Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
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Kabir removed his pilot’s headset and began flipping switches on the Bell Ranger’s instrument panels to shut down the rotors. He turned to grin broadly at Sai in the co-pilot seat, then at Manish sitting behind.
‘Ready to make history, guys?’ he said over the falling pitch of the turbine.
Kabir’s two associates beamed back at him. Manish said, ‘Let’s rock and roll.’
As the helicopter’s rotors slowed to a whistling whip-whip-whip, the three companions clambered out and jumped down to the rocky ground. It had taken less than an hour from the urban hubbub of their base in New Delhi to reach the remoteness of Hisar District, Haryana, out in the middle of nowhere twenty miles north-west of a once barely-heard-of village called Rakhigarhi.
Kabir stood for a moment and gazed around him at the arid, semi-desert terrain that stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. Far away beyond the barren escarpment of rocky hills behind him to the north-east lay Punjab, the Land of the Five Rivers; in front of him lay the wide-open semi-desertified plains, arid and rocky with just a few desiccated shrubs and wizened trees scattered here and there and offering no shade. It was mid-September, and the merciless heat of summer was past its worst, but the sun still beat fiercely down, baking the landscape.
Kabir was hardened to the heat, because of the outdoor demands of a job that often took him to difficult and inhospitable places all across the ancient Near East. Unlike his elder brothers, one of whom spent all his time in air-conditioned big-city boardrooms, and the other who, for reasons best known to him, had chosen to live in chilly, rain-sodden Britain. Very strange. Though if it was the life he shared with his beautiful new wife that kept him tied to London, Kabir couldn’t entirely blame the guy. She was something, all right. Maybe one day he, too, might be lucky enough to find a woman like her.
For now, though, Kabir’s sole devotion was to his work.
Kabir stepped back to the chopper, reached into a cool box behind the passenger seat and pulled out three cans of Coke, one for him and one each for Manish and Sai. His two bright, trusty graduate students were both in their early twenties, only a few years younger than Kabir, who happened to be the youngest professor ever to teach at the Institute of Archaeology in Delhi. With his warm personality and winning smile, he was widely held to be the most popular, too – though he was far too modest to admit it.
Sai rolled the cold can over his brow, then cracked the ring and look a long drink. ‘That hit the spot. Thanks, boss.’ Sai never called him ‘Professor’.
‘No littering, please,’ Kabir said. ‘This is a site of special archaeological interest, remember. Or soon to be.’
‘Doesn’t bloody look like it right now,’ Manish said.
Sai finished the can, crumpled it between his fingers and surveyed it with a thoughtful frown. ‘Just think. If I chuck this away among the rocks, four thousand years into the future some guy like us will dig it up and prize it as an ancient relic of our culture, wondering what the hell it can teach him about the long-lost civilisation of the twenty-first century.’
Kabir smiled. ‘That’s history in action for you. Now let’s go and see what we can figure out about the people who lived here four thousand years ago.’
‘I don’t think they drank Coke,’ Manish said.
‘Nah, something else killed them off,’ Sai joked. ‘Question is, what?’
It was one of the puzzles that Kabir had spent his whole career trying to answer, and it was no joke to him. Nor was he the only archaeologist who’d devoted endless hours to solving the mystery, to no avail. He tossed his own empty Coke can back into the cooler, then took out his iPhone and quickly accessed the precious set of password-protected documents stored inside.
Those documents were the single most important thing in his life right now. The originals from which they had been scanned were a set of three old leather-bound journals dating back to the nineteenth century. Not particularly ancient, as archaeological finds went – and yet their chance discovery had been the most significant he’d ever made. And he was hoping that it would lead to an even bigger one.
Outside of Manish and Sai, Kabir trusted virtually no one with his secret. The precious journals themselves were still back in the city, securely locked up in his personal safe while their new custodian travelled out to this arid wilderness, full of excitement and determined to find out if the amazing revelations of their long-dead author were indeed true.
Only time would tell. Sooner rather than later, he hoped. His eagerness to know the truth sometimes bordered on desperation. Yes, it was an obsession. He knew that. But sometimes, he reminded himself, that’s what it takes to get the job done.
Shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare, Kabir slowly scanned the horizon. The chopper was parked on a rocky plateau from where the ground fell away into a rubble-strewn valley. Heat ripples disturbed the air like tendrils rising from the ground, but he was able to make out the curve of the ancient dry river bed that wound for miles into the far distance. Millennia ago, a mighty waterway had flowed through here, nourishing the land and raising lush vegetation all along its banks. Now it was so parched and dusty that even looking at it made Kabir thirsty for another cold drink.
He looked