The Ark: A Novel (46 page)

He took a few steps to the side, and the view shifted instantaneously. Anything that wasn't a wall, floor, or ceiling would now quickly grab their attention.

"Try it," he said to Dilara, handing her a helmet.

She put it on and rotated her head side to side, up and down.

"This is incredible! I can see everything so clearly!" She wobbled and lost her footing. Locke caught her.

"It may take a few minutes to get your balance wearing these," he said. "If you feel unsteady, just close your eyes for a few seconds."

"Right."

"We'll leave the equipment here. No sense toting it everywhere. Let's divide up the place by level. I'll take the bottom. Grant, you take the second level. Dilara, take the top."

"This goes against everything I've ever learned or preached in archaeological discovery. We should be doing a methodical, inch-by-inch study of a find of this magnitude, not rifling through it like treasure hunters."

"No need to get fancy. Nobody touch anything unless you absolutely have to. We'll leave the scientific analysis for later. Our goal is to find the amulet."

"Which looks like what?" Grant asked. "A brooch?"

"It's probably some kind of jewel," Dilara said. "It will be displayed on the same kind of dais we saw in the map room of Khor Virap. If you find the amulet, don't touch it until I can see it in situ." She waved her digital camera at him. "I want to get a photo to document it before we remove it."

"And watch your step," Locke said. "The Ark seems sturdy enough, but even without water in here, there might be parts of the floor that have rotted through. Test before each step."

Even with the mercenaries on guard outside, Grant and Locke kept their submachine guns with them out of caution, but Dilara decided to shed the excess weight and dumped hers with the packs. Locke certainly wouldn't need the bag of tricks from his pack, so he left that behind as well. Speed at this point was more important than anything else. If Garrett did eventually come, Locke wanted to be long gone.

They split up as Locke had suggested. Grant and Dilara carefully crept up the nearest ramp, and they were soon just two bobbing lights.

Ceramic pots, thousands of them ranging from the size of a coffee pot to five feet in height, were stacked along the wall of the cavern opposite the Ark. A few were broken, but most were in pristine condition. Locke peered into a few of them, but they were all empty or contained the dried remains of food. The amulet wouldn't be found in any of them.

Locke entered the first room and quickly surveyed the contents. More ceramic pots. Nothing stood out. He had a feeling the amulet would be stored in a more exalted place, but he did a thorough scan anyway.

He repeated the same for the next two rooms. Empty. Locke guessed these were storage rooms. Food, water, supplies. Everything needed to sustain a family and a herd of animals for months at a time. More than enough space. Locke did the math. Almost 70,000 square feet of floor area. The equivalent of 35 average American homes. The size of the Ark was staggering. Noah must have had hundreds of animals to justify building something so huge.

In the fourth room Locke entered, a wooden fence stretched the width of the room, with a six-foot wide gate in the center. An animal pen. A few desiccated piles of hay were piled in the corners, but the animals had been removed. There were no bones.

The next four rooms were all animal pens. Locke was now almost halfway down the Ark and had found nothing of significance. He radioed the others, but they had similar luck. Grant and Dilara had found more artifacts--pottery, clothing, tools--but no amulet.

Locke inspected one more animal pen, then came to a room three times as wide as the rooms he had seen up until now. The room was 90 feet wide, the ceiling supported at regular intervals by stone pillars. The three-dimensional rendering showed a variety of texture gradients, meaning the room was filled to the brim with something. Locke cast his flashlight around, and reflections sparkled back at him from all directions.

It was as if Locke had stepped into a pirate cave. In every direction, gold ornaments and vessels, ivory statuettes, and jewel-encrusted objects covered the floor. Chests brimmed with bronze, silver, and gold pieces. Jade carvings adorned gleaming masks of gold. Marble busts lined the walls. Sapphires, rubies, diamonds, and amethysts were scattered like pebbles. The cache was so vast, Locke wouldn't have been surprised to see a dragon resting on top of it.

For a minute, he forgot all about the reason he was there. The effect of the glittering treasure was mesmerizing. Then he snapped out of it and remembered what he was looking for. If there was an amulet in Noah's Ark, it would be in this room.

He radioed Dilara and Grant to get down there as fast as they could without telling them why. They had to see this for themselves.

While he waited for the others, Locke walked amongst the hoard. The statuettes and urns were a mishmash of different styles and shapes, adorned with a wide variety of languages, all piled carelessly. It was as if they were just dumped in the first place that was available. Some of the treasure was stored in stone boxes or pottery, but most spilled out onto the floor.

Grant was the first to arrive and stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth agape. He said nothing. It was the first time Locke could remember him rendered speechless.

Dilara walked in behind him, but she was focused on her camera's LCD screen.

"I found an amazing storehouse of weaponry..." She looked up and froze in place. "My God!"

"Apparently," Locke said, "King Midas used to live here."

"I'm retiring early," Grant said.

"Unfortunately, the Turkish government might have something to say about that."

"Or the Armenians," Dilara said as she scanned the room in awe. "I can't believe this! It's incredible! Once word of this gets out, there's going to be a massive international fight over who owns it. This room alone has to be worth billions."

"What about a finder's fee?" Grant said hopefully.

"We'll see," Locke said. "First things first. The amulet has got to be in here somewhere. And Grant, no souvenirs."

"Spoilsport."

"We can come back later when we've got better equipment and supplies. Then you can help Dilara pick through this piece by piece. Right now, I want to find that amulet and get it somewhere safe."

"The amulet was of tremendous significance," Dilara said. "It wouldn't be tossed on the floor. Let's try the back wall of the room."

They snaked their way through the maze of wealth around them and came to a row of seven stone boxes six feet in length lying end-on to the back wall. Each was perched on a pedestal. Extensive writing covered the wall behind them, the same writing found in the Khor Virap map chamber.

"These look like coffins," Grant said.

"Sarcophagi," Dilara said. She snapped pictures of each of them and ran her hands over the surface of one, casting centuries of dust into the air. "The text will tell us who is entombed in them."

"Hold on," Locke said. "Look." He shined his light on a pillar that stood in the center, with four sarcophagi on one side, three on the other. The pillar was four feet high, and on its flat top sat a translucent orb the size of a softball and the color of maple syrup. It was surrounded by other orbs, slightly smaller.

Dilara read the text on the pillar. "Here resides the Amulet of Shem. Here it remains as a symbol of mankind's wickedness and a reminder of God's love and a warning to those who would tempt His wrath."

Locke knelt beside the pillar and shined the light through the orbs. He recognized what they were immediately. Enormous pieces of amber, sap from a tree that had fossilized millions of years ago. Often insects would be trapped in the amber, preserved virtually intact, protected from the effects of air and water.

The orbs around the edge of the pillar were completely transparent, flawless, but the Amulet of Shem contained the skeleton of a frog two inches long. It seemed to be floating in a pocket of viscous fluid the shape of a living frog.

After Dilara took a picture, he picked up the orb. The fluid circulated, causing the bones to slowly float around.

"This is the source of the disease," Locke said. "Garrett's raw material. The frog was caught in the amber and then dissolved from the disease, leaving the frog-shaped cavity behind. The prion must still be viable, protected in the amber. When he found the Amulet of Japheth, he realized the fluid inside held some kind of lethal plague."

"He got the Arkon from a frog?" Grant said. "Like in Jurassic Park, only gooier?"

Locke nodded. "The text at Khor Virap said the amulet held the horror. Garrett rightly assumed that inside the amulet was a plague that wiped out every person and animal in Noah's time. He knew he had the resources to analyze it and potentially develop a deadly weapon from it. Back in the lab, when he found out what he had on his hands, he devised the plan for Oasis."

Grant took the amulet from Locke and gazed at the suspended bones. "Just like what happened on Hayden's plane."

"If that dissolved frog is a carrier of the Arkon," Locke said, "then the disease must date from the time the frog was alive. At this point, we have no idea when that was. For all we know, that thing might have been hopping away from a T-rex when it got trapped in the amber."

"You think this stuff could have killed off the dinosaurs?" Grant said.

"We'll never know. But Arkon would certainly be virulent enough to do the job."

Dilara had been reading the text on the wall.

"Hey, guys," she said, snapping a photo. "This is the story of what happened." She laboriously read the text. "It says that Noah found these pieces of amber in an exposed riverbed. The discovery was his first sign from God that he should build the Ark." She turned to Locke and Grant. "Amber has always been prized as gem for its color and luster. Finding these must have seemed like a fortune."

"How did the prion get released?" Locke asked.

Dilara ran her finger along the writing. "I hope I'm getting this right. It says that Noah saw a vision that these pieces of amber were special, given by God to him alone. Three of the biggest ones contained the frog bones. A traveling trader saw them and claimed the fluid inside could be sold for medicinal purposes. Noah suspected that such use would be an affront to God and tried to hide them, but the trader stole one of the orbs and disappeared."

She told the story haltingly, pausing when she had trouble translating.

"Noah had another vision that the thief was an example of mankind's wickedness, that even God's servant was not free of tyranny by his fellow man. Then Noah heard of a strange sickness spreading from the foreign land the trader was from. He took this as a sign that God was exacting his wrath, and he had another vision with instructions for how to construct the Ark. He and his sons built it, trying to persuade others that death was coming and they should join him, but they wouldn't listen."

"Then the rains came," Locke said.

Dilara nodded. "And brought the Flood, as the pestilence had become known throughout the land. Noah closed the entrance to the Ark, for fear that the infected would seek refuge with him."

"This place is as dry as a bone," Grant said. "Where did they get water?"

"It doesn't say, but probably from a stream of uncontaminated glacier melt just outside the crevice entrance. Then they waited it out."

"And the treasure?"

Dilara read on. "When the Flood passed, no living thing existed anywhere. No animals, no birds, no people."

"It killed everyone on earth?" Grant said.

"Probably not," Locke said. "But I'm sure Noah didn't travel beyond the Mt. Ararat watershed. To him, it would have seemed like the whole world had been cleansed."

"Outside the cave, all they found were bones and the remnants of humanity's material greediness," Dilara said. "They collected everything they could find, from kings' palace hoards to merchants' possessions and brought them here, as an offering for God's deliverance." She stopped.

"What?"

"Now I understand," she said. "The Book of the Cave of Treasures. Noah's Ark
is
the Cave of Treasures."

"And let me guess who is buried with the treasures," Locke said. "Noah and his sons."

She took a deep breath and laid her hand on the sarcophagus to the right of the pillar the amulet sat on. "We are standing beside Noah. Physical proof that an event in the first book of the Bible actually took place. Buried with him are two of his sons, as well as the four wives."

"Why'd they leave out one son?" Grant asked.

"Ham was the one who wrote this," Dilara said. "He sealed the bodies of his family in the Ark as each of them died. He was the only one who could be trusted not to loot the treasure and bring down God's wrath again."

"Then he shouldn't have taken one of the amulets with him," Locke said. "And yet, that's exactly what I'm going to do now." He carefully took the Amulet of Shem back from Grant. He also removed one of the clear amber orbs from the pedestal. He put them both in his pocket.

"Hey!" Grant said. "I thought we couldn't take anything besides the amulet!"

"The amulet itself is too dangerous to test. But if the other orb was found at the same time, it might be able to tell us when the insect dates from. Wouldn't it be amazing if it came from 65 million years ago?"

"Fascinating," Grant said dryly.

Locke looked at his watch. Time for the radio check-in.

"This is Locke," he said into his walkie-talkie. "Come in."

No answer. All he got was static. He tried again with the same results.

"Maybe we're too far from the entrance," Grant said.

"Since we have what we came for, I suggest we all leave."

"Just let me stay for a few more minutes," Dilara said. "I want to get a few more photos."

Locke paused. The loss of contact was troubling, but the mercenaries should have radioed if they were under attack. Either way, he didn't want to stay any longer than they had to.

"I'll stay here with her," Grant said. "If she doesn't leave when you say the word, I'll carry her out."