Raymond glanced around the room. Once confident everyone had written their price and resealed the envelope, he retrieved the four offers. “As you can appreciate because of the unique and legally intangible status of the item, I will not be revealing the concluding winner. Instead I will contact him within the next twenty-four hours to complete the final transaction. Then, the man who discovered the ancient temple will take you to it.”
Sam stood up and glanced out the window. The Parisian city was lit up with a golden glow with the black ribbon of the Seine River splitting it in two. To the east, he spotted the Cathedral of Notre Dame standing proudly. His eyes drifted to the north where the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur rose magnificently above Montmartre. It was no wonder Gustave Eiffel had no end of offers to rent the apartment, the views were amazing.
Raymond interrupted his thoughts. “I’m afraid it’s important that you all leave now so that a decision can be made and the Eiffel Tower can return to the people of France. Once again, I thank you all for making the trip after such short notice.”
Sam walked down the narrow spiral staircase onto the third level of the Eiffel Tower and what was considered the top by tourists. An elevator, along with its security guard, was waiting for the four bidders. Sam stepped in without saying a word to the other bidders and the elevator descended in silence. The elevator dropped quickly, a far cry from the original Edoux elevator that ran off steam until being replaced by electricity in 1912. The elevator stopped at level two and the bidders were ushered to the waiting elevator on the north pillar to descend finally to the ground.
Sam stepped out of the elevator. The two men he didn’t know immediately walked in separate directions. He looked at John Wallis, trying to judge if the man would be willing to talk to him now, or if he’d been frightened by the auction. He held out his hand, “It’s good to see you, John.”
“Ah, Mr. Reilly.” John Wallis took his hand and shook it firmly with a warm smile as though he were welcoming an old friend. “It’s good to see you. I am, however, surprised to see you involved here.”
“It’s an interesting story,” Sam said. “Do you think there’s any truth to it?”
“I’m not sure. I know my boss certainly hopes not.”
Sam laughed. “No. I can’t imagine His Holiness would be very happy to hear that Jesus Christ was a rip off of a guy who lived around ten thousand years earlier. What’s the Catholic Church going to do if your bid wins, bury the discovery?”
“Far from it!” Wallis said. “His Holiness would like it examined. We’ve offered a large sum for its location and we intend to get something out of it.”
Sam smiled. “Probably too much.”
“Nothing is too much if this is what it takes to disprove a dangerous lie. And if the cavern is real and the paintings are true, then it will be much too important for the Church to leave to treasure hunters.” Wallis looked at Sam. “No disrespect to the work you do.”
“None taken.”
“His Holiness appreciates the work that you do.”
“I find that doubtful. The only times I’ve been to church is weddings and funerals.”
“That’s why he wants you to come along.”
Sam said, “My goodness. You were the winning bid?”
“Yes.”
“But I thought it wasn’t going to be announced for twenty-four hours?”
Wallis smirked. “You didn’t think we’d wait twenty-four hours to get started on something as important as this, did you?”
“No, of course not.”
“So, are you ready to go to the Charles de Gaulle airport?”
“You’re serious. Why does he want me to dispute the very basis of his entire religion?”
“What better person to examine the data than an atheist?”
“Are you asking for my help?”
“We’re offering you a chance to join an expedition. And I hope you’ll accept.”
Chapter Thirty-Two — Mount Ararat
It took five days for Sam, Wallis and Mioli to reach the summit of Mount Ararat. During that time, John Wallis spent much of his time in silent contemplation, while Sam got to know Gianpietro Mioli quite well. Despite the constant time they spent together on the journey to the top of the sacred mountain, Sam hadn’t yet decided what to make of the man.
At twenty-five, Mioli was definitely intelligent and driven. That much was fact. Having completed a major in archeology, he was currently pursuing a doctorial study at Italy’s University of Bologna into prehistoric human origins. The University of Bologna is a European equivalent to an Ivy League school.
What Sam didn’t understand was Mioli’s appearance of altruism. The kid appeared to genuinely want to help the world, through his research. He often spoke about how much we can learn from our ancestors if the world was going to survive. He spoke of the corruption of greed and the tyranny of a generation who bought into the ideal of the worship of money — and yet, when he made one of the greatest archeological discoveries he straight away auctioned it off to a private bidder.
Mioli withdrew his GPS and began studying his location. He waited until there were nine satellites overhead, giving his GPS an accurate reading down to a single foot. For what he was after, Sam knew Mioli would need every inch of that accuracy. Sam waited as Mioli studied his GPS. He stopped trying to work out the man and instead looked down from the snow-capped peak of the mountain to a very old monastery on the plains of Armenia, named Khor Virap.
In an instant, his mind was taken back to 2005 and the day he first met Billie Swan. She was investigating a place called the Temple of Illumination. A place Grigory Lusavorich visited in 286 A.D. What he had found there, led Tiradates III, his king, to have him locked in Khor Virap. Billie had never told him what Grigory the Illuminator found in that temple, but she did tell him that, whatever it was, brought Christianity to the region and gave him hope of a new world.
Sam’s mind returned to the present, as he heard Mioli shout, “It’s over here.”
“I’m coming over,” Sam scanned the plateau. It was covered with thick snow.
Mioli started hammering deep climbing anchors into the ice.
Wallis dropped his backpack on the ground. “This is where we need to dig?”
“No.” Mioli fed a piece of climbing rope through the eye of the anchor. “This is where we’ll all tether ourselves while we dig. Last time I was here I made the mistake of disconnecting from the tether and I fell through the crevasse. I won’t make that mistake again.”
Sam and Wallis clipped into the anchor and then followed Mioli to a place twenty feet further along the plateau. The sun was above them, but there was enough wind to make it icy cold. Mioli started to dig in the hardened snow. It didn’t take long. Within a few minutes he’d broken the hard surface and was able to dig through the soft snow below. It was obvious the snow had only recently been turned — most likely when Mioli first discovered the cavern below.
Fifteen minutes later, a wire climbing ladder was fixed to the entrance and Sam abseiled down into the large cavern thirty feet below. The walls were jet black and glassy. Like Mioli had told them, the place was positioned inside a large lava tube.
Sam disconnected his descender from the rope. “All right, I’m off the rope, come on down.”
He watched as Mioli abseiled next, followed by Wallis a couple minutes later. Sam stared at the walls. The pictures were larger than he’d expected, and definitely much more detailed than any other cave-paintings he’d seen in Neolithic caves. The images depicted a man riding a wooly mammoth and another one with a man fighting off a sabertooth tiger. The depictions of their common life events certainly matched the suspected timeframe of ten to twelve thousand years ago, but paintings of an era alone did nothing to prove the validity of Mioli’s claims.