THE MAHABHARATA QUEST:THE ALEXANDER SECRET

by CHRISTOPHER C. DOYLE

  While he was familiar with some of the rooms in the fort, there were many which he had never set eyes on. Over the last six months, he had finally started on the task of getting to know the fort better. It was during this exploration that he had discovered several interesting rooms. None of them were as interesting as the one he had discovered last year while hunting for the secret buried in the Mahabharata; but they had all told him something about his uncle’s tastes and predilections.

  Two weeks ago, however, he discovered something totally unexpected. He had come upon a room on the fifth level of the fort, just below the terrace. The room itself was unremarkable and seemed to have been used as a storeroom, judging from the cartons stacked in there along with large, bulky packages wrapped in brown packing paper.

  Curiosity had driven Vijay to check the contents of some of the cartons and he had not been prepared for what he found.

  Apparently, at least some of the contents of the room belonged to his parents, who had both died in a car accident when Vijay was just fifteen years old. He had heard from his uncle about the truck that had driven, head on at high speed, into the car his parents were in. Both of them had died on the spot. Vijay had not been with them in the car only because, at the last minute, he had to stay behind for some reason that he had now forgotten. But it had saved his life.

  He had realised, after examining some of the cartons, that his uncle had arranged for his parents’ personal possessions to be packed and transported to the fort, where they had been stored in this room for all these years.

  Suddenly, on seeing his father’s papers and his mother’s journals, he realised just how much he missed them. His uncle had taken good care of him, sending him to MIT for his higher studies, and never allowing him to feel like an orphan. And Vijay had immersed himself first in his studies and later in work, keeping all thoughts of that tragedy out of his mind.

  It was only when he came face to face with the physical memories of his parents that the loss really hit home, especially since his uncle, too, was no more.

  Vijay had, in that moment, determined that he would sift through the cartons and cherish every memory of his parents that would be churned up. He had barely known his parents, having lost them just as he was growing up and getting to understand them better. He knew that both his parents had been academic historians and researchers, working with the Archaeological Survey of India, but he didn’t remember much more than that. He had missed out on that precious relationship that grows through love and conflict during adolescence and he now thought that, perhaps, something in that room would help him get closer to his parents, even after their death.

  Every night since then, he would spend an hour or two in the room, sorting the contents of the cartons, reading through papers and journals, seeking insights about his parents that he had never bothered about during his teenage years.

  He switched on the desk lamp perched on the desk that he had stationed in the room for this purpose, and began working his way through the papers stacked on the desk.

  Would tonight bring some revelations that the previous nights had failed to provide?

  11

  DAY TWO

  Intelligence Bureau Headquarters, New Delhi

  Imran stared into the video camera and adjusted the angle as he waited for Patterson to join the video conference. The leader of the special task force had sounded irritated and doubtful when Imran had called him a few hours ago. It hadn’t helped that it was early morning in Washington and Imran had woken him up. But the IB officer didn’t think this could wait. He wanted to get moving on the leads he had gathered so far. And if it meant waking the leader of the Indo-US task force in the middle of the night that was fine by him.

  But Patterson had changed his mind when he saw the email Imran had sent him. Within an hour of receiving that email, Patterson had confirmed the video conference.

  The television screen flickered to life and Patterson’s stern visage appeared in a box that filled up half the screen. The other half was filled by the face of a thin, pale man with thinning grey hair. Imran knew who he was. Dr Hank Royson, from the Washington office of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. In his email confirming the conference, Patterson had indicated that Royson would be joining them.

  ‘Morning,’ Imran greeted the two Americans.

  ‘Morning,’ came the chorused response.

  ‘Dr Royson, I appreciate your joining us at short notice,’ Patterson got straight to the point. ‘Please let us have your views on the reports, which Kidwai sent us.’

  ‘Well,’ Royson cleared his throat and began, ‘you have to understand, first, that the reports are very preliminary and definitely not conclusive. The detailed toxicology reports and DNA sequencing will take some time, obviously. What we have here, are the preliminary toxicology reports and the result of Polymerase Chain Reaction testing, or PCR testing, which amplifies the DNA target sequence.’

  ‘We know what PCR testing is,’ Patterson cut in abruptly. ‘Your views on the reports we were sent are what we’re looking for.’

  Royson stared resentfully into the camera. ‘I wasn’t sure if Mr Kidwai was familiar with the jargon.’

  ‘Well, I’d figured out some of it by looking at the reports, and I also spent some time on Google,’ Imran smiled. ‘But thank you for being so thoughtful.’ He felt like he just had to soften Patterson’s asperity.

  Royson sniffed. ‘So here it is. It’s complex. We have — speculatively speaking of course — a previously unidentified bacterium and an unknown retrovirus. Both present in all the samples.’ He stared at the camera again. ‘CDC will be conducting our own tests on the samples you had airlifted to us and we’ll validate these results. But I’m quite sure there’s no major error here.’ He looked down, apparently scanning the reports, and then looked back into the camera.

  ‘It is odd, really. The bacteria have formed robust biofilms, in which the cells are surrounded by large expanses of matrix material, protecting them from immune responses. The preliminary toxicology reports indicate that the bacteria were spewing out multiple toxins which would definitely lead to death.’ He now addressed Imran. ‘Mr Kidwai, just where did you get these samples from?’

  Imran narrated the events of the previous night. ‘The samples were from a random selection of some of the bodies we found at the facility,’ he concluded. ‘And, the data we were able to recover from the hard disks, which I suppose you’ve seen, contained medical histories, which have the same information as these reports.’

  Royson nodded. ‘Yes, indeed. The medical histories you shared with us correlate with the conclusions of these reports you sent us. And some of the medical files belong to people who died as a result of the infections. The interesting thing is that, according to the medical files, death in all cases occurred four to five years after the initial bacterial infection. It would seem that, after the bacteria infected the patients, they went dormant, possibly as a result of a cell mediated immune response which contained the infection but did not eradicate it, owing to the biofilms. Clearly, the bacteria seemed to have had the ability to bind to or modify naturally occurring human proteins, enabling them to persist chronically but without apparent clinical or symptomatic effects, due to the CMI.’

  ‘Let me understand this,’ Imran said slowly. ‘You’re saying that these people were infected four to five years ago by these bacteria. The bacteria somehow bound to human proteins, which enabled them to persist for a long period of time. At the same time, they formed these biofilms which protected them from the cell mediated immune response or CMI, whatever it is, and so they didn’t display any symptoms of the infection.’

  ‘Correct.’ Royson smiled for the first time, showing a row of teeth stained by heavy smoking. ‘And then, suddenly, something, maybe a weakening of the CMI or some other trigger factor, activated the pathogenicity of the bacteria, releasing their toxins which produced symptoms like high fever and chills, excessive thirst and diaphoresis, a
cute abdominal pain, increased weakness leading to prostration with intermittent periods of energy, delirium, aphonia and terminal flaccid paralysis. They usually died within a few days of displaying these symptoms.’

  Imran took a few seconds to digest this information.

  Patterson spoke up. ‘It seems you were right, Kidwai,’ he conceded. ‘It is possible that the clinical trials being conducted on these poor SOBs were tests to see the effects of the bacterium and how long it stayed dormant before expressing itself.’

  ‘Bioterrorism,’ Imran breathed, hardly able to believe that anyone could use human subjects in such a callous manner.

  ‘Er… let’s not jump to conclusions, shall we?’ Royson interjected, holding up one finger. ‘DNA sequencing and checking the gene banks of existing pathogens need to be carried out to check if this is really a new strain of bacteria or whether there is any relation to an existing species. More tests need to be carried out to determine the vectors that carry and spread the infection.’

  Patterson nodded dismissively. ‘Sure, sure. But we have enough to go on to make this a priority for the task force. This is what the team was put together for.’

  ‘What about the virus?’ Imran asked, suddenly remembering that Royson had also mentioned a virus.

  Royson scratched his head. ‘Now that’s another strange thing.’ He paused to scan his papers once again. ‘We don’t know much about the retrovirus. There don’t seem to be any adverse effects of the viral infection, surprisingly. There is nothing in the medical files on the hard drives about the virus either. We will need to await the detailed tests before we can say anything conclusive.’

  ‘Okay,’ Imran collected his own papers and stacked them neatly. As far as he was concerned, this conference was over. He had work to do. ‘Guys, let me have the CDC’s conclusions as soon as they’re out. In the meantime, we’ve spoken to Titan in Seattle and they claim no knowledge of anything other than legitimate clinical trials to support the research they’ve been conducting on the new molecules. And the owner of the building says he only leased it out to Titan and had nothing to do with the operations in the building. It seems someone was running a private

  operation there.’

  Patterson looked thoughtful. Royson looked a bit bewildered. ‘I’ll get some people here to work the Seattle angle,’ Patterson promised. ‘If there’s a connection, we’re going to find it.’

  Imran nodded, his face grim. ‘We will. Good day, gentlemen.’

  The two Americans nodded and the television screen went blank again.

  Imran leaned back in his chair. Wheels were spinning in his mind as he plotted the course he was going to follow. This was one of the toughest cases he had come across. But one thing seemed to be obvious.

  There were bioterrorists out there.

  In India.

  On his watch.

  And he didn’t know where to start looking for them.

  Jaungarh Fort

  Vijay sat, puzzling over the file he had picked up ten minutes ago. The label on the spine of the file had aroused his curiosity. All it said was: “???”

  It was but natural for him to select that file out of all the others in the carton and start leafing through the documents filed in it. All the papers were either notes in his father’s handwriting or clippings of newspaper articles, that referred to various archaeological digs all over the country along with notes and diagrams. There was no context for the records in this file; just data. It was almost as if his father had googled all the data on these excavations or searched Wikipedia and then recorded the facts he had researched. Only, when this file had been created, Wikipedia hadn’t been invented, and Page and Brin were still working out of a garage in California.

  So what had his father been thinking when he filed these pages? Clearly a lot of work had gone into research to obtain all this information.

  Vijay had no idea. He began studying the papers, trying to find clues to his father’s thought process, attempting to understand why this information had been important enough for him to record in this manner.

  The more he studied the file, the more puzzled he grew. There had to be something behind this enormous effort.

  But what was it?

  12

  DAY THREE

  Jaungarh Fort

  Vijay sat and pored over the strange file he had discovered a few hours ago. The contents of the file were mind-boggling. There didn’t seem to be any connection between the documents, but then he probably wouldn’t see the connection unless he knew why the file had been created in the first place.

  Suddenly, his mobile phone rang and he jumped. The clock showed 3 am. What was Colin calling him at this unearthly hour for? Especially since Colin was in the fort!

  ‘You startled me,’ he reprimanded Colin.

  ‘Thank heavens. I’d have been worried if you were expecting my call at this hour.’ Colin’s repartee was swift.

  Vijay smiled. ‘And just why are you calling me at

  this hour?’

  There was a pause. Then, ‘I think you need to come downstairs and see for yourself.’

  ‘In the living room?’

  ‘Yup. Don’t dawdle.’

  Vijay sighed as he shut the file and locked the door of the room. Since his discovery of this room, he had kept the key to himself, even making a duplicate which was hidden away in a safe place known only to him. He had been thrown a lifeline, a means of communicating with his parents, and he wasn’t going to lose this opportunity.

  Sometimes you never know what you have until you lose it.

  This was a night for surprises. As he entered the living room, he froze. It was like he had seen a ghost. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Slowly, he regained his composure and walked into the room. But he was still unsure of how to react to this situation.

  Colin read his friend’s face and said nothing.

  ‘Hi, Vijay,’ Alice ventured timidly from the white leather sofa, where she sat with Colin. She, too, was apprehensive.

  Vijay didn’t respond. His jaw was clenched, his brow furrowed. This was the last thing he had expected. He had forced the memories of the past deep down into hidden recesses of his mind and had thought that they would never resurface. Yet, today, they were bubbling up, as fresh as they were eleven years ago. And the emotions they brought with them disturbed him. This was one memory lane he had never wanted to walk down. Ever. And he was doing exactly that now.

  Finally, he found his voice. ‘It is 3 am in the morning.’ He tried to sound nonchalant. ‘Why are you here? You had said that you never ever wanted to have anything to do with me. What changed now?’

  ‘She’s in trouble,’ Colin interjected, before Alice could reply. ‘She needs our help.’

  Cold silence greeted this explanation.

  ‘Vijay, her life is in danger. We have to help her,’ Colin tried again.

  With an effort, Vijay suppressed his emotions. ‘It is a long way from the US,’ he said slowly. ‘If you are here and you need help, you must be desperate.’

  Alice gazed back at him. The old wounds were hurting once again. A reminder that, though she had tried to forget them, they still existed below the surface. ‘I know how you feel, Vijay,’ she began. ‘And I swear I wouldn’t have come here if I had a choice. But I don’t.’

  Vijay forced himself to keep his voice even. ‘What happened?’

  Alice recounted the trauma she had experienced in Greece. Her voice shook as she described Damon’s murder, Marco’s death and her escape on the highway. ‘I couldn’t go back to the US,’ she finished. ‘No matter where I would go, they would have found me. I had to go someplace else. But I don’t know anyone else outside the US whom I could trust. Kurt Wallace had some people in Delhi provide me with a car to get here from the airport. He said it was the only way to ensure that no one was able to track me from Greece. Private jet. Private car. No paper or electronic trail.’

  She stared at Vijay, trying to dis
cern his reaction. It was obvious that he was affected by her story.

  ‘C’mon, Vijay,’ Colin broke in. ‘The girl needs a place to stay. Her life’s in danger. You have, what, fifty rooms here in the fort? Can’t she stay here for a couple of nights till this blows over?’

  Vijay looked at him then turned to Alice. ‘You have to understand one thing,’ he said, his voice serious. ‘I want both of us to be clear about this. I’ve moved on. I’m engaged. You and me – that’s in the past. I don’t want that to come between me and Radha.’

  ‘Radha’s his fiancée,’ Colin explained to Alice, helpfully.

  Alice nodded. She hadn’t expected any more than this. Somehow, she felt safe here. Even though she had never been to India, she knew she was among friends.

  ‘We have a security system protecting the fort,’ Vijay continued. ‘As long as you stay here and don’t venture out, no one is going to get to you.’ As he spoke, he remembered his uncle’s fate the previous year, but dismissed the thought from his mind. The system had been upgraded since then.

  ‘Thank you, Vijay,’ Alice responded. ‘I really appreciate your helping me out.’

  Vijay forced a smile. He was consciously trying to push his emotions away. ‘Sure. Always happy to help. Colin, will you show Alice to one of the guest rooms. Choose any one. Okay, guys, I need to sleep. Radha’s coming here tomorrow and I don’t want to be sleeping in when she gets here.’ He looked at Colin. ‘And we have our meeting with Imran in the morning.’

  Colin nodded as Vijay left the room.

  He then turned to look at Alice. ‘Well, that didn’t go so badly, did it?’

  ‘So tell me more about Radha?’ Alice asked. ‘What’s

  she like?’

  Colin frowned. This was not going to be as easy as he had thought.

  13

  Jaungarh Fort

  ‘Morning,’ Vijay frowned as he walked into the dining room of the fort. Colin and Alice were finishing breakfast. Bad timing. Radha would be here any moment now.