The Ark: A Novel (40 page)

"Absolutely. Remember that slip of paper from Dilara's locket that you had us analyze? The one that said B C T?"

The Book of the Cave of Treasures. "To be honest," Locke said, "I had forgotten about it. You found something?"

"Two sets of numbers and letters. We were able to read the pen indentations with the TEC's scanning microscope. I think it's a latitude and longitude. 122.bggyuW, 48.hutzsN." Locke wrote them down and studied the odd coordinates.

"Why do these look familiar?" he said.

"Because you're standing right at 122 west and 48 north," Aiden said.

Locke realized he had seen the coordinates when they had been planning the raid on Oasis.

"Without the decimal digits, this could be anywhere on the island. What's with the letters?"

"You tell me. That's what the paper in the locket said."

Locke turned to Dilara. "Did your father use a code for his notes?"

"Why?" Dilara said.

"He left you a message." He showed her the coordinates. "And I think it leads to something else. Do you know how to read this?"

"I think so. For notes he didn't want anyone else to read, he had a cipher. He taught it to me when I was young, and I use it in my notes sometimes. He and I are the only ones who know it."

She looked at the coordinates and took Locke's pen. She quickly crossed out each letter and substituted a number.

"Thanks, Aiden," Locke said. "We'll take it from here."

"Let me know what you find." Aiden hung up.

"What do you think it is?" Dilara asked.

"Only one way to find out." He flagged down a passing soldier. "Sergeant, I need your GPS locator."

"Yes, sir," the surprised sergeant said and handed him the unit.

The coordinates were so precise, Dilara's father must have used a GPS unit to record them. Locke entered them into the unit. He wasn't surprised by the answer.

"It's in this compound," he said. Dilara looked completely reenergized.

The location was about 300 yards north of their position, back in the direction of the woods that Locke had driven through from the fence.

Using his flashlight, he and Dilara walked until they reached the coordinates. In the exact center was a pine tree that had to have been 500 years old. A black hollow in the tree showed where it had survived past forest fires.

"He must have buried it," Dilara said. "He's an archaeologist, after all. We'll have to come back with a couple of shovels."

Locke looked at the ground, which was covered with pine needles. If her father had buried something here three years ago, all traces had been washed away. Maybe the ground-penetrating radar could help them.

He was about to go back with Dilara, and then he stopped.

"Why would your father hide something out here?" Locke asked.

"I don't know. It must have been something he didn't want Garrett to find."

"If he was a visitor, don't you think it would have been odd for him to walk out here with a shovel? Someone would have noticed."

"Maybe he used his hands."

"With just his hands, he wouldn't have been able to dig too deep. If he had, he would have come back all dirty and bloody. Garrett would have known something was up."

"Then how else could he..."

She paused. They were both looking at the tree. The one with the hollowed trunk.

Locke shined the flashlight down inside the hollow. Nothing but wood chips and water. Then he bent over and looked up. A circular reflection. It was the end of a tube two inches in diameter, pushed up into a part of the trunk further hollowed by insects. He tried to reach it, but his hand was too big.

Dilara snaked her hand in and grasped the tube. It took her three tugs because the tube was wedged in so tightly, but on the last one, she yanked it free.

The tube was white, opaque, two feet long. The top was sealed shut and seemed watertight. Dilara wiped the gunk off the tube with her shirt. She took a deep breath, then opened it.

In the dim light, Locke could see a roll of yellowed parchment, ancient looking. In the center of the rolled parchment was a slip of white notepaper, obviously modern. Dilara carefully tugged the note free.

As she ran her eyes over the paper, her eyes welled with tears. When she got to the end, she looked up at Locke.

"Your father?" he said.

Dilara nodded. "He wanted me to find this. This is the Book of the Cave of Treasures. It's the way to find Noah's Ark."

When he stepped out of the Blackhawk at Boeing Field, it seemed to Locke like months had passed since he and Dilara had arrived at the same spot from Las Vegas just five days ago. All Grant would talk about on the flight was Tiffany and his long-delayed return to Seattle, and Locke couldn't be happier for him. Grant lived in an apartment downtown, so he hitched a ride in Miles Benson's van back to Gordian headquarters. Locke took Dilara with him in the Porsche. Since she had already stayed at his house once before, he offered again. The big difference this time was that they didn't have trained killers looking for them.

Her father had been smart about coding the message in her locket, although his flaw had been to make the slip of paper too hard for her to find in the first place by placing it under her mother's photo. When Dilara had received it, she had no idea that she should look for a message inside it. But the coding itself was ingenious. The leading numbers showed they were latitude and longitude, but the coded lettering made the coordinates too imprecise to be of use in finding the hidden documents. No one who found the note, other than Dilara, would be able to decipher it.

As Locke drove, she read the note from the sealed container to him. As she spoke, she became so choked with emotion several times that she had to stop and compose herself.

My dearest Dilara,

I am sorry that you have come to find this note because it means that my suspicions have proven correct, and in all likelihood I am dead. I am sorry I was not able to share my greatest professional achievement with you, the greatest achievement of my life. To satisfy my curiosity and ambition, I am afraid I have taken league with someone who does not seek the knowledge I do for the same reasons. I have begun to suspect that Sebastian Garrett is disturbed, power mad, that he will betray me somehow. Therefore, I have hidden this document for you to find. The scroll is the only known copy of The Book of the Cave of Treasures.

I unearthed the scroll during a dig in northern Iraq. I chose not to release the contents to the media in the hopes that I could find the Ark myself. However, I ran short of funds, and through my old friend, Sam Watson, I fell in with a new benefactor, Garrett. He has seen the Book, but I am the only one who can decipher it. I felt the need to hide it when I found out he was searching for other translators.

You can be one of those translators. If you read it carefully, it will lead you to Noah's famed vessel, and the scourge that it still holds within its bowels. Garrett has come to suspect that I am withholding information from him. His trust is shallow and limited. The locket was the only way I could spirit my message out to you. I hoped that sending it to you as a birthday present would free it from suspicion.

If you are reading this, you must have already outwitted Garrett to some degree. But be careful. I fear he may take extreme measures if he knows you have these documents.

I hope you elect to complete the work that I could not finish and unveil Noah's Ark to the world. If you take on the quest, I wish you good hunting. Whatever you decide, know that your mother and I love you always.

Hasad Arvadi

"He's dead, isn't he?" Dilara asked. Her pain was palpable.

"We don't know that," Locke said, but he didn't really believe it.

"No, he is. I know it."

He put his hand on hers. "I'm so sorry, Dilara. I promise you we will find out what happened to your father."

She squeezed his hand. "Thanks. That means a lot to me."

He let her weep quietly. After a few minutes, she took her hand away to use a tissue and said, "My father wanted me to find the Ark, and that's what I'm going to do."

"Your father's note says that the 'scourge' is still in the Ark's bowels," he said. "That confirms what Garrett told you. That a relic with the prion disease--Arkon--is still in Noah's Ark."

"But Garrett told me that he never got to the Ark. If he didn't get
into
the Ark, how did he find a relic
from
the Ark?"

"We'll have to ask him. Maybe use his own truth serum. In the meantime, what's our next step?"

"
Our
next step?"

His father's words echoed in Locke's ears. "I need to make sure the last of the Arkon is destroyed."

"I'll take the scroll back to my laboratory at UCLA and analyze it there. We have a controlled environment for examining ancient documents, and this one looks at least 3000 years old. It'll be extremely fragile."

"Who else will be involved?"

"No one. If it looks like the scroll really leads to Noah's Ark, then I don't want there to be a stampede to the site. I know you're worried about the Arkon getting loose again, but I'm worried about the potential historical loss as well. Priceless artifacts could be looted, trampled, or destroyed."

"It'll be quite a find for you. It'll change your life."

"And yours, too."

"No, I'm an engineer, not an archaeologist. I'll leave the glamour stuff up to you."

The rest of the ride passed in silence, each of them mulling the implications of such a find.

When they reached Locke's house and went inside, Dilara carefully replaced the curled note back into the tube with the scroll and sealed it. She sighed heavily.

"He'd be very proud of you." His words brought on the opposite effect from the one he intended. Dilara burst into tears.

"I'm such an idiot," she sobbed. "All those years, I thought he was crazy, and he was right all along. Now he's dead, and I'll never be able to tell him how proud I am of him."

Locke pulled her to him and cradled her head in his shoulder. "He knows. He knows."

She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face. She had never looked more beautiful or vulnerable, nestled in his arms. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, tasting the salty skin.

Dilara exhaled a breathier sigh and turned her face to him. Their eyes met. The day's pent up tension flooded out of them, and they kissed deeply, as if they had fit together this way forever. Locke felt her entire body press against him, and he responded in kind.

"Shower?" she breathed into his ear.

Only then did he notice that they were both sticky with sweat and dirt.

He nodded and kissed her again. His need for her was almost unbearable. He felt like a randy teenager again.

They shuffled toward the bathroom, locked in an embrace as they maneuvered down the hall. They took turns unbuttoning and unlacing each other, tossing clothes and shoes as they went until there was nothing left to toss.

They staggered into the bathroom, their bodies still entwined, and Locke blindly fumbled with the shower control. Dilara pulled his hand away from it with an urgency that he completely understood.

"Later," she said and dragged him to the carpet.

The shower would have to wait.

* * *

The next morning, Locke woke before he was ready. The light streaming through the window because, in his hurry to get into bed, he had neglected to close the blinds. He had the unfamiliar feeling of warmth next to him. Dilara was curled up next to him, her smooth naked body snug against his, her face resting on his chest, her breath puffing lightly on his skin. The smell of shampoo wafted from her hair draped over the pillow. The effect was intoxicating, and Locke smiled to himself at the memory of the bathroom floor, the long lazy shower that followed, and then the epic love-making session on the sheets that now swaddled them.

Intruding into all of these pleasant sensations was the shrill sound of his phone ringing. He grudgingly extricated himself from Dilara and picked it up.

"Whoever this is," Locke said groggily, "your next words better be, 'Congratulations Powerball winner.'"

"Prepare to be disappointed," Grant said.

"Okay. What time is it?"

"Eight AM. I'd rather not be up either, but we have a big problem."

Grant's tone of voice got Locke's attention, and he sat up.

"What happened?"

"The Army finally got into that chamber that Garrett, Cutter, and the others retreated into."

"You caught him?"

"I wish. It wasn't a panic room like we thought. It had a hidden corridor. It led to a subterranean submarine pen, big enough to dock a small sub like the one from Garrett's yacht."

"You've got to be kidding me," Locke said.

"It kills me to say it," Grant replied, "but Garrett and Cutter got away."

Noah's Ark

As he boarded his refueled Lear jet at Heathrow Airport in London, Sebastian Garrett had new appreciation for Cutter's insistence on backup plans. The original specifications for Oasis had nothing about a submarine docking facility, but Cutter hadn't liked the idea of being trapped within Oasis by the concrete barriers. When they had switched the contract from Gordian to Coleman, Cutter had convinced Garrett to add the new requirement for the submarine escape dock, and now he was glad he did. Without it, Garrett would be in the custody of the US Army.

Garrett had piloted the submarine to a marina in Orcas Island's Deer Harbor. There, they stole a sailboat and scuttled the submarine so it wouldn't be discovered. Then it was an easy sail to Vancouver, British Columbia, where Garrett's funds in the Cayman Islands secured a chartered Lear, no questions asked. Cutter knew where to procure perfect fake passports.

Locke would eventually find out he had escaped, but Garrett had an eight-hour head start, maybe more. He would be in and out of Noah's Ark before Locke could determine where he'd gone. By that time, Garrett would have the only other sample of Arkon in the world.