The Goddess Legacy

Chapter 33

The taxi dropped them off in the center of the business district. Buying a new phone proved as easy as the last two, and when it was activated and had a signal, she called Singh back.

“This is my new number,” Allie said.

“I put that together all by myself. Where are you?” he asked.

She glanced up at a street sign and told him. He thought for a moment and gave her instructions. She repeated them back to him and he hung up. Drake raised an eyebrow and looked to her expectantly.

“We have half an hour to get to the Delhi Junction Railway Station. We’re to find the train that arrives in forty minutes from Buxar and wait on the platform.”

“That’s it? Wait?”

“You heard me.” Allie whistled loudly at a green and yellow rickshaw, and the driver skidded to a halt beside them. “Delhi Junction train station,” she said as they climbed into the cab. The driver nodded and took off like a scared rabbit, cutting off another rickshaw, which earned several curses and the inevitable horn assault.

The railway station was typical Indian pandemonium: people milling about, blaring announcements from overhead speakers echoing off the stone slab floors, groups of bewildered tourists milling around like lost puppies as a never-ending rush of locals made their way to and from the platforms, dressed in a dizzying array of colors.

Drake checked his watch as Allie searched for a working monitor that announced arriving trains. She pointed at one mounted on the far end of the station, and they fought their way through the human tide.

“Our platform’s that way,” she said after a quick scan, gesturing to their right.

“I see it,” Drake said, and they set off, skirting a group of chanting religious celebrants all dressed in the same bright shade of orange. “We only have a couple of minutes.”

“We’ll make it.”

They arrived at the platform, where it seemed several hundred other passengers had the same idea, and waited as a distant spotlight neared from down the track. Drake shaded his eyes in order to see the train and nearly jumped when something tugged at the bottom of his shirt. He looked down at where a boy, no more than six years old, gazed up at him with eyes the size of golf balls, his clothes tattered and stained — the uniform of the city’s homeless.

“Sahib, sahib,” the boy said, his voice thin.

“No. Go away,” Drake said.

Allie’s new phone rang and she answered it. “Yes?”

It was Singh. “Follow the boy.”

Allie glanced down at the urchin and whispered to Drake, “Singh sent him.”

The boy’s face had the deadly serious cast of an old man, hardship having already aged him beyond his years. Drake nodded to him and the boy pirouetted and scampered away, pausing occasionally to look back to ensure they were still behind him. Drake took Allie’s hand and they edged through the press of locals until they were opposite the restrooms, where the boy ran outside through one of the arches and made for the street.

“Another goose chase,” Allie said, and they took off after him, dodging vendors and porters as they sped toward the cars.

Allie’s phone trilled. “Yes?”

“I don’t see anyone following you. Come back to the station. I’m outside the restaurant in my Sikh getup.”

They returned to the two-story red depot and spotted Singh, who was leaning against a wall, a pair of cheap knockoff sunglasses covering his eyes and his blue turban slightly askew. When they neared, he spoke under his breath. “Keep walking to the other end of the station. Wait for me outside.”

They did as instructed, and Singh joined them two minutes later. He led them around the corner and began walking quickly toward the main avenue, giving a dirt rotunda with several dozen unfortunates sleeping on towels and blankets a wide berth. “Transfer the bitcoin to this address,” he said, handing Allie a slip of paper. She did her best to enter the characters on the move, and when she’d verified they were correct, approved the transfer.

“Done.”

Singh’s phone beeped three minutes later, and he stopped abruptly in front of a street market. A cart piled impossibly high with boxes, easily the size of a pickup truck bed, creaked by on the rutted road, drawn by a man on a bicycle, followed by an oxcart that could have been out of the Middle Ages. Singh stepped closer to them, his voice barely audible.

“The dagger came to me from a man who was part of the inner circle at an ashram in Bhiwani — a spiritual center of great fame there, operated by a guru called Swami Baba Raja. He didn’t come out and say it, but it appears that he might have liberated it from the ashram as his last act before leaving it for good.”

“Bhiwani?” Drake asked. “Where is that?”

“Look it up,” Singh said. “Anyway, this man left the ashram under a cloud. He’d had a disagreement with the swami, and in that world, it would be akin to disagreeing with the Pope. The next day his body was found floating in the river, and I narrowly escaped the same fate at my shop that morning. It was strictly luck that my assistant told me two men had come looking for me, and she’d gotten a bad feeling about them. Then, when I saw the news about the swami’s acolyte… I called her and told her to close up the shop at lunchtime and to leave.” He looked away. “I… I never heard back from her after that.”

“You think those men were sent by the swami?”

“Either him or one of his many powerful devotees. Half the Indian government has made pilgrimages to Baba Raja’s ashram over the years, so it could have been someone he told about the loss of the dagger, whose help he enlisted. I don’t know, and I don’t care. All I know is that it’s too hot for me anymore in Delhi, so I’m retiring and getting out of town for good.”

“With a quarter mil, you should be able to live pretty well,” Allie said.

“A little more than that, but your point is taken. Yes, there are myriad places I can live like a maharaja for the rest of my life, leaving no trace to follow.” He looked hard at Allie. “As I’ve said, you would be well advised to forget the dagger and go back to your country before they find you. Believe me, they will do the same to you both as they did to your friend, and no amount of wealth and fame will help you.”

“You think the relic is in the ashram?”

“Swami Baba Raja is rumored to have quite a collection, so anything’s possible. But the truth is I have no way of knowing. Only the trusted few have ever seen his hoard, my contact one of them — and he’s not talking.” Singh paused.

“Why did he sell it to you?”

“He didn’t sell it to me. He entrusted it to my care, for me to broker a deal. He knew that I have a decent clientele of foreigners, and wanted to sell it to someone who wasn’t Indian.”

“Why would he trust you with it?” Drake asked.

Singh swallowed hard and looked away. “The man who brought me the dagger was my older brother.”