James Becker - The Messiah Secret

‘I guess it could be a legend that was embellished over the years,’ Bronson suggested. ‘Maybe they only suffered flesh wounds, or were wearing some kind of armour. Or possibly it never happened at all?’

Angela frowned. ‘But for the story to have survived this long, there had to be a grain of truth in it. What I found interesting wasn’t actually the story about the leaders being bullet-proof, but the fact that the caravan was heading up into the hills well to the north-east of what later became known as Leh, because that area wasn’t part of the normal trade route. I think it’s possible that the story might even have been an eye-witness sighting of the caravan hauling the treasure itself.’

‘And you’re still convinced it’s worth following this up?’

‘Absolutely. If there’s even the slightest chance of finding it, we simply have to take it.’

The next morning Bronson and Angela stepped out of their hotel to look for a cab to take them to the airport.

Their senses were assaulted in every possible manner and from every possible direction. Above them, the sun blazed down, baking the still air to the point that it almost hurt to breathe. Dust clouds surrounded them, kicked up by the feet of what looked like hundreds of people milling around and the tyres of the dozens of vehicles — everything from trucks and buses down to cars and motorcycles — and literally hundreds of bicycles. And above all was the cacophony of yells and shouts from beggars, hawkers, taxi drivers and numerous other professions, interspersed with the roaring and grumbling of car and truck and bus engines, which virtually deafened them.

‘Dear God,’ Bronson muttered, pulling their two suitcases to one side of the uneven pavement. He stood there for a few moments with Angela, just looking at the scene in front of them.

‘It all looks like total chaos to me,’ Angela agreed.

‘Well, the sooner we’re in a taxi the better,’ Bronson said, ‘so keep your eyes open.’

He made sure Angela was clutching her handbag and laptop bag, then grabbed the handles on their two suitcases and stepped closer to the edge of the pavement, scanning the road in both directions. Pedestrians thronged the pavements and the edge of the road itself, many of them flapping handkerchiefs ineffectually in front of their faces or fanning themselves with their hats. Some even sported umbrellas against the sunlight.

‘It’s not just us,’ Angela murmured. ‘Even the locals are feeling the heat.’

‘We mustn’t get in any cab unless it’s air conditioned,’ Bronson instructed. ‘I’m not sweltering in a tin box in this heat.’

‘How will I tell?’

‘Simple. If all the windows are closed, it’s got air-con. If they’re open, it hasn’t.’

A couple of minutes later, they saw an elderly Mercedes draw up beside them, all the windows wide open.

‘Ignore it,’ Bronson said, looking down the street, watching out for another cab.

The next cab also had its windows open, but then he saw a fairly new taxi going the other way, all its windows closed. He whistled and waved, and was rewarded by the brake lights flaring red as the driver hauled the vehicle round in a tight — and probably illegal — U-turn.

‘Here’s our ride,’ Bronson said. He seized the handles of their suitcases and walked forwards as the car drew to a stop. The driver stepped out, opened the boot and helped Bronson lift their suitcases inside. Angela climbed into the back seat and Bronson sat beside the driver, revelling in the blast of cold air coming out of the dashboard vents.

‘Where to, sir?’ the driver asked, pulling out into the traffic, his English accented but clearly understandable.

‘The airport,’ Bronson said. ‘We need to fly up to Delhi.’

‘Very good. Domestic terminal. I very well know which way. You enjoy ride.’

The drive wasn’t perhaps the most enjoyable experience of their lives. Rush hour in Mumbai made the chaos of Cairo seem almost tame by comparison. Several times Bronson was absolutely certain a collision was imminent, and he’d close his eyes, only to hear a squeal of brakes and simultaneous bellowing of horns, and realize they’d somehow managed to scrape through without hitting anything. But the air conditioning in the taxi worked well and, despite the terrifying driving all around them, they were both almost sorry when their journey ended and they had to face the heat and humidity once again.

Bronson paid the driver, retrieved their bags from the boot and together they walked into the terminal building in front of them.

The flight to Delhi left on time, which slightly surprised them both, and they then had a two-hour wait in the domestic terminal in the capital before their onward flight to Leh.

When their flight was finally called, they picked up their bags again and walked towards the departure gate, and the last leg of their journey.

As they stood up, two middle-aged men of European appearance who’d been sitting about twenty feet away stood up as well. One of them looked down again at the picture displayed on the screen of his mobile phone, comparing that tiny image — showing a man lying apparently unconscious on the flag-stoned floor of a room — with the face of the man in front of him. Then he nodded to his companion. The identification was certain.

As Bronson and Angela walked away, the two men followed about fifty feet behind them, joining the back of the queue for the flight out to Leh, a flight for which they’d already bought tickets. As they waited to pass through the departure gate, the man holding the Nokia flipped it open and then made a twenty-second call to a US mobile number.

Nick Masters, his eyes red with exhaustion after a series of long-haul flights, took another sip of thick black coffee and stared across the table at the tall, slim man wearing an immaculate light grey suit. Despite his Western-style dress, his companion’s brown skin, black hair and dark eyes marked him as a local. In fact, Rodini was a lieutenant-colonel in the Pakistani military.

They were meeting in a small cafe close to the centre of Islamabad. Masters had explained what assistance he needed, though not why he needed it. And Rodini knew better than to ask for specifics.

‘Tell me exactly which part of Kashmir you need to get to,’ Rodini asked, sliding cutlery and plates to one side and opening a military map on the table.

‘Northern Ladakh,’ Masters said, pointing at the area near Panamik.

Rodini nodded. ‘That helps,’ he said. ‘We still control Baltistan and the Northern Areas, so getting you and your men as far as Skardu or Hushe — they’re just here, in central Baltistan — wouldn’t be a problem. Crossing the border into the area controlled by India will be more difficult, of course, because there’s a very large military presence along the border — on both sides of it, in fact. We’ll have to work out the best method of achieving that, but it will have to be a covert insertion, because all the roads between the Nubra Valley and Baltistan have been closed since nineteen forty-seven.’

Rodini tapped the map with his forefinger for emphasis. ‘Insertion is one thing, but extraction could be quite another. Depending on what you’re planning on doing in Indian territory, your best route out might be to simply drive down to Leh and buy an airline ticket to Delhi or Mumbai. Otherwise we could try to arrange for a chopper to pick you up, but we’d have to select the location very carefully. How many men in your team?’

‘Eight in all,’ Masters replied. ‘That’s seven plus me, but two of them are in Leh already, or at least on their way there, so I guess they can leave the same way they came in. That means the infiltration team will be six men.’