Valley of Death Page 16

  Haani was staring at Ben with a growing look of bewilderment on his face. ‘Oh man, is that what you think this is about? Because if you do, you’re totally way, way, way off the track. You have no clue. That’s not what this is about at all. Not even close.’

  Ben stared back at him, even more bewildered. ‘It’s not?’

  Haani shook his head emphatically. ‘Kabir was still months away from decoding the Indus Valley script. He might never have even got to the end of that project, it was so complex and difficult. What he found was something totally different. Something much, much bigger. That’s why I gave him the gun.’

  Chapter 29

  Ben sat and listened as Haani Bhandarkar now told him the story of how he’d been there when a chance discovery had turned into the luckiest, and at the same time the unluckiest, find of Kabir Ray’s life.

  ‘It was a few months ago, back in late April. The first and only time I ever went with him to the Rakhigarhi area. Manish and Sai were there too, all our gear packed into Kabir’s helicopter for the trip. See, Kabir was one of those archaeologists who believed that the Rakhigarhi site was the most important IVC city that had ever been found. Which meant that its ruins must be buried under a huge area of land, so he was into the idea of making lots of small exploratory digs across a wide area all around the main site, to test how far the city’s boundaries might have spread.’

  Ben said, ‘Okay. Go on.’

  ‘We were in the middle of this rocky wilderness miles to the north of the primary dig when we stumbled on a cavern. They’re everywhere. It was dark, stank like hell of rats and dead things. Just the kind of nasty place Kabir loved checking out. So in we went, hunting for the usual bits of ancient stuff that anyone else would think were just garbage. And that’s where we found it. Or should I say, found him.’

  ‘Found who?’

  ‘Well, there wasn’t much left of the poor guy,’ Haani said, and his gaze took on a faraway look as though he was revisualising the grisly discovery. ‘He was all curled up deep inside the cavern, as if he’d crawled in there to die. Just a skeleton, covered in a few tattered bits of clothing. There was a bullet hole in his skull big enough to poke your thumb through. At first we all thought, shit, someone’s been murdered, we’d better call the cops. But then we realised the police wouldn’t be much bothered about him, because he’d been lying there long enough to become an archaeological relic himself. Just another forgotten corpse from long ago. But there were four clues to suggest who he was, where he’d come from and what he was doing there. The first was a leather Sam Browne belt wrapped around his body. It was mostly rotted away and eaten by the rats, but there was enough left to tell that it was the kind that the British Army used to issue to their troops, back in the days of the Raj. It even had some big old cartridges left in the ammunition pouches, the type they made for the single-shot rifles they had then.’

  ‘Martini-Henrys,’ Ben said. ‘The gun that helped carve out the wonderful empire for us.’

  ‘And on his belt he was still wearing an empty bayonet scabbard for the same kind of rifle. There were lots of former British soldiers roaming colonial India in those days. Some had ended their military service, others had just gone AWOL. Like Charles Masson, the army deserter who discovered the ruins of Harappa.’

  ‘Gupta told me about him,’ Ben said, to save unnecessary explanation.

  ‘Whoever shot our guy, bandits or hostile tribesmen, probably took his gun and bayonet, but they didn’t take everything. The other three clues told us exactly where he’d been and what he’d been doing since he quit the army. He’d been carrying them wrapped up inside a metal waterproof box. The robbers had broken it open, probably thinking there was money inside, but when they saw it was just a bunch of books they left them alone.’

  ‘Books? Is that what this is about?’

  ‘Not the books, what was in them. They were a set of three leather-bound journals, like diaries. The leather was all mouldy on the outside, and rodents and mildew had ruined a few pages and the handwriting was faded, but the rest was pretty well preserved. The guy had written his name on the inside cover of each of the three volumes.’

  So this was about the dead man himself, as much as anything else. Ben said, ‘Okay, who was he?’

  ‘He was called Marmaduke Trafford. Definitely an Englishman, with a name like that. He’d been keeping the journal for years, highly detailed and painstaking, with dates and maps and drawings. Like a travelogue of all the uncharted corners and wild frontiers of India that he’d visited between 1829 and 1840, when he made his last entry.’

  ‘Fine, but what was the huge discovery?’

  ‘We didn’t realise about it, until after we took the journals back to our camp down the hillside and looked at them more closely. We spent half that night reading Trafford’s accounts of the places he’d explored, learning local languages and customs, getting into scrapes with hostile tribespeople, man-eating tigers, poisonous snakes. Really cool stuff. He was something of an amateur archaeologist, too, collecting artefacts and hunting for ancient lost cities. He might have been inspired by Charles Masson, who was already famous by then for his discoveries. It was pretty amazing. But then, we came to the really awesome part. Halfway through the second of the three journals, in an entry dated 1839, he talked about how he’d found this piece of clay tablet covered in weird script, like nothing he’d ever seen before. He knew it was really old, but couldn’t figure out what the writing meant. He copied some of the characters into his journal.’

  ‘Indus script?’

  ‘You got it. I mean, nothing else looks like it. It’s uniquely different from any of the other known ancient languages.’

  ‘I’ve already heard that lecture,’ Ben said.

  ‘Listen, okay? Not long afterwards, travelling through Haryana, Trafford had a bad fall in the mountains and was injured. He’d have died if he hadn’t been rescued by members of a remote outer Himalayan mountain tribe, who took him back to their village and nurtured him back to health.’

  ‘This is all in the journals?’

  ‘In so much detail that when you read it, it’s like you’re there yourself, living it with him. He spent the winter there, recuperating, making friends among the tribe and learning to communicate with them, finding out about their history and such. According to Trafford they had this whole legend about a past civilisation they called “the Old Ones”, which has got to be a reference to the Indus Valley people.’

  ‘Does it? That sounds like you’re making a big leap of logic.’

  Haani shook his head. ‘I might have been, except for one piece of evidence that clinches it totally beyond doubt. Think about why Trafford had to spend a whole winter learning their language. After years of travelling around India, meeting so many different tribes, you’d have thought he would have been familiar enough with them all to have been able to pick up a dialectic variation quite easily. But this tribe spoke a language different from any he’d come across before. It didn’t just sound different, it used a whole totally different form of written alphabet. See where I’m heading with this?’

  ‘You’re telling me that the tribe spoke the old Indus language.’

  ‘Something derived from it, at any rate. Trafford might never have made the connection, if he hadn’t shown them the weird clay tablet he’d found, and realised they could understand the writing on it pretty well. Maybe this tribe were descended from the last remnants of the culture, and had retained the language. Of course, that got Kabir seriously excited, because if Trafford had learned the meanings of the undeciphered ancient Indus symbols and written them in his journals it could have given us the key to unlock the whole thing. His work would have been complete.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘If he figured out the translations for the symbols, he never wrote them down. Or if he did, they were lost. Which was a huge blow to Kabir. He’d have been heartbroken, except for one major compensation.’

  ‘Which was?’
>
  Haani’s eyes were full of anticipation, as though he was coming to the best part of his story and savouring it. ‘Well, you see, one of the old legends they told Trafford was kind of special. It was the tale of a lost treasure.’

  Chapter 30

  Ben said, ‘Now this is beginning to sound as if you’re telling me something.’

  Haani explained. ‘According to their folklore, the treasure was associated with these same ancient people they called the Old Ones. It wasn’t clear what shape it took, only that it had been lost aeons ago. Naturally, Trafford was eager to know more about it. With their help he was able to draw a rough map of the treasure’s supposed location, way down the mountain in a huge rocky valley. Some adventurous villagers had tried and failed to find it through the centuries. It had become part of their tribal myth and legend, like the Holy Grail is to Christian tradition. Trafford decided that if anyone could find it, he could. As soon as the winter snows cleared, he set off on his journey. Turned out to be his last.’

  Ben said, ‘I’m presuming that he never found what he was looking for.’

  ‘If he did, he never got the chance to record it for posterity. More likely he was killed while he was still hunting for it. But he got close.’

  Ben thought for a moment. ‘How far north of Rakhigarhi did you find Trafford’s remains?’

  ‘Twenty-two miles, give or take.’

  ‘About two miles from the location Kabir was scouting when the attack took place.’

  Haani nodded.

  ‘Which suggests that Kabir was searching for the same treasure.’

  Haani nodded again. ‘You bet that’s what he was looking for. Trafford’s journals changed everything. Kabir became so fired up about them, he even put his Indus script project on ice to put everything he had into this instead. And I mean everything. He was in the process of arranging his own private excavations. It was going to cost him a hundred million rupees.’

  Ben let out a deep breath. So this was what the whole thing was about. This was Kabir’s big secret. Not some obscure academic quest to decipher some ancient coded language that only a handful of fuddy-duddy scholars cared about. It was a genuine, bona fide, down to earth, meat and potatoes, good old-fashioned treasure hunt.

  Suddenly, everything made so much more sense. As though mechanical components of a dismantled machine that hadn’t wanted to fit together before suddenly clicked neatly into place.

  He asked, ‘What kind of treasure are we talking about here? Gold and jewels?’

  Haani shrugged. ‘Who can say? Maybe. I mean, gold and jewels is the obvious assumption that most laypeople would make. But the fact is nobody knows what might have been hiding there under the ground for the last three to five thousand years, waiting to be unearthed. Or even whether it exists at all. But if it does exist, it’s going to be massively significant. This was a highly advanced culture in its day. Their levels of engineering and craftsmanship were like nothing else of their time. For them to have considered something to be a valuable treasure, it must be mind-blowing. It could be worth an unimaginable amount of money.’

  Ben said, ‘And you, Sai, Manish and Kabir were the only ones who knew about it?’

  ‘As far as we knew, nobody else had any inkling what we’d discovered. How could they? The journals were the only source of the information. Trafford’s remote mountain tribe are history now, erased and forgotten. In theory we were totally safe. But it was freaking me out nonetheless. Because this wasn’t just about archaeology any more. When wealth and riches come into the equation, there’s a million people out there who’d cut your throat to get a piece of the action.’

  ‘You shared these concerns with Kabir?’

  ‘Of course I did, but he wouldn’t take me seriously. I virtually had to force him to borrow the gun, just in case. He took it in the end, partly out of gratitude to me that I was looking out for him, and also because he was kind of fascinated by it as an object, being a normal kind of guy, but I don’t think he ever believed there was any threat. I guess that’s why he left it at home that day. But I was right all along. It happened exactly as I said. Somehow these bastards found out. And I’m scared they must know about me, too.’

  ‘Where are the journals now?’

  ‘Under lock at key at Kabir’s place, as far as I know.’

  ‘Meaning whoever got him now has the key?’

  ‘There’s no actual key. It’s a combination code. Only he knew it.’

  ‘No copies?’

  ‘Kabir scanned a few pages, including the treasure map, into his smartphone. He had that with him the day of the attack.’

  Ben said, ‘And we can presume that the attackers took it from him. So even if the original journals are locked up, the enemy now have the map, or the nearest thing to it. And they also know that hardly anyone else is in on the secret, or else they’d have had more competition.’

  ‘They, they, they,’ Haani said. ‘This is driving me nuts. Who are they? How did they know? This wasn’t information stored on a computer, potentially hackable like the Indus script program. We were really careful about not telling anyone. Not even Professor Gupta.’

  ‘Kabir told his brother Amal,’ Ben said.

  Haani’s eyes opened wide with surprise. ‘He what?’

  ‘Maybe not everything, but enough.’

  Haani sighed and shook his head. ‘So that’s why Amal was kidnapped. So he’d lead them to it.’

  ‘Which still doesn’t explain how someone else knew. Amal wouldn’t have blabbed. He was so protective of Kabir’s secret that he wouldn’t even tell his wife.’

  They both fell silent for a few moments, thinking hard. ‘None of it makes sense,’ Haani said. ‘Like, why go to so much trouble? If the bad guys knew Kabir was on the trail of a big find, the smart thing to have done would be to hold back and wait for him to dig it up, and then make their move. Instead, they jumped in and killed people, and now they have to kidnap some other guy in the hope that he’ll help them finish the job of finding it. Who would do that?’

  ‘Someone not too bright,’ Ben said. ‘Which tells us that the trigger pullers who carried out the attack weren’t the brains behind the operation. Trigger pullers are seldom the brains behind anything. Therefore, it’s likely that the attack was premature, not part of the plan. Whoever hired them to do the job might not have foreseen that they were the kind of violent cretins who’d go in like Flynn and not be able to resist opening fire on three innocent people just for the hell of it.’

  ‘Kind of naïve,’ Haani said bitterly. ‘What kind of people did he think they’d be? Assuming that the brains is a he. I’m not sexist. I just don’t believe a woman could be that much of a fucked-up murdering bastard.’

  ‘Very naïve,’ Ben agreed. ‘And that tells us something more about the boss man. Since, I agree, he probably is a he. This isn’t a seasoned crook. He doesn’t normally move in those kinds of circles. He lives in a whole different world, one where violence isn’t a habitual thing. If he’s resorted to hiring a bunch of gung-ho crazies to do his dirty work, it can only be because he had no other recourse. But after the first phase of the plan went horribly wrong, he was forced to go ahead with the next phase and let himself get dragged in deeper.’

  ‘We’re still missing how the hell he could have known to kidnap Kabir’s brother,’ Haani said glumly. Then he raised a finger in the air, as though a fresh thought had come to him, and added with a sly look, ‘Unless.’

  Ben looked at him. ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless the whole thing’s a setup and Kabir’s brother wasn’t really kidnapped at all. Maybe he faked it, because he knew more than we’re assuming he knew, and he wanted the treasure for himself.’

  ‘You’re in the wrong job, Haani. Ever considered a career with the New Delhi police?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means I’ve heard some pretty preposterous theories about the Ray brothers today, but that one beats them all. Trust
me, Amal didn’t fake his own kidnap. It happened.’

  The question was, what had happened next? Ben had his thoughts about that. And it wasn’t looking good.

  Chapter 31

  Now that there was a clear motive that not only explained Amal’s kidnapping but linked it beyond a shadow of a doubt to the attack on Kabir and the others, it was a much simpler matter than before to predict the bad guys’ strategy. It also painted a worse picture, if that was possible, than the one Ben had already had in mind.

  What made it so much worse was the treasure element in the equation. Whoever had Amal would have laid pressure on him to reveal facts that he might not even know: first, its location; second, its nature; third, its quantity and value. Squeezing out those details would entail frightening the hell out of him, threatening him with all kinds of horrors, probably hurting him physically to some degree – though not too much, not venturing deep into the realms of harsh torture, because torture could be badly counterproductive if things went too far and the weaker subjects closed down; and even the most moronic thug would realise that Amal was not a physically resilient person. But however they went about it, assuming that he knew what they wanted to find out, sooner rather than later he would crack.

  And it had been nine days now since the abduction. Ben thought it unlikely that Amal would have lasted more than a couple of days of rough treatment before the truth came out. He might have lasted only a matter of hours, or even just minutes. When the dam broke, it could go two different ways. He would either spill out everything he knew, which could be extremely bad news for him as it then rendered him obsolete. Or else he could persuade them that he genuinely knew nothing, which was an equally grim prospect, because then he was literally worthless to his captors. It was a no-win situation for the kidnap victim, whether the treasure existed or not.