“Right.”
“And me?”
“Yes.”
Locke had to admit this all sounded weird to him. What could Noah’s Ark possibly have to do with him?
“Why didn’t this Sam Watson contact me himself?”
“He wanted to talk to me first. You see, my father was an archaeologist, too. Hasad Arvadi. Do you know him?” She looked at him expectantly.
Locke shook his head, and she sat back in disappointment.
“Turkish?” Locke said.
“Very good. I’m impressed.”
“I spent some time at Incirlik Air Base.” Incirlik was the United States’ main base in Turkey and was a staging area for many flights into Iraq. “Your first name sounds Turkish, too. Does it mean anything?”
She blushed. “It means lover.” She quickly went on. “He was one of the few Turkish Christians. He emigrated to America long ago, but he used his connections in Turkey to get access to Mt. Ararat. In the past, it was very difficult to get permission to explore the region. His life’s work was to find any remaining evidence of Noah’s Ark. Most of the archaeological community thought he was a nut, obsessed with unproven theories, but Sam said he found it.”
Locke had to stifle a laugh. “He found Noah’s Ark? The actual Noah’s Ark?”
“I know. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what Sam said. He said to me, ‘Your father’s research started everything. You must find the Ark.’”
“If someone had found Noah’s Ark, I think I might have heard that little bit of news.”
“You wouldn’t have if the discovery was never made public. My father’s been missing for three years. Sam said someone murdered my father because of Noah’s Ark. I believe him.”
“Why?”
“Because of this.” Dilara showed him a locket that hung around her neck. She opened it to reveal a beautiful woman with dark brown hair. Except for the lighter skin and hair, it could have been a picture of Dilara. Locke nodded in appreciation.
“That’s my mother,” Dilara said. “She died when I was six. My father was from Ankara, and my mother was an Italian-American from Brooklyn. He met her when he moved to New York for a teaching position at Cornell. They were an unusual pair, but they were very much in love.”
That explained Dilara’s exotic looks. “What’s the significance of the locket?” Locke asked.
“My father never took this off. But I received it in the mail as a birthday present during the time he went missing. I think he knew he was in trouble. I think he wanted me to have it before he was killed.”
Locke shook his head. “Look, I’m sorry about your father, but I still don’t see what this has to do with me. Where is Sam now?”
“He’s dead. They killed him right in front of me.”
“They?”
“The people who are trying to kill me.”
“There are people trying to kill you,” Locke said dubiously, as if he were responding to a mental patient who’d just told him she was abducted by aliens.
“Yes, there are people trying to kill me,” Dilara said, obviously exasperated by his tone. “That’s why the helicopter crashed. That was no accident. Someone brought it down on purpose.”
NINE
With the press of a button, Sebastian Garrett turned off the bank of TVs showing every news channel’s coverage of the Rex Hayden plane crash. He stood and walked out onto the aft deck of his 250-foot luxury yacht,
“This is only a minor setback, sir.” Dan Cutter had followed him outside. Always the servant, Cutter. Always wanting to please. He was a tactical genius, but he could never see the big picture.
Garrett turned and smiled at Cutter. The Army veteran was a giant of a man with a forehead that bulged like those on the Beluga whales at SeaWorld. He had the physique of an alligator wrestler and a craggy face that betrayed years on dusty battlefields. Yet, he now had the down-trodden appearance of a mutt that had disappointed his master.
“You think I’m upset?” Garrett said. “On the contrary. I’m elated.”
“Elated, sir?”
“Of course. Look out there and tell me what you see.”
Cutter paused as if it were a trick question. “LA, sir,” he said firmly.
“Right. You see a city. But it’s a city rife with crime, misery, greed, unhappiness, debauchery, wickedness. All the sin the world holds can be found in that city. And this is one of the richest cities in one of the richest countries on earth. Now take its woes and multiply them a million-fold. That microcosm of sin is magnified beyond belief. Beyond reckoning. It staggers the mind that for all the great things that we have accomplished as a species, we have done even more to debase ourselves to such a low level. Do you know what I see?”
“No, sir.”
“When I look at that city, I see a blank slate. I see a new beginning for human kind. It’s just one of the thousands of places we will be able to reclaim for the righteous among us once the New World is upon us. And now I know my vision will be a reality. Our demonstration was a success. Our people will believe. They will see that it can be done, that I have delivered on my promise to them.”
“What about the airplane? It was supposed to crash into the ocean when it over-flew Honolulu. Now that it’s lying in the desert, they’ll have recovery teams combing through the wreckage.”
“As you said, a minor setback.”
“But the device may have survived the crash. We expected it would be lost at sea. If the device is recovered, the evidence could lead back to us.”
Garret had to admit the remains of the device could be a problem. He was the chairman and chief technology officer of Garrett Pharmaceuticals, whose revolutionary methods for vaccine production had taken the market by storm, lifting its stock and Garrett’s net worth into the stratosphere. Of course, taking a few shortcuts on FDA approvals and greasing the right palms made things go more smoothly. His combination of money and connections in the medical industry had made construction of the device possible, but some of the components had been highly specialized. There was a slim possibility they could lead the investigators back to Garrett Pharmaceuticals.
The carefully orchestrated planning for Garrett’s New World operation was three years in the making, and Friday was a critical date. There was no way to shorten the timeline, and Garrett couldn’t take the chance that they might be compromised at this critical juncture. They had to get the device back.
“Can you retrieve it?” Garrett asked.
“Yes, but it’ll take some time to infiltrate the crash site. By that time, they’ll have taken all of the luggage to a central facility for sorting and analysis. It will be easier and cleaner to find it there. That is, if the device wasn’t destroyed.”
“We can pray that it was.”
“Of course.”
“And the other matter?”
“We have a problem there as well.”
“Oh?” Garrett hadn’t heard about this. He assumed it had been settled.
When he’d been informed that Sam Watson, one of his star scientists, had discovered their plans, the first
