Free The Shiva Objective by David Sakmyster Page B

black king on the chessboard back on the yacht – narrow and pointy-headed, with just the hint of a crown.
    "As I told your employer-"
    "Mr. Waxman."
    "Yes, as I told him, we have an objective particularly suited to the talents of your team." He turned his head, and his eyes were wet from the sun's intensity glinting off the Taj and the winding Yamuna River.  "I believe only those with… exceptional abilities such as your own might be able to truly discover the whereabouts of a certain artifact that may have been under our very noses for centuries."
    Nina considered him for a moment.  Have to be careful here. Remember Waxman's instructions.  He had told her in no way to trust him.  That Davarius Malmud was obviously lying, hiding the real reason he wanted them there.  She was to play it slow.
    Screw that.  She was already tired of this city, the heat and the congestion, and she didn't like being jerked around. "Why don't you start by giving me the truth?  If you wanted a psychic, we know you’ve already had one here, in your employ, for seven years."
    Davarius paled slightly, took a step back.
    Nina pressed on.  "Mohammad Chaudhry.  We tried on several occasions to recruit him, but he passed.  Apparently, your benefit plan beat ours."
    Davarius took a long breath, but still seemed relaxed.
    Have I misjudged him? He should be sweating right now.
    "Yes, it's true.  We had a psychic.  A Remote-Viewer like you and those on your team."
    "But?"
    "But he went… missing."  He said the word slowly, and Nina had the sense he was drawing it out to gauge Nina's reaction.  She remained cool.
    "Ah.  Should have asked us.  Finding missing persons is a bit of specialty."
    "Yes," Davarius said quietly.  "That and locating lost artifacts and treasure." He turned back to the window.  "I've heard, however, that your abilities… they have limitations and are greatly dependant on the psychic's focus."
    Nina sighed.  "Yes, we're not all-seeing and even when we get valid visions, they're often hard to interpret." She thought back on countless sessions in smoke-filled conference rooms.  All of her colleagues drawing pictures, sketching out what their visions – wrong or right – were showing them.  Some had impressive hits; some could see and even hear things in faraway locations, and even in the past.  Sometimes the future.  But Davarius was right.  There were certainly limitations – like why she and Waxman couldn't see exactly what was going on here.
    "Right," he said.  "Well, Chaudhry paved the way.  Showed us the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.  But then he disappeared, just as we were getting close."
    "To what?"
    Davarius placed a hand, fingertips first, against the glass over the distant façade of the Taj Mahal.  "Inside our country's greatest tourist attraction, this mausoleum that has been the site of pilgrimages and adoration for four centuries, rests something besides the crypts of the fourth Mogul emperor and his favored wife."
    Nina nodded, and leaned back stretching her legs.  "Yes, Shah Jahan and his lovely princess, Mumtaz Mahal.  Ah, what a wonderfully tragic love story."
    "You know it well, then?"
    "Of course." A lie.  She had only read up on it last Tuesday.  And then, when she and another member of the group tried to take a 'look'…  they discovered much more.
    "But of course," she said, "history and history are not always the same."
    "So true," Davarius said, smiling broadly.  "What we call history today has been written by the victors.  They changed the past to suit their needs and let the ensuing centuries finish the job of covering the truth."
    "No one's the wiser," Nina said.  "Unless they can see into the past."
    Davarius's eyes shined with excitement.  "So I don't need to convince you…"
    "That your national emblem and this four-hundred year-old love story is a sham?" She shook her head slightly.  "No, you don't.  Your Shah Jahan may indeed have loved his eighteenth wife