miracles that qualified him for sainthood.
A standing candelabra had been set up across from the bottom of the stairs. On the right was the alcove Father Tatilian had mentioned. It was six feet tall, with an arched roof, two feet wide and three feet deep. It seemed to have a stone seat inside it, and a stone shelf set back about four feet high.
Locke stepped up on the semicircular dais in front of the alcove and examined it. The stones were crudely mortared, and he couldn’t see any noticeable seams where mortar had been removed. To all appearances, the entire cistern was as solid as the rock it was made from.
“Where was the murder victim found?” Locke asked.
The priest pointed to the floor on the other side of the cistern.
“He was shot in the head twice.”
“And you didn’t notice anything else unusual down here?”
“The police asked me that as well. Not that I could tell, although it was hard to concentrate on anything but the pool of blood that we cleaned up.”
Locke didn’t bother asking about forensic evidence. Even if the killers were sloppy enough to leave fibers or prints, which he seriously doubted, he didn’t think the local police would have had the resources to do any sophisticated analyses.
The novitiate was brought down for a reason, and the reference in the scroll to a cove had to be meaningful.
He counted out the stones from the left of the alcove, starting with corner stone.
He assumed that the key stones would be at eye level, which to people at that time was about five feet. Locke saw that the fifth and eighth stones were both about the same size, large enough to press his palm against. When he examined them more closely, he found a half-inch notch carved into each one in exactly the same place. These had to be the ones.
If the builders had constructed a secret passage, the key to unlocking it would be fairly simple because the engineering and construction methods of that age were rudimentary. On the other hand, the mechanism couldn’t be activated by accident, or it would be discovered too easily.
Two stones. There was a reason for two of them, and Locke thought he knew what it was. He tried to position himself to push both stones simultaneously, but they were so far apart that he couldn’t get leverage with either one.
“Grant, give me a hand here. On my count of three, I want you to push hard on the eighth stone. At the same time, I’ll push the fifth stone.”
Grant got himself in position.
“What are you doing?” the priest asked.
“I think I’m going to show you something about your monastery that you didn’t even know existed,” Locke said.
“I’m ready,” Grant said.
“One. Two. Three.”
They pushed with all their strength. At first, nothing happened. Then Locke sensed the slightest movement of his stone.
“Did you feel that?” Grant said.
“Yes. I think we need to push with equal force. Let up on your side a little. Again. One. Two. Three.”
This time, he could feel the stone begin to move immediately. It slid slowly backward, and so did Grant’s. At the same time, the fourth and seventh stones slid slowly forward. The stones stopped moving when they were pressed into the wall six inches.
Locke glanced at Dilara and saw the same excitement that he felt at their discovery. Father Tatilian, on the other hand, was apoplectic and blurted something in Armenian.
“What’s the matter?” Locke asked the interpreter.
“The priest is very upset,” Chirnian said. “He asks what you have done.”
“I think we’ve just unlocked a door.”
Locke inspected the stones projecting from the wall. Except for the small notches, they were carved to be extremely smooth on all sides and fit into the spaces precisely. The edges on the outside were filed down and covered with a half-inch of mortar to give the illusion that the stones were unmovable parts of the structure.
Locke went to the alcove and saw that the side wall had moved, but just barely. He put his shoulder into it, and the corner of the alcove swung stiffly on a central pivot, revealing an opening on the left. Locke shined his flashlight into the darkness. Stairs led down. A musty smell of decay filled his nose. To the left, he could see the mechanism that sealed the door.
As he thought, it was a simple stone pivot. A wooden one would have disintegrated long ago. The two stones they had pushed were connected to each other, and because of the leverage, pushing either one of them alone would merely cause stress on the pivot, not allowing them to move. But together, the stress was balanced, and the pivot not only pushed the other stones out, but also moved another piece of stone from the door that normally kept it from opening.
To reseal the entry, you would just push the door closed and then push the fourth and seventh stones back into place. Locke marveled at the primitive cleverness of it.
“What do you see?” Dilara asked.
Locke remembered why they were there.
“It’s a stairway. We’ve found the chamber.”
Grant and Dilara broke out their flashlights as well, and Chirnian and Father Tatilian took candles from the cistern.
Locke went down ten steps, and then turned to the right to see twenty more steps. It must have taken a year to dig this out of the sandstone.
He got to the bottom and found himself in another round room, twice the size of the pit. He stopped when he saw what was on the wall opposite him. A map. He played the flashlight over it and could see a carefully drawn outline of Mt. Ararat. Several points of black dotted the map. Next to the map were lines of text similar to those on the scrolls Dilara’s father had discovered.
The flashlight beam came to the end of the text at the bottom of the wall, and Locke saw a foot still encased in a shoe. He ran the light along the body until he reached a desiccated yawning face. The gruesome image was the result of years of slow decay in the dry climate. The brown robes of the mummified remains identified him. The missing novitiate.
The priest and translator gasped at the sight, and Locke heard a yelp from Dilara. Her response to the corpse was unusual for someone who unearthed them for a living. He turned and saw that she wasn’t looking at the novitiate’s body. Instead, she was looking at a second one, in much the same condition.
This body was dressed in western jeans, a collared shirt, and a khaki jacket. The graying hair suggested that the man was older, at least in his fifties. A notebook and pen were on the floor next to him. Then Locke realized who he must be.
In the dim light reflected on Dilara’s face, he could see the horrified recognition as she spoke softly, lovingly.
“Daddy?”
SIXTY-ONE
Dilara knelt on the floor next to her father, and Locke joined her, putting his hand on her shoulder. He knew the feeling of arriving too late to tell your loved one everything you wanted to say before they were gone. The one solace was that she finally had closure. She put her hand on Locke’s and silently wept, her body shuddering with sobs.
“I’m so sorry, Dilara,” he said. She nodded but said nothing.
