Valley of Death

by Scott Mariani

  ‘I’m certain that he would have told me if he had,’ Gupta said. ‘I can’t believe he would have kept something that important from me. We talked about it so many times. I was his mentor right from the start of the project, even though I couldn’t keep pace with his methodology.’

  ‘You said Kabir was his own person. Independent-minded. You also said he was keeping quiet about why he travelled to the Rakhigarhi area. So he didn’t always keep you abreast of everything he did.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Gupta admitted.

  ‘At least, not right away,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe he was planning on telling you later. Maybe he needed to confirm something, before he could be totally sure.’

  ‘I don’t see what that would have been. But it’s possible.’

  ‘Isn’t it also possible that someone else found out first, before Kabir got around to telling you? Maybe the same person who’d sent him the antagonistic emails? Perhaps the same someone who’d already tried twice to hack into his computer model, not just to access the information but to infect it with some kind of malware that would mess up the whole system. Someone obviously paying very close attention to his every move. What if that person was so intent on destroying Kabir’s research that they’d resort to the ultimate extreme?’

  Gupta stared at Ben in disbelief. ‘Do you really think this could be so?’

  Ben replied, ‘You’d need to ask the engineer who really did invent a car that runs on water. Except you couldn’t ask him, because he’s dead. Someone murdered him. Guess why.’

  Gupta turned a shade paler. ‘Dear me. Oh dear me. I had never realised—’

  Ben said, ‘People hurt and kill one another for the slightest of reasons, Professor. Take it from me. And if someone was trying to threaten Kabir’s work, that’s a lead I’d very much like to investigate further. If we knew who had sent the emails or tried to hack his computers, it would be an important first step.’

  Gupta began chewing his lip and wringing his hands in agitation. ‘I really have no idea. I don’t suppose that Kabir found out. If he did, he never mentioned it. But Haani might. Yes, now that is an idea. You should speak with him.’

  Ben asked, ‘Who’s Haani?’

  ‘Haani Bhandarkar.’ Gupta spelled it, and Ben wrote the name in his pad while Gupta explained, ‘Another of Kabir’s graduate students who worked as his assistant, along with Manish and Sai. Haani helped him set up the cyber-security measures against further hacking attacks. He had also accompanied Kabir on several archaeology field trips in the past, and would have gone with them that day if he had not sprained his ankle in a kabaddi match a week before.’

  Ben knew that kabaddi was one of India’s most popular sports, a rough-and-tumble team contest that was a more violent version of the tag games schoolkids used to play at break-time. Like rugby, but without a ball. ‘Lucky for him. Where can I find Haani? Here at the Institute?’

  Gupta shook his head and replied, ‘I haven’t seen him since … since the incident. He was as profoundly shocked by what happened as the rest of us. Even more so.’ He thought for a moment, then added, ‘I might have his home address in my office. Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t divulge personal information, but under the circumstances …’

  ‘I would appreciate that very much, Professor.’

  Gupta locked up Kabir’s office and led the way back down the corridor to his own. Ben stood by the desk and waited and watched as the professor spent several minutes rooting through drawers crammed with paperwork, gave up and then switched his search to a battered filing cabinet in the corner.

  ‘Here it is,’ he said eventually, pulling out a file, which he laid on the desk and flipped through until he found a dog-eared sheet of paper that was Haani Bhandarkar’s enrolment form as a student at the Institute. Clipped to the top left corner of the sheet was a passport-sized photo of a young Indian guy. He was a good-looking kid. Probably popular with the girls. His raven-black hair was longish and unkempt and he had a devil-may-care, F-you kind of look in his eyes. Attitude. The date of birth on the form made him twenty-two years old. Below that were filled out an address in Delhi, a mobile number and an email contact. Ben copied them down in his notebook. Gupta started giving him directions to get there, but Ben cut him off and said, ‘I’ll find it.’

  He thanked the professor for his help, and left. He checked his phone as he retraced his steps back towards the car, and saw that Brooke hadn’t called him, meaning she must still be at the house, packing her stuff and saying her goodbyes to Esha. Which gave Ben some more time to kill before he had to meet her at the hotel; and now he had a good use to put it to. He worked his way through the tourist throng, got back to the car, jumped in, stabbed Haani Bhandarkar’s address into the sat nav, and took off in a hurry.

  In too much of a hurry to notice the black Mahindra SUV leaving the Red Fort car park at the same time he did, and slipping into the traffic several cars behind him.

  The same black Mahindra SUV that had arrived just after he had, with four men inside. Of whom the pair in the front seats were the same two who had stopped Ben in the Chhatta Chowk bazaar earlier and asked him for a light.

  The guy with the Rambo tee was driving, with the taller man in the open-necked purple shirt next to him. Though the taller one wasn’t the biggest man in the SUV, by a margin of several inches. The back-seat passenger behind him was a hulking monster of a man, closer to seven feet than six, so wide that he took up most of the rear bench and so heavy that he made the suspension of the vehicle creak and list when he got in. As usual, the hulk was sitting in silence. It wasn’t his job to talk.

  Squeezed up next to the hulk, his back-seat companion with the swarthy complexion and the bulging eyes was just as quiet, because he was too preoccupied with his missing upper front tooth and bruised lip to say much. He spent a lot of time thinking about the bitch who’d punched him in the mouth. And about what he’d have loved to do to her by way of revenge.

  The guy behind the wheel glanced at the taller man in the front passenger seat and said, ‘What are you thinking, Takshak?’

  ‘I’m thinking the man we’re working for is full of shit, for a start,’ the one called Takshak replied. ‘Fuck him. I don’t trust him, never have. And I’m done obeying orders like a dog. It’s going to be time to start doing this our way. Just like we planned all along. We’re taking over.’

  ‘Then what do we do? You want to hit this Hope guy now?’

  The one called Takshak replied, ‘We will. And the Ray bitch, too. But it has to be done right. We have other priorities, remember. So for the moment, we just follow him and see where he leads us. Like the boss said.’

  ‘I thought you just said the boss was full of shit.’

  ‘He is. But we might have some more loose ends of our own to tie up before we can put our plan into action. Which means we need to follow this guy for the moment. Careful, though. Stay right back. Don’t let him spot us. He’s a smart one.’

  The driver looked worried. ‘And now we let him see our faces. I don’t know if that was a good idea.’

  ‘I wanted to get the measure of him,’ Takshak said. ‘Up close and personal. See what kind of man I’m up against.’

  ‘So now you got the measure of him, what do you think?’

  ‘I think if he’s really a friend of the Rays, they’ve got more interesting friends than I thought.’

  ‘He looks like a soldier. Ex-British Army kind of guy.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Takshak said.

  ‘They’ve got some serious black ops ninja kinds of hard cases. You think he’s one of those? Looked that way to me.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Takshak said again.

  ‘The kind of guys who can fuck you up in a heartbeat. Slash your throat wide open, shove their arm down deep inside right up to the elbow and rip your guts out in their bare fist before you even see them coming. Right?’

  ‘Wrong,’ Takshak said. ‘That’s the kind of guy I am.’

  Chapter 26

&nb
sp; After days with no direct human contact whatsoever, trapped in a hostile captive environment with zero hope of escape and total uncertainty as to what might lie in store, even the strongest mind starts to fall apart like an unravelling jumper. Amal had been married to a hostage psychology expert long enough to have picked up some scattered bits of knowledge about what it felt like to undergo one of the worst mental tortures a person can be subjected to. But when Brooke talked about her work with victims suffering from post-abduction trauma it was just an impartial glimpse of another world, one that Amal considered totally separate from his own. Why would he, in a million years, ever imagine for the slightest moment that he would one day end up living the nightmare for real himself?

  And yet, here he was.

  Nobody had hurt him, and he was being reasonably well looked after. But from early on in his incarceration he’d become terrified that that could change at any moment. His cell door would burst open and two or three or four masked men with guns were going to come trampling down those steps and grab him, hold him down and start pressing information out of him. He remembered how easily they’d physically overpowered him the night of the kidnap. They were tough, brutal men. They’d use harsh methods to make him talk. No possible way he could withstand them.

  You promised, Amal kept telling himself. You gave your word to Kabir that you wouldn’t give away his secret.

  Yeah, I know I did, would come the reply from inside his head. But Kabir’s probably dead. I’m not going to help him by keeping his secret. I’m only going to end up dead, too.

  To which he’d counter-reply to himself, A promise is a promise. Even if Kabir really is dead. Even if they kill you, too. Don’t die a coward.

  Then: Who am I kidding? I’m just a softy, a nerd, a writer. I’m not a hero. Not like some people I know. Not like … Searching for an example … Not like Ben Hope. He wouldn’t let these bastards break him. But what chance do I have of holding out? And what’s the point?

  Then: Fine. Then spill the beans and let yourself be remembered as a weakling who blabbed his guts out because he was too afraid.

  Torture. Mutilation. Waterboarding. Beatings with a rubber hose. Electrocution. A whole chamber of horrors kept crowding his thoughts. It wasn’t easy, being brave and resolute.

  It was on the third day – as best he could tell, given how hard it was to keep track of time – that the interrogation had begun. But it was nothing like Amal had imagined. It was almost worse. The door stayed shut. Nobody came down the steps to hurt him.

  Instead, the voice began to talk to him.

  It came from hidden speakers overhead, mesh-covered holes in the ceiling that he hadn’t noticed until the first time he heard it. It invaded every square inch of space inside the cellar, enveloping him, filling his ears, impossible to shut out, deep and reverberating and infinitely malevolent. So calm and yet so menacing. Its tones were distorted through some kind of electronic masking device that twisted and scrambled the sound frequencies to a sinister effect that made his flesh crawl with horror. Like a demon’s voice talking to him. Amal would soon come to live in constant dread of hearing it again. And he did, day after day.

  There was no predicting when the next session of questioning would begin. It could come at any time. But the questions themselves were always the same ones, over and over. And here they came again now, booming at him from the walls, threatening and terrible, making him want to fall to his knees and pound his face and rip out his hair.

  The spine-chilling voice began with the same opening line as always.

  ARE YOU READY TO TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW, AMAL?

  ‘I know nothing!’ he yelled back at the walls. The same answer he always yelled back, until he was hoarse with repeating it. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Why can’t you let me go? Please! Just let me go!’

  THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE, AMAL. TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW, AND THIS WILL ALL BE OVER.

  Then the crux. The question at the heart of all the others. The reason why these faceless people were holding him prisoner in this hellhole.

  WHAT DID YOUR BROTHER FIND?

  Amal screamed, ‘For the millionth time, damn you, I don’t know what Kabir found! I swear to you he didn’t tell me a single thing about it!’

  DON’T LIE TO ME. OR YOU WILL NEVER LEAVE THIS PLACE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? NEVER.

  ‘Why can’t you believe me? All he told me was that he’d found something, but he didn’t say what. If I knew, I’d tell you. But I can’t! He’s just an archaeologist, for God’s sake! A teacher! What could he have found that matters so much to you anyway?’

  WHERE IS IT?

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  WHERE IS IT?

  ‘I don’t knooooowww!!!’ Amal bellowed back at the walls. ‘If I don’t even know what the hell it is, then how can I possibly know where the hell it is?’

  How long could he go on lying to them? How much worse was he making things for himself by holding back the truth? Even more frightening was the thought that if he continued giving them nothing, they might start believing him. Then they would have no further reason for keeping him alive. That door at the top of the steps would suddenly swing open, his captors would come down inside the basement – perhaps one of them would be the owner of the awful demon voice, Amal would never know – and they’d put a gun to his head and murder him.

  The voice was silent for a few moments, as though the monstrous creature it belonged to was contemplating another approach. Then it spoke again.

  WE HAVE YOUR WIFE, AMAL.

  The words hit Amal like a tremor that swept his legs out from under him. He fell to his knees. Stared up at the ceiling. The pair of square mesh-covered holes stared back at him like two eyes in a huge blank face, inscrutable, merciless. He tried to open his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a gasp.

  DID YOU THINK WE’D JUST HAVE LET HER GO? SHE’S RIGHT HERE.

  ‘Prove it!’ Amal shouted. His voice was cracked with desperation. ‘Let me speak to her!’

  SHE CAN HEAR YOU. BUT SHE CAN’T TALK.

  ‘Don’t you hurt her! You can’t!’

  NO? I THINK I CAN. I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT.

  ‘Please! I’m begging you not to harm her!’

  THAT DEPENDS ON YOU. ARE YOU READY TO START TELLING ME THE TRUTH?

  Amal was drenched with cold sweat. His hands were shaking uncontrollably and his heart was fluttering. He bowed his head and closed his eyes and tried to breathe steadily. He couldn’t. He felt as if he was about to throw up. The conversation he’d had that night with Kabir now came flooding through his mind again, replaying like a flashback. He heard his own voice, filled with the amazement that had been his reaction when Kabir had let him in on his secret.

  ‘Are you serious, Kabir? Buried treasure? It’s like something out of Robert Louis Stevenson. X marks the spot, and all that stuff. You’re not winding me up?’

  And Kabir’s voice on the other end of the line, long distance from Delhi to London, a little crackly and faraway, but the excitement in his tone coming through as sharp and clear as if they’d been in the same room together talking face to face. ‘I’m totally serious, Bro. This is huge. Massive. Monumental. It’s everything I ever dreamed of. The culmination of years and years of work.’

  ‘And you actually found it?’

  ‘As good as, near enough. It’s just sitting there waiting for us to dig it up and bring it home. Might need more than a single helicopter load, though.’

  ‘Bloody hell, that’s incredible. It’s awesome. How much value are we talking about? Millions?’

  Kabir had laughed. ‘Hey, why not? Millions, billions, zillions. Dollars, not rupees. All the money in the world.’

  ‘It’s a bad line, Kabir. You’re breaking up.’

  ‘Hold on. Let me step out onto the balcony. That better?’

  ‘Much better.’

  ‘What was I saying?’

  ‘About all these millions and bi
llions you’re about to get hold of.’

  Kabir had replied, ‘It’s not really about the money, though. We’re talking about human knowledge, you know? Cracking a mystery whose secrets have been hidden away for thousands of years. We had no idea, Amal. I mean, we just didn’t have a clue about these people and what might be lying buried under our feet. And now we will. Can you believe that? It’s so fucking exciting, I can’t wait to get there.’

  ‘When do you leave for Rakhigarhi?’

  ‘Four days from now. All packed and ready to roll.’

  ‘I’m blown away. This is amazing, Kabir.’

  ‘But you have to promise to keep quiet for now, okay? Not a word to anyone. There are people who’d kill to know what I know. Seriously.’

  At the time, Amal had thought his brother was joking. It wasn’t until soon afterwards, when Kabir had disappeared, that those words would come back to haunt him.

  ‘Whatever you say. But keep me posted, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course I will. Talk soon, Amal.’

  ‘Take care, Kabir. Call me when you get home again.’

  The flashback ended. Amal opened his eyes and found himself back in his nightmare, kneeling there on the floor with his world in pieces. They had Brooke. Nothing else could possibly matter any more.

  The game was over. Time to start telling them the truth.

  Utterly spent and defeated, he slowly raised his head to look up at the ceiling. The speaker holes continued gazing down at him, as though waiting for him to speak.

  His voice was just a croak. ‘Kabir found treasure. Lots of it. Ancient. Priceless. Worth millions, billions, who knows?’

  I’M LISTENING, AMAL.

  ‘If I tell you everything I know, you’ll let her go? You promise?’

  TRUST ME, AMAL. NOW TALK.

  Chapter 27

  The neighbourhood where Haani Bhandarkar lived was a far cry from the living standards of the Ray family. Ben hacked northwards across Delhi to find himself in a teeming residential area that rivalled pretty much any of the war-torn and desperately deprived urban communities he’d encountered on his military travels and since. He passed endless slum colonies that consisted of makeshift shanty dwellings made of cardboard and tin, straw and mud. Drove through streets where huddled shapes of beggars and homeless people, many of them pitifully disabled and malnourished, lined every step and doorway, sharing space with the rotting litter that lay piled knee-high against the buildings and the human effluent that ran thick down the gutters, mixed with that of goats and mules and rats.