The Mahabharata Secret (28 page)

‘Of course not. I wasn’t going to tell them everything. I’m pretty sure they held back a lot of secrets from me.’

Farooq waited for a while before taking up the narrative again. ‘Bheem Singh and Van Klueck had searched high and low for clues to the secret of the Nine. They even sent a squad of assassins to the Temple of the Tooth near Lhasa. The assassins massacred the monks and made off with the ancient texts that were hidden in a vault in the temple. But they couldn’t find the metal disk and the key which were so vital to the search.’ He shrugged. ‘Naturally. One disk was with the Nine. The other was with the astronomer, buried behind the Buddhas at Bamiyan.’

He leaned forward and looked at Vijay. ‘Now, I’ll answer your question about how I got the metal disk and the texts. Luckily for us, before the Taliban was overthrown, the disk and the texts were passed on to Mohammed Bin Jabal, an Al Qaeda leader. But it wasn’t until 2003 that I got to see them. I immediately realised they were important, though I had never imagined what they would lead to. I took them to Vikram Singh, who didn’t yet know about my links to Al Qaeda. He translated them for me and I learned the truth about the secret of the Nine.’

He looked at Vijay. ‘Unfortunately, your uncle began wondering where I had found the disk and the texts. And when I asked him which member of the Nine had the key, he became suspicious. He secretly placed me under surveillance and discovered that I was working for Al Qaeda. He confronted me and threatened to expose me.’ A shadow crossed his face. ‘I gave him a chance. I told him if he let me know who had the key, I’d leave him alone and that would be the end of it.’

‘But he didn’t.’ There was pride in Vijay’s voice.

‘I had to go underground. While I lay low, I got involved with Lashkar-e-Taiba, who had ambitions of becoming the foremost Islamic defender of the faith. I also informed Bheem Singh and Van Klueck about the discovery. One of the texts mentioned a hidden location and gave instructions on how to find it. But that wasn’t where the secret was hidden. Instead, we found a small hoard of weapons, fairly sophisticated considering their antiquity, which we reverse engineered to build our own armoury.’

Radha and Vijay recalled the examples Shukla had given them, in an earlier conversation, of the so-called celestial weapons that had been used in the Mahabharata; terrifying weapons that could kill thousands at one stroke and lay entire regions to waste. It was a sobering thought.

‘That contraption you used to blow up the vault door,’ Vijay recalled the events at the vault in Delhi, ‘was that part of this hoard?’

‘One of the original weapons,’ Farooq beamed. ‘Not one of the replicas we built. Imagine it. A weapon thousands of years old, still in pristine working condition. And amazingly lightweight as well. That metal—we couldn’t figure out its composition—was lighter than aluminium or even carbon fibre.’

Vijay remembered seeing how the device had been folded up to less than half its size and the manner in which it had been carried away. Having witnessed the power of that device, the fact that a terrorist organisation like LeT had access to weapons like this was frightening.

‘Does that mean there is some truth to the legends of the Mahabharata?’ Radha wondered. ‘That the war actually did happen in ancient times?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Farooq was dismissive. ‘The weapons were powerful, but that isn’t what we were looking for. Though we did find an incomplete manual that described how to build the ultimate weapon of the Kauravas, the one described in the
Vimana Parva
. Using the manual, we built a prototype. But it didn’t work the way it was supposed to. We realised we needed to find the location where the weapon was hidden. Which meant we needed the key to the disk. So, we began looking for the key.’

‘And murdered the members of the Nine, one by one,’ Vijay said, bitterly.

Farooq sounded enthralled by his memories. ‘We used the weapons we had built using the secret hoard we had discovered. I was fond of your uncle. I didn’t want to kill him. Which is why I left him for the last, hoping that one of the others would have the key.

‘No wonder your uncle had such an advanced security system installed at the fort,’ Radha remarked. ‘He knew his life was in danger.’

‘And you murdered him.’ Vijay’s voice was low, but the pain of his uncle’s death had returned. He was also angry with himself for having unwittingly aided a terrorist organisation in getting their hands on a secret that the Nine had strived for centuries to keep concealed.

‘So what is this secret?’ Radha returned to the question that had led to these revelations.

‘An amazing weapon delivery system,’ Farooq hissed, his eyes brightening. ‘One that we will use to carry out our threat.’ He smiled superciliously. ‘We are going to attack the G20 summit in Washington. Al Qaeda has become obsolete and redundant, a toothless paper tiger. It is time for them to be replaced by an organisation that is more innovative and persistent. The time has come when the world will sit up and take note of Lashkar-e-Taiba!’

34

Day 9

The Hotel Ashoka Palace, Patna

Colin, White and Shukla were gathered in Colin’s room. He hadn’t slept much the previous night and, from the linguist’s face, it was evident that he hadn’t either. Colin placed a sheaf of papers before the others and this included some of the printouts they’d referred to in their earlier meetings.

‘I’ve been thinking about the verse all night,’ Colin began. ‘About who the Mother could be and how we can locate the forests where the verse says she lives. But it didn’t get me anywhere. Then, I realised that I was probably thinking too much about the Mother and not enough about the meaning of the verse. Perhaps if we start with the first line and try and understand each line, as we did with the inscriptions on the metal disk, we may get somewhere.’

‘The first line seems easy,’ White offered. ‘The chambers that echo would be the Barabar caves, I think.’

Colin nodded. ‘That’s what I thought as well. So, if we stand at the Barabar caves and look south, what do we see?’

He picked up the map of India from among the papers. It was the same map that they had referred to in the study at Jaungarh a few days ago, with the locations of all the edicts of Asoka marked out on it.

‘I’m guessing we are still looking for locations of Asoka’s edicts. There are only two places south of Barabar where the edicts are located,’ Colin pointed out the two locations along the eastern coast of India. ‘At least the ones that are nearby. All the others are way down south, near the southern borders of his empire.’

‘Dhauli and Jaugada,’ White read off the map.

‘I think one of these two should be the one referred to in the verse,’ Shukla concurred.

‘The verse says that we should look southwards to
the harbinger of the Lord’s birth
. Any ideas what that means? Who is the
Lord
?’

‘
The harbinger of the Lord’s birth
,’ Shukla mused. ‘These verses were written by members of Asoka’s court. In which case, the
Lord
is most likely Lord Buddha.’

‘And was there a portent that heralded his birth?’ Colin inquired.

Shukla’s thoughts were distracted by his concern about his daughter. Was she safe? Were they treating her badly? He shook away the thoughts with an effort and replied slowly, thinking hard.

‘I haven’t heard of any legends about a sign or omen heralding Buddha’s birth. But, in art, Buddha’s conception is normally depicted by a dream of his mother, Maya, in which a white elephant enters her womb. I don’t know if this depiction comes down all the way from Asoka’s time, but that is the only “harbinger” I can think of.’

‘It must be the one, then.’ Colin looked convinced. ‘The next line says:
In a dream
. Do you think it is one sentence deliberately split into two lines to confuse the reader:
To the harbinger of the Lord’s birth in a dream
. That could mean the elephant in the dream.’

He reached out for some of the printouts and began scanning them.

‘If we look southwards from Barabar, where do we find a white elephant? Could it be a painting of a white elephant? As you say, this is the depiction of Buddha’s conception in art.’ Colin frowned.

‘Listen to this.’ White began reading aloud from the sheet of paper in his hand. ‘At Dhauli, near the ancient town of Tosali, is an Asokan inscription carved into a rock. Immediately above the inscription is a terrace, on the right side of which is carved the forepart of an elephant, four feet tall. The elephant is a symbol of Lord Buddha and has now become an object of popular worship.’ He looked around. ‘What do you think?’

‘Could be.’ Colin was perceptibly excited. There was a ray of hope, after all. ‘Okay, if we assume that the elephant at Dhauli is the one that can be seen when we look southwards from Barabar, what next?’

‘We come back to the Mother.’ White was matter-of-fact. ‘Which is where we got stuck in the first place.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Colin admitted.
Passing over the Mother.
What could that mean? Who is the
Mother
? And how does one pass over her? They didn’t have planes in those days.’

‘Could this be a reference to some ancient statue?’ White wondered aloud.

‘If it was a statue it must have been someone famous at the time,’ Shukla suggested. ‘But I can’t think of any woman from that period whose fame has persisted through the centuries.’

A thought struck White. ‘What about the edicts of Asoka? Suppose we follow his edicts again? Is there any reference to a mother in them?’

Colin shook his head, his elation slowly dissipating. They were going round in circles. ‘Last night, I went through all the material we have. I couldn’t find any reference to a mother in any of the locations where the edicts were found.’

A feeling of dread took hold of Colin. Would they ever be able to solve this mystery? And, even if they did, would they be in time to save Vijay and Radha?

35

Day 10

Patna

White and Colin strolled down the road where their hotel was situated. The previous day had passed without any further breakthrough in their attempts to decipher the riddle. Even today, they were no closer to solving the puzzle. They had just three hours left to find the right answer for Farooq. A shop they were passing caught Colin’s eye. He stopped and pointed to a row of colourful brochures on the shop counter.

‘Travel brochures.’ Colin began thumbing through them. The shop was a little travel agency. ‘These are local tours. Looks like there’s lots to be seen around here.’ He was desperately looking for a way to take his mind off the problem of the clues. Perhaps if he was able to stop thinking about the problem he might get some new ideas that would lead to a breakthrough.

He picked up some more pamphlets and flipped through them, now genuinely interested. ‘Seems like Barabar isn’t really on the tourist circuit,’ he observed. ‘There’s no reference to the caves in any of these brochures.’

White looked like he didn’t understand but he, too, picked up a brochure and looked at it.

‘Tours of Bihar and Jharkhand,’ he read out the title of one. The owner of the travel agency, observing what seemed to be two American tourists browsing through his itineraries, hurried to the main counter.

‘Very good sights to see, sir,’ he began, addressing Colin. ‘Not very far from here, sir.’ He glanced at the brochure Colin was perusing. ‘Interested in ancient history, sir? You come to right place.’ His sharp eyes had observed Colin scrutinising the brochures, searching for a mention of the Barabar caves.

‘Lots of ancient sites, sir,’ the travel agent continued, thinking he was homing in on the kill. ‘Hazaribagh plateau. Not far from here. Many old sites; Banadag megaliths, ancient burial stones of the Kolarian tribes, Bawanbai Hills. Ancient manmade hill, according to the legends.’

He paused to see if his words were having any effect. Not satisfied with what he saw in their faces, he persisted. ‘North Karanpura valley. Stone tool culture. Rock paintings. Very old. Karanpura valley. More rock paintings.’ Pausing, he looked at his two prospective customers again.

‘There’s more, much more,’ he continued, obviously feeling that he hadn’t impressed the American tourists sufficiently with his sales pitch. ‘Sitagarha Hill.’ He passed a brochure to White from the back of the acrylic brochure rack. ‘Important Buddhist site. 300 bc. Sacred hill. Forms the figure of a Mother Goddess. Worshipped by the Birhor tribals.’

White smiled and took the brochure from him.

Colin froze. He reached out and grabbed the brochure the agent had handed to White.

‘What...?’ White began but stopped as he saw the expression on Colin’s face. ‘You got something?’

Colin didn’t hear him. He was engrossed in reading the contents of the brochure. When he had finished, he looked at White, a big smile on his face. ‘Thank you.’ He passed a
`
500 note to the travel agent. ‘Thank you very much! You don’t know how helpful you’ve been.’

‘No mention,’ the puzzled travel agent replied, wondering what he had done to earn the money. However, he accepted it with grace even though he was disappointed that the two prospects wouldn’t convert to paying customers.