The Sacred Vault

Kit gave him a questioning look. ‘Your what?’

‘A gun. A big gun. Thought it might be handy.’

Mac shook his head. ‘You haven’t bought another of those ridiculous things, have you?’

Eddie snorted. ‘It’s a good gun, and anyone who makes jokes about me compensating for something can fuck right off. We’ve got other things to think about - like how we’re going to rescue Nina.’

They retreated to a quiet corner of the hotel bar. ‘Can’t you get them to make the exchange in Delhi rather than Bangalore?’ asked Kit, after Eddie explained the situation. ‘I can arrange backup more easily.’

‘Khoil demanded it,’ said Eddie. ‘Or rather, his wife did. Probably shouldn’t have said yes, but we’re stuck with it now.’

‘It does give him the home advantage,’ noted Mac. ‘Wherever we choose for the actual handover, he’ll be able to have his people in place beforehand.’

‘I wasn’t planning on giving him much advance warning. Ring him up, tell him to meet us at such and such a place in an hour. We can keep an eye on anyone who turns up.’ He looked at Kit. ‘But we’ve got to pick a place first. Do you know Bangalore?’

Kit nodded. ‘I go there quite often. There are a lot of new millionaires in Bangalore from all the technology companies . . . several of them have tried to build up art collections, without caring where the art came from.’

‘Do you know any local police?’ Mac asked.

‘Some, but they may not be willing to act against the Khoils without very solid evidence. But I can ask for help, at least.’

‘Great,’ said Eddie. ‘What about a place to make the exchange? Somewhere very public, preferably with security around.’

Kit thought for a moment, then smiled broadly. ‘Do you like cricket?’

17

Bangalore

‘I don’t like cricket,’ Eddie muttered as he entered the grandstand.

‘That’s because you lack taste and class,’ Mac joked, coming through the gate behind him.

‘I don’t know why you like it. I mean, you’re Scottish. It’s not exactly your national sport.’

‘Scotland has a fine cricket team.’

‘Yeah, and when was the last time they won anything?’

Mac made a faintly irritated sound. ‘It’s about the sportsmanship, not the winning.’

‘Bet you don’t say that when England lose, do you? And it’s the most boring sport imaginable. Give me footie or Formula One any day.’

‘I don’t think you’ll find this boring,’ Kit said, catching up to them with a heavy bag - a flash of his ID had allowed it to be brought into Bangalore’s M. Chinnaswamy stadium without being searched. ‘Indian matches aren’t like yours.’

Mac raised an eyebrow as he took in the scene. ‘You’re not joking.’

If British cricket events were staid and reserved, this was more like a carnival that happened to have a cricket match going on in the middle of it. Music blasted from loudspeakers, the crowd singing along, clapping and even pounding out beats on makeshift drums. Flags and banners waved, and in front of the grandstand was a display that would have left any blazer-wearing member of the Marylebone Cricket Club choking on his gin and tonic as a trio of cheerleaders danced and gyrated.

Eddie grinned. ‘Okay, Kit, you’re right - this is already a hundred times better than any other cricket match I’ve ever seen.’

Mac huffed, then continued along the grandstand towards his seat while Eddie and Kit descended the steps to find theirs. They had chosen their positions carefully; Eddie was in the front row with a couple of empty seats around him where Khoil - and Nina - could sit when they arrived, with Kit a couple of rows behind so he could observe events, and if necessary make a rapid exit with the Codex. Mac was further round, equipped with binoculars to give Eddie advance warning of potential trouble.

Eddie sat, watching the people filing into the grandstand around him. Most were male, displaying a mixture of ages and clothing styles; none seemed remotely interested in the balding Caucasian in the front row, the cheerleaders dominating their attention.

He glanced back at Kit, who responded with a small nod. Further away, he saw Mac in his seat, more men taking their places around him. So far, so good. He took out his phone and attached a Bluetooth headset to one ear, then entered a number. ‘Okay, Mac. Give me a check.’

‘I see you,’ said Mac, ‘and I see Kit. No sign of Nina or this Khoil fellow.’

‘Well, it’s not time for the exchange yet. Anyone look suspicious?’

‘Not that I can see. Just a lot of very excited cricket fans.’

‘Now that’s suspicious.’

‘You just don’t appreciate the subtleties of the game. Now Kit on the other hand—’

‘Yeah, I had to put up with you both wibbling on about it the entire bloody flight down here. Maybe you should adopt him.’

‘Does that mean I can finally get rid of you? I only have time for one surrogate son.’

Eddie laughed, then took another look round. Still no sign of Nina or Khoil. ‘Keep your eyes open, Dad. Let’s see what happens.’

With great fanfare, the match began. Eddie feigned interest while keeping watch. The first innings ended, marked by music and another butt-shaking dance from the cheerleaders. Second innings, third. Then: ‘Eddie,’ said Mac over the headset. ‘To your left.’

Eddie turned to see Khoil coming down the steps. No Nina. He checked if anyone else was approaching from the other side, and saw the man who had choked Nina with the plastic bag. Kit gave Eddie a concerned look, but an almost imperceptible shake of the head told him to stay put and maintain a watching brief.

Khoil sat to Eddie’s left, the man in black on his right. ‘Mr Chase,’ said the billionaire.

‘Mr Khoil,’ Eddie replied. ‘Can’t help noticing you’ve forgotten something.’

‘As have you,’ said Khoil, leaning to look under Eddie’s seat and finding nothing. ‘Where is the Codex?’

‘Where’s Nina?’

‘In my car.’

‘Then get her in here. You can afford the tickets.’

‘Do you have the Codex?’

‘You’ll get it when I get Nina. That was the deal. Now bring her in.’

Khoil made a brief phone call, then leaned back and watched the action on the pitch. ‘Sport has never been of much interest to me,’ he said, almost conversationally, ‘but my father was a great fan of cricket, so it has a certain nostalgic appeal. But even it’ - he indicated the cheerleaders - ‘has become debased. A sign of these corrupt times.’

‘They can get rid of the cricket and just leave the dancing girls, far as I’m concerned,’ said Eddie, more concerned with whether or not the other man was armed. He couldn’t see the telltale bulge of a gun under his close-fitting clothing, but that didn’t mean he lacked a weapon.

Khoil shook his head patronisingly. ‘Yes, I thought you might think so. You are predictably lowbrow, a symbol of this age.’

‘You don’t know me, mate.’

‘I know you better than you can imagine. Your Qexia search results tell me a lot; I have seen them. So has your wife. She was not pleased.’

Eddie winced inwardly. ‘That settles it. We’re switching back to Google.’

Mac’s voice in his ear struggled to be heard over the noise of the crowd as the batsman scored a four. ‘Eddie, Nina’s here. One man with her, your left.’

He looked. The guy with the filed teeth was escorting her down to the front row. She seemed unharmed, but was dishevelled and anxious. Even when she reached him, the look of relief couldn’t mask her worry. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

‘More or less,’ she replied.

He saw a dressing covering the bottom of her right ear. ‘What happened?’

‘Vanita almost gave me the Van Gogh treatment.’

Eddie rounded on Khoil. ‘You fucking—’

‘Enough,’ Khoil said coldly. ‘I have brought your wife, as agreed. Now, bring me the Codex.’

Eddie bit back an angry remark and was about to signal to Kit when Nina spoke. ‘Eddie, you can’t give it to him. Even for me.’

‘I’d swap the bloody Crown Jewels for you,’ he replied - but he was surprised by the degree of insistence in her voice. She was concerned about much more than her own safety. ‘Why’s it so important he doesn’t get it?’

‘Because he thinks it’ll help him start the Hindu version of the apocalypse.’

Eddie raised his eyebrows. ‘Okay, that’s important. How?’

‘I don’t know. But that’s what he told me, and I don’t see him rushing to issue any denials.’

‘The end of the Kali Yuga is inevitable, Dr Wilde,’ said Khoil. ‘As I explained, it will be better for it to happen sooner rather than later. For the good of all humanity.’

‘You see?’ Nina said scathingly. ‘He’s another nut with too much money and delusions of godhood. Am I a magnet for these people, or something?’

Eddie regarded the Indian dubiously. ‘Can he do anything like that? I mean, the guy owns a search engine, not a nuclear bomb factory. What’s he going to do, put up a link saying “Click here to play global thermonuclear war”?’

Khoil smiled faintly. ‘If you do not believe I pose a threat, then you have no reason not to hand over the Codex.’ His expression hardened. ‘I have brought your wife. Give it to me. Now.’

Eddie cast the briefest of sidelong glances at Tandon to make sure he was within striking distance before responding. ‘You know what? I think I’m going to listen to my wife.’

‘It would be very unwise to go back on our deal.’

‘What’re you going to do about it?’ He indicated the cheering crowd behind them. ‘It’s not like you can just kill us in front of all these people.’

‘All these people,’ said Khoil, a sudden rising smugness turning his plump face almost toad-like, ‘are my people. They work for me.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Eddie. ‘I only told you where to meet an hour and a half ago.’

‘My company is a major sponsor,’ he indicated an advertisement hoarding emblazoned with the Qexia logo, ‘which gives me a certain amount of influence here, and after I received your call I announced a surprise treat for three hundred of my most cricket-loving employees - a trip to today’s exhibition match. Any member of the public who had already paid for one of the seats in this block was told there had been a booking error and given a complimentary upgrade and free entry to another match of their choosing. As you said,’ a small, cold smile, ‘I can afford the tickets.’

Eddie and Nina exchanged worried looks. ‘Mac,’ said Eddie, trying to pick the Scot out through the waving banners as another run was scored, ‘trouble.’

‘Colonel McCrimmon will not be able to help you.’ Eddie whirled on Khoil in shock at his use of the name. ‘Yes, I know who he is - and where he is sitting. He cannot interfere. Qexia provided a list of your friends, and it was a simple matter to cross-check with Indian immigration files - my company wrote the software, so we planted back doors in the code - to see if any of them had recently arrived in the country.’

‘Mac!’ Eddie shouted. Through the earpiece he heard the grunts of a scuffle.

‘Some of my larger employees are making sure he does not leave his seat,’ said Khoil. ‘And as for your friend Mr Jindal from Interpol . . .’

Eddie jumped up and twisted to give Kit the signal to run. Kit stood - and immediately slumped back into his seat as the huge bearded figure of Mahajan, directly behind him, smashed a fist down on his neck like a hammer. A crack as a ball was hit for a four, and the stadium erupted in cheers, drowning out his cry of pain.

Adrenalin surged through Eddie’s body. Two immediate threats: the man in black and the guy with the teeth, who had just grabbed Nina from behind. But they would have no choice but to back down if their boss was in danger.

He whipped out his gun, shoving the Wildey’s long barrel into Khoil’s face—

But Tandon was faster, one hand jabbing with blinding speed. His knuckles hit Eddie on the side of his neck - and the Englishman dropped as if his bones had turned to jelly, collapsing at Khoil’s feet. He tried to move, but all he could do was twitch, nerves blazing where Tandon’s attack had struck a pressure point and induced instant paralysis. The gun clunked to the concrete. He heard Nina scream his name, but couldn’t even turn his head to look.

Khoil’s expression was far from its usual state of bland neutrality, though; it was now one of wide-eyed fright. He staggered back, almost falling over his seat. The spectators behind him hurriedly helped their boss back upright.

‘What’re you doing?’ Nina screamed at them. ‘Help us!’

No one did. ‘Get - get them out of here,’ said Khoil, shakily straightening his glasses. ‘Quickly!’ As Tandon recovered Eddie’s gun, Mahajan arrived, bearing Kit’s bag. Greed replacing shock, Khoil looked at it. ‘Is the Codex inside?’ Mahajan nodded.

‘Excellent.’ He followed Singh and the shrieking and struggling Nina up the steps. Mahajan gave the bag to Tandon, then effortlessly picked up Eddie in a fireman’s lift and strode after them.

The eyes of everyone in the grandstand remained firmly fixed on the game.

Mac had been shoved back down by the two big men in the neighbouring seats when he tried to respond to Eddie’s urgent call. He managed to strike one a painful blow to the chest with his elbow - only for the other to press a sharp knife against his abdomen.

He could do nothing but watch helplessly as Eddie was knocked down, then hoisted like a sack of potatoes. What had happened to Kit, he had no idea - his view of the Interpol officer’s seat was blocked by one of his hulking captors.

‘Bastards!’ he snarled, struggling to break free, only to feel the knife tip pierce his skin. Blood swelled on his shirt.

Khoil, his servants and his prisoners were now all out of sight. He had to get after them - but first he needed to deal with his captors . . .

Another crack from the pitch as a ball was hit clean over the boundary for a six. The crowd’s reaction was even wilder than the previous shot - frenzied roars and cheers filled the stadium as thousands of excited fans leapt to their feet.

Jostling Mac’s attackers.

The knife was knocked away, just for a second—

Mac wrenched himself from their grip. He whipped up his elbow again, smashing it into one man’s nose with an explosive snap of crushed cartilage and a burst of blood.

The knifeman struck at him as he twisted and kicked—

The blade stabbed deep into his left leg below the knee with a dull thud. Expecting a shriek of pain, the knifeman froze in confusion - and took a savage chop of the Scotsman’s hand to his throat. Tongue bulging from his gaping mouth, he let out a strangled shriek of his own as Mac yanked the knife out of the prosthesis and stabbed it down through the Indian’s hand, pinning it to his thigh.

Mac jumped up, punching the broken-nosed man out of the way as he pushed past. People in nearby seats responded in shock at the sudden flurry of violence, but he ignored them, looking for his friends. He spotted Kit slumped in his seat, but Eddie and Nina were gone.

He hurried to Kit, who was groggily stirring, one hand clutching his aching neck. ‘Kit! Are you all right?’

‘Someone hit me from behind,’ Kit gasped. He felt beneath his seat - and realised the case was gone. ‘What happened?’ he demanded, rounding on the man next to him. ‘I had a bag - where is it?’

‘I saw nothing, I was watching the game,’ the man mumbled, avoiding his gaze.

‘What? How could you not—’

‘They’re all Khoil’s people,’ said Mac. ‘He told Eddie he bought three hundred tickets for his employees. Two of the larger ones were sitting beside me.’

‘What happened to them?’

‘They’re still there. I doubt they’ll be getting up for some time.’

Kit saw that Eddie’s seat, and those around it, were empty. ‘Eddie and Nina! Where are they?’

Mac’s face was grim. ‘He’s got them - and I don’t know if Eddie was alive or dead. Where would he be taking them?’

Kit shakily got to his feet. ‘He’s got an estate to the east of the city.’

‘Then we’ve got to follow them. Come on.’

‘And do what? I told you I wouldn’t be able to get much support from the local police without proof, and none of these fools will testify against Khoil.’ He waved an angry hand at the crowd. ‘And the Khoils have a lot of security. Armed security.’

‘We’ll worry about that when we get there.’ Mac started up the steps, limping on his artificial leg where it had been loosened during the struggle. Cricking his neck, Kit followed.

By the time Eddie could move again, he and Nina were on their way to Khoil’s estate. They were in the back of a Range Rover, Mahajan driving and Tandon covering them with Eddie’s own gun. Khoil was in an identical 4x4 ahead, chauffeured by Singh. Nina helped her husband sit upright. ‘Are you okay?’

‘No, I feel fucking terrible.’ He squinted at Tandon. ‘What the hell did you do to me?’

‘I hit one of your snayu marma pressure points, paralysing the nerves,’ said Tandon. ‘I could have killed you, but Mr Khoil wants to do that somewhere more private.’

‘So we’ve got something to look forward to, eh?’ He eyed the gun, wondering if he could move fast enough to grab it.

Tandon smiled thinly and drew the Wildey back a little, knowing what he was thinking. ‘I wouldn’t try it. It will take about twenty minutes before you’re fully recovered. And by then we’ll be at the palace.’

From the painful stiffness in his muscles, Eddie realised he was right. He slumped back, leaning against Nina for support. ‘Palace? Your boss thinks he’s a king, does he?’

‘I think it’s more like Vanita fancies herself as a queen,’ said Nina.

The gun jabbed towards her. ‘Do not speak against the Khoils,’ Tandon said, scowling. ‘They are great people.’

‘Oh, yeah, they’re lovely from what I’ve seen of ’em,’ said Eddie.

The little convoy eventually turned off the road, passing through a guarded gate in a high wall. Beyond, a lengthy drive ran parallel to the runway. The two Range Rovers stopped at the far end. The Khoils’ private jet was still parked on the tarmac; Nina saw that the odd little aircraft she had seen earlier was being loaded, wings folded, into a shipping container, a forklift standing by to lift it on to a truck.

Vanita Khoil waited for them, accompanied by a pair of armed guards. She glared at Nina and Eddie as they were taken from the second 4x4, before rounding on her husband. ‘Do you have the Codex?’

‘Yes, I do,’ he replied, signalling to another man nearby. ‘Take the Codex to the infotarium. I want the impression of the key scanned and fed into the prototyper immediately.’ Singh gave the man the bag, and he boarded a golf cart and drove away towards the palace.

‘Then why are they still alive?’ Vanita demanded impatiently.

‘I could hardly kill them in full view of the crowd. Even my employees might have found that too much to keep to themselves. Besides, I had a better idea.’ He whispered to her; Vanita’s face lit up with a malevolent smile.

‘That may be the best idea of your life,’ she purred, clicking her fingers. Mahajan shoved Nina and Eddie forward, Tandon keeping them covered with the Wildey. ‘I’d like you to invite you to dinner.’ She looked to the nearby tiger compound, smile widening. ‘With three very special friends of mine . . .’

18

Kit stopped the car on the roadside verge. ‘That’s it.’

Mac looked through his binoculars at the security barrier a hundred yards down the road. ‘Two men outside, another one in the hut. All armed.’ He lowered the binoculars. ‘I thought India had strict gun-control laws?’

‘It does. But it’s possible to get a licence under special circumstances - such as protecting one of the country’s most prominent businessmen.’

‘And I imagine said businessman’s money helped him get it.’ He surveyed the long wall surrounding Khoil’s property. ‘How big is this place?’

‘Over three square kilometres. They have their own airstrip - even a wildlife preserve. Their own little private world.’

‘Too private. They can do anything they want to Eddie and Nina, and nobody would know.’ Mac turned his attention back to the gate. ‘Could you use your police credentials to get us in?’

Kit shook his head. ‘They’d demand a warrant, and getting one will be very difficult, especially at short notice. The local magistrates are like the local police - it would take a great deal of persuasion for any of them to risk their careers by acting against people as powerful as the Khoils.’

‘So what can we do? We have to get them out of there.’

‘Unless we can find a way in without being seen, which I don’t think we could until dark, there’s nothing we can do unless they get some kind of signal to us. Then I could claim probable cause for entry and demand police backup, but without something definite . . .’

‘Sod it!’ Mac banged a fist down on his thigh in frustration. There was nothing he could do to help his friends.

At gunpoint, Nina and Eddie were marched through an underground passage to one of the observation bunkers. ‘Who the hell owns tigers?’ Eddie said in disbelief after Nina explained the sanctuary’s purpose. ‘I thought they were computer nerds, not the Indian Siegfried and fucking Roy!’

‘Did the SAS teach you anything about dealing with wild animals?’ Nina asked hopefully.

‘Yeah - stay away from them!’

‘I was hoping for something more specific. And speaking of staying away, why the hell did you come to India? I told you not to give them the Codex!’

Eddie shook his head in disbelief. ‘You’re still going on about that? I know you’re bloody mad for old junk, but you can’t seriously think that I’d put some book above your life!’

‘It’s not just “some book”, Eddie,’ said Nina, exasperated despite the danger. ‘It’s a vital part of whatever the Khoils are planning. They want to start a war, some kind of global catastrophe, I don’t know what - but before they can, they need the Codex so they can find the Vault of Shiva and take the Shiva-Vedas. ’

‘What do they need them for? If they’ve got the power to start a war, then I don’t see how some ten-thousand-year-old stone tablet’s going to make a difference.’

‘It’s eleven thousand years, at least—’

‘Yeah, because getting the dates right is really important right now.’

‘And,’ she went on, irritated by his sarcasm, ‘Pramesh thinks that without them, the plan won’t work. He’s trying to bring the world into the next stage of the Hindu cycle of existence, or some warped version of it, at least - but if he doesn’t have the Vedas, Shiva’s own pure teachings, he’s convinced that everything will fall back into chaos and corruption.’

‘So,’ Eddie said as they approached the end of the passage, ‘the Khoils want to start World War Three . . . for the good of humanity?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Christ.’ He shook his head again. ‘We know how to pick ’em, don’t we?’

They entered the bunker, one of the guards pointing at the elevator platform. Eddie quickly surveyed the surroundings as they stepped on to it. The bunker was octagonal, with a rectangular extension opposite the entrance to accommodate the elevator. Raised metal walkways led up to the windows, which looked out slightly above ground level. A desk was home to a computer and a telephone, a map of the tiger sanctuary and its tunnels on the wall beside it. He took in as much information from the map as he could before a guard operated a control, and the platform rose with a hydraulic whine.

They emerged into sunlight, surrounded by a cage. Nina recognised the clearing where she had watched a tiger be tranquillised a few days earlier. ‘There are cameras all over the place,’ she warned, pointing out a stout metal pole nearby. A black sphere at its top turned to observe their arrival. ‘They’re watching us.’

‘Indeed we are, Dr Wilde,’ said a voice, startling them. Khoil. But not in person; his tone was tinny, coming through a small loudspeaker on the triangular aerial drone. It descended into the clearing, camera pointed at them.

‘I wouldn’t miss this for the world,’ Vanita added.

Khoil spoke again. ‘You may have noticed a new addition to my vimana.’

‘Yeah, I see it,’ said Nina. Where the dart gun had been before, a larger and more deadly weapon was now mounted beneath the compact aircraft’s body: Eddie’s Wildey. She glowered at her husband. ‘You would have to buy another of those stupid things . . .’

‘As you saw with the dart gun, I am a good shot. But Vanita only wants me to use the gun as a last resort. Her tigers prefer live prey.’ The cage lowered into the ground, leaving them standing in the open. The drone pivoted as if gesturing into the surrounding trees. ‘The nearest tiger is forty metres in that direction. Move towards it.’ The gun swung back.

They reluctantly stepped off the platform. ‘What do we do?’ Nina whispered, looking round fearfully.

‘First thing, don’t get eaten,’ Eddie replied, trying to mask his own worry. Without a weapon, they had almost no chance of surviving a tiger attack. ‘Second, bring down that drone and get my gun. Did he say it had a dart gun on it before?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then he’s in for a fucking surprise if he fires it. Okay, stay close and follow my lead.’ They entered the trees, the drone descending under the overhanging branches to follow them.

Eddie peered into the vegetation. Forty metres; about a hundred and thirty feet. If the predator was hunting, they wouldn’t see it until it was almost upon them. With a light breeze blowing through the foliage, the visual confusion of the undergrowth and the dappled sunlight cutting into the shadows made it almost impossible to pick out movement.

He looked back at the drone. It was about ten feet behind, slightly above head height. He needed something heavy enough to knock it off balance . . .

A chunk of broken branch on the ground, mouldering amongst the decomposing leaves. He pretended to stumble, scooping it up as he caught his fall. ‘Stop,’ he whispered. ‘Get ready to run.’

‘Which way?’

‘Any way that isn’t at the tiger!’ Eddie half turned towards the drone, concealing the hunk of wood behind his body. Nina looked nervously into the trees for any telltale flashes of orange.

The drone came to a hover, eight feet away. ‘Keep moving,’ ordered Khoil.

‘Think I’d rather stay here,’ said Eddie. ‘Anyway, how do you even know where the tigers are?’

‘The tigers are all tagged with a GPS—’

Eddie suddenly hurled the piece of wood at the drone, knocking the little aircraft back. ‘Run!’

He grabbed Nina’s hand, and they turned and charged through the undergrowth, swatting low branches aside. The drone recovered and almost angrily spun to follow. The firing mechanism attached to the gun’s trigger pulled back—

The Wildey fired with a colossal boom, the bullet narrowly missing Nina to blast a fist-sized chunk of bark out of a tree - but the effect of the gun’s recoil on the drone itself was nearly as damaging. It was thrown backwards, spinning wildly into another tree trunk. If its rotor blades had not been shrouded inside impact-resistant plastic its flight would have ended there; as it was, it bounced off and wobbled drunkenly back into a hover.

‘If you’re talking, you’re not reacting,’ Eddie said by way of terse explanation as he and Nina crashed through the bushes. Any animals nearby would certainly be able to hear them, but he hoped the tiger had reacted like the birds that had burst in fright from the trees and fled from the sound of the shot.

‘Where are we going?’ Nina panted.

‘Outer wall - I saw where we were on that map. There might be a way out.’

They emerged from the trees. Ahead was a twenty-foot grey concrete wall: the preserve’s boundary. About sixty feet distant Nina saw a ladder attached to the wall - but its lower section had been raised like that of a fire escape, the lowest rung almost twelve feet up. ‘Eddie, over there.’

‘If I give you a leg up, you can pull it down—’

A rifle cracked above them, the bullet kicking up a small explosion of earth at their feet. Two men with guns ran along the top of the wall, a third aiming another shot. Nina and Eddie bolted as a second round slammed into the dirt.

More gunfire spat from the wall as they ran. ‘Back into the trees!’ Eddie yelled.

‘That’s where the tiger is,’ Nina protested.

‘Tigers don’t have guns!’ He vaulted a fallen log back into the shadows, Nina just behind. The firing stopped. Eddie slowed, getting his bearings - and hunting for any nearby movement. The immediate area seemed tiger-free. ‘Okay, so the wall’s out - we need to get to another one of those bunkers. Next one was, er . . . this way.’

He pointed in what seemed to Nina to be a completely random direction. ‘You sure?’

‘Sure-ish.’ He set off. Nina looked round nervously in case anything striped and clawed was watching from the bushes, then scurried after him.

‘What do we do when we get to the bunker?’ she asked in a near-whisper. ‘We can’t lower the elevator from outside.’

‘If we nobble that drone and get my gun back, I can shoot out a window. There was a phone in that first bunker - if the others’re the same, we can call Mac or Kit. We just have to steer clear of Hobbes and his mates.’

A faint whine caught Nina’s attention. She looked up into the trees, but saw nothing. It had to be close, though; Khoil had boasted that the drone’s rotors were inaudible past six metres. ‘I can hear the plane.’

Eddie stopped. ‘Where?’

‘Up there somewhere.’ She pointed.

‘I can’t hear it.’ He stared intently into the foliage, seeing nothing.

The noise grew louder. ‘It’s definitely there,’ Nina hissed. ‘There, there!’

‘Wait, I hear it—’ Eddie began, only to stop as the drone dropped down through a gap in the branches and hovered ten feet away. It turned slightly, pointing the gun at him . . .

But it didn’t fire.

‘What’s it waiting for?’ he wondered out loud.

Nina tugged frantically at his arm. He turned his head - and saw a bush, no more than fifteen feet away, lazily lean over with a faint crackle of bending branches as something pressed against it.

Something large.

‘Uh . . . tiger,’ Nina whispered. ‘There’s a goddamn tiger behind that bush!’

Eddie was already looking elsewhere. ‘That tree,’ he said, nudging her. Off to one side was a broad saman tree, its thick trunk forking a few feet above the ground, providing a step. ‘Move towards it, slowly.’

He put himself between Nina and the predator, then they sidled towards the tree. The bush became still. ‘I can see it,’ Nina whispered, voice tremulous. A shape had taken on form amongst the slashes of sunlight and shadow, crouching low behind the bent branches. Black lines over white and orange converged around a pair of intense yellow eyes, watching them unblinkingly. She remembered that tigers were lone hunters, silent stalkers that observed their prey carefully before springing into a sudden, deadly strike . . . as this one was doing. Fear squeezed at her chest. ‘Oh, shit, Eddie, I can see it.’

‘Me too.’ Only more five feet to the tree - but the tiger could cover the gap in a single leap. It slowly raised its head, then lowered it almost down to the ground. Judging the distance.

Preparing its attack.

‘Go behind the tree so it can’t get straight to you,’ he told her. ‘Then start climbing.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll be up there like a fucking rocket, don’t you worry!’ They reached the saman. Nina ducked below a branch and circled it. ‘Okay, get ready . . .’

The tiger slowly drew back on its powerful legs, ready to leap. It clearly knew that its prey had seen it . . . and was utterly unconcerned, thinking they posed no threat - and had no chance of escape.

‘Climb!’ Eddie hissed.

Nina pulled herself up, kicking off the forked trunk as she scrambled higher. Eyes fixed on the tiger, Eddie grabbed the overhanging branch and started to climb.

The animal drew back its lips to reveal a pair of three-inch-long fangs. It pounced—

And skidded to a stop, its head snapping round. The drone had moved closer for a better view - and the tiger heard the whine of its engines. A sound associated with pain, capture. It reared back and roared. The drone hurriedly retreated, but by then Eddie and Nina were both over ten feet up the tree and desperately climbing higher.

Eddie saw the tiger glare at them. ‘Can tigers climb trees?’

The answer came a moment later as it jumped on to the fork and scrabbled after Nina, claws ripping into the bark.

‘Fuck off, Tigger!’ Eddie yelled, kicking at it. He hurriedly pulled back his leg as the tiger swatted at him, slashing a chunk from his boot’s sole. It growled and clambered across to the other side of the fork after him.

The bough Nina was climbing shook as the animal jumped off it. A smaller branch she was using as a handhold snapped; she swung, clutching at the broken stub with a stifled shriek. Half hanging off the swaying limb as it bent under her weight, she saw the branch of another tree not far away. She moved further along the bough, reaching out. ‘Eddie! Over here! The tiger’ll be too heavy to get across!’

‘So will I!’ Eddie shouted back. He weighed almost seventy pounds more than her, and if the tiger followed him the branch would break under the combined strain.

‘You’ve got to, it’s gonna catch you!’ She edged closer to the new branch. The drone moved in like an eager voyeur.

Eddie looked down. Nina was right - the tiger was making frighteningly fast progress, claws ripping into the trunk just behind him. He clamped both hands round a branch above and pulled himself up as the tiger swiped again, barely missing his feet. Dangling, he swung along the bough like a monkey - then let go.

Nina got a firm hold on the other tree and hauled herself across just as the branch she had left thrashed violently, Eddie landing on it in an explosion of loose leaves. The drone was caught in the swirling cloud of green and brown, its soft whine abruptly becoming a harsh buzz as leaves were sucked into its rotors and hacked to shreds. The aircraft lurched, briefly losing lift before recovering.

The sight gave Nina an idea, but she was in no position to act upon it. Instead she kept moving along her branch. Behind her, Eddie clung sloth-like to the other branch’s underside.

The tiger shifted position, preparing to jump at him.

‘Come on!’ Nina shouted as she reached the trunk. Eddie pulled himself along, stripping more leaves where his thighs were wrapped round the branch.

The tiger leapt—

Eddie opened his legs, swung down - and used the momentum to throw himself at the other tree, grabbing Nina’s branch with one hand.

The tiger landed on the spot where he had been, the bough thrashing again - this time with a sharp crack of wood as it partially split away from the trunk. Suddenly fearful, the animal gripped the branch tightly as it tipped downwards, ending up swaying almost fifteen feet above the ground.

Eddie dropped to a lower fork as Nina descended. The tiger was trying to crawl backwards along the branch, afraid of the fall, but its sheer size restricted its movements. ‘It’s stuck!’ he cried, jumping down to the ground. ‘Leg it!’

Nina landed beside him - and pulled him behind the tree as the drone fired a second shot. It was thrown backwards by the recoil, but this time Khoil was prepared, and recovered more quickly.

By then, Nina and Eddie were running again. The ground became wet, their feet kicking up splashes as they skirted a marshy area near the central lake. ‘That way to the bunker,’ said Eddie, pointing.

Nina looked back. The tiger was not pursuing them, either still stuck in the tree or frightened away by the gunshot - but the drone was swooping after them like a tiny jet fighter. ‘How many shots in your gun?’

‘Five left.’

Perhaps there was something to be said for the Wildey after all; a normal gun would have had more ammo and less recoil. ‘I’ve got an idea how to bring down the drone, but we’ll have to split up.’

‘That’s about the worst thing we could do.’

‘If we don’t, we’ll get shot!’ The Wildey boomed again, the Magnum bullet blasting a hole right through the trunk of a small tree just ahead of Eddie, splinters making him flinch. ‘Split up!’ Nina shouted.

‘I’m not leaving you on your own!’

‘I won’t be far - just get it to follow you under a low branch!’ Eddie realised what her plan was. She peeled away; he kept going, looking back at the drone to make sure it was still following him. Fronds whipped at his face as he jumped through a clump of bushes.

The drone rose to clear them. Another thunderous gunshot seared past his head and slammed into the soggy ground. He had lost sight of Nina, but could hear her crunching through the undergrowth on a parallel course.

Another large saman tree bowed down ahead, branches drooping. ‘Nina!’ he shouted, hoping she would take it as a signal. The drone was still coming, a carbon fibre wasp with a lethal sting. Three lethal stings, only four of the seven bullets fired. It descended to clear the outermost foliage, fixing Eddie in its sights—

Nina leapt up and grabbed the overhanging branch, pulling it down on to the machine.

This time, more than mere leaves were sucked into the rotors. Branches crunched into the ducts, the whirling blades slashing against them - and jamming.

The drone spun out of control as one of its three rotor pods failed entirely with a horrible chainsaw rasp. The Wildey fired again, but the bullet flew harmlessly into the surrounding vegetation. Nina released the branch and dived at the gyrating aircraft, slamming it to the ground. She pulled the firing lever out from the Wildey’s trigger guard a moment before it clicked.

Eddie ran to her and lifted the drone to release his gun, then looked into the camera. ‘See you soon,’ he promised the observers with a menacing smile, before cracking the Wildey’s butt against the lens.

‘How many bullets are left?’ Nina asked.

He checked. ‘Two.’

‘Will that be enough?’

‘If it’s not, we’ll be tiger crap by tomorrow. Now, where’s that bunker?’ They set off at a jog, and soon re-emerged into sunlight, finding the lake to their left. Tall reeds rose from the water, giving them some concealment. ‘Okay, this way,’ said Eddie, leading her along the bank. He hopped over a mudhole. ‘Watch out for that.’

‘Watch out for that!’ Nina said in alarm. Eddie spun, seeing another tiger emerge from the lake and splash through the reeds towards them. He aimed the Wildey at it - then lowered the barrel slightly and fired. The combination of the gunshot and the explosion of mud and spray in front of the animal’s face prompted it to turn tail into the trees.

‘You didn’t shoot it?’ said Nina, surprised.

‘Enough people want us dead already without adding the World Wildlife Fund to the list,’ he said, keeping the gun raised until he was sure the animal had gone. Nina jumped the hole, and they continued along the bank. ‘Should be off to the right somewhere.’

‘Yeah - there’s a path.’ Nina bent low under a branch and followed the faint trail through the trees before holding up a hand. ‘I can see the bunker - and a camera pole.’ There was no way to reach the low concrete structure without being spotted.

‘We’ll have to move fast,’ Eddie said, hefting the Wildey. ‘You ready?’

She looked back to make sure the tiger was not returning, then nodded. ‘Let’s do it.’

They ran into the clearing. The camera turned to face them. ‘They’ve seen us!’ Nina cried.

Eddie went to the window beside the raised elevator platform and fired his last bullet at point-blank range. The window was toughened, but it couldn’t withstand the power of a Magnum round, shattering into a million crystalline fragments. He looked through. Nobody was in the bunker. Like the first one, it had a computer station at a desk - and a phone.

The opening was too small for him to fit through. He helped Nina slide inside; a chunk of glass still caught in the frame ripped the hip of her trousers, leaving a smudge of blood on the broken window. She grimaced, but wriggled through and hurried to the elevator controls. The metal platform descended into the ground.

Eddie hopped off it. ‘What’s that noise?’ he said, looking along the underground passage. An odd echoing sound reached him.

‘Goats,’ Nina told him. ‘They must keep the tiger chow down here. Someone ought to tell the Humane Society.’

He went to the phone. ‘Okay, let’s see,’ he said, starting to enter Mac’s number. ‘Just hope—’ A tone warbled in his ear. ‘For fuck’s sake!’ he snapped, banging down the receiver. ‘It’s an internal system.’

‘Get an outside line,’ Nina hurriedly suggested. ‘Nine, push nine!’

He tried again, but with no better result. If the phone was connected to the outside world, there was no indication of how to reach it. ‘Bollocks! We’ll just have to make a run for it.’ He glanced at the cut on her hip. ‘You okay?’

‘It just stings. I’ll be fine.’ They ran down the passage. Behind them, a shadow passed over the broken window, something sniffing at the smeared blood.

The third tiger. The male, largest and deadliest of the three.

Nina and Eddie rounded a bend in the passageway to find a pen behind a gated metal fence. A dozen miserable-looking goats reacted in alarm to the new arrivals. Eddie was about to run past when Nina pulled him back. ‘Someone’s coming!’ The ringing clamour of running footsteps echoed down the concrete tunnel.

The only place they could retreat was back into the tiger preserve. Instead, Eddie turned to the pen - and bashed open the gate’s bolt with his Wildey, waving his arms wildly. The goats panicked, leaping and bumping against each other before making a break for freedom. He held out his arms to force the animals towards the approaching footsteps. One got past him, but the others swerved away and charged down the corridor.

‘Now what?’ Nina asked.

‘Go with ’em!’ Eddie ran after the fleeing herd. Nina was about to follow when the lone goat tore back past her, little hooves clicking on the concrete floor. She jumped out of its way, then started in pursuit.

Eddie kept pace with the frightened animals, urging them onward faster and faster down the narrow tunnel. Another bend ahead, the footsteps louder—

Two of the Khoils’ security guards rounded the corner - and were knocked down by the stampede. One man took a pair of sharp horns to the stomach, screaming as blood jetted out. The other threw up his hands to protect his face as other goats scrabbled over him.

Eddie kicked the wounded - but still armed - guard in the head, silencing his screams. But the other man also still had his weapon, sitting up and spotting Nina in front of him. He raised his gun—

The Wildey cracked against his temple. He collapsed.

Eddie shoved the empty Wildey into his jacket, then collected the two men’s guns, Heckler and Koch USPs. ‘Nina, take this,’ he said, holding out the first guard’s weapon.

She accepted the USP, checking the passage ahead. The goats had disappeared round another corner. ‘Looks clear.’

‘There’s bound to be more of ’em, so stay behind me.’

They cautiously moved down the corridor. A shadow looked from beyond another corner - Eddie raised his gun and peered round.

The shadow was only a goat, standing in another bleak concrete chamber at an intersection, a storage area with crates and sacks of animal feed stacked high in recesses to each side. Other goats milled about, unwilling to go any further.

Beyond them was an open metal door - and a flight of stairs leading up. It was where Eddie and Nina had been brought into the tiger preserve, the passage to the first bunker off to one side.

Waving Nina back, he rounded the corner, gun aimed at the stairs. Some of the goats backed away from him - then stopped, unwilling to go further.

Was someone hiding in the doorway? Was that what was scaring them?’

Eddie moved past the stacks of supplies, quickly checking that nobody was lurking behind them before crouching for a better view up the stairs. No one in sight. ‘I think it’s clear.’

Nina warily rounded the corner - then froze at a faint squeak of wood from the farthest stack of crates. ‘Eddie!’

He looked round - but at her, not the sound. ‘What?’

Singh leapt from atop the crates and slammed him to the ground.

The goats scattered, one of them almost knocking Nina over as it barrelled past. By the time she recovered and brought up her gun, Eddie and Singh were grappling on the floor, too intertwined for her to shoot without risking hitting her husband.

The Dalit was on top of Eddie, hand clenched round his gun arm. Eddie twisted his wrist and fired. The USP’s muzzle flame scorched the back of Singh’s neck, but the bullet missed him, cracking off the wall. Singh yelled, then lunged with rage-driven strength - and bit Eddie’s forearm.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Eddie roared as the sharpened teeth sank into his flesh. The pain was so intense that he couldn’t keep hold of the gun. It clanked across the floor. Singh grabbed for it, but couldn’t reach without releasing his animalistic hold on Eddie’s arm. He opened his mouth, blood running down his chin as he groped for the USP once more.

Nina kicked it away just before his fingers closed on the butt. She jumped back as the clawing hand snatched at her legs. ‘Eddie, what do I do?’

‘Fucking shoot him!’

‘I’ll hit you!’

Eddie struggled, managing to land a punch against Singh’s side. In response, the wiry maniac jerked up a knee at his groin. Eddie did his best to twist away, but was still caught a painful enough blow to make him flinch involuntarily - giving Singh an opening. He drove his fist and forearm down into a hammer blow on Eddie’s face, cracking his skull against the unyielding concrete floor.

Eddie’s vision jarred, unnatural colours silently exploding over Singh’s face as the blood-dripping grin widened and dropped towards his throat. He willed Nina to jam her gun against the other man’s head and pull the trigger - but she was no longer there.

He felt Singh’s breath on his neck, the razor teeth about to tear into his throat.

19

Singh suddenly felt breath on his neck.

He looked round - and the tiger that had followed the scent of blood and the bleating of frightened animals into the bunker ripped its mighty fangs deep into the throat of its unsuspecting prey before he could even scream. The huge predator dragged the flailing Indian across the floor, slashing at his abdomen with its claws.

Nina had run backwards in pure reflexive fear when she saw the tiger. Heart slamming like a pneumatic drill, she pulled the bloodied Eddie away from the carnage. ‘Come on, we gotta move.’

‘You’re not kidding!’ he said, seeing the tiger tear out Singh’s throat. The fearful symmetry of its face was marred by a gush of bright red blood. ‘Where’s my gun?’

‘Here.’ She retrieved his USP.

He was about to fire it to scare away the tiger when someone shouted in Hindi from the stairs. ‘Cover your ears,’ he said, pulling Nina away from the exit, past the tiger and its quivering meal. The yellow eyes stared coldly at them with the promise that they would be next, but it didn’t move to attack.

Nina put her hands to her head as Eddie raised the gun. He aimed - not at the tiger, but the floor behind it. The first booming gunshot sent stinging chips of concrete at its rear legs. It dropped Singh’s body, whirling to face them with a snarl of fury.

Eddie fired again, and again, each shot blasting little craters out of the floor at the tiger’s feet. Overcome by the noise and the painful insect-bites of shrapnel, it turned and fled.

Up the stairs.

The shouts above quickly turned to screams. ‘Okay, sounds like they’re busy,’ said Eddie. ‘If anyone gets between you and the door, shoot ’em!’

They hurried up the stairs. Someone fired a shot, only for a voice as enraged as the tiger to yell at them: Vanita. More screams, then a loud crash followed.

Eddie reached the top to see that the tiger had pounced on one of the guards, knocking over a table. Other people were fleeing out of the main doors and up the stairs to the observation level. A guard cowering behind a workbench saw him and whipped up his gun, but a single shot from the USP sent him tumbling with a bloody hole in his forehead.

Nina spotted Vanita halfway up the stairs, screeching orders for someone to get a tranquilliser gun. Her husband was higher up, watching the chaos with an unbelieving expression - which changed to fear as he saw Nina point her gun towards him. She didn’t know if she could have pulled the trigger, but the threat was enough; he turned and ran out of sight to the upper floor.

‘Nina!’ Eddie pointed to the doors. ‘Go!’ He took down another armed guard before they both burst out into the open, blinking in the bright sunlight. ‘Where now?’

‘We can drive out of here,’ said Nina. She ran to a nearby golf cart.

‘In that?’

‘There’s a garage under the palace - we can get something faster.’ She climbed into the driving seat, Eddie jumping aboard behind her and pointing his gun back at the doors, although another scream from the building suggested that the tiger was still everyone’s biggest concern.

Nina stamped the accelerator to the floor. The golf cart lurched away, electric motors whining as it powered up to its top speed of twenty miles an hour. ‘It’s not exactly a Ferrari, is it?’ Eddie complained.

‘It’s better than running. Just.’ She guided the cart down the road to the palace. Even at its less-than-scorching pace, it still covered the distance in just over a minute. The ramp to the garage was off to one side - but she swerved away from it, heading for one of the doors into the huge house itself.

‘Where are we going?’ Eddie demanded.

‘The Codex - we need to find it.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’

‘I know where it is,’ she insisted, stopping and jumping from the cart. With a noise of frustration, Eddie ran ahead, kicking open the door and darting through with his gun raised.

The hallway was clear. They hurried inside. ‘Where’re we going?’

‘The infotarium.’

‘The what?’

‘Khoil’s name, not mine.’ They reached the high-tech room, where Nina held back again as Eddie burst in, confirming that nobody was inside before nodding for her to enter.

The lights were low, the sphere of screens displaying stylised clouds. Nina ran to the desk where her hand had been scanned, seeing the Codex in its open case. She slammed it shut and picked it up. ‘Okay, got it.’

She turned to leave, but Eddie’s attention was caught by another piece of equipment beside the laser scanner. A rapid prototyper . . . with something in the tank. He snatched it out, finding that unlike the silicone liquid he had used in New York, the medium this time was extremely fine grains of plastic. ‘This looks familiar.’

Nina grabbed it from him. ‘It’s from the Codex’s cover - the key! He’s made a copy of the key!’ One side of the thick and surprisingly heavy circular object bore the faces of the five Hindu goddesses, their husband Shiva at the centre. She opened the Codex case and shoved it in, slotting it into the impression in the orichalcum cover before snapping the case shut again. ‘We’ve got to delete the pattern so he can’t make another—’

‘No, we don’t,’ Eddie countered at the sound of pounding feet outside. ‘What we do need is to get out of here before we get killed!’

The footsteps came closer. Eddie brought up his pistol—

A man bearing an MP5 sub-machine gun rushed into the room - and took two shots to his chest. Eddie ran to him, shoving the USP into a pocket and picking up the MP5, then glanced at the display cabinet containing Khoil’s first computer. ‘A Spectrum, eh?’ He smashed the glass with the gun’s stock, making Nina jump, then did the same to the little computer inside it.

‘What was that for?’ she gasped, startled by the petty vandalism.

He grinned. ‘I was a Commodore 64 kid. Now where’s this garage?’

They ran from the infotarium, Nina directing them to the elevator. Another guard charged round a corner ahead - and took a burst from the MP5 across his chest. Shouts echoed behind them; more people were coming.

A short side passage led to the elevator. Nina pushed the call button, but Eddie booted open the door beside it and waved for her to go down the stairs. She took them two at a time, the heavy case banging against her legs, and emerged in the basement.

Eddie arrived a second later, eyes widening in admiration as he took in the gleaming cars. ‘Wow. This lot’s nearly as good as Kari Frost’s collection.’

Nina was in no mood for comparisons between maniacal billionaires past and present. ‘All I care about is: does he have anything fast?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ He indicated a two-tone slate and charcoal-grey hunk of sculpted, purposeful curves - the Bugatti Veyron. ‘Fastest production car ever built. Well, except for one by some little American company—’

‘We don’t need the Guinness World Records, just start it!’

A glass-fronted cabinet near the elevator contained numerous keys, each with the fob displaying the manufacturer’s logo. Eddie searched for the distinctive ‘EB’ of Bugatti, then smashed the glass with the MP5 and snatched out the keys. He tossed them to Nina. ‘Your turn to drive.’

‘Me? But—’

‘Unless you want to shoot.’

‘I’ll drive,’ said Nina quickly, running to the Veyron. She threw the gun and case inside and lowered herself into the low-slung, luxurious interior as Eddie rounded the supercar, the MP5 raised.

A chime as the elevator arrived—

Eddie fired before the doors had even fully opened, a guard thrashing backwards into the confined cabin. He glimpsed Tandon and released another burst, but the Indian squeezed himself flat against the side wall. For a moment Eddie considered running across to finish him off, but then the Veyron started with a growl from its massive sixteen-cylinder engine. He swung into the car. ‘Go!’

Smoke belched from the screaming tyres as Nina pressed the accelerator. ‘What the hell’s with this gearstick?’ she cried, trying unsuccessfully to shift into second gear.

‘It’s a sequential - push it forward to change up!’ Eddie leaned out of the door, seeing Tandon running for cover behind the McLaren. He fired another burst - just as Nina figured out the gears and upshifted. The car leapt forward, throwing off his aim. The McLaren’s windscreen shattered as Tandon dived behind it. Eddie cursed and pulled himself inside the Veyron, lowering his window as the supercar shot towards the ramp.

Nina kept accelerating, the engine note thunderous in the underground space. There was a horrible crunch as the Bugatti’s front air dam scraped the foot of the ramp, then they powered towards the square of daylight ahead—

One of the Range Rovers skidded to a halt at the entrance, broadside on to block their escape.

Nina fought her instinct to brake, instead jamming the accelerator all the way down and bracing herself . . .

The Veyron reached the top of the ramp - and went airborne. It smashed into the Range Rover at window height, slicing off the 4x4’s roof in an explosion of glass. The driver ducked just quickly enough to avoid decapitation, the supercar’s underside clearing his head by an inch as it arced over him and smashed back down to earth.

Airbags fired, punching Eddie and Nina back into their seats. Dazed, Nina tried to straighten out, and found that the Bugatti wouldn’t be breaking any more speed records: the suspension was wrecked, one of the rear wheels loose and bashing against the bodywork. Despite the damage, she still managed to wrestle the car towards the gate.

Eddie sat up, raising his gun - and seeing a potential target. Mahajan and another man were driving a golf cart towards the palace, the Khoils on the rear seats. He fired at them. Khoil and Vanita flung themselves out of the cart as bullets caught the guard and sent him flailing to the ground. Mahajan ducked and swerved the little vehicle to put it between the gunman and his employers.

Nina headed for the long drive - only to see a second Range Rover brake to block it. With its low ground clearance and damaged suspension, the Veyron had no chance of negotiating the grass verges to get round it. She instead made a hard turn, bringing the supercar on to the runway.

Eddie glanced back at the golf cart. Vanita had snatched up the fallen guard’s MP5 and was pointing it at the Veyron. ‘Down!’ he shouted as she opened fire. Bullets puckered the Bugatti’s bodywork, but none reached the cabin; the Veyron’s engine was mounted behind the seats, the huge block taking the clanging impacts. There was a loud hiss and a gush of steam as one of the radiators was punctured, adding to the wounded car’s woes.

Nina skidded past the parked jet and the now-closed container holding the smaller aircraft, aiming along the length of the runway and slamming up through the gears. The Veyron had all-wheel drive; even with one of them crunching against the wheelarch the response was still frightening. In the mirror, the golf cart was suddenly reduced to a dot as the car blasted through the sixty mile per hour mark in barely four seconds, thundering on towards a hundred. ‘Jesus!’ she yelped.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Eddie, pushing himself upright. ‘I’m jealous that you’re driving now!’

She was not as thrilled with the experience. The collapsed suspension was making the steering wheel judder like a jackhammer, even holding the car in a straight line becoming harder with each passing moment. Dashboard warning lights started flashing - the radiator was not all that had been damaged. The speedometer passed one hundred . . . then dropped back down. ‘I think this thing’ll need more than an oil change at its next service,’ she warned.

Eddie looked back. The steam had been replaced by greasy smoke, swirling in the Veyron’s slipstream. The second Range Rover was now in pursuit.

Ahead, even with the Veyron slowing, they were rapidly running out of runway. Beyond the poles of the landing lights at its far end, Nina could see the estate’s boundary wall. She brought the car into a sweeping, shuddering turn on to an access lane leading to the main drive. Only a short distance to the main gate, and freedom - if they could get through it.

If they could get to it. The engine rasped alarmingly, the stench of burning oil filling the cabin. Even with her foot to the floor, their speed was still falling. Sixty miles an hour, fifty. Nina straightened out as they reached the road, seeing the gate ahead. Guards ran to block their path.

Armed guards.

‘Go through them!’ Eddie shouted. ‘Crash the gate!’

‘There’s no power!’ Nina protested. Forty miles an hour and still slowing, even as she dropped through the gears in a desperate attempt to maintain speed. The vibration from the wrecked wheel was getting worse, the Veyron’s back end starting to weave. ‘We’re not gonna make it!’ Thirty . . .

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?’

‘Some of it. What about it?’

She tapped a finger on the map. ‘Something about Talonor’s journey. He visited a temple where he met the Hindu priests - who showed him the key to the Vault of Shiva.’ She lifted the replica, tilting it so light picked out the reliefs of Shiva and the five goddesses. ‘He said the Vault was one day away from the temple. Or rather, one day to get there, and one hour to get back.’

‘How’s that possible?’ Mac wondered.

‘Khoil thought they might have come back by river,’ said Nina. The Himalayas were riddled with blue lines running down from glaciers, so that didn’t narrow the possibilities. ‘But Talonor said he went away from the river to reach the temple. And then . . .’ She snapped her fingers. ‘From there, he carried on northeast until he discovered the Golden Peak.’

‘The Golden Peak?’ asked Kit.

‘The site of an Atlantean settlement.’

He was surprised. ‘There was an Atlantean settlement in Tibet? I’ve never heard that.’

Nina realised she’d made a gaffe. ‘Oh . . . yeah. It’s something we kept out of the public record for security reasons, because it contained the . . .’ She tailed off and glared at her husband, who was making a show of holding his head in his hands. ‘Knock it off, Eddie. Uh, things I can’t tell you about. Sorry.’ She gave Kit an apologetic shrug.

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Every organisation has its secrets - I should know!’

‘How does that help us, then?’ Eddie asked. He indicated an area above and to the left of Mount Kailash. ‘This is where the Golden Peak is, more or less.’

‘To the northwest of the sacred mountain,’ Nina pointed out. ‘Talonor said he continued northeast.’

‘There couldn’t have been a translation error?’ suggested Mac.

‘No, not for something that basic. That means the Vault of Shiva can’t be at Mount Kailash.’ She checked the map’s scale. ‘The Golden Peak is almost a hundred miles northwest of there. Talonor was the greatest explorer of his time - he couldn’t possibly have made such a huge navigational error. But Khoil doesn’t know that. He’s working from all the information Qexia has trawled from the internet - but nothing about the Golden Peak has ever been publicly released.’ A triumphant smile. ‘Guess computers can’t do all the work for you after all.’

‘So if it’s not there, where is it?’ Eddie moved his finger diagonally over the map. ‘If he went northeast to reach the Golden Peak, the Vault’s got to be somewhere southwest of it.’

‘Yeah . . . but the Codex specifically said that he met the priests at a temple on a holy mountain. Kit, are there any other—’

‘Kedarnath,’ Kit cut in, his expression suggesting he was chastising himself for not having thought of it earlier. ‘Kedarnath, of course! Here.’ He indicated a particular peak on the Indian side of the disputed border. ‘Lord Shiva lived on Mount Kailash, yes - but he had a second home on Mount Kedarnath.’

‘So he had a holiday cottage?’ said Eddie. ‘I’d pick somewhere a bit nearer the sea myself. But then, I’m not a god.’

Nina grinned. ‘You just think you are. So what’s the story of Kedarnath?’

‘There are three, actually,’ said Kit. ‘The great Hindu texts have many different ways of telling the same stories. One of them is that two of Shiva’s followers, Nar and Narayan, performed great penance before a lingam of Shiva - a symbol of the god,’ he clarified for Eddie and Mac. ‘Shiva was pleased and granted them a boon - a wish. They asked if he could make a home closer to his followers than Mount Kailash, and he agreed. In another, five brothers followed Shiva there to beg forgiveness for having killed their cousins in a war. He gave it, and told them he would live there to watch over them.’

‘And the third version?’

‘Shiva’s wife, Parvati, thought Mount Kailash was too far from India - she wanted to be nearer the people she loved. So she asked Shiva for another home that was closer to them.’

Eddie laughed. ‘That sounds familiar. The bloke has to move house because his wife wants to be somewhere she thinks is nicer.’

‘Are you telling me you liked living in Blissville?’ said Nina, of their move out of Queens back into her native Manhattan five months earlier.

‘It was a lot cheaper, I’ll give it that.’

She huffed, then turned back to Kit. ‘What else can you tell me about Kedarnath?’

‘Not much. I’ve never been there. But there is a temple there - one of the oldest and holiest in India. It’s dedicated to Shiva.’

‘How old?’ Eddie asked.

‘I don’t know, but very.’

‘Old enough to have been there when Talonor visited,’ Nina said thoughtfully. ‘Everything fits: Talonor thinking that Shiva, with his trident, was the same god as Poseidon; the temple being southwest of the Golden Peak; the entire site being considered a sacred mountain, the home of a god.’ Her expression brightened. ‘And Khoil’s looking in the wrong place. He’s started from a false premise - that the sacred mountain mentioned in the Codex is Mount Kailash. And since he doesn’t know about the Golden Peak, he’s got no way of realising that!’

‘So the Vault is somewhere on Mount Kedarnath?’ Kit asked.

‘Seems like it.’

‘Then I can’t see how it hasn’t been found already. Kedarnath is not like Mount Kailash - lots of people have climbed it. And the temple is a major tourist attraction, as well as a site of pilgrimage.’

‘It could be hidden. In a cave, through a crevice - however many tourists have been there, I doubt they’ve crawled over every square inch of the entire peak.’

‘It doesn’t help us find it either, though,’ Eddie said.

‘I know. If I had the translation . . . wait a minute. I’m a dumbass.’ She looked at Kit’s laptop. ‘I can get the translation. Can I use your phone?’

One call to Lola in New York later, and - after telling the relieved PA that she and Eddie were okay - the IHA’s translation of the Talonor Codex sat in Kit’s inbox.

‘So computers do have their uses, then?’ joked Eddie.

‘For some things, yeah,’ Nina admitted as she scrolled through the text. ‘I don’t know why I’ve suddenly gotten this reputation as a Luddite, though. I’ve used computers to help me my entire career. It’s when you rely on them to think for you that you have a problem - as Khoil hopefully won’t find out until it’s way, way too late.’ She remembered something and gave her husband a scathing look. ‘Speaking of problems . . . we need to have a little discussion about your internet surfing habits.’

‘Eh?’

‘Khoil knows what you’ve been looking at. Everything. Qexia has a record. He showed me.’

‘Oh, that. Yeah, he mentioned it. And next time I see him, I’m going to kick his arse so hard that he’ll shit out of his mouth.’

Mac tried to hide a smile. ‘Something you want to share, Eddie?’ He put his hands on Nina’s shoulders and grinned. ‘Only with my wife.’

‘I don’t want to share . . . that,’ Nina protested.

‘I bet you’d like it once you tried it.’

‘I don’t want to try it! We shouldn’t need . . .’ she blushed, ‘props.’

He kissed the top of her head. ‘Such a prude.’

‘Shut up. Oh, here it is.’ She highlighted part of the text.

‘Talonor describes the part of the mountain where the priests said the Vault of Shiva is hidden. “A ridge, higher above us, many stadia distant across hard but passable terrain. It was marked by a notch like that in the edge of a damaged blade.” Everything in military terms again,’ she remarked to Eddie.

‘Can we use that to work out the Vault’s location?’ Kit asked.

‘We should be able to, since we know where the temple is. Do you have Google Earth or something on your laptop?’

He did; a few minutes later, the screen showed a virtual view of Kedarnath mountain from the village of the same name. Off to the northeast, there was indeed a ridge with what could be described as a notch cut into it, though the relatively low resolution meant it could just as easily be a glitch of the rendering system.

‘The ridge is, let’s see . . . about three and a half miles from the village,’ said Nina. ‘The Vault’s supposedly somewhere up there.’

Eddie brought the camera higher, pulling back for an aerial view. ‘It says the village is at about three and a half thousand metres, but the ridge is . . .’ He moved the cursor across the screen. ‘Christ, it’s almost six kilometres up in places.’

‘Steep climb,’ noted Mac. ‘You’d have to take it slowly, or risk getting altitude sickness.’

‘That’d explain why the priests needed a full day to get to the Vault, I guess,’ said Nina. ‘But they wouldn’t have had anything close to modern mountaineering gear, so there must be a way that’s passable by foot. Could they have gone through the notch?’

‘Depends how big it is.’ Eddie indicated the angular graphic on the screen. ‘That doesn’t tell us anything. Could be fifty metres deep, or five hundred. We’d need to see it for real.’

‘What are the chances of that?’ Nina asked Kit. ‘You said that Eddie’s no longer Public Enemy Number One - are we free to travel?’

‘You really want to go to Kedarnath?’ he asked. ‘Is that a good idea?’

‘Whatever the Khoils are planning, it seemed to be on a deadline, otherwise they wouldn’t have been in such a desperate rush to get hold of the Codex. And they both seem pretty smart - they might not be archaeologists, but they’ll figure out that Mount Kailash isn’t the right place sooner rather than later. And when they do, they’ll start looking for other possibilities. Since they’re both devout followers of Shiva, I’d guess they know about Mount Kedarnath and his pied-à-terre.’

‘You want to go climbing the Himalayas?’ Eddie asked. ‘In December? It’ll be a bit bloody nippy.’

‘Pramesh seemed completely sincere about needing these ancient texts, the Shiva-Vedas. If we can find the Vault of Shiva and get the Vedas first, that’ll be a big spanner in his works - not to mention an archaeological find to match anything we’ve seen so far.’

Mac tapped his foot on the floor, the prosthetic leg making a dull creak of metal and plastic. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to count me out, then. Much as I love freezing my arse off on mountainsides, I’m not really up to the task any more. I have a slight deficiency in the limb department.’

Nina smiled at him. ‘Mac, you’ve already done way more than I can ever thank you for.’

‘I might still be able to do something useful, though. Peter Alderley is coming to India as part of the British delegation for the G20 summit. The Khoils might be pulling every string they can in the Indian government, but I highly doubt they’ll have any influence at MI6. I’ll talk to him and see if he can find out anything.’

‘Oh, great,’ Eddie groaned. ‘My favourite person.’

‘We should meet him,’ Nina said, teasing. ‘You can apologise in person for dropping his invitation down a drain.’

‘Tchah!’

Mac smiled. ‘I’m sure Peter will enjoy that. But whatever Eddie may think of him, he takes his work very seriously - and threats to global security are very much part of MI6’s remit. Especially with twenty world leaders in the same place at the same time.’

‘Do you think that’s their plan?’ said Nina. ‘Attack the G20? Then manipulate the media to place the blame on different countries?’

‘It’d be a pretty good way to kick off a war,’ Eddie said.

‘But how would they do it?’ asked Kit. ‘You’ve seen the security - entire sections of the city are closed off. Nobody would be able to get close enough.’

Nina gave him a grim look. ‘If that’s what the Khoils are planning, they’ll find a way. No, scratch that - they’ll already have found a way. They’ve been working on it for months, ever since they started stealing the cultural treasures. All they need are the Shiva-Vedas, and they’ll have all their pieces in place. So Eddie’s right - we have to get to the Vault of Shiva first.’

‘Just the two of us, then?’ said Eddie. ‘Since I know I’ve got absolutely no chance of talking you out of this.’

‘Just the three of us,’ Kit said, to everyone’s surprise. ‘If you’re going, I’m going with you.’

‘You’ve done a lot for us too, Kit,’ said Nina. ‘You don’t have to do anything else.’

‘Oh, but I do. First, does either of you speak Hindi?’ Nina and Eddie shook their heads. ‘You might not get very far without someone who can. Second, until Eddie is fully cleared, I will probably have to take personal responsibility for his actions - and I will have a hard time doing that if he is three hundred kilometres away up a mountain!’

‘Will your bosses be okay with that?’ Nina asked. ‘I doubt if searching for the lost vaults of gods is in your job description. ’

‘But my job is about more than tracking down lost art,’ Kit reminded her. ‘It also covers the theft of valuable antiquities. And the writings of Lord Shiva himself must surely qualify.’

Mac light-heartedly raised a finger. ‘They haven’t technically been stolen yet.’

Kit laughed. ‘Then consider it crime prevention! But you will need my help, and I am happy to give it.’

‘Have you got any climbing experience?’ Eddie asked.

He nodded. ‘And I can get the clothing and equipment we will need.’

‘I think we have a team, then,’ said Nina. ‘Kit, thank you.’

He smiled, then picked up his phone. ‘I have a long call to make to Lyon.’ He entered a number, then went into the next room to hold the conversation in private.

Eddie looked at the image of Mount Kedarnath on the laptop. ‘You really think it’s there?’

‘Yes, I do - and we could be the first people in thousands of years to find it. But we have to get there before the Khoils.’

Mac leaned forward in his chair. ‘It won’t be easy, Nina. The conditions in those mountains at this time of year will be awful. Eddie may have had survival training, but even so, one wrong step could kill all of you.’

Eddie snorted. ‘Your pep talks were a lot better back in the Regiment.’

‘I’m getting more careful with age. You might want to consider trying it. Both of you.’ He gave them a meaningful look, then stood. ‘Speaking of which, age affects the body as well as the mind, so if you’ll excuse me . . .’ He headed for the bathroom.

‘Cheeky old git,’ said Eddie, with a fond look after his former commanding officer. ‘I’m always careful. Ish.’ He noticed how Nina was looking at him. ‘What? Don’t tell me you agree with him.’

‘Of course I do, Eddie. We almost got killed at the Khoils’ estate. Several times.’

‘Par for the bloody course with us, isn’t it? And being chased up a tree by a tiger’ll make a great story to tell at a pub sometime.’

‘And what about the story when you almost got your throat ripped out by a psychopath because you didn’t hear him coming? Will that be on the list too?’

‘Yeah, okay, that wasn’t so good. But I still came out on top.’

‘Only by sheer luck.’ She took his hands in hers. ‘Eddie, I’m just worried that if you carry on like you always have, and deliberately ignore the fact that it’s affected your hearing—’

‘I’m not bloody deaf, all right?’ he snapped. ‘That Pennywisetoothed little bastard got lucky, that’s all.’

‘Or you were unlucky,’ said Nina quietly. ‘And you only have to be unlucky once to . . .’ She couldn’t speak the terrible thought.

He squeezed her hands and gave her a reassuring smile. ‘Well, at least it should be nice and quiet up in the mountains, right?’

21

‘So much for quiet,’ said Nina as she stepped off the bus . . . into a noisy crowd.

From what she had read, she had expected the Himalayan village of Gaurikund to be nothing more than a small pit stop on the way up to Kedarnath. But even with a covering of snow and a chill winter wind, the narrow streets of colourful, tight-packed and high-stacked buildings were bustling with activity.

‘They’re pilgrims,’ said Kit. ‘Kedarnath is closed in winter because of the weather - so the priests from the temple all move down to Gaurikund.’

‘They close the whole village?’ Eddie asked incredulously, hauling a large rucksack out of the bus. ‘Guess we’re not checking into a hotel once we’re up there, then.’

‘I’m afraid not. And we have to walk from here - this is as far as the road goes. It’s another fourteen kilometres to Kedarnath.’

Eddie looked up the valley. Though shrouded in grey clouds, the looming dark mass of Mount Kedarnath was still discernible, its highest peak over three miles above. ‘Nice weather for it.’

Nina was more interested in the people. They were of all ages, dressed in everything from utilitarian cold-weather clothing to layers of brightly coloured traditional Indian apparel to simple orange robes that seemed highly unsuited to the cold conditions. ‘They’re all here to pay homage to Shiva?’

‘Not all of them,’ Kit replied. ‘Gaurikund is a holy site for other gods as well. There is a hot spring where Shiva first told Parvati that he loved her - people come to bathe in it. It’s also where their son Ganesha was born.’

‘He’s the one with an elephant’s head, right?’ said Eddie. Kit nodded.

‘I’m impressed,’ said Nina. ‘How did you know that?’

‘It was in The Simpsons.’

‘Ah.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘The source of all modern knowledge.’

‘But did Bart and Homer explain why he has an elephant’s head?’ Kit asked Eddie with a smile, getting a negative response. ‘Parvati was bathing in the spring, and Ganesha was standing guard. Shiva arrived unexpectedly - he had been away for a long time, and didn’t recognise Ganesha as his son. Ganesha tried to stop him from seeing Parvati, so Shiva cut off his head.’

‘Whoa,’ said Eddie. ‘That’s a bit harsh.’

‘Parvati thought so too! She demanded that Shiva bring him back to life. But Shiva couldn’t find the head, so he took the head from an elephant and used that instead. That is one of the stories. As usual, there are many others.’

Eddie was puzzled. ‘If there’s so many different versions of every story, how do you decide which one to believe?’

‘You believe the one that you most believe in,’ said Kit with an amused shrug. ‘It must sound strange to westerners, but it has worked for us for thousands of years.’

‘It’s the version the Khoils believe that worries me,’ said Nina. She looked up at the brooding mountain. ‘How do we get to Kedarnath?’

‘There’s a path up the valley. I’ll ask someone how to get there.’ Kit stepped into the crowd, asked a man a question in Hindi - and got a look of utter disbelief in return. A second attempt earned him first a laugh, then an expression of concern, most likely for his sanity.

‘Okay,’ said Nina, pursing her lips. ‘Maybe it’s a harder journey than we thought.’

The sound of a scuffle made her turn. The pilgrims parted, backing away from an elderly man with a wild, almost dreadlocked mane of grey hair and a long beard, wearing nothing but an orange robe. He was dancing, sandalled feet skipping through the snow, and waving a gnarled stick at anyone who got too close.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Eddie. ‘He must be freezing!’

‘He’s a yogi,’ Nina realised. ‘A holy man. They give away all their possessions and travel through India in search of enlightenment.’

‘Maybe, but if I was him, I’d search for it somewhere warmer.’

The yogi continued his crazy little dance, the onlookers seeming caught between respect for him and annoyance at his antics. He laughed for no particular reason into a man’s face, then spotted Nina and Eddie. He tipped his head with a look of curious recognition and strode over to them.

‘Er . . . hello,’ said Nina, drawing back. Though she didn’t want to be uncharitable, the yogi would definitely benefit from a wash in the hot spring.

He fixed her with an intense gaze, foolish capering replaced by seriousness. ‘I know who you are, and why you are here,’ he said, his accent thick. ‘Nina Wilde.’

Nina was shocked. ‘How - how do you know my name?’

‘From here, I can watch the entire world,’ he intoned.

‘Is that a Hindu saying?’

‘No.’ A crazy smile split his face, and he jabbed his stick at a dish on a nearby building. ‘It just means we have satellite TV! Ha ha!’ He danced a brief jig, kicking up slush. ‘I saw you in Egypt, in the Sphinx. “What kept you?” Very funny!’ He laughed again - then before Nina could react he squeezed her breasts.

‘Oi!’ Eddie shouted, shoving him back. ‘Fuck off, Yoda!’ He raised a fist.

Kit hurried over. ‘Eddie, no!’ he cried, interposing himself between the giggling yogi and the aggrieved Englishman. ‘He’s a Pashupati Yogi.’

‘I don’t care if he’s Yogi fucking Bear!’ Eddie growled. ‘He just grabbed my wife’s tits - that gets you a smack in the mouth whoever you are.’

‘Eddie, it’s okay,’ said Nina, cheeks flushing. ‘No harm done, and . . . well, he’s obviously a little, uh . . .’ She tried to think of a non-offensive term. ‘Eccentric.’

The yogi cackled. ‘No, no. Rich people are eccentric. I am mad!’

‘He’s not mad,’ Kit said impatiently. ‘The Pashupatis are a sect of Shiva worshippers - sometimes called the Order of Lunatics. Some of them pretend to be mad to drive away people who want to associate with a holy man for their own personal gain.’ He turned to the old man. ‘Go on, be on your way.’

‘No, wait,’ said Nina. ‘He said he knows who we are—’

‘’Cause he saw you on TV,’ Eddie cut in.

‘—and why we’re here.’ She addressed the yogi. ‘Why are we here?’

‘You seek the Vault of Shiva, of course.’

The trio exchanged concerned looks. ‘How do you know that?’ Nina asked.

‘Why else would you be here? You are the famous Nina Wilde, you search for ancient legends and reveal them to the world. The other legends of this mountain, the pool of Parvati, the Shivalingam, they are all known. So you are looking for the one that is not.’

‘Nobody knows the legend of the Vault of Shiva,’ said Kit. ‘Dr Wilde only discovered it recently.’

The yogi was affronted. ‘I know it! So does everyone who lives here.’ He dropped his voice to a mock whisper. ‘But they will not tell anyone, because it is their great secret.’

‘So why’re you telling us?’ asked Eddie.

‘Because I am mad!’ He whooped, before becoming serious once more. ‘But you will not find it, Dr Wilde.’

‘You seem pretty certain of that,’ she said.

‘The Vault of Shiva is not real; it does not exist. Sometimes, a legend is just a legend. You should go home.’

‘That’s not really an option. We have to find the Vault. Before someone else does.’

He eyed her quizzically. ‘Someone in particular?’

‘We can’t talk about it. I’m sorry.’

His gaze revealed a thoughtful intelligence as he considered her words . . . then the crazy mask returned. ‘Everyone has their secrets! Ha! So sad. Nobody with a secret can ever reach the end of the path to enlightenment.’

‘The only path we’re bothered about is the one to Kedarnath,’ said Eddie, annoyed. ‘You know where it is?’

‘Of course I do! I was born in these mountains, I was married in . . .’ He tailed off, briefly lost in some memory, then faced Nina. ‘You are going up to Kedarnath, though there is nothing to find?’

‘Yes, we are.’

‘Even in this weather?’ He waved his stick at the cloud-shrouded mountain.

‘Yes.’

He shook his head, muttering something in Hindi. ‘Very well,’ he continued. ‘I will show you the way.’

‘I think we can manage, mate,’ Eddie said.

Nina’s refusal was more gentle. ‘That’s very generous, but we’ll be fine. Thank you.’

‘No, no, I insist,’ said the yogi. ‘You need a guide - there are many big falls. And I will find you a warm place to sleep at Kedarnath.’

‘I thought there wasn’t anyone there?’ said Kit.

‘There is not, but I will still find you a place! Come, come. The path is this way.’ He pointed up the street.

‘If you come with us,’ said Nina, ‘you’ll be walking fourteen kilometres up a mountain in the snow - why would you do that for us?’

He replied as if the answer was perfectly obvious. ‘Because it is the right thing to do! You need help, I am here to help. What other reason could there be? Now come, this way.’

‘Are we really going to let him come?’ Eddie asked Nina.

‘Can we stop him? I mean, if he wants follow us to Kedarnath, there isn’t much we can do about it.’

‘If he gets hypothermia, I’m not carrying him back down the bloody mountain,’ he grumbled.

‘Well,’ said Nina, ‘looks like we have a guide, whether we want one or not.’ She picked up her pack. ‘Oh, you didn’t tell us your name, Mr . . .’

‘Girilal Mitra,’ the old man said, bowing. ‘Very pleased to be at your service. Now, I hope you have good shoes - it’s a long walk!’ Dancing again, he pushed through the crowd. The trio hesitated, then followed.

Nina noticed that while the pilgrims were startled by the old man’s behaviour, others whom she assumed to be locals reacted with little more than weary disdain, or even ignored him entirely, as if well used to his antics. ‘So . . . how long have you been on the path to enlightenment?’

‘Some paths, you cannot know how long they are until you reach the end,’ said Girilal.

‘Very profound, but that’s not what I asked.’

‘I know. But here is one path I know well.’ The stick pointed at an arched gate, painted a brick-red, at the foot of a steep flight of steps leading up between the buildings. ‘The way to Kedarnath. Are you sure you want to go?’

‘Yes,’ Nina said firmly. ‘I’m sure.’

‘I thought so. Well!’ He clapped his hands. ‘Let us begin!’

Fourteen kilometres is just over eight and a half miles, and Nina had traversed similar distances across rough terrain with relative ease in the past. The difference here was that barely a yard of the trek was on the flat. Before they were a mile from Gaurikund her legs were aching from the constant, punishing climb up the steep snow-covered path. Kit was faring better, but not by much, and even Eddie, laden with the largest pack, was starting to show signs of strain.

The ascent didn’t appear to bother Girilal, however. He hummed a tune as he strolled, and even occasionally skipped, along. A shrill wind whistled down the slope, flapping the hem of his grubby robe.

‘I can’t believe you’re not cold,’ said Nina. Even with the exertion of the walk, she was glad of her thick hooded jacket and weatherproof trousers. ‘Do you use some mind-over-matter meditation technique?’

‘Oh, nothing like that,’ he said cheerily. ‘I am cold. I just don’t show it!’

Eddie grunted disapprovingly. ‘Deliberately risking frostbite is pretty fucking stupid, mate. Why do it? Getting rid of your worldly goods is one thing, but does Shiva say you’ve got to torture yourself?’

‘How I serve my penance is my choice,’ Girilal replied, for the first time since they had met him revealing a hint of negative emotion - not so much anger as sorrow.

‘Penance for what?’ Nina asked.

‘For my sins, of course. I cannot reach enlightenment until Lord Shiva has forgiven me for everything bad I have done.’

‘The Catholic way’s easier,’ said Eddie. ‘Quick confession, couple of Hail Marys, and you’re sorted.’

‘Like you’ve ever been to confession,’ joked Nina. ‘You’d be in there for hours! The priests would have to work in shifts.’

‘Don’t make me add clipping my wife round the ear to my list.’ Girilal resumed his humming, leading the way. The trees became sparser as they ascended, the unobstructed wind picking up. Along the way they passed a few tiny settlements, handfuls of huts huddled together - all without roofs. Nina at first thought they were derelict, until Girilal explained that the merchants inhabiting the little hamlets moved down the mountain during the winter; when Kedarnath was closed to pilgrims and tourists, they had no customers. The roofs were removed to prevent them from collapsing under the weight of snow.

The clouds closed in, the valley disappearing into a grey haze. Kit read a Hindi sign as they stopped to rest. ‘Four kilometres to go.’

‘We’ve only walked six miles?’ said Nina in breathless disbelief. ‘It feels like sixty!’

Once recovered, they carried on up the slope, which became steeper and rockier. By now, they were above the tree line, the only vegetation small bushes poking out from the snow. The dampness of the surrounding clouds intensified the cold still further. Nina tried to offer Girilal a blanket, but he refused, resolutely picking out the path ahead of them.

Another marker post, and another. Although the mountainside was getting no steeper, the climb became harder as the air thinned. Their rest stops increased in length and frequency. The last marker; one kilometre to go. They kept ascending. Then . . .

‘Look at that!’ said Nina, awed. They emerged from the fog - and for the first time since arriving in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, she was able to see the true majesty of the Himalayas.

Lower down, the mountains had been little more than ominous shadows, concealed in the murky clouds. But now she could see them clearly, lit by the stark winter sun. The sawtoothed main peak of Mount Kedarnath itself dominated the view, its lower, secondary summit off to the west, but even with the valley’s sides obscuring the surrounding landscape she could take in other snow-covered mountains rising beyond. She had been in the Himalayas before, but circumstances had not been conducive to sightseeing. This time, she was truly able to appreciate their scale.

Eddie was not so impressed. ‘Yeah, it looks pretty amazing,’ he said, ‘but you won’t like it so much when you try to climb the bugger.’ He pointed to the northeast. The ridge they had seen on Kit’s laptop was revealed for real, more jagged and imposing than its computer-generated counterpart. ‘We’ve got to get up that.’

‘There’s the notch,’ said Kit. There was indeed a V-shaped gap in the natural barrier, but even its lowest point was considerably higher than their current location.

Girilal turned his face from the falling sun to regard the ridge. ‘You think the Vault of Shiva is over there?’

‘That’s right,’ said Nina.

‘That is a very dangerous part of the mountain. Many who have gone there have never come back. Are you sure you want to follow them?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘I could live without it,’ Eddie muttered.

‘I cannot stop you, of course. But I wanted to warn you. Well, I tried! Now, come, come. The village is just ahead.’

After a short distance, they crested a rise to reach flatter ground. The track ahead was lined with a long string of small huts leading to the village proper; like those in the hamlets down the mountain, their roofs had been removed. The buildings at the path’s end were more solid works of brick and stone, squeezed tightly into the narrow valley floor. The absolute stillness of the scene was eerie, the village in hibernation, waiting for life to return in the spring.

‘The pilgrims stay here,’ said Girilal, waving his stick at the skeletal huts. ‘The tourists have more money; they stay in the hotels.’

‘Are you taking us to a hotel?’ Nina asked.

‘Oh, no! They are private property - that would be breaking and entering, and your policeman would have to arrest me!’ He directed a laugh at Kit. ‘No, I know somewhere better.’

At the end of the line of huts was a small bridge over a narrow gorge. They crossed it and entered Kedarnath proper. A central street wound up the slope, the houses’ doors barricaded by sandbags to keep out snow and meltwater, locks wrapped in cloth to protect them from the cold. At the far end was the village’s tallest building, a broad stone hall with a high square tower.

‘Is that the temple?’ Nina asked Girilal.

‘Yes - one of the twelve jyotirlingas, the holiest Hindu shrines, where Lord Shiva himself appeared. That is where I am taking you.’

Kit looked at him sharply. ‘You’re going to open the temple?’

‘I am a humble servant of Shiva; I have been there many times. It is the best place for those in need of shelter to stay the night. And,’ he added, grinning, ‘I know where the priests hide the key.’

Kit didn’t seem happy, but raised no further objections as they approached the temple. The building was impressive: it had a squat, sturdy appearance, being built from large stone blocks to withstand the elements, yet the blunt functionality was balanced by detailed carved figures set into alcoves around the colourful entrance. An imposing statue of a bull stood guard outside.

Girilal led them through a gate, but rather than going to the temple’s entrance he crossed to the building’s corner and brushed snow off a small pile of bricks, muttering to himself as he looked beneath each in turn. Finally, he triumphantly held up a large brass key. ‘I told you!’ he said, skipping to the door and unwrapping the cloth from the heavy padlock before opening it. ‘Come inside, come!’ He kicked off his sandals, then picked them up and stepped over the sandbags.

Kit placed his hands together and lowered his head towards the temple, then unfastened and removed his boots before entering. Eddie looked at Nina with a shrug before following suit. She did the same, hopping on one foot as she fumbled with the laces, and went inside.

The interior was dark; with the village closed for winter, there was no electricity. Eddie was about to delve into his backpack for a torch when a soft glow illuminated the entrance hall as Girilal lit a lamp. Figures emerged from the darkness: statues. Behind them, mythic scenes were painted on the walls. ‘Please, accept the hospitality of Lord Shiva,’ said the old man.

‘Thank you,’ said Nina. She looked more closely at the statues. ‘These are beautiful. Who are they?’

‘The Pandava brothers,’ said Girilal. ‘The heroes of the Mahabharata. They came here seeking Shiva before they died. They were serving penance for killing their cousins in battle, and because of that Shiva did not want to bless them, so he took the form of a bull to hide from them. But they found him, and he tried to get away by sinking into the ground. The brothers caught the bull by its hump just before it disappeared, and the hump turned to stone and became the Shivalingam. The temple was built around it.’ He faced the next room, hands together in prayer.

Nina couldn’t help noticing that his crazy-man act had all but disappeared. ‘What will you do now you’re here?’

‘I will pay my respects to Shiva, of course, and ask him to protect you on the rest of your journey.’

‘Can you ask him to stick up a sign pointing to his vault as well?’ Eddie said. Kit gave him a somewhat irritated look.

‘Eddie, we’re in a sacred Hindu temple,’ Nina chided him. ‘Behave yourself.’

Girilal laughed. ‘It is all right, Dr Wilde. Shiva has a sense of humour - some say Ganesha was created from his laughter! Now please, make yourselves warm. I will be back soon.’ He went into the darkened hall.

Eddie took a combined paraffin heater and stove from his pack and set it up. ‘This’ll be cosy,’ he said as he lit it. ‘Better than kipping in a tent, though.’

‘What’s the plan?’ Nina asked.

‘It’ll be night soon, so best bet’s to start off at first light tomorrow and head for that ridge. We should be able to get over it before it gets dark again - if we can find a way up.’

‘A safe way,’ added Kit. ‘After what Girilal said, I’m wondering if we should have brought more climbing gear.’

‘We’ve got enough,’ said Eddie, nudging his pack. Metal clinked inside it. ‘Long as we don’t have to scale any sheer cliffs, we’ll be fine - if the weather holds.’

‘Do you think it will?’ said Nina.

‘Place like this, it can completely change in five minutes. Only way to know is to keep an eye on the conditions, and if it gets dodgy be ready for it.’ He looked at the others’ packs. ‘Okay, so who’s got the nosh?’

Provisions were retrieved, and sleeping bags unrolled and laid out around the heater. Kit started preparing the food. Nina looked into the adjoining hall. ‘Girilal?’ she called. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’ No reply. ‘I’d better see if he’s all right,’ she said, concerned that the long, cold trek might have finally taken its toll.

The next, larger room was dark except for a faint orange glow, the temple windowless as further protection against the weather. Padding closer, she saw the light was a candle, behind a curtain. Girilal’s voice reached her, speaking quietly in Hindi. She parted the curtain and entered the small chamber beyond. ‘Girilal? Are you okay?’

The old man was sitting cross-legged on the stone floor before a small altar, the flickering candle beside him lighting the turquoise walls. He looked round, startled. ‘No, you should not be in here!’ he said, scrambling to his feet.

‘I’m sorry!’ said Nina, backing out. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were all right.’

He composed himself, and lowered his head. ‘No, I should apologise. I should have told you what I was doing, and asked you not to disturb me. It is my fault.’

Despite wanting to respect his privacy as he prayed, Nina couldn’t help but look at the altar. ‘Is that . . .’

‘The Shivalingam, yes.’ While lingams were usually cylindrical, this was instead a small three-sided pyramid of polished black stone, red stripes painted across it. ‘For those who have reached enlightenment, Lord Shiva will manifest himself as a pillar of cosmic light and bless them.’

‘Have you . . .?’

‘No.’ He shook his head with sad resignation. ‘I am not worthy. I have too much to seek forgiveness for.’ He picked up the candle, and gently but firmly ushered Nina out of the chamber. ‘Now,’ he said, his voice becoming more positive, ‘you said something about food?’

22

Even inside the temple, cocooned in her sleeping bag and wearing several layers of clothing, Nina still woke up shivering. Eddie was already awake, heating water on the stove. ‘Morning, sunshine.’

‘Morning,’ she said blearily. ‘What time is it?’

‘About twenty to seven. Sun’ll be up soon. We’ll need to get moving once it is. Got a lot of walking ahead.’

‘Can’t wait.’ She sat up, seeing that the outer door was ajar, letting in a slit of predawn light. ‘Where are Kit and Girilal?’

‘Kit’s gone for a piss. Dunno where the old guy is; he went out about twenty minutes ago. Maybe he’s taking a dump.’

Nina groaned. ‘I could have lived without you putting that image in my head, Eddie.’ She unzipped the sleeping bag. ‘What’s on the menu?’

‘Coffee first, then breakfast. Lots of high-calorie stuff - we’re going to need it. Cereal, porridge, that kind of thing.’

‘Mmm. Delicious,’ she said, unenthused.

‘Hey, you wanted to come here. I had another look at the map now we’ve seen the terrain first-hand, by the way. Think I’ve worked out a route. Girilal thinks it’ll be safe.’

‘How well does he know the area?’

Eddie smiled conspiratorially. ‘Better than he lets on. Sneaky old sod. I don’t think this is the first time he’s been up here in the winter.’

Nina indicated the next hall. ‘He must come to worship at the Shivalingam. Poor guy. Whatever it is he’s doing penance for, I don’t think he believes he’ll ever be forgiven for it.’

‘Well, maybe he’ll get a better crack at things in the next life.’ He looked up as Kit re-entered the temple.

‘Morning, Kit,’ Nina said. ‘Is Girilal outside?’

He briskly rubbed his cold fingers. ‘Yes. He said he wanted to watch the sun rise.’

‘He must be freezing!’

‘He must be mad,’ Eddie amended. ‘Kind of ironic, since that’s what he was already pretending to be.’

Nina shook her head. ‘He’s just looking for forgiveness, and I don’t see how he’s going to find it, because he can’t forgive himself. I feel really sorry for him.’

‘No need for that, Dr Wilde,’ said Girilal cheerfully, skipping over the sandbags into the temple. Nina blushed at having been overheard. ‘But I feel sorry for you. You will not find the Vault of Shiva, because it is not there. Please, make this old man happy and go back to Gaurikund. Do not risk your lives for a legend.’

‘That’s sort of what we do,’ Eddie said with a wry smile.

‘And you say I am mad!’

Nina smiled. ‘Thank you for caring, Girilal, but I’m afraid we’re long past that point.’

‘Well, I can at least wish you well and see you on your way.’

‘After breakfast,’ she said. ‘Care to join us?’

He laughed. ‘Of course! I am mad, not stupid!’

By the time they left the temple the sun was up, though the sky was mottled with cloud. Girilal shook their hands. ‘Please, come back down the mountain with me,’ he said hopefully. ‘It will snow later, I can tell.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Nina assured him, her breath steaming in the cold air. ‘Thank you for all your help.’

He bowed his head in modesty. ‘I am only doing what should be done. But I have asked Lord Shiva to watch over you, and I hope he will be generous.’

‘I hope so too,’ said Kit, peering up apprehensively at the ridge.

‘Then have a safe - and uneventful, ha! - journey. Perhaps we shall meet again if you return.’

‘When we return, you mean,’ Eddie said.

‘When you return, of course! Dr Wilde, Mr Chase, Mr Jindal . . . be safe.’

‘You too,’ said Nina. ‘Will you be okay getting back to Gaurikund?’

Girilal grinned. ‘I shall sing, and I shall dance, and I will be back there as quickly as if I had flown like a bird!’ He did a little jig in the snow.

Eddie held up a hand. ‘Listen, mate - we know you’re not really mad. So you don’t need to keep up the act.’

Girilal pursed his lips. ‘I didn’t even realise what I was doing. Perhaps I have been doing it for so long, it has become natural.’

‘Perhaps you’ve been doing it too long,’ said Nina pointedly.

‘Perhaps. In that case, I shall walk in a very normal way back to Gaurikund. Goodbye. And good luck.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘And I hope you find what you’re looking for.’

‘So do I,’ the old man said, waving as he set off back down the long path.

Eddie turned to gaze up at their own destination. ‘Okay, that gap in the ridge is about three miles from here, and over a mile higher up. We’ve got a long bloody climb. Let’s get started.’

Nina detected a new tone in his voice. ‘That was very military, Eddie. Were you like that in the SAS?’

‘If I was doing things like in the SAS, we wouldn’t still be standing here - we would have been running up the mountain with full gear and weapons before the sun was even up.’

‘Speaking of weapons,’ said Nina, regarding him suspiciously,

‘did you bring . . .’

‘Course I did.’ He unzipped his coat to reveal the Wildey tucked in its holster.

She put a hand to her head. ‘Oh, God. Why?’

‘Hey, you never know - we might run into a yeti.’

‘Yeah, that’s just the headline I want: “Legendary Himalayan creature discovered - and has its head blown off by demented Englishman”!’

‘Better than “World’s most famous non-fictional archaeologist eaten by snow monster”, innit?’ He started uphill. ‘Well, come on. The Vault of Shiva’s not going to find itself. And, oi! What do you mean, “demented”?’

Nina and Kit followed him, sharing a smile.

The ascent began relatively easily, but before long parts of the slope became steep enough for them to need to use telescopic aluminium climbing poles and even their hands to scrabble up it. The grass hidden beneath the snow gave way to nothing but earth and rock.

They kept climbing, Eddie scouting out the best route. Even with his experience, they had to double back a few times when the way ahead became too steep to ascend without climbing gear, something he wanted to avoid for as long as possible. But there was a route to the foot of the ridge, however convoluted and draining.

Rest breaks became more frequent the higher they got. ‘God, this is killing me,’ Nina gasped as she flopped down on a boulder. She pulled off one glove and rubbed her temple.

Eddie was with her in a moment. ‘Got a headache?’

‘A bit. It’s not serious,’ she assured him. ‘I just need to get my breath back.’

‘You took some altitude sickness medicine this morning, right?’

‘Yeah, I did. Really, I’m okay. What about you, Kit?’

The policeman was taking deep, slow breaths. ‘I’m fine. I think. This is the most exhausting case I have ever been on.’

‘Art theft doesn’t usually take you up the Himalayas, I suppose,’ said Eddie, surveying the area. The landscape below was hidden by mist, but he could see clouds visibly rising, strong winds pushing them up the mountainside. He looked higher. The patches of cloud had grown thicker and darker, and the air was noticeably more hazy than when they had left Kedarnath. ‘Girilal was right. I think we’re going to get snowed on.’

Nina regarded the clouds unhappily. ‘Nice Christmas cardy snow, or horrific flesh-stripping blizzardy snow?’

‘Three guesses. How’s your head?’

‘Better. A bit.’

‘Give it another minute, then.’ He patted her shoulder.

As she waited for her headache to subside, Nina’s attention went to the ground around them. Even under the snow, it had a distinctly stepped appearance, as if long terraces had been dug into the slope. ‘Have you noticed this? It almost looks like it was once cultivated.’

‘Up here?’ Eddie said sceptically. ‘There isn’t even grass this high up.’

‘There have been warmer periods in the past - there used to be vegetation in the Antarctic, remember. Maybe the priests at Kedarnath in Talonor’s time grew things up here. Or maybe there were people who lived closer to the Vault of Shiva - they’d need to get their food from somewhere.’

He shook his head. ‘Could just be a fluke of layers of rock or something.’

‘Yeah, I know. And if it were used for cultivation, it would have been a long time ago - there’s a lot of erosion. It’s still an interesting possibility, though.’

‘Depends on your idea of interesting.’

‘Quiet, you.’

Once Nina’s headache faded, they set off again. The ridge loomed over them, a colossal wall of stone. From this distance, the ‘notch’ was revealed as a deep pass in its own right. Eddie checked it with binoculars. ‘There’s a way up to it. Pretty steep, and there’ll be a lot of zigzagging, but I think we can do it without having to rope up.’

‘Can we reach it before it starts snowing?’ Kit asked.

He looked at the sky. The clouds had thickened still further. ‘Probably not. It might not be too bad, though. Not much wind at the moment.’

‘Let’s hope it stays that way,’ said Nina.

They picked their way up the steepening route to the pass. About half a mile short, they stopped to eat. It was now past midday; only five hours before sunset. Rested and nourished, the trio pressed on until they reached the bottom of the path.

The sun was lost behind cloud, the temperature falling. Nina realised the clouds themselves were closing in. Kedarnath’s peaks were already obscured, and the upper parts of the ridge disappeared into the leaden grey. As she watched, a lone snowflake drifted past. It seemed to be a fluke . . . then another appeared. And another.

‘Shit,’ muttered Eddie as the fall began in earnest. He tried to pick out the switchback path above him. ‘We’ve got about another three hundred feet to climb, and there’s nowhere to put up a shelter if it gets bad. We’ll either have to go back down and wait it out, or get to the top no matter what the weather does.’

‘Can we make it all the way up?’ asked Nina.

‘Dunno.’ He studied the clouds. ‘If the wind doesn’t pick up we should be able to, but . . .’ A shrug. ‘Depends how keen you are to see what’s up there.’

‘There is kind of a time factor,’ Nina reminded him. ‘If the Khoils figure out the Kedarnath connection, they’ll be on their way here too - and probably by helicopter.’

‘Bad weather’ll affect a chopper just as much as us. If we can’t get up there, neither can they.’

‘But as soon as it clears, they’ll be able to fly straight there.’ She looked at the winding path above. ‘If you think it’s too great a risk, then . . . we’ll wait it out until the weather improves,’ she said reluctantly. ‘But if you think we can make it, we should try. For all we know, the Vault of Shiva might be right on the other side of that ridge. It might be in that ridge.’

‘Great, dump all the life-and-death decisions on your husband . . .’ Eddie stared up at the pass once more. ‘Okay, we’ll try it. You all right with that, Kit?’

‘If you think we can make it, I will trust you.’ He smiled. ‘You seem to know what you’re doing.’

‘Christ, I wish that was true all the time! Okay, let’s go. Be careful.’

Eddie took the lead, probing the rock beneath the snow with his aluminium pole. Fat snowflakes whirled around them, eddies of wind gusting them up the ridge into the climbers’ faces.

The path narrowed as they moved higher, the steep slope transitioning to actual cliff. Mid-afternoon, but beneath the overhanging clouds it felt more like evening. The landscape below disappeared into a dismal sea of grey as more snow fell. The pass above was only vaguely visible through a disorienting swirl of snowflakes.

They continued the ascent. Before long the climbing poles became useless, everyone needing both hands to keep a firm grip on the rock. At the end of another leg of the zigzag path, Eddie stopped and squinted up through the falling snow. ‘Not far to go, but if it gets any narrower we might have to get out some spikes and rope up. It’ll slow us down, but it’ll be safer.’ He shifted his gaze to the main mass of Kedarnath - and his expression changed. ‘Wait, fuck that! We need to get to the top, right now!’

Nina looked. ‘Why? What’s happening?’ A dark cloud bank had moved across the peak, angling upwards from the mountain’s side like a Nazi salute.

‘A storm’s coming! That cloud - it’s called a flag cloud, and when it’s tilted up like that it means the wind’s blowing really fast.’

‘How fast is really fast?’ Kit asked nervously.

‘Seventy, eighty miles an hour - it’s a fucking blizzard, and it’s coming right at us! Move it!’ He started up the path.

‘I’m movin’, I’m movin’!’ cried Nina, side-stepping along the narrow ledge as fast as she dared. Kit was right behind her. The wind picked up, its shrill whistle chilling in more ways than one.

The approaching storm seemed as tangible as the rockface, a black wall closing in to crush them. Eddie reached the last leg of the path, the entrance to the pass at its top. He stretched his legs wide to clear a broad gap in the ledge - and felt stones shift underfoot, adrenalin kicking at his heart as he fought to keep his balance. He rasped his boot against the rock until it found solidity, then hopped over, warning the others to be careful.

Nina reached the final section, seeing the pass - and also the storm lunging down like an attacking bear. Panting, the freezing air searing her lungs, she moved to the gap. The wind was roaring now, tearing at her clothes. Kit clung to the rock wall a few steps behind her.

Eddie waited on the far side, hand out. She steeled herself, jumped - and cleared it. ‘Kit, come on!’ she called.

He leapt—

The storm hit.

It was almost a physical blow, the wind slamming against them. Visibility was reduced to inches in a second. Eddie clutched Nina’s hand; she reached back with her other to grab Kit’s sleeve, pulling as hard as she could as he clawed for a handhold. The weight of his backpack made him wobble, one foot slipping - then he found support. She tried to yell for him to follow, but couldn’t even hear her own voice over the fury of the storm. All she could do was tug the Indian in the same direction Eddie was pulling her, and hope none of them fell and dragged the others over the edge . . .

Perversely, the last few feet were the hardest, the steep, snow-slicked slope offering no handholds. Eddie kicked his toes hard into the frozen scree, dragging Nina after him. His outstretched hand, already numbing, touched something solid.

The wall of the pass. They had made it—

And were no better off. The split in the ridge was barely eight feet wide at its foot - and it acted as a channel for the storm. The vicious wind chill made the temperature plummet. Within moments, the group’s backs were coated in snow and ice, their clothing flapping like flags in a hurricane.

‘Keep moving!’ Eddie gasped. If they stayed in the natural wind tunnel, they would freeze to death in minutes - there was no chance of erecting a tent in time, even if it could withstand the storm. One arm over his face, he reached back with the other to pull Nina along. Kit held on to her backpack, stumbling in their wake.

Now Eddie understood why this part of the mountain had such a fearsome reputation. The pass was an obvious short cut - but if the weather changed suddenly, it could become a deathtrap.

How long was the pass? He lowered his arm, the cold biting at his eyes. Nothing visible except wind-driven snow streaming past.

He squeezed Nina’s hand, hoping to feel her do the same in return, but got no response. Another look ahead as he staggered on. Still nothing visible but the disorienting hyperspace tunnel of rushing snowflakes. He could feel ice forming on his eyelashes, freezing them together.

He used his elbow to find the wall. There might be some nook, a fallen boulder, a tiny cave that could provide just enough shelter for them all to huddle inside until the storm passed. But he felt nothing except solid rock . . .

The wind suddenly changed, blowing at him not from behind, but from the side. A tornado of snowflakes whipped round him. Forcing his ice-crusted eyes open, he looked round. The rock walls seemed no different from the rest of the pass.

Why had the wind shifted? Something was diverting it - maybe even blocking it. Shelter. But he still couldn’t see anything—

He looked up - and found it.

About seven feet above in the eastern cliff was a fissure, a horizontal slash in the rock. Roughly five feet high, and deep enough that nothing but shadow was visible within. If they could all squeeze inside . . .

He turned, taking the icy blast directly into his face as he shouted to Nina and Kit. ‘Cave . . . up there! Nina, climb up!’

She pushed her hood against his. Even that close, he could barely hear her over the wind. ‘Can’t feel . . . hands.’

‘It’s our only chance! Come on!’ He shoved her to the wall. ‘Kit, help her up!’

The two men took hold of Nina and lifted her. ‘Reach up!’ Eddie shouted. ‘Get into the hole!’ She stiffly raised her hands, groping numbly for the gap. Finding it. Eddie and Kit pushed her higher, and she all but fell inside. Realising that the wind had dropped, she crawled deeper into the fissure.

‘You next!’ Eddie told Kit. The Indian said something, but it was lost in the wind. Eddie bent to give him a leg up, taking hold of Kit’s boot with his freezing fingers. Legs flailing, Kit wormed into the tight opening.

Eddie jumped up after him, but the edge of the little cave was slick with ice. His hands, useless lumps of meat, couldn’t get a grip. The storm was sapping his strength by the second - if he didn’t get into shelter very soon, he never would . . .

Kit reappeared in the cave mouth. He knelt and held out his hands. Eddie reached up. Kit grabbed his wrists and pulled. With the last of his strength, Eddie scrambled up the wall, boots rasping on the rock.

He slumped into the fissure, almost knocking Kit over as he landed on him. The cave was deeper than he had thought; they moved into the darkness, flurries of snow still clawing at them in a last-ditch attempt to stop their escape before the ferocious wind finally dropped.

‘Thanks,’ Eddie gasped, getting a weak grunt of affirmation in return. He saw Nina in the shadows ahead and dragged himself to her. ‘Help me . . . with the heater.’

She pulled off his backpack and opened it. A minute later, the paraffin heater was lit. They piled their packs up behind them to block the wind. Eddie massaged Nina’s hands through her gloves as the trio hunched tightly round the heater. ‘Don’t try to warm up too fast,’ he warned. ‘Get the circulation back first.’

‘Will we have frostbite?’ she asked, worried.

‘I don’t think we’ll have to saw off any fingers, but no point taking chances. Can you feel anything?’

‘Yeah. Pins and needles.’

‘Believe it or not, that’s good. How about you, Kit?’

Kit flexed his fingers. ‘Feeling better. And I think all my toes are still attached . . .’

‘Great. Let’s see where we are, then.’ He fumbled in his pack for a torch.

Nina blinked in annoyance as she was momentarily dazzled, then followed the beam as it slid over the rocks around them, moving deeper and deeper. ‘How far back does it go?’ The passage twisted out of sight about thirty feet away.

‘Dunno. Think we’ve found a good place to sit out the storm, though.’

She looked at the cave floor, which was coated with grit and small stones. ‘Looks alluvial. It must carry meltwater during the spring thaw.’

‘I didn’t know you were a geologist,’ said Kit.

‘It’s useful stuff for archaeologists - helps us figure out how deep things might be buried.’ She took the flashlight from Eddie and scanned the walls. ‘Where does the water come from, though? It must open out somewhere.’

She made as if to crawl down the passage to investigate, but Eddie pulled her back. ‘Oi! Get properly warmed up first. Might as well have something to eat while we’re at it.’

‘Well, if we must . . .’ They smiled at each other, then Eddie poked through the packs for supplies.

After half an hour, they were more or less recovered and ready to move. Nina had already taken the lead. ‘It carries on round this corner,’ she reported, shining the light ahead.

‘How far?’ Kit asked.

‘I don’t know - I still can’t see the end. But it gets wider.’ She continued on.

‘Jesus, slow down,’ Eddie complained. ‘It’s not like we’ve found the Vault of Shiva . . .’ He tailed off.

‘Do you think . . .’ said Kit, eyes widening.

‘With her luck, I wouldn’t be bloody surprised. Come on!’ He shuffled down the confined passage after his wife, Kit behind him.

They caught up with Nina. The tunnel was indeed getting wider - and higher. ‘I can see daylight,’ she said. A faint grey cast over the rock walls was discernible ahead.

Eddie tugged down his hood. ‘There’s no wind.’ That wasn’t entirely true - he could feel a breeze on his cold-reddened cheeks - but it was nothing compared to the gale blowing at the other end of the tunnel. There was another bend to traverse, but the gloomy daylight was now clearly visible beyond it. ‘It opens out,’ Nina said, Eddie and Kit flanking her as they rounded the corner.

And stopped, frozen in surprise.

‘Well, bloody hell,’ said Eddie as he took in the incredible sight. ‘I think we found it.’

23

The cave emerged at one end of a narrow canyon sliced into the ridge. Snow was falling, but wafting gently down, not blasted by the blizzard. The top of the rift high above them acted as a windbreak, diverting the storm’s fury over it. All that was visible of the sky was a ragged line of grey.

But the onlookers had lost all interest in the weather.

The almost sheer sides of the valley had been carved into tiers decorated by ornate sculptures and columns and niches, dozens of arched entrances into chambers within the mountain between them. The elaborate architecture was unmistakably Hindu, gods in many forms gazing out from the walls, but it appeared incredibly ancient. The erosive effect of time had taken its toll, most of the carvings weathered and missing sections, and great chunks of the tiers themselves had collapsed, smashing the floors beneath them and littering the valley floor with broken rubble.

‘My God,’ said Nina, walking out into the falling snow. The valley’s far end was obscured by haze and shadow, but she could see enough to be awed by the sheer scale of their discovery. She counted seven tiers on each side, rising about seventy feet up the rocky walls. ‘It must be thousands of years old. Over eleven thousand, if it’s the same place Talonor mentioned.’

Kit was equally amazed. ‘How can it never have been found? We’re only a few kilometres from one of the holiest sites in India - someone must have seen it!’

‘Nothing to see from up there,’ Eddie realised, pointing skywards. ‘We’re on the north side of the ridge, so it’ll never get any direct sunlight.’ He peered at the topmost tier. ‘The cliffs overhang it at the top. You probably won’t know there’s anything down here even if you’re looking right over the edge.’

‘The Vault of Shiva must be here, somewhere,’ said Nina, awe changing to excitement. ‘How long is the valley, do you think?’ ‘Only one way to find out,’ he said, gesturing along the canyon’s length. ‘Go and see.’

They started up the valley. The wind howled mournfully high above them. As they advanced, new features emerged from the gloom: lines strung across the canyon connecting the different levels. At first they were just single ropes, drooping under the weight of snow, but then more complex crossings appeared - ones with lines to support both feet and hands, and even actual rope bridges, swaying in the breeze high above.

Eddie regarded one dubiously. ‘No way that’s been here for eleven thousand years. Rope bridges don’t last long if someone’s not maintaining them.’

‘You think someone’s been here more recently?’ Kit asked.

‘Looks like it.’ Nina went to one of the arched openings, examining the carvings beside it before shining the flashlight inside. ‘Most of these inscriptions are in Vedic Sanskrit . . . but there are others in Classical Sanskrit, which didn’t come into use until some time around four hundred BC.’

She entered the chamber, finding it piled high with the trash of centuries. The ground-level rooms would flood during the spring thaw, so anything left in them was apparently considered worthless by the valley’s inhabitants. Much of what she saw in the torch beam had rotted beyond recognition, but she caught a glint of metal and carefully extracted it from the garbage. ‘And look at this.’

‘A sword?’ said Eddie.

‘A scimitar, or what’s left of one.’ She examined the corroded hilt. ‘And there’s text on it - it looks Arabic. Parts of India were conquered by Muslims from the thirteenth century onwards, so this has to date from at least then.’

‘I didn’t think they came this far into the Himalayas,’ said Kit.

‘It might have been an expedition, looking for a trade route to China - or even searching for the Vault of Shiva. Who knows? But they obviously got this far.’ She returned the sword to its place, and they continued up the canyon.

More ropes crossed the valley overhead, and Eddie also spotted other lines hanging down between levels and across gaps where the stonework had broken away. Even as the place fell into ruin, it was clear that somebody had still been living there. But nothing they saw could provide a clear idea of when it had finally been abandoned.

That line of thought soon left their minds, though. The valley’s far end loomed through the murk, a near-vertical wall of dark rock three hundred feet high. A huge stone staircase had once risen to the height of the uppermost tiers, but the structure had now almost completely collapsed into a vast pile of rubble. The only way up to the jutting stub remaining at the very top was by navigating the intact sections of ledges along the valley’s sides, criss-crossing back and forth on the ropes and bridges to reach places where one could climb up to the next level. A three-dimensional maze, where one slip would result in a fatal plunge back to the start.

But what waited at the finish suggested that the journey would be worth the risks. ‘It’s Shiva,’ Nina gasped.

At the top of the ruined staircase was a broad ledge . . . and standing at its back, beneath the overhanging rockface, was an enormous statue of the Hindu god. Two-legged, but four-armed, the colossal figure was poised as if dancing. The sculpture, hewn from the rockface, stood sixty feet tall, towering over the bizarre settlement below. Its head was cocked at a steep angle, lips curved into a teasing half-smile that suggested it knew a secret . . . and was challenging onlookers to discover it.

Kit bowed his head in respect to the giant. ‘I would say we’ve found what we were looking for.’

Nina hurriedly took off her backpack and groped inside it. ‘Where’s the damn thing gone . . . here!’ She retrieved the replica of the key and held it up. ‘Look! It’s the same face, the same expression. This really is the key to the Vault of Shiva! We’ve got to get up there.’

Eddie surveyed the crumbled tiers. ‘Do you really want to risk climbing across on those ropes?’

‘There might be another way up, something we can’t see from the ground.’ She pointed at the ruins of the stairway. ‘See, we can get up to the second level on that, then we can get at least one floor higher if we use the carvings to climb up to that gap in the next ledge.’

‘And what if the whole lot comes down as soon as we put any weight on it?’

‘We’ll just have to hope Shiva was listening to Girilal when he asked him to look out for us.’

‘If Shiva really was watching out for us, he would have made it a nicer day.’ Eddie took in the dark grey sky above the canyon, snow-bearing clouds still scudding overhead. ‘And we’ve got less than an hour before it gets dark.’

‘I’m not going to just sit here,’ Nina said impatiently. ‘Let’s at least see how far we can get, okay? We’ll come back down before it gets dark and set up camp.’

‘All right, Christ!’ They headed for the base of the stairway. ‘Stick the rucksacks in that room there so we don’t have to lug them with us.’

Nina put the replica key in the inside pocket of her coat; then, the packs stowed, they started to ascend the rubble. It only took a few minutes to pick their way to the ledge on the second level. The carvings Nina had pointed out were an elaborate latticework with images of animals like bulls and elephants worked into the design. ‘It won’t be an insult to the big man up there if we use these as footholds, will it?’ Eddie asked Kit.

Kit smiled inside his fur-lined hood. ‘We’re here for a reason that will honour him, so I don’t think Lord Shiva will mind.’

‘Great. I like having God on my side. Any god.’ He brushed snow off the carvings and started to climb. ‘They’re all solid,’ he called back down from the next level.

Nina came next, breathing heavily with the exertion. Eddie helped her up, then did the same for Kit. ‘Okay, so now where?’ she said. The gap in the ledge through which they had climbed was too wide to jump, but it looked possible to climb across using the wall carvings to reach some dangling ropes further along.

Eddie tested the carvings, then picked his way carefully across the gap. The stone face of a cow crunched alarmingly when he stood on it; he hurriedly found an alternative foothold and completed the crossing. Avoiding the weak spot, Nina and Kit followed. By the time they were both on the other side, Eddie had tested the ropes to see if they would hold his weight.

‘Are they okay?’ Nina asked.

‘Too okay, if you ask me,’ he replied.

‘You think someone has been here recently?’ said Kit.

‘Yeah. In the last few years, definitely.’

‘Then somebody knows about this place,’ Nina said. ‘Girilal! That’d explain why he was trying so hard to persuade us not to come up here. He was worried we’d find it.’

‘He had the perfect cover,’ Kit mused. ‘He could watch everybody who came to Kedarnath or Gaurikund, and nobody would give a second thought to a yogi in either place.’

‘But he didn’t do anything to stop us, did he?’ said Eddie as he shimmied up the hanging ropes. ‘He could’ve killed us in our sleep if he’d wanted.’

‘Maybe . . . maybe he was warning us,’ Nina suggested, not liking the idea as soon as she said it.

Eddie looked down at her. ‘About what?’

‘I don’t know. I mean, we were in enough physical danger finding this place, but . . .’ She tried to dismiss the thought, and climbed up after Eddie.

Another room carved out of the cliff awaited her on the next tier, stone figures framing the arched entrance. As Kit climbed up, she shone her flashlight inside. It was considerably deeper than the ground-level chamber. Bundles of wood were stacked haphazardly near the doorway . . . but further back, the torch beam found something more regular.

Wooden boxes.

She advanced inside, bark fragments crunching under her boots. The boxes were old, the rough wood discoloured and mouldering, but the utilitarian construction was unmistakably the product of the industrial era. And as she got closer, she picked out words stencilled on them.

The language was English.

‘Nina? You coming?’ Eddie asked from the entrance.

‘Eddie, look at this.’ She crouched beside one of the boxes, reading part of the text. ‘“577/450 Martini-Henry”. Any idea what it means?’

‘It’s ammo,’ he told her. ‘Point five seven seven calibre with a four-fifty cal round. The Martini-Henry was a really old rifle.’

‘How old? And who used it?’

‘The British Empire. Don’t know exactly when - Victorian times, I suppose.’

She straightened. ‘Which means the colonial-era Brits found this place too. They definitely would have made a record of it . . . if they’d ever returned.’

‘You’re saying whoever lived here killed anyone who found it?’

‘Looks that way.’ They returned to the ledge, where Kit was waiting.

‘So who were they? And when did they leave?’

A faint sound reached them over the wind’s constant wail: an echoing whisper.

Growing louder.

More voices joined the sinister chorus, the mutterings coming from all round them. Metal scraped and clinked against stone.

‘I don’t think they did,’ Nina whispered.

Men emerged from the dark openings below them across the valley. Through the falling snow, the only details she could make out were that they all wore robes of dark blue and their heads were shaven.

Eddie looked down through the gap in the ledge. ‘Shit. There’s more of them underneath us.’

‘Who are they?’ Kit asked nervously.

‘Guardians,’ guessed Nina. ‘They protect the Vault of Shiva. And I think they’ve been doing it for a very long time.’

‘Maybe we can talk to them.’ Kit called down to the shadowy figures in Hindi. His words didn’t appear to have any effect, more men coming out of the chambers.

‘What did you say?’ Nina asked.

‘I told them I’m a police officer, and that we mean them no harm.’

‘I don’t think they believed you!’ Eddie cried. ‘Down!’

He pushed Nina to the floor. Something flashed across the narrow valley and clanged off the stonework just above them before spinning away. Kit ducked as another object scythed at him. It hit the wall with a ringing screech and landed in the snow beside Eddie. A flat hoop of gleaming steel about nine inches across, a chakram, inscribed with Sanskrit text - and with a razor-sharp outer edge, as Eddie discovered when he tried to pick it up.

‘Ow! Fuck this Xena bullshit,’ he growled as another chakram slashed overhead. He took out his gun. Their attackers clearly recognised the weapon, warning shouts prompting them to move into cover. He heard movement on the tier below and aimed the Wildey down through the gap. A robed figure darted out of sight.

‘What do we do?’ said Nina, anxiously watching the entrances on the far wall. Faces stared back at her from the shadows. Hiding in the nearby chamber was not an option: it had no other exits, an inescapable trap.

‘If I take a couple down, it should put the others off.’ Eddie pointed the gun at one of the archways, the faces instantly vanishing into darkness. ‘Just need a good shot . . .’

‘Eddie!’ Nina warned, seeing a man climbing through another gap in the ledge about forty feet away. Eddie whipped the gun round - as something heavy struck his hand with tremendous force and a savage bolt of pain surged up his arm.

The Wildey was jarred from his grip, clanging off the edge of the tier and tumbling down to the ground. ‘Buggeration and fuckery!’ Eddie spat, clutching his hand.

The object that had hit him lay nearby. It was a dumbbell-shaped piece of metal almost a foot long, the bulbous sections formed from four thick, curved arms. A vajra, another ancient Indian weapon, which could be held and used as a club - or hurled at a target.

The climber saw that he had disarmed his opponent - and reached over his shoulder to draw a sword from a sheath across his back.

‘Uh, I think we should go,’ said Nina, pulling urgently at Eddie’s sleeve.

‘Go where?’

‘There’s only one place we can - up!’ She started to scale the carved wall to the fifth level, Kit doing the same.

Eddie looked across the valley. The robed men emerged from cover, and began to climb the walls. The man who had thrown the vajra ran along the ledge towards him, sword raised.

He snatched up the Indian weapon and hurled it at the running man. The vajra hit him hard in the face with a dull clang. He collapsed, face bloodied.

Eddie was about to run to the fallen figure and get his sword when a fusillade of missiles from the other side of the canyon deterred him. He ducked to avoid another chakram and several fist-sized stones, then scrambled up the wall.

Nina was already hurrying along the next tier. ‘Eddie, this way!’ she shouted, reaching one of the rope bridges. Its widely spaced planks were coated with snow, icicles hanging from them.

‘Are you bloody mad?’ he gasped as Kit helped him up.

‘There isn’t a way up from here!’ This section of ledge was truncated by a gap far too wide to jump, and any carvings they could have used to shimmy across had also been scoured away by whatever had fallen from above.

‘Shit!’ He looked down. The guardians had the home advantage, knowing the fastest routes up through the different levels, and were quickly gaining. Across the valley, though, he spotted an intact stairway connecting the level opposite to the sixth tier. If they could find a way to the top level, they might be able to get across to the giant statue of Shiva . . . ‘Nina! That key - will it get us into the Vault?’

‘What?’ she asked, surprised. ‘I don’t know. Why?’ He pointed up at the enormous figure, frozen in its dance. ‘If we can get inside, we might be able to shut them out.’

‘But they’ll have a key too!’

‘Maybe we can jam the door. Go on, get across!’

She hesitantly took hold of one of the bridge’s guide ropes. ‘I don’t think this is safe . . .’

‘If they can use it, so can we!’ More stones hurtled across the gap, smacking against the wall. Eddie threw one back. It hit a climbing man; he screamed and fell to the ledge below. ‘Go!’

Nina put one foot on the first plank. It creaked, but held. Both hands clutching the ropes, she took another step, and another. Icicles cracked and fell away as she moved across.

‘You go next,’ Eddie told Kit, picking up another stone. The guardians seemed reluctant to attack Nina, concentrating their missiles on the two men. Maybe they were worried about damaging the bridge. He ducked another lump of rock, then looked back down. Some of the guardians were only two tiers below, running along the ledge to reach more ropes where they could continue their ascent.

Nina was over halfway across, taking the bridge step by frightening step. The planks were not regularly spaced, requiring her to look down to be sure of finding a foothold - which gave her a horrible swaying view of the ground fifty feet below. But she pressed on. Only fifteen feet to go . . .

Movement through the wafting snow. Guardians were scaling the ropes to the fourth tier, only one level below.

She quickened her pace, gasping ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ in time with each step. Two planks left, one, there! She looked back, seeing the progress of the guardians on the other side of the valley - and to her horror finding that they were not only more numerous, but closer. ‘Eddie!’ she yelled, jabbing a hand at the robed men rapidly picking their way up the wall. ‘They’re right behind you!’

‘Go!’ Eddie ordered Kit, waiting for him to traverse a couple of planks before following. The bridge juddered violently with the extra weight, more ice breaking free and exploding into shards on the hard ground below. ‘Nina, get up to the top!’ She was about to protest when the first guardian reached the ledge on the other side - and sent a chakram spinning at her like a lethal Frisbee. She shrieked and ducked, the disc whistling overhead to clang off the wall. She hopped up and hurried towards the stairs, jumping over the dogtoothed gaps in the stone.

Kit picked his way across the bridge, Eddie right behind him. A plank cracked alarmingly as the Indian stepped on it. He gasped, transferring his weight to the support ropes.

The bridge wobbled. Eddie clutched the ropes as one foot slipped off a plank, the wood painfully scraping the back of his calf. Kit looked back in alarm. ‘Keep going!’ Eddie told him, levering himself back up.

He waited for Kit to reach the second to last plank, then started after him. The bridge’s guitar-string vibration eased as they got closer to the end—

A plank snapped under his weight.

Eddie dropped before catching himself on the ropes, legs flailing helplessly in empty space. The bridge lurched violently, a whipcrack ripple running along its length - jolting his left hand from the ice-crusted rope.

Kit stopped on the final plank, looked back - then turned round. ‘No, keep going!’ Eddie shouted, but the Interpol agent was already returning.

Nina reached the stairs, a series of stone blocks jutting a foot out from the wall, and was about to climb them when she saw Eddie dangling from the bridge. She was on the verge of running back to help when she caught movement in her peripheral vision.

Above her. A man hung from one of the ropes between the uppermost tiers, legs wrapped over it as he pulled himself along. More guardians were starting across on other lines.

If any reached the top level before her, the explorers were doomed.

She ran up to the sixth tier, her eyes searching frantically for the next flight of steps.

Kit reached Eddie. He wound one of the support ropes round his arm, stretching out his other hand. The Englishman strained to lift himself up, his right fist clenching the quivering rope.

The bridge swayed. Another crack from under Kit’s feet. The plank was breaking—

Eddie lunged - and caught Kit’s hand.

The Indian pulled him up, the board moaning and splintering. Eddie brought up his foot and found support - not on the wood, but on one of the ropes supporting the planks. ‘Okay, get across, go!’ he shouted. Kit turned to complete his crossing.

Eddie looked for Nina. She was almost at the stairs to the top level—

What the hell? He saw a man seemingly hanging in mid-air, before realising he was traversing a rope to the top tier.

And would reach the ledge in front of Nina.

Kit reached the far side and stopped to wait for him. ‘No, go and help Nina!’ Eddie shouted as he continued across the bridge. ‘They’re gonna catch her!’ Kit saw the men on the ropes, then ran for the stairs.

Nina arrived on the highest tier. The top of the broken stairway leading to the statue was beyond its far end. She would have to jump the gap to reach it, but it looked an achievable distance.

If she could get there. The man on the rope was making alarming progress. She started to run. He was only ten feet from the ledge, effortlessly pulling himself closer. She ran faster, feet slithering in the snow. He would be at the ledge in moments. She had to get past him—

His hands reached the stone.

The guardian swung himself on to the ledge, revealing a sheathed sword across his back. Nina was still a few yards short. She tried to swerve past him before he could get to his feet - but he drew his sword and swung it to block her path.

She skidded to a stop. Another robed man had crossed the valley behind her. Trapped—

There was an arched entrance to another chamber just a few feet back. She darted inside. Some of the rooms went deeper into the mountain than others - maybe they were linked, by passages she could use to escape . . .

Not this one. She could see the back wall. Another storage area, objects piled at random.

The guardian was a deadly silhouette framed in the arched doorway.

Kit pounded along the sixth level, following Nina’s tracks. He passed a taut rope, one of the guardians halfway across. A glance down told him that Eddie had made it over the bridge—

Something dropped from the broken tier above.

It was a statue, pushed by a man on the next level. It blew apart like a bomb as it hit the ledge in front of him. Kit tried to hurdle it, but his foot clipped the heavy stone core and he tripped. He landed hard, sliding on the snow . . .

And going over the edge.

Running down the fifth tier, Eddie heard someone scream behind him. He looked back and saw Kit fall from the ledge above, plunging towards the ground—

He slammed to a stop as his leg caught in a bunch of tangled ropes, leaving him painfully hanging upside down forty feet in the air. More guardians were crossing the bridge.

Eddie hesitated, then ran back. ‘Kit! I’m coming!’

Nina retreated into the small room. The items within seemed to be the former property of previous adventurers unlucky enough to encounter the lost valley’s defenders. Mildewed clothing, rotten leather bags, wood and metal boxes, but nothing helpful.

The guardian entered the chamber. He didn’t seem angry, or triumphant - the only aura he gave off was that he was simply doing his job. He raised his sword.

An old rifle amongst the detritus. Nina snatched it up, spun, pulled the trigger—

A dry metal click. The gun was empty, and even if it had been loaded the barrel was scabbed with rust.

But it had still shocked the guardian into freezing, the corroded muzzle just inches from his throat. A relieved smile turned sardonic as his hand tightened round the sword’s hilt—

Nina jabbed the rifle at his neck with all her strength. The man’s eyes bulged in pain as he reeled back, choking. She whipped the gun round and swung it at his head. The vintage weapon’s wooden stock shattered with a very satisfying crack, pitching her erstwhile attacker into the piled garbage.

She raced back out. The guardian who had pushed the statue over the edge saw her and shouted commands to his comrades.

No sign of Eddie or Kit. Nina ran for the end of the tier. The top of the ruined stairway was across the gap. At the back of the ledge, she saw large stone doors between the statue’s feet, circular markings upon them. A lock?

She had a key.

The guardian was in pursuit. She pushed harder, angling at the tier’s corner to narrow the gap as much as possible. If she misjudged it, she would die.

Jump—

The valley floor rolled past seventy feet below . . .

Nina caught the very bottom step with her leading foot and threw herself forward. Her boot slipped on the snow. She fell, her cry abruptly cut off as she hit the unforgiving stone.

She slid down the ancient stairway, feet sweeping a miniature avalanche over the edge—

She clawed at the steps, finding snow, stone beneath - and a crack where a slab had been dislodged in the collapse. Nina stabbed her fingers into it. Her death-slide stopped, legs hanging over the void. She found a hold with her other hand and pulled herself up.

The guardian was still running along the uppermost tier. He would make his own jump in seconds. Nina staggered up to the deep, broad ledge and headed for the doors. There was a circular indentation at the centre of the carvings.

The same size as the replica key.

She pulled it from her coat. Behind her came a thump as the guardian cleared the gap and landed on the stairs, bounding up them after her.

Eddie reached Kit and grabbed the ropes. ‘Hang on!’

‘I’m hanging!’ Kit shouted back. ‘Eddie, they’re almost across the bridge!’

The first of the guardians was only a few steps short of the ledge. Looking up, he spotted Nina running for the statue - with a robed man chasing her. ‘Shit!’ He pulled harder—

One of the ropes, weakened by age and weather, snapped. Kit screamed, but jerked to a stop once more after falling only a foot, other lines entangling his ankle.

The first guardian was off the bridge, drawing a savage-looking knife. The man behind him had a sword. More men ran down the stairs towards the two intruders. The only possible escape route was down the ropes to the tier below - but Eddie couldn’t do that until Kit was free. He kept lifting. ‘Grab the ledge!’ he said. Kit bent at the waist, struggling to reach the icy stone. ‘Come on, you’ve almost got it!’

The other man’s fingers closed round a carved outcropping. Eddie let go of the ropes and grabbed his wrist, pulling him on to the ledge. He was safe.

But Kit didn’t even have time to say thanks. The first guardian reached them, lunging with his dagger—

Eddie jerked sideways, the blade slashing his padded sleeve. He whipped up one arm to knock the man’s hand away from him - and slammed his other fist into his face. The robed man fell on his back with a starburst of bright blood around his mouth.

Kit freed his leg, raising his own fists as he faced the group running in from the other direction. ‘What do we do?’

‘Climb down the rope,’ said Eddie.

‘We’ll never make it in time!’

‘Not if you keep yakking - go on! I’ll hold ’em off.’ He snatched up the downed man’s knife as Kit took hold of the rope and hopped over the edge, quickly shimmying down—

And scrambling back up again, even faster. ‘Eddie, there’s a man with a sword underneath me!’

Eddie held up the dagger - and another guardian mirrored his move, only with a blade about three times longer. More men approached from behind. ‘Well . . . arse.’

Nina reached the doors. What she had thought to be carvings were actually separate objects set into the stone: five large wheels arranged in a circle around the ‘keyhole’, smaller wheels set around their edges with dozens of words in Sanskrit written upon each one. What it meant, she had no time to wonder - all she could do was jam the replica key into the lock and hope something happened.

Nothing did.

The key was a perfect fit, but there were no pins or levers or other mechanisms inside the hole. The horrified realisation hit her that the key was symbolic, not physical - the wheels had to be aligned with the faces of Shiva and the five goddesses in a particular way. It was a combination lock.

And she didn’t know the combination.

Key in hand, she spun to find the guardian right behind her, his sword raised. She screamed—

The blow didn’t come. Instead, he held the blade to her throat and dragged her back to the top of the steps. She saw that Eddie and Kit had been captured as well, a dozen men surrounding them.

Her captor was apparently the leader, bellowing a command in Hindi. The others responded by seizing their prisoners and forcing them to the edge of the ledge. Eddie struggled, but a guardian smashed the hilt of a knife against his head.

Nina was thrust forward, wobbling on the brink. Eddie and Kit were shoved into similar precarious positions.

One push would hurl them to their deaths.

She heard her captor take in a breath to shout the order that would kill them.

24

‘Stop!’

The command didn’t come from the man behind Nina. It boomed up from the valley floor, echoing off the stone walls. She looked through the snow - and saw a single figure at the foot of the ruined stairway, dressed in simple orange robes.

Girilal.

The leader hesitated, not delivering the fatal push . . . but not pulling her back to safety either. He shouted down to the old man in Hindi, sounding angry - yet also somehow respectful. Girilal replied in kind, his voice commanding without a hint of chattering faux-lunacy.

Whatever he was saying, it worked. With a frustrated grunt, the leader stepped back, hauling Nina with him. Keeping his sword to her neck, he waved for the others to pull Eddie and Kit away from the edge.

To her shock, his next words were in English. ‘Come with me,’ he growled.

The prisoners were taken to one of the chambers cut into the mountainside. It was much deeper than the others Nina had seen, a passage leading from the archway into a large room with a sheet of animal skin hanging across the entrance to keep out the elements. Fires burned in alcoves carved in the walls, the smoke carried away through cracks above.

She counted at least twenty of the guardians. All were men, ranging from middle age to their teens. They wore the same dark blue robes and their heads were shaved, monk-like. But they were clearly not passive seekers after spiritual perfection. They were warriors, defending the valley to the death.

Another two men brought in Girilal, their attitudes a mix of contempt and deference. The yogi smiled at Nina, then began talking to the leader, his animation in stark contrast to the younger man’s stoic disapproval.

‘He knew about this lot all along,’ Eddie muttered. ‘And he didn’t bloody warn us.’

‘He did, though,’ said Nina. ‘He tried everything he could to put us off. But he couldn’t tell us about these people without confirming that the Vault of Shiva actually existed . . . which was exactly what he was trying to avoid.’

‘But who are they?’ Kit asked. ‘And what’s his connection to them?’

Girilal glanced across. ‘I will answer your questions soon. But first I have to persuade them not to kill you, so please be patient!’

‘I think we can give him a little more time,’ said Nina, nervously regarding the hostile faces surrounding them.

The two men conversed for several minutes before the leader, still clearly displeased by Girilal’s interference, stood before the trio. He was around thirty, tall, with a wiry muscularity. ‘I am Shankarpa,’ he said. ‘You say you are here to protect the Vault of Shiva?’ His English was halting, rusty.

‘Yes,’ Nina replied. ‘I’m Nina Wilde, the director of the United Nations’ International Heritage Agency.’ Shankarpa’s expression was one of incomprehension until Girilal provided an explanation in Hindi. ‘My job is to find important historical sites so they can be shown to the world - and protected from thieves.’

‘We protect the Vault from thieves,’ he told her firmly.

‘Yeah, we noticed,’ said Eddie. ‘You’re a bit more active than your average rentacops, though.’

Nina shushed him. ‘We’re not the only people looking for the Vault. Another group wants to steal the Shiva-Vedas. They’ve already killed to find out where they are, and they’ll kill you too if you try to stop them.’

The mention of the Vedas raised a commotion. ‘How do you know of the Shiva-Vedas?’ Shankarpa demanded.

‘From a man called Talonor. He visited Kedarnath thousands of years ago - the priests told him about the Vault, and showed him the key.’ She indicated the replica amongst their confiscated possessions.

He picked it up, holding the faces of the gods to the firelight. ‘Where did you find this?’ The question was accusing, as if it had been taken from him personally.

Nina decided to simplify the explanation. ‘Talonor pressed the key into a sheet of gold - this is a copy made from it.’

‘A copy?’ He tapped the dense plastic. ‘It is not the real key?’

‘No, it - wait, you don’t have the real key?’

‘It was lost long ago,’ he said, glowering.

‘Hold on,’ said Eddie. ‘You mean you’re guarding the Vault of Shiva . . . but you can’t get into it yourselves?’ He laughed sarcastically. ‘How do you even know there’s anything in it?’

‘Nobody can enter the Vault without the key,’ Shankarpa said angrily. ‘The doors have been closed for over a thousand years - and no outsiders have ever lived to reach them. Until today.’

‘But now you have the replica, can you open it?’ asked Nina.

Now his dark expression had a hint of shame. ‘That secret . . . is lost too.’

‘Well, that’s one way to keep the place safe,’ Eddie said mockingly. ‘But if the bad guys find it, they’ll just blow the doors open.’

‘We will protect the Vault,’ Shankarpa insisted. ‘We have watched over it since Lord Shiva placed his sacred possessions here.’

‘How can you have been here all this time?’ asked Kit. ‘There are no plants to eat, no animals.’

‘No women,’ Eddie added. ‘You’d have to be pretty bloody dedicated to spend your lives up here.’

‘They are,’ said Girilal, leaning on his stick. ‘The guardians come from the villages around the mountain - it is our great secret.’ Shankarpa said something in Hindi, a clear order for him to shut up, but the old man shook his head. ‘Not everybody knows, only a trusted few. We - they watch the children of their village for those worthy of the honour of protecting the Vault of Shiva. If they are willing, they are trained by the other guardians, and spend the rest of their lives here.’

‘You said we,’ Eddie noted. ‘You’re one of them?’

‘I was. No more.’

‘Why not?’ asked Nina.

‘I made a mistake. I thought I was doing the right thing, but . . .’ He sighed, shaking his head sadly. ‘I hurt someone I loved, took away the thing that was most important to her. I have tried to seek forgiveness, but do not think I can ever find it. So I wander between Kedarnath and Gaurikund as a mad old man, ignored . . . or insulted.’

‘Your own penance,’ Nina realised. ‘But for what?’

Girilal turned to Shankarpa, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘For him, Dr Wilde. Shankarpa’s real name is Janardan. Janardan Mitra. He is my son.’

Night fell outside, the rumble of the storm fading. In the underground chamber, Girilal had persuaded Shankarpa that the three visitors should be allowed to live.

For the moment. The guardians’ constant looks of suspicion as they ate told them they were still only one barked order away from death.

‘Where do they get the food?’ Nina asked Girilal. ‘We saw some ground on the way up that looked as if it might once have been cultivated, but it can’t have been used for hundreds of years.’

‘The villages provide it,’ the yogi explained. ‘A few times each year, some of the guardians come to Kedarnath, dressed as pilgrims, to collect it.’

‘It’s not exactly a feast,’ said Eddie, looking at the meagre bowls of vegetables and rice. ‘What do you do if you run out of food and the weather’s too bad to get down the mountain?’

‘Lord Shiva gives us the strength we need to survive,’ rumbled Shankarpa.

‘Maybe, but I’d take a can of beans over faith any day.’

‘Eddie,’ Nina warned. The last thing they needed was to antagonise their captors. ‘Girilal, you said you hurt someone you loved. I’m guessing you meant Shankarpa’s mother.’

He nodded. ‘It was my own fault. I thought it was right to tell my wife about the Vault, and that she could be trusted to keep the secret. She could - she is a better person than me. But my mistake . . .’ He looked at Shankarpa. ‘My mistake was also telling our son. Our only child. He was young, he was headstrong, and he thought a lifetime of serving Lord Shiva as a warrior would be better than living in a poor village.’

‘And it is,’ said Shankarpa firmly. His English had already become less stiff, the mere act of speaking it unlocking old memories. ‘Would you rather I carried tourists up the mountain on my back for a few rupees?’

‘There is no shame in serving others,’ his father told him, before addressing Nina again. ‘He had made up his mind. When he was old enough, I agreed that he could join the guardians. He gave up everything to serve Shiva, and I was happy for him. But there was someone who was not.’

‘His mother,’ said Nina.

Girilal lowered his head. ‘Yes. I did not discuss it with her until the decision was already made. I thought she would feel like me, that she would be honoured to have Janardan chosen for such a great task. I was wrong.’

‘She was losing her son.’

‘Yes. And she hated me for it. I took away what was most precious to her, without even thinking. After that, she . . . she did not want to speak to me again. She left me.’ He looked up; Nina saw that his eyes were glistening with tears. ‘I hurt her more than I could have imagined. That is why I became what I am - I gave everything I owned to her. But it was not enough. Nothing I could give her could ever replace her child. I sought forgiveness . . . but I will never get it. I do not deserve it.’

Shankarpa was unmoved. ‘She never understood what it means to serve Shiva. She was weak.’

‘Do not speak of her like that!’ Girilal snapped. The other guardians reacted with surprise at the challenge to their leader, and even Shankarpa was taken aback by the anger in the old man’s voice. The yogi took a breath, then continued more quietly. ‘I am sorry. I did not mean to shout. You made your decision, as I made mine. The difference is . . . you did not regret it.’

‘No, I did not.’ His dark eyes flicked across to Nina, Eddie and Kit. ‘What do we do with you, hmm? My father thinks you can be trusted. But why should I?’

‘Protecting secrets is part of what we do,’ said Nina. ‘We stopped a catastrophe that would have killed billions of people, and kept it a secret to prevent global panic.’

‘And this guy Khoil and his wife,’ added Eddie, ‘they’ve got a catastrophe of their own in mind, and they’re dead set on getting hold of what’s behind that statue up there before they kick it off.’

‘If the Khoils can’t get the Shiva-Vedas, they might not go ahead with whatever they’re planning.’

‘If it is Shiva’s will,’ said Shakarpa, ‘who are we to stop it?’

‘But it isn’t Shiva’s will,’ Nina replied. ‘It’s the Khoils’ will - and they’re very definitely not gods. They don’t want to destroy the world so it can be reborn. They just want money and power for themselves. I doubt Shiva would approve.’

He nodded slowly. ‘If you are telling the truth about these people, what can we do to stop them?’

‘Nothing,’ said Eddie. ‘If they find this place, first thing they’ll do will be airlift in mercenaries. Lots of ’em. With lots of guns.’

Shankarpa sat back, mulling their words over before speaking in Hindi to his companions. The discussion went on for some time, varying degrees of disagreement emerging.

‘What’re they saying?’ Nina asked Kit.

‘They’re deciding whether they can trust us, and, if we’re telling the truth about the Khoils, what they can do to stop them.’ He listened to the conversation for a few moments, unsettled. ‘They are also still arguing about whether or not they should kill us. Some of them have very strong feelings about it.’

Nina noticed the man she had hit with the rifle glaring at her, an ugly purple bruise on his throat. ‘Yeah, I figured that. Good thing we didn’t actually kill any of them.’

Girilal leaned closer, lowering his voice. ‘I think he will let you live.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘He is my son. I have to believe that he will do what is right.’ Eddie watched the debate. None of the factions appeared particularly pro-mercy. ‘Just hope you were a better dad than you give yourself credit for . . .’

It was several minutes before Shankarpa reached a decision, shouting down the more vocal objectors. ‘If we let you live,’ he said to Nina, ‘what will you do for us in return?’

‘The first thing will be to tell the Indian government and the United Nations about this place. It will still be a secret,’ she pressed on, seeing he already had very strong reservations. ‘We won’t go public. But if the UN knows about the Vault, we can protect it.’

Shankarpa didn’t seem convinced. ‘And what else?’

‘If you’ll let us, we can try to open the Vault.’ She indicated the replica key.

He laughed in disbelief. ‘You want the guardians of the Vault of Shiva to help you open its door?’

‘All the Khoils want are the Shiva-Vedas. We can take them someplace secure. If they’re not here - and they know that - they’ll have no reason to come. Whatever other treasures are in the Vault will be safe.’

‘And why should you be trusted with the sacred words of Lord Shiva over this man Khoil?’

‘Because the Khoils want to use them to gain power. But I want to show them to the entire world,’ she said defiantly. ‘Everyone will be able to read the teachings of Shiva. Isn’t that what he would want?’

‘She is telling the truth,’ Girilal added. ‘She is very famous for this. Even in Kedarnath!’

‘I can help you,’ Nina insisted. ‘If you let me.’

Shankarpa remained deep in thought for a long moment. ‘I will . . . let you try to open the Vault,’ he finally said. ‘Tomorrow, when it is light.’ ‘And what if we can’t get in?’ Eddie asked.

A thin smile. ‘Then you will die.’

He nudged Nina. ‘No pressure on you then, love.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

‘If others come, we will protect the Vault, as we always have,’ said Shankarpa. ‘And we will have more than just our swords.’ Eddie’s Wildey was amongst the group’s belongings, the guardians knowing enough about firearms to have removed the magazine and ejected the chambered round.

‘You’ll need more than just one gun,’ Nina said.

‘Perhaps we have more. But if you open the Vault, we may not need them.’ He issued an order. Several men stood and surrounded the prisoners. ‘They will take you to a room where you can sleep.’ He smiled coldly. ‘Enjoy your stay.’

In contrast to the previous day, the slash of morning sky above the valley walls was a deep, empty blue. Sunlight turned the snow above almost to gold. But the warm glow didn’t reach into the depths of the narrow canyon; even the giant statue of Shiva, standing beneath the overhang, was shrouded in eternal shadow.

Accompanied by Shankarpa and Girilal, and escorted by about half of the guardians, Nina, Eddie and Kit made the laborious ascent to the broad ledge at Shiva’s feet. Nina had the replica key with her, as well as some of her archaeology tools, but she had no idea how much use the latter would be. She suspected the lock was not one that could be picked.

Even in the shade, enough diffuse light came down from above for her to get a good look at the door. The lock was far more complex than she had realised. A circular hole at its centre for the key, five large wheels arranged around it in a pattern resembling a flower - and round their circumferences were smaller ones, twenty in all, the ‘parent’ wheels sharing one with each of their neighbours where they touched.

But the complexity didn’t end there. Each small wheel was divided into three pieces: two eye-shaped sections aligned with the rim of the bigger disc, and a third like the central pinch of an hourglass between them to fill in the rest of the circle. The edge of each ‘eye’ had ten words in Vedic Sanskrit carved into it, the ends of the hourglass another five. Thirty words per disc, twenty discs . . . six hundred words in all.

Somehow, they had to be arranged in the right combination. What that combination might be, Nina had absolutely no idea.

She reached up to one of the large discs, and, after getting a silent nod from Shankarpa, turned it. Metal and stone grated behind the surface, some kind of undulating runner system lifting it - and the smaller discs it carried - outwards as it rotated, just enough to clear the neighbouring wheels before dropping back down into the next position. By turning the smaller discs through a hundred and eighty degrees and then rotating the big wheels, each eye section could be swapped between them and moved to any part of the lock. It was an extremely complicated, but also incredibly clever, piece of ancient engineering.

‘I think I see what you have to do,’ she announced.

‘Glad you do,’ said Eddie, bewildered. ‘I haven’t got a clue. All this Professor Layton crap does my head in.’

‘It’s not that complicated, really.’ She inserted the key into the central hole with the carvings of the Hindu gods facing outwards. ‘See? Five goddesses, five small wheels and five big ones. Presumably, you have to position all the wheels correctly to open the lock. It’s just a matter of figuring out the right combination of these words.’

‘Oh, that all? Doddle.’

‘How many combinations are there?’ Kit asked.

‘Let’s see. Six hundred words, so the factorial of six hundred.’

Shankarpa stepped closer, examining the mechanism in a new light. ‘What does that mean?’

‘The factorial? It’s the number of possible combinations of a number of items. If you had four, the factorial would be four times three times two times one - twenty-four. Five would be five times four times three, and so on - one hundred and twenty.’

Eddie’s brow crinkled as he tried - and immediately failed - to extend the sequence to the puzzle. ‘So six hundred times five nine nine times five nine eight . . . Christ, I can’t even do the first one without my head hurting.’

Nina’s mental arithmetic skills were considerably better. ‘Six hundred times five hundred and ninety-nine is three hundred and fifty-nine thousand four hundred. Multiply that by five hundred and ninety-eight and you get, uh . . .’ She frowned herself as the numbers very rapidly grew beyond even her ability to handle them in her head. ‘Hold on, let me write this down.’

She took a notebook and pen from her pack. But it didn’t take long for her to admit defeat. ‘O-kay. Let me put it this way. If you said a trillion—’

‘There’s a trillion combinations?’ Eddie interrupted. ‘Bloody hell!’

‘I’m not finished. If you said a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, and kept on saying trillion over a hundred times more, that’s how many variations there are. If you tried one combination every second for the five billion years before the sun explodes and destroys the planet, you couldn’t even do one per cent of them.’

‘That’s a bit of an overkill way to open the doors.’

She smiled a little. ‘If something’s too much overkill even for you, it must be bad.’

‘We don’t have five billion years to spare, though. There must be a quicker way.’

‘You’re right. Whoever built it wouldn’t have made a lock so complex that even the people protecting it wouldn’t be able to figure it out.’ She looked at Shankarpa. ‘Have you ever tried to open it?’

‘A few have tried,’ he said, ‘but without the key, the secret has been lost.’

Her gaze slowly circled the pattern of interlocking wheels, then went to the centre. She examined the keyhole. ‘So the key is the key.’

‘Duh,’ said Eddie.

‘If you’ll pardon the pun. But it can’t be a coincidence that the faces of the goddesses on the key line up with the wheels. They’re a clue. Maybe you don’t need to have the entire thing in an exact configuration - just match each goddess to one particular word. What do the words say?’

Girilal ran his finger around one of the small wheels, reading the ancient text. ‘Many different things. “Moon, waterfall, sadness, dog, travelling, invincible, stranger, yellow . . .” ’

‘They’re completely random,’ said Kit. ‘Maybe they have to be arranged into a sentence?’

‘I don’t think Shiva would have designed his vault’s lock around a game of Mad Libs. It’s something simpler than that, to do with the goddesses . . .’ It struck Nina that she had yet to ask the obvious question. ‘Who are the goddesses?’

Shankarpa pointed them out. ‘Parvati; Uma; Durga; Kali; Shakti.’

‘Shiva’s wives. And if you had to describe each of them in a single word,’ Nina went on, excitement rising as the solution came to her, ‘are those words on any of the wheels?’

‘Durga is the invincible warrior-mother,’ said Girilal. Shankarpa almost shoved his father aside as he darted closer to examine the wheels. ‘The words! We have to find the right words!’

‘Talonor didn’t get it quite right,’ Nina realised. ‘What he wrote in the Codex was a misinterpretation, a mistranslation - it’s not the “love of Shiva” you need to know to open the Vault. It’s the “loves”, or “lovers” - the wives of Shiva! If you don’t know their stories, you’ll never find the right combination.’ She hurriedly turned her notebook to a new page. ‘We need to know the words - all of them.’

‘Six hundred words?’ Eddie said. ‘That’ll take a while.’

‘You got an appointment?’ She took her pen and started writing as Girilal began to recite the words.

‘Rat.’

‘Rat,’ Nina repeated, writing it down.

‘Hmm . . . dust.’

‘Dust.’ After thirty minutes, her list was a little over half complete. The tedium of the task had overcome the initial thrill, most of the guardians sitting contemplatively at the statue’s feet waiting for her and Girilal to finish. Kit was hunched up in his thick coat, half asleep, while Eddie paced impatiently around the ledge. Even Shankarpa, watching his father work, showed signs of boredom.

‘Smiling.’

‘Smiling.’

‘Ah . . . now, let me think,’ said Girilal, finger pausing over one particular word. ‘Some sort of bird. It could be “buzzard”, or it could be . . .’

‘Helicopter,’ said Eddie.

Nina glanced at him. ‘I don’t think that’s quite right, Eddie.’ ‘No, I mean I can hear a helicopter. Listen.’

She strained to hear as Shankarpa called for silence. A faint thudding became audible, the unmistakable chop of rotor blades. ‘And I thought you were worried about your hearing,’ she whispered to Eddie.

‘It’s high frequencies that’re knackered. Low ones aren’t a problem. Yet. And choppers aren’t exactly quiet.’

‘Is it Khoil?’ asked Kit, standing.

Nina anxiously stared at the ragged banner of blue above the canyon. There was an outside chance that the helicopter’s arrival at the hidden valley was just a coincidence . . . but she wouldn’t have wasted even a single dollar betting on it.

The noise drew closer, echoing from the valley walls. The whine of engines rose beneath the pounding blades. A shadow flicked across the sunlit summit of one of the cliffs as the helicopter passed overhead, and was gone. The engine shrill faded.

Nina exchanged a look of relief with Eddie . . .

The sound’s pitch changed. The helicopter was coming back.

‘Get into cover!’ said Eddie, waving the guardians into the shadows. The approaching rotor noise was louder, the aircraft descending.

The shadow reappeared on the cliff, moving more slowly. The helicopter was above them. A fine spray of snow whipped down from the overhanging rock, caught in the downwash.

Eddie watched as the crystalline fall moved from one side of the ledge to the other. ‘It’s circling,’ he said. ‘They’re trying to get a better look into the valley.’ He advanced a few steps, looking up past the overhang. ‘I can see it - they’re coming round! Everyone get back!’

He retreated as the helicopter’s lazy orbit brought it over the far end of the valley. It was civilian, painted red and white with a rather bulbous fuselage that reminded him of a fat, short-billed bird in flight. He didn’t know the type, which meant it had entered service after he left the SAS; aircraft recognition was a standard part of military training.

One thing was clear, though. It belonged to the Khoils. The Qexia logo was emblazoned on its side.

The chopper drifted across the canyon. Eddie glimpsed a face behind the side window, sunlight glinting off a camera lens. It disappeared from view behind the cliff above, blowing down another swirling sheet of snow, then the engines increased power and it flew off to the south.

Nina ran to the top of the stairway, but it was already out of sight. ‘Did they see the statue?’

‘Even if they didn’t, they still got pictures,’ Eddie said grimly. ‘Couple of minutes in Photoshop and they’ll be able to brighten things up enough to spot it. And soon as they do . . .’

‘They’ll be back. In force.’ Nina hurried to the door. ‘We don’t have much time,’ she told Shankarpa. ‘We’ve got to figure this out, fast.’

Girilal resumed his work with more urgency, Nina hurriedly scribbling down each new word. The remainder took only twenty minutes to translate. ‘Okay,’ she said, flicking back through the pages, ‘we’ve got five goddesses, and six hundred possible words to describe them. Let’s narrow it down.’

It was a tortuous process. Shankarpa told the other men what they needed to do, but everybody had slightly different views of the goddesses. There were multiple words that could apply to each of them; Kali, for instance, fitted the descriptions of ‘black’, ‘death’, ‘terrifying’, ‘salvation’, ‘rage’ and ‘uncontrollable’, and the other four Hindu figures had similarly varied lists.

Nina wrote each set on a separate page, tearing them from the notebook and lining them up in front of the door. ‘Well, it’s a start,’ she said. ‘Eddie, how long do you think we have before that helicopter comes back?’

‘Depends where it’s going, and if Khoil’s all set up to go or if he needs to put a team together.’

‘If he’s flying from Delhi,’ Kit said, ‘it would take about an hour. And that would be the logical place for him to assemble his men.’

‘Then we need to start trying the lock,’ said Nina. ‘Okay, so each goddess has got several words that could be used to describe them. But what are the best words? When you think of Kali, say, what’s the first word that comes to mind?’

‘Death,’ said Eddie immediately.

‘You’re just saying that because of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.’

‘No, he is right,’ Shankarpa said. ‘Kali is the goddess of death, the destroyer of evil.’

‘The destroyer of ego,’ Girilal corrected. ‘She is like the mother who sees when her children have bad in them - and drives it out. If you face Kali and you are not pure, if you fear her because you know you have done something that deserves punishment . . . she will destroy you.’

‘Glad my mum wasn’t that strict,’ Eddie said.

‘So, the word representing Kali is “death”,’ said Nina. ‘Okay, we have to get the segment with the word “death” on it around to the wheel next to Kali, and then line it up with her. Let’s see . . .’

She turned the appropriate large wheel, bringing the smaller disc to the position where it was shared with an adjoining wheel. A half-turn of the little disc switched the eye section on to the new carrier; two turns anticlockwise brought it to a third large wheel, and a final anticlockwise move placed it next to the key. Nina rotated the small wheel to align the word with the goddess. There was a moment of almost comical silence as the onlookers all held their breath, but nothing happened.

‘I suppose it was too much to hope that we’d hear a big click,’ she said. ‘What are the other words?’

Several minutes of debate produced - more or less - a consensus. Parvati was represented by the word ‘love’. While Uma prompted some argument over whether she, Parvati or Shakti best fit the term, she was eventually agreed to embody ‘motherhood’. Shakti herself was attributed with ‘femininity’ - though as Girilal pointed out with a smile, the word could also be interpreted as ‘sexuality’. Finally, Durga, the fearless warrior, was ‘invincible’.

With Kali’s part of the combination already in place, the task now was to bring the other pieces to where they belonged. Nina took a step back, puzzling out the sequence of turns needed to bring everything into the right place. There was a certain Rubik’s Cube quality to the task, as without careful planning, moving one word into position at the centre could carry another away.

But she was sure she could do it.

Snow was rubbed into the chosen words to mark them, so all Nina had to do was switch them from wheel to wheel to bring them into the correct positions, then rotate the smaller discs to line up the precise word with each goddess. In an odd way, she realised as she worked, she was almost enjoying herself. Shankarpa and the other guardians didn’t seem any better disposed to her, and there was the looming threat that helicopters laden with armed men could thunder overhead at any moment, but the immediate challenge was a purely intellectual one.

After five minutes, one more turn brought the last wheel into alignment. ‘Okay, almost done!’ she said. Now that all five were in position, she could turn them to line up the individual words. Kali was already paired with the word ‘death’, and one by one she turned the others. Shakti, Uma, Durga . . . and finally Parvati.

Another breathless silence . . .

And again, nothing happened.

‘Buggeration and fuckery,’ she muttered.

Eddie gave her a surprised look, then drew back to check the rest of the door, aware that the guardians were now watching him more mistrustfully than ever. ‘There’s not a handle we’re supposed to turn?’

‘This is all there is,’ said Shankarpa.

‘Try another combination,’ Kit suggested, urgency entering his voice as he nervously regarded the men surrounding them. ‘Shakti might be “motherhood”, not Uma.’

‘I don’t think it’ll make any difference,’ said Nina. They had overlooked something. But what?

Shankarpa interrupted her thoughts, pushing her back from the door. ‘You have failed.’

‘Wait a minute, mate,’ Eddie said, moving towards him - only to have several sharp blades raised to his neck. ‘She’s good at this stuff, but even she doesn’t always get it first time. I once nearly fell into a pit full of spikes ’cause she couldn’t tell her left from her right.’