The Twelve (11 page)

“A true yogi can travel anywhere in the universe,” Gupta explained. “I have known such yogis, and they are quite remarkable. They do not publicize their abilities, and they do not try to make money by doing tricks.”

Max was somewhat surprised at this pronouncement from a man who had seemed quite grounded and skeptical of grandiose claims. So he pressed on.

“You mean a true yogi can go anywhere in the universe in his mind
?
”

“No,” Gupta corrected. “He can do so in his actual body.”

At that moment B.N. came up to Max and pointed to his watch.

“There are no more trains tonight, so you will need to return via the bus, and we must get you to the station immediately, or you will miss the last bus back to the city,” he warned. “I have a rickshaw waiting.” As Max stood and prepared to depart, B.N. continued.

“Perhaps I will see you when you return to film.” He handed Max his business card. “Let us stay in touch in any event.”

***

So Max soon found himself on a bus headed back to Old Delhi. The bus crowd wasn't as dignified as the train crowd, and in fact seemed somewhat sinister.

When he disembarked it was even worse. There were pickpockets, common thieves, pimps, prostitutes, beggars, and people who were dying, sick, and homeless surrounding him. Only by keeping his face down and pushing toward the rickshaw stand was he able to escape the heavy stench of fear and sickness that enveloped the station itself.

Within minutes Max was back at the Ashoka Palace Hotel and headed to his room. He was a little astonished to encounter the shoeshine man sleeping in the alcove outside his door. He knew it was the custom, passed down from the days when the English ruled India, to have hotel guests leave their shoes outside their door so that they would be polished and ready for wear the following morning. He had never given much thought to when and how the shoes were polished.

He apologized for waking the man, whose only response was to ask Max for his shoes, which he handed over.

Entering the room, Max fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Sometime during the night, however, he awoke to find his body floating above the bed. He thought he was dreaming, but then he reached his hand down and felt the mattress below him.

He was hovering in the air with no support whatsoever—levitating above the bed. Without warning, Max felt a presence grab his left hand. It felt like a human hand, but lighter, more fleeting. Then he was aware of a body of light. It had all the features of a human body, but none of the density. A voice spoke to him.

“Do not be afraid,” it said. “I am a yogi. Gupta sent me. He enjoyed talking with you this evening and wants me to show you the truth of what he told you.

“We can go anywhere in the universe you wish,” the yogi continued. “Where would you like to go
?
”

Max, who could barely think, spoke on pure instinct.

“The moon,” he said.

In an instant, he felt his light-body travel to the moon. It was his physical body, but like the yogi's the denseness was gone. Max retained all his features and sensations and his abilities to think, talk, and observe, but in a dimension without heaviness of any kind.

The moon was gray and lifeless, and had a dusty, yet at the same time almost liquid, quality. It was almost transparent. He had a sensation of weightlessness as he bounced from place to place, sometimes thinking that he might fall into the center of the moon itself. After a while the yogi spoke again.

“Where else
?
”

He was still somewhat flustered but managed to respond.

“Take me to the planet with the rings.”

Instantly, Max was in a place that exhibited the greatest sensation of orange he would ever know. It was a color that Max had never seen on Earth—such a vivid hue that it proved that the experience was real, and not just dreamed or imagined.

He spent what seemed like many hours soaking in the orangeness of the planet when the yogi addressed him again.

“Where else
?
”

“Oh, this is quite sufficient for one evening,” Max replied. “We can go back now. I have a busy day ahead of me.”

And just as quickly as they had arrived at the moon and the orange planet, they were back in his hotel room in the aging, once-grand Ashoka Palace.

Max's dense everyday body still was hovering six inches above the bed, and the yogi was still holding his hand as Max felt his light-body once again integrate into his denser form.

He felt the yogi smile at him, and then the yogi departed.

Max felt his body slowly drop back onto the bed, and he looked at the clock.

It was 4:44 in the morning.

He pinched himself to be sure he hadn't been dreaming and then gently fell back to sleep.

When he awoke, just forty minutes later, he looked around the room to be sure he was still in the Ashoka Palace. Getting out of bed, he looked out of the window at the green lawn, smelled the morning air, looked at the flowers and fruit that were sitting on the desk in his room, and smiled as he contemplated his nighttime journey.

He looked at himself in the mirror to see if he was the same Max he had been the day before. For a moment he doubted the entire experience, but then he noticed a glow in his own face and saw for the first time the ethereal body within his body—something he had never perceived before.

***

Later that afternoon Max returned to the National Museum and was escorted to the director's office. The secretary smiled as she handed Max a letter.

“I have been the director's secretary for more than fifteen years,” she said, excitement in her voice. “This is the first time I have ever been asked to type a letter granting anyone permission to film. Your project must be very important. Congratulations.”

Max took the letter to Projab Akbar's office that very afternoon, and when the chief of cultural affairs opened the envelope, his expression showed complete disbelief—along with a note of disappointment.

“I am admittedly surprised,” he said frankly, “but the director is granting you and your crew permission to film in the museum, and so it shall be. Your film guide has been assigned and will meet you and your crew at your hotel on Thursday at 9:00 a.m.”

And with that Max was out of the office, past the red-suited monkeys, and back to researching the rest of his location list—ranging from the ancient astronomy observatory in Delhi to the Ajanta Caves outside Bombay.

These were but a few of the many unsolved mysteries that were the essence of India.

***

Max knew he would need to be at the airport at 4:00 a.m. the following morning, to assist with customs and get his crew through the crush to the Ashoka Hotel, so he had an early dinner and prepared to go to bed.

Upon emptying his pockets, he read B.N.'s business card for the first time.

Keeper of the Fifteenth Century

National Museum of Delhi

Brama Nepal Mahars

For the third time he was stunned by sudden clarity and a startling revelation.

B.N. was Brama Nepal Mahars, the third of the twelve names.

The Keeper of the Fifteenth Century was connected in a way that extended far beyond simply granting permission to film in the National Museum.

On to Japan

August 1973

A
FTER THE CHALLENGES HE HAD FACED MAKING A SIMPLE SET OF
copies in Delhi, by the time Max reached Japan, he was ready for the high-tech, efficiently organized society that was Tokyo.

An interpreter had already been lined up, cars had been rented, secretaries were available, and communication with the United States was relatively easy. What wasn't easy, however, was the fact that it was August, and all of Japan seemed to be on vacation. Max had planned on taking the crew to Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan where the Ainu—a white-skinned race—was known to live.

This white-skinned race had no connection with the gene pool of the rest of Japan. There was a great deal of speculation about who they were and where they had come from, and some suggested that they might be descendants of an alien civilization.

Max felt this was a real stretch and not necessary for them to pursue. When he found it impossible to book a flight for the crew, he cancelled the location shoot and told the crew they would be filming at the National Museum instead.

By this time he was convinced that the Von Daniken theory of ancient astronauts was thoroughly unbelievable. He had—as his contract required—searched for ancient mysteries wherever the trail of research led him. In the process he had surveyed more than ten million museum pieces throughout the world and found just six artifacts that could possibly be attributed to ancient astronauts or ancient space ships.

The odds were pretty good of finding six of anything out of a pool of ten million. The more he searched, the more frustrated he became that he couldn't refocus the television documentary on the unbelievable mysteries he had uncovered.

There were the mysteries of Stonehenge and brain surgery performed six hundred years ago in Peru and proof that ancient civilizations had possessed amazing technologies that somehow had been lost. The people of ancient times were impressive in their architecture, their technology, their social organization, and their art. There seemed to be no limit to what they could achieve, and he saw no need to introduce extraterrestrials in order to develop a compelling storyline.

His own out-of-body experience had elements that were both alien and otherworldly, but strangely enough, he didn't think it was extraterrestrial in nature. It actually didn't seem that unusual to Max—during the excursion he'd felt at peace and retained a sense of belonging.

Did that mean he was from an alien culture
?
If yogis could leave the planet and return, were they aliens, too
?

Max didn't think so. He had certainly met a lot of strange people in his life who, he thought, might have been from another planet—his brother, Louis, chief among them. But as amusing an idea as it was, and while it did seem possible that all kinds of alien beings could exist on planet Earth, he had yet to see proof.

He mused on these ideas while he took a taxi to the museum to prepare for the shoot. He had already secured the permissions, so this was a relatively easy assignment. Using a brochure, he had identified the exhibits he intended to visit.

As he entered the building, he dropped the brochure and reached down to pick it up. When he did so, he heard a loud rip.

He looked down and realized a seam in the seat of his pants had torn and left an eight-inch gap, exposing his underwear. Max was embarrassed and not sure what to do.

He tried to explain to the guard at the museum entrance, saying that he needed needle and thread. Although the guard eventually understood, he couldn't oblige, since sewing implements weren't the tools of his trade.

As Max tried to figure out his next move, a young Japanese woman, who identified herself as Yoko, approached him. She was wearing a bright yellow dress, which perfectly complemented her black hair and flawless complexion, and she spoke in halting English.

“Come with me. I can help you,” she said.

Yoko led him to the door of the men's room.

“You go inside and give me pants,” she told Max, and though startled, he did as he was told.

She sat on a chair next to the security guard and a few minutes later handed Max flawlessly repaired trousers.

“Thank you so much,” he said gratefully. Then he added, “Please join me on my tour of the museum. I am working for American television selecting what to film for a documentary film.”

Yoko smiled a shy smile.

“Okay,” she said, and they spent the next two hours touring the exhibits while Max made note of the various artifacts for filming.

“Your work is very exciting,” Yoko observed. “I greatly enjoyed learning about these Japanese mysteries.”

“Well, I greatly enjoyed your company,” he replied. “Please join me for dinner.”

Yoko smiled shyly again.

“Are you sure
?
”

“Yes, I am,” he replied. “I'm all alone, and have reason to celebrate as this was the final location here in Japan. Please help me celebrate.”

“Then I agree,” she answered in her limited English. “Will be fun to join you.”

Max quickly found a taxi, and they ventured to the Imperial Palace Hotel, where Max was staying. The dining room there was a five-star restaurant, and Max encouraged Yoko to join him in the elaborate, seven-course, set meal.

During dinner some of Yoko's shyness melted away, and she talked about her life. She was a travel agent and a seamstress, the only daughter and youngest child of a middle-class factory worker's family, with five brothers and seven nieces and nephews. She lived alone in a tiny studio apartment in the same building as her aging parents, and it had fallen on her to take care of them.

Yoko explained that she had been a surprise baby, born when her mother was already forty-three. She still remembered the horrors of being a young child during World War II, living in the aftermath of the atomic bomb.

Nevertheless, she enjoyed being a travel agent, and her great luxury in life was taking two weeks every year to go to Hawaii or Paris or to other exotic locations made available to her by her travel agent discounts. She revealed that she didn't think she would ever marry and felt as if with her nieces and nephews she had all the children in her life she would ever need.

As she finished her story, Max ordered champagne to celebrate the end of his grueling twelve weeks of nonstop work. He described some of the more interesting adventures he had experienced, and Yoko laughed as she drank the champagne. She wasn't used to drinking and finally told Max that she didn't feel as if she was in any condition to go home on her own. Although she knew it was scandalous, she asked Max if she could take a nap in his room, and he agreed.

Soon they were resting against each other on the bed, and before long the combination of closeness and champagne were too much to resist.

Max hadn't been with a woman since the beginning of his travels, and he had the sense that Yoko might not have been with a man for several years. What started as gentle caresses soon led to passionate lovemaking, and with Yoko, Max felt a sense of balance in his body, mind, and spirit. He had never felt skin as smooth and delicate as Yoko's, and she was as fragile as a porcelain doll.

***

When he woke the next morning, Yoko was gone.

On his bedside table he noticed she had left her business card with her full name and address and a note that read:

It was wonderful being with you. Have safe return to America and write me if you will ever come to Japan again.

XOXOXO

Yoko

The name on the business card read:

MIYAKO MITSUI

Apparently Yoko was a nickname. And with a sense of clarity that was beginning to be familiar, though no less astonishing, Max realized that Miyako Mitsui was the fourth name on the list of twelve.

Synchronicity was beginning to be the order of the day, he realized, and he wondered at the forces that seemed to be propelling him without his being aware. Whatever they were, their effects seemed to be accelerating.

Yet he was no closer to understanding where those forces might be directing him. What was this mystery of the Twelve
?
It no longer seemed plausible that it could just be a random assortment of names. But how was it that he was meeting these people
?

His trip to Trujillo had only occurred because he was afraid of what might happen if he returned to Bolivia, yet it was in Trujillo that he met Maria.

Yutsky could be explained by the connection of their work, but his meeting with B.N. had depended entirely upon broaching the one topic that V.S. Naipul was willing to discuss.

Even his visit to the museum in Tokyo was due to the fact that he had been unable to get to the Ainu—and no one could have anticipated that Max would tear his pants.

Most indisputable of all was the utter lack of connection between the four.