“Do you have the stone?” Will asked, finally speaking up after watching in silent frustration for a few minutes as the other two men spun their wheels.
Both men turned around simultaneously. Lindsey spoke up. “Yes, Will. I have it right here.” He fished it out of the navy blue blazer he was wearing and held it out.
“What does it say, Professor?” Will had been absent during the discovery of the round disc in the ruins of Nekhen. And he couldn’t read Ancient Hebrew, like most of the normal world.
DeGard chimed in from memory. “Where the mountain rises through the eye of the needle the—”
“What?” Will cut him off in mid-sentence. “The eye of the needle?”
“Yes. That’s what the man said, Will. What are you getting at?” Lindsey’s voice was gruff as he spoke.
Will spun around and faced Kaba. “Come here for a second. I want you to look at something.” She raised a suspicious eyebrow, but did as he requested and followed him over to the stone.
There was a hole in the top of it that immediately caught Will’s attention. It had been drilled through all the way to the other side of the stone and was almost perfectly smooth. He thought it interesting that something so old could have been done with such precision. More than just being a point of curiosity, it gave him an idea.
“Here,” he said to Kaba and cupped his hands near his thighs. “I’ll give you a boost. I want you to look through that hole at the top and tell me what you see.” She gave a quick nod, understanding what he was getting at, and a second later she was peering through opening.
“I just see a spot on the mountain,” she reported, unimpressed. Will let her back down for a moment and stepped over to one of the black duffle bags they’d brought from the helicopter.
He fished out a pair of binoculars and handed them to Kaba. “Try it again, this time looking through one of those lenses.”
They repeated the procedure, but this time she peered through the cavity with one eyepiece of the binoculars. She breathed slowly to try and keep steady as she peered through the stone at the mountain. She made a few adjustments of the lens to clarify what she was seeing.
“There is an indention. It might be a cave.” Her voice was audibly excited. “It is up near the snow line, but there is definitely something there. Seems like there might be a place to land the helicopter near the anomaly.” She looked down at Lindsey with a jubilant expression. He smiled up at her. Will’s arms were shaking, so he let her down to the ground once more.
“Good thinking, Will,” Lindsey said proudly. The old man beamed, actually looking happy for the briefest of seconds. “Can you remember where that spot is on the mountain?” He turned his attention to Kaba.
“No. But with this we won’t need to,” she pulled another device out of one of the bags. It was a small, black box with what appeared to be a lens on one end and a viewfinder on the other. “This will tag the location with a laser and guide us to exactly where we need to go.”
Kaba motioned with a quick nod of the head for Will to boost her up one more time. He obeyed, and hoisted her up to the hole in the rock. She placed the device in position then pressed a few of the buttons before looking through the viewfinder. Holding the thing steady, she pressed another one of the buttons then hopped down. She looked at a small LCD screen on the top of the object. A small red dot appeared in the center of it with a green dot off to the right.
“That is where we are going. When we get there, this dot will be right on top of the other. I suspect we won’t have to wait until we are that close before seeing what we are looking for.” At her explanation, a corner of Lindsey’s mouth curled into a smile.
DeGard stared at the mountain, dumbfounded. He was in nearly complete disbelief that a non-scholar had been able to so quickly figure out the meaning of the riddle. The rest had already started back to the helicopter, so he fell in line behind them, trying to maintain his dignity by walking upright and taking huge strides.
Lindsey made a twirling motion with his finger for the helicopter pilot to start up the engine again. Moments later they were lifting off the ground and moving towards the mountain. The dusty village passed below them, a patchwork of stone homes, muddy roads, and old wooden fences. There were a few antennas and telephone poles, evidence that the people at least had some form of electricity, however unreliable it might have been.
Up ahead, the mountain grew larger in the windshield as they came closer to the rocky slopes of Ararat.
“Head up that way,” Kaba said, now in the front seat next to the pilot. Will, Lindsey, and DeGard had assumed positions in the back.
Off to the right of the helicopter, Will noticed a stone structure on a hill in the distance. It resembled a fortress or a castle. He couldn’t tell for sure.
“What is that?” he pointed out the window.
DeGard was sitting across from him. He leaned forward to see what Will was asking about. It only took a second to recognize the old building.
“That is Khor Virap, just on the other side of the Armenian border. It is a monastery for the apostolic church of Armenia.” He leaned back in his seat as he answered.
“It looks old,” Will commented, still intrigued by the building. He could make out the outline of a central facility encircled by a high rock wall.
DeGard let out a deep breath. “That’s because it is old. Khor Virap was originally built at the time of Constantine, somewhere around 300 AD. It was a castle and a prison, if I remember correctly. And I usually do.”
“Oh.” Will sat back and relaxed, letting the ancient church fade from his memory.
The helicopter covered the expanse from the tiny village to the foot of the mountain in a short amount of time. Then, it began the ascent up the side. Kaba kept a close eye on the device, making sure they kept aimed in the right direction. Random gusts of wind rolled down the slopes, causing the pilot to have to work a little harder at his task. He made it look easy, moving his feet and hands only a little faster to keep the machine flying level as it zipped up the mountainside.
They passed 8,000 feet, and the wind picked up again, pushing the helicopter sideways. But it kept pushing on.
“It’s just up ahead,” Kaba said and pointed out the windshield.
Snow was blowing down on them from above and decreased visibility. As they reached 8,200 feet, a ledge cut deep into the side of the rock and opened up a large, flat area.
Kaba tapped the screen on her device. “This is it.”
The pilot held the flying machine steady for a second before deciding on a place to set down. There was plenty of space for them, but not the other chopper. As the runners touched down on the rocky plateau, he radioed the other pilot to turn back.
The rock landing ran to where the mountain sloped up dramatically. There was, however, a huge chunk of rock that appeared to have been ripped out, providing for a deep recess into the face of the mountain.
Lindsey and the others exited the helicopter and were immediately greeted with bone-chilling winds that cut through their lightweight jackets and coats. The pilot stayed with the chopper as the rest of the group quickly scurried across the landing and into the cavity in the stone. As they neared, the wind died down, blocked off by the overhang in the rock.
Kaba and Will both had bags with them and produced flashlights after seeing how dark the inside of the cavern was. They continued deeper inside with DeGard and Lindsey close behind. Once out of the blustery cold of the cliff, they let go of their coats they’d been holding tight against their bodies.
“What is this place?” Lindsey wondered aloud. No one answered. Instead, they pressed slowly on into the darkness.