The Sacred Vault

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-a-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