The Messiah Secret - James Becker [90]
‘You still look like a jet-lagged zombie,’ she said, putting her arms round him. ‘Just a clean-shaven zombie, which is only marginally better. Come on. Let’s go and find the business centre.’
Downstairs, the receptionist directed them to a small room off to one side of the lobby. Inside were two desktop computers, a fax machine and a laser printer. Angela sat down in front of one of the desktop machines, and plugged a memory stick into one of the USB ports. A few moments later, the printer hummed and began feeding pages into the output tray.
Angela and Bronson knew they had to act as tourists and join the increasing numbers of Westerners drawn to the Leh region of India by its stark and untamed beauty. But they realized that two Westerners wandering about unescorted in some parts of that area, which had a massive military presence because of the sensitivity of the nearby borders with China and Pakistan, might well attract attention – official and otherwise. They also knew they would have to leave the tourist routes to find what they were looking for, so Angela had come up with a cover story that might help.
She had already prepared a mission statement on her laptop, basing it on one of several previous documents she had stored on her back-up disk.
The printer fell silent. Angela retrieved her memory stick, clipped the printed sheets together and tucked them in her handbag. The finished document ran to about a dozen pages and, together with her British Museum identification, it would, she hoped, be enough to satisfy any official who stopped them. According to the statement, the purpose of their journey was to carry out a preliminary survey of the evidence for pre-Indus Valley civilizations in the Jammu and Kashmir regions of India, and to determine whether a full-scale investigation in the area would be justified. The Indus Valley itself ran just to the south of Leh, so it was a plausible explanation.
Such initial explorations occurred on a regular basis all over the world and that would hopefully be enough to keep them out of trouble. Of course, one telephone call back to the British Museum would immediately destroy their cover story, because nobody there had the slightest idea about where Angela was or what she was doing. Neither was there any official approval for any museum investigation in Kashmir, or anywhere else in northern India, for that matter.
The hotel restaurant was closed, so they stepped outside. Bronson was surprised to discover that it was late evening – his biological clock was telling him something completely different. The evening air was pleasantly cool, and they found a decent-looking restaurant that was still serving dinner without having to walk very far.
‘The first thing we have to do is get ourselves up to Leh,’ Angela said, unfolding a map of the Indian sub-continent on the restaurant table between them and pointing at a spot right up in the Jammu and Kashmir territory, at the very northern tip of India. This area was bordered by China to the east and by Pakistan to the north and west. ‘We’ll have to use Leh – or somewhere very near it – as our base, I think.’
Bronson studied the map, measuring distances by eye and using the scale that ran across the bottom of the sheet.
‘How do we do that? Fly up to Delhi and then take a train?’ he asked.
‘No – we can fly straight there. Leh’s been open to visitors – by which I mean tourists – since the seventies, and it’s actually a fairly big town. The whole area has become really popular with what you might call “adventure tourists” – the kind of people who don’t expect hot water or comfortable beds at the places they stay. There’s an airport, for domestic flights only, a few miles south of the town.’
‘Let’s see if we can take a direct flight tomorrow morning. Once we’re in Leh, we’ll have to hire a four-wheel-drive jeep because I think we’ll find there are very few roads or even tracks once you start climbing.
‘Now,’ Bronson continued, ‘you spent ages on the internet but you still haven’t told me what you’ve found out.’ He looked