Ark Found

Prologue

Chronopoulos Dimitrios wondered why the band was still playing. Clearly, despite all the hoopla proclaiming it “unsinkable,” the great liner Titanic was sinking. They’d struck an iceberg, he’d heard. From his position above the port side Boat Deck, he watched the seven musicians play as though it was any other late night performance. But the angle of the deck now had a pronounced list to it. Chronopoulos found himself having to reach out with an arm to grab a railing to keep from slipping.

He felt a hand grip him on the shoulder and turned around to see his brother, Apostolos, who’d gone to see if he could get more information from the crew about was going on. His next words unsettled him deeply.

“They’re launching the lifeboats.”

Chronopoulos made steady eye contact with his brother while he tried to make sense of the uncertainty plaguing his thoughts. A breeze, light but weighted with chill, ruffled his hair.

“Well come on!” his brother pleaded. “We should get in the queue.”

Chronopoulos glanced down at the port rail, where he heard a splash over the strains of a waltz. A chorus of shouts erupted as the first boat landed lopsided in the water, nearly tipping over, but then landing upright.

“Third class will be the last to board, anyway,” Chronopoulos said, turning back to his brother. Even in steerage class, the trip had been an expensive one for them, but the prospect of a visit to New York City held its own potential monetary reward. “Tell you what: you go down there and get in line. I’ve got to get my parcel out of the safe.”

His brother’s eyes widened in fear. “Are you crazy? That part of the ship could be flooded by now!”

“I’ve got to take a look. It’s the whole reason for my trip. I’ll be quick about it.” Chronopoulos spun on a heel and looked away from the band toward the stairs that led into the ship’s common areas.

“Don’t be stupid!” Apostolos’ voice nagged after him. “It’s not worth it. You’re risking your life for what, that old scroll?”

At this, Chronopoulos wheeled around. “That old scroll as you call it might happen to be the most valuable thing I own. Think about it… the location of Noah’s Ark! Invaluable. And there are no copies of it.”

Apostolos rolled his eyes. “I respect your career in archaeology, brother, I really do. But honestly, you have no idea if that old paper is genuine or not.”

“You know what happened. The papyrus it’s printed on was evaluated by a London expert and found to be of proper age, and he recommended I bring it to the collector in New York, who has a network of—” Chronopoulos was interrupted by the sound of a fight breaking out down below on deck. Both siblings turned to look as fisticuffs erupted between two male passengers vying for position in a new line that was forming for a second lifeboat that had not yet been lowered to the water.

“Go then, if it makes you feel better,” Apostolos relented. “By the looks of things, we could use Noah’s ark right about now, couldn’t we?”

Chronopoulos smiled warmly at his brother and gave a slight nod as he turned and ran off toward the entrance to the ship’s interior. More people streamed out onto the decks now — both passengers and crew alike — and the young Greek found himself feeling like a salmon swimming upstream as he entered the ship’s common area against the flow. He was bumped into more than a few times as he made his way deeper into the ship. Although there was no public address system, no ship-wide announcement that the mighty Titanic was going down, people were beginning to suspect that was exactly what was happening. The uncertainty served only to make things worse.

Chronopoulos reached the hallway that led to his quarters and turned left. He didn’t need to go to his quarters — he and his brothers had already retrieved all of their belongings, including the key to the safe — but he didn’t know how to get to the Purser’s Room where the safe was unless he first visited his own room. The ship was that big, and he didn’t have time to squander getting lost. Only a few people occupied the space, most of them walking in the opposite direction to get outside. He passed a husband and wife standing in front of an open quarters door arguing fiercely over where their child was last seen.

Strange groaning and creaking noises emanated from places unknown as Chronopoulos forged his way down the hallway. He passed his quarters and peered quickly inside without stopping. The berth’s bunk beds, which had housed eight people including Chronopoulos and his brother, were now empty. He noticed the water running in the single communal sink. A shame, he thought, picking up his pace now as he continued down the hall. He really had been having a good time on the voyage. Although he was a third class passenger, he had heard other, more travelled passengers state that the third class accommodations aboard Titanic were equivalent to second class room and aboard on most other ocean liners.

He passed the open door to the third class smoking lounge and was surprised to see an old woman inside, seated at a table by herself and smoking a cigarette with a long filter as though she had not a care in the world. She made eye contact with him but said nothing nor changed her expression. Chronopoulos kept moving, by now unconsciously adjusting his gait for the increasingly unsteady movement of the ship. He reached a stairwell and took it up two flights before it opened into another hallway, this one shorter than the last. Near the end of it, he saw a gaggle of three or four people outside the door to the Purser’s Room.

They were arguing. Chronopoulos could see and hear that much even before he could make out the details of their faces or hear the individual words being spoken. He wasn’t sure about what, but then when he got near enough they all stopped talking and watched him approach. The rowdy group of men, third class passengers by the looks of it, though Chronopoulos realized that he himself might fool some people by the way he dressed up a bit, blocked the doorway. Chronopoulos paused at the double-door entrance and looked past them into the Purser’s Room. It appeared no one was inside.

“Excuse me.” The archaeologist waited for at least one of them to step aside, but instead they all stopped arguing with each other and stared at him. He could smell alcohol on their breath. One of the men looked as though he was about to object, but one of his companions shot him a look that said, let him pass.

Chronopoulos hurried into the room before they could change their mind. The last thing he needed right now was to be involved in some kind of drunken altercation. He fumbled in his pockets for the key to his safe as he walked across the room. By the time he got to the bank of small safes, read the numbers on them, and assured himself he found the correct one, he realized that the passengers outside the room had followed him inside.

The tallest and drunkest of the three, an Irishman of about forty years of age, nodded to the key in Chronopoulos ‘ hand. “Well go on, open it!”

Chronopoulos hesitated.

“Open it I said!” the drunk man said, taking a step closer. Chronopoulos could smell the cheap whiskey on his breath.

The young archeologist still hesitated, unsure of how to behave in this situation. He had gotten into one fistfight in his life, in Greece, five years ago with a childhood friend. And he had lost, limping home with his tail between his legs and a bloody nose. But now, as he thought about the treasure that lay inside the box — at least he was convinced that’s what it was — he was not about to even put himself in a position to truly lose. On the other hand, he thought, it was likely that these drunks would have no interest in an old piece of paper. No doubt they sought jewelry, cash, obvious valuables. He decided that was the route he should take, and made fear-defying eye contact with the lead drunk.

“I have nothing of value in there. Only personal letters and photographs of sentimental value to me and my family.”

“He said open it, boy!” One of the other men, to his left, reached out and kicked him in the left leg, a bolt of pain shooting through him as the knee buckled, but held. Chronopoulos was unarmed, untrained in fighting, and outnumbered three to one by men who were not about to listen to reason. He saw no other option than to open the safe and hope they found no interest in his dusty old scroll. He had considered not paying for the safe and instead keeping the parchment in his berth with his general belongings, not wanting to spend the extra money for safekeeping, but the thought of showing up to his meeting in New York empty-handed was enough to get him to pony up the extra funds.

So now he reluctantly held up the key and turned to the safe. “Okay. Fine, you will see there is nothing of interest in there for—”

Suddenly all four men tumbled to the ground as the ship canted sharply to the right. A muffled crack was heard at the same time. Chronopoulos winced as his elbow hit the floor. He felt the key leave his grasp and then a tinkling sound as the piece of metal landed out of sight. Then he felt the breath leave his body as a booted foot slammed into his abdomen, knocking the wind out of him. The men untangled from one another and were quicker to rise to their feet than Chronopoulos, but just as they did, the ship rolled again and all of them were back on the floor in a mound.

That’s when the water began seeping in from the left, sluicing down the Purser’s Room until it jolted them all awake with its icy reality.

Chronopoulos saw an opportunity to get himself out of a losing fight and seized it. “The Titanic is sinking! We have to get out of here before it goes down!”

One of the drunkards rose to his feet and moved to kick Chronopoulos in the ribs, but slipped on the water and went down hard, the back of his head striking the floor. The scant millimeters of water cushioned his fall just enough to prevent him from blacking out, but even so he made no move to get to his feet. He lay there on his back, cringing, tears running down the sides of his face. Before anyone could say anything else, the lights in the room blinked on and off three times before remaining off, casting the room in complete darkness. Knowing this was his chance for escape, Chronopoulos slithered across the wet, sloping floor to put some distance between himself and his attackers.

“Power musta cut out!” one of the drunks said. Various crashing noises were heard as unseen furniture rocked around the room and items slid off of shelves and tables. Chronopoulos continued to slide across the floor. He changed directions when he felt he had gone some number of yards from the group of assailants. He had given up all hope of retrieving his map now and wanted only to escape this terrible situation with his life.

Then the lights flickered back on and he saw with a start in the unsteady light that he had gone the wrong way — deeper into the room rather than toward the door as he had hoped he had gone.

“He’s trying to get away!” one of the thugs shouted. Chronopoulos managed to stagger to his feet just as the lights stayed on. They were dimmer than before, and the young Greek heard one of the men mutter the word “generator” before he started to run.

“Get him!”

But at that moment, what got him was the wall of the room bursting open as a raging torrent of freezing seawater flooded the room. There was no swimming against it. As water poured into the room with unimaginable force, swift, unrelenting and unbearably cold on contact, Chronopoulos knew that he, nor any of his attackers, would survive this. His mind flashed on his mistake: you should have listened to Apostolos and not come down here.

At first, while the icy waters lifted him higher as the room flooded, he told himself that he might be able to swim up to the hallway, but before he had even completed the thought he was being carried as if on a waterfall up and out of the room where the wall used to be and then bashed into the hallway wall, snapping his neck and saving him the torture of holding his breath until he drowned.

His last thought flowed across the neurons in his brain as his body ceased to function forever: I hope Apostolos made it onto one of the lifeboats.

Noted antiquities collector Charles Miller brought a hand to his mouth in slow motion as he reacted to the headline in that morning’s New York Times: “Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg; 866 Rescued By Carpathia, Probably 1,250 Perish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing.”

He spent the next hour wringing his hands over whether his appointment with the young Greek archaeologist, whom he knew had chosen the Titanic’s maiden voyage as his means of transportation to New York, would be kept. He re-read the telegraph correspondence he’d had with him to make certain he had the name right: Chronopoulos Dimitrios. So far that name had not shown up on either the survivors or perished lists. Either way, he would miss his appointment with him that day. He knew from the article that the survivors were now en route to New York aboard the rescue ship, Carpathia. He could only hope that Mr. Dimitrios would be among them. For if not, Charles, thought, lifting his gaze from the shocking article….

If not, then the ark is truly lost once again.