DeGard frowned, obviously taken aback by the strange riddles. “Did Drake not ask for a few more clues? This was all he wrote down?”
Lindsey nodded. “Pretty much. Though, there is one catch that Drake mentions.”
“Which is?”
“He says that when one arrives at the entrance to the chamber, there will be three doors, not one. It says that the seeker will not know which test he will face first.”
“So, the person who finds it will just have to be lucky,” DeGard realized.
“He goes on to talk about an expedition into the mountains to try and find the entrance to the chamber, but he and his crew got lost. Several of his men died along the way. Eventually, he says they turned back and returned to their ship, and eventually home to England.”
“So, Francis Drake tried to find Noah’s Ark,” DeGard said in a hushed tone, more to himself than anyone else.
“It would appear so.”
The Frenchman still seemed full of doubt. “I still wonder about the authenticity behind this story. He could have been a raving madman by that point in his life. How do you know it isn’t some fairytale told by an old sailor, who had spent too many years at sea?”
Lindsey cocked his head to the side like someone who had just won a chess match or proven themselves to be right in a debate. His chin wrinkled slightly as he grinned.
“Because, at the end of the diary, there is a line I have only seen in one other place on the planet. Immortality is for the righteous.”
Chapter 41
Joe and Helen waited patiently by their car in the parking lot of the Center for Disease Control. He had driven by the place on occasion when in the area, but had never gone inside. Something about a place that housed every major disease known to man, and probably some that weren’t disclosed, made him more than a little uncomfortable.
They had both calmed down somewhat since leaving the Biosure facility, but their nerves were still on high alert. Each time a car entered the parking lot, they perked up and kept a wary eye on it until it had passed by or disappeared in the rows of automobiles.
Neither of them had said much until five minutes before arriving at the CDC building. Joe had called Dr. Solomon and asked her to meet them in the parking lot. He hadn’t wanted to risk taking the vial inside. And they had already pressed their luck with security a few times that day.
A woman exited a side door of the enormous gray building and immediately headed their direction. Her sleek, brown hair was pulled back in a long ponytail. She wore a white lab coat, gray slacks, and a badge hanging from one of the front pockets on the coat. Her creamy skin radiated in the afternoon Georgia sunlight. She was a beautiful young woman.
“That her?” Helen asked as Dr. Solomon weaved her way through the cars.
“Yep.” Joe nodded slowly.
Helen seemed confused. “Why hasn’t Sean asked her out? She’s stunning.” It was a rare thing for Helen to offer admiration, and Joe let her know he was shocked with an awkward glance.
“They’re better as friends,” he commented. “Actually, they’re better as casual acquaintances.” He didn’t say anything else on the topic because the subject of their conversation was nearly in earshot.
His wife wore an expression that clearly stated she suspected there was more to the story than met the eye.
“Hey, Jenny. Thanks so much for meeting us,” Joe smiled as the woman approached.
He opened up his arms and embraced her. She accepted the hug warmly, and returned the gesture, wrapping her lithe arms around him.
“It’s good to see you, Mac.” She smiled wide as she let go of Joe, revealing the brightest teeth Helen had ever seen.
“This is my wife, Helen.”
Dr. Solomon extended a hand, which Helen shook firmly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Doctor.”
“Please, call me Jenny.” Her smile extended almost all the way to her brown eyes. “So, Sean says you have something I need to take a look at?”
Joe took the vial out of his pocket and placed it in the palm of her hand. She held the tube up in the sunlight, carefully inspecting it. The clear liquid shimmered in the light.
“Sean didn’t say much. But I’m under the impression he believes this is some kind of virus.” Her last comment sounded more like a question.
“That’s what he said,” Joe responded. “We did a little digging around after he called me and discovered a huge shipment was due to leave the Biosure facility.”
Helen cut in. “The strange thing was that there were no shipping dates. It was as if all the shipments were on hold, waiting for something.”
Dr. Solomon gazed at the liquid for a few more seconds before lowering it out of the sunshine. She then slipped the vial into one of her lower lab coat pockets.
“That’s odd,” her eyes went back and forth between Joe and his wife. “Usually, those kinds of things don’t just sit around for very long. The pharm companies are all about profit. And the sooner they can get a product to market, the more money they’ll make.”
Joe and Helen exchanged a confirming glance.
“Biosure is a huge corporation,” the doctor explained. “They have holdings in the billions, from what I understand. Their network is huge. I’ve only met a few people from there, no one high ranking. But even the lower level employees reek of something slimy.”
“What do you mean?” Joe crossed his arms, interested in what Dr. Solomon had to say.
“I don’t know, exactly. It’s hard to put my finger on it. But I get this weird feeling like they run that business like it’s a cult or something. Everyone I spoke to from there seemed like they had been brainwashed. It was really weird.”
The married couple shared another suspicious expression.
“How long do you think it will take before you know something about that vaccine,” Joe pointed at Dr. Solomon’s pocket.
“I can do an analysis on it today. It will probably be a few hours. I’ll need to run a few other tests to confirm whatever it is. But if it is as serious as Sean implicated, I want to get it done as quickly as possible.”
Helen seemed concerned. “Joe and I speculated on that. But we aren’t medical people. Just how dangerous would some kind of super virus be?”
“It’s hard to say,” the doctor took on a grave demeanor. “We’ve been on the lookout for this sort of thing for a long time. The Spanish flu was a superbug that killed nearly one hundred million people in 1918. The strange thing was that the people it killed were usually the stronger, healthier individuals. Their immune systems reacted to the flu virus by going into a sort of hyper mode, and ended up killing the people by causing too much damage to their organs and tissue.”
“Any idea what caused it?” Joe cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow.
“Not really,” she shook her head. “It was during World War I, so all the troops being in such close quarters didn’t help. Plus they were constantly moving around from place to place, so that aided in the spread of the epidemic. No one really knows for sure, though, where ground zero was.”
Joe pondered what she’d said for a moment before speaking again. “I remember reading about the Spanish flu as well as some other biological catastrophes that occurred in history. The plague was another such instance. No one was sure about the origin, but how it was spread was easy to identify.”
“Correct.”
“There was something else,” he continued, “I remember reading about those epidemics that are still somewhat of a mystery.”