Chapter 25

  

My excitement from earlier that morning turned to fear. I was losing my hold on what was real. I was so sure I had temporarily escaped the present-day problem by eluding the person who was willing to kill for this treasure. Nobody else knew Anand’s letters were there. Steven and his family didn’t know which was why he had come to me. How had the treasure-hunting killer followed me across the ocean?

Joseph and I sat drinking strong coffee for ten rupees a cup at the India Coffee House on MG Road located in the basement of a concrete high rise. All the major cities in India seemed to have an MG Road, short for Mahatma Gandhi. I was buying. Ten rupees was approximately twenty-five cents, so it wasn’t especially generous of me.

The India Coffee House wasn’t one of the modern trendy coffee houses that had started springing up. The chain had been around since before I was born. The strong coffee and cheap food kept it in business despite the sparse decor. We sat in plastic chairs in the crowded café.

“I don’t know what could have happened,” Joseph said. “It does not make sense that the letters could be gone from the archive reading room. They should not have been removed!”

“Could they have been misplaced or misfiled after you first found them?” I knew it was unlikely, but I didn’t want to believe Steven’s killer was a step ahead of me.

Joseph shook his head. “The whole box is missing.” He added something in a language I didn’t understand. From the guttural sound in his throat I guessed he was cursing.

“It makes no sense,” he continued. “We have never had a theft. And to think it happened under my supervision. You have my sincerest apologies, Professor Jaya.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is my fault.” I glanced anxiously around the bare-bones surroundings. I couldn’t tell if it was the smell of sweaty bodies or the fact that my problems had followed me to India that made it difficult for me to breathe.

“Your fault?” Joseph said. “For asking for help of a colleague with research? No. I only wish I could have been more help. To think you came all this way—”

“There’s more going on than a simple research project,” I said.

“Your family history, I understand.” Joseph looked dejectedly into his empty coffee cup.

“Let me order us more coffee,” I said, hailing the waiter. I was stalling as I decided how much to tell Joseph. I didn’t want to drag him into this mess, but it appeared that he was already involved. Because of me, he was the latest victim. But I didn’t understand how someone had followed me across the ocean. What was I missing?

The waiter appeared at our table. I ordered fried cutlets to go with our coffee. I hadn’t had breakfast, and it felt like dinner time to my stomach.

“I’m sorry for getting you into this,” I said after the waiter had left. “I should tell you that the letters might provide information leading to a treasure. There’s a lot at stake. That’s why someone has stolen them.”

“Yes, this is what Miss Tamarind indicated when she first contacted us. It is always exciting when our archives can provide such relevant information.” He smiled and adjusted his thin glasses.

“There’s something else you should know, too,” I began slowly, “in case you come across the person who has taken the letters. The person might be dangerous. A man was murdered.”

Joseph’s coffee cup clattered to the table.

“Murdered?” he whispered, the color draining from his face.

“A man was murdered in San Francisco,” I said. “He was the person who contacted me to find the letters.”

“Murder,” Joseph repeated over and over as he attended to the spilled coffee as best he could with the thin napkins on the table. He avoided my gaze as he repeatedly pushed drenched napkins across the table. Seeming to notice the futility, he stopped, but he didn’t seem to know what to do once he ceased mopping up the mess. His thin hands flitted nervously from his glasses to his empty coffee cup.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you,” I said, “but I thought you should know.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. He resumed absentmindedly wiping the spilt coffee on the table. It wasn’t the kind of place where a doting waiter would appear to help. Joseph looked up, his large brown eyes meeting mine. “He was murdered over the letters? You are sure of this?”

“Unfortunately,” I said, “I am.”

  

The old archivist looked more frail than he had an hour ago as we walked out of the coffee house. He assured me he’d be fine, and I caught an auto-rickshaw back to my hotel.

In the hotel lobby, I walked past an Anglo man dressed in local attire. He sat alone, reading an English-language Indian newspaper. I could only see an obscured view of his head, and in spite of the fact that he wasn’t wearing glasses, he reminded me very much of Lane Peters. I was about to kick myself for continuing to think about him, when the man turned his head.

It wasn’t my imagination. It was Lane.

I don’t remember walking over to him, but I found myself standing right in front of him. He smelled of aftershave and sandalwood. I felt a comforting familiarity in his presence, the force of which took me by surprise.

“For someone who says they want nothing to do with me,” I said, “you’ve got a really strange way of showing it.”

“I had to come,” he said. He stood up and tossed the newspaper aside.

I felt my stomach do a little flip, only to be followed by a sinking feeling when I heard what he had to say next.

“I didn’t want to,” he said. “But Naveen Krishnan is in India. He killed Steven Healy. Now he’s after the treasure.”