The Lost Ark

by J. R. Rain

  Always my eyes scanned the surrounding shrubbery, alert for military patrols. And just before noon, as the Rover plunged through slightly deeper water, Faye said, “Thank you, Sam.”

  “For what?”

  “Giving me the opportunity to look for my father.”

  “And opportunity is all it may be,” I said. “He’s been missing for a long time.”

  “You would fail miserably at writing greeting cards.”

  Minutes later, I stopped the Rover. About a hundred yards upstream, the mud banks merged into steep granite cliffs, and the stream grew in size into something more than a stream. I only hoped that I had put enough distance between us and the Turks.

  I turned out of the stream and spent the next five minutes fighting the loose mud. Two feet forward, one back. White steam issued from the engine. The Rover was losing water. The coolant system was probably shot-up.

  Once on dry land, we moved quickly through reeds and grasses and the occasional mean-looking thorny bush that might have been cultivated in Hell’s half acre. The shrubs gave way to larger boulders, and soon we were driving up through a massive limestone canyon, carved by eons of flood waters and glacial melt. A pair of Egyptian vultures rose and fell with the turbulent updrafts created within the canyon. Waiting for something to die. Or for some privacy.

  When the canyon became too steep and dangerous, I parked the vehicle deep within the shadows of the canyon wall between two huge boulders. A hell of a parallel parking job, I might add. I threw a canvas cover over the vehicle. The Rover now looked remarkably boulder-like. It should escape detection at first or even second glance.

  “What about the alarm?” Faye asked, shielding her eyes like a saluting soldier from the glare of the noon sun. There was something akin to a smirk on her face, but with Faye it was hard to be sure.

  “A shepherd boy wouldn’t know what to do with the Rover,” I said, scanning the horizon with the field glasses. The land was a living green and bronze blanket. I stood within the shadows to eliminate the possibility of a telltale gleam from the lens of the binoculars.

  I spotted a quick-moving jackal, its sand-colored coat wet with dew. Nose to the ground. Tracking rabbits or pheasants. Or even young ibex or chamois. There was no other movement. The land was empty and majestic, harsh and wild. Just the way I liked it. I exhaled. My breath fogged before me.

  “I think we’re safe,” I said, letting the heavy field glasses hang from the strap around my neck. We stood shoulder to shoulder, her shoulder just below my shoulder. Faye’s eyes were slits against the morning sun.

  Perhaps a mile away something flashed under the sun. I raised the binoculars. A camouflaged military truck was moving languidly along a well-worn trail along the river. Was this a routine patrol? Or had something alerted them? That something being us.

  “What is it?” Faye asked.

  “Military truck.”

  “Are they on to us?”

  “I don’t think so, Dick Tracy.”

  The truck moved on without incident, disappearing within the deeper foliage along the stream’s bank. Just a routine patrol, I hoped.

  With the toe of her hiking boot, Faye kicked a loose pebble into another such pebble in a pre-historic game of marbles. “So this is the infamous Mount Ararat.”

  I shook my head. “Hardly. The true Ararat is high above, and a lot closer to heaven than you or I.”

  “You sound like a song.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you heard me sing.”

  Later, we dressed in long underwear, polypropylene socks, nylon pants and windbreakers. The nylon outer shell would keep the wind and rain out; the long underwear to keep the warmth in. A good recipe for mountain climbing. To complete the look, I handed her a wool cap and a pair of ski glasses. Now she looked ready to conquer a mountain, or hold up a liquor store in Aspen, Colorado.

  A dry wind swept along the canyon. I lit a cigarette. The vultures were gone, probably gorging on the carcass of some poor creature who had propagated the myth that women were inferior to men.

  “Are we ready?” she asked, voice tight, managing to sound excited and impatient all at the same time.

  “Almost,” I said.

  I helped Faye into her backpack and slipped into mine. Both packs jangled with crampons and carabiners. I slipped a hundred foot kernmantle rope—coiled in a classic mountaineer coil—over my backpack.

  “Now, we’re ready.”

  The sky was clear, although thunderheads lay on the distant horizon, waiting like an invading Medieval army for the command to storm the castle. The wind was crisp but manageable. It was good hiking weather. I crushed the cigarette under my boot, leaving my mark on the holy mountain. I led the way forward, and upward.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The ankle-high grass gave way to loose volcanic rock, which was akin to walking across a field of bowling balls. A cold wind swept down through the canyon, funneled between the massive rock walls, whistling over the many rock protrusions. The cliffs were layered with basalt, limestone, quartz, sandstone and dolomite in a sort of geologic rainbow.

  An hour into the climb I stopped in the shade of a rock buttress. Faye was breathing steadily, a film of sweat on her upper lip. She wiped the sweat away with the back of her hand.

  “Why are we stopping?” she asked impatiently.

  “Water,” I said. “If that’s okay with you.”

  She nodded her consent. “A little water does sound good.”

  “I’m glad you approve.”

  When I had finished drinking, Faye was still guzzling away. Precious liquid trickled down her chin and neck.

  “You might want to conserve some of that,” I said.

  Reluctantly, she pulled away from the bottle like a baby from a teat. She stared in shocked silence at the half-empty contents. “I hadn’t realized I was so thirsty,” she said. “Where do we get more?”

  “Reconstituted urine. I have special baggies and distillers in my backpack. When done properly, the water doesn’t taste bad. Sort of coppery.”

  “That’s not funny, Sam.”

  “Of course not.” I grinned and pointed farther up the canyon. “We’ll be passing a stream about an hour’s climb from here. And higher up, we’ll use melted ice and snow.”

  “No yellow snow.”

  “No yellow snow,” I agreed.

  The wind blasted over the rock buttress, moaning like the dead. Now all we needed were flapping shutters. Preferably broken. Higher up, between the canyon walls, the narrow strip of sky revealed storm clouds approaching from the east, dark and gray, as if composed of a million lost souls. On Ararat, storms hit quickly, and hard. From blizzards to hailstorms to surreal electrical storms.

  Faye slipped out of her backpack and sat on a stool-sized rock, which wobbled slightly. I glanced down to see if anything slithered from underneath. Nothing slithered. There was a smudge of dirt on Faye’s right cheekbone. A slow-moving rivulet of sweat passed over the smudge. She undid the laces of her boots and slid two slender fingers down into the sock, and winced.

  “Blisters?” I asked.

  “I think so.”

  I found another pair of old polyurethane socks deep within my backpack, and handed them to Faye. “The blisters are unavoidable but you can impede their advance with these.”

  “Thank you, General Schwartzcoff.”

  A half hour later, we stopped before a tunnel carved naturally within the canyon wall. The arched opening was veiled by gently swaying cobwebs. “Shortcut,” I said, grinning.

  Faye shook her head. “Men and their shortcuts.”

  I removed a small flashlight from my backpack and pushed aside the thick cobwebs and ducked into the tunnel. The passage was narrow and continued as far as the light would reach. Dust motes swirled in the air. A tiny creature with bright red eyes stared at me before scuttling off along the floor, its tiny little claws clicking on the stone.

  We moved deeper into the tunnel. Once or twice I ducked to avoi
d the low ceiling. Once or twice I didn’t duck soon enough. Our boots echoed off the surrounding walls, and sometimes we came across soft pockets of sand, which muffled our footfalls.

  Just ahead, obscured by the gently swaying ectoplasm-like cobwebs, was a faint glow that marked the tunnel’s end. And as we moved closer, the glow became a bright archway of yellow sunlight, washing over the smooth stone floor.

  “How do you fare with heights?” I asked.

  “I’m good with heights. Why do you ask?”

  I was the first to exit the tunnel, stepping out onto a narrow ledge. Below was a thousand foot drop into a massive canyon, reminding me of a scaled-down version of the Grand Canyon, with its multi-colored layers, sheer walls and levels upon levels. Two golden eagles circled far below, wings outstretched, looking for trouble.

  Faye stepped out behind me. She immediately gasped, grabbing my bicep. Her talon-like grip would have impressed any golden eagle. I pried her fingers free and looked over my shoulder. “That good, huh.”

  She took a moment to collect herself and eased out onto the ledge like a scared puppy sampling rain for the first time. “I’m OK with heights, Sam. I just wasn’t prepared to be slapped in the face with it. How did we get so high?”

  “Ararat sits on a three thousand foot plateau, not to mention we’ve been climbing for the past two hours.”

  The raptors circled below, their auburn feathers ruffling in the updraft. Somewhere a rabbit didn’t stand a chance.

  I led the way along the narrow ledge.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Long ago, I had grown accustomed to the weight of my pack on my shoulders. It had become an extension of me, like a big deformed hump, attractive only to gypsy women in bell towers. As we moved along the ledge, my legs felt strong, although they burned with the effort of carrying forty pounds up a sharp incline. After all, I was out of shape, as it had been a slow summer, thanks to Emir Omar Ali. Faye didn’t show any signs of tiring, keeping pace with me stride for stride. I was impressed.

  As the sky began to darken, the wind brought with it the sweet smell of rain, and later, when the ledge merged into a steep grassy slope, the rains finally came. Attached to our windbreakers were hoods, which we immediately utilized. Still, the drops were like ice on my face and neck, until my skin grew completely numb and lost all feeling.

  I led the way across the field, trampling through the tall grass. The patter of rain was somehow comforting against the nylon hood. Next, a low fog moved in. There’s something to be said about a swirling mist clinging to the side of a mountain, as if we had stepped into a fantasy land created by Tolkien. My tongue felt fat and sticky—the brutal reality of this world. I stopped in the middle of the grassy field and removed my backpack. Faye did the same and we both drank eagerly.

  As we did so, a distant figure emerged from the fog. Seconds later, the figure proved to be a man. He stumbled once, but held himself up with a long wooden staff. He was dressed in a tattered robe. I could see blood on the cleaner parts of his robe.

  Faye pressed against me; the feeling of closeness was not unpleasant, and her need for comfort was surprisingly appealing to me. “He’s a shepherd,” I said. “And, like us, he’s trespassing.”

  The shepherd paused, swayed on his feet, and then fell forward.

  * * *

  He lay face-down, torn robe spread around him like broken angel wings. I carefully rolled him over. Faye gasped. His nose was broken and swollen and split from side to side. Blood poured from his nostrils and into his gray beard. His equally gray hair was caked with blood. He could have been seventy years old, and in those seventy years he surely had seen better days.

  “What happened?” Faye asked, dropping to her knees.

  I shook my head. “Could have taken a fall, or been caught in a rock slide. A few years back, an American astronaut was struck by such a falling rock. When they found him, he looked similar to this.”

  Faye reached under his head and lifted it and poured water over his puffed and cracked lips, washing away some of the blood and exposing more deep wounds around his mouth. The old man opened his brown eyes for the first time and tried to sit up but Faye held him down.

  He drank more water, then spoke for the first time, a rambling stream of nomadic Kurdish. When finished, I responded in the same language.

  “What did he say?” said Faye eagerly. “What did you say?”

  “His name is Makmur, and he knows of me. The great white guide, as I’m known to his people. I said I knew of him as well, a dedicated shepherd and respected patriarch.”

  “Is that true?”

  “The great white guide business?” I shrugged modestly.

  “No, Sam Ward. Have you heard of him?”

  “Of course not. I was being courteous. It was expected of me.”

  Makmur’s eyes flicked to Faye, and the old man spoke again: “He says you must be an angel, because surely he has died and gone to Heaven.”

  Faye Roberts blushed. I didn’t know she had it in her. “Spunky little devil,” she said. “Tell him that’s the oldest line in the book.”

  I did. “He also says you would make a fine shepherd’s wife, and he has a grandson available.”

  “Remind him that he’s too injured to play matchmaker.”

  Sheet lightning flashed, illuminating the dark underbelly of the storm clouds. The old man spoke in a long rambling stream and I translated between his many pauses: “He says he has a right to live and work and eat off the mountain just as his father did before him, and his father’s father before him, etc., etc. He was beaten as a warning for others to stay away.”

  “Who beat him?”

  “Soldiers.”

  We were silent. Makmur’s breathing became increasingly labored. Blood bubbled from his lips, mixed with saliva. The rain came down steadily. The rain somehow made the setting even more forlorn.

  Faye asked, “Has he seen my father?”

  I repeated her question and the old man responded: “There were two men, foreigners, above the Gorge. That was a month or two ago. But he does not know who they were or why they were here.”

  Faye closed her eyes and seemed to pray a silent prayer. Meanwhile, I opened Makmur’s robe. There was a pool of blood spreading like a disease under the paper-thin skin of his abdomen. Internal bleeding. His ribs were broken, and maybe also a punctured lung, judging by his ragged breathing. Faye held his head in her lap as the wind and rain swept over us. We bundled the old man back up and sat with him until he died. His last breath was extraordinarily long, and his chest seemed to shrink down into the rocky soil. I shut his eyes.

  Five minutes later, Faye was still holding his head. I reached over and touched her shoulder. She looked at me, eyes troubled and wet. “Why did they kill him, Sam?”

  Thunder rumbled overhead. Water dripped steadily from the end of my nose. I looked at the beaten body. “My guess is that Emir Omar Ali has something to hide. Perhaps something very important.”

  We stared down at the sodden, broken body. The rain washed the blood away from his face. Faye finally said, “Won’t the wild animals get him?”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, I won’t have that.”

  Faye shucked her backpack, scavenged the area for the dark volcanic rocks and began placing them around the body. I slipped out of my own pack and helped, taking us the better part of an hour to completely cover Makmur’s small body. Finally, I broke his gnarled staff a third of the way down and secured it with twine from my backpack and shoved the makeshift cross between the stones over his head.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The rain turned into a freezing drizzle. We had been hiking for the better part of six hours. During that time I thought of Makmur. He was murdered, that much was true. A powerful man like Omar Ali, acting within Turkish authority, could do just about anything. And trespassers were fair game. A simple beating of an old shepherd would go unnoticed, even if it resulted in death.

  The temperatur
e continued to drop; our breaths fogged before us. Later, the drizzle stopped and there was a break in the clouds and the sun shone brightly down as if making up for lost time. A pair of white snowfinches streaked overhead, followed by an alpine chough that turned its head and watched us, then disappeared up through the clouds.

  The grassy slope was mostly barren, with the occasional outcropping of igneous rock. Later, we stopped beside a crystal clear stream, which wound down from above, bubbling over smooth stones. I handed out dried fruit and almonds. Almost too exciting for words. After eating, we sat back in the lush grass. Faye laced her fingers behind her head and stared up at the overcast sky. “Let’s be reasonable, Sam. There is no ark.”

  “Not according to Mrs. Dartmouth,” I said.

  “Who’s Mrs. Dartmouth?” she asked.

  “My Sunday school teacher.”

  “Of course.”

  The water made relaxing bubbling noises, the sort that’s recorded and sold in alternate health stores everywhere. I pulled out a shoot of grass and stuck it between my teeth. It tasted just like grass.

  I said, “I’ve heard all the arguments before. The arguments bore me. It’s a moot point. A classic example of science versus faith. I don’t know much science, and I don’t have much faith.”

  “That’s taking the easy way out, Sam,” Faye said. “Other than some unusual animal deposits that may be the results of a massive local floods, there’s just no evidence of a world-wide flood.”

  “They say God works in mysterious ways.”

  “But where did the water come from, Sam? And I don’t buy into the Canopy Theory. There’s little if any evidence supporting that Earth was covered in a layer of water vapor which contributed to the flood. Even so, where did all the water go? How did all the animals fit into one ark? How did the animals come to be on the ark?”

  “Refer to my prior comment.”

  I closed my eyes. My stomach made some digesting noises. Something rustled in the grass maybe twenty feet away. Probably a field mouse.