Ark Found, page 13
part #2 of Omega Files Adventures Series
“Thank you,” both of them said. “We’re sorry for the damage,” Carter added. He pushed open the right-side door and he and Jayden exited the cab, closing the door after them. He looked around, mostly behind them, but also ahead and laterally, but couldn’t see the silver car. He thought it might be about ten cars back, but couldn’t be certain. He pointed to the bus stop. “Let’s get to it before the bus does or we’ll be sitting ducks on the side of the road.”
For right now, the bus had pulled over to the shoulder of the right lane, but most of the pileup was in the left-most lane, and already other vehicles in the right lane were starting to ease back into traffic. This opportunity to reach the stop before the bus wouldn’t last long. He and Jayden ran toward the stop, which featured a simple open bench with a sign on a pole next to it. No other people waited there.
Jayden threaded his way through traffic with the grace of an NFL running back, while Carter, a tad slower, took an alternate route that was more in his comfort zone. After enduring a few choice gestures and horn honks from frazzled drivers, along with one person who asked them if they were all right and were they in the accident, the pair of treasure-seekers reached the other side of the road in front of the bus stop.
“Nothing like a real life game of Frogger to wake you up!” Jayden exclaimed, resting with his hands on his knees.
“I like being able to put another quarter in if I die,” Carter huffed. He eyed the traffic to their left and saw that the bus was almost to them. He raised a hand to indicate to the driver they wanted to board.
“Any sign of our tail?” he asked Jayden, who also stared in that direction. He replied in the negative.
“Then let’s get on.”
“Only one problem with that,” Jayden said. “I’m out of cash. You got any?”
Carter shook his head. “Gave it all to the cabbie.”
Jayden shrugged. “When I was a kid going to school on the public bus in Seattle, sometimes I’d spend my bus fare on candy bars at the 7-11 and then have to talk my way onto the bus.”
“How’d you do that?” Carter asked as the bus air brakes belched and the doors opened. “Just kind of pretend like I’m digging around in my pockets for the fare and then, if the bus was crowded enough, sort of shuffle off down the aisle and hope the driver didn’t notice.”
Carter laughed. “And if he did notice?”
“Usually some adult would take pity on me and give me the fare.”
“Somehow I’m not so sure that’ll work for you these days. But let’s hope it does, because don’t look now, but I see the silver sedan coming up back there. Let’s get on before they see us!”
He and Jayden waited for an elderly couple to disembark at a painfully slow rate, the man helping the woman down step by step, steadying her when she was on the ground before hobbling off together. Jayden boarded the bus first, while Carter was close behind, glancing back behind the bus at the silver sedan as it switched from the same lane the bus was in to the middle lane.
“You go to the airport, right?” Jayden asked the driver, an older woman with curly silver hair.
“Just like the sign says,” she said, pointing to the electronic sign inside the bus that read, AIRPORT.
“Perfect, thanks!” Turning to Carter, he said, “Yep, it goes to the airport!”
“Great.” He and Jayden took a couple of steps away from the driver toward the back of the bus, hoping she would start to drive away, but she only sat there, looking at them expectantly. The bus was not crowded, with plenty of empty seats stretching all the way to the back. “So much for your childhood ways,” Carter muttered to Jayden under his breath.
“I need your fares, gentlemen,” the driver said loudly in an exasperated tone.
“Uh, right, hold on,” Jayden said before beginning a show of looking through his pockets, then his small backpack he had purchased at the hotel gift shop. Carter did the same. “I’m flat broke,” he grumbled to Jayden. “Turn around!” He could see the silver sedan approaching the bus in the next lane. He and Jayden faced the sidewalk, hunching over a little.
“Listen, you two, if you don’t have the fare ready, you’ll have to get it ready while you wait for the next bus. There’ll be another one coming along in twenty minutes.”
“We could ask if anyone has it, just straight up beg,” Jayden said in a low voice.
But Carter shook his head. “Probably it would work, and it’s not that I’m beneath it, but I don’t like the idea of calling that much attention to ourselves. Bus isn’t that crowded, but there’s still like twenty people back there. I’d rather just make a deal with the driver directly, that way only one person will remember us.”
“Okay, you got anything to trade for fares?” Jayden looked his body up and down, lingering on his Omega dive watch, a gift from Carter’s grandfather upon graduating naval officer school worth thousands of dollars.
“Not that,” Carter said shaking his head.
Jayden nodded and instead glanced at his own wristwatch, a relatively cheap Casio digital with high-tech bells and whistles such as a barometer, compass, and elevation readout. He unstrapped the gadget from his wrist. “I don’t know how I’ll know what time the moonrise and low tide is anymore without this thing, but I suppose it’s the price I’ll have to pay.”
He held out the watch and stepped up to the driver. “Look, this thing’s all I got. It’s worth a couple hundred American. We can’t wait for another bus or we’ll miss our flight. It’s not refundable and we’d be out thousands of dollars.”
The driver examined the watch with a begrudging look before snatching it from Jayden’s hand and closing the bus door. “Welcome aboard!”
Carter and Jayden took seats in the middle of the bus and hunkered down, Carter at the window seat where he scoped out the passing vehicles, looking for signs of the silver sedan. “I think it worked.”
“Let’s hope so, because my wrist feels awfully naked.”
“Sorry. I’ll make it up to you. Let’s focus right now on getting out of here.” Before long they saw signs for St. John’s International and entered a curving roadway with a sign warning, AIRPORT ONLY—DEPARTURES / ARRIVALS. They were glad to see the bus take the fork leading to departures, with each stop representing a different collection of airlines.
“Let’s just get off at the first one,” Carter suggested, “since we don’t know which one we need yet.”
With no arguments from Jayden, the pair of treasure hunters walked to the back door of the bus in anticipation of the stop. Jayden pressed the button to request a stop while Carter eyed the scene outside the door windows. He saw no signs of any pursuers or tails, so when the door opened the two stepped out onto the sidewalk bordering the air terminal.
“Let’s get inside,” Carter said, still worried their adversaries might know to troll the airport looking for them. With each only carrying a small backpack, they were able to thread their way quickly through the crowds without attracting much attention. “Turkey, Turkey, Turkey…” Carter said under his breath as they scanned the departure boards.
“Is that Europe or what?” Jayden wondered.
“A small part of it is in Europe, but most of it is in Asia. This way, come on.” They fast-walked until they reached an Air Canada terminal with service to the Turkish capital of Ankara.
Staring at the departure times, they saw that the next flight left in just under two hours. “Let’s see if we can get on.” Carter stepped up to the ticket counter, eyeing the flag with red and white sickle and star with both trepidation and hope.
Chapter 15
Doğubayazıt, Turkey
Carter and Jayden stood in the middle of a crowded, dirt street lined on both sides with ramshackle vendors and simple storefronts of all sorts, fruit stands, cell-phones, curios and trinkets, rugs, incense, candles, spices, fresh fish and clothing. Musicians played doumbek hand drums, sitars, and flutes, their middle-eastern rhythms permeating the air and mingling with pungent hookah smoke. After travelling for nearly twenty-four straight hours, Carter and Jayden were exhausted, having slept only on the plane and then on the long bus ride from the airport in Ankara to the country’s eastern border with Iran. The town of Doğubayazıt was the jumping-off point for expeditions to climb the mighty Mt. Ararat, which loomed in the distance like an otherworldly symbol of mystery and enchantment. The mountain was actually comprised of two distinct peaks, known as Greater and Lesser Ararat, with the Lesser having an elevation 12,782 feet, and Greater thrusting 16,854 feet into the heavens.
Despite the extraordinary view of a snow-capped volcano rising over three miles into the air only a few miles away, the place had an air of poverty about it characteristic of undeveloped nations. To Carter, it contrasted sharply with the majesty he associated with the region due to its rich and almost mythological history. Noah’s Ark was thought to be buried somewhere in this land.
It was cold, too, with a light snow falling, and dirty, sooty snow lining the ground. He and Jayden had picked up parkas, knit caps and wool pants at an outfitter store catering to mountaineers, so they weren’t uncomfortable, but the low temperatures only added to the austerity of the town.
“Think about how cold it is up there!” Jayden said, pointing to the snow covered peak in the distance.
“I’d rather think about finding out where Daedalus went. What do you say we do some leg work?”
Jayden nodded. They’d told everyone they’d encountered so far, on the day-long bus ride here, at the backpacker’s hostel where they booked a room, and to the shopkeeps where they purchased mountaineering gear, that they were tourists from America here to climb Mt. Ararat, as many thousands do each year. It wasn’t known for being a particularly difficult or technical climb, and was not high enough to require bottled oxygen for most people. Anyone capable of a strenuous hike a high altitudes for several days in a row could do it, like backpacking the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, or parts of the Rockies in Colorado. The upper portion was mired in snow 365 days a year, which made it cold, however, but so was any mountain over 10,000 feet.
“Seeing as the sit-on-our-butts work didn’t pan out, looks like we’ve got no choice.” Jayden was referring to their time the day before in the bustling, modern capital city of Ankara, where they’d sat in an Internet café for a couple of hours, searching for signs of archaeological permitting activity that might be associated with Daedalus. Naturally, they found none.
“It’s not like we were expecting Treasure, Inc. to file for a permit, but it can’t hurt to see if anyone has. It might draw Daedalus to them like flies to a jar of spilled honey.” But no recently applied for archaeological digs had turned up, and none of the ongoing operations were noted as having activity right now. Mt. Ararat—for the moment, at least—was free from diggers and those who would plunder its past.
But Carter was under no illusions that locating Noah’s Ark could be as simple as wandering up a single mountain—snow-covered or not—and digging it up. If it was, it would have been found by now. And there are those, he was aware, who claimed that it already has been. One of the more well-known cases occurred in 1959, when a private individual discovered an object that was roughly boat-shaped, with dimensions that could fit those of Noah’s Ark. The Turkish government at that time prevented his work from continuing and mounted their own investigation. It wasn’t until 1987 that Turkey officially recognized the discovery, and at that time credited the individual with the find. Still, it was not definitive and many historians claimed that that the fossilized timbers located could have come from numerous other sources besides Noah’s Ark, if in fact the ark was something other than a fictional creation in the first place.
Also, in 1978, an earthquake exposed rib timbers that were 515 feet in length, or 300 royal Egyptian cubits. The measurement units were a significant point, since the Egyptian cubit, rather than feet or meters, was used in the ancient world. Using these units made the timbers the approximate dimensions of the ark. Could they be from a petrified ship? But again, the world was not convinced. Still, Carter thought it a good bet that perhaps the map led to either this discovery or the previous one upheld by the Turkish government. He had made up his mind that, in the absence of more concrete leads, to head for these two sites first and see if anyone else might be hanging around.
It occurred to Carter that any time after the Bible was written, anyone could have built an ark of their own to recreate the story, and that, if found in modern times, could easily be confused with the “real” thing. He wasn’t sure what it would take, exactly, to convince the world that the authentic, biblical Ark of Noah had been found, but a wooden boat dated to the proper age and of the proper dimensions would be a start. And he knew of a map that supposedly led right to it.
Daedalus …He felt the anger begin to seethe inside him and willed himself to redirect it by concentrating on the immediate task in front of him—hooking up with a local guide outfit that could inform him about recent expeditionary activity. He knew full well that Daedalus or anyone working on his behalf would skirt the established legal permitting channels for acceptable archaeological work. They would be posing as backpackers, like Carter himself was, and would attempt to follow the map to wherever it led under that guise.
Carter intended to find him. However, as he looked around, away from the mountain toward the vast expanses of rolling hills in either direction away from it, he was aware that Mt. Ararat itself need not be the resting place of the ark.
“Let’s go, Carter, before I decide to lay around in some hookah bar for the rest of the month.” As usual, Jayden was impatient to get moving even though he wasn’t exactly sure where they were going. Carter consulted a local guidebook he’d picked up at the airport and had studied some on the bus ride over. Around them, people passed by wheeling carts, guiding livestock such as goats and sheep, and riding all manner of wheeled vehicles from bicycles to small trucks.
“The largest guide company is Ararat Trekking, and they have an office in the center of town. I say we check in there and see if there’s anyone we can chat with. Then from there, see if we can arrange a guide to take us to the two sites associated already with Noah’s Ark finds.”
Jayden signified his agreement with a shrug and the two waited for a man pulling a cart laden with caged roosters to pass, and then set off on foot down the street. As they moved the snow stopped falling, the light wind died out and the sun shone a little through the clouds. Carter unzipped his parka and began to enjoy the experience. Although he and Jayden had been to the Middle East many times on deployment, Turkey was a first for both of them, and they soaked up the experience like any first-time traveler to the country.
“Here’s what I don’t get, though,” Jayden said as he walked, deliberately looking away from a woman approximately his same age. It was difficult for him, but he avoided eye contact with the women they passed, most of whom were covered from head to toe including face scarves. He knew that they had strict customs here and that he could not afford to ruffle any feathers on their current agenda.
“What don’t you get?” Carter asked.
“If this map was made back in the pre-Titanic days, then how could it point to the discoveries that were found in the 20th century?”
Carter shrugged. “Maybe they found them first and the modern people re-discovered them independently? I don’t know but I figure it’s worth a shot.”
The walked along in silence for a while. “You know, Carter,” Jayden said after a spell, “I’ve got to tell you, this is by far the best job I’ve ever had. Especially if I live through it.”
Carter smiled and shook his head. “Omega’s first official case is turning out to be a doozey, I’ll give you that. But hey, we go the extra mile for our clients.”
“Extra fifteen thousand miles or whatever it took to go halfway around the world.”
“Whatever it takes. If Noah’s Ark does exist, no one wants it to fall into the hands of a black market collector who only cares about himself.”
“No one except that black market collector and his obviously well-paid minions, you mean.”
“I stand corrected.” Carter held his guide book up to his nose, then looked down the street. An elderly man with a long white beard was walking by and he held the book up to him. The man stopped, smiled and looked at the open page. Carter knew not a lick of Turkish, so simply pointed to the photo of the tour company’s storefront, then looked around at the street and shrugged.
“Ah!” the man exclaimed before turning and pointing down the road.
“He says we take a left down there,” Jayden guessed. They both thanked the man by nodding and smiling before continuing down the street. They turned left onto a busier street that was paved, although the traffic seemed to be of the same chaotically mixed variety as the last street. Carter recognized the sign for the place from half a block away, since it was one of the few two-story buildings on the street. As they continued down the road, Carter made it a point to keep his situational awareness up, keeping his head on the proverbial swivel. He wasn’t looking for a repeat of being accosted as they were in Newfoundland, and certainly didn’t want to end up back in the clutches of Treasure, Inc., as they were aboard the ship.
“Hey, did you ever contact Maddy?” Jayden wanted to know. “Not that I don’t think you know what you’re doing, mind you, but you know—”
“Yeah, yeah she’s an archaeology expert, I get it. No offense taken. I sent her an email yesterday from our room. I’ll check it tonight. I doubt she’ll have anything at this stage for us, but once we get into a situation where we need more detail about something specific, she’ll come in handy.”
“Oh I bet she’ll come in handy all right,” Jayden said, a mischievous tone to his voice.
