'Shine your flashlights on the rock,' he directed and, with one accord, multiple beams of light converged on the rock wall.

They made their way along the wall, moving slowly, searching for an opening or any sign of a blocked entrance. Vijay was sure that the original Nine had closed the opening and hoped that they would find some sign that indicated where the cavern entrance once stood.

But there was nothing. The wall stretched for almost 60 feet around the hill but they came across neither opening nor any sign. As they came to the end of the wall, Vijay asked them to light up the gap between the wall and the hill. He stepped forward to enter the fissure but Farooq summoned him back and motioned to one of his own men to check the narrow gap.

The man walked slowly, cautiously, feeling his way around the narrow passage between the wall and the hill. And disappeared.

After a moment, a shout came to their ears, followed by a string of unintelligible words.

'What's he saying?' Murphy asked.

'There's nothing there.' Farooq shouted out something to the scout and turned on Vijay, his anger carving deep lines on his face in the light of the torches.

Vijay didn't understand. He made his way into the gap. The terrain, the wall, the fissure, all matched the description in Surasen's narration.

With one difference.

There was no entrance into the hillside.

He emerged from behind the wall, looking perplexed. A sinking feeling took hold of him. Had the Nine brought them so far only to lead them into a dead end?

Or had they been mistaken in their conclusion about Sitagarha hill being the location of the cavern?

42.

Day 11 The outskirts of Hazaribagh town The convoy of trucks drew to a halt and Imran hopped out. Radha jumped out as well and they walked together to where a white Ambassador car, with a beacon, stood. As they approached, the man standing outside the car came forward to meet them.

'Good to see you, Vishnu,' Imran greeted the District Collector of Hazaribagh warmly.

'Good to see you, too, Imran.' The DC was in his mid 30s, with jet black hair cut short and a pencil-thin moustache.

Radha was introduced to him.

Vishnu smiled at Radha and, addressing Imran, said, 'I know you're not going to tell me who she is and why she is here.'

'No. Long story. We don't have too much time. We have to be on our way.'

'That's why I said I'd meet you here rather than you taking a detour through the town. You'd lose an extra half-hour that way.' Vishnu glanced at the commandos in the trucks. 'And you'd fall behind whoever you are chasing.' He grinned at Imran. 'I don't suppose you can tell me what you're up to? Evacuating Hazaribagh town in the middle of the night, accompanying three truckloads of Black Cat commandos into the forests of Hazaribagh. Whatever it is you're after, it must be big.'

Imran grinned back. The two men seemed to know each other well. 'National security. Can't tell you. But you're right. It is big. How's the evacuation going?'

'The BSF have been a great help. We'll be through in a couple of hours.'

''What did you tell the people?'

'Section 144. Earthquake prediction.' Vishnu looked at Imran. 'It wasn't easy, though.'

Imran understood. Disaster management policies and contingency plans sounded good on paper. Putting them into action, however, was a different thing. 'We must be going.' Imran said, finally, to Vishnu. 'You'd better get away as well. Just in case.'

Vishnu's face was serious. 'Take care of yourself, Imran.' He nodded to Radha. 'You too, Radha. And I hope you catch whoever you are after.'

He got into his car and drove off as Radha and Imran made their way back to the truck and clambered in. They were close to their goal.

But would they reach in time?

The Final Task The tension was palpable and Vijay was sweating profusely.

Then, Colin had a flash of inspiration. 'Hang on. Wasn't there something about a stupa being discovered around here?'

Vijay stared at Colin, wondering what he was jabbering about. His mind was numb with the pressure of their fate hanging by a thread, accentuated by a lack of sleep and the tension of the last few days.

Colin realised that Vijay hadn't seen the brochure from the travel agency, and he quickly explained.

Vijay, too, made the connection. 'The original entrance was definitely here,' he explained. 'Behind the rock wall. The Nine must have blocked it up and camouflaged it so it looked like the rest of the hillside. With the passage of 2,000 years all trace of their handiwork would have disappeared. But they must have built an alternate entrance. The stupa will mark that entrance.'

Farooq's eyes bored into Vijay for a moment, then he turned around and barked instructions to his men who fanned out, searching for a stupa.

Tense moments passed. Murphy stood by impassively, his face inscrutable. Farooq, however, paced up and down wordlessly like a lion in a cage.

A shout came out of the darkness.

Farooq strode swiftly in that direction, followed by the rest of the group.

Two men had their flashlights trained on a small stupa blackened with age. If there had been a protective wall around it, the centuries had devoured it. What stood before them was a hemispherical stone mound, 10 feet high, bereft of carvings or stonework.

Vijay held his breath as he and his friends approached the stupa.

'Let's split up and examine the face of the structure. You know what we are looking for,' he directed them.

Colin and Shukla nodded and broke away. The stupa seemed to be consistent with the pattern the Nine had followed.

It had been carved out of stone, not bricks and plaster like many other stupas; it had been built to last.

Shukla made the discovery. 'Here,' he called out.

They quickly hurried to the far side of the stupa and found him standing before the only ornamentation on the structure.

It was a stone column that extruded around six inches from the stupa, parallel to the ground. The base of the pillar, where it met the stupa, was ornately carved with miniature lions. But it was the face of the pillar that was visible to them that bore the unmistakable sign of the Nine, within a circle of lions.

The nine-spoked wheel.

They looked at each other excitedly, almost forgetting that they were surrounded by terrorists.

Farooq and Murphy came up to them and stared at the pillar. Murphy looked at Vijay. 'Well?'

The pillar was profusely carved and to anyone not familiar with the sign of the Nine it was difficult to comprehend the nature of their discovery.

'It's here.' Vijay looked around. What did the sign mark? If it indicated an entrance, then where was it?

'How can you be sure?' Farooq eyed him with suspicion.

Vijay ignored him. 'Keep looking,' he instructed his companions. 'It has to be here somewhere.'

They wandered among the broken columns and pillars scattered around the stupa, probably remnants of some other ancient structure that had stood here. But there was no sign of anything that would indicate an entrance to the cavern within the hill.

Shukla stopped at a short stone cylindrical pillar and stared curiously at it. It was three feet in height and resting on a stone base that rose up from the ground to a height of three inches. Near the tip of the pillar were small, hollow stone loops.

Vijay and Colin saw his interest in the pillar and joined him in examining it.

Did it offer any clues?

Colin looked back at the horizontal column on the stupa which had the wheel engraved on it.

The same thought struck all three of them together.

It was pointing straight at the circular pillar Shukla had stopped by. The horizontal column was fixed at exactly the same height as the height of the circular pillar. This had to be more than a coincidence.

'Lights!' Vijay called out and the LeT men trained their flashlights on the stone pillar.

'It's built to slide.' Colin pointed at the thin stone slab that formed the base. The pillar seemed to be mounted on grooves and if they could slide the pillar along the grooves, they were certain that beneath the base of the pillar, they would find another entrance to the cavern of the Nine.

'We need ropes.' Vijay looked at Farooq, who barked orders once more.

The LeT men ran thick ropes through the stone loops on the pillar. They then tugged hard at the ropes.

The pillar didn't move.

More men joined the effort, straining every muscle.

But the pillar refused to budge.

Vijay frowned and squatted, examining the grooves on which the pillar was mounted. 'The pillar can't be slid in this direction,' he announced after a few moments. There's an edge of rock wedged in between the grooves, locking it in place. Try pulling in the opposite direction.'

The LeT men now moved to the opposite side and heaved on the ropes.

This time, the pillar moved with a jerking motion, shuddered and then toppled over to the ground with a soft thud.

Carved into the stone base was a hollow, forming a sturdy stone handle. It had been concealed beneath the pillar.

Ropes were looped through the handle and pulled. Slowly, the base stone began to rise as centuries of dirt and mud fell away from its edges. It finally fell over, exposing a dark hole in the ground.

Flashlights were immediately trained on the opening, revealing a stone staircase that descended into the depths of the ground and disappeared into darkness.

Farooq motioned to two men who obediently disappeared down the stairway. A few moments later, a muffled shout reached their ears. They were quickly herded forward, led by Farooq and Murphy.

In the light from the flashlights they noticed that on either side of the staircase were bare stone walls polished smooth, though not as finely as the walls of the caves they had seen at Barabar.

The stairway took them deep under the forest floor. As they stepped off the final stair, they stood in a square chamber and looked around, in awe. It was large enough to accommodate at least a 100 people. Whoever had built the chamber had taken pains to burnish its appearance, polishing the walls to a high degree of smoothness. The roof was about 30 feet above their heads.

The LeT men spread out.

Shukla gazed around, wondering why the chamber had been built. He knew this question would remain unresolved, the answer hidden in the mists of time.

There was a shout from one of the LeT men who had gone ahead to explore.

Farooq and Murphy stalked over to him, followed by the others. The light of the torches revealed openings in the rock wall opposite the rocky stairway entrance.

'Not another riddle.' Colin groaned.

They stared at the sight before them.

Nine archways had been cut into the rock wall. Each arch rose to a height of 10 feet and bore an inscription above it. But this time the telltale wheel was of no help.

Each arch bore an engraved wheel above the inscription.

'What does this mean?' Farooq demanded angrily. His tension was palpable. He hadn't been expecting the final stage of the journey to be this challenging.

But it was clear that the Nine hadn't meant their secret to be discovered so easily. Even if someone solved the clues and made it this far, they had to go through further tests before they achieved their goal.

Shukla had been studying the arches. 'I've read about tricks like these,' he said softly, his eyes still gleaming. The excitement of treading a path that hadn't been trodden for over 2,000 years, of finding the only existing structures built in the time of Asoka the Great, and of being so close to finding the secret of the Nine, had momentarily overcome his fear and apprehension of being held hostage by LeT. 'Entrances like these were built to ensure that only a select few could access them. Enter the wrong doorway and you could find yourself in a trap, a maze, or worse.'

'So, which one is the correct doorway?' Murphy's gaze bored into Shukla.

Vijay looked at the old scholar, hoping he could make sense of the inscriptions above each archway. They were unintelligible to him.

'The inscriptions are in Magadhi.' Shukla gazed fervently at the engravings, straining to read them. Farooq noticed this and ordered the flashlights be trained on the inscriptions.

'Can you read them?' Vijay urged Shukla. 'I mean, are they still legible?'

To his relief, Shukla nodded. 'They've been sheltered here for a long time, protected against the elements, so they're in good condition.' He pointed to each inscription, as he read them out from left to right.

'Isvara, Jeevas, Prakriti, Samay, Karma, Dukkha, Samudaya, Nirhodha, Marga.'

Colin frowned. 'I recognise the first five. I remember you telling me about the five basic truths of the Bhagavad Gita. But what are the others?'

Shukla looked at him. 'The four basic truths of Buddhism; Dukkha (the truth of suffering), Samudaya (the truth of the cause of suffering), Nirhodha (the truth of the end of suffering), Marga (the truth of the path that frees human beings from suffering). Together, these nine words represent the foundation of Hinduism and the basis of Buddhism, the two major religions that originated in India. If there was any doubt that Asoka was responsible for this or connected with this structure in any way, this removes that doubt.'

'Good.' Murphy walked up to Shukla, 'Then you can also figure out which one is the correct doorway.'

Shukla shook his head. 'I have no way of knowing which one to choose. There are no clues here.'

Farooq strode up to Shukla, a hard look on his face. 'We have not come this far to fail. We must find the path to enter.'