When Sam saw Dilara, he stood and waved to her, a smile temporarily making his face look ten years younger. She returned his smile and made her way to him. Sam clasped her tightly to him.
“You don’t know how glad I am to see you,” Sam said. He held her at arm’s length. “You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. Except perhaps for your mother.”
Dilara fingered the locket around her neck, the one with the photo of her mother that her father had always carried. For a moment, her grin faltered and her eyes drifted away, lost in the memory of her parents. They quickly cleared and returned to Sam.
“You should see me caked with dirt and knee deep in mud,” Dilara said in her flat mid-western cadence. “It might change your mind.”
“A dusty jewel is still a jewel. How is the world of archaeology?”
They sat. Sam drank from a coffee cup. He had thoughtfully provided a cup for Dilara as well, and she took a sip before speaking.
“Busy as usual,” she said. “I’m off to Mexico next. Some interesting disease vectors predating the European colonization.”
“That sounds fascinating. Aztec?”
Dilara didn’t answer. Her specialty was bio-archaeology, the study of the biological remains of ancient civilizations. Sam was a biochemist, so he had a passing interest in her field, but that wasn’t why he was asking. He was stalling.
She leaned forward, took his hand, and gave it a comforting squeeze. “Come on, Sam. What’s with the small talk? You didn’t ask me to cut my trip short to talk about archaeology, did you?”
Sam glanced nervously at the people around him, his eyes flicking from one to the next as if checking to see whether they were paying undue attention to him.
She followed his gaze. A Japanese family smiled and laughed as they munched on hamburgers. A lone businesswoman to her right typed on a PDA between bites of a salad. Even though it was early October, the summer vacation season long over, a group of teenagers who were dressed in identical t-shirts that said, “TEENS 4 JESUS,” sat at a table behind her, texting on their cell phones.
“Actually,” Sam said, “archaeology is precisely what I want to talk to you about.”
“You do? When you called, I’d never heard you so upset.”
“It’s because I have something very important to tell you.”
Then his deteriorated condition made sense. Cancer, the same disease that took her mother a decade ago. A breath caught in her throat. “Oh my God! You’re not dying, are you?”
“No, no, dear. I shouldn’t have worried you. Except for a little bursitis, I’ve never been fitter.” Dilara felt herself sigh with relief.
“No,” Sam continued, “I called you here because you’re the only one I can trust. I need your counsel.”
The businesswoman next to Sam rose to leave, and her purse slipped off her lap to the floor near his feet. Then as she went to pick it up, she knocked her salad plate to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said with a light Slavic inflection. “I’m so clumsy.” While she grabbed the plate and plastic fork, Sam bent to pick up the purse for her. He held it out to her, switching it to his right hand and flicking the fingers of his left.
“Watch your sleeve,” Sam said. “I think you got some dressing on your purse.”
“Oh, thank you so much.” She took the purse and gingerly cradled the bottom of it using a handkerchief. Sam wiped his hand on a napkin, and the woman motioned for him to dump it on her salad plate so she could get rid of it for him. She smiled at Sam and Dilara and headed for the napkins on the condiment stand.
“You’re as gallant as ever, Sam,” Dilara said. “Now why do you need my counsel?”
Sam looked around again before speaking. He flexed his fingers like he was working out a cramp. His eyes returned to Dilara. They were creased with worry. He hesitated before the words came out in a rush. “Three days ago, I made a startling discovery at work. It has to do with Hasad.”
Dilara’s heart jumped at the mention of her father, Hasad Arvadi, and she dug her fingers into her thighs to control the familiar surge of anxiety. He had been missing for three years, during which she had spent every spare moment in a fruitless attempt to find out what had happened to him. As far as she knew, he had never set foot in the pharmaceutical company where Sam worked. What the connection between them was, she couldn’t guess.
“Sam, what are you talking about? You found something at your work about what happened to my father? I don’t understand.”
“I spent an entire day trying to decide whether to tell you about this. Whether to get you involved, I mean. I wanted to go to the police, but I don’t have the proof yet. They might not believe me before it’s too late. But I knew you would, and I need your advice. It’s all starting next Friday.”
“Eight days from now?”
Sam nodded and massaged his forehead.
“Headache?” she asked. “Do you want some aspirin?”
“I’ll be okay. Dilara, what they’re planning will kill millions, maybe billions.”
“Kill billions?” she said, smiling. Sam was pulling her leg. “You’re joking.”
He shook his head solemnly. “I wish I were.” Dilara searched his face for some hint of a prank, but all she could see was concern. After a moment, her smile vanished. He was serious.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “You’re not joking. But I’m confused. Proof of what? Who’s ‘they’? And what does this have to do with my father?”
“He found it, Dilara,” Sam said in a lowered voice. “He actually found it.”
She knew immediately what ‘it’ was by the way Sam said it. Noah’s Ark. The quest her father had dedicated his whole life to. She shook her head in disbelief.
“You mean, the actual boat that…” Dilara paused. The remaining color had drained from Sam’s face. “Sam, are you sure you’re all right? You look a little pale.”
Sam clutched his chest, and his face twisted into a mask of agony. He doubled over in his seat and fell to the floor.
“My God! Sam!” Dilara threw her chair back and rushed over to him. She helped him lie flat and yelled at the teenagers with the cell phones. “Call 911!” After a paralyzed moment, one of them frantically started dialing.
“Dilara, go!” Watson croaked.
“Sam, don’t talk” she said, trying to keep her composure. “You’re having a heart attack.”
“Not heart attack… woman who dropped purse…salad dressing was contact poison…”
“No!” he yelled feebly. “You have to go…or they’ll kill you, too. They murdered your father.”
She stared at him in shock. Her deepest fear had always been that her father was dead, but she could never allow herself to give up hope. But now—
She started to speak, but Sam gripped her arm.
“Listen! Tyler Locke. Gordian Engineering. Get…his help. He knows…Coleman.” He swallowed hard every few words. “Your father’s research…started everything. You must…find the Ark.” He started rambling. “Hayden… Project…Oasis…Genesis…Dawn…”
“Sam, please.” This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not when she might finally get some answers.
“I’m sorry, Dilara.”
“Who are ‘they’, Sam?” She saw him fading and grasped his arms. “Who murdered my father?”
He mouthed words, but only air came out. He took one more breath, then went still.
She started CPR and continued the chest compressions until the paramedics arrived and pushed her back. Dilara stood to the side, crying silently. They worked to revive Sam, but it was a futile effort. They pronounced him dead at the scene. She made the obligatory statement to the airport police, including his baffling allegations, but for such an obvious heart attack, they shrugged it off as incoherent babbling. Dilara collected her backpack and walked in a daze toward the shuttle that would drop her off at her car in the long-term parking lot. Sam had been like an uncle to her, the only family she had left, and now he was gone.
As she sat in the shuttle bus, his words continued to ring in her ears. Whether they were the ravings of a demented elderly man or a warning from a close friend, she couldn’t be sure. But she could think of only one way to check whether Sam’s story had any truth to it.
