The Midas Code tl-2

by Boyd Morrison

  “Orr must have been planning to blow the entrance once he’d secured the Midas Touch so that no one else could get in.”

  “What a tragedy that would be.” She handed Tyler a SIG Sauer pistol she found inside. “You’ll probably want this.”

  “Thanks.” He searched the rest of the bag, but with the Taser now in the water it was the only weapon available. Orr wasn’t carrying a gun, having put all his trust in the explosive belts.

  Tyler opened Orr’s bag and saw the box with the golden hand inside. Next to it was a leather pouch. Tyler opened it to find an ancient book. The cover had no writing on it. He began to open it when Stacy stopped him.

  “Don’t,” she said. “That’s the Archimedes Codex. It’s too fragile to handle. You might damage it more than Orr already has.”

  Tyler put it back in the pouch. He inventoried the rest of the bag’s contents. Two full clear water bottles, one marked “Seawater” and the other marked “Fresh Water.” Two sets of heavy rubber gloves. An empty plastic Tupperware container. And an older model digital video camera already loaded with a tape.

  “What’s that for?” Stacy said.

  “If he was going to sell the Midas Touch, he’d want some clear evidence that he wasn’t simply giving his buyer a dud. So he was probably going to film the chamber and the Midas Touch in operation.”

  Stacy nodded. “And when he got his sample, he’d show himself blowing up the only entrance to the chamber.”

  “He definitely covers all the bases.”

  Stacy looked at Orr’s bleeding face. “Not all of them.”

  He handed the camera to Stacy. “Start filming.”

  “Why?”

  “When we get back to the surface, we’re going to need our own evidence to convince the Italian authorities that this really is down here.”

  “All right,” Stacy said, “but I’m usually in front of the camera, not behind it.” She took the camera to the center of the pit, opened the screen, and started filming. First, she panned around the chamber, then focused on the statue and the pedestal. She was careful to steer clear of the boiling water churning in the pool along the base of the terrace.

  Tyler hoisted Orr’s pack and started slapping his face.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

  With a groan, Orr began to stir, so Tyler rose and pointed the SIG at him. Orr’s moan turned to a cry and his tied hands flew to his face.

  “My eye! What did you do to me?”

  “That’s your fault. Now get up.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Quit your whining. I’ve seen soldiers in battle continue fighting with wounds that make your injury look like a paper cut.”

  Orr grimaced as he held his palm to his eye. “What do you want?”

  “I want to know where my father and Carol Benedict are.”

  “You’ll kill me if I tell you.”

  “I’ll do worse if you don’t.”

  Stacy was still filming the writing on the pedestal. “My God,” she said.

  Tyler didn’t take his eyes off Orr. “What is it?”

  “This tells Midas’s whole story. How he got here, the curse of the golden touch, everything. Good God! This statue is his daughter.”

  “Midas probably wanted to spend eternity with her likeness.”

  “No, this isn’t a statue of his daughter. This statue is his daughter. The writing says that he turned her to gold on purpose after she died to preserve her body for all time.”

  Tyler backed up so that he could keep an eye on Orr while he looked at the statue. She had been posed lying down, with her arms at her sides, a beautiful girl perhaps fourteen years old. Her eyes were closed, but he could see the pain in her face. She wore a robe that was just as golden as she was, and her left hand was sawed cleanly from her wrist.

  “Document everything. Tell me the rest of the story later.”

  Tyler went back over to Orr and gave him a light kick. “I think it’s time we introduced ourselves to Midas. Come with me.”

  Orr staggered to his feet, his hands still covering his eye. Tyler nodded toward the stairs. Orr trudged over and climbed toward Midas’s coffin. Stacy followed them and continued to film.

  When they got to the top of the terrace, Tyler stopped, shocked at what the sarcophagus had hidden from view up to this point. A skeleton lay on the floor, still clad in shirt, jeans, and shoes, the bones a spotless white, the clothes dis-integrating. The skull was fractured.

  Tyler remembered the story Cavano had told him about the fight between the men. One of them got his head bashed in. The other died after touching the body of Midas and falling into the water.

  “This one of the men who chased you?” Tyler asked Orr.

  He nodded.

  “Here’s the other one,” Stacy said, pointing over the side of the terrace.

  Tyler looked down and saw a body at the bottom of the roiling pool. Like the girl, this corpse had been transformed into solid gold, clothes and all.

  Stacy got a shot of both the body and the skeleton. “Why did the guy in the water turn to gold but this one didn’t?”

  “Because he wasn’t exposed to the Midas Touch and then submerged in the hot spring,” Tyler said. “And in this heat the bacteria inside the skeleton guy’s body had a smorgasbord once he died. He probably rotted away in a couple of months.”

  “Then the walls couldn’t have turned to gold on their own.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Orr said. “Midas did it before he died. He must have touched the walls and then sprayed them with the water from the hot spring.”

  Tyler thought about the golden tendrils at the entrance. That would explain why the gold petered out there.

  “There’s only one way to find out if you’re right,” Tyler said. He pointed to the corner. “Now go over there and kneel with your hands on your head.” Orr hesitated. “Do it!”

  Orr complied and got on his knees. His right eye was now swollen shut. He kept the good one intently focused on them. Tyler had no doubt that he was just waiting to take any opportunity to gain the upper hand, and a small part of Tyler wished he would try.

  “Make one move and I’ll kill you.”

  “No, you won’t,” Orr said. “You need me alive.”

  “Okay. I’ll shoot you in the kneecaps. So stay there if you ever want to walk without a limp.”

  Orr said nothing, but he understood. Tyler turned back to the coffin, but he adjusted his position to make sure he kept Orr in his sight the entire time.

  The sarcophagus rested on a golden support platform about three feet high near the edge of the terrace above the boiling pool. Tyler ran his hand over the intricately carved lid. Something felt odd, and he pressed into the gold. Instead of the hard metal surface he was expecting, it gave under his push.

  He had been considering how to open the lid. If it had been solid gold, it would have weighed hundreds of pounds. But now he realized that the coffin wasn’t pure gold. It was made of wood. The gold leaf was merely a protective covering.

  Tyler unfolded his Leatherman knife and drew it across the platform supporting the wooden sarcophagus. Gold flaked off in several spots, revealing tuff underneath.

  Stacy knelt to get a better look, focusing the camera on the slash. “So the pedestal, the walls — everything is just gold leaf?”

  “Apparently only organic substances are completely transformed into gold, and even then they would have to be completely submerged in the hot spring for a significant length of time. That would explain why the coffin is only gold leaf. The only substantial amount of gold in this room is in the two dead bodies.”

  “As I told you,” Orr said, still on his knees in the corner, “the real value is the Midas Touch itself.”

  “Yes, you told me,” Tyler said. “Good for you.”

  “Should we see if it really works?” Stacy asked.

  Tyler nodded, handing one set of the rubber gloves from Orr’s pack to Stacy. “We’ll need to be careful. Remem
ber, according to Cavano the drug runner was poisoned by whatever he touched in the coffin.”

  They put the gloves on. The lid wasn’t hinged, so they lifted it from either end and leaned it against the side.

  The mummified corpse of King Midas grinned at them, the skin stretched taught over his leathery withered cheeks. He was wrapped in regal purple robes, and a gold crown adorned with rubies and sapphires capped his head. One desiccated hand lay across his chest, but the other was twisted at his side. Each finger was encircled with a magnificent gold and jeweled ring.

  Orr and Cavano’s pursuer must have grabbed the hand, eager to take the rings off, but when he brushed against Midas’s skin, he released the hand before he could remove the rings, and the lid dropped back down.

  Orr strained to see. “Is it Midas?”

  “He’s here, all right,” Tyler said. “In the flesh, so to speak.”

  “He must have spent months or years preparing this chamber and ordered his loyal servants to place him here after his death,” Stacy said. “Then they closed up the chamber behind them.”

  Tyler rummaged through the sack and took out the two full water bottles.

  He needed an object to test. He turned and saw the skeleton of the Italian drug runner, whose shoes were still intact. The nylon shoelaces would be perfect. Tyler untied one of the shoes and unlaced it.

  He took both ends and rubbed them on Midas’s hand.

  “Open the bottles,” Tyler said. Stacy started with the seawater bottle.

  Tyler dipped the shoelace into the water while Stacy filmed. Within seconds, a blush of gold encrusted the tip of the lace. They repeated the steps with the gold-bearing fresh water. This time the effect was even greater, because the solution had a stronger concentration of gold than the seawater. Tyler took the golden lace out and marveled as the water dripped from it.

  Stacy gaped at it. “My God! It works!”

  “Incredible,” Tyler said. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself, and he knew others might feel the same.

  “Let’s take a sample to test when we get back,” he said. “Take that Tupperware container out and open it.” Stacy hadn’t yet touched anything, so her gloves were clean.

  While she got the container, Tyler took a breath and ripped Midas’s hand off, rings and all. He dropped it in the empty container, and Stacy put the lid back on. He removed his gloves as carefully as he could to avoid exposure to the microbes and set them aside. Stacy took her gloves off as well.

  Tyler held up the laces for Orr to see. “This is what you were searching for,” he said. “I hope it drives you nuts coming so close and not getting it.”

  “Nothing has changed except for who’s holding the gun,” Orr said. “We can still make a deal for the information you want.”

  “The only deal I’m going to make with you is that I will guarantee you a short, miserable life if anything happens to Sherman or Carol.”

  “That’s too bad, because now you’re too late.”

  “Really? Why’s that?”

  Orr smiled and nodded behind Tyler.

  He turned to see Gia Cavano silently entering the cavern. Behind her was a man with a submachine gun pointed at Grant’s head.

  SIXTY-ONE

  Cavano didn’t care if Tyler and Stacy were helping Orr by choice or against their will. She knew Orr well enough to believe that he had taken Tyler’s and Stacy’s relatives hostage, but that didn’t make her inclined to share the treasure with anyone. If she let them go, the Italian authorities would be on her before she could get a tenth of the gold out.

  With her submachine gun, she opened fire, but Tyler and Stacy dove behind the golden coffin, bullets pinging off the wall behind them. None of the shots were aimed at Orr, who flattened himself on the floor. She wanted him alive. A bullet to the head was too good for him.

  Tyler didn’t return fire with the pistol Cavano had seen him holding. He obviously wouldn’t want to hurt his friend. Sal stood behind Grant, using him as a shield.

  The astounding golden chamber was just as she remembered it, except for the dead body in the pit below, its head a mess of gore. Cavano was already drenched from the humidity that condensed on her skin.

  She noticed Orr’s bloody face and called across the long chamber. “I see you’ve done all of the hard work for me, Dr. Locke.”

  “You okay, Tyler?” Grant said.

  “Not bad,” Tyler yelled from behind the coffin. “How about you?”

  “Your warning worked for me, but three of Cavano’s men used up their nine lives.”

  “And for killing my men,” she said, “Jordan has earned the most painful death I can possibly imagine.”

  “Listen, Gia,” Tyler said. “I think the one thing we can agree on is that we all want Orr dead. But right now I need him alive.”

  “Yes, Grant told us why you have been such a thorn in my side for the last few days. Good to see you again, Jordan. I hope you’re in pain.”

  “You can’t kill me, Gia,” Orr said. “The gold isn’t worth what you think it is.”

  “If it’s only a few billion dollars, I think I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s not. It’s a few million.”

  “Shut up, Orr!” Tyler yelled.

  In the face of so much gold, Cavano laughed, and Sal joined in.

  “I’m serious,” Orr said. “Scratch the wall next to you. You’ll see that the gold is only a few millimeters thick.”

  Cavano looked at Sal, who shrugged. Was her whole assessment of the treasure that far off? She dragged the nose of her gun across the wall. She stared in horror when it left a gouge of gray tuff behind.

  “The statue is solid gold,” she said. “I know it is.”

  “The statue is, but the pedestal isn’t,” Orr said. “The girl might weigh a few hundred pounds. You’d clear twenty million euros at best. I know your business is in much deeper debt than that.”

  He was right. The purchase of the Ministry of Health building had exhausted her organization’s funds. Without a major influx of cash, she would be at the mercy of the other Camorra clans, who would sweep in and gobble up her budding empire.

  “How about I share a billion dollars with you?”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I have an auction planned for the Midas Touch.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but I can find my own buyer.”

  “Not the group I have assembled. I’m the only one they’ll trust.”

  Cavano paused. “And why should I trust you?”

  “You don’t have to. You can come with me to the auction. We’ll split the payment into two accounts. If I’m lying about the deal, you can kill me then. But if I’m not, you go your way and I go my way. Forget about this whole vendetta thing and we’ll both be super-rich.”

  Cavano walked back and whispered to Sal in Italian. “What do you think?”

  “It looks like he’s right about the wall,” Sal whispered back.

  She nodded. Later she would figure out how to get her vengeance, but for now she couldn’t afford to risk killing Orr. She was about to agree to his terms when Tyler called out.

  “One problem with your plan, Gia! I’m right behind the coffin. I can dump Midas’s body into that pool in three seconds, and then you’ll have nothing. Once it’s in the water, the body will turn to gold in a matter of hours, and the microbes that are responsible for the Midas Touch will disappear forever.”

  “You do that and Grant is dead.”

  “We’re dead anyway, so you better cut me in on Orr’s deal, too.”

  Cavano thought about it. She had no desire to cut anybody else in on the deal, but she couldn’t lose the Midas Touch, either.

  “All right,” she said. “But I want to see a working sample first.”

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “I swear on my husband’s grave.”

  After about thirty seconds of silence, Tyler said, “All right. You come down to the pit. I�
�ll keep an eye on Orr, and Stacy will bring the sample down to you. You try anything and I’ll kill Orr and dump Midas into the water. Then nobody gets anything. Sound good?”

  Perfect, Cavano thought. “Sounds good. We’re coming down. If Stacy tries anything, she dies first. Then Grant. Then you.”

  She whispered into Sal’s ear again. “When I’m sure we’ve got it, kill Grant, then Tyler. I’ll take care of Stacy.”

  Sal nodded.

  Cavano had lied when she swore on her husband’s grave, but she was a good Catholic. To her way of thinking, it was nothing that a few minutes in the confessional wouldn’t take care of.

  SIXTY-TWO

  Stacy tried not to shake as she walked down the steps carrying the container with Midas’s hand inside. She was more afraid of the Midas Touch than she was of Cavano.

  When Stacy got to the bottom of the stairs, Cavano was waiting for her, a black automatic rifle aimed at her. Sal was behind his boss on the other side of the pedestal, with his own gun leveled at Grant.

  “Put it down,” Cavano said.

  Stacy stopped and put the container on the floor. She turned to go back up the steps.

  “Wait!” Cavano yelled. “Leave the gloves.”

  Stacy gulped. She carefully removed the gloves by the fingers and laid them down next to the container.

  “Now back away, but don’t go up the stairs.”

  Stacy did as she was told, her heart pounding. She didn’t know what the next few seconds were going to bring, so she had to be ready for anything.

  Cavano put her hand in her pocket and took out a twenty-euro note. Smart, Stacy thought. Easy to rub the microbe onto and dip into the pool to test it.

  Cavano put the gun down and donned the left glove first and then the right one. She picked up the container and was about to open it when she got a puzzled look on her face. She peered at her hands with dismay. Too late, Cavano realized that it was she who’d been tricked.

  Tyler had seen the opportunity when Cavano insisted on testing the Midas Touch herself. He whispered his plan to Stacy as they were shielded from Cavano by the coffin. With Stacy’s uncontaminated right-hand glove turned inside out, Tyler quickly rubbed Midas’s hand on the fingertips of the glove. He then gently pulled the glove right side out using his Leatherman pliers, careful not to touch the inside lining. Stacy had put the glove on delicately, making sure to ball up her fist so that her fingers wouldn’t touch the microbes.