The Breath of God (34 page)

“How did he find us in Agra?” she asked, not for the first time over the past two days.

“We don't even know he's after the texts.”

“But what else could he possibly be after? And who is he?”

The second question troubled Grant the most. The image of the assassin's smug expression burned into his mind.
Was the shooter a lone fanatic?
Grant
doubted it. He was more likely part of a larger group threatened by the release of the Issa texts.

Kristin dropped her head. “Is it even worth it?”

“We can't let this guy, whoever he is, prevent us from moving forward; that's probably exactly what he wants.” He sounded more confident than he felt.

Kristin motioned out the window. “Hey, we're here.”

Grant glanced at his watch. Almost five. They would travel to Sarnath first thing in the morning. He'd wanted to rush there immediately, but she explained that the temple would be closed by the time they arrived. Instead she'd insisted that they stop first at Banaras Hindu University to visit a friend, a professor of Hindu studies who had helped provide her with background research for her article on the Hindus' religious pilgrimage to the Ganges River.

The taxi turned underneath a salmon-colored stone gate. Entering the campus reminded Grant of stepping onto the grounds of the Taj Mahal and finding peace from the bustling city of Agra. Leaving the chaotic streets of Varanasi behind them, they drove down a wide, tree-lined avenue. Conspicuously absent from the university grounds were the city's stray cows, dogs, and pigs. Only a few students and professors on bicycles pedaled calmly down the road. Grant thought that Banaras University could have been any college in the States. To their right, classroom buildings were set back from the main road by expansive lawns, where students sat, studying textbooks under the shade of mature hardwood trees. To their left, they passed the athletic fields where other students played soccer and cricket.

“It's not quite what I expected,” Grant said.

“Something smaller, more Third World?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“BHU is one of the largest universities in India, over twenty thousand students. See that building?” Kristin pointed to a classically designed red brick building. “That's the law school. Over there”—she pointed to a peach-colored plaster building with brick accents on the cornices and along the main entrance—“that's the nursing school. The university is divided by academic fields; each has its own building. Religious studies is up ahead.”

Five minutes later, they ascended a worn marble staircase to the second floor of one of the brick and plaster buildings. Proceeding down the hall past several classrooms, they arrived at a wooden door. A nameplate on the wall read “Professor Deepraj Bhatt.”

In response to Kristin's brisk knock, a scratchy voice on the other side called out, “
Hahn?
Yes?”

Kristin opened the door into an office that could have belonged to Grant's own mentor. Books and periodicals were piled on the desk and overflowing from the bookcase behind it. A small desk lamp was the only other illumination in the room aside from the single window's natural light. A blast of cool air from the AC unit mounted underneath the window greeted them as they entered from the humid hallway. A small Indian man with silvery streaks running through his jet black hair peered over a stack of documents from behind the desk. His eyes opened wide, and he leapt from his chair.

“
Namaste
, Kristin! So happy to see you again.” The professor, who was about an inch shorter than her, embraced her like a favorite relative he hadn't seen in years.

“Professor, this is Grant Matthews.”

“Ah yes, Grant, I have heard good things about you.” He extended his hand to Grant.

“Likewise, Professor Bhatt,” Grant replied.

“Please, call me Deepraj.” The professor cleared off a pile of journals from the two mismatched wooden chairs in front of his desk. He then wheeled his own chair from behind his desk so that all three were facing each other and motioned for them to sit.

Grant took a seat, but Kristin opted to hop onto the edge of the desk, swinging her legs like a school kid. Grant couldn't help but catch a glimpse of her legs underneath the lime green cotton skirt. He was reminded of their passionate night in his apartment that ended so abysmally. Since then, she'd been friendly, even flirty at times, but she kept her distance.

“So, Grant, I understand this isn't your first trip to my country?”

“On my first trip, I was on the coast, in Kerala studying the spread of Christianity eastward. My research focused on the Apostle Thomas's travels here in
AD fifty-two. With my second and now third trips, I'm chasing the possibility that Christianity may have spread from East to West with Jesus' travels. Ironic, isn't it?”

“Ah, but my friend, whichever way you travel, east or west, you will always end back where you started, if you travel long enough.”

“Professor—I mean, Deepraj,” Grant said, “you sound like a friend of mine, a monk in Bhutan who started me on this journey.”

Professor Bhatt clapped his hands together. “That wouldn't be KG, would it? I hear you've become one of his favorite students.”

“KG?” Grant's eyebrows rose. “You know Kinley Goenpo?”

Deepraj chuckled. “Oh, we have quite a history together.”

N
ASTY
.

The word came to Tim as he searched through his duffel bag in the rented flat. The same word had come to him as his rickshaw driver had driven him through the streets of Varanasi yesterday. To him, the word accurately described this country, this city, this room, and now the way he felt.

Tim removed the large pink bottle from an inside pocket. Not bothering to read the directions, he chugged a third of the medicine. Anything to quell the explosive feeling building in his bowels. He'd been careful with what he'd eaten so far, but something had caught up with him. In the Army he'd been protected from the local cuisine with MREs. He wished now that he'd brought some with him.

Tim replaced the bottle in his bag, which he then dropped onto the room's dusty floor. Reclining on the hard, lumpy mattress, Tim cursed the rickshaw driver who had found the flat. The formerly white plaster of the walls and ceiling of his room had turned a dull gray from years of grime and pollution. Chunks of it had peeled back, hanging loosely like the leaves of a giant plant, revealing the concrete block of the structure behind it. On the trip from the train station, his driver had promised the flat to be just what Tim wanted—quiet, with a private first-floor entrance through a nondescript alley in the heart of the Old City of Varanasi.

Tim recalled the man's rapid-fire English. “I negotiate very fair deal from owner,” he'd said. An owner, Tim suspected, who was no doubt a relative of the driver's. What sealed the deal for Tim, though, was when the man asked
with a mischievous look, “You don't mind sleeping near the path the corpses take on their way to the cremation ghats?”

“Cremation ghats?” Tim asked, his curiosity aroused.

“Yes, along the banks of the Ganges River, stone steps, the ghats, lead from the city streets to the water.”

“Are you telling me they cremate bodies outside on these steps?”

The driver glanced over his shoulder at Tim and laughed. “Every day.”

The disgusting image of bodies cooking like hot dogs on a campfire confirmed for Tim the primitiveness of this society. Unfortunately, once he'd engaged the driver in conversation, he couldn't shut the man up. Over the whine of the motorbike's engine pulling the creaky rickshaw, the man droned on, explaining that Varanasi was to Hindus what Mecca was to Muslims: a holy pilgrimage site to be visited during their lifetime. The Ganges was believed to have cleansing powers both spiritually and physically for those who bathed in its waters.

“We Hindus believe,” the driver had said, “that Varanasi is the ultimate place to die. By dying here, we are released from the endless cycle of reincarnation and death.”

The extent of the superstitions and bizarre beliefs of non-Christians never ceased to surprise Tim, but he would use their perverted ideas to his advantage. He would be able to carry a semiconscious person to his flat without arousing suspicion; the sight of a weak, terminally ill traveler who had come to die in Varanasi wouldn't raise an eyebrow.

D
EEPRAJ SMILED AT the astonished looks on Grant's and Kristin's faces. “Kinley and I overlapped at Oxford for two years. In a sea of Anglo-Saxons, I was comforted to find a friend from my part of the world.”

Closing his still gaping mouth, Grant asked, “Have you spoken with him recently?”

“Have I spoken with him? He was sitting just where you are two weeks ago.”

Grant and Kristin looked at each other for a second time. Kristin leaned forward. “We've been told to go to Sarnath. Did he mention that to you?”

“No. He only told me to expect you. I learned many years ago not to push Kinley when he's not inclined to talk.”

“Do you know about the texts he showed us while we were in Bhutan?” Grant asked.

“I've been following the news online. I was even able to watch the video of your TV appearance at Emory.”

Grant's face fell.

Deepraj patted his shoulder. “Don't be so hard on yourself. You were quite good actually. Poised, intelligent, knowledgeable. You were just ambushed. I can't fault you for your reaction.”

“What do you think about the texts?” Kristin asked.

“As a young man, I heard the stories of Jesus' travels through my country. Many Indians are familiar with his trek.”

Grant's face hardened. “But the key question is whether these texts just chronicle a legend that developed later, or whether those events actually happened as recorded.”

“Does it really matter?” the professor asked.

“Of course it matters. If Jesus' experiences with Hinduism and Buddhism shaped his understanding of God and formed the basis of his own teachings, then we have a very different understanding of him as a man.”

The professor nodded his head, although to Grant it looked like he was nodding not in agreement with his argument but in understanding of a larger issue. “Kinley and I discussed how you see the world in such black-and-white terms.”

Grant was reminded of this same critique that Jigme and Razi had made of him. Then an idea came to him. Just as he had realized at the Taj that the encounter between the Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist students—he, Razi, and Jigme—was not a coincidence, he thought about the professor standing in front of him: a professor of
Hindu s
tudies. Then a single word popped into his head—
connection
. One of Kinley's favorite teachings was that life was not a series of individual incidents but that we live in an web of interconnections.

He spoke quickly. “I know the texts are more important than just revealing the nonsupernatural aspects of Jesus' life.” He tapped on the professor's desk. “They show the
connections
among the various world religions in a way that previously was less apparent.” He leaned back in his chair and smiled.

Rather than applaud Grant's insight, Deepraj rose from his seat and pointed to the darkening skies outside the small window above the humming AC unit. “Care to join me for an early dinner?”

“We're starved,” Kristin replied.

Deepraj led them out of the main university entrance and down Assi Road, negotiating a path through sidewalk tables overflowing with fresh fruits and vegetables, many of which Grant had never seen before. The professor stepped into a small store that sold perfumes and tonics stored in hundreds of unlabeled bottles on wooden shelves. Before Grant could ask what they were doing
in the place, Deepraj led them through the rear door of the store into a dark and dank alley behind the crumbling concrete building.

Grant's instincts immediately kicked in. Since the attack in Agra, his senses had been alert for any sign of danger. He scanned the shadows. Nothing but the stench of rotting garbage. He watched Deepraj climb a shaky metal staircase that led to the second floor.

“Don't worry, my American friend,” Deepraj said, laughing. “Very fresh food. We won't drink water, however, just beer.” He held open a rusty door.

As soon as he stepped inside, Grant relaxed. In contrast to the grimy alley, the restaurant was colorful, clean, and infused with the smell of turmeric, cumin, and baking bread. Fabrics in a rainbow of silk billowed across the ceiling from the center of the room and then draped down the walls, creating the illusion that they were in some maharajah's tent. The restaurant held only seven tables, and they were the first customers of the night to arrive. The host, a slight man who was a full head shorter than Grant, greeted the professor by placing his hands to his chest in prayer position and bowing deeply.