The Mini Sequel to the Alexander Secret: A Secret Revealed by Christopher C Doyle

Author:Christopher C Doyle [Doyle, Christopher C]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9789385724367
Amazon: 9385724363
Publisher: Westland Books Pvt Ltd
Published: 2016-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 4

Starbucks

Saket, New Delhi

‘Let me guess,’ Vijay’s sharp mind had connected the dots even as KS was speaking. ‘One of those journals was a translation by a Professor Fuller. A translation of a Greek journal written by Eumenes, a general of Alexander the Great.’

KS looked surprised. ‘Yes, that’s right. How did you guess?’

Vijay hesitated. Did he know this stranger well enough to confide in him? Especially since he was insinuating things about his father that Vijay was reluctant to believe in? He decided to take the plunge.

‘I found the journal in my father’s papers,’ he explained. ‘Just last year. Dad never told me about it when he was alive.’

KS nodded. ‘I didn’t think he would have. I was just curious about how he had passed it on to you. If I understand you, he didn’t actually pass it on. You found it purely by accident.’

‘I was going through cartons with their stuff in them when I stumbled upon the journal,’ Vijay clarified. ‘It was pure chance.’

‘There were only two people in whom I had confided regarding these journals,’ KS continued, apparently satisfied with the explanation Vijay had provided. ‘When I received the journals, I tried to contact the academic who had sent them. His name was Mike Ashford and he taught at St. James College in Philadelphia. We weren’t really friends. We had met at a conference, got along well and kept in touch over the years. He would send me greetings for the New Year and Diwali and I would send him a Christmas card every year. Then, there were the occasional letters we would exchange. With the internet, our correspondence became a bit more frequent through emails, but it came as a bit of a surprise to suddenly receive this package from him one day. With these two journals, no less. There was no advance email informing me; no letter accompanying them, no explanation for the strange contents of the package. And when I tried to contact him to find out why he had sent them to me, I was told that he was missing. He had disappeared mysteriously the day the courier had been dispatched from Philadelphia. The police had nothing to go on and the case had been left unsolved,’ KS paused. Vijay noticed that he looked considerably distressed.

‘ I read the journals and they didn’t make sense to me. Like I said, they sounded like some fantasy stories written by some ancient scribe. What struck me however, was the number of coincidences that seemed to be associated with these journals. First, Professor Fuller, who had translated both journals into English, according to the inscription on the first page of both journals. He, too, had mysteriously disappeared in Chicago, two weeks before Ashford’s disappearance. And one of the professors of the college had died in a motor accident on the day Ashford sent the journals to me. So I figured, fantasy or not, there was something important about the journals. There had to be a reason why Ashford had sent them to me,’ he finished.

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