A huge metallic bang shook the car as the broken wheel finally sheared off its axle, tearing off the Veyron’s back quarter panel and bouncing down the drive. The already low-slung supercar’s ground clearance was reduced to zero as the unsupported body hit the road like an anchor. Grinding over the asphalt, it screeched to a stop.
The guards ran towards them, guns raised—
And whirled at the sound of another vehicle behind them.
The barrier shattered as Kit crashed his car through it. One of the men was hit by a length of broken wood and bowled off his feet to smash through the guard hut’s window. The other two leapt out of the car’s path, bringing their guns to bear—
Kit spun the steering wheel and yanked on the handbrake. The car fishtailed, its rear end swinging round and swatting away one of the guards with a thump of flesh against steel.
The remaining man dived aside in the nick of time, rolling and bringing up his gun—
Mac kicked open the passenger door. It hit the crouching guard just as he fired, knocking the gun downwards. A semicircle of red sprayed over the tarmac as the bullet hit the luckless man’s kneecap. He fell on his back, dropping the gun as he screamed and clutched the wound.
Mac tossed the fallen weapon out of his reach, then waved to the occupants of the crippled Veyron. ‘Well, come on! We haven’t got all day!’
20
Kit lowered his cell phone, his normally sunny face somewhat clouded. ‘That . . . did not go well. But it could have been worse.’
‘What did your bosses say?’ Nina asked. ‘Are they going to arrest the Khoils? Or at least investigate them?’
‘Unfortunately, no. Not without more proof.’
‘But we’ve got proof,’ said Eddie, indicating the Talonor Codex. The golden book sat on a desk in Kit’s small but modern Delhi apartment, the Interpol officer having arranged a flight from Bangalore back to the capital on a government transport aircraft. ‘They had that thing in their bloody house. That’s got to be enough for Interpol to take action, surely?’
‘It’s your word against theirs. I know you recovered it from them, but that isn’t firm evidence. If Khoil had left a single fingerprint on it, that would be enough, but you said yourself that he never actually touched it. And,’ Kit sighed, ‘the Khoils have already been busy. They have lots of friends in high places - and they seem to have spoken to all of them in the last few hours. Politicians, lawyers, judges . . . We need absolutely irrefutable evidence before we can take any action.’
‘So there’s nothing they can be charged with?’ Nina said in disbelief. ‘What about the simple fact that I’m sitting right here in India? I was goddamn kidnapped!’
‘I looked into that. But unfortunately, the immigration agency has a record of you arriving - alone - at Bangalore airport three days ago.’
‘That’s impossible! They brought me straight to their own airfield.’
‘That’s not what the computer says, I’m afraid.’
‘And guess whose company wrote the software on that computer?’ said Eddie rhetorically.
Mac made a grumbling sound. ‘It seems we have a stalemate. There’s not a great deal they can do to us without arousing suspicion against themselves, but we’ve got nothing on them either.’
‘I have one piece of good news, though,’ Kit told Eddie. ‘The Interpol red notice issued on you has been rescinded. I’ve told my superiors that the Talonor Codex has been recovered - and that you helped. I strongly implied the whole thing was some sort of sting operation. You’ll still have to be questioned back in New York, but for now you’re off the arrest list.’
Eddie wasn’t especially overjoyed. ‘Fucking marvellous. We’ve got the Codex back, but it doesn’t matter, ’cause they’ve got what they needed from it.’ He tapped the plastic replica of the key beside the golden book. ‘They’ve probably made another copy already.’
‘I told you we should have deleted the pattern,’ Nina said.
‘So the Khoils will be able to find the Vault of Shiva?’ Kit asked.
‘Unless we find it first,’ said Nina.
Eddie frowned. ‘Not much chance of that, is there? We don’t know where it is.’
‘Nor does Khoil. He had a translation of the Codex, and made some deductions from it, but hadn’t pinned down an actual location.’
‘What deductions?’ asked Mac.
Nina thought back to Khoil’s boastful claims at the palace. ‘He said it was somewhere near Mount Kailash - Shiva’s home.’
‘The Sacred Mountain,’ said Kit, nodding. ‘The logical place.’
‘Have you been there?’
‘No, unfortunately.’ He smiled. ‘My work doesn’t give me a lot of time for pilgrimages. Perhaps some day.’
‘Do you have an atlas?’
Kit found a book and opened it to a map of the northern half of the Indian subcontinent, the contours of the Himalayas in greys and purples above the greens and browns of the rest of India. Tibetan China was above it at the top right of the page, Nepal sandwiched between the two much larger countries. ‘Here,’ he said, pointing at a spot above Nepal’s northwestern corner, near the disputed Indo-Chinese border. ‘These two lakes are Manasarovar and Raksas Tal - both holy places. Drinking the water of Manasarovar is meant to cleanse you of all your sins for a hundred lifetimes.’
‘Might be worth me having a swig,’ said Eddie.
Mac cocked his head. ‘Just the one?’
‘Mount Kailash is north of them,’ Kit continued. ‘Lord Shiva supposedly meditates at the summit.’
‘Waiting to end the world, according to Khoil,’ said Nina.
‘And begin it again,’ he reminded her.
‘Maybe so, but for all its faults, I’d kinda like to keep the one we have now.’
‘Exactly what did Khoil tell you about this plan of his?’ Mac asked.
‘Not enough,’ she sighed. ‘Although I think he may have given away more than he intended when he was showing off how he’s rigged the Qexia search engine. He used India and Pakistan as an example of two countries that would only need the right spark to go to war - maybe that’s already part of what the Khoils are planning.’
Mac nodded. ‘Both countries have nuclear weapons. If they started throwing them about, things would escalate beyond just the two of them very quickly.’
‘But what would the Khoils gain from that?’ asked Kit.
‘Global collapse,’ said Nina. ‘Pramesh wants to force the world into the next stage of the cycle of existence - end the Kali Yuga, and start a new Satya Yuga. A new golden age,’ she added for the benefit of the two puzzled British men.
‘That’s rather arrogant of him,’ said Kit thoughtfully. ‘The Kali Yuga is supposed to last over four hundred thousand years, and Shiva is the one who will end it. Not a man.’
She smiled darkly. ‘Arrogance is about his only personality trait, unless you count nerdiness. But he said he has to have the Vedas from the Vault of Shiva for his plan to work. Without Shiva’s teachings to inspire them, people will just stay in the gutter.’
‘So what if he doesn’t get these Vedas?’ Eddie asked.
‘I don’t know. If he believes in them that much, maybe he won’t carry out his plan at all.’
‘Well, then. We get them before he does. Problem solved!’
‘Easier said than done. We don’t know where the Vault is.’ Nina looked at the map more closely, brow furrowing as she trawled through her memory of everything she had learned from the Talonor Codex. Some clue was tantalisingly close to revealing itself, but without access to the translation she couldn’t pin it down. ‘And . . . I’m not entirely sure that the Khoils do, either. Something isn’t right. Do you remember what I was telling you about Talonor - when you realised that what he was writing was a tactical report?’