On a hill overlooking a green field was a stone structure with thick walls and a central tower, a fortification that must have been the monastery of Khor Virap. And dominating the horizon in the background, framed against a bright blue sky, was the towering white outline of Mt. Ararat.
FIFTY-NINE
With all of the flying she’d done to digs throughout the world, Dilara Kenner was an experienced traveler, but the toll of the last week, including the latest 20 hours to Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, was too much. She could go without getting on another plane for a year.
She had spent all of her waking time on the Gordian private jet poring over the scroll photographs, trying to decipher anything else she could about finding the map at Khor Virap. Locke and Grant had left her alone to work, and before they had landed, Dilara reported back to them on what she had discovered. Unfortunately, even with Aiden’s help, it wasn’t much.
“You think the map is still there?” Locke asked. “Why wouldn’t Garrett have taken it with him?”
“Because it’s not portable. The scrolls talk of a map of stone. I think that means the map is written on a wall.”
“Aiden did a thorough search in both public and private databases, and he said no one has ever heard of a map like this.”
“Right here,” Dilara said, pointing to a photo of the scroll on her laptop, “it says that the descendents of Japheth, one of Noah’s sons, built the temple as a shrine to God’s forgiveness. One of the amulets and map were kept in a secret chamber that was known only to the worthy. The other amulet was sequestered inside the Ark itself.”
“So the priests at Khor Virap don’t know about the chamber?”
“The temple was razed in a Persian invasion, and the keepers fled without revealing the chamber, which must have been well-hidden. They preserved its location in this document, but they must have perished before they could return and secure its contents.”
“There must be some clue in the scroll to finding the chamber,” Locke said.
“Whoever wrote this feared it would fall into their enemies’ hands, so they used a cipher.”
“You mean the scroll is coded?”
Dilara highlighted a section of the scroll that talked about Khor Virap, then a Jewish temple and now a Christian monastery.
“Notice anything different about this section?” Dilara asked them.
“The spacing and indentation are slightly different,” Grant said. “It’s subtle, but since you pointed it out, I noticed it.”
“Exactly.” She pulled up the photo of the note her father had written to her. “Something about the way my father wrote the note to me seemed odd, which is why I wanted Tyler to photograph it as well. He was sending me another message.” She overlaid the handwritten note over the Khor Virap section. The lines aligned perfectly.
Locke pointed at her father’s note. “The first letter in each line…”
“…is written in slightly more bold print.” Dilara said. “Anyone looking at the note would think he was using a simple transposition cipher where the first letter of each line would spell out words. But whoever tried to decode it that way would go crazy trying to figure it out because the resulting phrase would be gibberish. My father was trying to tell me that the scroll itself used a transposition cipher, and only in this section.”
“So don’t keep us in suspense,” Grant said. “What does it say?”
“It translates to ‘The fifth and eighth stone from the cove reveal. The fourth and seventh stone from the cove conceal.’”
Grant looked doubtful. “They rhymed it in Hebrew?”
“No, that’s me. It sounded better than, ‘The fifth and eighth stone from the cove open. The fourth and seventh stone from the cove hide.’”
“You’re right,” Grant said, smiling. “More cryptic.”
“Any idea what that means?” Locke said.
Dilara shook her head. She’d been puzzling about it, which was why she had taken so long to discuss it with them, but she still couldn’t decipher its meaning.
“My guess is, we’ll know it when we see it.”
Locke shrugged. “Then let’s find out what’s at Khor Virap.”
Dilara was amazed by him. He always seemed to roll with the punches. No matter what happened, he knew he’d be able to figure a way through it. She supposed that’s what made him a good engineer, his ability to solve whatever problems arose, but he carried that confidence into every part of his life. It was why she found him so attractive. She didn’t know where the night they’d spent together would lead, but she savored the memory.
The jet landed in Yerevan, and to keep a low profile, Locke had arranged for an interpreter to meet them with a car at the airport. When they got to the car, Locke gave a wad of American dollars to the interpreter, who gaped at more money than he normally made in six months.
“I hope that will keep our expedition confidential,” Locke said.
“Certainly, Dr. Locke,” the man sputtered in outstanding English. “My name is Barsam Chirnian. I will be happy to help in any way I can.”
“How long will it take to get to Khor Virap from here?”
“It’s only 30 kilometers to the southwest. We should be there within the hour.”
That would put them there around five PM local time.
“Good,” Locke said. “On the way, you can tell us about Khor Virap.”
The four of them climbed into a well-used Toyota Land Cruiser and wound through city streets before getting on a major road south. To their right, Mt. Ararat and its little brother to the south loomed over the plains. Even though Armenians considered the 16,854-foot-tall mountain their own, making it their national symbol, it actually sat across the border in Turkey.
As they drove, Chirnian gave them what sounded like a tour guide spiel about the monastery. Artashat, the town where the monastery was located, was the first capital city of Armenia and remained so until it fell in the fifth century. No one knew the exact date Khor Virap had been built, but it was one of the first Christian monasteries in existence. It sat on the only major hill for miles and had served as an early fortification against invaders due to its strategic position on the Araks River. The site was revered as Armenia’s holiest shrine because of St. Gregory the Illuminator.
Grigor Lusavorich had returned from Israel to his native Armenia in the 3rd century to proselytize the new religion of Christianity. The father of King Trdat III had been murdered by Grigor’s father, so Trdat imprisoned Grigor in a pit at Khor Virap for 13 years, where he miraculously survived untold torture and suffering. When Trdat fell ill, he received a vision that Grigor would be the only one who could heal him. Grigor cured Trdat’s disease, and the king converted to Christianity. In 301, Armenia became the first Christian nation. Grigor was beatified as the country’s patron saint.
In the time it took Chirnian to relate the story of St. Gregory, they had arrived in Artashat. The October afternoon sun bathed the flat plain with a golden hue. Vast rows of vineyards and farms stretched toward the foothills of Mt. Ararat, which climbed into the few wisps of clouds that decorated the blue sky.
The ancient monastery of Khor Virap was perched on the southern end of a crusty mound that lacked any vegetation. The Land Cruiser wound up the monastery’s hillside road until it passed through the main gates. The site’s reputation as one of Armenia’s biggest tourist attractions was well-founded. Even though it was close to closing time, a dozen cars were parked in the lot. They got out and walked through an arch formed in the thick stone exterior walls and up a set of stairs.
They emerged into a central courtyard that held a full-sized church, which Chirnian said was often used for weddings. There were no nuptials going on, but men and women, some in western clothes, others in the native Armenian garb, snapped photos of the church and the mountain that was so famous as the Ark’s resting place. Even though it was a monastery, the monks had left long ago, and it was now administered by priests of the Armenian Orthodox Church.
