The Midas Legacy (Wilde/Chase 12)

by Andy McDermott

  Nina grabbed the parachute’s steering lines and swung herself away from the boiling black cloud rising to engulf her. The cliffs rolled past, still growing larger as her momentum carried her towards them, larger—

  Bare rock whipped past her dangling feet – then she was clear, turning back out to sea. She straightened out, letting the parachute take her away from the disintegrating wreckage.

  A sharp smell hit her nostrils. It wasn’t the burning yacht or its flaming trail of fuel. This was more like melting plastic . . .

  Fear returned in full force. It was plastic: nylon.

  The parachute was on fire.

  A flame-ringed hole was opening up in the brightly coloured canopy, glowing globs of molten material dropping away as the fire ate through it. ‘Oh, shit!’

  Nina pulled on both lines, trying to bring herself down to the water more quickly. But her descent was already accelerating as the burning parachute started to collapse. Another scream as she dropped towards the ocean—

  She still had enough presence of mind to take a deep breath just before she hit. A wave smacked hard against her face as she went under amidst a rush of churning bubbles. Disoriented, she tried to right herself and return to the surface, only to find herself entangled as the remains of the parachute came down on top of her.

  The harness and pack were dead weight on her back. She pushed at the buckle on her chest to release them. A muted clunk, and the straps popped free. She shrugged clear and kicked out from beneath the overbearing jellyfish, but some of the lines had wrapped around her legs.

  Her panic returned. She forced herself to stop swimming, bringing up both legs in front of her as she tried to unravel the cords. Currents shoved at her like impatient subway crowds. One leg freed, but the other was still snagged, the lines pulling tighter around her ankle as the floating chute was yanked back and forth by the waves.

  Calm, stay calm, she told herself as she unlooped them. The pack sank past her, other lines pulling at her leg. She resisted the gentle but unyielding pressure, using her arms to propel herself back up before continuing her task. Only a few more to go. A distant thudding rumble reached her through the water, the sound of an engine, but she couldn’t spare it any thought as she finally tugged away the last cord and swam clear of the parachute.

  She burst into open air, gasping. More waves slapped at her. Spluttering, she blew away water as she tipped backwards to keep her face clear of the surface, then tried to get her bearings.

  The column of black smoke rising from the cliffs made it impossible to miss the wreckage of the Pactolus. The luxury yacht’s remains were barely identifiable as a ship, the mangled mass wreathed in fire. There was no beach, the weather-worn rocks rising straight out of the sea. Nowhere to get safely ashore.

  She looked the other way. This low in the water, she couldn’t see the small boats carrying Eddie and the others, but she did spy another vessel, a motor yacht, heading towards where she had seen De Klerx’s men. It was going to rescue them . . . and, she desperately hoped, her.

  ‘That’s the ship that cut across our course!’ Velis said, seeing the other vessel moving towards the bobbing mercenaries.

  Trakas turned to Anastasia, who along with Eddie was being watched at gunpoint by Axelos. ‘Your ship, I assume?’ he asked her in English. Her only reply was a dismissive narrowing of her eyes. ‘Your friends will be saved, then. Those who are still alive.’

  ‘Never mind them,’ Eddie said angrily. ‘What about Nina? We’ve got to see if she got off the ship!’ The smoke from the Pactolus had blocked his view of the yacht’s last moments.

  ‘We’re not going back,’ Axelos said coldly. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘A pity,’ said Trakas. ‘Dr Wilde would have been useful.’

  ‘For what?’ the Yorkshireman growled, but no answer came.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ Anastasia demanded.

  Trakas chuckled humourlessly. ‘You came here for the Crucible, no? Now you will see it.’

  ‘Hey!’ Nina cried, waving her arms. ‘Over here, hey!’

  She had been in the water for twenty minutes, reluctant to move too far from the smouldering wreck of the Pactolus for fear that anyone coming to investigate might miss her. But now the motor yacht was finally approaching, having picked up the men in the sea.

  A figure on its deck signalled to her: De Klerx. Both relieved and aggrieved to see him, she swam exhaustedly to the ship. He and another man reached down and pulled her from the sea. ‘Are you all right?’ the Dutchman asked as she slumped to the deck, water streaming from her soaked clothing.

  ‘Yeah, no thanks to you,’ she replied, wringing out her hair. ‘What the hell were you and Anastasia doing? We came out here to talk to Trakas, not start World War Three.’

  ‘You were never going to succeed,’ he replied with a dismissive sneer. ‘A man who would go to such lengths to get the Crucible would never voluntarily give it up.’

  ‘So you decided to take it anyway, huh?’ Another man offered her some towels. She gratefully wrapped one around herself. ‘What about Eddie, and the others? Where are they?’

  ‘Trakas took them.’

  ‘Where?’

  De Klerx went to the cabin door, gesturing for her to follow. ‘We think a place called Riklos. He owns a shipyard there.’

  ‘You think? You don’t know?’

  ‘The two men I left on this ship had to choose between following him and rescuing us.’ They entered the cabin. The other survivors of the failed raid were inside, now down to four. ‘But I have spoken to Mr Mikkelsson. Even while we were travelling to Greece, he had used his diplomatic connections to obtain information about Trakas’s businesses. Riklos is the only place he owns that could operate an industrial particle accelerator.’

  ‘You think that’s where he’s keeping the Crucibles?’ The Greek’s denial of any knowledge about the smaller of the two Atlantean artefacts came back to her, but she put it aside; there were more urgent concerns.

  ‘It must be.’

  A hatch at the cabin’s rear was open. The room beyond was dark, but Nina glimpsed distinctly military-looking cases stacked within. Weapons. ‘You’re planning to raid the place?’

  ‘Yes. It will be night by the time we arrive, but we can still find the Crucible – and rescue Anastasia and the others.’

  ‘I hope that’s not the order of priorities,’ said Nina, dropping on to an empty chair.

  ‘No. Getting Anastasia back is my top priority.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet it is.’ That there was something going on between the Dutchman and the young Icelander had been hard to miss. ‘Just remember that getting Eddie back is my top priority – and the Lonmores, too.’

  ‘I am sure you will not let me forget.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t,’ she said, responding to his sarcasm in kind. ‘And I hope this operation goes better than your last one.’

  26

  Eddie surveyed the shoreline ahead as the helicopter began its descent. ‘Guess that’s where we’re going.’

  The two boats had taken their passengers to the island where he, Nina and the Lonmores had landed before travelling to the Pactolus, the chopper returning at Trakas’s summons. With Axelos and one of the surviving yacht crew acting as armed guards, the prisoners were put aboard. Trakas took the front passenger seat, leaving Spencer to sit uncomfortably in the rear under the glares of his father, his stepmother and Anastasia.

  The flight west to the Greek mainland took over an hour. A cove at the edge of a range of rocky hills was home to a sprawling boatyard. Numerous craft of varying sizes were under construction or being maintained, but a large factory-like building some way back from the waterline suggested that more went on at the facility than simple repair work. An electrical substation was located beside it, fed by high-
tension lines running down from the hillside.

  The helicopter landed near a perimeter gate. Eddie saw that it was guarded – and that the two men who hurried to meet the aircraft were armed, Italian Spectre sub-machine guns slung at their waists.

  The new arrivals were quickly escorted to the factory, the chopper lifting off behind them. Trakas was greeted by a man in thick-framed glasses, whose report was well received by the shipping magnate. ‘This way!’ he told his unwilling guests with a smile.

  ‘Where are we going?’ demanded Anastasia.

  ‘To see the Crucible! Is that not what you wanted?’ He led the way through the facility, accompanied by the man in glasses. A number of assembly lines snaked around it, the mechanical guts of several boats in the process of being pieced together, but the Greek’s destination was off to one side of the long building.

  Eddie felt concern when he spotted radiation warning signs on the walls. ‘Oh, great. First the Midas Cave, now this – I’ll be lucky if I don’t sprout a third bloody arm.’

  ‘There is no need to worry,’ said Trakas. ‘It is perfectly safe.’

  ‘What’s safe?’ asked Lonmore.

  The Greek brought them into an area separated from the rest of the interior by a long partition. ‘This!’ he announced with pride.

  A boxy piece of equipment emblazoned with more warning trefoils was raised on a stand. It formed one end of a machine, a hefty yellow-painted metal pipe that ran the factory’s length. The tube was encircled at regular intervals by large coils of copper wire, thick skeins of electrical cabling running to each. ‘A linear accelerator,’ said Anastasia.

  Trakas nodded. ‘It was used to strengthen metal parts for boats and stop them from rusting. Ion implantation, it is called. But I have had it modified for a greater purpose.’ He started along the device, Axelos ushering the others after him. ‘Behind us is the particle source. They are accelerated by the magnets in these rings.’ He gestured at one of the copper coils as he passed. ‘By the time they reach the other end, they are going very fast – enough for the neutrons to get through the outer shell of the Crucible.’

  ‘But not fast enough to get back out,’ said Eddie, remembering Mikkelsson’s description of the process.

  Trakas glanced back at him. ‘Indeed not, Mr Chase. They are trapped, to bounce backwards and forwards until they hit atoms of mercury-196. They join together . . . and turn to gold. Just like the legend of Midas.’

  Anastasia’s already angry expression deepened as she glowered at Spencer. ‘You told him about this. All of this is my father’s theory!’

  ‘His theory, but Augustine’s the one who’s going to put it into practice,’ the young man replied.

  ‘Very soon,’ Trakas added. He pointed ahead to where people were clustered around the linear accelerator’s far end. ‘Everything is ready for the first test. If it works, and I believe it will, then the bankers will be forced to give up their hold on my country.’

  ‘You really think you’ll be able to hold the world’s financial system to ransom?’ Lonmore said.

  ‘I do, my friend,’ the Greek replied. ‘I do.’

  The group approached the pipe’s far end. The assembly that had been used to support boat parts for ion implantation had been shifted into a corner, replaced by a much larger and heavier box made of thick metal plates. The messiness of the welding suggested it had been put together at short notice. The container was open at the top, a hinged lid three inches thick raised by a heavy chain running to an electric hoist overhead.

  More chains were slowly moving an object from the back of a flatbed truck into the imposing container.

  The Crucible.

  ‘There it is,’ said Trakas proudly as Lonmore and his wife stared in amazement. Even Anastasia could not contain her wonder. ‘It will be filled with over a thousand litres of mercury. According to Fenrir’s theory, that much mercury should produce over twenty kilograms of gold. If it falls short, it does not matter; what matters is that any gold is produced at all.’

  Eddie looked up at a man on a walkway who was filming the operation with a video camera. Other cameras were fixed upon stands around the accelerator, silently recording every moment. ‘And all this is to prove you’re not faking it, at a guess.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Spencer. ‘Everything’s time-coded, so they’ll know we haven’t made any edits. My idea,’ he added smugly.

  ‘Bet you’re full of parental pride right now, aren’t you?’ Eddie said to Lonmore. The businessman’s disheartened expression served as his answer.

  ‘You will also be witnesses,’ added Trakas. ‘I hoped Dr Wilde could be here too – the testimony of the world’s most famous archaeologist would be hard to ignore.’

  ‘Then maybe you should’ve bloody gone back to get her,’ said the Yorkshireman angrily.

  ‘There were survivors, Mr Chase. With luck she was one. But she is not the only one who will be believed.’

  They reached the end of the steel tube. By now, the Crucible had disappeared inside the container. The chains were detached from its cage and pulled clear by the hoist. The truck moved off to stop at a roller door nearby.

  ‘This containment chamber is my father’s design,’ Anastasia said of the box, with deep disapproval. She rounded on Spencer. ‘You stole that too?’

  ‘Why should it go to waste?’ he shot back. ‘The Legacy was never going to use the Crucible anyway. All you would have done was argue about it and block each other’s plans.’

  Lonmore turned to his son. ‘I can’t believe you’ve betrayed the Legacy like this, Spencer,’ he said. ‘You’ve given away our secrets – and why? Out of spite?’

  ‘You know what I can’t believe, Dad?’ Spencer replied with an angry sneer. ‘That you’d kick me out – your own son! – so you could give my seat to some bimbo who worked as your secretary! Can you get any more clichéd?’

  ‘Don’t you dare call me that,’ hissed Petra. ‘And maybe if you hadn’t been an out-of-control spoiled brat, he wouldn’t have needed to kick you out!’

  ‘Now, now,’ Lonmore said, feebly trying to interpose himself between the pair. ‘That’s not really fair, Petra.’

  ‘Oh, so now you’re standing up for your ungrateful waster of a son rather than your own wife?’ she snapped. ‘He is spoiled, Spencer! That’s the only word for him! No, actually, I can think of quite a lot more, but I’ll keep them to myself. But if you hadn’t indulged him in absolutely everything he ever wanted, he might have taken more responsibility for his life instead of relying on you to bail him out!’

  Spencer turned his back on the couple. ‘I’m not going to be lectured to by some gold-digger from the typing pool. But this is what happens when blood doesn’t stand by blood, isn’t it? Everything falls apart.’

  ‘That goes both ways,’ Lonmore said, clearly distressed by the argument.

  The man with glasses, who was apparently in charge of technical matters, called out to Trakas. ‘We are ready to fill the Crucible,’ the mogul announced expectantly.

  The procedure took some time, but the last of several drums of liquid mercury was finally emptied, its contents pumped into the Crucible. Trakas eagerly issued a command, and the container’s lid closed with a deep, reverberating clang. A rumbling sound came from machinery beside it as vacuum pumps drew out the air. The barrel-chested Greek ushered everyone back behind a free-standing concrete wall that on closer examination had a core of dense, dark metal. ‘Lead,’ he explained. ‘The case is a radiation shield, lined with more lead. It should hold in the radiation, but it is best to be safe, yes?’

  The technician made final checks, then returned to the particle source and signalled to those at the far end of the accelerator. ‘We are ready to start!’ Trakas announced, now almost childishly excited. A shout to the cameraman, who gave him a thumbs-up from the walkway.
‘The cameras are rolling. We can begin!’ He turned to Eddie. ‘Thanks to your wife, Midas is about to save Greece. A pity she could not be here with us to witness this.’

  The Yorkshireman eyed the armed guards. ‘Yeah, I bet she’d be loving it.’

  Trakas waved to the technician. The factory’s overhead lights flickered as a basso hum came from the accelerator. It rose in pitch and volume. ‘When the power has built up, neutrons will be fired into the Crucible,’ he explained. ‘If your father’s theory is correct, Anastasia, when the neutrons trapped inside the Crucible reach a certain intensity, there will be a burst of radiation.’

  ‘That’s what happened in the Midas Cave,’ Eddie told the Icelander. Despite her angry mood, she nodded, intrigued by what was happening.

  The electrical sound from the machine kept climbing. The technician called out again, closing a circuit with a clack loud enough to be heard even down the accelerator’s length. The lights flickered again, and a harsh droning buzz joined the noise. ‘The neutrons are being fired!’ said Trakas.

  Even Petra was now engrossed. ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘I do not know.’ He looked at Eddie. ‘In the Midas Cave, how long?’

  ‘A few minutes,’ replied the Englishman. ‘But there was a pool that had to fill up with water before anything happened, so . . .’ He shrugged.

  Trakas nodded. ‘We will know when the neutron burst comes. There is a radiation meter inside the box.’ He turned back to the accelerator, peering at it through a slot-like window of thick dark glass.

  Eddie surreptitiously glanced at the others to see if they were equally transfixed. The guard’s attention seemed divided between the humming device and his charges . . . but as Eddie slowly turned his head towards Axelos, he realised the security chief was watching him closely from just beyond easy reach, his gun held ready. Having faced the former SAS man before, he was unwilling to give him a second chance at escape. The Yorkshireman gave him a sardonic look, then looked back at the machine.