The Mahabharata Secret (27 page)

‘I believe you,’ Farooq said, after a pause. ‘You just stumbled upon the riddle today. You haven’t had time to decipher it. But you’ve been pretty good at unravelling the clues so far. I’m sure you’ll get this one, too. Here’s the deal. I’m giving you two days. Forty-eight hours. Spend that time wisely. When I call back, I want the location of the secret.’

‘And what if we can’t get the answer to the riddle?’

‘Well, then, that’s tough luck,’ Farooq’s unctuous voice was calm. ‘You’ll never see your friends again. And there’s a lot we can do with the woman. Before we kill her.’

The phone went dead.

‘We have to spend every minute of the next 48 hours trying to find out what that verse means,’ Colin said sombrely. He knew he would do his best, and so would the others. But would their best be enough?

Mission Patna

Imran stood in Vaid’s office. For the last hour he had tried calling Vijay’s phone to warn him about the threat from Farooq, but Vijay’s phone had just kept ringing. It was too much to hope that Vijay wasn’t carrying his cellphone or was not responding for some other reason. It was more likely that he was too late.

And now it looked like his plan would also come to naught. ‘I don’t get it,’ he stared at Vaid in disbelief. ‘What justification are they asking for? Don’t they have all they need? Do they want Farooq to present himself before them? Bloody bureaucrats!’

He had been summoned by Vaid minutes ago and informed that the mandarins in the Home Ministry had asked for justification to deploy the 50 commandos Imran had asked for to be despatched to Patna. It was this news that had provoked his outburst.

Vaid regarded Imran calmly. While he knew that Imran’s question was rhetorical, he could understand his subordinate’s frustration.

‘You know better than anyone that we can’t follow up every lead we get,’ he tried to reason with Imran. ‘The Home Ministry believes that with the death of Bheem Singh, the plot has been foiled. There was no mention of Farooq in your conversation with him. They don’t want to fly a planeload of commandos all the way to Patna for nothing.’

‘I know that’s procedure. But, surely they know that Bheem Singh spoke about his partners? That would have been in the recording of our conversation.’

‘It was there. I don’t know if they’ve gone through the recording in detail. But even if they have, they probably think that after Bheem Singh’s death, the partners are leaderless, rudderless and directionless.’

‘Vijay Singh and his friend, Radha Shukla, have been kidnapped,’ Imran said quietly.

Vaid raised his eyebrows.

‘Yesterday, I authorised a tap on Vijay’s mobile phone. Just in case. Sure enough, just about an hour ago, Farooq called the others using Vijay’s phone. And told them to decipher some verse in exchange for their lives.’

Vaid leaned forward, his curiousity piqued. ‘Did Farooq refer to himself by name?’

Imran knew what Vaid was looking for. But he also knew that this hope was futile. ‘He didn’t.’

‘There’s nothing else we can do, then. We need evidence that Farooq is at large and in Patna. Find me something and, I promise you, I’ll have the commandos flown there with an hour’s notice.’

Imran sighed. He knew Vaid was right. Eyebrows had already been raised at his surreptitious mission at Bheem Singh’s farmhouse. Never mind that he had unearthed the terrorist plot of the century. He had broken the rules. If he had the commandos flown to Patna and they didn’t find Farooq, there would be trouble. And he had no way of knowing if Farooq would actually make good his threat. After all, he wouldn’t yet have heard of Bheem Singh’s death. What would he do when he knew? Suppose he decided to call off the search?

‘I’ve also put a trace on Vijay and Radha Shukla’s mobile phones,’ he informed Vaid. ‘If Farooq uses either phone again, we’ll locate him. I’ll find him and call you.’

‘You’re going to Patna?’

Imran smiled grimly. ‘I want to make sure we nail that bastard.’

33

Day 8

Patna

Farooq beamed with satisfaction at his two prisoners. ‘Finally, I have you where I want you. Your friends are going to work out the last clue you found at Barabar. And once we have that clue, the secret of the Nine will belong to us.’

Vijay and Radha sat on the floor before him. Radha’s hands had been unbound but Vijay’s hands were still tied behind his back.

After a short, bumpy ride in the SUV, through narrow lanes and dark alleys, they had arrived at a three-storey house in a nondescript section of Patna. Both prisoners had been dragged into the house, where they had been dumped in this room. There was no one in the room apart from the three of them; Farooq’s armed goons stood guard outside the door.

Vijay didn’t like the fact that their captors had made no effort to blindfold them or confuse them in any way about the location of the building where they were being held captive. It was as if Farooq didn’t really care if they were able to identify the place later or not. He guessed that Farooq didn’t mean to let them leave. That was a sobering thought!

But he still put up a brave front and he could see that Radha was doing the same. She was a strong woman; he had always known that, but to see her hold up in the face of the kind of adversity they were now confronted with was a different thing. His respect and admiration for her had increased by several notches. As had his sense of despondency.

Vijay stared back angrily at Farooq. ‘You’re never going to get away with this.’

‘Really? And who is going to find you? Not your friends.’

‘The Maharaja,’ Radha said suddenly. ‘Bheem Singh. Greg White will inform him and he’ll organise a rescue party for us.’ Her eyes flashed at Farooq . ‘You and your gang of thugs will go to jail.’

Farooq smirked. ‘Gang of thugs, eh? You really don’t know who you’re dealing with here, do you?’

A sudden fear took hold of Vijay. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘And what are you after?’

There was a genuine look of surprise on Farooq’s face. ‘You mean to say you don’t know what the secret of the Nine is?’ His voice rang with disbelief.

Vijay shook his head. ‘No. We know that the brotherhood of the Nine was created by Asoka to conceal a great but dangerous discovery. But we don’t know any more than that.’

Farooq laughed heartily. ‘You’ve gone to such great lengths to decipher the clues left by the Nine and travelled across India following the trail of their secret but you have no idea what you seek? This is rich.’

Vijay flushed. He didn’t like the way Farooq put it, but he was right. All he had been focused on was following the clues in his uncle’s message and finding the secret. He and his friends had been so caught up in this that they never really gave a thought to the actual nature of the secret. He felt a bit foolish, recognising the truth in Farooq’s words.

‘Do
you
know what the secret is?’ he countered aggressively.

‘Of course,’ came the immediate reply. ‘We’ve known all along. We found out 10 years ago.’

‘We?’ Radha didn’t understand.

Farooq seemed to mull over something.

‘No one is going to come to your rescue,’ he said finally. ‘And there’s no way you can escape us now. So I guess there’s no harm if I tell you now. After all you’ve gone through, perhaps you deserve to know.’

He barked out an order and one of his men scurried into the room with a chair. He settled down comfortably, after dismissing the guard. ‘Let’s begin with ancient history. You are right about Asoka the Great and the discovery of the secret which led to the birth of the Nine in the third century bc. Fast forward to 500 ad, when the first Maharaja of Rajvirgarh stumbled upon the Nine and an ancient lost book of the Mahabharata.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Radha interrupted. ‘Rajvirgarh? Isn’t that Bheem Singh’s ancestral kingdom?’

Farooq grinned wickedly. ‘Yes, I’m speaking of Bheem Singh’s ancestor, the man who founded the kingdom of Rajvirgarh when the Gupta Empire crumbled. The stone book was the
Vimana Parva
, that was deliberately not recorded and available for the masses, unlike the other books of the Mahabharata, when the oral tradition gave way to the written one. The book described a secret weapon from the gods that the Kauravas were about to employ on the battlefield with the help of the King of Magadha. But with the abrupt end of the war that weapon was never deployed.’

‘That’s what the inscription said,’ Radha looked at Vijay. ‘The one on the wall of the secret chamber at Bairat. You remember Papa translated it for us.’

Vijay nodded as it was Farooq’s turn to flush. ‘I never saw that inscription,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘But it doesn’t matter now. We don’t need it.’

He resumed his story. ‘The Maharaja discovered that his court astronomer was, in reality, a member of the Nine and tried to get the secret out of him. But the astronomer disappeared and was never seen again.’

He chuckled. ‘Until 2001. When the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas.’

Vijay’s hopes began to sink. Farooq’s words were ominous. Was he connected in some way to the Taliban?

‘There were caves hidden behind the statues,’ Farooq continued, ‘caves that were hidden away for 1,500 years. In one of those caves, the Taliban found the skeleton of a man and a treasure trove of ancient documents. Texts that had somehow survived the ravages of time. They also came across a metal disk with inscriptions. Our long-lost astronomer from Rajvirgarh had finally been found.’

Radha and Vijay exchanged glances. So this was where the second metal disk had turned up.

‘Unfortunately,’ Farooq continued, ignoring them, ‘the Taliban couldn’t read the texts. They were written in Kharosthi. So the ignorant louts sat on them for a while without knowing their significance.’

‘So how did you get hold of them?’ Vijay demanded. He was trembling despite himself, in anticipation of Farooq’s revelation of his links to the notorious former rulers of Afghanistan.

‘Patience,’ Farooq admonished him. ‘I’ll come to that in a bit. But first, here’s something you didn’t know.’ He grinned again, clearly enjoying himself.

‘Around the same time as the discovery of the texts, in early 2001, I was approached by the Nine with an invitation to join them. One of their members had died and they were searching for a replacement.’

‘You mean the Nine are still around?’ Vijay wondered aloud. ‘I thought they had died out centuries ago?’

Farooq looked directly at Vijay. ‘It was your uncle who extended the invitation. He was a member of the Nine…and their contemporary leader as well.’

He was greeted by expressions of disbelief.

Vijay found his tongue. ‘Is this another of your tricks? Uncle, a member of the Nine, and their leader as well?’

Farooq stared back at him, his gaze unwavering. ‘I know it’s hard to believe. But it’s true.’

‘It does make sense,’ Radha said slowly, addressing Vijay. ‘It would explain the clues he left in his emails to you. It also explains how he was so well-informed about the locations of the clues we’ve followed so far. That’s probably also how he came to possess the metal disk we found in his locker.’

‘Oh, that wasn’t with him to start with,’ Farooq clarified. ‘The disk and the key to the disk were never kept with the same person; always two different people. It came to him when I killed the member of the Nine who possessed it. Two years ago.’ His eyes flashed angrily. ‘He never told me he had it. They had a secret code by which, if something happened to one member, anything they possessed was passed on to another member whose identity they knew, until the member who died was replaced.’

There was silence once more. They could both imagine what had happened to the rest of the Nine. Vijay’s mind flashed back to the softboard at his uncle’s desk; the eight news clippings that reported the mysterious deaths of eminent people all over the world. Had they been the other eight?

Farooq was speaking again. ‘I was delighted to accept his invitation and I joined the Nine. It was an honour. It didn’t matter that India and Pakistan harboured political animosities. As a nuclear scientist, I felt the Nine had no political or geographical boundaries. But that was short-lived. After 9/11, when the US invaded Afghanistan and killed thousands of innocent civilians after overthrowing the Taliban, I joined Al Qaeda. The West had no right to attack and kill innocent Muslims without provocation.

‘The US had long helped Pakistan with its covert nuclear programme and I had come to regard America as a friend. But 9/11 showed me that it was a marriage of convenience for the Americans. I began to hate America and when Al Qaeda approached me, I joined them. I had planned to pass on critical components of the Pakistani nuclear programme to Al Qaeda so they could assemble a nuclear bomb.’

Vijay’s hopes sank even lower. Farooq was a member of Al Qaeda! What moment of madness had led him to entangle with a man who was proudly confessing to being a terrorist? He clung on weakly to the only hope that seemed to be left for them: Bheem Singh. Surely the Maharaja would be able to command resources that would lead to their rescue?

And another question had begun to trouble him. What was there about the secret of the Nine that was of such interest to Al Qaeda?

Farooq was speaking again and his next words shattered Vijay’s hopes. ‘I met with one of Al Qaeda’s partners, a powerful consortium led by an Austrian businessman, Van Klueck and Bheem Singh. They had been unsuccessfully searching for the secret of the Nine since 1990, when Bheem Singh had discovered ancient documents in a secret chamber in Rajvirgarh fort; documents that spoke of the
Vimana Parva
and the missing astronomer.’

‘What?’ Radha couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Bheem Singh is a partner of Al Qaeda?’

Farooq was grinning from ear to ear, enjoying their shock and visible discomfort. He had known that they were pinning their hopes on the Maharaja.

Vijay’s expression grew gloomy and forlorn as he digested this revelation. There was no hope of escape left for him and Radha. He looked at Radha and saw the same conclusion in her eyes.

‘So Bheem Singh knew you were a member of the Nine?’ Radha demanded.