The Messiah Secret

46

Nick Masters, his eyes red with exhaustion after a series of long-haul flights, took another sip of thick black coffee and stared across the table at the tall, slim man wearing an immaculate light grey suit. Despite his Western-style dress, his companion’s brown skin, black hair and dark eyes marked him as a local. In fact, Rodini was a lieutenant-colonel in the Pakistani military.

They were meeting in a small cafe close to the centre of Islamabad. Masters had explained what assistance he needed, though not why he needed it. And Rodini knew better than to ask for specifics.

‘Tell me exactly which part of Kashmir you need to get to,’ Rodini asked, sliding cutlery and plates to one side and opening a military map on the table.

‘Northern Ladakh,’ Masters said, pointing at the area near Panamik.

Rodini nodded. ‘That helps,’ he said. ‘We still control Baltistan and the Northern Areas, so getting you and your men as far as Skardu or Hushe — they’re just here, in central Baltistan — wouldn’t be a problem. Crossing the border into the area controlled by India will be more difficult, of course, because there’s a very large military presence along the border — on both sides of it, in fact. We’ll have to work out the best method of achieving that, but it will have to be a covert insertion, because all the roads between the Nubra Valley and Baltistan have been closed since nineteen forty-seven.’

Rodini tapped the map with his forefinger for emphasis. ‘Insertion is one thing, but extraction could be quite another. Depending on what you’re planning on doing in Indian territory, your best route out might be to simply drive down to Leh and buy an airline ticket to Delhi or Mumbai. Otherwise we could try to arrange for a chopper to pick you up, but we’d have to select the location very carefully. How many men in your team?’

‘Eight in all,’ Masters replied. ‘That’s seven plus me, but two of them are in Leh already, or at least on their way there, so I guess they can leave the same way they came in. That means the infiltration team will be six men.’

In fact, he had only recruited a six-man team, but Donovan would be flying into Islamabad that morning, and was intending to cross the border into India with them. Masters had also sent two men to Delhi. They had spotted Bronson and Angela at the airport, and had managed to get on the same flight.

‘We’ll need some ordnance as well,’ Masters continued, ‘but nothing too heavy. A few nine-millimetre pistols, some Kalashnikovs and if possible a sniper rifle with a suppressor, plus ammunition. Will that be a problem? Can we still just go out and buy them here in Islamabad?’

Rodini made a note on a piece of paper and shook his head. ‘The sniper rifle might prove difficult to source because it’s somewhat specialized, and if you find one it’ll be expensive, but otherwise there’s no problem, especially for the Kalashnikovs. You can buy them in one of the markets. I can suggest traders who supply good quality ordnance and are honest — or at least as honest as anyone else involved in that business. Anything else?’

Masters paused for a few seconds, wondering how best to phrase his final request.

‘Yes,’ he said, and leaned forward. ‘We intend to recover an object from that area, and we will need transport to assist us in the retrieval.’

‘What kind of an object?’

‘That I can’t tell you, but I can assure you that it has no military significance or intrinsic value. It’s simply a relic that my principal has located, and wishes to take possession of. He collects such things.’

‘Does he always need a team of crack mercenaries armed to the teeth to recover objects that he covets?’ Rodini asked, a slight smile on his face.

‘Not always, no.’

Rodini grunted his disbelief. ‘And may I ask whether it belongs to the Indian government?’

Masters shook his head. ‘No. It belongs to nobody. It’s been lost for millennia.’

‘Very well. How big is it, and how heavy?’

‘I don’t know for certain at the moment, but I estimate a weight of no more than four hundred pounds, and a box that would fit in the back of a jeep or small truck.’

Rodini still looked unconvinced, but Masters decided this was just too bad. The last thing he was going to do was tell him exactly what he was trying to recover — all his credibility would vanish the moment he did so. Even the men he’d recruited had no idea of their actual objective, only that it was a relic that had been lost for a couple of thousand years.

Rodini looked down again at his few notes. ‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘The only major problem is getting you across the border. Give me a call when all your men have arrived.’