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.
Chapter 21
“Are they done with the dive already?” Carter asked Jayden as he came running up.
“Yeah! They got something out of the water — a timber, it looks like. Small enough for one person to carry.”
“Probably for analysis.”
“Yeah, but listen: the lookout guy is running up here right now! They’ve got the log on shore and they’re rigging it up to the rope system they set up, but I guess something needs to be done up here to pull it up, so he’s on his way.” Jayden now noticed the map in Carter’s hands.
“Is that…?
“Yes, I found it in Daedalus’ pack there.”
“Holy crap! That’s the map, we got it back!”
Carter glanced toward the slope where the team could be heard preparing to climb back up from the lake. “For now, anyway.”
“We’ve got to get out of here. Even with one gun, it’s still two against four and who knows what other tricks Daedalus has up his long, dirty sleeves. But wait — is that it?” He looked back toward the lake. “Is that where it says Noah’s Ark is?”
Carter glanced at the map. “I think so, but it’s more complicated than that. I’ll tell you later. But you said they brought up a timber?”
“Yeah, two of them, actually, but they’re just loading one of them right now.”
Carter looked down at the map.
“So is this it — this is Noah’s Ark?” Jayden asked again. Carter had no choice but to explain about the hidden lines leading to east Africa, even though time was extremely short. Jayden had to know what was going on.
“Africa?” Jayden pondered. “But there’s no mention of what’s there?”
“Not a single notation, other than it looks like the region is more detailed than usual. We’ll have to check it out in more detail when we have time.”
“Which is not now,” Jayden agreed. “Should we hightail it out of here?”
Carter considered this for a moment while they listened to the sounds of the expedition beginning to ascend the slope.
“I think we should take a page from Treasure Inc.’s own book, and let them do the dirty work of finding and bringing up the artifact…”
“Then we take it?” Jayden guessed. “But how?”
“I don’t know, but what would you rather do, grab a piece of the timbers they already brought up, or come back again with SCUBA gear, hope they don’t find out what we’re up to…”
“I see your point, but Carter, c’mon! There’s no way they won’t see us.”
“Let’s take a look. We should see where they are now, anyway.”
They jogged back over to the slope, sliding into crouch positions as they neared the edge. The rope and pulley system was in motion now. Carter raised his head just enough to be able to see down to the lake, to see if one or both logs was coming up yet, but he was stunned and shocked to see the lookout man nearly three-quarters of the way to them.
He shrunk back down, shivering with the sudden, massive jolt of adrenaline at almost being seen.
“The rest of the team is on the way up too,” Jayden said, also having seen the lookout.
“We have to do something,” Carter said, looking around. “We need to not be seen, but we also need those logs.”
“We could leave and come back with our own dive gear and dive in peace,” Jayden suggested. But Carter shook his head.
“What, and risk our every move being tracked, and if Treasure, Inc. doesn’t kill us when we’re sleeping, the Turkish government will throw us prison for not obtaining a permit? We just need a small sample of what they already brought up. Break off a chip, and then we’re out of here.”
“How the hell are we going to do that?” Jayden hissed. He sounded uncharacteristically strained. “That guy is almost to us, and the rest of them are not far behind!”
Carter’s gaze was already roving around their immediate surroundings. He spotted a SCUBA rig at the very top of the drop-off to the lake, beneath the rope rig. Then he belly-crawled to the edge and looked down. A smile crept across his face as he looked back to Jayden and waved him over. “I have an idea.”