02 The Secret on Ararat (19 page)

THIRTY-THREE

“THEY WERE PROBABLY FAKES,” Murphy said as he and Isis caught their first glimpse of Dogubayazit. “I mean, that bronze plate—it’s hard to believe something like that was really on the ark. I think our man got cold feet. He probably thought we’d show up with the police in the morning. That’s why he made himself scarce.”

“Those documents were genuine. I’m sure of it,” Isis countered. “And ten thousand dollars is a lot of money. I find it hard to believe he wouldn’t stick around to collect.”

Murphy sighed. “Well, we’ll never know now. So let’s just put it behind us. What do you think of Dogubayazit?”

Isis snorted. “If you’d been prepared, if you’d had the money with you—”

“Isis, please!” Murphy almost shouted. “I’ve had a lot
more experience than you with these things. Trust me, we were about to be taken for a ride. And now we’re within striking distance of Ararat. Let’s look forward, not back. Okay?”

She snorted again, but didn’t say anything. They continued in silence along a highway running east on a large, flat plain between two ranges of desolate, craggy mountains. The road had slowly risen to an altitude of 6,400 feet as it got nearer to the Iranian border.

Now they could see Ararat in the distance about fifteen miles away, the top third covered in snow. It seemed incredible that the resting place of the ark was there in plain sight, as it had been for thousands of years, so clear they felt they only had to reach out to touch it. And the wonder of it banished all thoughts of what might have been in Erzurum.

They entered the town between clusters of shabby concrete houses and headed for the Hotel Isfahan, a favorite among climbing teams.

Dogubayazit had grown to a town of forty-nine thousand people, and Murphy wondered what they all did for a living out in the middle of nowhere. He had been told by Levi that the main source of income for the town was smuggling, which made sense.

When Murphy and Isis walked into the lobby, they could hear raucous laughter coming from farther inside the hotel. The receptionist, a thin man with an outsize mustache, seemed to know who they were before they had a chance to introduce themselves and simply pointed toward the dining room. They hefted their bags and followed his directions.

Inside the dining room, the Ararat team seemed to
have pretty much taken over. There was no sign of any other guests. And Murphy wondered whether the sight of Hodson and Valdez—dressed in army fatigues and with handguns slung in shoulder holsters, loudly downing shots of the local raki—had sent them scurrying for cover. They certainly looked like a dangerous crew, and Murphy was very glad they were on his side.

Also sitting at a long table spread with a red-checked tablecloth were Professor Reinhold, holding a book in one hand and a breadstick in the other, Bayer and Lundquist, engaged in a fiercely whispered debate over something, and Vern Peterson, who was chatting amiably with Whittaker. Vern was the first to spot Murphy and Isis, and he quickly got up from the table and intercepted them. “Murph, I’ve got some bad news. The Turkish government is giving us a hard time about the helicopter. I was able to fly it into Dogubayazit, but they say I don’t have permission to go any nearer to Ararat.”

Murphy looked over at Mustafa Bayer.

The Turk put his glass down and sighed theatrically. “I know! I know! I am working on it! I got the permits to climb the mountain, and we had permission to fly, but the man who was in charge of the military area was reassigned to a different post. The new colonel does not know about our arrangement. It’s just typical Turkish bureaucracy. I’m sure I can clear it up soon.”

“I hope we can by tomorrow evening,” said Murphy. “If not, we’ll need to hire horses to carry our gear up to Camp One. Then we will have to carry the other supplies to Camp Two and Camp Three by backpack. That won’t be fun.”

Peterson continued, “I sure want to get a chance to fly this thing, Murph. It’s a twin-engine, four-rotator-blade Huey. It’ll fly six people and some gear up to about twelve thousand feet. If we go higher we’ll probably have to drop it down to about four people. The four blades will help in the thin air, but the higher we go the less efficient we are.”

“What happens if it starts snowing while you’re flying at a high altitude?” asked Professor Reinhold, putting down a forkful of salad.

“That shouldn’t be a problem. The Huey comes equipped with de-icing equipment. I think wind would be more of a problem. Strong gusts are difficult to deal with. Especially if you’re too close to the mountain. We wouldn’t be the first plane to flip. But don’t worry, you’re in good hands!”

“I’m relieved to hear that,” Reinhold said, sounding anything but.

Hodson spoke up. “Isn’t it possible that the wind from your blades could start an avalanche?”

Vern shrugged. “It’s possible. You’ll have to be sure you’re not under a cornice or a steep face when I pick you up. I won’t be able to land on most of the mountain. It’s too steep. We’ll have to use the winch and pull you up.”

The group was silent for a moment, focusing on the fact that the helicopter pilot could be their savior—or could condemn them to an icy grave.

Then Lundquist waved Murphy and Isis over. “Come on, you two. Have a drink and something to eat. It’s not bad, you know, and it may be a while before we see real food again.”

Murphy decided it was time to establish his authority.
“No thanks. We need to get things moving. I want you and Valdez to help me check all the climbing equipment and supplies.” He nodded toward the other end of the table. “Hodson can check the first-aid equipment and radios. Isis has a list of food supplies we’re going to need. I suggest Professor Reinhold go with her to the market.”

Plates were reluctantly pushed aside, drinks downed, and everyone got moving. Bayer was left lounging in his chair.

“And what would you like me to do?” he smiled.

Murphy didn’t return his smile. “We need that permission to fly over Ararat. Who do we have to talk to?”

Bayer frowned. “Do not trouble yourself. Trust me, it will be done.”

“Then do it,” Murphy insisted.

Bayer slunk off with a scowl. Whittaker watched him go and gave Murphy a wink. “Way to go, Murphy. I hope you haven’t made an enemy there.”

Murphy turned on him. “There’s no room for prima donnas on this team, Whittaker. The sooner Bayer realizes it, the better.”

“Then I guess I better go upstairs and check that all my film’s loaded,” Whittaker said, making for the door. “I don’t want to get chewed out by the boss.”

When everyone else had left, Murphy sat down with Vern and reviewed their plans, trying to make sure he had thought of everything. The way the rest of the team had seemed so relaxed was bothering him. Two hours later a disconsolate Bayer arrived back at the hotel.

“Is he going to release the Huey?” asked Peterson.

“I think so,” Bayer said. “But it will not happen for at least two days. We will have to make other arrangements to get the equipment to the mountain. You will not be able to fly the team to Ararat, but you will be able to pick us up and bring us home.”

“Let’s go!” said Murphy, slapping the table with his palm. “We can’t waste time here. We have to find someone with horses who can pack us in.”

It was 5:00
A.M.
the next day when the team assembled in front of the hotel and began loading their gear into a truck. Valdez got in the cab next to Bayer, while the rest of the team piled into a van. Peterson waved them off.

“We’ll keep in touch by satellite phone,” Murphy assured him, winding down the passenger-side window. “God willing, we’ll see you on Ararat!”

Vern saluted and watched the van disappear around the corner.

The back of the van was fitted with rough benches on each side, and as the team settled themselves, Murphy was reminded of paratroopers waiting to be dropped over enemy territory. “Last chance to bail out,” he said. “Next stop, Ararat.”

“Next stop, Noah’s Ark,” Reinhold grinned.

Up front, Bayer was talking. “We’ll head east on the main highway toward Iran, until we come to the Dogubayazit Commando Post. You will all need to have your passports and climbing permits ready for the military guards. About one kilometer past the post we will
turn left and go north toward Ararat. It is a fairly good dirt road. It should not take too long.”

Isis watched out the window as the sun rose over two small villages. Some of the early-morning shepherds were already out rounding up their flocks.

Soon they began to climb the slopes toward a house. When they reached the 6,600-foot level, they stopped and unloaded their gear. The horse-packer and his two sons were waiting, huddled around a fire. They loaded the equipment onto the horses and the team began the trek to Camp 1. As the sound of hooves on the rocky trail replaced the grinding of gears, and goat-herder settlements replaced villages, they began to feel they had entered a different world—a world that still had links with the ancient past.

Murphy dropped back to watch his team as they progressed up the mountain. Valdez and Hodson had each taken a flank, scanning the trail ahead and periodically turning one-eighty to check behind. Machine pistols were slung round their necks, but their hands never left the stocks. Murphy didn’t want to know how they’d got the weapons into Turkey. Bayer had taken point, no doubt an issue of pride, and was striding ahead up the trail. Occasionally he would slow and look up toward the snowline as if he was waiting for something. Lundquist walked behind him, his eyes never straying from Bayer’s back, as if he was determined to keep him in sight at all times.

In the middle of the group, Reinhold was trying to read a book balanced on the back of one of the horses. Every now and then he would stumble against a rock, cursing, and the book would fall to the ground. Murphy
shook his head. For a man who seemed to share many of his own interests, Reinhold was curiously uncommunicative. He was clearly as fascinated by the possibility of finding the ark as Murphy was, but Murphy suspected he was put off by the spiritual underpinning of their quest and preferred to keep his thoughts to himself. Fair enough, Murphy thought. Plenty of time for talking later.

Just ahead of Murphy, Isis was keeping up a good pace with her easy, economical stride. She looked as if she was on a Sunday morning stroll up a gentle hillside, and Murphy marveled again at her reserves of strength and endurance. He also marveled at her wild, natural beauty, which perfectly complemented the awesome landscape around them.

And he wasn’t the only one to appreciate it. For every shot of the mountain Whittaker took, he surreptitiously snapped off two of Isis. Despite himself, Murphy felt a pang of annoyance. Or could it be jealousy?

It was mid-afternoon, and they seemed to have been climbing for hours when the clouds grew dark and it began to rain. By the time they had unpacked their rain gear, it had begun to pour. Thunder roared and lightning flashed, and slippery mud quickly made the going treacherous. But the horse-packer and his sons didn’t slow down for the weather. They trudged on until the clouds broke up and the sun peeked through.

At about ten thousand feet the team reached a small grassy meadow. Streams of crystal water flowed from under a nearby snowbank, and the horse-packer and his
sons helped to set up camp. Bright-colored nylon tents soon covered the ground, the horses were hobbled, and the evening meal was bubbling in pots over a brushwood fire.

As everyone hungrily devoured the meal of rice and beans, Murphy explained the plan for the following days, a series of treks up to Camps 2 and 3, ferrying supplies back and forth while they acclimated themselves.

There was little conversation. Everyone had their own thoughts about what was to come, and there was a palpable sense of energies being conserved. The easy part was over.

The sun had gone down and a breeze was picking up. The horse-packer and his sons tied blankets over the horses and went to their tent, while the rest followed suit.

Isis curled up in her sleeping bag and pulled the drawstring tight against the cold air. In the darkness she could hear the nylon flapping in the breeze. She couldn’t help thinking that Murphy was only a few feet away. Then exhaustion took over and she began to fall asleep, her mind filling with a jumble of violent images that would feed her dreams through the night.

Murphy lay with his eyes open, listening to the sounds of the night. He could hear the noise of weapons being field-stripped. And the rustle of pages—probably Professor Reinhold studying his research materials on the construction of the ark.

Then all he could hear was the sound of the wind on the mountain.

He began to pray.

THIRTY-FOUR

“YOU’RE SURE EVERYTHING will be safe?”

It was early in the morning and Murphy and Bayer were standing on a patch of ground away from the tents, by the horses. Behind them, the rest of the team were busy making breakfast and cups of hot tea.

Bayer touched his hand to his chest. “Of course, I will watch over them. There will be no problem.” He patted the automatic holstered at his waist.

“Okay,” Murphy said. “We’re going to cross the Araxes Glacier and explore the area around the Ahora Gorge. If nothing else, Whittaker should get some good footage on the glacier.”

Bayer sat down on a rock and lit a cigarette, staring off into the distance, while Murphy went back to the tents to help pack the rucksacks with ropes, carabiners, ice screws, crampons, and ice axes.

Leaving Isis, Reinhold, and Bayer, along with the
horse-packer and his sons, the rest of the team checked their GPS equipment and headed toward the glacier, their plan being to traverse east at relatively the same level around the mountain. They would save the strenuous upward climbing for later.

The morning air was crisp and exhilarating. The sky was bright blue and not a cloud could be seen. But as Murphy knew, appearances on Ararat could be deceptive. Within an hour a clear sky could deliver a raging blizzard.

The team moved at a good pace across the rocks and occasional snow drifts on the shady sides of the mountain. Even though it was early in the morning, they began to unzip their jackets and open them up. It was important to let out body heat and reduce the sweating to a minimum to keep their clothes dry and reduce dehydration.

We’re getting closer
, Murphy thought excitedly, adrenaline surging through him as he entered a rock-strewn gully.

Isis watched the little group as they disappeared into the snowfield. The ache in her legs felt good, and despite a night of feverish dreams, the clear mountain air had invigorated her. She felt herself beginning to relax for the first time in weeks. Or was it simply that she felt better when Murphy was around? She looked for a sunny rock with a good view of the mountain where she could enjoy a few more minutes of leisure before cleaning up the pots and pans, and saw Professor Reinhold sitting on a rock at the front of the meadow where it
began to drop down the mountain. He, too, liked the sun, but he also liked the slight breeze. The only thing he didn’t like was having to hold the pages of his book down while he read. The breeze kept trying to turn them for him.

Bayer was nowhere to be seen.

When the team reached the Araxes Glacier, they unloaded their spiked crampons and put them on. They each hooked on to a rope for safety, with about forty feet between each climber, and began to cross a sea of white snow covering the glacier. Murphy was leading the team, with Valdez behind him. Next came Lundquist, and Hodson brought up the rear. Whittaker had a separate rope tied to the main rope between Lundquist and Valdez, allowing him the freedom to move forward or backward to take pictures.

Despite Valdez and Lundquist’s suddenly dropping to their armpits in the snow as they fell into small crevasses covered by snowdrifts, crossing the glacier was relatively easy.

Descending the east side of the glacier was more difficult. The snow had turned into ice. Murphy was pounding in some ice screws when he slipped and fell a few feet before catching himself. He hooked onto the belay ropes to drop the seventy feet to the rocks below, aiming to leave the ropes in place for the climb back up on the return trip.

He hoped they’d still be there.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Reinhold said, pointing to the horses. The horse-packer’s sons were feeding them hay and talking to them. Isis wondered whether the horses understood Turkish.

“Yes, they are. And the boys look after them well. You don’t always see that out here,” Isis replied. “This is the first time I’ve seen you with your nose out of a book,” she laughed.

Reinhold smiled. “You can never learn too much. When we find the ark—or I should say if we find the ark, whatever’s left of it—I want to make sure I know what we’re looking at, how stable the structure is. And, of course, if it really
is
the ark. There’s been plenty of time for someone to plant fake remains on the mountain.”

“You mean like the Turin shroud?”

“Exactly. Although your Professor Murphy probably believes that’s legitimate.”

Isis was rather disconcerted to hear him referred to as
her
Professor Murphy. “I have no idea what he believes,” she said airily. “But what about you? I find it hard to believe you’d leave your precious research behind to take your life in your hands on Mount Ararat if you didn’t think there was something here.”

Reinhold kept his smile in place, but his boyish eyes had hardened. “Oh, I think there’s something up here, all right. The question is, what?”

Progress toward the Ahora Gorge was becoming more difficult as the team entered a large boulder field. Some of the rocks were as large as a small house. Climbing
around the boulders or over them was beginning to eat up time and energy.

“Let’s rest for a minute,” Lundquist suggested, his face streaked with sweat.

“Come on, Lundquist, we don’t have the time. We got a schedule here,” protested Hodson, looking to Murphy for confirmation.

Murphy was about to speak, but Whittaker put a hand on his shoulder. Then he put a finger to his lips. He seemed to be listening for something.

“What is it?” Murphy whispered.

Whittaker didn’t reply, but then Murphy could hear it too. A faint crackling in the distance, like waves dragging stones down a beach. He looked up the slope, back the way they’d come, and suddenly he could see it.

“Rock avalanche!” he yelled. “Take cover!”

Murphy and Valdez scrambled toward the house-shaped rock to their right. Hodson and Lundquist were trying to reach a similar rock twenty feet below them.

Whittaker for some reason started running toward the avalanche as if he had some sort of bizarre death wish. For a moment Murphy thought he was going to have to turn around and pull him back. Then he saw that Whittaker had spotted a perfect nook scooped into the boulder field just above them.
I guess he’s done this more times than I have
, Murphy thought as he hurled himself to the ground alongside Valdez. He rolled just in time to see Whittaker squeezing off one last shot with his camera before the huge wave of dust and rocks surged over his position and crashed into the rock Murphy and Valdez were sheltering behind.

As the tremendous noise overwhelmed them and the
dust forced them to close their eyes, Murphy tried to picture Lundquist and Hodson’s last position. He had no idea whether they’d managed to get out of the avalanche’s path in time. For several agonizing minutes Murphy clung to the rocks, waiting for the dreadful grinding and crashing noise to stop, signaling that the danger had passed. Eventually he pushed himself to his feet. Holding his scarf over his nose and mouth against the choking dust, he moved down the boulder field, trying to locate the other members of the team. Valdez and Whittaker were soon at his side.

“Hodson!” he shouted. “Lundquist! Where are you?”

There was a muffled “Here!” and Murphy saw movement in the rubble. Hodson was staggering to his feet and then Lundquist, too, began to emerge.

Hodson put a hand to his forehead and it came away bloody. “I was making for that rock over there when this guy trips me up. Luckily we fell into a hole. Otherwise that would have been it.”

“You never would have made it,” Lundquist protested, brushing himself off. “You were lucky I grabbed you in time.”

Hodson glared at him and spat into the dust. “Whatever.”

“Look, the main thing is we’re all okay,” Murphy said. “Thanks to Whittaker’s sharp senses.”

“You never know who’s going to save your life, do you?” Whittaker grinned, snapping off a shot of the disheveled and dusty mountaineers.

Then they heard another sound and their heads all jerked up at the same time. Was it the sound of another avalanche starting? They listened, readying themselves
to dive to shelter if they needed to. But it was too far away. A steady
pop-pop-pop
back from the direction of the camp.

Gunfire.

The only ones to hear them coming were the horses. Their ears went up first. Then their nostrils flared as they began to sniff the air. They snorted a couple of times and whinnied softly.

The noise of the horses made the dozing horse-packer open his eyes. He looked at his horses to see what was wrong. Could they smell a pack of wild dogs?

The horse-packer sat up just in time to see a figure stepping out from behind a rock. He had a rifle in his hand and a scarf covering his face. He was heading for Professor Reinhold, back on the rock with his book.

The horse-packer was about to shout a warning when he heard another sound. The sound of a round being chambered. It came from his left and he turned to see another masked gunman, his rifle pointing straight at the horse-packer’s heart.

He raised his hands and slowly turned his head to see a third gunman moving quickly toward Isis’s tent. Beside him, his sons were awake, and the horse-packer put his hands on their shoulders to keep them still, but they needed no prompting. They had lived long enough in these mountains to know that when a rifle was pointed at you, you simply trusted in Allah and waited to see what would happen next.

Reinhold was still deep in his book when he felt the hard jab in his back. He turned and looked into the barrel
of a rifle held by a man with a scarf over his head. He slowly raised his hands. He could see Isis emerging from her tent as another gunman grunted something to her in Turkish.

This doesn’t look good
, he thought.
Not good at all
.

The gunmen herded everyone into the cooking area. One of the men held them at rifle-point while the other two searched the tents. They came out holding a few items that they wanted.

The leader of the gunmen spoke to the horse-packer in what sounded like Kurdish. Reinhold couldn’t understand the words, but his meaning, emphasized with hand gestures, was clear enough. They wanted him to take his horses and sons and leave. As long as he kept his mouth shut and didn’t alert the authorities to what had happened, they wouldn’t be harmed. The horse-packer gave Reinhold and Isis a pitying look, then began leading the horses back down the trail.

The gunmen turned their attention to Isis and Reinhold, roughly tying their hands with old pieces of nylon rope. Jabbing at Isis with the point of the rifle, one man was asking her something urgently in Turkish.

Reinhold realized he had an urgent question of his own.

Where was Bayer?

Just then there was a clatter of rocks farther up the mountain, and the gunmen swung their rifles around instinctively. The leader shouted a few words in Kurdish, and he and one of the other gunmen started jogging down the trail in the direction the horse-packer and his sons had gone, dragging Isis between them. Reinhold was left alone with the third gunman. The
gunman waved a finger at him and said something Reinhold didn’t understand, but he was sure it was something along the lines of “Don’t try anything.” He wished he knew enough Kurdish to be able to tell him, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Then there was another clatter of rocks and the gunman swung his rifle around in the direction of the noise. Out of the corner of his eye, Reinhold could see a dark figure approaching fast. The gunman saw it too, but too late. His head was jerked back by a powerful hand and a knife blade flashed. He clutched his side, made a retching noise, then collapsed to his knees as Bayer pulled the blade out and wiped it roughly on his fatigues. He looked at Reinhold fiercely, pressing his finger to his lips. Reinhold nodded. Then Bayer jogged away in the direction the other two gunmen had taken, and Reinhold was left staring at the bloody corpse as the last twitches of life left it.

After a while he walked a few feet away, toward the tents. He didn’t know what to do. Eventually he went back to the corpse and pried the rifle out of the dead man’s grip. He hoped he’d know how to use it if he had to.

Suddenly the camp had gone very silent. Even the wind had dropped to a whisper. He strained his ears to hear the slightest sound. He thought he heard a cry. Was it Isis? He dreaded to think what might be happening to her. Then he heard a crack. Then another. A noise like rocks falling down a steep slope. Then silence.

He waited, expecting at any moment to see the two other gunmen returning to camp. Then he’d have to use the rifle. He suddenly realized how foolish it was to be standing in the middle of the meadow, a sitting target.
He started running toward the glacier, searching to find a boulder large enough to hide behind, when he heard a shout.

“Professor Reinhold! It is okay, my friend. No need for running!”

He turned and there was Bayer, grinning from ear to ear as he led a pale-looking Isis back into camp. She was clearly trembling.

“What happened?” Reinhold asked when they reached him.

Bayer shook his head. “Very bad men. Very bad.” Then he grinned again. “But also very stupid. And now very dead.”

He let go of Isis and she collapsed into Reinhold’s arms.