The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [56]
‘Don’t hurt her!’ Vanita warned.
‘I won’t, my beloved,’ Khoil replied, a hint of impatience in his flat voice. The camera drew closer.
The tiger looked up, a noise catching its attention—
He pulled a trigger on one of the sticks. A flat whap came over the speakers, the image jolting backwards. When it settled again, the tiger had released the goat and was trying to run back into the jungle - but only got a few yards before drunkenly flopping to the ground. A silver dart protruded from its flank.
‘She is down,’ Khoil reported into the headset. ‘Bring her inside.’ On the smaller monitor, the platform lowered into the ground. After a short pause it rose again, several men in white overalls stepping off and moving cautiously to the fallen predator.
‘Is she all right?’ Vanita demanded. One of the men felt the tiger’s body, then gave the hovering camera a thumbs up.
‘She will be fine,’ Khoil assured her. He pushed a button. The words Auto return flashed up on the big screen, the camera swinging round of its own accord and ascending above the treetops. ‘Now, Dr Wilde,’ he said, standing, ‘we can talk. I suspect it will be pointless, but Qexia projected a twelve per cent probability that you might be persuaded to work with me.’
Nina shrugged. ‘Sounds like your projections have a thirteen per cent margin of error, but go ahead.’
As he had earlier, Khoil missed the subtext and took the remark literally. ‘Less than five per cent, actually. But you are undoubtedly wondering why we want to obtain the Talonor Codex.’
‘It’d crossed my mind.’
‘Mr Zec has sent me scans of all the IHA’s research and translations from your apartment. They confirm everything I had hoped - that the Codex contains the information needed to reveal the location of the Vault of Shiva.’
‘So you think it’s real?’
‘As real as Shiva himself.’ Seeing her sceptical look, he continued: ‘You are surprised that a computer billionaire could also be a devout believer? This is India, Dr Wilde. The gods are all around us, as important a part of daily life as water. Vanita and I are both Vira Shaivites - “heroes of Shiva”. Following Shiva has brought us great wealth and power, and we want to show our gratitude by fulfilling the great lord’s plan for the world.’
‘What plan?’ Nina asked, but they were interrupted by a buzzing sound as something flew into the room through an open window: a black and silver flying machine about two feet across its front and slightly longer. It was triangular, a cylindrical shroud at each corner containing fast-spinning rotors. ‘What’s that?’
‘One of my vimanas - the name in the ancient Hindu epics for the flying machines used by the gods. They are described as flying chariots, mechanical birds, even floating palaces . . . the products of a great civilisation now lost to time.’ The little aircraft made its way to a stand at one side of the room, hovered above it, then lowered itself down. As the buzz of its engines faded, Khoil walked to the drone, Nina - and the three bodyguards - following.
She saw that slung beneath its body was a dart gun, a camera lens above it. ‘That’s how you tranqued the tiger? Cool little toy.’ The gun had a conventional trigger, pulled by a mechanism protruding from the drone’s belly. It had a magazine holding two more of the darts, which were fired by a small bottle of compressed gas.
She leaned closer. The amount of tranquillising agent needed to take down an animal as large as a tiger could be potentially lethal to a human. If she could reach the trigger mechanism . . .
‘Vanita has her pets; I have mine. I grew up under the flightpath of Bangalore airport, and when I was a child I thought the airliners were the vimanas my father told me about when he read from the Vedas and the Mahabharata. I actually wanted to be an engineer, to build aircraft, but then I discovered computers.’ Khoil became noticeably more animated as he warmed to his subject. ‘But it is still an interest. I own a large stake in one of India’s military aircraft manufacturers, and I