The Last Chamber (21 page)

Ararat, Armenia

The two SUVs bumped along the road heading into the little city. Sean
wondered what people did for entertainment around the area or if it was simply
like a third world country where survival was all that mattered. They didn’t
see many people as the small convoy passed through the first array of
buildings.

Jabez had radioed his men and ordered them to the location where
Adriana landed the helicopter. They had proceeded in the land vehicles to cause
less of a fuss with the locals because Jabez had said they would likely need
ground transport to investigate anything in the mountains to the north.

They zoomed along the bumpy, dirty street headed for the middle of
town. On one of the sidewalks, they passed an elderly woman walking with the
assistance of a cane. She had a white and blue shawl pulled over her head that
draped halfway down her back. Many of the buildings were dilapidated or in ill
repair. Some of the structures seemed to be abandoned.

Jabez answered the unspoken questions that lingered in the vehicle.
“This town was officially founded in 1927. The cement factory here has kept
people working for many decades. Unfortunately, between the dust from that
factory and the poisonous gases from the gold factory, the quality of life here
is very low.”

“That’s fairly young for a town,” Sean commented. “Are you sure there
is a connection to what we’re looking for?”

“While the town was officially founded in 1927, there have been
inhabitants here much longer. The village itself actually dates back several
thousand years. From what I understand, the statue we are looking for could be
that old, dating back to a time before the Bronze Age.”

The convoy turned sharply down a side street, then made a left,
heading back to into the direction they were going a few moments before. Sean
peered ahead through the windshield, impatiently searching through the run down
city. Up ahead, the street came to a point where they could only turn right. It
was a small town square. Across the street in the center of the square a black
iron fence wrapped around a small area no larger than two thousand square feet.
There were a few small trees and benches giving it the look of a miniature
park. In the center of the little area was what they had come to find, though
the object wasn’t at all what Sean had expected.

“Stop the car,” he ordered. Jabez did so immediately and pulled off to
the side of the street. The car with the four men behind them did the same.

A piece of granite shaped like a sword stood seven feet tall. The tip
of it was melded into the rock from which it had been cut. The weapon was
designed in a style from ancient times with a broad blade and a small, flat
hand guard just above the hilt.

Sean and the others got out of the vehicles and checked both ways
before crossing the street, though he wasn’t sure why. They hadn’t seen another
moving vehicle since arriving save for a donkey pulling a cart. A few shoddily
clad children were sitting on the sidewalk a hundred feet away, busily playing
with what looked like homemade dolls. The kids had a grimy appearance as if
they hadn’t bathed in several days, maybe longer.

The group trotted towards the black fencing, scanning it for an
entrance. Off to the right, a small gate hung slightly open. Jabez’s men looked
up into the vacant windows of the surrounding buildings, checking for any
potential danger. They basically had to push Firth along to keep the older man
moving, something that he clearly didn’t appreciate, but took with a small
amount of dignity.

They arrived at the base of the huge sculpture and stared up at it.
Years of vandalism and neglect had left graffiti on most of the surface. Only
at the very top, near the hilt of the carved sword, did the stone remain clean
albeit weathered by the centuries.

The sidewalk circled around a small patch of dirt where the base of
the statue anchored into the ground. The westward sun cast a long shadow along
the ground in the shape of the stone weapon.

“What are we looking for?” Adriana asked as she examined the piece
closely.

Sean shook his head. “I don’t know. Look for anything that may look
like words or symbols,” he suggested as he bent over and tried to scan the
surface of the stone for any clues.

Firth took the approach of standing back with his arms crossed as he
gazed at the piece, while Jabez copied what the other two were doing. The men
from the brethren had formed a perimeter and were keeping an eye out for
anything suspicious.

Suddenly, Sean perked up and looked around, a paranoid expression on
his face. “Do you hear that?”

Adriana looked up into the sky. “It sounds like the other helicopter.”

Jabez’s eyes shot upward as well, scanning the partly cloudy sky. His
men did the same, cautiously looking about the rooftops of the town. For a few
moments, the tension was as thick as mud. Everyone around the odd statue could
feel it.

Then, as quickly as it had arisen, the choppy sound of the helicopter
faded away into the distance. Jabez’s men continued to search the skies
suspiciously for another thirty seconds, just in case.

“They’re gone,” Firth announced with a level of certainty. “I wonder
where they went.”

Sean’s eyebrows tightened slightly. “Yeah,” he said in a disconcerted
tone. “I wonder that too.”

“Do you think they found something we may have missed?” Adriana asked.

It was a possibility Sean had considered. But he didn’t think so. They
had been thorough, despite their rush at the ancient fortress. “Doubtful. It’s
probably more likely that they went the wrong way. Still, I don’t want to be
around if they turn back and come this direction.”

“Agreed,” Jabez chimed in, and immediately began scouring the stone
sword again.

Several minutes passed without any revelation or discovery. Jabez,
Sean, and Adriana had all done circles around the ancient object without
finding so much as a scratch that seemed out of place. Firth had never moved,
simply resting his chin on one hand with the one arm tucked underneath the
other.

“Got anything?” Sean sounded exasperated.

The others shook their heads and joined him on one side of the
monument. Firth stayed put, still staring at the object the same way he had
been for the last several minutes.

“What are we missing?” Sean asked the group. “Is there anything else
at this site?”

Jabez looked around the fenced in area but didn’t see anything of
note. “It does not appear so.”

Sean noticed the professor hadn’t moved since they got there.
Something had gotten Firth’s attention, but what it could be was still a
mystery.

“What is it, Professor?”

The older man remained still a few more seconds before responding.
Finally, he let his hand down from his chin and pointed at the long shadow
running along the ground towards the east.

“It’s a sun dial,” he said matter-of-factly. “If I had to guess, I
would say the shadow points to the area in the mountains you are looking for.
Of course, you would need to know the time of day. That could be a problem.”

A grin crept across Sean’s face. He put his hands on his hips for a
moment, impressed with the professor’s assessment.

“Well, Doc. There you go. Welcome back to doing some field work.”

Firth scoffed. “This is hardly real field work,” he emphasized the
word
real
with
a sarcastic beat. “And like I said, you have the problem of not knowing the
time of day required.”

“Yes,” Adriana interrupted. “But we know the general direction from
the map in the prison pit. Sean, pull up the picture you took in the dungeon.”

He had already begun fishing the device out of his pocket before she’d
finished her sentence. A few seconds later he was tapping the screen and
spreading his fingers, zooming in on the image Saint Gregory had left so many
centuries before. Adriana and Jabez peeked over Sean’s shoulder as he analyzed
the picture on the screen.

The line extended out at an angle, leading into the mountains. Those
mountains ran from the northwest to the southeast for hundreds of miles, which
presented a problem. If they guess wrong, Sean and his companions would end up
out in the middle of the wilderness mountains.

Another cold breeze rolled through the center of the town, kicking up
dust along the way. Dark clouds were beginning to sneak up from the west. While
the southern part of Armenia and eastern Turkey didn’t usually experience
drastically cold temperatures, there were times when the weather could reach
some extremes. Snowfall wasn’t a typical thing. But as cold as the air was,
Sean wondered if the approaching storm might bring some precipitation.

The bigger problem was that if Firth was right, and the sword
sculpture was a type of sun dial, they would be up a creek without a paddle if
the clouds covered up the source of light. They needed to figure out the
direction, and quickly. Otherwise, hours could be lost, maybe even days. That
was something they couldn’t afford.

Sean closed the picture out and pulled up his Google maps app. He
entered the location and zoomed into the center of the city where they were
currently standing. He twisted the overhead view a little and zoomed back out,
peering with narrow eyes at the image.

“What are you looking for?” Adriana asked. Firth had moved over to
where the other three were huddled around Sean’s phone and tried to lean in to
see what he was doing.

“A road, a path, a trail, anything leading out of the town that could
coincide with the line that leads into the mountains.” He pointed at the
screen. “The problem is there are several roads that lead out of the town,
heading into the mountains. It could be any of them.”

Adriana’s face crinkled slightly as she considered the problem. “What
if the direction we should take is still part of the clue, the one about the
righteous?”

Sean shot her a quick grin. “Could be. But how does it relate?”

“Before, it had to do with kneeling. I doubt there is another map
hidden under this dirt, though,” she traced a finger around the area circling
the monument. “It would have been found long ago. Or it might have even washed
away after being exposed to the elements.”

“So, what could it be?” Jabez wondered.

Adriana began slowly moving around the sculpture, staring at it as she
spoke. “Muslims are required to pray at certain times of the day. In the
ancient times, the Judaic ancestors of Abraham kept a similar tradition. There
was a time for morning and afternoon prayers, while the sun was still up,
nearing the end of its journey across the sky.” Sean nodded as she spoke. He
was beginning to see where this was going. “It is estimated that the afternoon
prayers took place around five 0’clock. If we assume the sun would be at that
point,” she extended a finger into an empty place in the sky, “the shadow would
be cast across the ground in that direction.” She pointed at the sword, but her
eyes were gazing beyond, into the high mountains outside the city.

Sean checked the direction she indicated then got back his phone to
see if where she was pointing had any discernible paths. There was one faint
outline of a dirt road that trailed away from the town and wound its way into
the Mountains.

He looked up from the screen and smiled. “I think you did it,” he
praised. “I’m pretty sure this is our road.”

Jabez and Firth peeked over his shoulder at where he was indicating on
the screen.

“Pretty sure?” Firth returned to his dubious self. “If we are going
into those mountains, I would hope that you are a better than pretty sure.” He
crossed his arms again and cocked his head to the side.

Sean slipped his phone back into his pocket. There was
 
“It’s the only way that makes sense,”
he responded as patiently as possible.

“And how far do we go into the mountains? Do we just keep going until
we bump into some mythical boat?” The Englishman held his arms out to his side.
“If it was there in plain sight, other people would have already found it by
now. It won’t be that easy.”

For a moment, the only sound that interrupted the silence was the wind
blowing across the surface of the sword and a through a few of the scraggly
trees dotting the tiny park.

Firth had a point, as much as Sean hated to admit it. If ark was
sitting in plain sight in the mountains to the north, someone would have
already found it. Even if it weren’t obvious, satellites or possibly airplanes
would have noticed an anomaly and taken pictures of the ancient vessel.

Adriana interrupted his thoughts. “We need to think about this
differently, Professor. If there were a large boat-type structure that came to
rest somewhere, years of erosion and decay would have destroyed the entire
ship. Correct?”

“Obviously,” he answered emphatically. “Based on the geography, those
mountains probably receive most of their rainfall in short bursts. That means
flooding. So, after decades and centuries of rotting and decay, the remnants of
anything would have surely washed away. If there was something there to begin
with.” He added the last part with a little sneer.