The Midas Code tl-2

by Boyd Morrison

  “Maybe the device has something to do with the codex and that’s why Locke took it back from us.”

  That stopped Cavano. Maybe Sal wasn’t as dumb as she thought.

  She felt her blood pressure rising again. Lumley had withheld information from her. She retrieved her phone and dialed the archaeologist’s cell.

  “Hello,” he said tentatively.

  “It’s me. Don’t lie to me this time. Tell me what you told Westfield.”

  “I didn’t lie. I really couldn’t help him—”

  She didn’t have time for this. “If you don’t tell me what you know, I will strap you to a table and make you watch as I pull out your entrails one by one.”

  Lumley gulped audibly. “All … all right. Of course. Mr. Westfield was particularly interested in two statues of the Parthenon’s west pediment — Herakles and Aphrodite.”

  “Why?”

  “The codex referenced those two figures as a key to some kind of puzzle, but I don’t know what.”

  “Have they come back to the museum?”

  “Oh, no. I don’t think they would.”

  “You mean they solved the puzzle?”

  “I don’t know. The codex implied that one would have to be at the Parthenon in person to understand what it meant.”

  At the Parthenon. “Grazie, Doctor.”

  “Am I free now?”

  “No. I may call again at any time, and if you don’t answer, I will take that as a sign of disrespect. Do you understand?”

  Lumley wheezed into the phone. “Absolutely.”

  She hung up.

  With a day’s head start, it was possible she was already too late to get Locke, Benedict, and Westfield, but it was the only lead she had.

  “Get Adamo and Dario,” she said to Sal. “Since they were at the museum, they’ll recognize Grant Westfield. Send them to Athens tonight. I think Locke and his friends may be there already.”

  “Should I go with them?”

  “No, I want you here in Naples. If they slip through, they’ll come here next.”

  “What should Adamo and Dario do in Athens?”

  “Find photos of Locke and Benedict to give them. I want them at the Parthenon from opening to closing.”

  “And if they find all three of them?”

  Getting them all back to Italy would be difficult. The best bet would be to charter a boat.

  Cavano could already feel her heartbeat ease and her muscles relax. For the first time in twenty-four hours, she felt back in control.

  “We don’t need all three,” she said. “Capture Locke. Kill Benedict and Westfield.”

  FORTY-TWO

  It was 2:45 in the afternoon, and with the 3:00 closing time fast approaching, the visitors at the National Archaeological Museum were beginning to wander back toward the entrance. Using the tickets Grant had bought earlier in the day, Tyler and Stacy had entered the museum separately.

  Tyler had put on a collared shirt and jeans for the operation, with the backpack slung over his shoulder. His earpiece was in and connected to his cell phone’s open line to Grant, who was with their motorcycles next to the emergency exit.

  “You ready out there?” Tyler said.

  “A little crowd at the bus stop, but otherwise we’re good to go.”

  “Give me a shout if something wicked comes that way.”

  “Will do.”

  Tyler wore the new black cap on the off chance that his Mariners cap would be connected to the Munich garage incident. He pulled the bill down and made sure to keep it between his face and the cameras in each room as he followed Grant’s directions to the room with the Antikythera Mechanism. Having studied the photos thoroughly, Tyler knew exactly what to expect, but seeing it in person for the first time he was still amazed at how much the replica sitting behind the glass looked like the geolabe he’d built. Other than the single knob on the side of the Antikythera Mechanism, as opposed to the dual knobs on the geolabe, they were virtually identical.

  The attendants from this room and the one with the emergency exit were chatting, paying no attention to Tyler. No other tourists were around, giving him the chance he needed.

  He positioned himself directly beneath the working camera next to a display case that had a small space between it and the wall. Tyler knelt as if to tie his shoe, plopping the backpack next to him. With a smooth motion, he removed the smoke grenade from the pack and rested it behind the display case. Unless someone was looking for it, it wouldn’t be seen.

  He stood back up and pretended to spend a few more minutes reading the captions on the Antikythera Mechanism. A walk around the case holding the replica showed him the keyhole that would unlock the front glass.

  He strolled back out the way he’d come, just another visitor browsing relics from Greece’s ancient past. He really did wish he had more time to inspect the fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism. It was incredible that he’d been looking at a device more sophisticated than any other created for fifteen hundred years.

  They’d planned to set things in motion in the gallery containing tombstone sculptures, about a hundred feet from the room with the Mechanism. When he turned into the hall, he saw Stacy peering intently at the statue of a robed man carrying a bowl into which offerings would be placed.

  She made a slow 180-degree turn, and Tyler nodded as her eyes passed over him. It was a go.

  Grant had noted the locations of all the fire alarms, and Stacy found one near a group of elderly tourists listening to a guide speaking English. She pulled it discreetly as she walked by. A Klaxon began to blare.

  The sound came from horns in the ceiling, so no one turned to where Stacy had just been standing. She looked as confused as the rest of the patrons.

  Attendants began to appear from both ends of the hall. Fire was a major threat to the artwork, but the sprinklers were not set to come on automatically for fear of damaging the statues unnecessarily.

  Tyler gripped the unfolded Leatherman in his pocket, waiting for his cue.

  Within seconds, a guard appeared. He was speaking loudly into his walkie-talkie and headed directly for the alarm pull. He stopped in front of it and swung around, looking for any hint of a fire.

  The tour group was watching the guard, not moving toward the exit as Tyler had hoped. He sidled up to one of the group members, a gentleman who looked to be in his eighties.

  “Did you hear that?” Tyler said.

  “Hear what?” the man said.

  Tyler pointed at the guard. “I think that guy said there was a fire in the back of the museum.”

  That seemed to be confirmation enough for them, and the tour group began shuffling toward the front exit.

  Stacy was already engaged in an animated conversation with the guard in Greek, performing her bit to perfection. She gestured at the ceiling as if the fire might be up there. She put her hand on the guard’s back. Two attendants who had joined them also looked up. Whatever Stacy was saying, they were buying it.

  Tyler took the Leatherman out of his pocket, the wire cutters at the ready. The guard’s keys were dangling off his left hip. Tyler stood next to him as if he were also trying to see the cause of the alarm.

  Stacy yelled, and that was his cue. He bent slightly, grasped the keys, and snipped the cord. The guard didn’t feel a thing.

  Tyler turned and headed back toward the Antikythera Mechanism.

  As soon as he made the turn into the next room, he bumped three display cases with his hip. According to Stacy, each case would have a silent alarm built in. The sudden motion would set them off, creating more distraction.

  Then he flicked the button on the remote, igniting the smoke grenade. Grant had spent his lunchtime rigging the igniter. The flameless paintball grenade could be set off just by holding a nine-volt battery to the leads, but it could also be attached to a simple electric ignition switch and activated with a push-button remote.

  The grenade began to spew out enough smoke to cover a football field. In thr
ee minutes, the entire hall would be full of the nontoxic gas. Tyler just needed it to fill the room that held the Mechanism replica.

  He flipped through the keys until he found the odd-shaped one that opened the display cases.

  The attendants in the room cried out in alarm. Tyler was only twenty feet away now and saw an orange cloud of smoke billowing through the entryway. The two attendants came out hacking and coughing, convinced that the gas was poisonous.

  Tyler had expected them to go out the emergency exit. Their sudden appearance complicated things, but he decided to just go for it.

  Tyler skirted around them and plunged into the room, which was now completely engulfed in smoke. Unable to see more than a foot in front of him, he moved to the display case by feel.

  He was about to insert the key when he felt someone latch on to his arm. One of the attendants had gotten brave and gone back into the smoke to save Tyler. She pulled on him insistently shouting at him in Greek.

  Tyler nudged the attendant forward and made as if to follow her out. But once she got two steps ahead, he stopped and went back to the case, confident that she wouldn’t know where he’d gone. He ran his hand along the top until he found the keyhole. He inserted it, and with a twist the case popped open. Orange smoke flooded into the purified air inside the case.

  Tyler unzipped his backpack. He snared the Antikythera Mechanism replica and stuffed it into the bag. Then he wiped the keys down with his shirt and tossed them into the case.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “You’re clear,” came Grant’s reply.

  Tyler walked toward the exit door, pushed it open, and tumbled through, holding his hand over his face and wheezing for the benefit of anyone who might be watching.

  He stumbled to where Grant waited with the motorcycles. No one else was near the bus stop. Any looky-loos were drawn to the museum entrance.

  They both got on their bikes, rocketed away, and made a circuit around the museum. When they reached the front, Stacy was running toward them.

  She hopped on Tyler’s ride, and they took off.

  Three intersections later, they stopped at a red light. They heard some sirens, but all of them were headed toward the museum.

  “Any problems?” Grant shouted above the traffic.

  “Other than the attendant making a last-second grab for me, it went off without a hitch,” Tyler replied. He turned to Stacy. “Nice acting job. I almost looked up at the ceiling myself.”

  “I have to please my public,” she said. “Think the attendant will be able to identify you?”

  “With all that smoke? She’ll be lucky to remember it was a man.”

  “You mean, you’ll be lucky.”

  The light turned green. “I’m highly skilled at being lucky,” Tyler yelled over his shoulder as he opened the throttle, putting more distance between them and the scene of the crime.

  FORTY-THREE

  After they dropped Stacy off at the hotel, Grant and Tyler went to a local metalwork and fabrication shop they had rented. Tyler paid the owner a handsome fee to leave them alone for the evening with the grinding, cutting, and welding tools they would need to remove the gear from the Mechanism replica and transfer it to the geolabe.

  The approach to constructing the replica was different from the one Tyler had used on the geolabe, so he had to remove the axle from the gear before he could fit it to the geolabe. The entire process took seven hours, and by midnight he had all forty-seven gears of the geolabe back together. The dials spun freely, as if the gear had been in place from the beginning. The geolabe was once again in working order.

  “Now we just have to wait until morning,” Grant said, as he gathered up the scattered pieces of the replica. “The Acropolis opens at 8 A.M.”

  “Shouldn’t take us more than ten minutes once we’re up there. Then we can head back to the airport. With the hour time difference, we’ll be in Rome by lunchtime.”

  Landing in Naples was too risky. They didn’t know how far Gia Cavano’s influence reached, but Tyler didn’t think it extended to Rome. They’d hire a car and make the one-hour drive down to Naples in time to meet with Orr.

  Tyler rubbed his eyes. He needed a good night’s sleep, but he didn’t know if that was going to be possible with his mind racing.

  Grant must have seen the worry etched on his face. “Your dad’s going to be okay, you know.”

  “I know. He’d want me to be more worried about that nuclear material than about him.”

  “I still can’t figure why Orr would want it. It’s bizarre.”

  “It has something to do with the gold,” Tyler said. “Why else would he have us hunt for the treasure and prepare his nuclear material simultaneously?”

  “If he sets that thing off in DC,” Grant said, “it’ll turn Washington into a ghost town for the next twenty years.”

  “Maybe he’s got a grudge against the government.”

  “Yeah. He might hate paying taxes even more than I do.”

  Tyler placed the geolabe in his backpack, then paused before speaking. “Do you think we’re doing the right thing not calling the FBI into this?”

  Grant shrugged. “Man, I don’t know. It could go either way. They do have more resources than we do, even with Aiden’s snooping powers and Miles’s connections. On the other hand, I think you’re right that Orr would find out. The longer he thinks we’re on our own, the longer he doesn’t do anything to the general or to Stacy’s sister.”

  “I know. And I know my father’s not going to sit idly by while they hold him hostage. Keeping Orr occupied could give him a chance to break out.”

  “You think he’ll try something?”

  Tyler nodded. “If we can’t find him first. But Aiden said there’s no way to track the videos Orr is emailing to us. They’re routed through three different anonymizers in Eastern Europe.”

  He didn’t have to go through the rest. Grant had seen Aiden’s email. Gordian Engineering was one of the top forensic accident-investigation firms in the world. Miles had assembled a team of volunteers close to Tyler and gone out to the site of the ferry truck explosion to gather evidence, first calling the local sheriff to notify them that they had gotten a tip about the blast.

  Under the sheriff’s guidance, they had sifted through the wreckage and found nothing that would lead back to Orr. The truck had been stolen the day before, and all the bomb components could be found at any Radio Shack. The binary explosive was also impossible to track. Without any other leads and with no injuries, the sheriff was already concluding that it was the work of yahoos who got a kick out of blowing up stuff.

  Aiden’s efforts to sniff out Orr through the use of his electronic communications had been no more fruitful. Orr’s cell phone was a disposable. The Web site for tracking the geolabe was set up with a false identity. Unless they got a lucky break, their only opportunity to free Sherman and Carol would be to nab Orr himself.

  “All right,” Tyler said, hoisting the backpack. “Let’s get back to the hotel. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

  When they reached their suite, they found Stacy in the living room reading over the Archimedes Codex yet again.

  “Does it work?” she asked eagerly.

  Tyler smiled. “Like a Swiss watch.”

  “I’m going to hit the hay,” Grant said. “I’ll set the alarm for seven. I’ll need a good breakfast.”

  He shut the door behind him, leaving Tyler alone with Stacy. Tyler set the backpack with the geolabe on the table and sat down next to her. Suddenly, the pace of the past few days caught up with him. He slumped against the back of the couch and closed his eyes.

  “Poor guy,” she said. “You look beat.”

  Tyler turned his head toward her and cracked his lids. “You look pretty alert.”

  “I took a nap while you were gone.”

  He twisted his neck around, the muscles sore from bending over the geolabe for four hours straight with no break.

  She pushed him up.
“Here. Let me work on those knots.”

  Before he could argue, Stacy had grabbed his shoulders. For a small woman, she had strong hands. Tyler had to admit that it felt damn good. He leaned into her thumbs, which found the most gnarled spots.

  After five minutes of work, the stress wasn’t completely gone, but his muscles were no longer cramped. Tyler leaned back into the cushion and looked at Stacy. Her eyes searched his.

  “What?” she said.

  “This situation is tough on you, isn’t it?” she said.

  “And it’s not tough on you?”

  “Of course it is, but I have faith it’ll all turn out for the best.”

  “So do I.”

  She casually brushed his hair. “No, you don’t. You want to make it turn out all right. That’s why it’s so hard for you. You hate not being in control. I saw you during that car chase on the autobahn. You were in your element. You were certain it would go exactly as you planned, and even if it didn’t, you had confidence that you could react to whatever was thrown at you.”

  Tyler looked at her but said nothing.

  “That story about getting injured by that horse when you were a kid,” she continued. “You weren’t afraid of being killed. You were afraid of being paralyzed.”

  Tyler was shocked at how close Stacy had gotten to the truth. But paralysis wasn’t his fear. Miles was proof that life didn’t end in a wheelchair. A coma was what scared him, the idea that he would be a vegetable the rest of his life, dependent on others, contributing nothing.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Tyler asked her.

  Stacy put both her hands on his. “Because I want you to know that you’re not alone in this. One way or another, we’re going to get through this. All of us.”

  The air seemed to be sucked out of the room, and Tyler got tunnel vision. He was focused solely on Stacy’s bright blue eyes. His breathing came to a standstill.

  She leaned closer, her gaze passing from his lips to his eyes. Her grip on his hands tightened. If he moved even an inch more toward her, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself.