The Hunt for Shambhala

17

Dr Diana Silva felt the cold steel muzzle of Kaleka’s pistol push into the small of her back as they waited for the elevator to arrive. They were standing in the opulent marble entrance lobby of the Jambudvipa, the private super yacht of Rakesh Madan. A gentle metallic ping drew her attention to the elevator’s arrival and a moment later the burnished chrome doors swished open in luxurious silence.

Kaleka sighed and pushed the gun into her back even harder. “Get in.”

The elevator doors shut behind the two of them and the Indian hitman selected the top deck. The elevator serviced all seven decks of the enormous private yacht but today it was taking the prisoner up to the private realm of one of India’s most notorious recluses.

The elevator’s ascent was silent and felt almost motionless. The only sensation of movement was given by the flashing blue lights every time they passed a floor. As she waited, she gently rubbed her face — she already had the beginnings of a black eye from when Kaleka had hit her back in Goa, and now she wondered how far he might go with a gun in his hand.

A few seconds later the doors opened to reveal a vast private apartment with double-hung windows giving a breathtaking view of the city’s skyline beyond. The view rose and fell almost imperceptibly as the yacht bobbed up and down in the warm waters of the marina.

“Ah, Dr Silva — how kind of you to join me.”

Diana heard his voice, but couldn’t see him in the enormous apartment space. She tried to scan the room for him but before she began Kaleka pushed her violently out of the elevator with his shovel-like hand. She staggered forward and fell over to find herself face to face with the snarling face of a white Bengal tiger.

She gasped and scrambled backward, and as she got to her feet she heard Madan give a low chuckle.

He stepped out from behind a large Chinese folding screen and extended a hand to help her. “Please, it cannot hurt you. It was turned into a rug ten years ago.”

Diana rejected his hand and straightened her shirt as she pulled herself up to her full height. “How tasteless.”

“In your world, perhaps, but I personally shot this animal on a hunt in Madhya Pradesh. It was not my first kill, but certainly my bravest. Every day I am reminded of how fierce these beasts truly are.”

“Not this one.”

“No…” he said, eyes crawling all over her. “Not this one.”

As he spoke, Madan dismissed Kaleka with a string of orders, and the hitman disappeared into a room behind the elevator shaft. Then Madan turned to the Portuguese woman and smiled. “Please — allow me to show you the view.”

She followed him to a set of French doors which overlooked a large stretch of deck on the starboard side, with views over the bustling city in the distance.

Madan opened them and they stepped out onto the terrace where a brass side table was covered in a white cotton cloth and shaded from the late sun by a large parasol. “Please, have a seat.”

“Do I have any choice?”

“Of course not.”

Diana sat at the table and Madan joined her. As the billionaire’s eyes scanned Cumballa Hill, Kaleka stepped out onto the deck. He was holding a tray which he placed gently on the table. An antique silver teapot was in the center, and two china cups. Beside them was an upturned metal bowl, shining dully in the last of the day’s light.

Madan waved him away with his hand and began to pour the tea into the cups. “India is very famous for its tea,” he said. “We produce more tea in India than anywhere else in the world except China. This tea is from my own personal tea gardens in Darjeeling.”

“Why am I here, Mr Madan?” As she spoke, she was certain she saw the upturned metal bowl move slightly in her peripheral vision.

He stopped pouring the tea and added some milk before pushing Diana’s cup over to her. “What many people do not realize is that we have the British to thank for Indian tea. It was the British who introduced tea to India, and they did so to destroy the monopoly the Chinese had on tea production.”

“I asked you a question.”

“Yes… and not an unreasonable one. Look — the first stars.”

Diana followed his hand up into the sky and saw a scattering of stars beginning to shine in the evening sky. “Why did you bring me here against my will?”

“Ah — a satellite! I wonder if it’s one of mine?”

Diana was dimly aware of Madan’s great fortune and how he’d made it, but she had no interest in any of it. “I am a prisoner, then.”

“I prefer to think of your status as a temporary guest, and I am your host. You have not been mistreated in any way, I hope? I know Kaleka can be a little exuberant in his work but pay him no attention. He is a loyal servant and will not harm you.”

She rubbed her black eye. “Unless you tell him to.”

“Unless I tell him to.”

Now she saw the bowl move again, but this time she was much more confident that it had really moved and it wasn’t just her imagination. She pushed back away from the table a few inches and pulled her hands into her lap.

Madan smiled and looked back up at the sky. “In the early days the Indian Space Research Organization would only allow private companies such as mine to place nano-satellites into orbit, which they launched alongside their own, but now things are a little different. Madan Industries now has three full-size multiband communications satellites in orbit, and we hope to launch more very soon.”

“I know nothing about space, or satellites,” Diana said.

He gave another of his insincere smiles. “No, but you do know about this — you are leading authority on ancient languages and symbols, after all.” He pulled a small book from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table beside the silver tea service.

“What’s this?”

“Don’t you know? This is the most valuable item in all of India.”

“It doesn’t look like it.”

“It’s not made of gold or encrusted with rubies, no, but such things are not the only measure of wealth in this world, Dr Silva.”

“I don’t understand.”

Madan turned the small catch and opened the leather bound book. He opened it and began to leaf through it. “Many of the pages are damaged by water,” he said with genuine sadness in his voice. “One can only imagine how such a tragedy happened, but thankfully for us much of its contents are still intact.”

“What contents?”

“See for yourself.”

Madan handed it to her.

“This is a diary?”

“A journal, yes. It was the property of a British explorer and geologist for the British Geological Survey over one hundred years ago. He died in China when the plague ripped through Harbin in 1910 and his journal disappeared. It showed up in a private collection in Hong Kong recently. Now it is mine.”

“And what has this to do with me?” She was playing for time. She knew what was going on.

“Don’t be coy, Dr Silva. How do you think I knew who you were or where to find you? It is not easy to find someone in India, but the process can be expedited if you have a bird in the sky who listens for you.”

“You spied on me with your satellites?”

“Not exactly,” he said calmly. “I was spying on someone else and when that person telephoned you they dragged you into it, shall we say.”

“Selena Moore!”

Madan suppressed a mischievous chuckle. “The very same, yes — the young and foolish Professor Moore. She called you yesterday and told you she had discovered something that would change world history.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Something that might indicate an archaeological discovery that would — and I quote — hit Indian culture like a comet from outer space — and I right?”

Diana recoiled slightly when she heard Madan quote her friend word for word. It meant this stranger really had been listening in on their private conversation the day before, and it disgusted her. “How could you spy on people like that? This was a personal telephone call.”

“This is 2017, Dr Silva — there is no such thing as privacy anymore… not if you are poor, at any rate — but a rich man like me can still afford to purchase a private life.”

“You disgust me.”

“Don’t be rude, Dr Silva. You forget I have been very civil to you, but this can change.” He gently tapped the top of the upturned bowl for a moment and then lifted it to reveal a hideous red scorpion. It started to crawl off the table but Madan turned the metal bowl the right-way up and flicked the furious creature inside with his teaspoon.

“What is that thing?”

“This is hottentotta tamulus, if you prefer its formal name, but we shall call her an Indian Red Scorpion. She is widely considered to be the most dangerous of all scorpions.” The creature attempted to crawl out of the bowl once again but Madan knocked it back down with the spoon. It curled its metasoma up and fired its stinger at the spoon’s bowl. Diana flinched as the heavy telson at the tip of the metasoma clunked against the silver.

“Keep that thing away from me!”

“Do not disrespect her like that,” Madan snapped. “Scorpions are some of the very first predators to walk on dry land. Over fifteen hundred species and right here before you is the most lethal of them all!” The tiny red scorpion scuttled about in the bowl and grew increasingly erratic as it searched for an escape route.

“You’re frightening me.”

“Many people do not realize that the scorpion is an arachnid, just like a spider, and also like a spider they do not sting unless provoked.” He removed his Armani glasses and stared at the creature without blinking for a few moments. “But if she stings you, and it is not treated, then you will die. This is how they have outlived even the dinosaurs — injecting a lethal cocktail of toxins into their prey and paralysing them while their insides dissolve. Then she will suck the contents of her victims’ insides into her own stomach and leave the hollowed-out exoskeleton aside.”

“You’re making me feel sick, Mr Madan. Is that your intention?”

“Of course not.”

“I can’t think of anything worse than being trapped with a scorpion.”

Madan flicked the scorpion out onto the smooth, white table cloth and Diana screamed. Calmly, the Indian billionaire turned the bowl over and trapped the little red arachnid once again beneath the metal. “Are you sure you can think of nothing worse than that?” he said with a smirk.

“I don’t know what you mean…”

“Turn the journal to page forty-one please. Do it now.”

She did as he asked and stared at the page. On the left-hand side was a series of standard geographical coordinates, but beside them were the strangest symbols she had ever seen before. There were around twenty of them, and they were spaced apart as if they were almost in a grid, similar to the way Japanese characters are sometimes written.

“I recognize these as coordinates,” she said, “but what are these?”

“They are the symbols recorded in Tibet by Arthur Stanhope, the British explorer whose journal you are holding in your hands. Their location is marked by the coordinates you see on the same page, and it is my belief that the symbols will reveal to us the location of the ancient Tibetan Kingdom of Shambhala.”

“And what do you expect me to do?”

“I expect you to translate them.”