Even so, by the time they broke for lunch, Carter had to admit that he was feeling the workout. He asked himself if his time away from the service, almost a year now, had made him softer. The dog slurped up water from its bowl while the Turkish couple faced the peak of Ararat and knelt on a prayer rug. The others took photos and videos, or made brief satellite-phone calls to friends and loved ones back home. Glancing around at the vistas below, Carter was taken aback by how vast the region was. All of it qualified as “Ararat,” and so the ark could have come to rest anywhere up here, according to the Bible. It only had to be high enough elevation to make sense with the great flood waters subsiding and the ark coming to rest on what would likely be part of a mountain. He considered that the ground would be damp from the flood, and that possibly it would have sunk into a bed of mud, possibly submerged all the way beneath it. By now the wood would likely be petrified. Carter wished they could have brought a drone to obtain aerial views, but none were for sale in Doğubayazıt, and being on the run had not afforded them time to plan ahead. He reminded himself to try calling Maddy again, at camp tonight.
The group eased back onto the trail and continued up the volcano. Much of the time there was silence and Carter and Jayden dared not have conversation that involved their agenda, but when others in the group did strike up a conversation, or when the dog barked and everyone told it to be quiet, they would seize the opportunity to discuss what might lay ahead for them. “Do you think Daedalus will be armed?” Jayden asked.
“Don’t know,” Carter replied in a low voice, “but we have to assume that he could be. A man like Daedalus — with both means and a lack of moral scruples — would be able to get almost anything he wanted. It just depends how important he thought being armed was compared to the hassles it would involve, if any.”
Other than the knives, multitools and hatchets they carried that would not look out of place with camping or outdoors gear, Carter and Jayden were unarmed.
“Hopefully we can do a stealth infiltration of his camp,” Jayden said. Carter agreed, and then they trudged on in silence. The air became chillier as the elevation increased, and the parkas were zipped back up. After a while, Carter and Jayden found themselves having to deliberately hold back their pace in order to stay with the group, and they were glad to think that tomorrow they would strike out on their own. At base camp they had joked with the guides about the possibility of getting lost, saying that if all else failed, down was the way back, right? But they knew it wasn’t that simple. Besides Turkey, Mt. Ararat shared borders with Iran, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Traipsing down without knowledge of where they were going meant that they could end up in an unforgiving nation with no travel visa. A very serious matter were they to be detained, the trekking operation had warned them.
When the sun was visibly lower in the sky, the guides announced they had reached their campsite for the night, a craggy, snow-strewn plateau with a steep drop-off on one side, and a long, gradual slope on the other, while the summit of Mt. Ararat lorded over them above a steep incline. While they set up camp, Carter took out a pair of binoculars (he told he group he was an avid bird watcher) and scanned the territory below the steep drop-off, looking for any signs of backpackers. But he saw none; he scanned the other directions as well, but they were just as free of human presence.
After dinner, the lead guide took Carter and Jayden aside and asked them if they were ready to go off on their own in the morning. “The ark site is down there,” he said, pointing down the steep incline, “and then that way for probably ten kilometers uphill,” he finished, pointing out of sight.
Carter and Jayden nodded enthusiastically, playing the part of gung-ho adventure travelers. “Game on!” Jayden gushed.
“We’ll miss you guys,” Carter said. “You’re a great group, but we’d rather see the ark than the summit, and unfortunately we don’t have time for both.”
“I understand,” the guide said. “I just wanted to confirm that you are leaving us in the morning — I assume you will dine with us for breakfast?”
Carter nodded. “That’s right, then we’ll pack up with you, but when you guys head up there…” He looked up at the snowy summit. “…we’ll be going down there.” He looked down the steep incline.
“Do you think we’ll meet any other climbers at the ark site?” Jayden asked the guide. He was fishing for information on whether the guide knew of other climbing parties there, and of course whether they might be Treasure, Inc., but he thought it was a reasonable enough question to ask without raising suspicion.
“Probably not,” the guide answered. “There’s not much to see, really, just the vague outline of something that might be a ship. Every now and then people come digging for timbers, but most people who come up here just want to go to the summit.”
“Well, we better enjoy the company of other humans while we can!” Jayden said to Carter, before adding to the guide, “Hopefully we won’t get too sick of each other!”
The guide laughed. “Yes, well that’s another reason why group travel is recommended. Good company!”
That night in the tent, Carter used his satellite-phone to check his messages. “Got something from Maddy!” He told Jayden. He listened to the message, disconnected, and then recapped it for Jayden. “She says she’s still on a dig in Kyrgyzstan. Wants to meet up when we’re done if possible.”
“I’m sure she does,” Jayden said with a suggestive lilt to his voice. Carter pressed the button on his phone to call Maddy. “I’m going to tell her where we are — just approximately, not exactly- and what we know so far about the map and our search, to see if she has anything that might help us.” But the call went straight to voice-mail. Carter left her a message.
Outside it was dead quiet, with none of the group having the energy to stay up after the day’s uphill trek, knowing they faced another day of it tomorrow.
Chapter 18
The next morning played out as planned, with Carter and Jayden parting ways with the trekking group after breakfast and camp breakdown. Both groups wished each other luck, with the tour leader asking Carter to phone a message to the trekking operation when they returned, to let them know they had made it down off the mountain safely. Carter agreed to this, and after a final warning about not ascending too rapidly without acclimating, he and Jayden watched the tour group continue up the trail that switchbacked further up the volcano.
“I will miss those guys,” Jayden said.
“Good group of people,” Carter said. “The kind of people who would respect a treasure like Noah’s Ark. Makes me want to stop Treasure, Inc. even more.”
“True. If Daedalus gets his way, he’d have the ark in his living room and no one would ever see it again.”
“Probably the centerpiece of his home bar.”
Jayden appeared thoughtful. “Hm, now that would be cool, I have to admit. Probably too cool for a low-life like him.”
“Speaking of,” Carter said as he shouldered his pack, “what do you say we head down there?”
He and Jayden eyed the precipitous slope down to a snow-filled ravine or gully of sorts. Jayden took a last look through a pair of binoculars. “No signs of anyone. Let’s do it.”
The two set out off the beaten path down the steep slope. The going was much slower than walking up the established track, since they needed to test each snow-covered step to make sure their footing was secure before putting their full weight down, unless they wanted to tumble down the rock-strewn face with its boulders hidden beneath the snow drifts. It also became colder the further down into the ravine they ventured, especially when the direct sunlight was blocked by the mountain itself overhead. Carter eyed the freshly fallen snow carefully for footprints, but it was all unbroken as far as he could see.