Imran smiled grimly. 'I want to make sure we nail that bastard.'

33.

Day 8 Patna Farooq beamed with satisfaction at his two prisoners. 'Finally, I have you where I want you. Your friends are going to work out the last clue you found at Barabar. And once we have that clue, the secret of the Nine will belong to us.'

Vijay and Radha sat on the floor before him. Radha's hands had been unbound but Vijay's hands were still tied behind his back.

After a short, bumpy ride in the SUV, through narrow lanes and dark alleys, they had arrived at a three-storey house in a nondescript section of Patna. Both prisoners had been dragged into the house, where they had been dumped in this room. There was no one in the room apart from the three of them; Farooq's armed goons stood guard outside the door.

Vijay didn't like the fact that their captors had made no effort to blindfold them or confuse them in any way about the location of the building where they were being held captive. It was as if Farooq didn't really care if they were able to identify the place later or not. He guessed that Farooq didn't mean to let them leave. That was a sobering thought!

But he still put up a brave front and he could see that Radha was doing the same. She was a strong woman; he had always known that, but to see her hold up in the face of the kind of adversity they were now confronted with was a different thing. His respect and admiration for her had increased by several notches. As had his sense of despondency.

Vijay stared back angrily at Farooq. 'You're never going to get away with this.'

'Really? And who is going to find you? Not your friends.'

'The Maharaja,' Radha said suddenly. 'Bheem Singh. Greg White will inform him and he'll organise a rescue party for us.' Her eyes flashed at Farooq . 'You and your gang of thugs will go to jail.'

Farooq smirked. 'Gang of thugs, eh? You really don't know who you're dealing with here, do you?'

A sudden fear took hold of Vijay. 'Who are you?' he demanded. 'And what are you after?'

There was a genuine look of surprise on Farooq's face. 'You mean to say you don't know what the secret of the Nine is?' His voice rang with disbelief.

Vijay shook his head. 'No. We know that the brotherhood of the Nine was created by Asoka to conceal a great but dangerous discovery. But we don't know any more than that.'

Farooq laughed heartily. 'You've gone to such great lengths to decipher the clues left by the Nine and travelled across India following the trail of their secret but you have no idea what you seek? This is rich.'

Vijay flushed. He didn't like the way Farooq put it, but he was right. All he had been focused on was following the clues in his uncle's message and finding the secret. He and his friends had been so caught up in this that they never really gave a thought to the actual nature of the secret. He felt a bit foolish, recognising the truth in Farooq's words.

'Do you know what the secret is?' he countered aggressively.

'Of course,' came the immediate reply. 'We've known all along. We found out 10 years ago.'

'We?' Radha didn't understand.

Farooq seemed to mull over something.

'No one is going to come to your rescue,' he said finally. 'And there's no way you can escape us now. So I guess there's no harm if I tell you now. After all you've gone through, perhaps you deserve to know.'

He barked out an order and one of his men scurried into the room with a chair. He settled down comfortably, after dismissing the guard. 'Let's begin with ancient history. You are right about Asoka the Great and the discovery of the secret which led to the birth of the Nine in the third century bc. Fast forward to 500 ad, when the first Maharaja of Rajvirgarh stumbled upon the Nine and an ancient lost book of the Mahabharata.'

'Wait a minute,' Radha interrupted. 'Rajvirgarh? Isn't that Bheem Singh's ancestral kingdom?'

Farooq grinned wickedly. 'Yes, I'm speaking of Bheem Singh's ancestor, the man who founded the kingdom of Rajvirgarh when the Gupta Empire crumbled. The stone book was the Vimana Parva, that was deliberately not recorded and available for the masses, unlike the other books of the Mahabharata, when the oral tradition gave way to the written one. The book described a secret weapon from the gods that the Kauravas were about to employ on the battlefield with the help of the King of Magadha. But with the abrupt end of the war that weapon was never deployed.'

'That's what the inscription said,' Radha looked at Vijay. 'The one on the wall of the secret chamber at Bairat. You remember Papa translated it for us.'

Vijay nodded as it was Farooq's turn to flush. 'I never saw that inscription,' he admitted reluctantly. 'But it doesn't matter now. We don't need it.'

He resumed his story. 'The Maharaja discovered that his court astronomer was, in reality, a member of the Nine and tried to get the secret out of him. But the astronomer disappeared and was never seen again.'

He chuckled. 'Until 2001. When the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas.'

Vijay's hopes began to sink. Farooq's words were ominous. Was he connected in some way to the Taliban?

'There were caves hidden behind the statues,' Farooq continued, 'caves that were hidden away for 1,500 years. In one of those caves, the Taliban found the skeleton of a man and a treasure trove of ancient documents. Texts that had somehow survived the ravages of time. They also came across a metal disk with inscriptions. Our long-lost astronomer from Rajvirgarh had finally been found.'

Radha and Vijay exchanged glances. So this was where the second metal disk had turned up.

'Unfortunately,' Farooq continued, ignoring them, 'the Taliban couldn't read the texts. They were written in Kharosthi. So the ignorant louts sat on them for a while without knowing their significance.'

'So how did you get hold of them?' Vijay demanded. He was trembling despite himself, in anticipation of Farooq's revelation of his links to the notorious former rulers of Afghanistan.

'Patience,' Farooq admonished him. 'I'll come to that in a bit. But first, here's something you didn't know.' He grinned again, clearly enjoying himself.

'Around the same time as the discovery of the texts, in early 2001, I was approached by the Nine with an invitation to join them. One of their members had died and they were searching for a replacement.'

'You mean the Nine are still around?' Vijay wondered aloud. 'I thought they had died out centuries ago?'

Farooq looked directly at Vijay. 'It was your uncle who extended the invitation. He was a member of the Nine...and their contemporary leader as well.'

He was greeted by expressions of disbelief.

Vijay found his tongue. 'Is this another of your tricks? Uncle, a member of the Nine, and their leader as well?'

Farooq stared back at him, his gaze unwavering. 'I know it's hard to believe. But it's true.'

'It does make sense,' Radha said slowly, addressing Vijay. 'It would explain the clues he left in his emails to you. It also explains how he was so well-informed about the locations of the clues we've followed so far. That's probably also how he came to possess the metal disk we found in his locker.'

'Oh, that wasn't with him to start with,' Farooq clarified. 'The disk and the key to the disk were never kept with the same person; always two different people. It came to him when I killed the member of the Nine who possessed it. Two years ago.' His eyes flashed angrily. 'He never told me he had it. They had a secret code by which, if something happened to one member, anything they possessed was passed on to another member whose identity they knew, until the member who died was replaced.'

There was silence once more. They could both imagine what had happened to the rest of the Nine. Vijay's mind flashed back to the softboard at his uncle's desk; the eight news clippings that reported the mysterious deaths of eminent people all over the world. Had they been the other eight?

Farooq was speaking again. 'I was delighted to accept his invitation and I joined the Nine. It was an honour. It didn't matter that India and Pakistan harboured political animosities. As a nuclear scientist, I felt the Nine had no political or geographical boundaries. But that was short-lived. After 9/11, when the US invaded Afghanistan and killed thousands of innocent civilians after overthrowing the Taliban, I joined Al Qaeda. The West had no right to attack and kill innocent Muslims without provocation.

'The US had long helped Pakistan with its covert nuclear programme and I had come to regard America as a friend. But 9/11 showed me that it was a marriage of convenience for the Americans. I began to hate America and when Al Qaeda approached me, I joined them. I had planned to pass on critical components of the Pakistani nuclear programme to Al Qaeda so they could assemble a nuclear bomb.'

Vijay's hopes sank even lower. Farooq was a member of Al Qaeda! What moment of madness had led him to entangle with a man who was proudly confessing to being a terrorist? He clung on weakly to the only hope that seemed to be left for them: Bheem Singh. Surely the Maharaja would be able to command resources that would lead to their rescue?

And another question had begun to trouble him. What was there about the secret of the Nine that was of such interest to Al Qaeda?

Farooq was speaking again and his next words shattered Vijay's hopes. 'I met with one of Al Qaeda's partners, a powerful consortium led by an Austrian businessman, Van Klueck and Bheem Singh. They had been unsuccessfully searching for the secret of the Nine since 1990, when Bheem Singh had discovered ancient documents in a secret chamber in Rajvirgarh fort; documents that spoke of the Vimana Parva and the missing astronomer.'

'What?' Radha couldn't believe her ears. 'Bheem Singh is a partner of Al Qaeda?'

Farooq was grinning from ear to ear, enjoying their shock and visible discomfort. He had known that they were pinning their hopes on the Maharaja.

Vijay's expression grew gloomy and forlorn as he digested this revelation. There was no hope of escape left for him and Radha. He looked at Radha and saw the same conclusion in her eyes.

'So Bheem Singh knew you were a member of the Nine?' Radha demanded.

'Of course not. I wasn't going to tell them everything. I'm pretty sure they held back a lot of secrets from me.'

Farooq waited for a while before taking up the narrative again. 'Bheem Singh and Van Klueck had searched high and low for clues to the secret of the Nine. They even sent a squad of assassins to the Temple of the Tooth near Lhasa. The assassins massacred the monks and made off with the ancient texts that were hidden in a vault in the temple. But they couldn't find the metal disk and the key which were so vital to the search.' He shrugged. 'Naturally. One disk was with the Nine. The other was with the astronomer, buried behind the Buddhas at Bamiyan.'

He leaned forward and looked at Vijay. 'Now, I'll answer your question about how I got the metal disk and the texts. Luckily for us, before the Taliban was overthrown, the disk and the texts were passed on to Mohammed Bin Jabal, an Al Qaeda leader. But it wasn't until 2003 that I got to see them. I immediately realised they were important, though I had never imagined what they would lead to. I took them to Vikram Singh, who didn't yet know about my links to Al Qaeda. He translated them for me and I learned the truth about the secret of the Nine.'

He looked at Vijay. 'Unfortunately, your uncle began wondering where I had found the disk and the texts. And when I asked him which member of the Nine had the key, he became suspicious. He secretly placed me under surveillance and discovered that I was working for Al Qaeda. He confronted me and threatened to expose me.' A shadow crossed his face. 'I gave him a chance. I told him if he let me know who had the key, I'd leave him alone and that would be the end of it.'

'But he didn't.' There was pride in Vijay's voice.

'I had to go underground. While I lay low, I got involved with Lashkar-e-Taiba, who had ambitions of becoming the foremost Islamic defender of the faith. I also informed Bheem Singh and Van Klueck about the discovery. One of the texts mentioned a hidden location and gave instructions on how to find it. But that wasn't where the secret was hidden. Instead, we found a small hoard of weapons, fairly sophisticated considering their antiquity, which we reverse engineered to build our own armoury.'

Radha and Vijay recalled the examples Shukla had given them, in an earlier conversation, of the so-called celestial weapons that had been used in the Mahabharata; terrifying weapons that could kill thousands at one stroke and lay entire regions to waste. It was a sobering thought.

'That contraption you used to blow up the vault door,' Vijay recalled the events at the vault in Delhi, 'was that part of this hoard?'

'One of the original weapons,' Farooq beamed. 'Not one of the replicas we built. Imagine it. A weapon thousands of years old, still in pristine working condition. And amazingly lightweight as well. That metal-we couldn't figure out its composition-was lighter than aluminium or even carbon fibre.'

Vijay remembered seeing how the device had been folded up to less than half its size and the manner in which it had been carried away. Having witnessed the power of that device, the fact that a terrorist organisation like LeT had access to weapons like this was frightening.

'Does that mean there is some truth to the legends of the Mahabharata?' Radha wondered. 'That the war actually did happen in ancient times?'

'Doesn't matter.' Farooq was dismissive. 'The weapons were powerful, but that isn't what we were looking for. Though we did find an incomplete manual that described how to build the ultimate weapon of the Kauravas, the one described in the Vimana Parva. Using the manual, we built a prototype. But it didn't work the way it was supposed to. We realised we needed to find the location where the weapon was hidden. Which meant we needed the key to the disk. So, we began looking for the key.'

'And murdered the members of the Nine, one by one,' Vijay said, bitterly.

Farooq sounded enthralled by his memories. 'We used the weapons we had built using the secret hoard we had discovered. I was fond of your uncle. I didn't want to kill him. Which is why I left him for the last, hoping that one of the others would have the key.

'No wonder your uncle had such an advanced security system installed at the fort,' Radha remarked. 'He knew his life was in danger.'

'And you murdered him.' Vijay's voice was low, but the pain of his uncle's death had returned. He was also angry with himself for having unwittingly aided a terrorist organisation in getting their hands on a secret that the Nine had strived for centuries to keep concealed.

'So what is this secret?' Radha returned to the question that had led to these revelations.

'An amazing weapon delivery system,' Farooq hissed, his eyes brightening. 'One that we will use to carry out our threat.' He smiled superciliously. 'We are going to attack the G20 summit in Washington. Al Qaeda has become obsolete and redundant, a toothless paper tiger. It is time for them to be replaced by an organisation that is more innovative and persistent. The time has come when the world will sit up and take note of Lashkar-e-Taiba!'

34.

Day 9 The Hotel Ashoka Palace, Patna Colin, White and Shukla were gathered in Colin's room. He hadn't slept much the previous night and, from the linguist's face, it was evident that he hadn't either. Colin placed a sheaf of papers before the others and this included some of the printouts they'd referred to in their earlier meetings.

'I've been thinking about the verse all night,' Colin began. 'About who the Mother could be and how we can locate the forests where the verse says she lives. But it didn't get me anywhere. Then, I realised that I was probably thinking too much about the Mother and not enough about the meaning of the verse. Perhaps if we start with the first line and try and understand each line, as we did with the inscriptions on the metal disk, we may get somewhere.'

'The first line seems easy,' White offered. 'The chambers that echo would be the Barabar caves, I think.'

Colin nodded. 'That's what I thought as well. So, if we stand at the Barabar caves and look south, what do we see?'

He picked up the map of India from among the papers. It was the same map that they had referred to in the study at Jaungarh a few days ago, with the locations of all the edicts of Asoka marked out on it.

'I'm guessing we are still looking for locations of Asoka's edicts. There are only two places south of Barabar where the edicts are located,' Colin pointed out the two locations along the eastern coast of India. 'At least the ones that are nearby. All the others are way down south, near the southern borders of his empire.'

'Dhauli and Jaugada,' White read off the map.

'I think one of these two should be the one referred to in the verse,' Shukla concurred.

'The verse says that we should look southwards to the harbinger of the Lord's birth. Any ideas what that means? Who is the Lord?'

'The harbinger of the Lord's birth,' Shukla mused. 'These verses were written by members of Asoka's court. In which case, the Lord is most likely Lord Buddha.'

'And was there a portent that heralded his birth?' Colin inquired.

Shukla's thoughts were distracted by his concern about his daughter. Was she safe? Were they treating her badly? He shook away the thoughts with an effort and replied slowly, thinking hard.

'I haven't heard of any legends about a sign or omen heralding Buddha's birth. But, in art, Buddha's conception is normally depicted by a dream of his mother, Maya, in which a white elephant enters her womb. I don't know if this depiction comes down all the way from Asoka's time, but that is the only "harbinger" I can think of.'

'It must be the one, then.' Colin looked convinced. 'The next line says: In a dream. Do you think it is one sentence deliberately split into two lines to confuse the reader: To the harbinger of the Lord's birth in a dream. That could mean the elephant in the dream.'

He reached out for some of the printouts and began scanning them.

'If we look southwards from Barabar, where do we find a white elephant? Could it be a painting of a white elephant? As you say, this is the depiction of Buddha's conception in art.' Colin frowned.

'Listen to this.' White began reading aloud from the sheet of paper in his hand. 'At Dhauli, near the ancient town of Tosali, is an Asokan inscription carved into a rock. Immediately above the inscription is a terrace, on the right side of which is carved the forepart of an elephant, four feet tall. The elephant is a symbol of Lord Buddha and has now become an object of popular worship.' He looked around. 'What do you think?'

'Could be.' Colin was perceptibly excited. There was a ray of hope, after all. 'Okay, if we assume that the elephant at Dhauli is the one that can be seen when we look southwards from Barabar, what next?'

'We come back to the Mother.' White was matter-of-fact. 'Which is where we got stuck in the first place.'

'I don't get it,' Colin admitted. Passing over the Mother. What could that mean? Who is the Mother? And how does one pass over her? They didn't have planes in those days.'

'Could this be a reference to some ancient statue?' White wondered aloud.

'If it was a statue it must have been someone famous at the time,' Shukla suggested. 'But I can't think of any woman from that period whose fame has persisted through the centuries.'

A thought struck White. 'What about the edicts of Asoka? Suppose we follow his edicts again? Is there any reference to a mother in them?'