inquiringly at Shukla, who blurted out the meaning of the verse.

‘Four brothers.’ Farooq looked puzzled as he turned the verse over in his head, trying to make sense of it. ‘You’re sure of this translation?’ He looked at the old man and saw the terror in his eyes and nodded. ‘No, I don’t think you are dissembling.’

‘Let her go now,’ Vijay said fiercely. He glanced at Radha, still held by the two men, her head at an awkward angle as the man gripping her hair twisted her head back. ‘You have the translation.’

Farooq glanced at the inscription again as if to reassure himself that the translation was, indeed, correct. He gestured to his men and issued some more instructions. They stepped back from the group, their Uzis still trained on them, and the two men holding Radha released her.

Colin didn’t like the look on Farooq’s face. ‘I don’t think he intends freeing us,’ he whispered to Vijay.

His voice must have carried to Farooq, whose face twisted into a cruel grin. ‘I don’t mean to let you go so easily,’ he addressed Vijay. ‘Not after the hard time you’ve given me. And not once but twice. You are as bad as your uncle.’

Without bothering to explain, he turned on his heel and headed back up the staircase. His men backed away from the group, guns ready in case someone tried to make a break, and followed him up the stairs. Radha joined them as the last of the men disappeared.

‘You okay?’ Vijay asked her, concern in his voice. She nodded numbly, still dazed.

‘He’s going to drop the trapdoor on us.’ Colin had a worried look on his face. ‘There’s no other way out of this cavern.’

As he spoke, the sound of the trapdoor crashing down into its resting place echoed down the stairway and into the cavern. They looked at each other grimly. The stone trapdoor had been difficult to lift from the outside. How would they raise it from below?

Suddenly, a blast shook the cavern and the ground underfoot trembled as the roof of the cavern above the stairway came crashing down. The stairs disappeared in a pile of rubble. Almost simultaneously, the walls of the cavern shook and groaned, and the wall behind them, with the secret doorway, began to disintegrate and rain down in shards of stone.

They fled from the collapsing wall, bending double, trying to shield their heads from the shower of rocks from the wall and the stone roof.

As the collapse of the wall subsided in a cloud of dust they straightened up, coughing and flapping their hands in an attempt to wave the dust away from their faces.

‘He’s blasted the trapdoor opening with explosives.’ Vijay’s voice was surprisingly calm, belying the horror that gripped him with the realisation of what had happened.

They were trapped underground, deep within a hill, with no way to escape.

20

March 2, 2001

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

The air was thick with the sound of explosions. Scores of Taliban soldiers stood around and cheered as the anti-aircraft rounds ripped through the giant statues of the Buddha that had been carved into the sandstone cliffs, 1,500 years ago. Now, they were doomed—fated to be reduced to a memory occupying a corner of history—on the orders of the Taliban, rulers of Afghanistan. These statues had seen successive rulers of Afghanistan come and go, but they wouldn’t survive the rule of the Taliban.

The stone scultpures exploded in clouds of dust and a rain of rubble that cascaded down the sides of the cliff. Within moments, where the statues had stood, there remained only two hollows.

Some of the Taliban men picked up a rock or two, souvenirs to take home. They would tell their children and grandchildren about the day they destroyed the infidel statues.

Baran paused at the foot of the cliff, a rock in each hand, and looked up at the hollows left by the statues. The cliff was a jagged wall of stone where the statues had stood; solid, except for five black dots that marked the face of the cliff in the larger hollow.