Ben Hope. Scott Mariani

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СКАЧАТЬ his fingers and surveyed it with a thoughtful frown. ‘Just think. If I chuck this away among the rocks, four thousand years into the future some guy like us will dig it up and prize it as an ancient relic of our culture, wondering what the hell it can teach him about the long-lost civilisation of the twenty-first century.’

      Kabir smiled. ‘That’s history in action for you. Now let’s go and see what we can figure out about the people who lived here four thousand years ago.’

      ‘I don’t think they drank Coke,’ Manish said.

      ‘Nah, something else killed them off,’ Sai joked. ‘Question is, what?’

      It was one of the puzzles that Kabir had spent his whole career trying to answer, and it was no joke to him. Nor was he the only archaeologist who’d devoted endless hours to solving the mystery, to no avail. He tossed his own empty Coke can back into the cooler, then took out his iPhone and quickly accessed the precious set of password-protected documents stored inside.

      Those documents were the single most important thing in his life right now. The originals from which they had been scanned were a set of three old leather-bound journals dating back to the nineteenth century. Not particularly ancient, as archaeological finds went – and yet their chance discovery had been the most significant he’d ever made. And he was hoping that it would lead to an even bigger one.

      Outside of Manish and Sai, Kabir trusted virtually no one with his secret. The precious journals themselves were still back in the city, securely locked up in his personal safe while their new custodian travelled out to this arid wilderness, full of excitement and determined to find out if the amazing revelations of their long-dead author were indeed true.

      Only time would tell. Sooner rather than later, he hoped. His eagerness to know the truth sometimes bordered on desperation. Yes, it was an obsession. He knew that. But sometimes, he reminded himself, that’s what it takes to get the job done.

      Shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare, Kabir slowly scanned the horizon. The chopper was parked on a rocky plateau from where the ground fell away into a rubble-strewn valley. Heat ripples disturbed the air like tendrils rising from the ground, but he was able to make out the curve of the ancient dry river bed that wound for miles into the far distance. Millennia ago, a mighty waterway had flowed through here, nourishing the land and raising lush vegetation all along its banks. Now it was so parched and dusty that even looking at it made Kabir thirsty for another cold drink.

      He looked back at the iPhone and scrolled through the selection of documents until he came to the scan of the hand-drawn map from one of the journals. The hundred and eighty-plus years it had lain undiscovered had done considerable damage. A lot of the pages had been nibbled around the edges by mildew and rodents. Others were so badly faded and water-stained as to be barely legible. Kabir had used specialised computer software to enhance the details, and a UV camera to photograph the worst-affected sections. He’d been pleased with the results. The digitised map now looked as sharp and clear as the day the journal’s author had sketched it. The only modification Kabir had made was to insert modern GPS coordinates in place of the original latitude and longitude figures that the author had calculated using the tools of his day, stars and compass.

      The map’s key feature was the undulating, meandering curve of a river whose line, as Kabir stood there comparing the two, closely resembled that of the dry bed that stretched out in front of him.

      ‘What do you reckon, boss?’ Sai, at his shoulder, was gazing at the screen of the iPhone.

      ‘I think we might have found it, boys,’ Kabir replied. His voice was calm but his heart felt ready to leap out of his chest. He took a couple of deep breaths, then started leading the way down the rocky slope towards the river valley. He ran five miles every day and was as nimble as a mountain goat over the rough terrain. Sai was markedly less so, being overly partial to calorie-laden Delhi street food, and Manish was a city kid too used to level pavements. Slipping and stumbling and causing little rock slides under their feet, they manfully followed their leader down the hillside. By the time they reached the bottom, Kabir was already tracking along the river bed, walking slowly and scanning left and right as though searching for clues.

      It was hard to believe that such an arid and inhospitable area could have once been a major centre of one of the largest and most advanced cultures of the ancient world. But that was exactly what it was.

      To say that the lost Harappan or Indus Valley Civilisation was Kabir’s overriding interest in life would have been a crashing understatement. Long, long ago, over a stretch of time spanning one and a half thousand years during the second and third millennia BCE, the culture had thrived throughout the north-western parts of South Asia. Their empire had been larger than that of Mesopotamia; greater even than that of ancient Egypt or China. It had covered a vast area comprising parts of what were today Afghanistan, Pakistan and north-west India. At its peak, it was thought to support a population of five million inhabitants, which by ancient standards was enormous.

      And yet, virtually nothing was known about these people. Nobody even knew what they called themselves, let alone how they organised their society. The most baffling enigma of all was the question of what had finally caused their whole civilisation to crumble and disappear in an astonishingly short time.

      For years, it had been widely assumed in the archaeology world that the main centres of the Indus Valley Civilisation had been the excavated cities at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, both in Pakistan. This had been a major frustration for archaeologists from India, since tensions between the two nations made it hard for them to travel freely in their neighbouring country. More recently, important finds made at Rakhigarhi in India’s Haryana region had radically changed that view. Many historians and archaeologists now believed that the sheer size of the site excavated at Rakhigarhi, and the wealth of incredible, priceless artefacts found under its dusty, rocky ground, pointed to its having once been the capital of the entire civilisation. If that was true, as Kabir fervently wished it was, then it might offer scholars the opportunity to finally start figuring out the secrets of the ancient lost culture.

      Exactly what he hoped to find here, all this way from the main Rakhigarhi site, Kabir couldn’t say for certain. All his hopes were pinned on the remarkable journals, which described ‘a vast treasure most precious to all men on earth’. The man who’d penned those words had been one of the most important explorers of his generation. If his claims were right, Kabir could be standing, literally, on top of the biggest and most valuable archaeological find ever.

      Treasure. The excitement he felt at the sound of that word took his breath away.

      But even once he found it, getting it out of the ground would be no easy task. Kabir had already made some private, tentative enquiries among his contacts in the Indian government. They were unlikely to agree to fund a new excavation project, but as long as they agreed in principle, Kabir was more than willing to pay for it out of his own pocket. His very own private dig, fully under his own supervision. He calculated that to bring in sufficient manpower and equipment to get things rolling would cost him at least a hundred million rupees, equivalent to about one and a half million American dollars.

      Kabir didn’t blink at those figures. The benefits of being born into wealth.

      Manish and Sai caught up with him and the three of them walked on, following the river bed. Each man was silent, gazing at the rocky ground underfoot and imagining what wonders might be hidden below. It was a heady feeling. Finally, Manish said, ‘Wow, boss, you really think it’s here somewhere?’

      Kabir said nothing. He was gazing into the distance as he walked. His step slowed, then slowed again, and he halted, his eyes still fixed on some faraway point on the rocky horizon to the south-west of the river valley. He frowned. СКАЧАТЬ