‘We should be careful, boys,’ Lamba said to his colleagues. ‘It seems we’re dealing with a superior intellect here.’
‘A real genius,’ Agarwal snarled. ‘He’s got it all figured out.’
‘Not all of it,’ Ben said. ‘Not yet. I don’t have much of a clue what Kabir and Amal Ray had got themselves into, or who stands to gain by targeting them. But I’d bet the bank it wasn’t drugs, or anything remotely like it.’
‘You sound very sure about that,’ Lamba said.
‘If you knew Amal, you’d laugh at the idea of him as a drugs kingpin. This is a guy who cries over a dead baby sparrow, won’t have a gun in the house and can’t drink caffeinated coffee. As for his brother, I’ve checked out his academic profile and believe me, it’s pretty dull stuff. In short, Detectives, you’re wasting your time. And mine, which is in short supply right now seeing as I’ve got at least one missing person to track down. So if you’re not going to charge me, I think we’re done here.’
The detectives finally relented. They had nothing to hold Ben on, and no option but to let him go. Lamba ungraciously handed him back his passport, wallet, phone, car keys, Zippo and what was left of his cigarette pack. Ben said, ‘I’d like that pistol back, too. This city’s a dangerous place. You never know when a bunch of trigger-happy amateurs might try and accost you in the street.’
‘Don’t push your luck, Mr Hope. And remember, we’re watching you.’
‘Watch and learn,’ Ben said. ‘And try to stay out of my way next time.’
Chapter 22
As he drove fast away from the police station, Ben called Professor Gupta at the Archaeology Institute to apologise for the delay and ask if they could reset their meeting. Gupta was running late himself, and happy to see Ben now. Ben hustled across the city and this time managed to reach his destination without incident. No more white Toyotas, fake taxicabs or motorcyclists with black visors shadowed his route. Or none that he could see. You could never really tell for certain.
Once the citadel and stronghold of the Mughal emperors, the Red Fort was an impressive sight, encompassing a complex of buildings and gardens spread over 250 acres and encircled with a red stone wall more than two kilometres in length and a hundred feet high, dotted all around with towers and domes and ramparts that dominated the skyline and dwarfed everything around it, glowing blood red under the hot sun. As Ben had pretty much expected, the seventeenth-century landmark was a magnet for tourists even this late in the season, and the busy car park was thronging with crowds, tour guides and pamphlet vendors. There was also a noticeable security presence. Ben recalled that the Red Fort had been the target of a terror attack about eighteen years earlier.
He parked beside a couple of military security forces trucks, and threaded his way through the press of tourists. Professor Gupta had arranged to meet him in the Officers’ Mess building within the complex, so he bought a little map and guidebook from a kiosk to orientate himself. The usual no smoking signs were everywhere, so he lit up a Gauloise too.
He followed the crowds through the main entrance, a monumental red stone gateway that his guidebook informed him was Lahori Gate, from whose ramparts the Prime Minister made an address every August on Indian Independence Day. Ben noticed that the windows of the high towers flanking the gateway had been walled up in modern times, presumably to prevent an embarrassingly public assassination by sniper attack.
Lahori Gate led through to a vaulted arcade, the Chhatta Chowk or covered bazaar, which must once have been a splendid architectural sight but was now, in true Delhi style, tightly crammed with shops and stalls peddling souvenirs to tourists. Ben was walking briskly through the bazaar when a voice said, ‘Hey, excuse me.’
Ben turned, expecting to be accosted by some do-gooder objecting to his cigarette. Or maybe he was about to be arrested again.
But the two thirtyish Indian guys who had stopped him definitely didn’t look like do-gooders, and they weren’t cops either. One was about Ben’s height and build, in an open-fronted purple shirt with a thick gold chain around his neck. Slicked hair, blunt features, mirror shades hiding his eyes, an air of masculine confidence about him. The other was shorter and plumper, with a T-shirt featuring a muscled-up Sylvester Stallone brandishing an M60 machine gun. Both of them had unlit cigarettes dangling from the corners of their mouths. The taller guy said, ‘We need a light.’
Ben said, ‘I can see that.’
The taller guy said, ‘Do you have one?’
Ben said, ‘Yes, I have.’
The taller guy said, ‘Do you think we could get one from you?’
Ben said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe you could, but you’d have to ask me first.’
‘Could we have a light, please?’
Ben said, ‘Certainly.’ He took out his Zippo, thumbed the wheel, held it out for the taller guy to suck in the flame, then held it a little lower for his Rambo fan friend to do the same.
The taller guy said, ‘Thanks, buddy.’
Ben said, ‘You’re welcome.’
His good deed done for the day, he moved on, finding his way about the complex. Beyond the bazaar were innumerable gardens and fountains, which like many of the damaged, decaying internal architecture and crumbling walkways were not all in pristine condition. It was as though the place had never fully recovered from being used as a garrison by the occupying forces of the British Army back in the days of the Raj. There was litter everywhere, so Ben didn’t feel too bad about flicking away the stub of his cigarette. He used his map to head for the southernmost of the various palaces within the complex, the Mumtaz Mahal. According to the guidebook it had once been used as an officers’ mess, and now housed the Red Fort Archaeological Museum and the headquarters of the Institute.
The palace was a white stone pavilion, built on a humbler and less opulent scale than most of the complex’s other buildings. It was cool inside, with only a small handful of tourists drawn to view the museum exhibits from the Mughal Empire. Ben wandered from one gallery to another, keeping an eye out for the man he’d come to see while glancing at the collections of paintings, porcelain and jade, textiles, astronomical artefacts and furniture, like a spectacular marble chair used by Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal emperor, who had been forcibly overthrown by the British, tried for treason right here in his own Red Fort and then exiled to die in Rangoon in British Burma. Another gallery housed an impressive collection of nineteenth-century weaponry used in the disastrously failed rebellion of 1857 against British commercial interests in India, which had spelled the formal end of the Mughal era and consolidated Britain’s iron hold over its ‘jewel in the crown’.
The days of the Raj may have been long gone, but its memory still cast a long shadow. Despite having spent a significant part of his younger days enthusiastically fighting for Queen and country, an older and wiser Ben was far from proud of his nation’s historical legacy of brutal conquest and aggressive domination over much of the world. It was an internal conflict that he still struggled to reconcile.
No sign yet of Professor Gupta. Ben started glancing at his watch and hoping he hadn’t wasted his time coming here. Just then, a dapper little white-haired man of around seventy in a khaki suit and red bow tie appeared as if out of nowhere, and greeted him with a melancholic smile.
‘Mr Hope, I presume? I am Imran Gupta.’
Ben apologised again for the delay, and thanked the professor for sparing the time to talk to him. Out of courtesy, he felt it was appropriate to comment on the museum’s impressive collection of artefacts. Gupta seemed pleased, but replied sadly, ‘Unfortunately, however, what you see here is but a small fraction of the surviving treasures from the Mughal era. Many of the most beautiful and valuable pieces from that time, such as the Koh-I-Noor diamond, the jade wine cup of Shah Jahan, and the magnificent crown of Bahadur Shah II, were looted by our beloved colonial rulers, along with anything else they could steal. Over a century and a half later, the British government still refuses to return t
hese priceless examples of our national heritage to their rightful place.’
Ben’s guilt trip was evidently not over yet. He said, ‘I hope you get them back one day.’
Gupta gave a weary smile. ‘Not in my lifetime, I’m sure. But you came to talk about far more pressing matters than our national squabbles over history. Why don’t we step into my office? This way, please.’
He led Ben through a door marked PRIVATE and down a corridor to a minute office that Ben at first thought must be a cupboard. The cramped space was stacked from floor to ceiling with a weight of books and files that threatened to bring down the ancient shelving units and bury Gupta’s tiny desk in an avalanche of paper. There was little room for anything else, except two simple chairs.
Gupta sat primly behind his desk in one of them, invited Ben to sit in the other, and offered him a cup of tea. Ben accepted, just to be polite. Gupta rang a little bell, and moments later a shrivelled old woman who might well have dated back to the Mughal era herself hobbled in bearing a pot and two dainty porcelain cups on a tray. She set it down on the desk and hobbled away without a word.
Gupta ceremoniously poured the tea, took a sip and then said, ‘Now, Mr Hope, I am at your service. Like everyone else here, faculty and students alike, I was devastated by the appalling incident at Rakhigarhi. Manish and Sai were such gifted and bright young souls. What a heart-breaking and tragic waste of life. I pray that the perpetrators can be brought to justice.’
‘Manish and Sai were Kabir’s companions on the trip?’
‘They were two of his graduate students, who were closely involved in his research projects.’
Ben wondered if Kabir’s research projects had anything to do with the cryptic secret that he’d confided to Amal before the incident. Wanting to broach the subject as delicately as possible he said, ‘Professor, perhaps you can enlighten me. I understand that the location of the attack is very out of the way, so much so that Kabir flew there by helicopter. But I’m not clear as to exactly what they were doing in that area.’
Gupta sipped more tea and replied, ‘That’s a good question. In fact, Mr Hope, the precise details of his trip’s purpose were something that Kabir was keeping rather hush-hush between himself and his assistants.’
Ben was surprised. ‘He didn’t tell you? His boss?’
Gupta shook his head sadly. ‘Kabir is … was … dear me, I never know whether to refer to him in the past or present tense. This is so awful.’
‘Let’s keep it positive until we know more,’ Ben said.
‘Very well. Thank you. As I was saying, Kabir is very much his own person. In any case I have never regarded myself as his superior, more as a kind of mentor. I know he would have fully informed me, when he felt the time was right. But I do have a good idea why he chose to visit that particular location. Its proximity to the major archaeological excavations at Rakhigarhi, only a few miles away, strongly suggests that his interest in the site was connected with his interest in the lost Indus Valley Civilisation. I can think of no other reason why he would have travelled out to such a remote and inaccessible spot.’
‘The Indus Valley Civilisation?’ Ben repeated. His abandoned theology studies had taught him some scraps of knowledge about ancient history, ancient peoples and cultures, but he’d never heard of this one.
‘Kabir’s passion,’ Gupta replied. ‘You might say, his obsession. He has devoted his entire career to the subject, and staked his professional reputation on his research findings. You would be surprised what a hotly-contested area of archaeology it has become. Even I am flabbergasted at how much debate and controversy the study of a long-lost Bronze Age civilisation can generate, several thousand years after the fact.’
Hotly-contested debate and controversy sounded like the stuff that secrets were made of. Ben had caught a trace of a scent here, and wanted to know more. ‘Perhaps you could enlighten me a little?’
Gupta said, ‘I can do better than that. Would you like to see Kabir’s work for yourself?’
Chapter 23
Gupta led Ben from his office and down a narrow passage. He stopped at a door with a nameplate marked PROF. K. RAY. For a moment he seemed about to knock before entering, then caught himself, and his wiry shoulders sagged with grief. Sighing loudly he pulled a jangling ring of keys from his pocket, found the right one and unlocked the door. Ben followed him inside Kabir’s office.
The room was about twice the size of Gupta’s own, but the array of computer equipment it contained could have comfortably filled a space twice as big again. Wires trailed all over the floor and every inch of horizontal surface was covered with screens and monitors.
‘Nothing has been touched since Kabir disappeared,’ Gupta said. ‘It remains exactly as he left it. Some men collect motor cars, others are greedy simply for money. Kabir’s passion is for accumulating knowledge, and all of it is right here in this room. So is almost every single computer that the Institute possesses. Kabir commandeered them for his own use, as he had so much data to crunch.’
‘So what was this Indus Valley Civilisation?’ Ben asked.
‘Everyone has heard of the legendary ancient cultures of China, Egypt and Mesopotamia,’ Gupta said. ‘And yet so few know of arguably the greatest and most widespread early civilisation of them all, which thrived across a vast area of what are now India, Pakistan and Afghanistan between three and five thousand years ago.’
‘Forgive my ignorance,’ Ben said.
‘It’s perfectly understandable,’ Gupta explained patiently, ‘considering how very little is known about the Indus Valley Civilisation. It is in fact one of archaeology’s greatest mysteries, its very existence having completely eluded scholars until its chance discovery in the nineteenth century, when a deserter from the British Army, a man named Charles Masson, happened to stumble across some ancient ruins while wandering through the remote parts of the Northwest Frontier not controlled by the empire. At first he thought he had discovered the remains of a brick castle, but on further exploration realised he had found the remnants of a lost city that stretched for twenty-five miles, an incredible discovery. Even then, no excavations were attempted until many years later, in 1921. Only recently have archaeologists realised the sheer scale of the mysterious civilisation that once occupied the Indus Valley, stretching over an area of some one and a half million square miles from the great mountains in the north, to the alluvial plains of the Indus and Ganges rivers, to the tropical rainforest of the Malabar Coast.’
Gupta stepped over to one of the computers. ‘You will have to excuse me, as I’m not as adept as my younger colleagues with modern technology.’ He turned on a monitor, and its screen flashed into life with an image of a map of India and neighbouring Pakistan, as they had looked three thousand years before Christ. The inscriptions on the map were all in Hindi. Gupta reached for a mouse and began pointing the cursor arrow here and there over the screen as he went on excitedly, now quite taken with his subject.
‘The first major finds were the lost cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, which after the post-war partition of India in 1947 fell into the territory of Pakistan. For many years it was believed that these two sites represented the most important centres of the Indus Valley Civilisation, or the IVC, for short. This of course was cause for much frustration for Indian archaeologists, given the unhappy state of tension that has long existed between our two countries. How unfortunate that politics should enter into the pursuit of knowledge.’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘However, as more and more sites were discovered and the true size of the culture began to emerge, that situation changed dramatically. Today, of 1022 IVC cities known, 406 are situated in Pakistan and the remaining 616 here in India, though fewer than a hundred have yet been fully excavated. You can imagine the enormity of such a project.’
Ben agreed that he could, although he was beginning to wonder where this was going. The professor, just like every academic he had ever come across, was in danger of nattering on all day without
revealing anything of practical interest. Ben decided to give it a few more minutes before he pressed him on.
Gupta closed that window and opened up a menu of picture files, which he scrolled through before selecting a file marked RAKHIGARHI and clicking it. The screen flashed up an image of a barren, featureless rubble field that, to Ben’s untrained eye, looked like the aftermath of a massive earthquake. Gupta explained that this was the excavation site at Rakhigarhi in the Hisar district of Haryana, some hundred and fifty miles from Delhi and about twenty miles south of the scene of the attack on Kabir and his associates.
‘When the ruins were first discovered, they were thought to be a relatively minor find. But what began as a small-scale excavation project might now turn out to be far more significant. Its sheer size has led some archaeologists to speculate that Rakhigarhi might even have been the capital city of the entire Indus Valley culture. If that’s correct, well, it’s just incredible.’
Gupta stood marvelling at the incredible rubble field, obviously able to see a lot there that Ben couldn’t. Then he closed that image file and opened up another one that couldn’t have been more different. It was a panoramic scene of an ancient city. Except this one, instead of being levelled to a ruin of broken rocks with barely a tower standing, was totally intact and appeared to be a thriving, bustling, industrious metropolis of many thousands of inhabitants. By pressing left and right arrow keys, the professor was able to pan the image across the screen to give a full 360-degree rotating view. The city seemed to stretch in all directions as far as the eye could see. ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ he said proudly.
‘It looks as if it had been built yesterday,’ Ben said, surprised.
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