The Ark tl-1

by Boyd Morrison

  “Yes,” the priest said warily. “Very unusual. Two novitiates had made a pilgrimage at that time and were staying at the monastery. One of them was killed, and the other went missing. He was never found.”

  “How was the novitiate killed?”

  “Shot. The police investigated, but no one was ever arrested. The case remains unsolved.”

  “Any motives?”

  “Robbery, most likely. I entered Khor Virap one morning and found the body.”

  “It had to be Garrett,” Grant said.

  “You know who might be behind this?” the priest said.

  “Possibly,” Locke said. “Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

  “There isn’t much to tell. It occurred at night when the monastery was closed. Brother Dipigian was found with two shots to the head. We never saw Brother Kalanian again. We assumed he had been kidnapped. For what reason, we couldn’t fathom, and we never received a ransom demand. Not that we could pay much. We take honoraria for weddings and other parties held here, but most of it goes to the monastery’s upkeep.”

  “Where was the body found?”

  “That was the oddest thing. It was in the pit.”

  “The one that held St. Gregory captive?” Dilara said.

  “Yes. But if it was a robbery, it was a strange place to take him. As a holy shrine, the pit of St. Gregory is unsurpassed, but there is nothing of value in there. A few candles in an alcove, that’s all.”

  Dilara gasped. “An alcove?” The scroll mentioned a cove. The Hebrew could be translated many different ways, including alcove.

  “It’s where pilgrims can pay tribute.”

  “The fifth and seventh stone from the cove reveals,” Dilara said to Locke, who immediately saw what she meant.

  “Father,” he said, “please show us to the pit of St. Gregory.”

  * * *

  At the top of the hill overlooking the courtyard of Khor Virap, Garrett focused binoculars on the figures two hundred yards away. He saw Locke, Westfield, and Kenner with someone who appeared to be an interpreter talking to the priest. He lay next to Svetlana Petrova and Dan Cutter, who cradled a Russian VAL silenced sniper rifle that fired subsonic 9mm rounds. Cutter had acquired the hard-to-get rifle in Armenia along with their other weapons.

  “Do you want me to take them out?” Cutter asked.

  Garrett had already been to the Ark’s location, and if he’d been able to get inside it, he’d already be long gone with the second amulet. But when he had arrived at the site of the Ark, he realized Hasad Arvadi had tricked him. The old man had been crafty, leaving out key information that would have made the Ark accessible.

  When Garrett couldn’t get into the Ark, the next step had been to return to Khor Virap. There must have been additional information about how to get into the Ark that Arvadi had concealed from Garrett. The plan was to photograph every square inch of the map to make sure they missed nothing, and Garrett would find another translator to tell him what the map really said. Finding a qualified translator might take time, so to ensure no one followed in his footsteps, he would obliterate the map.

  Garrett and Cutter had been lying in wait to make their move on the monastery, just like they’d done three years before. Then to Garrett’s surprise, Locke and the others had appeared.

  Although their arrival had jolted him, he quickly reassessed the situation and realized it might be to his advantage.

  “Hold your fire,” Garrett said to Cutter. “Maybe we can get Tyler Locke and Dilara Kenner to do our work for us.”

  If Dilara was as skilled an archaeologist as her father, she would be able to decipher the map’s text and uncover what her father had not divulged to Garrett. Garrett would know as soon as they emerged from the pit if they had seen the map and determined the Ark’s location. Then it would just be a matter of following them to the Ark and killing them all once they had shown him the way inside.

  SIXTY

  The priest led them away from the church in the central courtyard to the small St. Gevorg chapel. It was after 5:30 at this point, and the monastery was closed, so the tourists had been escorted out. They had the chapel to themselves.

  To the right of the altar Locke saw a hole with steep aluminum stairs leading down. Father Tatilian climbed down backwards, and the rest followed.

  The pit was a cistern, vaguely round, with rough gray stone walls. Even with five of them, there was plenty of room, although it would get stuffy quickly with just the hole above to circulate air. The space was larger than what Locke had imagined when he had heard it was a prison cell, but then again, he couldn’t imagine being confined within it for 13 years. It was a miracle that Grigor didn’t go insane during that time. Maybe that was one of the miracles that qualified him for sainthood.

  A standing candelabra had been set up across from the bottom of the stairs. On the right was the alcove Father Tatilian had mentioned. It was six feet tall, with an arched roof, two feet wide and three feet deep. It seemed to have a stone seat inside it, and a stone shelf set back about four feet high.

  Locke stepped up on the semicircular dais in front of the alcove and examined it. The stones were crudely mortared, and he couldn’t see any noticeable seams where mortar had been removed. To all appearances, the entire cistern was as solid as the rock it was made from.

  “Where was the murder victim found?” Locke asked.

  The priest pointed to the floor on the other side of the cistern.

  “He was shot in the head twice.”

  “And you didn’t notice anything else unusual down here?”

  “The police asked me that as well. Not that I could tell, although it was hard to concentrate on anything but the pool of blood that we cleaned up.”

  Locke didn’t bother asking about forensic evidence. Even if the killers were sloppy enough to leave fibers or prints, which he seriously doubted, he didn’t think the local police would have had the resources to do any sophisticated analyses.

  The novitiate was brought down for a reason, and the reference in the scroll to a cove had to be meaningful.

  He counted out the stones from the left of the alcove, starting with corner stone. The fifth and the eighth stones from the cove reveal. The stones that made up the wall ranged from a few inches to a foot across. They had cut the stones to fit what was needed for each space.

  He assumed that the key stones would be at eye level, which to people at that time was about five feet. Locke saw that the fifth and eighth stones were both about the same size, large enough to press his palm against. When he examined them more closely, he found a half-inch notch carved into each one in exactly the same place. These had to be the ones.

  If the builders had constructed a secret passage, the key to unlocking it would be fairly simple because the engineering and construction methods of that age were rudimentary. On the other hand, the mechanism couldn’t be activated by accident, or it would be discovered too easily.

  Two stones. There was a reason for two of them, and Locke thought he knew what it was. He tried to position himself to push both stones simultaneously, but they were so far apart that he couldn’t get leverage with either one.

  “Grant, give me a hand here. On my count of three, I want you to push hard on the eighth stone. At the same time, I’ll push the fifth stone.”

  Grant got himself in position.

  “What are you doing?” the priest asked.

  “I think I’m going to show you something about your monastery that you didn’t even know existed,” Locke said.

  “I’m ready,” Grant said.

  “One. Two. Three.”

  They pushed with all their strength. At first, nothing happened. Then Locke sensed the slightest movement of his stone.

  “Did you feel that?” Grant said.

  “Yes. I think we need to push with equal force. Let up on your side a little. Again. One. Two. Three.”

  This time, he could feel the stone begin to move immediately. It slid slowly b
ackward, and so did Grant’s. At the same time, the fourth and seventh stones slid slowly forward. The stones stopped moving when they were pressed into the wall six inches.

  Locke glanced at Dilara and saw the same excitement that he felt at their discovery. Father Tatilian, on the other hand, was apoplectic and blurted something in Armenian.

  “What’s the matter?” Locke asked the interpreter.

  “The priest is very upset,” Chirnian said. “He asks what you have done.”

  “I think we’ve just unlocked a door.”

  Locke inspected the stones projecting from the wall. Except for the small notches, they were carved to be extremely smooth on all sides and fit into the spaces precisely. The edges on the outside were filed down and covered with a half-inch of mortar to give the illusion that the stones were unmovable parts of the structure.

  Locke went to the alcove and saw that the side wall had moved, but just barely. He put his shoulder into it, and the corner of the alcove swung stiffly on a central pivot, revealing an opening on the left. Locke shined his flashlight into the darkness. Stairs led down. A musty smell of decay filled his nose. To the left, he could see the mechanism that sealed the door.

  As he thought, it was a simple stone pivot. A wooden one would have disintegrated long ago. The two stones they had pushed were connected to each other, and because of the leverage, pushing either one of them alone would merely cause stress on the pivot, not allowing them to move. But together, the stress was balanced, and the pivot not only pushed the other stones out, but also moved another piece of stone from the door that normally kept it from opening.

  To reseal the entry, you would just push the door closed and then push the fourth and seventh stones back into place. Locke marveled at the primitive cleverness of it.

  “What do you see?” Dilara asked.

  Locke remembered why they were there.

  “It’s a stairway. We’ve found the chamber.”

  Grant and Dilara broke out their flashlights as well, and Chirnian and Father Tatilian took candles from the cistern.

  Locke went down ten steps, and then turned to the right to see twenty more steps. It must have taken a year to dig this out of the sandstone.

  He got to the bottom and found himself in another round room, twice the size of the pit. He stopped when he saw what was on the wall opposite him. A map. He played the flashlight over it and could see a carefully drawn outline of Mt. Ararat. Several points of black dotted the map. Next to the map were lines of text similar to those on the scrolls Dilara’s father had discovered.

  The flashlight beam came to the end of the text at the bottom of the wall, and Locke saw a foot still encased in a shoe. He ran the light along the body until he reached a desiccated yawning face. The gruesome image was the result of years of slow decay in the dry climate. The brown robes of the mummified remains identified him. The missing novitiate.

  The priest and translator gasped at the sight, and Locke heard a yelp from Dilara. Her response to the corpse was unusual for someone who unearthed them for a living. He turned and saw that she wasn’t looking at the novitiate’s body. Instead, she was looking at a second one, in much the same condition.

  This body was dressed in western jeans, a collared shirt, and a khaki jacket. The graying hair suggested that the man was older, at least in his fifties. A notebook and pen were on the floor next to him. Then Locke realized who he must be.

  In the dim light reflected on Dilara’s face, he could see the horrified recognition as she spoke softly, lovingly.

  “Daddy?”

  SIXTY-ONE

  Dilara knelt on the floor next to her father, and Locke joined her, putting his hand on her shoulder. He knew the feeling of arriving too late to tell your loved one everything you wanted to say before they were gone. The one solace was that she finally had closure. She put her hand on Locke’s and silently wept, her body shuddering with sobs.

  “I’m so sorry, Dilara,” he said. She nodded but said nothing.

  They rest of them withdrew as much as the small space allowed to let Dilara grieve for a few moments. Bloodstains caked the floor, and Locke saw the source. A bullet hole perforated each of Arvadi’s legs, and another was in his mid-section. His death hadn’t been an easy one. Locke picked up the notebook that had fallen out Arvadi’s hand. It looked as though he had been writing in it when he died. The printing was jagged and forced, not the smooth cursive on the previous note.

  The note had only three lines, which were scrawled haphazardly across the page, like they were written in the dark, and they probably were. The last line trailed off. Arvadi must have died in the middle of writing it.

  Sebastian Garrett killed me. Shot me to reveal Ark.

  Didn’t tell him real entrance. He took Amulet of Japheth.

  Don’t tell

  Locke peered at the second line.

  Didn’t tell him real entrance.

  Her father had misled Garrett. But what did that mean? The real entrance? On a 6000-year-old wooden boat, it wouldn’t matter if you didn’t find the right entrance. You’d simply chop a hole in the side and go in that way. It didn’t make sense.

  With the pain and blood loss, Arvadi might have been delusional. The last line was useless, but the first two seemed lucid enough. If Garrett had been tricked somehow, they might still have a chance to beat him to Noah’s Ark and find the second amulet before he did.

  As much as Locke wanted to let her mourn a little longer, he knew he couldn’t. Even though finding her father was traumatic, Dilara still needed to help them decipher the map.

  “I’m sorry, Dilara,” Locke repeated. “Are you going to be okay?”

  She took off her jacket and covered her father’s face with it. Then she stood and nodded solemnly. “I knew he was dead a long time ago. But it’s different confirming it. Especially like this.”

  “I know.”

  “He was so close to achieving his goal. His life’s dream. And Garrett killed him in reach of it.” She wiped away the tears and looked at Locke. “We’re going to get him, aren’t we? We’re going to kill that son of a bitch.”

  Locke wouldn’t be upset if Garrett ended up pushing daisies, but feeding Dilara’s revenge would be a distraction they didn’t need.

  “We’ll do what we have to do. But first, we need you to finish your father’s work if we’re going to stop Garrett. Do you think you can focus?”

  The heat in Dilara’s eyes smoldered for another moment and then faded. She nodded, but the grief was still there.

  “Tyler, look at this,” Grant said. He shined his flashlight on a small offering table. In the dust, there was the shape of a round object that used to rest on the table. The amulet. The source of the prion disease.

  “Can this be real?” Locke said. “Up until this moment I didn’t actually believe we’d find Noah’s Ark.”

  “And now?”

  “That map looks pretty convincing. I’m beginning to lose my skepticism.”

  Dilara took several flash photos of the map, then focused her light on the text. Several times, her eyes flicked back to her father’s body and the tears would return. Each time, Locke would hold her gently then turn her attention back to the map.

  The words were written in the same language used in the scroll. She took fifteen minutes working out the translation before she finally spoke.

  “It’s like Garrett said.” Her voice wavered, and her words were punctuated by an occasional sniffle, but her astonishment was apparent. “He told me that the flood was a plague. I didn’t believe him. I thought, why would he tell me the truth? But this says the Amulet of Japheth rests here and contains a horror that almost destroyed man. It was hidden in this chamber in remembrance of God’s wrath, His justice, and His love for mankind, that it was a testament to God for giving humanity a second chance to change our ways.”

  “But how could an amulet cause the deaths of everyone on earth?” Locke asked. “How could it be the source of a disease?”
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br />   “I don’t know. It says that the flood is captured for eternity inside the amulet. It says to find the true story, you must find the Ark, where the Amulet of Shem is kept.”

  “Great,” Grant said. “We’re finally getting to the good part. Where is it? There are dots all over this map. The Ark could be any one of them.”

  “The Ark’s resting place is in the eastern face of Mt. Ararat,” Dilara said. “The other marks are false Arks, decoys to throw off anyone who found the chamber but could not read the text. The majority of people in ancient times were illiterate.”

  “Got it,” Grant said, pointing at the location on the east side of the mountain.

  “Wait a minute,” Locke said, looking at the map, “if the Ark was where this dot says it is, people would have found it years ago. That elevation is lower than the year-round snow cover.”

  “The text says, quote, ‘The great vessel in which Noah took refuge from the flood is found in the east flank of Ararat.’”

  “You mean, on the east flank of Ararat,” Grant said.

  “No, I mean in,” Dilara said.

  “This makes no sense,” Locke said.

  “The text describes two entrances into the Ark. One that is sealed, and one that is passable.”

  “Your father’s last note mentions a real entrance, as if he could deceive Garrett into choosing the wrong one. But how could that possibly keep Garrett from retrieving something from a rotting wooden ship thousands of years old?”

  Dilara read further. When she got to the bottom, she staggered backward, as if she had been shoved in the face.

  “Oh my God!” she said. “They hid it deliberately. They lied about Noah’s Ark to keep it from being discovered.”

  “What are you talking about? Lied about what?”

  “Everything.”

  “Hold on,” Locke said. “Are you saying Noah’s Ark isn’t on Ararat?”

  “In a way, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Dilara replied. “It isn’t on Ararat. It’s in Ararat. That’s why no one has ever found the Ark. It’s a vessel, but not the kind that floats. For the past 6000 years, everyone has been searching for giant boat. Noah’s Ark is a cave.”