The Breath of God (25 page)

The computer in her lap beeped, causing both to jump.

“Email,” Kristin said.

Grant reached across her and clicked on the mail icon at the bottom of the screen. Several seconds passed before he realized who the sender, jigmemonk, was.

“I don't believe it!” Grant exclaimed loudly enough that a young couple at the next table glanced over. He lowered his voice. “Jigme.”

“Kinley's apprentice? The one who never spoke?” she asked.

“Yeah, check this out.”

Grant read the email aloud:

“I don't get it,” Grant said, rereading the email to himself. “With everything we've been through, the first we hear from them is another one of Kinley's mind twisters.”

Kristin continued to stare at the email.

“Well?” Grant said, growing agitated in spite of himself. Suddenly he became aware of the sound of grinding coffee beans. The noise grated on his nerves. He felt himself falling back into despair, indulging Reverend Brady's accusation that he was being messed with. He'd spent the past week pleading with Karma through phone calls and emails for a glimmer of information on either Kinley's whereabouts or the status of the texts, and until this vague email he had nothing.

“I don't think it's really a koan.” Kristin's voice grew animated. “It's a riddle or a clue!”

Grant stared at the screen. A spark of hope ignited within his chest. He knew that the witty but confusing stories Kinley had delighted in posing to him in Bhutan were not true riddles, because the questions they posed didn't have a single solution. The stories were called
koans—
sayings made popular by the Zen schools of Buddhism in China and Japan that were meant to shock the mind into thinking outside its usual boundaries.

“Look at the final sentence. She pointed to the computer. “He wants us to visit ASAP.”

“You think Kinley was nervous sending us explicit meeting instructions after the negative publicity we've received and his problems with the lama?”

“I do.”

Suddenly the lack of communication from Kinley and the lama's claim that the library held no texts on Issa made sense to Grant: Kinley must have taken the texts with him when he left, and now he was ready to meet with them.

Grant sipped his latte. “Okay, the clue seems to refer to Jesus. We have the reference to Issa, and the crown of thorns that Jesus wore at his crucifixion, and then the idea that his death brings eternal life through God's love.” He paused for a moment, furrowing his brow. “But I don't see how that leads us anywhere. The palace of grief? Does that mean something to you?”

Kristin reread the email, her lips silently mouthing the words. She then pointed to the first line. “Here: ‘
Isa built his monument to mankind as a crown, not of thorns, but as a palace of grief.'
Jigme spells the name ‘Isa' with one s. When used as the Indian name for Jesus, didn't you tell me it was spelled with a double s?”

Grant nodded. “I assumed he just misspelled it, or used the Islamic form, which has only one s.”

“Look at the rest of the sentence: the
crown
refers to a
monument
which is specifically
not of thorns
but is related to
a palace of grief
.”

“Not of thorns.” Grant pictured Kinley's twinkling eyes. “A misdirection. How like him. The riddle isn't about Jesus at all.” Then he saw the clue. “
Monument!
It's about an actual monument, not a metaphorical one. And the monument has something to do with grief. Like a cemetery or something?”

Kristin smiled broadly. “The most recognizable monument in India is
a palace of grief
. The Taj Mahal.”

“It is?” The spark of excitement flamed within him. “I never had time to visit Agra when I was in India.”

“I spent a week there writing about the Taj,” she said. “Emperor Shah Jahan commissioned the monument in sixteen thirty-one, not as a palace in which to live, but as a mausoleum for the remains of his second wife, Mumtaz, who died while giving birth to their fourteenth child.”

“Fourteen kids? That's one dedicated mother.”

“As dedicated as the emperor, who loved her above all his other wives. So the grandeur of the Taj came to symbolize his eternal love.”

Grant read aloud from the email, “‘
Only through death can we see his symbol of eternal love
.'”

“Exactly. Also, the name Taj Mahal translates literally as ‘Crown Palace.'”

“Just like the riddle says, but”—Grant sat up straighter, the pain in his leg and his troubles at the university momentarily forgotten—“what about
Isa
?”

“The Persian architect who designed the Taj was named Ustad Isa, spelled with one s.”

“You're amazing!” He leaned over and wrapped his arms around her in an embrace that almost knocked the computer from her lap. The couple beside
them glanced over again. He didn't care that he was making a scene. For the first time since they'd left Bhutan, they were a step closer to reaching the texts. He noticed Kristin was beaming at him. “So we meet Kinley and Jigme at the Taj Mahal, but when? I assume the last phrase about the full moon has something to do with meeting them at night?”

Kristin traced her finger along the final phrase:
reflected in a pond by the light of the full moon
. “That makes perfect sense,” she said.

“It does?”

“In front of the monument are two long reflecting pools where you can see the image of the Taj. When Kinley and I were chatting in the courtyard before we went up to the library, he asked me about my travels through India. One of the highlights for me was seeing the Taj at night under the full moon. You see, the Indian government strictly regulates access to its World Heritage monuments, but on one night per month, during the full moon, they open the grounds of the Taj for a few hours to tourists.”

“So all we have to do is to find the next full moon,” Grant said.

Kristin typed “lunar phase” into the browser's search field. Seconds later they had their answer. They had to hurry. The next full moon was in four nights, and it would take two days to get there. Fortunately, he thought, their visas were still good.

Then the thought of the hearing at Emory that would determine his academic fate in two weeks flashed through his head. He would forward Jigme's email to Billingsly, but he doubted Dean Flannigan would grant him a reprieve. Could they travel to Agra and meet Kinley at the Taj and then return to Atlanta with proof of the texts in time?

F
ORTY-FIVE MINUTES behind schedule.
Did anything in this filthy country run on time?
Tim shifted uncomfortably on the train's hard plastic seat. At least he'd paid the extra rupees for the first-class car on the Shatabdi Express from New Delhi to Agra. His stomach had turned two hours earlier when he saw the coach cars pull past him on the New Delhi station platform: humans packed like livestock, standing in the stench of their unwashed countrymen. At least his first-class car had working AC, and no one had tried to bring chickens or goats into his compartment.

After flights from Birmingham to DC and DC to London, Tim had finally arrived in New Delhi yesterday, exhausted but exhilarated. He had waited his life for an opportunity like this. What he'd been searching for in the Army—belonging to the team protecting his country—had driven him until that was taken away. Now he understood that he'd suffered then for a reason: to gain the skills and the fortitude to face the opportunity before him. He was now part of something bigger than his country—he was an agent in God's plans.

After he'd arrived in New Delhi, he picked up several emails on his phone. The first was a copy of a coded message from the monk Kinley to Grant Matthews, and the second was a translation of the code that gave him a new destination: the Taj Mahal. Tim congratulated himself on his foresight to travel halfway around the world to wait in India for his Bhutanese visa. They were now coming to him. Tim stopped at Bhutan's consulate in New Delhi to apply
for his visa—one could never overprepare—and then he left for Agra, the city made famous by one of the world's most recognizable monuments.

Glancing at his fellow passengers, Tim noticed how dark-skinned they were, not quite black, but not far from it either. The men looked halfway respectable, dressed in business suits, but the saris the women wore looked like silk curtains wrapped around their bodies. Colorful, but as ridiculous-looking as the odd nasal piercings and red smudges on their foreheads. During the time he'd spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, he'd never become accustomed to the primitive habits of Third World people. Indians, Afghanis, Iraqis: they were all the same to Tim. As Reverend Brady had emphasized many times, these people, the non-Christians, would all end up in hell.

He checked his watch again. He was anxious to arrive in Agra before Grant Matthews and Kristin Misaki. He'd been closely following their every move for days now. The software he'd installed on Matthews's computer worked perfectly. A copy of every email Grant sent or received was covertly forwarded to an anonymous account Tim had set up. He'd taken an additional precaution by activating the E911 microchip in Grant's phone. This chip transformed the phone into a GPS receiver, and once activated, the cell phone's location could be pinpointed to within a few yards with a web browser. Based on the emails he'd intercepted from their online bookings, he knew that Grant Matthews and Kristin Misaki would arrive in Agra late the following day, giving him little time to scout the city and plan his operation.

As the train pulled into the Agra Cantonment station, Tim hoisted the straps of his olive green backpack onto his shoulders and pushed past the other passengers. He stepped onto the concrete platform with its open-air corrugated metal roof. The stench of urine immediately assaulted his nostrils. At least the fall weather was sunny and warm, not like the scorching summers he'd spent in the Middle East. Swatting at the flies swarming his face, he shoved past a thin man wearing torn navy pants and a soiled polyester shirt.

The man, who carried a blackened rag and a can of shoe polish, followed beside Tim, tugging his arm and repeating, “Shoeshine, mister?”

Tim's hand instinctively went to his hip, but the reassuring bulge of his Glock was missing, packed into his backpack. Before leaving the States, he had
carefully disassembled it, concealing parts in a fake alarm clock and a converted shaving cream can. Many parts of the gun were made from a composite plastic, which made his job all the easier. Tim had checked his only bag, knowing how lax airport security actually was in light of all their self-congratulatory efforts post-9/11.

Undaunted, the man pleaded, “Twenty rupees. Good shine.”

Tim briefly considered punching the scrawny man in the face, but then he pictured the man's blood and saliva on his hands and thought better of it. Who knew what kinds of diseases these people had? Instead he glared at the shoeshine man, who, Tim realized, was not even wearing shoes himself.

“They're hiking boots, you fucking moron,” Tim spat out. Although the barefoot man may not have understood the exact words Tim used, he got the message and moved to the next travelers departing the train.

As he continued along the platform, the smell of deep-fried food awakened Tim's stomach with a growl. He passed a vendor selling a breaded ball of something cooked in a murky vat of oil from a metal cart. As hungry as Tim was, he imagined the gut-wrenching diarrhea this food would probably give him. He would wait until he arrived at his hotel to find something safer to eat. He remembered that he had a handful of protein bars in his backpack too.

Reaching the end of the platform, Tim climbed a metal staircase leading to a catwalk that crossed over the train tracks to the street exit. From the group of taxi and rickshaw drivers haggling for his business, he picked the least offensive, an elderly man dressed in a frayed white shirt, who at least wore a tie. Tim tried to touch as little as possible while sitting in the interior of the dented white van. He caressed his forearms as he gazed out the window.

During his brief layover in Delhi, he'd noticed that the Indian government had made an attempt to cover up some of the squalor with wide tree-lined avenues and modern-looking office buildings in the newer parts of the capital city. After just a few minutes in the taxi, he could see that Agra was a different story. Decrepit wood and stone structures stood next to concrete buildings that had not seen a coat of paint in decades. Every few blocks, he passed communities of tent cites that had sprung up outside the walls around the buildings. Entire
families lived under lean-tos made of rusted tin. Mud covered the ground and the people. The squalor here dwarfed anything he'd encountered before.