James Becker - The Messiah Secret

‘You have your orders, Colonel,’ Killian said. He was still standing and was conscious that he had the upper hand. ‘Very clear orders, I believe. Why can’t you obey them?’

‘Without knowing exactly what you’re looking for, I’m not prepared to commit any of my troops or equipment,’ Tembla said harshly. ‘And that’s what my report to my superior in Delhi will say when I file it.’

Killian looked at him for a few moments, then shook his head. ‘Very well. What I’m about to tell you must not leave this room, Colonel. Do I have your word on that?’

Tembla inclined his head. ‘Of course.’

Killian leaned forward and began to speak in a low voice.

Two minutes later, he sat down in his seat and waited for Tembla’s response.

Tembla nodded a couple of times as if he couldn’t quite take in the implications of what he’d just been told, and sat down heavily. ‘I see your problem,’ he said at last. ‘And I do appreciate the crisis your religion will face if this relic is recovered.’ He sighed. ‘You’ve got what you need.’

‘Thank you. You said you had another question for me?’

‘Yes. I ordered one of my men to conceal a tracker on the jeep Bronson has rented. But when he attempted to position the device, he found that there was already one fitted, lashed securely to one of the chassis members. Somebody else is following this man as well. Do you know who that is?’

Killian nodded. ‘A man named Donovan. I know something about him, and he’s even more dangerous than Bronson. So what did your man do? Remove the other tracking device?’

Tembla shook his head. ‘I told him to leave it in place, to use a hand-held scanner to identify the frequency the device was using. This will allow us to track the vehicle from a helicopter. And I also ordered him to use a tin of red spray paint to mark a small circle on the roof of the jeep. That will make it even easier to follow from the air.’

Tembla got to his feet. ‘I’ll be told the moment Bronson or Lewis leave the guest house. I have a team of men watching the property. Now I suggest you get some sleep. Tomorrow could be a very long day.’

Bronson and Angela woke early the next morning and got on the road that led north-east out of the town, and which started climbing almost immediately.

Behind them a dusty grey Land Rover appeared from a side street, and turned in the same north-easterly direction.

Two men were sitting in the driving compartment of the Land Rover, and the equipment stored in the back of the vehicle almost exactly mirrored what Bronson and Angela had obtained in Leh, except that there was a lot more of it. The rear compartment held four tents, not one, and far more food and water than they’d bought, and also a number of planks of wood and a small carpenter’s toolkit.

In front of the passenger on the dashboard was a topographical map of Ladakh, but he hadn’t bothered to open it. Instead, all his attention was focused on an electronic device attached to the windscreen with a sucker. It looked something like a satnav unit, and comprised a five-inch screen with controls positioned around its rim. But unlike a normal satnav, as well as the symbol for the vehicle in which the unit was mounted, there was an additional moving dot showing on the electronic map. It was this symbol that was holding the passenger’s attention.

Although the road out of Leh towards the north-east was reasonably straight, albeit with a rough and potholed surface, in reality it was little more than a metalled track, defined only by its slightly flatter surface. On both sides, rocks and boulders marked the limits far more starkly and positively than any crash barriers could. The ride in the big Nissan jeep Bronson had rented was jarringly firm, so it wasn’t the most comfortable of drives, but Bronson would trade reliability over comfort any day, and especially in the kind of terrain that he knew they’d be encountering later.

‘Are you happy about the route?’ he asked, after they were well clear of the town itself.

‘More or less,’ Angela replied. ‘We carry on climbing along this road until we cross the top of the Khardung La pass — which until recently was considered to be the highest pass in the world accessible by road — and then keep going straight to the bottom of the valley. Then we should swing left and follow the river that runs along the valley floor until we get to Thirit. There must be a way we can cross the river there. The trouble is, I have no idea how big the river is and we’ve no way of knowing until we see it. According to the map it’s fed by tributaries from both sides of the valley, so my guess is that it’s quite substantial, and driving through it, even in this truck, might not be such a sharp idea.’

‘Makes sense to me.’

‘Anyway, somehow we’ll cross the river at or near Thirit, and then take the northern fork in the road and head up towards Panamik, which lies near the southern end of the Nubra Valley. The word “Nubra” means “green” in the local dialect, because it’s supposed to have the best climate in the whole of Ladakh — its own microclimate, I suppose. And “Ladakh”, as a matter of interest, means the “land of the high passes”.’ She gestured at the hills and valleys visible all around them.

Bronson nodded, concentrating on the road, which had now started to climb quite steeply. ‘Now we’re on the last lap, can you just explain to me why you’re so sure the Nubra Valley is where we should be looking?’

‘Because it all fits so well with the Persian text. The first verse specifically refers to Mohalla, and the second states that they buried the treasure in the “valley of flowers”.’

‘I thought you told me a few minutes ago that “Nubra” meant “green”.’

‘I did, and it does. But the old name for the Nubra Valley was Ldumra, which means the “valley of flowers”. Some people think that “Nubra” means flowers, but it doesn’t — that’s just a linguistic echo from the old name in the local dialect. And a small caravan would probably be able to reach the Nubra Valley from Mohalla in about ten days, which again matches the Persian text.’

‘OK,’ Bronson agreed. ‘And I assume there’s no other location that you’ve identified in this area which matches the description so well. But I’ve looked at the map, too, and the Nubra Valley is shaped like a triangle about forty miles long with a base around twenty-five miles wide. That means it covers an area of roughly five hundred square miles, and the northern end of it is in territory that’s controlled by Pakistan, not India, which adds a whole new level of complication. So the question I’m asking,’ he finished, ‘is where do you suggest we start looking?’

‘Your calculation is right, and trying to locate a cave in an area that size would be a complete waste of time and effort without some kind of directions. But, it so happens that we do have some directions,’ Angela said, smiling across at him. ‘Because of the third verse of the Persian script.’

Killian woke before dawn and paced his small room as he waited anxiously for some word from Tembla’s watchers a few miles up the road in Leh. Finally, when he could take the strain no longer, he walked down to the briefing room he’d been in the previous evening and helped himself to coffee.

Tembla strolled in about thirty minutes later, nodded to Killian and poured himself a mug.

‘Well?’ Killian asked.

‘They’re on the road already,’ Tembla said.

‘What?’ Killian jumped to his feet. ‘I need to get up there.’

‘Patience, Father. We launched a Searcher at dawn. That’s a UAV — an unmanned aerial vehicle — and it was programmed to loiter overhead Leh. It picked up Bronson and Lewis as soon as they left the guest house, and it’s been following their vehicle ever since. It’s tracking them visually using a high-definition camera, and it’s receiving the electronic signal from the tracker, so we know exactly where they are. I got the last update just before I came here, and at the moment they’re climbing up the road towards the Khardung La pass.’