CLOSE CALL IN KASHMIR
I was told that your lives were in danger, Badruddin said. Our lives are still in danger, Mike said, because the people we're with are unlikely to set us free unless we give them what they want. Which is. The treasure, the amanat, that's what everybody is after, Noor said. Terrorist violence and a nightmare drive Shamsuddin Bandey, head priest of a shrine in Aishmuqam village in Jammu and Kashmir, to find out more about some of the 300-year-old scrolls kept in his family s custody for generations. But his actions arouse the suspicions of a top bureaucrat and a history professor. The corrupt duo believe the scrolls may point the way to a vast, buried treasure and they will stop at nothing to get it. Elsewhere, militants break into a museum in Srinagar and steal valuable artefacts to fund their war against India. They also kidnap a woman scientist. Along the way, others are drawn into the action: Michael Zutshi, an American professor nostalgic about his childhood spent in Kashmir, and Ashok Dalela, a CBI officer on the trail of the masterminds behind the illegal trade in antiques.