James Becker - The Messiah Secret

‘Good. And just tread softly, will you? That part of India’s a sensitive area — I don’t want any official entanglements.’

‘I always tread softly,’ Masters replied. ‘Like the saying goes, I walk softly and carry a big stick — except that these days that normally means an assault rifle or a Browning fifty cal.’

He looked over the notes he’d scribbled down on the pad beside his bed. ‘You still haven’t told me what the target is,’ he pointed out.

Even over the satellite telephone link, there was no mistaking the suppressed excitement in Donovan’s voice.

‘You remember that tiny piece of papyrus I bought at auction ages ago? The one I named the Hyrcania Codex?’

‘Yeah,’ Masters replied, smothering a yawn. ‘You thought it might be a clue to …’ His voice died away as he recalled what Donovan had told him a couple of years earlier. For a few moments he sat there in silence. Suddenly he knew exactly what his old friend was talking about and, despite himself, he felt a sudden chill as he realized the implications.

‘You mean you’ve found something that might lead you to it?’

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ Donovan said. ‘You know that I’ve been looking for it ever since I read the translation of the papyrus text, how I’ve had my people scouring the web, checking museum databases, doing everything I could to track it down. Now I’m real close to finding it — or rather Bronson and Lewis are, because they’ve got more information than I have. And when they do find it, I’m going to take it from them.’

‘But surely it would have turned to dust after all this time?’

‘For a while, I thought so too. But now I reckon that it could still be viable, just because of where it’s hidden. If I’m right, this would be the greatest archaeological discovery in the history of the world, more important than anything that’s ever been found before. And the implications for science are just mind-blowing.’

‘You’re serious about this, JJ, aren’t you?’ Masters said slowly.

‘You’re damn right I’m serious. To recover this object, I’ll risk everything. It’s been a long search but now — right now — the end-game has just begun.’

In his hotel in downtown Mumbai, Bronson had just woken up. After he’d had a shower and a shave, he announced that he felt a bit better but Angela didn’t think there was much visible improvement, and told him so.

‘You still look like a jet-lagged zombie,’ she said, putting her arms round him. ‘Just a clean-shaven zombie, which is only marginally better. Come on. Let’s go and find the business centre.’

Downstairs, the receptionist directed them to a small room off to one side of the lobby. Inside were two desktop computers, a fax machine and a laser printer. Angela sat down in front of one of the desktop machines, and plugged a memory stick into one of the USB ports. A few moments later, the printer hummed and began feeding pages into the output tray.

Angela and Bronson knew they had to act as tourists and join the increasing numbers of Westerners drawn to the Leh region of India by its stark and untamed beauty. But they realized that two Westerners wandering about unescorted in some parts of that area, which had a massive military presence because of the sensitivity of the nearby borders with China and Pakistan, might well attract attention — official and otherwise. They also knew they would have to leave the tourist routes to find what they were looking for, so Angela had come up with a cover story that might help.

She had already prepared a mission statement on her laptop, basing it on one of several previous documents she had stored on her back-up disk.

The printer fell silent. Angela retrieved her memory stick, clipped the printed sheets together and tucked them in her handbag. The finished document ran to about a dozen pages and, together with her British Museum identification, it would, she hoped, be enough to satisfy any official who stopped them. According to the statement, the purpose of their journey was to carry out a preliminary survey of the evidence for pre-Indus Valley civilizations in the Jammu and Kashmir regions of India, and to determine whether a full-scale investigation in the area would be justified. The Indus Valley itself ran just to the south of Leh, so it was a plausible explanation.

Such initial explorations occurred on a regular basis all over the world and that would hopefully be enough to keep them out of trouble. Of course, one telephone call back to the British Museum would immediately destroy their cover story, because nobody there had the slightest idea about where Angela was or what she was doing. Neither was there any official approval for any museum investigation in Kashmir, or anywhere else in northern India, for that matter.

The hotel restaurant was closed, so they stepped outside. Bronson was surprised to discover that it was late evening — his biological clock was telling him something completely different. The evening air was pleasantly cool, and they found a decent-looking restaurant that was still serving dinner without having to walk very far.

‘The first thing we have to do is get ourselves up to Leh,’ Angela said, unfolding a map of the Indian sub-continent on the restaurant table between them and pointing at a spot right up in the Jammu and Kashmir territory, at the very northern tip of India. This area was bordered by China to the east and by Pakistan to the north and west. ‘We’ll have to use Leh — or somewhere very near it — as our base, I think.’

Bronson studied the map, measuring distances by eye and using the scale that ran across the bottom of the sheet.

‘How do we do that? Fly up to Delhi and then take a train?’ he asked.

‘No — we can fly straight there. Leh’s been open to visitors — by which I mean tourists — since the seventies, and it’s actually a fairly big town. The whole area has become really popular with what you might call “adventure tourists” — the kind of people who don’t expect hot water or comfortable beds at the places they stay. There’s an airport, for domestic flights only, a few miles south of the town.’

‘Let’s see if we can take a direct flight tomorrow morning. Once we’re in Leh, we’ll have to hire a four-wheel-drive jeep because I think we’ll find there are very few roads or even tracks once you start climbing.

‘Now,’ Bronson continued, ‘you spent ages on the internet but you still haven’t told me what you’ve found out.’ He looked at her meaningfully.

Angela sighed. ‘I now know who “Yus of the purified” was, and how he acquired that name. In fact, he was called Yus Asaph, or sometimes Yuz Asaf. Yus or Yuz simply meant “leader”, so his name translated as “the leader of the healed” or “leader of the purified” — and that specifically meant lepers who’d been healed.’

‘I didn’t know you could cure leprosy.’

‘I’m just telling you what I found out, or at least what the records told me.’

‘And what about Mohalla? Did you find out where it was?’

‘Yes, and you won your bet. The only “Mohalla” that makes sense in this context is Mohalla Anzimarah, which was located in an area called Khanyar or Khanjar, which is near Srinigar, in Kashmir.’ She pointed at the map. ‘It’s some distance from Leh, maybe a couple of hundred miles, so that ties in quite well with your estimate of how far a small band of travellers could cover in about a week.’

‘And the man they called Yus Asaph was definitely there?’ Bronson asked.

‘According to two completely different sources — and one of them is pretty unimpeachable — yes, he was. And there’s a slightly spooky element I read about which might be related. According to another source, round about the time that the treasure was hidden away a story started to circulate about the so-called “Ghosts of the Silk Road”. That name was tagged on to the story a lot later, of course, because it wasn’t actually called the Silk Road until the nineteenth century. But this source claimed that a small caravan was attacked by a gang of bandits as it made its way up a valley. The leaders of the caravan were hit several times by arrows, but the missiles had no effect on them, and the bandits ran away in terror.’