The Messiah Secret (29 page)

Angela and Bronson watched the computer screen as the first page of search results appeared on it.

‘It doesn’t look like it’s an actual place,’ Angela said. ‘Or at least there’s nowhere named Mohalla in any of the gazetteers. If there was, I’d have expected Wikipedia or one of the other encyclopaedia sites to have popped up with its location.’

‘The first result is from Wikipedia,’ Bronson pointed out.

‘I know, but it’s not a location. It’s a description of some kind.’ She clicked on the result.

‘You see? It gives the name Mohalla, or Mahalla as an alternative spelling, but the word means a neighbourhood or a district in some of the villages and towns in Central and South Asia. And that second sentence makes no sense in the context we’re investigating.’

‘What does it say?’

‘That Mohalla often describes a Muslim area, and can
also be a derogatory term. Well, one thing that we can be absolutely certain about is that the Ark of the Covenant pre-dates Islam by millennia; and this Persian text we’ve been working with is at least half a millennium older than the Muslim religion.’

‘And what about that last bit?’ Bronson couldn’t see the screen as clearly as Angela could.

‘It says the word could be a reference to Shahi Mohalla, and that’s somewhere in Lahore in Pakistan.’ Angela glanced at Bronson. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I know what you’re going to say. India and Pakistan are neighbours, so maybe you’re right. But I’m still not convinced.’

‘Let’s just treat it as a working hypothesis,’ Bronson suggested. ‘What you’ve found already suggests that Mohalla could be an Indian place-name. We just don’t yet know where it is – or rather where it was. So why don’t we assume that Mohalla
is
in India until we’ve managed to prove that it isn’t?’

‘OK,’ Angela agreed cautiously. ‘I’ll just take a quick look at the rest of the search results to see if there’s anything else there.’

She scanned down the page of results generated by the Google search engine, clicking on anything that looked interesting, then moved on to the second page, but found nothing there.

‘I’m going to alter the parameters slightly,’ she said, adding a couple of words to ‘Mohalla’ in the box and checking the results of the new search.

About halfway down the page one result looked interesting. Angela clicked it, they both read it, then Angela sat back, turning the laptop slightly to face Bronson.

‘Could that be it?’ She looked at Bronson, frowning slightly.

Bronson shook his head. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘If it is correct, it does explain exactly who “Yus of the purified” was, and where Mohalla was located.’

‘Yes, but after all this time – I mean, there’d be nothing left now, surely?’

‘We don’t know that. It all depends on what they did, how they did it, and where they ended up.’

‘So all this time we’ve been looking for the wrong relic?’ Bronson asked.

‘We’ve been looking for the wrong treasure, from the wrong time period, and in the wrong country.’ Angela rubbed her eyes. ‘How the hell could I have got everything so badly wrong?’

‘We were just following the clues,’ Bronson said softly, taking her hand. ‘We made deductions based on the best evidence we could find. The problem was that once we thought we knew what we were looking for, it was easy enough to make each new piece of evidence fit our preconceptions. It happens all the time in police work.’

‘But to be
so
wrong—’

‘At least now we know what the Wendell-Carfaxes were looking for. But is it worth following up, after all this
time? Wouldn’t we be better just packing up and going home?’

Angela looked shocked. ‘But we’re only just getting started.’ She pointed at the screen of her laptop. ‘If this information checks out, this would be the single biggest find in the history of the world – bigger than Tutankhamun, bigger than anything else. If there’s even a one in a million chance of finding this treasure, it’s definitely worth trying.’

For the next few minutes Angela scoured the internet, copying the information she found on some websites, discarding others. Finally she found one that held her attention for several minutes.

‘You ever heard of somebody called Holger Kersten?’ she asked.

Bronson shook his head.

‘Or Nicolai Notovitch?’

‘No. He sounds Russian.’

‘He is Russian. And how about Hemis Gompa?’

‘Never heard of him, either.’

Angela sighed. ‘It’s a place, not a person.’

‘Can you stop the twenty questions routine and tell me what you’ve found?’

So she did.

Ten minutes later, Bronson sat back in his seat, his face a mask of disbelief. ‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you?’

Angela leaned towards him and took both his hands.
‘Damn right I am. Most of this information’s been out there in the public domain for years, but without the translation of the Wendell-Carfax Persian text, it’s just been a story, and a tall story at that. But when you add the Persian text into the equation, absolutely everything changes. We simply have to check this out.’

‘What about the “valley of flowers”?’

‘If Mohalla is where I think it is, I’ve got a good idea where the valley is, too,’ she said. ‘The difficulty is going to be getting there. It’s not what you might call a particularly hospitable part of the world.’

Bronson nodded slowly, recognizing the determination in her eyes. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’

In his apartment in New York City, a man called Nick Masters sat upright and looked at the illuminated display of his bedside alarm clock: 3.17. He’d been in bed for less than two hours. ‘Have you any idea what time it is?’ he said.

‘How long have we known each other?’ JJ Donovan asked.

‘What? You call me up in the middle of the night to ask me that?’

‘This is important. How long?’

‘Ten years, maybe twelve, I guess. Why?’

‘And do you trust me?’

‘As much as I trust anyone else in this goddamn country, yes.’

‘And I trust you, Nick, which is why I’m calling. We go back a long way. We know each other, and we’ve worked together before. I need some help. I need
somebody who can handle whatever’s about to kick off out here.’

‘Where are you?’ Masters asked.

‘India. I need you and I need some of your men as well. Men who know what they’re doing. Guys with combat experience.’

‘All my people know what they’re doing. That’s why I recruit them. So what do you want from me?’

In his small hotel room in Mumbai, Donovan looked at the list he’d prepared, wondering if there was another way to achieve his aims. Then he shrugged. He had to prepare for all eventualities, and that meant assuming they might have to fight when they got to the search area. He figured that the more firepower his team could muster, the better.

‘I need at least half a dozen men on the ground, plus personal weapons and two or three four-by-four jeeps or trucks.’

Masters was scribbling notes as he listened.

‘What’s the target?’

‘I’ll get to that in a moment. I’m following two people, and they’re getting real close to something that I’ve been looking for.’

Donovan quickly explained about Bronson and Angela Lewis, and the trail he’d been following.

‘Whereabouts in India are they heading?’

‘They’ll have to fly to either Mumbai or Delhi, but they’ll be making for Kashmir, right up in the north, heading for a place called “the valley of flowers”. What I don’t
know is exactly where in that valley we should be looking. That’s why you have to locate them as soon as possible. I’ll send you an email with all the data I’ve got. There’s even a photograph of Bronson. Check your inbox in five minutes.’

‘OK,’ Masters said, thinking fast. ‘The quickest way to get to Kashmir is to fly to Islamabad or Lahore, and then cross the border. I’ve got a couple of friends in the Pakistan military machine, which should solve the problem of getting weapons and vehicles into India. I’ll borrow everything I need from them, and then find a nice quiet place to slip over the border. And I’ll try to get a couple of my guys to Mumbai or Delhi right now, see if they can pick up Bronson’s trail. Whatever happens, I’ll have some of my people out there within twenty-four hours.’

‘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.