They looked at the map in silence. The route Alexander took now reflected the meanings of the verses they had just discussed. From Khandahar to Kabul. From Kabul to Balkh. From Balkh, across the Oxus river, to the region of the Sogdian rock and then back to Kabul before moving on to Jalalabad.
‘We still don’t know what the “saltless sea” refers to,’ Colin wondered. ‘Something important seems to be there according to the verse. The “kernel of the quest”.’
‘It has to be something north or west of the Oxus river,’ Shukla mused. ‘But it somehow doesn’t make sense. Who are the “three brothers”? And what is the arrowhead? Not to mention the “serpent’s seal”.’
‘Alexander had the benefit of a ready-made map,’ Colin huffed. ‘And here we are trying to guess at the meaning of obscure riddles.’
‘The important thing is that we’ve established that the Kunar valley is the final stop in this journey,’ Shukla concluded. ‘Which means that the last two verses refer to locations within the valley. Finally, we have something for Vijay.’ There was a note of hope in his voice.
As if on cue, the phone on the desk rang. Colin sprinted across the study and picked it up. It was Vijay. Colin updated Vijay on their analysis.
‘It certainly sounds logical,’ Vijay agreed. ‘Thank everyone for me, Colin. I’ve got to go now. They are waiting to set off. Now we’ve got something to go on.’
54
Jalalabad, Afghanistan
Van Klueck looked at Vijay enquiringly as he disconnected the call. He had been present during both calls, watching and listening, when Vijay had called home. There was no way Vijay could do anything but what he was supposed to do – communicate with the rest of his team to solve the riddle.
‘The Kunar valley is the final stop.’ Vijay briefed Van Klueck on his conversation with Colin. ‘The verse about day and night and the staff and the one about the fiery gaze of the serpent both have to refer to locations in the Kunar valley.’
Van Klueck looked at Cooper who was standing by. ‘What does our guide say?’
‘He isn’t sure about the reference to Shiva’s staff in the mountains,’ Cooper replied in an even tone. ‘But he also says that he isn’t a local from the valley. He’s from Jalalabad. We’ll have to ask around at the villages in the valley. It is a 90 minute drive to Asadabad from here. The road’s in good shape. It was laid just a few years ago as part of a USAID project to link Kabul to the border with Pakistan. I say we go take a look.’
‘I don’t think we need to go all the way to Asadabad,’ Van Klueck mused. ‘There must be a path leaving the road and going into the mountains. How else would Alexander have found the location?’
Vijay agreed with him silently. Eumenes and Alexander had made it to the location in pitch darkness, with only the light of torches to aid them, according to the secret journal. The only way they could have accomplished this was if there was a means of going deeper into the mountains surrounding the valley that could be traversed on foot and without too much difficulty or the need for climbing gear.
But he said nothing. He didn’t want them to know about the secret journal. Instead, he watched as Van Klueck assented to leave and Cooper went about hustling his men in preparation for the trip.
A piece still missing
Colin scowled at the ivory cube. It had given up most of its secrets. But one verse describing a location on Alexander’s route still remained to be deciphered. The one about the three brothers and the serpent’s seal.
‘I’m not satisfied,’ he said. ‘If all the verses on the cube are equally important, we can’t ignore this one. Without this missing piece, the puzzle is just not complete. No matter what they find in the Kunar valley, it won’t give them what they are looking for. And this refers to the “kernel of the quest”. If the secret is located in the Kunar valley, then what is the kernel? That should really be the most important part, shouldn’t it?’
Alice’s brow furrowed with concentration as she puzzled over the verse. ‘This one is really obscure. We’ve worked out the bit about the Oxus river. But nothing else in this verse seems to make sense.’
Shukla sat silently, his face expressionless. They could only guess at the maelstrom in his mind.
‘There’s only one way to crack this,’ Colin said finally. ‘I’m going to do what Vijay usually does in a situation like this. Search the internet till kingdom come. Something’s got to turn up.’
The Kunar Valley, Afghanistan
Vijay, seated in the leading Land Rover, looked back at the fleet of Land Rovers following behind. There were six SUVs, packed with men armed to the teeth. He had observed that, apart from their guide who was a local Afghan, all the other men were Caucasians. Probably mercenaries from Europe and the US, he assumed. Or part of a private army belonging to the Order. Either way, the muscle power available to the Order was a scary thought.
This road was nothing like the one from Kabul to Jalalabad. The gorges and the steep drops were missing. So far, the road had followed the course of the Kunar river, running alongside it through a flat valley with fields stretched on either side. While the valley narrowed in places, it was reasonably broad until now.
On their right, the road was bounded by the Kunar river as it snaked through the valley. Further south, Vijay could see the Safed Koh mountains which bordered the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
To their left rose the Hindu Kush mountains, the backbone of Afghanistan, lofty and intimidating. Somewhere in those mountains lay the secret of the gods.
Vijay recalled his research on Alexander. After Darius, the Persian emperor, had been defeated by Alexander, he had been murdered by one of his nobles, Bessus, and left to die in ignominy. Bessus had taken the name Artaxerxes V and fled across the Hindu Kush mountains to Bactria, thinking Alexander would not pursue him there. But Alexander had crossed the Hindu Kush through the Khawak Pass, disregarding the perils of the journey. His troops had run short of supplies during the march. They were forced to kill their pack animals and eat raw meat to survive. But Alexander finally caught up with Bessus, who was eventually tortured and killed.
Alexander had then gone on towards the Sogdian rock. And somewhere there, Callisthenes had left the army to embark on his clandestine mission to the region of the Sogdian rock and the other location indicated in one of the verses that they had yet to decipher. What had he collected from there and brought back for Alexander? Would they find the answers in the Kunar valley?
55
A prisoner’s thoughts
Radha sat in her cell on the floor, hugging her knees. What Saxena had disclosed to her earlier in the day had numbed her. And no one apart from her knew about it. She was convinced that nothing could stop the Order from completing its mission and achieving its goals.
What was most galling for her was the fact that she could do nothing about it. It was eating her up. She wanted to get out and tell the world about what was really happening, why the clinical trials had been established. But she also knew that Saxena had revealed the Order’s plans to her only because there was no way out of here for her. She was locked in a cell she couldn’t open from inside. There was 24X7 CCTV coverage of her cell through the cameras installed in the corridor outside. Any unusual movement would be noticed immediately. A male guard came in at regular intervals to check on her. And, even if she managed to somehow overpower the guard and get out of the cell, she had seen the facility outside. It was buried underground. She had seen no exit doors.
She had to face the cold truth. There was no way out of here. The only way she would get out of here was if someone broke into this place and rescued her.
Which was highly unlikely because no one knew where she was.
Search for the signposts
The elevation had been increasing steadily since their departure from Jalalabad. The valley had narrowed considerably now. The fields on either side had disappeared and the road now wound through the foothills of the Hindu Kush, still c
linging to the river on its right.
They had enquired at several villages they passed but had found no clue to the signposts that were supposed to guide them to the location they sought.
They were now entering dangerous territory. Occasionally the boom of rocketfire came to their ears. The war in Afghanistan had an active battlefield in this valley. Even two thousand years after Alexander, the bloodshed here had not abated. Cooper had assured Van Klueck that the local units of the Taliban had been informed about their presence in the valley.
‘They won’t be firing missiles our way today,’ he had told Van Klueck. So far, that promise had seemed to hold true. Vijay hoped that it would remain this way until they returned to Jalalabad.
Another village consisting of mud huts loomed up ahead. The convoy stopped and the local guide hopped out to make his usual enquiries.
This time, he seemed to have unearthed something. They could see him smiling broadly and making gestures towards the mountains.
Presently, he loped towards the lead SUV in which Van Klueck was seated along with Cooper and Vijay. Cooper got out and exchanged words with him then turned to Van Klueck.
‘Around a kilometre from here, according to the villagers, there’s a track leading into the mountains. A two hour trek will bring us to some rock formations and rock inscriptions from an ancient era. Our guide says we should find our signposts there.’
Van Klueck shot a glance at the guide. ‘How do we know he isn’t feeding us a tall tale? When we get up there we’ll probably only find scratches on the rocks left by cavemen forty thousand years ago.’
Cooper grinned. ‘I checked that with him. He’s coming with us. And he knows the consequences if we don’t find what we’re looking for.’
‘Very well, then. Let’s go.’
The convoy set off again.
An escape plan
The seed of a thought had germinated in Radha’s mind. It had been triggered by the realisation that only someone breaking through the defences of the facility from the outside could find her. And that was not impossible, provided someone knew where to look.
Suppose she could find a way to get a message out of here? Anwar had done that with Imran. The unpleasant memory of Anwar’s fate accompanied this thought and she pushed it away with a queasy feeling.
She knew she was doomed anyway. They were holding her only as a bargaining chip for Vijay to help them. Once their purposes were served, she would be killed. Or worse, used as another subject in their awful experiments. She remembered Saxena’s remarks about Freeman’s project. What were they doing that involved genetics?
It didn’t matter for now. The important thing was to get to the IT section and see if she could somehow send out a message.
Radha resolved she would at least try. She knew the consequences of failure. But she couldn’t just sit by and watch as Saxena and his team went about their mission with no one the wiser.
A glimmer of hope
Colin sat at the laptop and rubbed his weary eyes. Darkness was falling outside and he had been at work for several hours now. He stood up and walked to the window, looking at the lights of the little village at the foot of the hill.
He had managed to work out one part of the verse. Or at least he thought he had. But that hadn’t helped in any way.
After a lot of thinking and discussion with the others, reinforced by research on the internet, he had concluded that the “saltless sea” referred to the Aral Sea, a lake which was fed by the Oxus river, known today as the Amu Darya.
Even though the Aral Sea was a pale shadow of what it was 60 years ago, it had seemed to be a promising candidate. First, it was the nearest sea to the Oxus river. Second, one would need to cross the Oxus to reach the Aral sea, if one was coming from Balkh. Third, the Aral Sea was originally a freshwater sea. It had only turned salty over the decades, as the water of the rivers feeding it was diverted, and the sea itself shrank to a fraction of its former size. This had led to an increased concentration of toxins and salt in the water.
But while the Aral Sea appeared to meet at least three conditions for being the sea referred to in the verse, he had drawn a blank beyond that. Searches for the three brothers linked to the Oxus river or the Aral Sea had unearthed nothing.
He had begun to doubt Shukla’s translation of the “eye”. Suppose it was an eye after all and not a reference to a river? That would lead to a new conundrum: what was meant by a “swiftly flowing eye”?
Colin sighed. This wasn’t as easy as he had thought. He wondered how Vijay was doing. There had been no news from him.
He sat down again at the laptop. Time was running out. For him. And for Vijay and Radha.
56
In the mountains
Van Klueck perched on a boulder and watched his team search the surroundings for the signposts. Daylight had begun to fade but they carried powerful portable searchlights which illuminated the mountainside and the rocks around them.
The trek had lasted the promised two hours. It was here that their guide had called a halt and indicated that this was the location where they should begin looking for the signs indicated in the verse.
Their surroundings did seem to correspond to at least a part of the verse. They were now high above the Kunar river. Van Klueck estimated that they were now at least 2000 feet from the valley floor, on a sort of ridge. And the verse had referred to a ridge above the river.
As he sat there, he reflected on what accomplishing his goals here would mean. A step up in the Order. Closer to the top. Maybe even part of the closed group that ran the Order. His family had been members of the Order for centuries. They had served with loyalty, even in their freewheeling pirate days. But the Van Kluecks had come a long way since then. They were wealthier. More powerful. More respectable. And they had moved up the ranks of the Order over the years.
Today, he was within grasping reach of the ultimate prize in the Order; a position that would seat him at the same table as the man who ran it. The one with the original bloodline. A bloodline that had started with the Order and propagated through thousands of years, unbroken and pure.
As he looked on, the searchlights cut through the growing gloom, highlighting the men in stark relief. His gaze settled on Vijay. He didn’t understand the man. Didn’t he know that his fiancée and he were doomed? He certainly wasn’t stupid. Yet, he seemed to show a dogged persistence in the face of even the longest odds. Could he have a backup plan? But Van Klueck knew that Vijay was unarmed. He shook his head. It didn’t matter. The man was good at solving puzzles and cracking riddles. He had helped them the previous year, though unwittingly. And today, he was helping them of his own volition. The European couldn’t ask for more.
Vijay moved through the dusk, accompanied by two armed men with searchlights. A feeling of déjà vu came over him. He remembered a similar search last year. But today, the circumstances were different. There was no escape from his situation.
He tried not to dwell on his fate and focused on the rocks and the mountainside. The villagers and the guide had been right about the inscriptions and drawings. The boulders around abounded in crudely inscribed artwork and script. But nothing yet corresponded to the description in the verse.
Moving to another section of the mountain, he noticed a deep alcove in the mountainside, more like a short passageway a few feet in length that ended in a wall of rock. The entrance was rectangular, and just above the entrance, was a square aperture that seemed to have been carved through the rock. But it was too small for anyone to crawl through. He wondered what the purpose of the aperture was since it certainly wasn’t a means of accessing the alcove, even if the entrance was sealed. He indicated to his guards to train their searchlights on the rock face at the rear end of the alcove, which was shrouded in darkness.
Vijay found himself looking at a hunting scene carved into the rockface that was enclosed in the natural alcove. Two archers with drawn bows were hunting an indeterminate animal, probably a deer, and
there was a smaller animal at the side of one of the hunters. It could have been a dog, though it was difficult to say since the drawings were very crudely sketched.
His first reaction was similar to Van Klueck’s response earlier. These seemed to be crude cave drawings, thousands of years old, carved by people who were living in caves and hunting for sustenance. How could any of these rock drawings have any bearing on their quest?
Vijay was in the process of drawing away from the artwork when something caught his eye.
He had missed an element of the painting. High above the scene he had just studied, cut into the rock, were a five pointed star and a circle surrounded by small linear cuts radiating outwards. He realised what he was looking at.
‘It’s here,’ he called out. ‘The first signpost.’ He gazed at the drawing. Where was Sukra in this picture? The son of the rishi Bhrigu? Was he one of the hunters depicted here?
Van Klueck hastened up to check on Vijay’s discovery, accompanied by the rest of his men.
‘Day and night meet,’ Vijay explained. ‘The sun and the star, representing day and night respectively. Together in the same painting. This is it.’
‘Hmmm.’ Van Klueck peered at the artwork. ‘I think you’re right. But now, how do we find Shiva’s staff?’
Vijay’s excitement at the discovery subsided. He didn’t have an answer.
57
Step one
Radha decided it was time to go for it. She didn’t want to wait until it was too late. She took a deep breath and pressed the call button that she used to summon the guard whenever she wanted to use the toilet or take a shower. There was a large common bathroom on the floor with enough cubicles to accommodate all residents of the floor together. The toilets were located adjacent to the bathroom.
THE MAHABHARATA QUEST:THE ALEXANDER SECRET Page 22
