Ark Found

Chapter 19

“Are the tanks set up yet, Phillipo?” Daedalus bellowed.

His brother’s reply echoed from off the ice below but was perfectly audible. “That should be the last one. Four rigs ready to go. Just need some more hot tea.”

“We can have tea after we do the dive.”

“Oh c’mon, brother, we’ve waited 5,000 years to recover the ark, what’s five more minutes?”

“It’s that much more time for the Turkish government to find out we are excavating archaeological ruins without a license, that’s what it is, Phillipo. Then you will be drinking your tea in a Turkish jail.”

“You have a way of looking on the bright side, Daedalus.”

“As did Noah. He knew the world would soon be flooded, and yet he had a plan for it, a plan that would not only save him and his family, but the animals of the world as well. Are the drysuits and the rest of the gear down by the lake?”

Daedalus stared down at the object of their new attention, a small lake — some might call it a large pond — partially iced over. It had been difficult to detect at first because fresh powder covered the intact ice, but on closer inspection, but the team member had noticed water sloshing against the shore while Daedalus and his brother had been arguing.

Daedalus picked up his binoculars and stared down at the lake. Was it possible? Then, for probably the tenth time that day, he took out the map from his pack, the original map from the Titanic. He very much regretted having to bring the original on the expedition and risk something happening to it, since he was aware of its intrinsic value even though he already had copies of it, but the timeline of recent events had necessitated that he keep it with him. He unfolded it now and looked at it again. He could have viewed a photo on his tablet, but he felt like for some reason he was missing something when he did that. He liked the feel of connecting more intimately with the past, and so he risked the old document to the elements in the pursuit of inspiration.

He stared yet again at the X — literally a small black X-marks-the-spot — that had been the focus of his recent obsession. He was confident about the general location, eastern Turkey, and even as far as Mt. Ararat, which was clearly indicated on the map. Not Lesser Ararat, he was sure, but the main, Greater Ararat on which they now found themselves. But more specifically than that is where things became increasingly subject to interpretation. After staring at the map for hours at night by lantern light in his tent, he was still unable to determine if the cartographic rendering had been accurately drawn to scale, or if it was simply meant to be a symbolic representation of roughly where the ark lay. Also, the X was disturbingly close to an already discovered ark site — discovered in modern times well after the map was made. It ate Daedalus up inside to think that what he had thought of as a priceless treasure map, dredged up from the bottom of the sea — and the ages — could in reality lead to something that had already been discovered without its aid.

As he stared down at the lake while his team readied the SCUBA gear, Daedalus considered the route they had taken up the mountain, based both on a known ark site, and on the graphical depiction on the map. At first he had thought the X to be distressingly close to the known site — a grouping of timbers of appropriate age and in the shape of the storied ark with the proper dimensions, but which has already been discovered and dismissed by professional archaeologists as definitively being Noah’s Ark. But when his team member had pointed out the semi-frozen lake below the known ark site, Daedalus had pored over the map again. There were no elevation contours or other cartographic methods employed that would be considered sophisticated by modern standards. So although on paper the X-marks-the-spot appeared to be very close to the known “ark” site, a scant millimeter’s positioning of the X’s cross point could well make a difference in real life that translated to a completely separate location, miles away. It was, Daedalus reflected, like a crude form of geocaching — hunting down planted treasures with the aid of modern GPS gadgets. And even in that scenario, arriving at a specific set of GPS coordinates where treasure is located, further hunting was still required much of the time. There could be a tree at that location, for example, and rather than being buried in the ground, the treasure is up in the tree.

Or a lake, with the treasure down in the lake. The fact that the lake was partially frozen and oftentimes covered with snow meant that it would obscure whatever was down below. And, as the illicit treasure hunter brought binoculars to his eyes once again, there did appear to be something down there. He could pick out the dark, linear forms of what appeared to be timbers of some sort. It excited him to think that if they were from the ark, or a replica of the ark old enough to be considered “real” to most believers, that the cold water might have preserved them to the point that they are not even petrified wood, but still wood. How amazing that would be!

He stared back down at the map again while the sound of a chainsaw cutting through ice rent the frigid air. Daedalus had not relied solely upon this old piece of paper. He had also used modern technological aids, such as Google Earth to examine satellite photography of the region. In this imagery he had noticed the lake that was superficially “next to,” but also physically far below the X-marks-the-spot on the map, which appeared close to the already-discovered ark artifacts site. This prior knowledge of the area was why he had insisted on lugging hundreds of extra pounds of SCUBA gear up the mountain, along with the chainsaw and gas cans to run it. But when they had first gotten up here and looked around, the lake was nowhere to be found, and he worried that the image was outdated, or that an earthquake or avalanche had since covered it over. They had located the known “wreckage” and then worked from there to where the lake should be. He had been about to give up when they came across it.

Now it was a matter of the technical SCUBA dive to get down to the timber-like objects they could see at the bottom of the lake. Ice diving combine with high altitude in an extremely remote area did not for an easy or safe dive make. Add to that the fact that he was deliberately operating with a skeleton crew of four people including himself, both to expedite things so that they could get up here as quickly as possible as soon as he had the map, and also because loose lips sink ships, as he was fond of saying. The less people who knew where the ark was, should they find it, the better.

Daedalus spoke into a two-way radio to his team members working to get the scuba gear down to the lake. They had already rigged a system of ropes from the side of the slope down to the basin the lake occupied, and now they were attaching the gear to the ropes and pulling it down to the lake on a pulley system. At least that was how it was supposed to work. He was well aware that there were a lot of things to go wrong with the system such as losing gear on the way down, the rope and pulley system itself failing, his personnel slipping down the mountain and falling into the icy lake, things like that. Preoccupied with thinking of every little detail that could go wrong with the execution of his dive plan, Daedalus failed to notice the small movements to his left, barely within his peripheral vision.

Two men crawled up out of the ravine behind him and paused, looking around. They saw Daedalus standing there, binoculars to his eyes, and then looked ahead and to their left at the rope and pulley system that ran out of sight down the slope to the lake, which they could not see from their current position. Further distracting Daedalus was his radio crackling with Phillipo’s voice, speaking in Greek.

“Copy, Daedalus. Three sets of gear down at the lake shore, one set on its way. You can make your way down to us whenever you’re ready. All your gear will be waiting for you, including the underwater video system.”

“Copy, see you soon.” Daedalus clipped his radio back onto his belt and walked to the edge of the slope. He looked down at the lake, gazing into its icy blue depths and wondering what he would find there. Time to find out, he thought, but first…

He unzipped his trousers and urinated into the snow.