Ark Found

Chapter 20

Jayden had to lay his face flat into the snow to stifle a laugh despite the seriousness of the situation. Carter remained stock still but kept his head up to watch Daedalus. As best he could tell, the rest of his team was down the slope off to his left, leaving him up here alone. Even better, although he couldn’t understand the radio conversation in Greek, he could see that Daedalus was preparing to join his team down the slope. Whatever was down there, they were very interested in it, because they had set up some kind of rope system that led out of sight down the slope.

Carter tensed as Daedalus zipped up his fly. If he turned this direction, he would probably see them. If that happened, Carter thought, they’d have no choice but to fight. At least it would be two-on-one until his team heard the struggle and scrambled up from down the slope, however long that took. It sounded like they were far down below, so that was something. But then, to his relief, that entire line of thought became a moot point as Daedalus walked straight over to the rope system, and without looking over at them, gripped the rope and walked out of sight down the slope.

Jayden picked his head up out of the snow and looked at Carter, who now found it was his turn to try not to laugh while looking at his friend’s snow-caked face. He pointed down the slope. Jayden’s response was to crane his neck and look around behind them, meaning, Is anyone else up here? Carter shook his head in the negative. Off to their right, maybe a hundred feet away, he thought he saw evidence of a campsite — some packs on the ground, maybe a tent set up. Down the hill they could hear some walkie-talkie chatter and the occasional yelled command to facilitate some kind of operation. Carter’s curiosity as to what they were doing down there was overwhelming, but he wasn’t about to stick his neck out over the slope and risk being seen. First things first, he thought.

The map. Whether original or copy, some version of it had to be up here somewhere, unless Daedalus had the only copy on his person. But Carter doubted that, and he knew there was only one way to find out. He and Jayden crawled a little farther away from the slope to ensure they couldn’t be seen when they stood up. When they regained their feet, they tip-toed over to the camp gear they’d seen.

An additional problem now presented itself. Carter held out a hand to signal Jayden to stop as they neared what looked like a mess tent, as well as a small cook fire still smoldering. They didn’t see any other people, but what if someone was inside the tent, sleeping, or working on kitchen detail, something like that? No doubt he and Jayden would be able to take him or her out, even silently, but they were using radios, and it would only take two seconds of frantic warning to send the reinforcements up to camp.

They stayed put for a full minute and observed the tent carefully, watching for shadows inside, and listening for any sign of human activity. But there was none, and so they crept over to the tent, whose flaps hung loosely open. Carter peered inside and saw that it was clear. Quickly he pulled Jayden inside and they did a more through sweep to make sure someone wasn’t actively hiding beneath folding table or the tarp on the ground. They found the space to be unoccupied.

“Jayden, you go back to the slope and act as lookout. I’ll look for the map.”

Jayden wasted no time slipping out of the tent and creeping across the campsite back toward the slope. Carter turned his mind to the map search. He didn’t know how long Daedalus and team planned to be down there, but all it would take is for one of them to come back up and they’d likely be gunned down like animals. Out here in the wilderness, no one would ever know. The trekking group would report them missing a few days after he didn’t check back in at the appointed time, but nothing would likely come of that in the way of an investigation — they’d be presumed lost in the mountains, and it would be too late for them, anyway.

Carter quickly rummaged through a couple of stuff sacks on the ground, and moved a couple of tarps around, but quickly came to the realization that this was only a mess tent and he wasn’t likely to find the map in here. His time was best spend searching elsewhere in the camp, so he left the tent and began moving around.

Glancing to his left he saw Jayden in a prone position to the right of the rope and pulley system, with a fallen branch strategically positioned in front of his head for concealment as he observed the activities down by the lake. This left Carter free to roam about the campsite. He went looking for backpacks, those personal items that would represent a likely place for something valuable one wanted to keep close at hand.

Daedalus stood on the edge of the lake and zipped up his dry suit, a diving suit that, unlike a wetsuit, did not allow any water at all to come into contact with the skin.

“Ready when you are, Daedalus.” Phillipo fastened the strap on his scuba rig’s BC, or buoyancy compensator. Of their other two team members, one would be also diving with them, while the fourth would be remaining on shores as both surface support — ready to aid the divers in and out of the water, enter the water to help if necessary-and to act as general site lookout. Daedalus’ main concern was that he had not filed any permit paperwork for archaeological operations here, so should they be seen by any type of Turkish authority, or even a local guiding operation who might report the activity to authorities, it could mean trouble.

“It’s cold,” Phillippo said with a grin as he stepped into the water, fins in hand. The underwater topography of the lake was such that there was a very shallow lip around the edge of the shore before it dropped off sharply down to depths that exceeded 100 feet. The trio of divers entered the water and hugged the shoreline while they adjusted their gear and tested it to make sure it was working properly, including the underwater video and photography equipment. With the drysuits on, the could still feel the chill of the iced water, but it was tolerable rather than life-threatening, like wearing a jacket in cold weather. The full suits restricted movement somewhat, especially with the SCUBA gear on over that, but there was no other way to explore places like this.

“Let’s make it quick,” Daedalus said to his dive team, and with that, he stepped off the shallow edge of the lake and into deep water. He placed his regulator mouthpiece between his teeth and pressed the button on his BC inflator hose to let the air out of his vest. He maintained a vertical posture as he began sinking beneath the surface of the lake. His brother and their other team member followed suit, and a minute later all three of them were descending into the lake.

The campsite was not as organized as Carter had hoped for. There was no central location other than the mess tent where he could find all the gear piled together. He found one backpack leaned against a tree by itself, and searched through it exhaustively, but found no paper maps, and zero electronic devices such as a laptop, phone, camera or flash drive. Looking around some more, he located a second pack. The only difference between this one and the first was that it contained a smartphone. Carter frowned as he started at the modern device. A photo of the map could be on a phone, he thought, and yet this presented a new problem, since most phones were locked by default for security purposes. He powered it on, and sure enough, was met with a passcode screen.

He clenched his teeth and powered down the phone while considering available options. He could steal the phone and try to electronically unlock it later — hack into it, basically — or else he could see if it had a removable memory card and take that out of it. But for now he put the phone back in the pack where it was and decided to keep looking for something more definitive. He was pretty sure that only Daedalus himself would have a copy of the map, after all, so the chances that this one phone would have anything were one out of four. At least he thought their team consisted of four.

Carter moved around the site some more until he found another backpack, this one simply lying on the ground on a light snow drift. They must have been in a hurry to unload and get the operations set up, he thought. He rummaged through this pack, which he noted was a top name brand, moderately used. He felt something flat and slim right away and removed it to reveal an iPad. Again, it could have useful info on it, but it was likely passworded. He kept looking through the pack. He recognized a slim compartment on the back of the pack as being for firearm concealed carry, and paused. It felt like something was in there… he unzipped it and pulled out a 1911 pistol. Checking the magazine, he saw that it was full.

Carter got up from his kneeling position and checked his surroundings as he popped the magazine back in. This was an interesting turn of events, he thought. But now he had a major decision to face. He saw three options: One, keep it. Could come in handy if they were discovered by Treasure, Inc. He could discard it once they got near the bottom of the mountain so as not to risk being seen with it in town and detained. Two, hide it, toss it down the mountain into a snow bank so that Daedalus — he was pretty sure that’s whose pack this was — would never find it. Or three, just put it back like nothing ever happened.

He heard footsteps treading lightly and reflexively raised the loaded gun, pointing it in that general direction, but then lowered it when he saw that it was Jayden. Carter lowered the gun and saw Jayden’s gaze travel right to it.

“Bonus!” he said in an exaggerated whisper. “The map?”

Carter shook his head. “Not yet.”

“You gonna keep it? I think you should keep it, and find one for me if you can. Toss theirs.” Carter nodded. “I’m inclined to agree. What are they up to down there?”

“That’s what I came to tell you while I have a little time. Three out of four of them just went for a dive in the lake!”

“Dive?” Carter was confused. “You mean, like they took a swim?”

“No, SCUBA dive! They dragged a bunch of tanks down there with those ropes, used a chainsaw to cut an opening in the ice, and now three of them are underwater.”

Carter pondered this for a moment. “Wow. And what’s the fourth guy doing?”

Jayden glanced back to the edge of the slope as if that man might appear at any moment. “He’s the posted lookout, I guess. When I left my post he was just standing on the shore where the divers entered, and looking around a bit, but not too much. He never looked up in my direction.”

“All right. Sounds like I have some time to work with. You re-take your post.” He turned back to the pack and began unzipping one of the small “admin pouches” on the front, which usually contained smaller non-weapon or survival items such as flashlights, documentation, keys, perhaps a multitool, pens, notepads, extra batteries and the like. This compartment contained a pair of fleece gloves and a ski mask, as well as a small penlight and a candy bar. He continued to rummage through the backpack, tossing items obviously not of interest out of the pack, then putting them back in after the space they had occupied had been “cleared.” He was about to declare the entire pack as having been searched when he shoved some items of clothing back down into the bottom of the main compartment — and felt it shift. He thought maybe it had a zipper or tie on the bottom that had come undone to allow the pack to be accessed from both ends, but a quick glance at the outer bottom of the pack told him this was not the case. Which left only one explanation.

The backpack had a false bottom!

Carter snaked his fingers down inside the pack and felt for the edges of it. He was able to slip a finger against the side and then pry it up, removing the black canvas-covered piece of fiberboard from the pack. His heart rate sped up as he felt a layer of thin plastic at the very bottom — the true bottom — of the bag. He pulled the item out and immediately held his breath as he recognized the map he and Jayden had so painstakingly brought up from the Titanic. It had been placed inside clear plastic cover to protect it somewhat against the rigors of travel.

Carter eyed the document ravenously, drinking in its details as if it could be snatched away from him again at any moment. Which is not far from the truth, he thought, taking his phone from his pocket and powering it on in order to use the camera. He placed the map on the ground and snapped off a few close-up photographs of it. After checking to see that the resulting images were in fact readable, he then powered his phone off and pocketed it.

He glanced over toward the edge of the slope and saw Jayden hunched down low, monitoring the lake divers, his back to him. Carter put the rest of the items back in the backpack, and did his best to organize it the way it was, minus the gun and the map, of course, and then to leave the pack in the same position on the snow-packed ground as he had found it. He had a major decision to make now: should he steal the original map back from Daedalus or put it back in his pack so that he never knew they were here. If he put the map back, though, he’d really need to put the gun back, too. Unless….perhaps he would blame the missing items on one of his own expedition mates and think they did it? That could cause a nice row between them, Carter mused. But on the other hand, the map itself was valuable and technically belonged to his client. He saw himself as duty-bound to bring it to her.

There was something else, too, he was aware as he stood. The lake. What was down there? Treasure, Inc. had obviously gone to great lengths to probe its depths, with an extensive, tricky dive operation. They must have either seen something compelling down there or else the map told them where to look…

The map! He held it up again and began to study it, but then realized he hadn’t even told Jayden the news yet. He should let him know, before—but wait, what’s that? His gaze bored into the map where a solid black “X” seemed to indicate something important. Literally an X-marks-the-spot? Carter wondered. He mentally pictured the satellite photos and modern maps of the Mt. Ararat region he had briefly perused before beginning the trek. As far as he could tell from his hurried examination of the map, which indicated clearly the mountains of Ararat, though not the country of Turkey or any nation by name, it could be their current location. So this map is what led them here, Carter thought. And so close to the known ark site. Then he had the same thought process as Daedalus had, that maybe the old map pointed to the timber wreckage that had been discovered in the latter 20th century…

But wait, what’s this? It happened by accident, a trick of the light. Carter was holding the map with two hands, turning to orient it to the sunlight that was filtering through a stand of sparsely-leaved trees, when a shaft of light reflected off of a small pool of melted snow directly beneath the map. The effect was to light the map from beneath, which revealed faint lines he hadn’t noticed before. They led from the X to another part of the map. To make sure he wasn’t imagining things, Carter stepped away from the reflecting light, still eyeing the map. No more lines. He then turned away from the sunlight filtering through the trees, viewing the map in solid shade, and still no lines appeared. Then he positioned the map back over the light reflecting up from the ground, and there they were again: hidden lines on the map revealed.

Carter furrowed his brow as he inspected the map further. One interesting thing about it was that it was oriented vertically rather than horizontally, as most maps are. By tracing the lines from where they were — at the X — to where they went… which seemed to be… some part of Africa?… his finger went from the top down towards the bottom of the map. And yet, there was no X or similar marking there. Again, he moved the map so that it was not bottom lit, and scrutinized it again. The X was definitely there, but the lines were gone, and the spot to which they led — somewhere in east Africa, Carter guessed — was otherwise unmarked or designated in any special way. Or was it?

Eyeing the map even more closely while a few birds chirped and squawked around him in the otherwise quiet mountain ecosystem, Carter could see that the region of east Africa where the invisible lines led was extremely detailed. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the Ararat region of the map had a similar level of pronounced detail, while the rest of the map, depicting part of Europe, the Middle East, some of Asia and almost all of Africa, had reasonable detailing but not as much as those two areas. That in itself was a clue of sorts, wasn’t it, Carter reasoned.

He wondered if Daedalus and his team had picked up on that yet. No doubt he had archaeological and antiquities experts inspecting and analyzing copies of the map at this very moment to try and elucidate its secrets. Ah, but that was his mistake, Carter now realized. For no digital copy or even physical reproduction or facsimile of any kind would be able to duplicate the hidden physical content in this document. That was Daedalus’ mistake, his fatal flaw, if you will, Carter thought. He kept the best of everything for himself, relying only upon himself, thinking that others could do what they needed to with less.

And that will be your downfall, Daedalus, Carter decided. But the puzzle the map presented tugged at his intellect. Why the two parts? The X — that was clear enough. But why the lines that led to Africa? Was it saying the ark was in Africa? Was Daedalus and his team diving the lake for nothing?

His thought train was interrupted by a yell from far below, and then, much closer, he heard Jayden’s footfalls, running toward him.