THE MAHABHARATA QUEST:THE ALEXANDER SECRET (16 page)

37

PRESENT DAY

DAY THREE

Escape…

Radha acted on instinct. The moment the three faces turned towards her, she pulled up the door lock knob and slammed open the door of the car, ignoring the insistent ring of her mobile phone. The car door crashed into the fender of the car alongside, and its driver immediately stopped and got out to inspect the damage.

She ignored the screaming driver and the honking of the cars behind them, and weaved her way through the traffic, aiming for the metro station that was a few metres away.

Behind her, the aggrieved driver stomped his way to the driver’s side of the offending car, only to be confronted by the muzzle of a Glock. He backed off hurriedly, his rage forgotten, doused by the cold water of fear and self preservation.

The three men in the car gave chase as Radha reached the sidewalk and sprinted up the escalator to the metro station. Drivers honked angrily at them and subsided equally fast as they saw the guns brandished by the fake IB agents.

‘Train’s coming!’ one of the men shouted, as the yellow light of an approaching train washed over the façade of the station. They increased their speed, vaulting over cars stalled by the sight of the guns and followed Radha up the escalator.

Radha risked a glance behind her and saw that the traffic had not stopped the men. Their guns were in plain sight but they weren’t shooting at her. She wondered why.

But there was no time for speculation. The train drew up at the platform and screeched to a halt as she emerged from the escalator. There was no time to be a good citizen and stand in the inordinately long queue for tickets. Radha vaulted over the row of turnstiles, disregarding the shouts of people behind her. She ran to the far end of the platform and boarded the very last coach, hoping against hope that the train would leave before the men reached the platform.

The doors of the train shut and she fearfully glanced out of the windows. Her three pursuers were still on the platform. One of them caught her eye and glared at her balefully as the train began gathering speed and moved out of the station.

Suddenly, there was a commotion, as the man glaring at her looked around him, prompted by cries from his colleagues, and sprinted away, heading for the exit. As the train sped away, Radha realised why her three captors were fleeing. Five men, all dressed casually, had dashed up the escalator, vaulted over the turnstiles and were now in hot pursuit of the fake IB agents. The newcomers also brandished handguns. She didn’t know who they were, but since they were chasing her captors, they had to be the good guys.

She sank into a vacant seat and wiped her brow. Only now did she recall the phone call that she didn’t answer while making her escape from the car. She pulled out the phone and shook her head when she saw the number. It was Vijay. What timing, she thought to herself and dialled the number.

Vijay picked up immediately. ‘Radha, are you okay?’ The concern in his voice, along with the fear for her safety, was heartwarming and made her relax immediately.

‘I’m fine,’ she told him and narrated what she had just undergone , including the final scene of her kidnappers fleeing the five armed men who had made a last minute appearance.

Vijay chuckled. ‘That would be the IB guys Vaid sent. He had put a trace on your GPS and sent out a team to help you out. Looks like his plan worked.’

Radha smiled but her smile faded away almost immediately as she realised something. ‘Imran’s hospitalisation is a fabrication.’

‘No it’s not.’ It was Vijay’s turn to give her the news. ‘You should be at the airport in ten minutes, tops,’ he said. ‘I’ll head there right away. You just find a quiet spot and hunker down until we come.’

Radha grinned at Vijay’s Americanism. It reminded her of the Louis L’Amour novels she used to read. It was good to smile after all that she’d been through and good to know that Vijay would be at the airport soon to pick her up.

She slipped the phone back into her jeans pocket and closed her eyes. Whether it was the stress of the evening’s events or the fatigue of the day’s journeys from Jaungarh to Gurgaon and Delhi, she didn’t know.

All she knew was that the train seemed to have stopped and she was being shaken awake. She woke up, disoriented and stared at the men standing before her with blurry eyes.

Gradually, her vision cleared and she made out a tall Caucasian man, flanked by six men. They were all armed. The white man had a handgun pointed straight at her face. The coach was empty. All the other passengers had dispersed. Or fled.

He grinned as the realisation hit her. ‘We’re at the airport, my dear,’ he smirked. ‘Welcome to Indira Gandhi International Airport.’ He mimicked the airport announcements, his accent perfectly matching those of the English announcements at the airport. ‘Fasten your seatbelt, poppet. You’re about to go on a long ride.’

IGI International Airport, Metro station

Vijay looked around the station, bewildered. He had arrived ten minutes ago to witness the train leaving the station, bound for Central Delhi. There was no sign of Radha on the platform. All he could see around him were passengers who had just come in from their flights, waiting for the next train to arrive.

Where was she?

He walked the length of the station once more, just in case he had missed her earlier. Though it was highly improbable that he had, he didn’t want to take any chances.

He had left the others to wait for the agents promised by Vaid and rushed to the airport. The traffic had been bad, but he knew that Radha would not wander off when she knew he was coming for her. He was at his wit’s end. Calling her phone wasn’t helping either. It was switched off. That was another thing that bothered him. Why would she switch off her phone?

Nothing seemed to make sense. Unless she was being held captive when they had spoken. Perhaps she was pressured into lying to him about having shaken off her pursuers. It was an unpleasant thought but, given what had befallen Imran, he couldn’t rule anything out.

Vijay called Colin and updated him. Colin, Alice and Shukla, accompanied by three IB agents, were on their way to the airport. The agents had arrived shortly after Vijay had left and their identities had been verified with Vaid before the others accompanied them.

The plan was for the IB agents to escort them back to Jaungarh. There had been a great deal of discussion over where exactly they could go. No place seemed to be safe at the moment. Vijay’s argument, which won the moment, was that despite their adversaries knowing that Alice was at Jaungarh, they had stayed their hand until she, with the others, had moved out of the fort.

‘I feel the safest place, at the moment, is the fort,’ Vijay had concluded and the others had agreed with him.

Unable to come up with any ideas on how to locate Radha, Vijay dialled Imran’s number again. Vaid, unable to reveal his own mobile number to Vijay, had suggested this as a contact number for the time being.

‘Is everything okay?’ Vaid asked as he picked up the call.

‘Not really.’ Vijay updated him on the situation. ‘I have a request,’ he added. ‘Can we track the location of Radha’s mobile phone once again since it is GPS enabled?’

‘I’ll get someone to track it right away,’ Vaid responded. ‘But we’ll only get a location trace if her phone is on. If it is switched off, as you mentioned, then we can’t do much.’

Vijay’s heart sank. If Radha had, as he feared, been abducted, there was little chance that her captors would keep her phone switched on. And if they did, they would be sure to ensure that her GPS was disabled so that her location could not be tracked.

He had worked out that their attackers at the museum had used some kind of advanced technology to identify them as well as keep a tab on all them through the GPS on their smartphones. The fact that the whereabouts and identities of each of the others, except Shukla, were known to the men at the museum pointed to this. Shukla was the only one without a mobile phone and they didn’t know about him. After this realisation they had all switched off the GPS on their phones.

Vijay was afraid. Whoever these men were, they were not amateurs. And if the technology at their command was the same as the one that the IB used, then they were also powerful people. It was his worst nightmare come true. He may just have lost Radha.

38

Prisoner…

Radha’s eyes fluttered open and she moaned. The first thing she saw was the colour of her surroundings.

White. Pure and pristine. A white ceiling. White walls. Perhaps even a white floor. As this thought came to her, she realised that she was strapped to a bed, her wrists and ankles bound; with little leeway for any kind of movement. A drip was attached to a needle that was inserted into her left arm.

She struggled with her bonds for a few moments before realising the futility and surrendered to the reality of
her situation.

Her head was heavy and her body felt like lead. Where was she? And how did she get here? She had a vague recollection, as if through a haze, of a man pointing a gun at her in a train coach. Of being shepherded off the train, onto the platform. And then there was no further recollection.

Her nasal tract still burned from the acrid fumes of the chemical which she had been forced to inhale. The strong grip at the base of her neck, forcing her face into a damp cloth, had left a bruise on the back of her neck and a dull pain to accompany it.

She now realised that she was wearing a hospital gown. Where were her jeans and the top she had been wearing in the train? Who had changed her clothes? An offensive, humiliating feeling of having been defiled by an unknown person washed over her, accompanied by a fury that suddenly exploded without warning.

It came as a shock to her as the rage consumed her and then all rational thought was swept aside as she vented her anger, screaming loudly and struggling against her bonds with an intensity and strength that she had not known herself capable of displaying.

…or guinea pig?

Dr Varun Saxena stared with great interest at the video monitor, one of a bank, in the centre’s control room. He turned to his companion and nodded to him. ‘You were right, Gary,’ he said. ‘I never knew that this drug had such a strong side-effect.’

Gary Freeman grinned. ‘Hey, I hate to say “I told you so” but I did tell you so.’ He jerked a thumb at the video monitor which was displaying Radha’s outbreak of emotion. ‘I think you’d better give her the antidote right away. That is, if you want her fully intact. The drug’s effects won’t wear off until another two hours and in that time she could lose a hand or two.’

On the screen, Radha still fought her bonds with undiminished intensity, apparently oblivious to the needle in her arm. The drip, along with its tubing, jerked violently as she thrashed about in futile fury.

Saxena glanced one last time at the video monitor, then picked up the intercom and issued instructions. Within moments, a nurse entered the room and injected something into the drip. The antidote was swift to act, calming Radha’s exertions almost instantly.

‘You may not have got this kind of a display with your regular specimens,’ Freeman continued, chuckling. ‘They’re so full of the shit we keep injecting them with that you never know what might have interfered with the effect of the drug. It was a good thing that this one came along. Just at the right time.’

‘She didn’t “come along”,’ Saxena informed him as the two men left the room. ‘She was brought here by Cooper. We have to dispose of her sooner or later. Once we find out what she knows about Operation Mahabharata.’

‘Really?’ Freeman looked concerned. ‘See, you guys keep me locked away here and I don’t know what’s happening in the outside world.’

‘Don’t have a choice,’ Saxena shot back. ‘We’re supposed to be doing clinical trials here. Even I tiptoe my way here on the rare occasion that I visit. We can’t afford this facility to be linked to Titan in any way. And the studies that you are conducting here have to be below the radar. You know that. If word leaks out, that genetic research is being carried out at this facility, it would be catastrophic. Especially if it was revealed that the head of genetics at Titan was leading the research.’

‘Yeah, I know, I know. But I don’t have to be happy about it,’ Freeman grumbled. ‘Is the op at risk?’

Saxena shrugged. ‘Don’t know. That’s why she’s here. We need to find out. She came to me, masquerading as a journalist. I didn’t know it at that time. It was only when Cooper alerted us to the connection between her and the IB agent who came to meet Swaroop that we got to know that she was undercover.’

Freeman whistled. ‘So she was working with an IB guy? She’s also Indian intelligence?’

‘We don’t know yet. But that doesn’t matter. The IB guy’s dead…or dying at least. Cooper took care of that. And once we find out what she knows, she’ll join him. Until then, Cooper’s going to use her as bait. So, while we’re keeping her on ice, we may as well make good use of her presence here. Good, fresh specimens are hard to come by.’ He grinned unpleasantly and Freeman chuckled again.

39

The link discovered

Vijay, Colin, Alice and Shukla sat in the study at the fort. The IB men had dropped them back some time ago and then left. If they had been followed or if there were any more people stalking them, they had been careful not to make themselves obvious.

Back in the fort, Vijay felt a palpable sense of relief and security. They would be safe here. But through the journey to Jaungarh and since their return, they had all been disturbed by the lack of any news about Radha. It was like she had disappeared off the face of the planet.

Shukla sat, despondent, his face reflecting his anxiety for his daughter. ‘Why isn’t Vaid investigating Titan?’ he asked for the umpteenth time, of no one in particular. Vijay had assured him earlier that Vaid had personally spoken to Swaroop Varma, the CEO of Titan Pharmaceuticals. The man had been shocked to receive a personal visit from the Director of the IB and seemed to have been genuinely concerned about what had happened to both Imran and Radha. He had assured full cooperation both in the investigation and the hunt for Radha, even going to the extent of offering to allow IB agents to inspect every office and outsourced facility associated with Titan in India.

‘The IB is checking all leads,’ Vijay said patiently. He tried to mask his anxiety for Shukla’s sake. ‘We just have to have faith in them. And hope that something turns up soon.’

Alice spoke up. ‘I’ve been thinking about something the blonde guy at the museum said.’ She looked at Vijay. ‘Do you remember when he was counting us off? He said something about Imran and Radha.’

‘He said they were “covered”,’ Vijay replied morosely. He should have figured at that time itself that Radha and Imran were both targets. But he knew he couldn’t blame himself or anyone else for not considering this at that time. They could think of nothing else but their own fates which had hung by a very slender thread. They had been really lucky to have gotten away. Those men had been professional killers.

‘Yes, that, too, but he also mentioned that they had been nosing around.’ Alice looked at him warily. She knew it was a tricky time to be bringing this up. But she also had a feeling this may just be the break they were looking for.

‘Yeah, I remember that,’ Colin frowned, and Vijay and Shukla also nodded morosely. Colin slapped his thigh as he realised what Alice was saying. ‘Good heavens! The two
are
connected!’

Vijay and Shukla still looked confused. Alice realised that their emotions were probably clouding their thinking so she explained. ‘All this time we’ve been thinking that the involvement of Peter with my excavation and what happened to me in Greece had nothing to do with Imran’s discovery of the bioterrorism lead here in India. But could it be possible that the two are actually connected?’

Shukla looked at Vijay, unsure if this was good news or bad news. Vijay didn’t respond immediately. Alice could almost hear the wheels spinning in his mind as he analysed and sifted data from their conversations and the encounter at the museum. She knew Vijay well from their days together. He had an amazing knack for analysing facts, but he also relied a lot on his intuition – a killer combination. She knew that he was putting facts and instinct together right now to validate what she had said.

‘You could be right,’ Vijay said, finally. ‘They knew about each one of us, except Dr Shukla.They have access to technology that allows them to track our movements. So they monitored Alice’s presence at the fort and were able to follow us to the museum. They were also monitoring Radha and Imran’s movements and knew that they had visited Titan Pharmaceuticals. That much is clear from what the blonde guy at the museum said. And both Imran and Radha have been targeted after that visit. The question is: what is the connection between the excavation in Greece and the bioterrorism angle? We know that they are after the cube. We also know now that Alexander was on a quest to find something on his journey to India. Something that Eumenes describes as the “secret of the gods”.’ Vijay was now thinking aloud, trying to work things out.

The others sat and listened. Colin and Alice knew Vijay well enough to know that they shouldn’t interrupt when he was working things through. Shukla was distracted by his worries surrounding Radha’s whereabouts and was only half listening to Vijay.

‘So,’ Vijay continued, ‘the obvious conclusion is that this secret that Alexander was looking for is a possible source of bioterrorism. The only thing that I can think of is that it is a virus or a bacteria that can devastate populations. Something that bioterrorists can use to their advantage. What else can it be? That would also explain the cells at the facility that ran clinical trials for Titan. And the test reports that described an unknown bacteria and virus. But that raises a host of questions. Why would a bacteria or virus be called a “secret of the gods”? Why was Alexander looking for this secret? What did he do with it when he found it? Or is it something else that we are missing out on?’

There was silence as the others digested these thoughts. Vijay’s conclusion seemed to be logical. The questions he had raised were also very relevant. But there didn’t seem to be any clear answers. Especially to explain Alexander’s quest, if the secret involved a bacteria or virus that could be used for bioterrorism.

Shukla rose. ‘I think I’m going to turn in for the night,’ he said glumly. What he really wanted was to be alone right now. He really wasn’t interested in this discussion about Alexander and the link to bioterrorism. His daughter had been kidnapped. No one, not even the IB, knew where she was. And if there were bioterrorists involved, then her life was surely in danger. If they could bomb the apartment of a senior IB officer, what chance did Radha have as their prisoner?

Vijay nodded, understanding. He, too, was despondent, but with this latest revelation, something told him they had a fighting chance. He didn’t know how or what that chance was, but he trusted his gut feeling. ‘Why don’t you guys get some rest?’ he told Colin and Alice. ‘I’m going to work on this angle a bit more and see if I can think of something that may be useful for us.’

Colin knew that his friend was acting on a hunch. He didn’t argue. Instead, he patted Alice on the shoulder and rose. ‘You’re right,’ he said to Vijay. ‘See you in the morning.’

As the others left the study, Vijay walked over to the huge bay windows that overlooked the hillside the fort was built on and stared into the dark night outside.

There was a darkness in his heart that matched the surroundings of the fort. But deep down there was his natural rebellious streak that was beginning to surface. It was a trait that had served him well most of his life. It made him stubborn at times when he should have given up. On some occasions, this had led to some grief, but more often than not, he had been able to achieve what he wanted by grimly hanging on.

He hoped this was one of those times. Radha was the only precious thing left in his life. Sure, there was Colin who was a great friend, almost a brother, to Vijay. But Radha had given him the love he had never had since his parents had passed away. Even with Alice, he reflected now, it hadn’t been this way. Radha’s love was selfless, almost unconditional. He had never thought it possible.

And he was not going to lose her now.