The Ark: A Novel (41 page)

He twirled the USB drive in his fingers and smiled at Svetlana, who sulked at their predicament. She and Cutter had taken the setback harder than he had. Garrett's serenity came from the knowledge that, like Cutter, he always had a backup plan. The US government would freeze his assets, but they didn't know about all of his money. With hundreds of millions of dollars still at his disposal, even a disaster of the previous night's magnitude could be overcome.

Switzerland would become his new haven. The Swiss lab, built under a medieval castle purchased under an untraceable pseudonym, would be able to perform the same function as Oasis. It was not as comfortable, but it would do the job. Once he had the sample of Arkon in his possession, it would take a only matter of weeks to synthesize the new Arkon-C. By the time the authorities figured out where he was, it would be too late.

The only task now was getting access to Mt. Ararat and Noah's Ark. He knew its location, thanks to Hasad Arvadi, but like Arvadi, Garrett had never actually been there. He had not tried reaching it before now because the Turkish government protected the mountain with zeal. An expedition to the area three years before would have been watched carefully and would have brought unwanted attention to his plans. Now that his plans were exposed, he would have to risk going directly to it. With enough money for bribes and Cutter and the two guards at his disposal, Garrett felt sure that he would be inside Noah's Ark in less than 24 hours. Then he would take the second Arkon sample and disappear.

Garrett entertained himself by thinking about how he would get retribution for the invasion of Oasis and the delay of his plans. He was a patient man and had a vision for the long term, but that didn't mean he was beyond exacting revenge. During the weeks it would take to complete his goal to make a New World, he would hire the best assassins money could buy, and Tyler Locke would find out how painful his curiosity could be.

* * *

In Gordian's Seattle laboratory, Dilara carefully pulled the delicate scrolls from the tube with rubber-tipped tongs. A huge examination table had been set up so she could lay it flat, and the humidity of the room was dropped to 25% to protect the document. To Locke, the cool, dry air felt like a January evening in Phoenix. Grant and Miles stood to the side, watching Dilara spread the document out with her white-gloved hands.

Although time was quickly slipping away, Dilara moved slowly and deliberately. She was firm about protecting the ancient scroll. Since all they needed was the translation, Locke suggested she unfurl the scroll in the lab and photograph it. That way, they could take the photographs with them and keep the original scroll safe. While she prepared the scroll, Locke was busy setting up the high-definition camera in its articulated frame.

The key would be how long it would take Dilara to decipher the language printed in faint script. It seemed to be a primitive variant of Hebrew.

"How old is this paper?" Locke asked.

The hint of a smile continually played at the corners of Dilara's mouth. She was excited about the archaeological significance of this find, even if it meant the possible end of the world.

"It isn't paper. It's papyrus. Same as used in Egypt. Without carbon dating, there's no way to tell for sure how old it is, but I'd guess at least 3000 years old, pre-dating the Dead Sea Scrolls."

Grant whistled.

"The scroll itself is a huge archaeological discovery," she said. "Only Noah's Ark could outdo it."

"Let's hope something in there actually leads us to it," Locke said. "I'm ready when you are."

"Just a few more minutes. I have to handle this like you handle explosives. The slightest miscue, and I could reduce it to dust."

After she was through unrolling it, Locke shot a photo of each section. In turn, the pictures appeared on the screen at the end of the room, five times the original size.

"Can you translate?" Locke asked.

Dilara peered at the first segment. "I think so. It's proto-Tannaitic Hebrew, the language used in the Copper Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's unusual and not seen often, and it's very difficult to translate. Only a few people in the world can sight read it. My father was one of them."

"And lucky for us, it sounds like you're another." Locke pressed a button on the room's phone. "Did you get these photos uploaded, Aiden?"

Aiden's voice came back over the speaker phone. "Absolutely. I'm transferring them to your laptop. I've also begun to parse them. If I can get a translation matrix from Dr. Kenner, we might be able to automate some of it."

"Good. The goal is to find out anything the scroll says about Noah's Ark."

"Oh my God!" Dilara said, still reading.

When she didn't elaborate, Locke said, "What?"

"There's a lot more here than just Noah's Ark," Dilara said. "It's a version of the entire book of Genesis. This would be the earliest version ever found of a biblical document. It describes God making the heavens and the earth, the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, but enhanced, in more detail than I've ever seen. Remarkable!"

"I hate to interrupt," Locke said, "but we do have a time crunch. When we come back, you can take all the time in the world to read this. Can we skip ahead to Noah?"

"Yes, I know. I'm sorry. Next section. Next section. Next section. Stop!"

She stepped closer. Her eyes were so wide as she read that Locke thought they would fall out.

"This is it!" she said.

"Does it say where the Ark is?"

"Not exactly, but now I can see why my father was retranslating the Bible. Remember how he had crossed out words and replaced them in certain chapters? For example, this line here could be interpreted as the Ark being within the mountains of Ararat."

"How does that help us?"

"I don't know." She kept reading, then stopped, and a puzzled look crossed her face. "Huh? That's new." She paused.

"Will you stop that?" Grant said with a laugh when she didn't explain. "You're driving us nuts."

"Sorry. There's a section here that's not in the Bible. It talks about a map."

"A map to Noah's Ark?" Locke said.

Dilara nodded. "It also describes two amulets of such power that they can destroy the world."

"That fits. At least now we know we're looking for an amulet, although how an amulet can hold a prion disease is still a mystery. Where's the map?"

"It tells of a city. I can only guess the pronunciation. Something like Ortixisita. In this city, there is a temple called Cur Ferap."

"Have you heard of them?"

"They sound familiar, but I can't quite remember. If I had my books here..."

"Aiden, you hearing this?" Locke said toward the speaker phone.

"I'm already looking it up," came Aiden's reply. "I'll try all possible vowel substitutions and narrow my focus to the area around Mt. Ararat."

After a few seconds, Aiden said, "Got it. There's a city in western Armenia called Artashat. Originally built in 180 BC as Artaxiasata. It's well-known for a monastery on its outskirts."

Dilara snapped her fingers. "Now I remember! Khor Virap! The prison for St. Gregory the Illuminator!"

"You're good, doctor," Aiden said. "I've got a great picture of it. I'm sending it through to your screen."

As soon as Locke saw the photo of Khor Virap, he was sure that's where they needed to go.

"Aiden," he said, "have them get the jet ready for us. We're going to Armenia."

Locke continued to stare at the picture and started to believe they might actually find Noah's Ark after all. On a hill overlooking a green field was a stone structure with thick walls and a central tower, a fortification that must have been the monastery of Khor Virap. And dominating the horizon in the background, framed against a bright blue sky, was the towering white outline of Mt. Ararat.

With all of the flying she'd done to digs throughout the world, Dilara Kenner was an experienced traveler, but the toll of the last week, including the latest 20 hours to Armenia's capital, Yerevan, was too much. She could go without getting on another plane for a year.

She had spent all of her waking time on the Gordian private jet poring over the scroll photographs, trying to decipher anything else she could about finding the map at Khor Virap. Locke and Grant had left her alone to work, and before they had landed, Dilara reported back to them on what she had discovered. Unfortunately, even with Aiden's help, it wasn't much.

"You think the map is still there?" Locke asked. "Why wouldn't Garrett have taken it with him?"

"Because it's not portable. The scrolls talk of a map of stone. I think that means the map is written on a wall."

"Aiden did a thorough search in both public and private databases, and he said no one has ever heard of a map like this."

"Right here," Dilara said, pointing to a photo of the scroll on her laptop, "it says that the descendents of Japheth, one of Noah's sons, built the temple as a shrine to God's forgiveness. One of the amulets and map were kept in a secret chamber that was known only to the worthy. The other amulet was sequestered inside the Ark itself."

"So the priests at Khor Virap don't know about the chamber?"

"The temple was razed in a Persian invasion, and the keepers fled without revealing the chamber, which must have been well-hidden. They preserved its location in this document, but they must have perished before they could return and secure its contents."

"There must be some clue in the scroll to finding the chamber," Locke said.

"Whoever wrote this feared it would fall into their enemies' hands, so they used a cipher."

"You mean the scroll is coded?"

Dilara highlighted a section of the scroll that talked about Khor Virap, then a Jewish temple and now a Christian monastery.

"Notice anything different about this section?" Dilara asked them.

"The spacing and indentation are slightly different," Grant said. "It's subtle, but since you pointed it out, I noticed it."

"Exactly." She pulled up the photo of the note her father had written to her. "Something about the way my father wrote the note to me seemed odd, which is why I wanted Tyler to photograph it as well. He was sending me another message." She overlaid the handwritten note over the Khor Virap section. The lines aligned perfectly.

Locke pointed at her father's note. "The first letter in each line..."

"...is written in slightly more bold print." Dilara said. "Anyone looking at the note would think he was using a simple transposition cipher where the first letter of each line would spell out words. But whoever tried to decode it that way would go crazy trying to figure it out because the resulting phrase would be gibberish. My father was trying to tell me that the scroll itself used a transposition cipher, and only in this section."

"So don't keep us in suspense," Grant said. "What does it say?"

"It translates to 'The fifth and eighth stone from the cove reveal. The fourth and seventh stone from the cove conceal.'"

Grant looked doubtful. "They rhymed it in Hebrew?"

"No, that's me. It sounded better than, 'The fifth and eighth stone from the cove open. The fourth and seventh stone from the cove hide.'"

"You're right," Grant said, smiling. "More cryptic."

"Any idea what that means?" Locke said.

Dilara shook her head. She'd been puzzling about it, which was why she had taken so long to discuss it with them, but she still couldn't decipher its meaning.

"My guess is, we'll know it when we see it."

Locke shrugged. "Then let's find out what's at Khor Virap."

Dilara was amazed by him. He always seemed to roll with the punches. No matter what happened, he knew he'd be able to figure a way through it. She supposed that's what made him a good engineer, his ability to solve whatever problems arose, but he carried that confidence into every part of his life. It was why she found him so attractive. She didn't know where the night they'd spent together would lead, but she savored the memory.

The jet landed in Yerevan, and to keep a low profile, Locke had arranged for an interpreter to meet them with a car at the airport. When they got to the car, Locke gave a wad of American dollars to the interpreter, who gaped at more money than he normally made in six months.

"I hope that will keep our expedition confidential," Locke said.

"Certainly, Dr. Locke," the man sputtered in outstanding English. "My name is Barsam Chirnian. I will be happy to help in any way I can."

"How long will it take to get to Khor Virap from here?"

"It's only 30 kilometers to the southwest. We should be there within the hour."

That would put them there around five PM local time.

"Good," Locke said. "On the way, you can tell us about Khor Virap."

The four of them climbed into a well-used Toyota Land Cruiser and wound through city streets before getting on a major road south. To their right, Mt. Ararat and its little brother to the south loomed over the plains. Even though Armenians considered the 16,854-foot-tall mountain their own, making it their national symbol, it actually sat across the border in Turkey.

As they drove, Chirnian gave them what sounded like a tour guide spiel about the monastery. Artashat, the town where the monastery was located, was the first capital city of Armenia and remained so until it fell in the fifth century. No one knew the exact date Khor Virap had been built, but it was one of the first Christian monasteries in existence. It sat on the only major hill for miles and had served as an early fortification against invaders due to its strategic position on the Araks River. The site was revered as Armenia's holiest shrine because of St. Gregory the Illuminator.

Grigor Lusavorich had returned from Israel to his native Armenia in the 3rd century to proselytize the new religion of Christianity. The father of King Trdat III had been murdered by Grigor's father, so Trdat imprisoned Grigor in a pit at Khor Virap for 13 years, where he miraculously survived untold torture and suffering. When Trdat fell ill, he received a vision that Grigor would be the only one who could heal him. Grigor cured Trdat's disease, and the king converted to Christianity. In 301, Armenia became the first Christian nation. Grigor was beatified as the country's patron saint.