The Avatari (65 page)

‘Have you been able to locate the transceiver?’

‘No, sir. But our Pakistani contacts confirm that a woman, working on authority granted by the deputy director, had it delivered to someone in north Afghanistan. The woman was not one of our operatives; in fact, she may have been working with the KGB.’

‘Good god!’

‘Yes, sir. The person it was delivered to used to work for us once – a West Point man, in fact. But he went out of circulation a long time ago. It could be a mistake, but I’ll have it checked out.’

‘And the transceiver?’

‘No trace at all. Hopefully, it hasn’t been picked up by the Soviets. We’ve switched off the satellite link now.’

The President chose his question after much deliberation, the way a man would if he were loath to hear the answer, but couldn’t avoid it at any cost.

‘Why in god’s name do you think this operation was being run by the deputy director?’

The admiral scratched his head, his voice genuinely puzzled. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea, sir. And since you don’t know about it, it’s obviously unauthorized.’ The big man straightened his shoulders. ‘But rest assured we will find out.’

The President leaned forward.

‘How many other people know about this?’

Admiral Fred Neeson had been in the business long enough and had interacted with enough presidents to know what was coming – the Potomac two step. Well, he had done his job.

‘Apart from me, Mr President, no one. No one knows the whole story.’

The President got up from his desk and came around to the admiral. He tried putting his arm around the big man and failed. He settled on clasping his shoulder.

‘I suggest you too forget about the whole thing, Fred,’ he advised, ‘just let it go.’

* * *

According to the texts, the Zhang Zhung, at one point, had spread across eighteen kingdoms in the western and north-western regions of Tibet, which included the Chang Tang plateau. Among them was Shambhala or the ‘Kingdom of Happiness’. There is some scientific evidence to suggest that prior to 1500
BCE
, the plateau offered a much more hospitable environment which gradually grew harsher and more forbidding, contributing to the decline of these kingdoms and the rise of Tibetan kingdoms in the southern valleys where the people practised Bon, an animistic religion pre-dating Buddhism.

Since 1991, a research team from the Nepal–German Project in High Mountain Archaeology has been searching for and excavating sites in the villages of Kagbeni and Dzong in southern Mustang. Most of the caves are isolated and located on high cliffs. One, however, a cluster of sixty rooms, contains living areas and food-storage areas. As per carbon dating, the oldest part of these caves dates back to 500
BCE
. The research team concluded that to establish if these caves were, indeed, occupied by the Zhang Zhung, excavations over a wider area, including most of Tibet and northern Afghanistan, would be necessary. Major archaeological surveys are yet to be undertaken in these areas.

* * *

Peter, Susan and Tashi eventually found their way back to Africa. The first thing that Peter did was get in touch with BOSS officials. They were surprisingly considerate about him not being able to fulfil the terms of his contract. They did not bother to inform him that much before he was to join, someone in the British Consulate had advised them to let it go.

A transfer of funds from a bank account in Yorkshire helped convert the Lone Baobab Lodge in Zambia into a small school. They realized they would need boarding and hospital facilities as well if this project were to work. Two rains later, they stood in front of the modest buildings of El Durga Bahadur Memorial Centro di Atendimento – Portuguese for ‘care centre’. Their wards were mostly children, most of them shy of a limb, courtesy the seven million landmines planted during the war. Most of them had never known their parents and were handed over by villagers who had heard of the centre and travelled many days to reach them. Some of the elders who brought them in would stay on; they were as destitute as the children. No one was sent back.

On an average, they would be raided four times a year by soldiers professing to a multitude of allegiances. Some would steal everything they had. Most, however, would rest for the night, eat and move on. Peter built an outhouse on the fringes of their buildings and stocked it so that the soldiers could use it without disturbing the centre’s inmates. On one occasion, a trio of soldiers bent on taking away the children had brandished their weapons menacingly at Peter. He had coolly pointed to the window where Susan stood with a shotgun aimed at them. The soldiers had left without taking anything. They had been in the bush long enough to know who would fight back and when they should run. One year, they were ravaged by malaria and Peter thought he might lose Susan. It was the only time that Tashi had seen Peter cry. But she fought back and so did the centre.

Everyone pitched in where boarding facilities were concerned. They had volunteer doctors who helped run the infirmary. Susan and Tashi managed the school, Susan teaching science and mathematics, while Tashi taught history and geography. Tashi would bring distant places alive for children who had never been out of the jungle.

The school would remain closed during the three months of rain. Tashi would save the allowance Peter gave him and, during vacation periods, take the cheapest fares to the farthest places. He always seemed happy and, to anyone who asked, would say that it had been his ambition, since as long back as he could remember, to ‘see the world’.

In 1994, more than three and a half centuries after it had been conjectured, Professor Andrew Wiles, a British mathematician, worked out a proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem. Among the many accolades he received, one was a congratulatory letter from a lady he had known as a colleague in Cambridge, a Susan Hamilton, whom he had known to be a fine mathematician. He had lost track of her over the years and, wanting to write back to her, was puzzled to find no return address given. It was only the postmark which indicated that the letter had been sent from Africa.

After writing the letter to Andrew Wiles, Susan had finally accepted Peter’s proposal of marriage, a proposal he had offered every morning like a ritual after brushing his teeth. They were married in a simple ceremony presided over by Tashi, their volunteer doctors, their staff and smiling children. Susan looked lovely in a braid of flowers the children had woven for her. They had run out of camera film and fresh supplies would arrive only after two weeks, so there were no pictures.

* * *

Erect and dignified in a monk’s robes, his head tonsured, a tall man emerged from the depths of the caves late in the morning to the ledge outside, blinking so that his eyes could adjust to the light. As had been his routine for years now, he had spent many hours studying the ancient scripts engraved on the walls of the caves. Later, he would retire to another small cave, which served as his room, to meditate on all that he had read in the morning. Many young acolytes from the monastery passed by him now, hurrying to their lessons and bowing to him in reverence and awe. He patted their heads affectionately.

But today, he would break his daily routine by heading to the rooms where offerings from the pilgrims were stored. The gold and precious stones lay in heaps, unattended. One offering had been given pride of place on a plain wooden stool; incense burned underneath it and a young monk sat in attendance at all times. Though no written history of the article existed, it was believed that this well-guarded offering had been made by none other than the emperor Kublai Khan to gain entry into the monastery.

The young monk rose to his feet as the older man entered and bowed to him. The older man smiled at him and gently, reverently, picked up the small, unembellished earthen bowl. It was the bowl used by the Buddha to beg as a
bhikshu
, a mendicant, for the only meal he would have in the day. It was the only item in the monastery deemed valuable enough to have someone watch over it.

The older man placed it back, a faraway look in his eyes and a smile on his lips, as if lost for a moment in memories of a past life, then went on with his daily routine.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would never have begun writing but for Amma, who exhorted me to follow the dream, taking the sting of Appa’s truism that writers generally never get rewarded enough.

Sumita was with me every step of the way, reading and editing drafts, honestly telling me where I needed to start over again and then giving me the strength to do so.

Going through a first-time writer’s unedited manuscript is undeniably tedious. I am therefore extremely grateful to Brighu for reading it in one day and telling me that it was okay – the first person, in fact, to do so. Thanks are also due to Brigadier Jagatbir Singh, Parimal Kasliwal, Papa and Mummy, Chachaji and Admiral Raja Menon for doing the same and giving very valuable suggestions. Rahul Rajan’s recommendations on how the characters should be developed were extremely insightful. I used every one of them.

Like everyone else, I thought writing the book was the difficult part, a notion I was quickly disabused of when I began my search for a publisher. In this quest I want to thank Urmila, who took me to the Jaipur Lit Fest, as also Gaurav Sabharwal, Rachna Chhachhi, Brigadier Anindya Sengupta and Mahavir Sharma for connecting me to prospective publishers.

After getting what I am made to understand are mandatory rejections, I ran into some luck when Pramit Pal Chaudhuri read the manuscript and forwarded it to my editor, Poulomi Chatterjee, at Hachette India. Thank you, Pramit, for recommending me, and thank you, Poulomi, for accepting the manuscript and then giving so much to the book.

Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to my comrades-in-arms in the Indian Army, with whom it has been an honour and privilege to serve. This book is about courage and heroism, something I learnt about from these men and women who display it routinely in the most treacherous terrain in the world. If I have not named them, it is because I know they would not have wanted to be named. They look upon it as doing their job and don’t like to talk about it.

Raghu Srinivasan is a serving officer in the Indian Army. His tenures have seen him patrol leech-infested tropical jungles, stare across the expanse of the African savannah and spot snow leopards in the Karakoram ranges. He met his best friend Sumita when he was a subaltern and she was just out of high school; they have now been married for twenty years. The couple have an eleven-year-old daughter, Vaishnavi, who thinks her father is the greatest storyteller in the world.

A mythical kingdom

Legend has it that only those chosen by destiny can gain entry into Shambhala, the mythical kingdom believed to hold the ancient wisdom that humanity will need to resurrect itself from the inevitable apocalypse. They are the Avatari.

An ancient artefact

When Henry Ashton, a retired British Army officer settled in the Yorkshire dales, receives a letter from a monk entreating him to prevent a ‘hidden treasure’ stolen from a Laotian monastery from being misused, he finds himself honour-bound to respond. Assisted by a retired Gurkha Sergeant, a high-strung mathematician from Oxford with a Shambhala fixation of her own, and an American mercenary on the CIA’s hit list, Ashton’s mission leads to an ancient map that dates back to the time of the great Mongol, Kublai Khan.

A secret that must not be revealed

The group follows the trail, risking the perils of the inhospitable deserts of Ladakh, turmoil in Pakistan and the rugged mountains of Northern Afghanistan, where the Afghan War is at its height. But they are up against a deadly adversary with seemingly unlimited resources, who will stop at nothing to get possession of the ancient secret – a secret that, if revealed, could threaten the very fabric of human civilization…