Ark Found

Epilogue

Carter Hunt was about to get up from his desk when an email notification sounded from his open laptop. A spark lit in his eye on seeing who the sender was, and he sat back down and clicked it open. At last, the lab results he’d waited so patiently for. Confirmation, or at least partial confirmation, of his theories — or — denial — was at hand right now.

Upon arriving back to the states from Ethiopia, he had sent the timber sample from the lake on Mt. Ararat and the ark lid fragment from the Ethiopian chapel to a laboratory he trusted and had worked with before. Without telling them what he thought the samples were, or where they came from, he explained he wanted an analysis of the wood, and carbon dating of each sample to determine their age. The email had a.pdf file attached, but as usual, his lab guru was kind enough to put the “bullet-point take home message,” as she called it, in the body of the email. Carter leaned forward and read with rapt attention:

Carter couldn’t help but whisper the word, “Yes!” The wood from Noah’s Ark and the Ark of the Covenant was not only the same type of tree consistent with what historians say was used in their construction, but they were the same age with the same plant DNA, meaning they were from the same individual trees. This confirmed his theory that, since Noah’s Ark was older than the Ark of the Covenant by about 2,000 years, that the latter had been built using timber from the former. Why else would the map, which had been accurate with respect to its location of Noah’s Ark on Mt Ararat, have hidden lines leading to The Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia?

Because it’s the same wood! Carter pounded his fist on his desk as the realization struck him with icy clarity. The map was telling its readers, Noah’s Ark is here, X-marks-the-spot, but if you find my hidden lines, you’ll find something more. They’re hidden because what they lead to isn’t Noah’s Ark, not exactly, anyway. But it’s made from Noah’s Ark: The Ark of the Covenant.

Carter thought about the historical connections between the two biblical icons. He knew that both arks were represented in the Bible as powerful symbols of salvation: One for Noah and his family, to repopulate the Earth after God destroyed it during the Great Flood as punishment for humanity behaving badly, as well as the animals of the Earth that humankind depended on for their own survival. But also one ark for the moral code by which humans should live, for their own well-being and to help them avoid the necessity for a second Great Flood. Both constructed from the same batch of timber, two thousand years apart, until God himself summoned Moses from the top of Mt. Sinai in Egypt. Even the basket in which baby Moses floated down the Nile, to escape drowning by order of the Pharaoh, was called a ta-va, the Hebrew word for “ark.”

Carter shook his head to clear those thoughts. He certainly didn’t have all the answers, but he knew one thing: the world now had a much better chance of experiencing its common heritage of treasures, biblical and otherwise, now that they had been wrested from Treasure, Inc.’s control. As soon as he had returned from Ethiopia, Carter had anonymously notified the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism authorities that unauthorized removal of possibly significant archaeological relics was taking place, knowing that this would stonewall Daedalus’ operation there. Carter had followed with great interest the Internet news story a week later indicating that Turkey had taken over an archaeological site on Mt. Ararat from non-permitted “archaeologists,” who were immediately deported from the country.

There was one treasure that Carter had managed to return home with. The map from the Titanic. He had given it to his client, Ms. Ashley Miller, without mentioning the three hidden lines. She was so elated, she paid Carter a bonus, saying she had never expected he would actually be able to recover it from the wreck in the first place, much less get it back after it was stolen. Now that he had, she said she only wanted to hold it in her hands once and see it, to feel the connection to her family’s past. After that, given everything Omega Team had gone through to obtain it, and what it would mean to the other families of Titanic passengers, she was happy to donate it to a museum for all the world to see so that the tragedy of that “unsinkable ship,” that failed ark, might be remembered by all.

Carter got up from his desk chair and stretched. He and Jayden had both been impacted by all they had seen. It had given them a lot to think about and reflect on. After arriving back home in California, true to Carter’s word, they had celebrated surviving the Titanic at Neptune’s Net, one of their favorite beer and seafood joints on the Southern California coast. While there, Carter presented Jayden with a new G-shock watch to replace the one he’d had to barter for bus fare in Newfoundland. Over fried calamari and Big Wave Ales, Carter told Jayden he was a much better drunken bar customer here than he had been at the pub in St. John’s, which reminded Jayden of something he’d wanted to do. He had a friend take his and Carter’s picture at a table full of pitchers and food, the Pacific Ocean in the background. Then he looked up the pub online, and saw that it accepted online payments. He electronically sent a large tip, followed by an email with the picture apologizing but hoping this would help make it up to him.

After that, Jayden left for vacation in Hawaii, surfing and scuba diving to cleanse his mind in order to be ready to return to work for Omega again. Carter opened the sliding glass door that led from his office to the back yard. Unlike Jayden, he had preferred to get right back to work, sending in the wood samples, contacting his client, monitoring the news sites for information on the places they had impacted. He knew someone else who he was sure got right back to work after it all, too.

Daedalus, and probably most of his black market company. Getting run out of first Ethiopia and then Turkey wasn’t going to stop him. He knew where the Ark of the Covenant was. Carter hoped the Guardians of the Ark would move it and implement stronger security this time. Because Daedalus and Treasure, Inc. wasn’t going to give up, he knew that. And yet he had his doubts anything would change. The news stories in Ethiopia, which somehow did not make it beyond the local news cycle, beyond a couple of tabloid-style sites popular with conspiracy theorists (“Church Housing Ark of the Covenant Under Attack by North Korean Special Forces” and such). Police in Axum reported a break-in to the Church of Zion (no mention of the Chapel of the Tablet), where a priest was killed (no mention of the Guardian of the Ark, either). A murder weapon was recovered, but no arrests had yet been made, and the investigation was ongoing. No mention of the underground ark room or that the ark was open and its intricately carved, gilded lid damaged. Perhaps these details were left out for investigative purposes, Carter thought, so that someone who was actually there could be separated out from those who weren’t by mentioning certain details.

Carter decided not to tell anyone about finding the Ark of the Covenant. He said only that they went to Axum and visited the famous church, but that the ark there was only another replica. When asked how they thought to go there from Turkey, he explained that he got the idea because the Titanic map had more detail in Ethiopia than any other place except for Mt. Ararat. He made no mention of the invisible lines. Instead, he put forth the idea that perhaps the Ark of Covenant was built using wood from Noah’s Ark, and this notion was promptly disregarded by scholars.

Carter walked out into the yard, down to where a small, babbling brook traversed his property and ran downhill to the city below. It wasn’t always running, only after enough rain, but it was now. Smiling, he took the piece of the Ark of the Covenant from his pocket it and turned it over in his hands. So much history, so many people’s lives affected by this piece of wood…

Reaching the stream, he held the fragment of the covenant lid in his hands for a moment, turning it over as he contemplated it. Then he tossed it into the water. He watched it drift away, slowly at first, then picking up speed as it left his property and started downhill toward the city, toward humanity, toward the future.