02 The Secret on Ararat (8 page)

“Yes, Carl!” Murphy pointed to his right.

“Professor Murphy. In the Badi Abas story, Davis mentions that the ark is broken. In the other sightings the ark was all in one piece. Why don’t the stories match?”

“We’re not sure, Carl. It’s possible the first sightings of the ark were when it was on a cliff above the Ahora Gorge. The movement of the glacier and/or an avalanche could have toppled it into the gorge and the fall broken it into sections. Ararat is known for earthquakes and avalanches.”

Murphy glanced at the clock on the wall. He knew that the bell would ring in a few moments.

“We’re almost out of time, but before the class is over, I want to give you an assignment.”

Those who had already closed their notebooks anticipating the bell groaned and opened them back up.

“I want you to do a study and see what you can find in history about Noah and the Flood. Jesus even talks about Noah when He says in Luke Seventeen:

Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying, and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the Flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed.

“Noah’s Ark is a testimony that God will not let wickedness run unrestrained forever.”

“Professor Murphy, I have a question,” said a student named Theron Wilson.

“Go ahead, Theron.”

“Do you think we will ever really find the ark?”

The question momentarily stopped Murphy in his tracks. Finally he said, “There’s probably a reason it’s been hidden all this time. And God would need a good reason to let someone reveal it to the world again. It could be that revealing it now would send a message, a message about how much evil there is in the world and how we have to do something about it. Maybe now would be a good time for someone to go looking for it.”

There was a pregnant silence as his audience pondered his words. And then the ringing of the bell brought them all back to the present.

ELEVEN

VERNON THIELMAN was smiling to himself as he took a deep breath of the cool night air. It was Friday night and he was glad he wasn’t working the graveyard shift. He pushed the light button on his watch.

Ten-thirty. Almost done and the night is still young
.

The full moon was making his job as night watchman a breeze. From the top of the roof of the Smithsonian, he could see anyone entering the parking lot that flanked the back two sides of the building. As he moved diagonally across the roof to the other corner, he could see 5th Street, which ran north and south, and Milford Boulevard, which ran east and west. The traffic was light for a Friday night.

After the violent death of two night watchmen and the theft of one section of Moses’ Brazen Serpent from the Parchments of Freedom Foundation, a security guard had been placed on the roof. Despite the anxiety
the deaths had engendered, the roof duty was regarded as relatively safe. His job tonight, after all, was to see and report, not to confront anybody or put himself in harm’s way. Given that the security staff had negotiated extra danger payments, Thielman thought he had a pretty good deal.

It was hard to believe, but it appeared that the two guards had been killed by birds. Peregrine falcons to be exact. Birds of prey that had been trained to use their razor-sharp talons and beaks on man, instead of their usual quarry, pigeons and crows. It seemed pretty unlikely that such a bizarre incident could ever happen again, but Thielman was taking no chances. Every time he heard a squawk or a flutter of wings, his hand went straight to the security baton in his belt—ready to beat off any feathered attacker. And he had already checked the roof area several times for any lurking falcons.

Tonight, happily, he hadn’t seen so much as a sparrow.

He did, however, see a dark-green Jeep drive slowly down 5th Street and turn right onto Milford. The Jeep stopped across the street from the foundation and a large man eased himself out. He looked in both directions as if he were going to cross the street, but then just stood by the Jeep. Then the man looked up at the roof and Thielman had the uncanny feeling he knew he was there. He couldn’t see the man’s face, but something about the situation sent a shiver up his spine.

Thielman stepped closer to the edge of the roof to get a better look, but the man’s face remained in shadow.

Suddenly the man by the Jeep raised his hand, held it in midair for a few moments, then snapped it down
against his thigh. Instantly Thielman heard an earsplitting shriek behind him and swiveled to see a dark shape arrowing down toward his face. Fumbling at his belt, he instinctively took a step backward and tripped over a taut monofilament line stretched between two steel air outlets. Turning awkwardly, he managed to break his fall by gripping the guardrail surrounding the roof.

For a second he congratulated himself on his swift reactions.
Not so bad for an old guy
, he thought.

And then the rail snapped in two like a stale breadstick and he was plummeting through space, spinning crazily as the ground rushed up to meet him in a crushing embrace.

By the time the stranger had ambled over to Thielman’s body, with its crazy arrangement of limbs sticking out at odd angles, the last muscle spasms had finished their grisly dance, and everything was still. He paused for a moment to savor the pungent aromas of violent death, then dragged the corpse around to the back of the building and heaved it into the bushes.

He looked up as a starling gently settled on his shoulder and began to preen itself. He bared his teeth in a sickly smile. Starlings were mischievous birds and great mimics.

“You seem to have scared our friend here out of his wits, little one.”

The bird gave a trill, cocked its head once, and flew off. The man moved silently to one of the large windows and removed a handful of tools from a backpack. First he held up what looked like a TV remote, pointed it at the window, and pressed a series of buttons. After a few
seconds a red light winked on and a single beep told him the alarm system had been neutralized.

Next, he applied a suction cup to the window and attached an arm with a glass cutter.

Putting pressure on the glass cutter, he made an arcing circle around the suction cup, then tapped the circle once with a gloved hand and the glass popped out with the suction cup still attached. He set it on the ground, put away his tools, and slipped through the hole in the glass.

On the third floor of the building, another security guard methodically checked the doors as he walked down the corridor. So far everything was secure. Nothing out of place. Another quiet night.

He worried that maybe it was too quiet. He’d been experiencing problems with his hearing recently—his wife swore she had to shout to get his attention—and when he found himself wrapped in total silence, he couldn’t be sure that he simply wasn’t registering low-level noise. The kind of noise that could be significant in his line of work.

That faint grunting sound, for instance, gone as quickly as it had come. Did he imagine that? Or was it actually a shout—another guard in trouble somewhere in the building—and he should be rushing to his assistance, calling for backup, every lost second a matter of life and death?

He stopped. A thud. Definitely a thud. Like a bag of flour hitting the floor. Followed by more silence. But the silence was somehow eerier this time.

He quickly unlocked the door to one of the offices, slipped inside, and crossed to the window overlooking 5th Street. Nothing out of place. Still, better safe than sorry. He radioed to Thielman on the roof.

No reply.

Not good. He felt his skin go clammy. Then he punched more numbers into his walkie-talkie.

“This is Robertson to Caldwell. What’s your location?”

“This is Caldwell. I’m in the basement.”

“Okay. I’m going to the roof and see why Thielman isn’t answering. Why don’t you work your way up and join me?”

“I’m on my way.”

Robertson headed for the stairs. But slowly. He’d give Caldwell plenty of time to catch up. No point taking more chances than he had to.

Talon heard the door to the basement open and quickly slipped into the shadows next to the stairwell. A few seconds later Caldwell jogged past him. Talon was momentarily startled by the security guard’s speed. In his experience these rent-a-cops took their time over everything—especially investigating suspicious situations—but this one seemed determined to get to the source of trouble as quickly as he could.

In which case, Talon really ought to point out that he was heading in the wrong direction.

“Excuse me, sir.”

Caldwell spun around, his hand instinctively going to the automatic on his hip.

“I seem to be a little lost.”

Caldwell approached cautiously, unable to make out the features of the man lurking in the stairwell. “You certainly are, sir. Can you come out into the light, please?”

“Of course,” Talon said, stepping smartly forward while simultaneously sweeping his right arm across Caldwell’s throat. Before Caldwell could react, his larynx was severed, along with both carotid arteries. He slumped to the floor as twin fountains of blood painted the wall a garish red.

Talon carefully wiped the blood off his artificial index finger onto Caldwell’s jacket and smiled. “Thanks for your help. I think I can find my own way now.”

When Robertson reached the roof, Thielman was nowhere to be found. He walked over to the corner overlooking 5th Street and Milford. All was quiet except for a green Jeep parked across the street. As he walked along the Milford side of the roof, his flashlight illuminated the broken guardrail. He looked over the edge and could see something on the pavement that looked like a large oil stain. He then crossed to the corner overlooking the two parking lots. He swept his flashlight in a slow arc over the ground toward the bushes.

He gasped as he saw two black shoes sticking out.

He pulled his automatic out of its holster, slipped off the safety, and hurried back toward the roof door. He had one thought in mind.
Get to the fourth floor and set off the alarm
. Seven minutes later the place would be swarming with cops.

All he had to do was make it through the next seven minutes.

Isis McDonald’s unruly mop of startling red hair was spread out on her desk, her pale face pillowed on a dusty copy of Seagram’s
Glossary of Sumerian Script
. The book lay open at the page she had been reading when she fell asleep. It was not so much that she’d been working for twelve hours straight (that was a common occurrence when a philological problem remained unsolved, and therefore a cause of mild but constant irritation); it was more that, since her sense of time completely deserted her when she was immersed in her work, she simply laid her head down for a nap whenever she felt tired.

She had been dozing softly for about twenty minutes and normally would have expected to remain asleep for another half hour or so before awaking refreshed, if a little stiff, and ready to attack the problem with renewed vigor.

But this time she was jerked awake by the sound of an alarm.

She sat up with a start, trying to get her bearings. Was there a fire? Had someone broken in to the foundation? Then she heard a series of loud noises in the lab next to her office. It sounded like things were being thrown about by a madman. Still not fully awake, she opened the door and turned on the light.

A man with black hair and gray eyes set in a long, pale face turned to face her. He gave her a look that chilled her to the bone.

She’d seen that look before. So had Laura Murphy.

She stepped back from the doorway, aiming for her desk, where a .32 automatic—as yet unfired—nestled in a drawer amid a clutter of stationery.

She didn’t even manage a single stride before he caught her.

He grabbed her with his left arm and whirled her around, and her forehead made contact with a solidly aimed fist. Isis flew backward across her desk, knocking the computer to the floor and spraying papers everywhere. She didn’t have time to scream before a numbing blackness descended on her.

Talon quickly moved to her side and circled his hands around her delicate throat. His thumbs began to move down on her larynx.

“Exquisite,” he breathed.

There was nothing more pleasing than a face-to-face kill. Especially if one had the time to draw it out.

“Hold it right there!”

Talon knew without turning around that a gun was aimed at him, but he showed no sign of alarm. He let go of Isis’s throat, letting her slump unceremoniously to the floor, and turned toward the remaining security guard.

“Put your hands up where I can see them.”

Talon slowly raised his hands, locking eyes with the guard. The guard took his eyes off Talon for a moment to look at Isis, and Talon instantly appreciated his dilemma. If she was badly hurt and needed immediate
medical assistance, how was he going to do that while keeping Talon in his sights?

In the split second provided by the guard’s indecision, Talon put a hand behind his neck and slipped a throwing knife into his palm.

“I said keep your hands up!” shouted Robertson, a moment before the knife embedded itself in his throat with a sound like a cleaver chopping through ribs. He dropped his gun, and both hands closed over the hilt to try and pull it out, but the life force was already draining from him. He sank to his knees in slow motion, then toppled almost gracefully onto Isis.

Talon looked at Isis, then cocked his head at the sound of approaching sirens.

“Later,” he said with a sneer.

The phone jolted Murphy out of a deep sleep. Shards of a shattered dream—Laura laughing on a mountainside, birdsong, the word
Jasmine
—fell away into darkness as he came fully awake. The ringing continued. Finally it registered that it was his phone.

“Murphy.”

“Michael, it’s Isis. I’m sorry if I’ve woken you.”

During the ordeals they’d shared together, he’d seen the full range of her emotions, from elation to despair, but the sheer terror he could now hear in her voice struck a shocking new note.

“Isis. What is it? What’s wrong?”

Isis started to speak, and then the words dissolved into crying.

“Take a deep breath.”

Murphy waited until the sobbing subsided.

“Tell me what happened.”

Haltingly, with several breaks for more crying, Isis related as much of her ordeal as she could recollect, though the blow on the head and subsequent concussion had jumbled the sequence of events in her memory.

A chaos of different emotions swirled through Murphy’s mind. Sorrow, guilt, but most of all anger. “I’ll be on the first plane out of Raleigh. I should never have gotten you involved in this. Are you sure you shouldn’t be in the hospital? Did they discharge you, or was it that stubborn streak of yours—”

“No, Michael,” she interrupted. “It’s not your fault. And I’m okay. I’m just shaken up, that’s all. The police asked me to go to my sister’s in Bridgeport, Connecticut. That’s where I’m calling from now. They have a patrol car guarding the house. They want me to stay here until they can figure out what happened.”

Murphy gripped the phone so hard his knuckles turned white. “We know what happened, Isis. We know who did this—who killed the guards, attacked you. He would have killed you too if the police hadn’t …” His voice trailed off as another thought struck him.

“The fragment of wood—is it still in the lab?”

Isis laughed through another sob. “l thought for a moment you were just concerned about me.”

“I am, Isis,” he protested.

“But there are other, more important things to worry about, aren’t there? Don’t worry, Michael, I understand. But the answer to your question is no. The wood is gone.”

“So that’s what he came for.”

“Looks like it,” Isis agreed. “But that’s not all.”

“What do you mean?”

“We did some further research. We discovered that the wood was not only about five thousand years old, but that it contained radioactive isotopes and almost no traces of potassium forty in it. What do you make of that?”