THE MAHABHARATA QUEST:THE ALEXANDER SECRET (8 page)

15

More riddles

‘Okay, here’s the next one.’ Shukla turned the cube over
once again.

‘And from the lands around the rock

Pluck the fruit and leaf and bark

The first with many stems and fruit

Dark purple, clothed in grey and white

And green or brown. The next is smooth

Of texture, bearing violet fruit

Beware for burns will greet the touch.’

‘Pretty clear instructions,’ Colin remarked sarcastically, ‘if you knew what you were looking for.

‘But it does seem to confirm what Alice said just now,’ Radha countered. ‘This cube could be a secret guide to a quest. The only problem is we don’t know what the objective of that quest is.’

Shukla read out the next inscription.

‘Remember, adventurer, bold as you are

Ignore the warnings at your peril

The elements must come together

Protected by the fiery gaze

Of the serpent – disregard

And forfeit your most precious gift.’

‘Okay,’ Colin interjected. ‘I can decipher at least one line of this riddle.’ He grinned at the others. ‘This is what we would call a disclaimer today. What this one is saying is that if you don’t follow the instructions and ignore the warnings – whatever they are – you will lose your life. That’s the “most precious gift”. It can’t be anything else.’

‘You could be right,’ Radha said thoughtfully. ‘But it still doesn’t tell us what the instructions will lead us to. And there is such a mix of imagery – we have Shiva, a serpent, fruits to be plucked, a swiftly flowing eye – how does one figure this out?’

‘Wait till you see the last one.’ Shukla had been studying the final inscription while they were talking. ‘It says:

Then enter you the portal to

The valleys parting east and west

Choose wisely here, remember where

You march and where Surya lies.’

‘Oh great,’ Colin groaned. ‘Another portal and Surya now. This is crazy. Who is Surya?’

‘Not really,’ Radha frowned, thinking hard. ‘Surya is the Indian sun god. So Surya rises in the east. Which means that this riddle is talking about two valleys and the instruction is to choose the valley in the east.’

‘That’s a good point. But what valley? And the sun moves from east to west, so Surya could lie in the west, depending on the time of day,’ Vijay pointed out.

The gleam in Radha’s eyes faded. ‘We don’t have a reference point to try and solve this riddle,’ she shrugged, a note of disappointment in her voice. ‘We need either a starting point so we know which face needs to be read first. Or we need to know the purpose for which the cube was created. Without either, we can’t decipher the cube.’

‘True,’ Alice agreed. ‘The cube was definitely created for a purpose. But there’s no way of knowing why it was made.’ She placed it back in the padded container.

‘Okay, that settles it. Why don’t we go outside and take a walk around the fort? It’s a beautiful day. We can’t solve these riddles anyway. God knows I’m glad about that. I don’t want to have anything to do with fiery serpents. And my life is my most precious gift and I don’t intend losing it by getting involved with any kind of quest. These quests were made for Greek heroes; Hercules and his ilk. Not for twentieth century guys like me.’ Colin rose and extended a hand to Alice. She smiled at him and allowed him to help her up.

‘Don’t worry,’ Vijay laughed. ‘We weren’t about to set off on a trip chasing those riddles anyway. Greece is too far away for us to hunt for answers to these riddles there. And, in any case, there’s no reason for us to do that. It was more an intellectual challenge, which I think we’ve all agreed is pointless.’

‘I think I need some fresh air too.’ Shukla arose and accompanied Colin and Alice out of the room. Radha hung back with Vijay as the others departed.

Vijay eyed her quizzically.

‘So,’ Radha began. ‘Just who is she? A hot blonde, built like Barbie, arriving in the middle of the night, and pally enough with both of you. What’s she doing here? What’s the story?’

While Radha sounded cheerful enough, Vijay realised that she needed to know. He explained his past relationship with Alice. ‘But don’t worry,’ he assured her. ‘It’s all in the past. I got over her a long time ago. When you and I met the only relationship I had was with my work.’

Radha nodded and smiled. But in her heart, she had misgivings. She wasn’t worried about Vijay; she trusted him implicitly. And somewhere, her intuition told her that the relationship between Vijay and Alice had been stronger on her side than his. But she had observed the way Alice kept looking at Vijay. She suspected that Alice still harboured feelings for him, despite the breakup, despite the intervening years.

She decided to not worry and handle things as they came. ‘What time is Imran going to be here?’ she asked.

Vijay looked at his watch. ‘He said around noon. We’ve got time to kill.’ A thought struck him. ‘Hey, since we have time, I want to show you something really weird. We’ll need to go to one of the rooms on the top floor.’

‘What did Imran want to meet about?’ Radha enquired, as they climbed the stone staircase to the fifth floor.

‘He didn’t specify. All he would say was that the task force has its first case and he needs to brief us. But he didn’t sound too happy about it.’
 

16

Jaungarh Fort

‘This is really mysterious,’ Radha mused, as she leafed through the file that had perplexed Vijay. ‘There must have been a good reason why your dad put this file together.’

Vijay shrugged. ‘I keep thinking that. But I haven’t the foggiest what that reason could be.’

‘What’s this?’ Radha indicated a single A4 size sheet of paper with symbols on it. She peered closely at the symbols. ‘They look like runes of some kind. And they’re handwritten. Is this your dad’s handwriting?’

‘I don’t know,’ Vijay admitted. ‘I don’t remember his handwriting. Come to think of it, I don’t remember much about him.’ He shook his head. ‘I never spent enough time with him. I guess I just felt that he would always be there and there would be enough time to hang out together. So I spent my time playing football and cricket with my friends in the neighbourhood parks. And, as it turned out, there never was enough time.’ He fell silent and Radha slipped her hand into his. He pressed her hand in response, grateful that she was there.

‘There’s a list of some kind here,’ Radha observed, studying one of the papers. ‘Looks like an index.’

Vijay peered down at the file at the sheet of paper Radha was examining. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if there’s any correlation between this list and what’s in the file, shall we?’

Radha nodded. This was intriguing. It probably amounted to nothing significant but she understood Vijay’s need to know. She slipped the sheet with the index out of the file. Vijay began listing the papers in the file as she checked for their presence on the list.

It was tough going. There were few exact matches. While they were able to identify papers listed in the index in most cases, a few could be matched only through guesswork and approximation.

‘There are three items on this list which don’t seem to be in that file,’ Radha said finally, after they had gone through its contents. She pointed them out. ‘KS-1, KS-2,’ she read out the names on the list. ‘And this third one.’ She tried to make out the name, which was a single symbol. ‘What is this – a “W”?’

Vijay strained to make out the symbol. ‘Looks like a “W”,’ he said. ‘But it is too wavy to be a “W”. See here, there are no straight lines.’ Something stirred in his memory and he stiffened.

‘What happened?’ Radha noticed the change in his posture.

‘I think I came across one of the missing documents earlier,’ Vijay narrowed his eyes as he tried to remember. ‘I remember seeing “KS” somewhere.’ He got up and started studying the cartons which he had already gone through over the last two weeks. ‘I’ll have to go through them again,’ he mused.

‘Here, let me give you a hand.’ Radha pulled one carton towards her and began pulling out its contents.

Vijay smiled at her and chose another carton to examine. This was what he loved about Radha. He knew that, despite her nonchalant demeanour, she was troubled by Alice’s presence. But she had shrugged that off and was, as always, ready to help out. It was something he admired in her in addition to her inner strength and confidence. She was always there for her friends and family, pushing her own needs and priorities aside at a moment’s notice. He wished that he could be like that. He was too much of an introvert, caught up in his own world. Abruptly, his thoughts moved to Alice. He knew why Alice had broken up with him, when they were both at MIT. He had agonised over it after their break up, trying to work out what had gone wrong. And he had finally understood. He had never been able to open up to her. While he had always been serious and reserved, ever since his parents died he had drawn even further into his shell. It was his way of trying to forget the tragedy that had befallen him. He had built mighty walls around himself. And the project that had been his dream always meant more than anything else. When he met Alice, it seemed that things might change. But he had never been able to raze the walls that always stood between them.

For a long time, he had been unable to forgive her for the manner in which she had walked out on him. No discussion, no explanation, no chance for him to redeem himself. Or even realise the mistakes that he had made. He had been bitter. Angry with her. It was much later that he realised that it wouldn’t have made a difference at that time even if she had explained where he had gone wrong. He had just not been ready. It had taken him two years to come to terms with the break up. After that, he had been wary of getting into another relationship. Partly because his work kept him busy, and partly because he felt that he couldn’t really give himself completely to any relationship. Then he had met Radha. Their friendship had blossomed into love a year ago, during their adventures following the murder of Vijay’s uncle. Somehow, things had worked out and he was happy now. Contented. He couldn’t have asked for a better person than Radha to be in a relationship with.

‘Here it is!’ Radha’s voice seemed to float on the surface of the ocean of his thoughts. Vijay emerged to see what she had found.

Radha was holding a slim cardboard file in which a sheaf of papers was bound with a ribbon. It looked well thumbed and worn. ‘KS-1,’ she announced.

Vijay beamed. ‘Great. Let’s find out what’s inside.’

‘Looks like a photocopy of a handwritten journal,’ Radha remarked as she opened the file and began scanning the contents. ‘This is interesting. Your father was a historian wasn’t he?’

Vijay nodded.

‘He must have been pretty passionate about his work to collect stuff like this. This journal is the translated copy of a journal that dates back to the time of Alexander the Great.’

Vijay’s mobile phone rang. It was Colin. Imran had arrived.

‘Is it noon already?’ Radha looked at her watch and grinned at Vijay. ‘Times flies when you’re having fun.’ She waved the journal at Vijay. ‘This is interesting stuff. According to the first page, it is a translation of a much older journal belonging to a guy called…’ She looked at the journal to check the name. ‘Right. Eumenes. He’s the guy who wrote the original journal which some guy called Lawrence Fuller has translated into English.’

Vijay took the journal from her and flipped through it. His father had taken pains to keep this safe. He had to know why. His attention was attracted by the mention of a name in the journal. He showed it to Radha, who took the journal from him, her eyes glistening with excitement.

17

The Task Force meets

They made their way downstairs with Radha clutching the journal they had just found. She planned to go through it with Vijay after Imran had left.

Ten minutes later, Vijay, Radha and Colin were seated in the study around the glass-topped coffee table. Imran wore a serious look on his face as he double-locked the door of the study and joined them. Even his greetings when they had met were unusually subdued.

‘Right,’ Imran began. ‘The task force has its first case and as members of the think tank, you need to be briefed. That’s why I’m here. I’ve been in touch with Patterson who will brief the team members in the US.’

He paused. ‘We have a potential case of bioterrorism on our hands. Two nights ago, I got an email from a childhood friend, Anwar, requesting help. I didn’t know it at the time but it seems that he had enrolled, five years ago, as a volunteer for clinical trials being sponsored by Titan Pharmaceuticals, a US multinational with research centres in India.’ He described the events of that night leading to the discovery of the corpses in the centre run by Aryan Laboratories.

‘The body in the IT lab was Anwar’s,’ he continued. ‘It was charred beyond recognition but we identified it using DNA analysis.’ He paused for a while. The death of his friend had affected him deeply. ‘We can only conjecture but it seems that Anwar somehow managed to sneak into the IT lab and send out that email. Apparently, he was discovered and killed. The autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was a bullet through his head. At point blank range. It seems that when they realised that the email had been sent to an IB officer, they decided to kill all the inmates and burn the place down to destroy any evidence that might fall into our hands.’

‘So these clinical trials were being conducted to test a new bioweapon?’ Radha asked. ‘What does Titan have to say about this?’

‘That’s what we suspect,’ Imran replied. ‘But Titan claims that all trials they sponsored were legitimate and approved by the Drug Controller General of India. And we checked with the Clinical Trials Registry – India, where Titan had registered several clinical trials. Patterson and his team have spoken to the senior management of Titan in the US, and even to the Chairman of the Board, Kurt Wallace, who is also a majority shareholder in Titan.’

The name registered immediately.

‘The guy who funded Alice’s expedition,’ Vijay said, looking surprised.

‘Who’s Alice?’ Imran asked immediately. ‘And what’s her connection here?’

‘A friend of mine from the US who turned up suddenly early this morning.’ He swiftly sketched out Alice’s story, including the details about Wallace that Alice had mentioned.

Imran pursed his lips when Vijay had finished. ‘Your friend certainly had a tough time. I’m glad she managed to get away from there. Though it certainly is an interesting coincidence that Kurt Wallace is the common factor in both cases. And it is also an interesting coincidence that your friend turned up here at the same time that we’re investigating a possible case of bioterrorism.’

Vijay realised what Imran was thinking. ‘I can vouch for her,’ he remonstrated. ‘I’ve known her…’ he faltered as he struggled to d
escribe his relationship with Alice without getting Radha upset. ‘I know her well,’ he finished.

Imran looked pointedly at Vijay. ‘Maybe you do. But it is curious that the timing of her visit and the fact that she is connected to Kurt Wallace coincides so well with the facts of our case. Maybe it is nothing but sheer coincidence. But I’m not ruling out anything until we’re sure.’

Vijay subsided, trying to conceal his dismay.

Imran resumed the briefing. ‘Wallace and the entire senior management of Titan have pointed to the owner of Aryan, Suman Pahwa, who seems to have disappeared after the fire. We’ve tracked down all the possible places we could have found him but he’s vanished. We’ve reached a dead end with Pahwa. But there was something going on there. The hard drives were badly damaged by the fire, but we have a pretty sophisticated IT lab where we were able to recover a lot of the data. There were medical files with histories on the subjects of the clinical trials. This gave us a lot of information. We also conducted an autopsy on the bodies we found and sent samples to the National Centre for Disease Control, New Delhi and the National Institute of Virology in Pune. Their findings were corroborated by tests conducted by the CDC in Washington – I got their reports just this morning.’

He briefed them on the conversation he had had with Patterson and Royson the previous evening. ‘So our guess is that this Pahwa guy was running this covert clinical trial operation in the centre. We haven’t ruled out the involvement of anyone from the US, of course. Even Wallace himself. But there’s no evidence to support that.’

There was silence when he concluded.

‘So, what are the next steps?’ Colin asked.

‘And how can we help?’
Vijay chipped in.

‘We don’t have a lot to go on right now,’ Imran conceded. ‘I wanted you guys to have all the facts in case you could think of a new angle, something that we could work on. For now, the field agents assigned to the task force are hunting for Pahwa and trying to get any other leads on the clinical trials. They’re scouring newspaper advertisements for clinical trials from four to five years ago and talking to people in the industry. I am going to visit the CEO of Titan in India, Dr Swaroop Varma. And I will also meet the Chief Medical Officer of Titan, Dr Varun Saxena.’

‘We could help you with that,’ Radha offered. ‘I don’t mind meeting the CMO, if you’d like.’

‘Thanks,’ Imran smiled, ‘but that’s a field job. I know you guys have undergone field training after the task force was set up, but you have no field experience. This could be dangerous if we happen to meet someone who is actually involved in the bioterrorism operation.’ He couldn’t help but recall his own close shave with death the previous year when he was on the trail of the terrorists who were searching for the Mahabharata secret.

‘So we’re never going to gain field experience if we don’t start somewhere,’ Radha persisted. ‘What if I come with you when you’re meeting the CEO, so that you’re around in case anything goes wrong?’

‘You may as well agree, Imran,’ Vijay grinned. ‘She’s like a bulldog. She won’t back down now.’

Radha slapped his back lightly and made a face. ‘I think this will be interesting. Come on Imran. Let’s do it.’

‘Oh, okay,’ Imran held out his hands. ‘Fine. What could go wrong with an interview? I have the meeting scheduled with the CEO at 4.30 pm. I’ll get my guys to organise the meeting with the CMO at the same time.’

As he reached for his phone, it rang. Imran listened intently to the caller and his face clouded.

‘Bad news?’ Vijay guessed.

‘We just found Pahwa’s body. Car crash on the Agra expressway. Apparently his brakes had been tampered with and they gave way. He must have been zipping on that road so he didn’t have a chance.’ He sighed. ‘That’s our last live lead gone. And that also means that he was probably just a pawn in the game. There’s someone in Titan who is running the show. Only, we now have no way of finding out who that is.’