The Ark: A Novel (43 page)

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?"

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?"

"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."

"It's a cave?" Locke said. Now Arvadi's entrance reference made sense. Dilara had even called Oasis a new ark. He could have kicked himself for not making the connection sooner, but he had been so focused on Noah's Ark as a ship that he never entertained the idea it could be a cave. "But the Bible says it's a ship, doesn't it? That it was made of wood?"

"It does," Dilara said. "'Make thee an ark of timber planks: thou shalt make little rooms in the ark, and thou shalt pitch it within and without.'"

"That sounds like a ship to me."

"We're using the English translation of something that's been passed down through thousands of years. It all comes down to translation and interpretation. Think of the telephone game. Little errors in the process can end up as huge errors down the line. I think that's what happened here. What if Noah's Ark was the structure inside a cave? A vessel can also mean a container." She looked back to her father. "I'm so stupid. Why didn't I listen to him?"

"You couldn't have known," Locke said. He considered the language. "The cave must have been the refuge. The words would fit. But we're talking about a huge cavern. 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits high. That's 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high."

"You were saying a few days ago that a ship that big in ancient times would have collapsed as soon as it was floated onto water. This explains why it could be so big."

Locke saw the irony of arguing for the case of Noah's Ark being a boat, when before he had been the one arguing against it.

"And the window and door?"

"I don't know," Dilara said. "Openings in the cave? What I do know is that this text clearly states that Noah's Ark is a cave inside Mt. Ararat."

"It does explain why no one has ever found it. New caves are still being discovered all the time. The problem is that Mt. Ararat is a shield volcano, which don't typically contain caverns."

"Why not?"

"Caves are usually carved out by water over millions of years, and Mt. Ararat is too young for that to happen. Most large caves in the world are found in limestone, which is soluble and can be dissolved by slightly acidic water." Locke had learned that little tidbit when consulting on a sinkhole collapse in Florida that destroyed an entire mall.

"But remember those big lava tubes that we explored in Hawaii?" Grant said.

"I didn't say it was impossible. How does the flood fit into all of this?"

"The flood was the disease," Dilara said. "Garrett told me that he had to modify the prion from its original form. Waterborne diseases were virulent and common in the ancient world. Still are. Typhoid contaminates drinking water in many countries. But when the original translators misinterpreted the ark as a ship instead of a container, they must have assumed the references to the waters meant a flood, not a plague."

"A flood of waters upon the earth," Locke said, "to destroy all flesh."

"What if the prion disease in the amulet attacked any animal matter, not just humans?" Dilara said. "If this prion disease was released into rivers and lakes, it would wipe out every living thing in that watershed. The only trace would be bones. No flesh. To people who rarely ventured 30 miles from where they were born, it would seem like God had cleansed the earth."

"And Noah would have had to take all the animals he wanted to save with him. Once the disease destroyed everything, the remaining prions would die out or reach the ocean, where the salt water would kill them."

"If Noah didn't know how long it would take for the disease to subside, he might have built a huge ark, enough to feed him, his family, and his animals for months."

"So when the Bible talks about the waters of the flood," Locke said, "it means that the waters
carried
the flood, which was a plague."

"And if it was a particularly rainy season," Dilara said, "it would look to Noah like the rains were the harbinger of doom. It even fits sending out the raven and the dove to see if the waters had abated. The raven never returned because it was killed by the prions. With some reinterpretation of dates and wording, everything seems to fit."

"But it doesn't explain how the prions were related to the amulets. Everything we've found implies that the prions are
inside
the amulets."

"We'll have to find the last amulet to know for sure, and to do that, we have to find the Ark."

Chirnian had been interpreting the conversation as it proceeded, and Father Tatilian had listened attentively without comment. But at this point, he exclaimed through the interpreter, "No, it would be best if you did not find the Ark."

"Why not?" Locke asked.

"Because if true, this information will cause much distress and confusion. We consider the Bible to be the inspired word of God, carefully compiled over hundreds of years, so a fundamental challenge to something as important as the story of the Flood is very serious. It would undermine our confidence in our understanding of much of the Old Testament."

"We have to find it," Locke said. "If we don't, there will be no one left to debate the point."

"God will not let the earth be destroyed again. His covenant with Noah was clear. 'Neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the flood.' He would not let this happen."

"But we're not dismissing that promise," Dilara said. "First, 'all flesh' is an important phrase. Sebastian Garrett just wants to wipe out the human race, not all flesh. That's why he spent so long modifying the disease in his lab. He specifically designed it so that it wouldn't affect animals. Second, what if we're the ones who have to stop him from wiping out all flesh? We could be God's soldiers who will prevent it and preserve God's covenant."

"God helps those who help themselves," Locke said.

"The Bible doesn't say that," Father Tatilian said.

"I know. Benjamin Franklin's words, not mine. But I think they ring true."

"The Bible is infallible. This story about the cave cannot be true!"

"If we find the Ark," Dilara said, "it will support the Bible, not hurt it. It will finally provide physical proof that the book of Genesis has an historical basis, that it's not just a book of faith or literature. And the people who want to believe it is literally correct can continue to do so. It's the human translators who were fallible, not the words themselves. With just a few changes to the text, the story is still accurate. So the King James version needs a little tweaking? So what?"

The priest scowled, but he didn't object. "I will have to pray for guidance on this."