The Lost Ark

by J. R. Rain

  Until I sensed a shadow rise behind me. And from the corner of my eyes, Farid raised his fist high and struck down like the Hammer of God.

  Lights out.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  I awoke slowly from the land of the dead, head pounding. Professor Caesar Roberts was holding a wet rag to my head, a bemused grin on his face. I was beginning to think he always had a bemused grin on his face.

  “How long,” I said, struggling to regain use of my tongue. “How long have I been out?”

  “Two or three hours,” said Caesar, a sparkle in his eyes. “At least since they dragged you in here and deposited you like a sack of potatoes.”

  When I finally stood, a wave of nausea swept over me, and I almost disgorged what little food I had eaten during the past few days. Wally sat cross-legged next to the fire, rocking gently, staring down into the lapping flames as if they held the secret to his escape. He didn’t look at me, and seemed lost in his own fear. I could see that his Mickey Mantle baseball card, once sheathed in plastic, was now melted and blackened in the fire pit. I pointed to the remains of the card and asked Caesar what had happened.

  “A soldier threw it in the fire,” said the professor. “He said it was punishment for the beating you gave him in the tunnel.”

  “Dammit.”

  A cold draft worked its way over my skin. Faint morning light issued from the tunnel behind, pushing my shadow before me. In the muted half-light, Caesar and Wally looked ghoulish and pale, like two creatures from a Jules Verne novel. I wondered how long since they had seen the light of the sun.

  “Pardon me if I seem insensitive to your pain,” said Caesar, the smile on his face wavering, “but where the hell is my daughter?”

  My head pounded from the inside out. There seemed to be a faint ringing in my skull. It had been a hell of a punch by Farid. “She’s with Omar.” I thought of Liz Cayman, inadvertently dead at the hands of Omar. I did not blame Farid. But I would hold the emir responsible. He would pay for stealing my fiancé’s life. My life. Our life together.

  Caesar said, “You okay, Sam?”

  “No.”

  The professor exhaled, looking miserable. “Join the club. I should have known she would try something like this. With her, nothing surprises me. She’s quite capable of anything. So what do we do now?”

  “I’m still working on that one, professor. First I need to stop the ringing in my head. Either that, or someone get the damn phone.”

  While I sat there with my head in my hands, Caesar caught me up to date. “We used a map I had created from the journal of Jans Struys. By coming up from the north, we had inadvertently skirted Omar’s camp.” The map had indicated that this was the legendary cave, but there was no marker, as proclaimed by Struys in his memoir. Frustrated but undaunted, Caesar began hacking away at the ice until he’d uncovered the fabled finger of rock. The marker. Elated, they had found their cave, only to discover that a massive cave-in had blocked further access into the tunnel. Omar and his men appeared shortly thereafter. In summary, Caesar said, “I can see clearly now what I failed to see for the past month. By offering ourselves as workers, I had managed to spare our lives. That was my one good decision in a long series of very bad ones. Now the bastard has my daughter.”

  “Your daughter is safe for now,” said a voice behind us.

  We turned. Omar stood in the cave opening, out-of-breath, hanging by the arm of his bodyguard. The light from the fire cast the emir’s eyes into twin pools of bottomless pits. “But it is your own well-being that should concern you. Mr. Ward, will you please accompany me?”

  * * *

  We stood together in the passageway, with Farid off to the side. As always, the bodyguard stared blankly into the near distance, managing somehow to see everything and nothing at once. The stock of his pistol jutted from the inside of his robe. Either that or he was happy to see me. He stood between me and the emir, and it was obvious that I would not get another chance at the emir’s neck.

  I waited silently as Omar studied his perfectly manicured fingernails. He looked ghastly in the muted light: deep shadows in the hollows of his cheeks and temples. Finally, he said, “I’m prepared to make you an offer, Mr. Ward.”

  It took all my effort to keep my voice steady. “What offer?”

  “You were a photojournalist, Sam. A very good one, from what I hear. I want you to write my story before I die, which I imagine will be soon.” He paused, and his dark eyes stared into my own. “I want the world to know why I have done what I am about to do. I do not want the world to think I’m an animal.”

  “But you are an animal, emir. The worse kind: you kill the innocent.”

  Anger flared briefly on his face. His mustache twitched. Farid glanced his way, then back to staring at the wall. “I kill for a higher purpose, Sam. I kill to end the war on Kurds. Much like the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War Two. Yet the genocide on the Kurds continues. The world refuses to see that. Now they will. I will force them to take notice, to wake up. To acknowledge the problem.”

  I snorted. “You’re doing this out of revenge, plain and simple. An eye for an eye.”

  The emir’s eyes blazed. “You trivialize at your own peril, Sam. My hunger for personal justice, for the brutal murder of my family, takes nothing away from the fact that heinous crimes are enacted on my people on a daily basis.”

  Omar leaned against the tunnel wall. If Farid was interested in our conversation he showed it by appearing completely uninterested. Omar folded his arms over his chest and stared at me with tired eyes.

  “And what’s in it for me?” I asked.

  “I will leave you a fortune, Mr. Ward. I will give you a portion now, and the rest when the article is published to my satisfaction.”

  “And what of Faye and the others?” I asked.

  Omar shook his head sadly.

  I looked him directly in the eye. “I would rather deal with the devil, emir.”

  He sighed and nodded. “I was afraid you’d say something like that. You give me no choice, Mr. Ward.”

  I stepped forward. Out of the corner of my eye, Farid shook his head. Stepping forward was not a good idea. I stopped and clenched my fists. “What have you done with Faye Roberts?”

  “She is safe.”

  “From your brother?”

  “He has been kept at bay. For now.”

  I glanced at Farid and he nodded reassuringly. Yes, she was safe.

  I narrowed my eyes. “I will kill you, emir, if any harm comes to her.”

  “When you are dead, Mr. Ward,” said Omar, turning his back on me, “you will hardly be in a position to carry out your threat.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  We spent the remainder of the day removing rocks and digging with shovels. Most of the rocks were huge, and seemed to be cemented together. We used wheelbarrows to deposit the debris on the south side of the cave. I never mentioned the significance of the small mound on the north side of the cave. And much later, as the long day turned into evening and the evening turned into night, a guard tossed in a leather satchel.

  “Dinner,” said Caesar.

  It was our only meal of the day, scraps of fatty meat and bones and chunks of hard bread. A wineskin was included, and actually contained real wine. I wondered if Farid had anything to do with that. We ate in silence, although I noticed Wally simply poking at his food, his face long and drawn. He seemed to be retreating into himself, having given up hope for escape. The three of us were filthy enough to make a bar of soap nervous.

  While we ate, I pointed to the excavated opening in the cave wall. “Soon, we’ll need to support the walls and ceiling with timbers, or risk a cave-in within the cave-in.”

  The professor was nodding. “True, but we haven’t gone deep enough yet.”

  The food was quite good, then again, my standards had dropped considerably over the past few days. When finished, we passed around the wineskin. A guard came in later, saw that we we
re done, and ordered us to continue working.

  “I don’t speak Arabic,” said Wally, “but I’ve come to know what that means.” It was the most he had spoken all day.

  We continued to remove dirt and rocks far into the night, although I was unable to detect much difference in the wall, which was disheartening. And when it got considerably late, Wally tossed aside his shovel and said, “I’m going to bed.”

  * * *

  While the boy slept, I sat with Caesar off to the side. We spoke in low voices, out of respect to the sleeping Wally. Eventually, the conversation turned to Struys’s memoirs.

  “I’m unaware that Struys left behind a map,” I said. “Only a memoir.”

  Caesar looked like a politician with a secret. “True, there is no physical map, per se. The map, however, is hidden within the pages of the memoir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The map exists, Sam. You must read between the lines.”

  I shook my head. “Other researchers have scoured his memoir from top to bottom, gleaning from it all the known facts of Ararat, applying that book as a guide to find the cave with the marker shaped like a finger. How is it that you were successful where others have failed?”

  “I am one of those researchers, Sam. I am one of those who scoured Struys’s book from top to bottom. I felt that his account had the ring of authenticity as opposed to other, less credible eyewitness accounts. Call it a hunch, but I was convinced that Struys’s accurate descriptions of the mountain and its inhabitants proved that not only had he climbed the mountain, but that he had observed it with a journalistic eye for detail. His description of the ark itself is nothing short of breath-taking. The truth, Sam, is in the details.”

  “Fine,” I said, “the guy had an eye for detail. Aside from that, how were you able to discern from his writing an accurate map to this particular cave?”

  “Ah, well, even magicians nowadays are telling their secrets. I suppose I can tell mine, too.” He paused dramatically. “I began by obtaining the most current satellite photograph of Mount Ararat as provided by the Turkish Department of Interior. Next, I carefully went through Struys’s memoir word for word, creating in perfect chronological order each step of Struys’s journey over the mountain.”

  “But that has been done,” I noted.

  “Yes,” said Caesar. “But perhaps not with as much intensity. Next, aided by a friend from Boeing’s research and development team, we entered the satellite photograph into their advanced-imaging computer, which brought the mountain to life, in wonderful 3-D.” Caesar grinned. “With the touch of a button, I could view the mountain from every angle, panning out wide, or in as close as possible. Like a starship in Star Wars, we sailed through canyons and over rivers.”

  Faint voices came from down the tunnel, loud and obtrusive. The guards were probably drunk, or halfway there. Wally, however, continued to sleep as if dreaming of sawing logs.

  Caesar continued, “The computer assigned coordinates to the mountain, in a sort of grid-like pattern, roughly every square acre. Coordinate AA-123, for instance might be near the southern base of the mountain. Coordinate AA-124, might be the square acre just above it, etc., etc. Next, I entered each step of Struys’s journey over the mountain: each trail, each outcropping of rock, each river or stream, each canyon or gully or ravine. When I entered a description of, say, a stream that flowed over a grassy plateau, the computer gave me 52 coordinates that matched that description. Next I entered into the computer the description of a fifty foot granite canyon. The computer gave me seventeen possibilities. I entered every natural landmark as described by Struys along his journey. Each time, the computer gave a list of possible matching coordinates that could likely be found on the mountain.”

  Caesar paused for breath. The guards had increased their laughter, probably as the booze increased their blood-alcohol level. It was perhaps only a matter of minutes before they came in here in a drunken stupor and sprayed the room with bullets.

  “And in the end, Sam, the computer provided me one long list of coordinates. Starting from the base of the mountain, it followed a likely trail matching the coordinates for all the landmarks. You cannot begin to know the excitement I felt on that day, Sam, as I stared at that 3-dimensional map of Ararat, as the Dutchman’s route came to life before me.”

  “But surely the emir, or Al Sayid, would have confiscated your map by now, perhaps ensuring that you would not attempt to escape through the rock wall once you broke through the cave in.”

  His eyes twinkled like distant stars. “They did take it away from me, Sam. However, I would not be foolish enough to ascend Mount Ararat with only one map.” From a slit in the rubber sole of his boot, the professor removed a tightly folded and very dirty piece of paper. “I have a copy here, Sam, although the emir has the original, laminated version.” He paused and worked the map back into his boot where it was safely hidden. “So you can understand my frustration when I was told that I could not climb the mountain for some obscure political reason.”

  I thought of the many times I had been to this cave, to be alone with the dead, unaware that this was the cave of legend.

  “Yes,” I said with certainty. “Yes, I can understand why you had to climb the mountain. But one thing still intrigues me.”

  “What’s that, Sam?”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why do you search for the ark with all your heart, mind, body and soul?”

  * * *

  “I am a man of faith, Sam. I am a professor at a very small Bible college in Southern California. I teach Biblical archaeology to prove the validity of the Bible. I believe in the creator and I believe in the afterlife. I believe spirituality is a very personal and individual experience that varies from one person to the next. There’s not many like me around, Sam. The growing trend is to scoff at the Bible, but I find it a valuable wealth of information and a treasure trove of future archaeological finds.”

  I shook my head. “You must be a true man of faith, professor. The story of the ark is too wild for me to accept without some reservation.”

  He shrugged. “The fact that there are bipedal primates who can build super computers in a universe devoid of other life, could be considered a miracle as well.”

  “You’ve got a point,” I said.

  “Science picks and chooses its miracles,” said Caesar. He spoke with enthusiasm, and it was hard not to be drawn to the man. He was probably an excellent lecturer, although I saw him as the type who probably assigned too much homework.

  I lay back in the soft sand, and put my hands behind my head. “Your enthusiasm is wearing me out, professor.”

  He smiled infectiously. “I do have that effect on people.”

  * * *

  The professor was snoring pleasantly. Almost a caricature of the perfect snore. A low nasally rumble, followed by a slight wheeze.

  I was wide awake, but it wasn’t the snoring that kept me up. I was worried about Faye. I wondered again what Omar had done with her. I had known him to be driven by a somewhat skewered set of ethics. The sort that said: I won’t rape you now, but I will later when you are officially part of my harem. Rather loose moral system, but it might just keep her out of some immediate trouble.

  I needed to get out of here. I was restless. I was finally beginning to feel like a true prisoner: trapped, without friend or hope. I was crawling out of my skin, itching to do something. I moved over to the fire, stretched out my cold fingers for warmth. I glanced around the small cave. To the north was the massive cave-in, which looked impregnable; to the south was the narrow, dark tunnel which led to the guards. I looked up at the ceiling. I couldn’t see the ceiling. The smoldering fire was unable to penetrate the darkness, and so it remained hidden behind a black veil. I was trapped.

  I chewed on my lower lip, watching the dying embers in the small fire. Caesar and Wally slept noisily, breathing alternately, although Wally seemed to catch up to the old man, and they sometimes snored in unison. My ears wante
d to throw up.

  I stood up suddenly and moved off toward the dark tunnel, standing just inside the entrance. Beyond I could hear the murmur of the guard’s voices; and, although the tunnel was eternally dark, my straining eyes seemed to detect a soft glow coming from beyond a slight bend. Then again, if you strain your eyes hard enough, you can detect almost anything. Even Elvis.

  I thought again of Faye. Maybe she had been killed, discarded like a rag doll. I inhaled, feeling the pain of anguish and helplessness and uncertainty. This was all so goddamned insane.

  I started off down the tunnel, walking carefully, my right hand trailing along the smooth wall for guidance and direction. My fingertips quickly gathered dust and cobwebs. The sand beneath my feet was soft and muffled my footfalls. I breathed easily through my nose. If there was a way out of the tunnel, I was going to find it. And if there was a way of freeing Faye, I was going to find it. If there was a way of getting caught, I would probably find that too.

  The voices grew louder and more distinct, although the guards still spoke softly. It was quite late; they had probably drunk themselves into a stupor. One could only hope—

  The wind picked up, sprinkling sand over my face. The wind whistled softly over the protrusions in the wall, followed by a gentle moan. Much too peaceful. The voices were mumbling in Arabic, although I could not make out the individual words. Probably talking about the Lakers chances next year. I slowed my pace. The tunnel grew brighter. The brightness steadily increased, and from just around a bend I could hear the crackle of the fire.

  He was waiting for me in the shadows of the tunnel. I would learn later from Farid that he had been watching me with Night Vision goggles. First I heard a whisper of moving fabric. Instinctively, I swung wildly into the darkness with a punch that seemed to connect with a shoulder or jaw, either way it was bony. But the guard was already swinging the butt of his rifle around. An explosion of light, as if someone had struck a match inside my skull, flashed behind my eyes. The light flared briefly, and then winked out of existence.