The Midas Code

by Boyd Morrison

  He gave Stacy his phone.

  “Call Grant and tell him to head this way.”

  “But he’ll never catch us.”

  “Just tell him that we’re getting onto the 95.”

  As she dialed, Tyler thought about the evidence he’d left behind in the garage. Now he was glad he’d worn the gloves. If he had been successful in keeping his face out of sight of the cameras, there would be nothing leading back to him.

  Of course, none of that would matter if Cavano and her men caught up with them.

  He passed through an intersection just as the light turned red, but that didn’t deter the Zonda and the Lamborghini. Horns honking, they blew through.

  The Ferrari’s gas gauge read more than half full. Cavano must have filled up before she arrived in Munich, which sparked a brainstorm for how to get out of this mess.

  Tyler’s plan was simple. At high speed, these cars all gulped fuel at a prodigious rate. Because the Lambo and the Zonda were being delivered to a dealer, Tyler was sure that they had only a token amount of gas in their tanks. If he could stay ahead of them long enough, they would run out before he did. Then he could leisurely plan a place to rendezvous with Grant.

  On the phone, Stacy said, “No, he’s busy trying to kill us. Where are you … On the road? … Thank God.” To Tyler, she said, “He got the Audi. The police got there just after he took off. He says Cavano’s driving the Zonda, and she looked pissed.”

  Tyler wasn’t surprised. He’d be pissed, too, if someone had stolen his $250,000 supercar.

  Stacy told Grant they were about to get on the 95. “What then?” she said to Tyler.

  “Tell him to take the autobahn south, and we’ll call him back when we can.”

  While she did that, Tyler swung onto E54, the highway leading to the autobahn. He couldn’t get above eighty miles an hour as he constantly squirted through tiny spots between cars, much to the annoyance of the Germans he passed, who were used to the rigid law of cars passing only on the left.

  The honking horns behind him meant that Cavano and the other car were using the same tactics, and they were gaining ground.

  A minute later, a sign said one kilometer to 95.

  The traffic in the left-turn lane leading onto the autobahn was backed up and at a standstill.

  “Don’t stop!” Stacy yelled.

  “I’m not.”

  When Tyler reached the intersection, he stood on the brakes, throwing him and Stacy against their straining seat belts. With a flick of the wheel, he veered left from the middle lane and charged past a turning truck, eliciting another scream from Stacy.

  They now had a clear stretch of autobahn in front of them. Tyler snapped the Ferrari through its gears. In ten seconds they were doing over 120 and still accelerating.

  The Lambo made it through the intersection faster than Cavano’s Zonda. Tyler had to slow as he waited for a station wagon that was tooling along at 100 to pass a semi, giving the Lambo time to catch up. By the time the lane was free, the Lambo was right behind them.

  Tyler floored it, and the Ferrari leaped forward. Stacy had forgotten about his wound and gripped the sides of her seat.

  Within seconds they were skirting 200 miles per hour on the sweeping turns through the Bavarian Forest. Even in a car meant for the track, 200 was eye-watering. Tyler was now so focused on the road that he didn’t dare glance at Stacy again.

  A Porsche sedan up ahead must have noticed the two supercars headed its way and decided to see if it could match their speed. The car pulled into the passing lane and sped up, but it was still slower than the Ferrari.

  Tyler caught up to the Porsche and had to tap the brake to keep from rear-ending it. That was all the Lambo needed to make up the distance, and the Zonda was nearing them as well.

  The Porsche pulled aside to let Tyler pass. The Ferrari rocketed forward, but the Lambo stayed with them. The Porsche fell behind, unable to keep up.

  In the rearview mirror, Tyler saw the Lambo’s passenger window roll down. The man in the passenger seat stuck a gun out the window, ready to take aim at the Ferrari’s tires, but he hadn’t counted on the force of the 180-mph wind. The pistol was torn from his hand and skipped across the road into the grass.

  If they had another gun, the Lambo’s passenger wouldn’t make that mistake again, and a blowout at this speed would mean the end of the Ferrari and both of the people it carried.

  Tyler let up on the accelerator.

  “Why are you slowing down?” Stacy said. Even she was getting used to the speed when slowing down meant going under 175.

  “I want them to get closer,” Tyler said.

  “Closer? Are you nuts?”

  The road was curving to the left, so Tyler hugged the inside of the left lane, letting the Lambo pull along Stacy’s side. He’d have to do this just right, or they’d be eating metal.

  The driver raised a pistol. He was gesturing for them to slow down or he’d shoot. Perfect. Only one hand on the wheel.

  Tyler jerked the wheel to the right, bashing the Ferrari into the Lambo. The driver got off two shots, but they both went into the hood.

  The Lambo was nudged over just far enough to catch the edge of the shoulder. The unevenness made the driver over-correct, and the back wheels spun out. When it reached the grass embankment, the Lambo flipped, spewing body panels and engine parts all over the side of the autobahn. Tyler saw the bodies of both occupants go flying. At that speed, they would be pulped on impact.

  Now Tyler was responsible for the deaths of three men today. He had killed before in self-defense, so he understood the grim necessity of it, but Stacy was aghast at the carnage.

  Tyler was so fixated on the crash that he hadn’t noticed the Zonda closing the gap. Cavano’s car had just a little more horsepower, so she was slowly creeping up on them no matter how hard he pushed the Ferrari.

  The Zonda pulled up on Tyler’s side, and the man in the passenger seat had his own gun pointed at Tyler. Tyler tried the same maneuver he’d used to destroy the Lambo. He yanked the wheel over, but Cavano was too deft and avoided the impact.

  When she pulled even again, she leaned over so that Tyler could see her smile and wag a finger at them.

  “She’s got us,” he said.

  “You’re giving up?”

  “Never. I just have to think of something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “That’s the hard part.”

  Cavano’s passenger fired two warning shots into the air. Apparently, Cavano wanted her Ferrari back in one piece. But her passenger made it clear that the next two shots were going to end Tyler’s and Stacy’s lives one way or the other if they didn’t pull over.

  Tyler saw a sign that said AUSFAHRT. An exit. Two kilometers. If he could reach it, maybe he could figure out something. He slowed to give the impression that he was obeying her command.

  The Zonda suddenly lurched as if the car were having a seizure. Tyler thought Cavano had hit the brake, but then it sped up before lurching again.

  The passenger turned away to see what was happening, but Tyler already knew. She was out of gas. He mashed his own pedal down.

  Cavano gestured wildly to the gunman, but by the time he turned back around, the Ferrari was already directly in front of the Zonda. Not learning from his dead comrade, he stuck the gun out to shoot them and had it snatched from his hand.

  The Zonda continued to slow and finally pulled over to the shoulder.

  Tyler cruised to the exit, satisfied that he and Stacy were in the clear. He blipped the throttle and soon the Zonda was out of sight.

  Taking a back road that ran parallel to the autobahn, they met Grant at a rest-area parking lot where they’d dump the Ferrari. Cavano would get it back, though with about eighty thousand dollars’ worth of bodywork.

  “You guys okay?” Grant asked as they got out.

  Tyler nodded, holding his wounded arm. “Nothing that a bandage won’t take care of.”

  Stacy steadied h
erself against the Audi. “After that ride, I feel like I’m bathing in adrenaline.”

  “Let’s make a pact,” Tyler said. “I never drive you in a car at two hundred miles an hour again, and you never make me ride another horse.”

  She smiled. “You’ve got a deal. Next time we’ll compromise and make it a horse and buggy.”

  Tyler groaned playfully, opened the front boot, and saw a case inside. He lifted its lid to make sure the whole car chase hadn’t been for nothing.

  There was the geolabe shining brightly at him. He breathed a sigh of relief and was about to close the case when he heard it rattle, as if a piece of metal was loose inside. Then he noticed a protrusion on the side. He turned it over, and his heart sank when he saw what it was.

  “Uh, guys,” he said. “We’ve got a new problem.”

  “It’s not there?” Stacy said.

  “No, it’s here all right. At least, most of it is.”

  Tyler held it up to his eye and could see Stacy straight through the bullet hole.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  They found a clinic that bought Tyler’s story about injuring his arm with a piece of jagged metal. After the doctor put ten stitches into the arm and gave him a tetanus shot, the three of them returned to the Gordian jet. Tyler and Grant had just begun to disassemble the geolabe to assess the damage from the stray bullet when Tyler’s phone rang.

  “Is it Orr?” Stacy asked.

  Tyler nodded and put the call on speaker.

  “How are you doing, Locke?” Orr said. “Found the map yet?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “I already know you work well under pressure. You have to meet me in Naples in two days.”

  Tyler remembered Cavano’s explanation about beginning her excavation on Monday. There would be no wiggle room in Orr’s schedule, but he had to put up at least a token resistance.

  “We need more time,” Tyler said. “There’s no way we can finish our task by Sunday.”

  “Find a way, or start making funeral arrangements.”

  Tyler hesitated a few seconds for effect. “Fine. We’ll be there. How are we making the exchange? I don’t imagine you’re bringing my father and Stacy’s sister with you to Italy.”

  “Have someone ready to confirm their release at the Lincoln Memorial that day at 3 P.M. eastern time. At the same time on Sunday, 9 P.M. in Naples, there’s an outdoor concert taking place on Piazza del Plebiscito before a fireworks show. Meet me there. Both you and Stacy.”

  “Just me,” Tyler said.

  “Both of you, or don’t bother showing up.”

  “We haven’t seen our proof-of-life videos today.”

  “I’m sending the video now. When I confirm that you’ve solved the puzzle, I will release Sherman and Carol.”

  Hearing Orr use their names as if they were friends made Tyler’s bile rise. He didn’t believe Orr was going to give his hostages up that easily, but they had no choice but to continue playing along.

  “How will we find you at the concert?”

  “I’ll call you with more instructions then. Just make sure you’re there at 9 p.m.” Orr hung up.

  Tyler checked his email. Carol and Sherman looked more haggard than they did the day before, but they seemed uninjured. There wasn’t any more signing to decode, however. This video was from the chest up. Sherman’s hands weren’t in the frame.

  “Orr isn’t leaving us many options,” Tyler said to Stacy as he showed Grant the video.

  She nodded as if she were expecting it.

  “Without any more leads from Aiden,” Grant said, “I think we’re going to have to go through with this.”

  Tyler sighed. “I think you’re right.”

  Ransom handoffs were notoriously messy for everyone involved. Double-crosses were too easy to pull off. One side would bring the money, but the kidnappers would take off with it without delivering the hostage, sometimes by killing the bagman. Or the kidnappers got nabbed by the police as soon as the hostage was recovered. A successful handoff depended on a degree of trust on both sides, but that was sorely missing in this case. Tyler sure as hell didn’t think Orr was going to let any of them go free.

  “So what’s the plan?” Grant said.

  Tyler had the start of an idea for how to approach the handoff, but he had to mull it over before he told Grant and Stacy. “Let’s work on that later. First, we need to see if the geolabe can be saved.”

  The bullet had gone in through the side of the geolabe and out through the top. If it had been struck through the face, the entire device would have been destroyed, but since only a minor portion was damaged Tyler was hoping it could be salvaged. As it was, though, he’d tried turning the knobs, and something inside was definitely broken.

  The outer metal faces of the geolabe were fitted together using tiny screws. Tyler unscrewed them using his Leatherman tool and lifted the single-dial plate. As he’d suspected, there was the tracking device affixed to the inside of the plate with epoxy. He set down the plate so that he could inspect the interior.

  He shined a flashlight into the device and saw the problem. The gears meshed together precisely. Any warping or misalignment would cause the teeth to miss each other, rendering the device nonfunctional.

  “Crap,” he said.

  Stacy leaned forward. “Is it bad?”

  The gears could be lifted out one at a time. He took out three, all of which were perfectly intact. Then he reached the main universal gear, the one that drove the entire mechanism.

  The bullet had grazed just this one gear. A dozen teeth were missing, and the gear was hopelessly bent.

  Stacy picked it up and turned it over in her hands.

  “Can it be fixed?” she asked, giving it back to him.

  Tyler gave Grant a somber look.

  “How long to make that gear?” Grant asked.

  “A couple of days. If I had the right equipment.”

  “A couple of days?” Stacy said. “Can’t you just buy one?”

  “This isn’t an off-the-shelf gear ratio,” Grant said. “It requires precision machining.”

  “I’ll call Miles,” Tyler said. “We can send out the specs. He probably knows someone in the US who can whip one of these out quickly.”

  “It’s Friday afternoon there. Even if we could get the gear fabricated, it wouldn’t make it over to Europe in time for us to fix the geolabe, use it at the Parthenon, and then get to Naples.”

  “There’s got to be some way to get a new one more quickly,” Stacy said. “Too bad we can’t just use Archimedes’ original one.”

  Tyler put the damaged gear down. That was it.

  “We can get the original,” he said. “The gearing inside the Antikythera Mechanism is very similar to the geolabe’s. Its main gear has exactly the same dimensions as this one.”

  Stacy laughed and then stopped when Tyler didn’t join in.

  “You mean the one in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens? I was joking. It’s corroded and embedded in a rock. It’ll never work.”

  “Not the one they found in the shipwreck. The replica. It might require a few modifications to fit it on the axle, but the diameter, thickness, and number of teeth are identical.”

  “Isn’t that one also in the National Archaeological Museum?”

  “Right next to the original.”

  “Wait a second,” Grant said. “You think they’re going to let us borrow their replica of the Antikythera Mechanism, take it apart, and use a piece of it in our own reconstruction?”

  Stacy shook her head. “Museums are stingy with their display objects. Even for a respected institution, it would take months of negotiations to get a loan approved by the cultural ministry. For us, there’s no chance.”

  “That’s if we asked,” Tyler said.

  Grant scowled. “You’re kidding.”

  “We’re only going to borrow it. We’ll give it back.”

  Tyler expected Stacy to protest, but she stared at the ceiling
. He could see that her mind was churning with the implications of his proposal.

  “Are you on board?” Tyler asked her.

  Stacy’s eyes focused on him. He’d never seen a more serious and determined expression.

  “I just saw a video of my sister in handcuffs,” she said. “The question isn’t if we should steal that thing, but how.”

  SATURDAY

  THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Orr asked the flight attendant for another glass of champagne, and she brought it to him within seconds. He winked at her and got a dazzling smile in return. With a good six hours left on the flight to Rome, he saw no reason not to toast the culmination of years of planning. He even thought Alitalia’s name for first class fit his mood: Magnifica.

  He put the footrest up and closed his eyes, but he wasn’t the least bit sleepy. After all this time, he was nearing his final retribution. He visualized Midas’s vault of gold that had haunted his dreams for the past twenty years, running his hands over the gleaming metal that would make him richer than Midas himself could ever have imagined. But, more than the impending wealth, he savored the thought of vengeance for a life snatched from him. His targets would know what it was like to have comfort and prosperity ripped away and replaced by misery and poverty. They would have to scratch and claw out of the abyss the way he had.

  Orr would become rich beyond belief, while the people who’d made his life hell would lose everything. He relished the poetic justice of it.

  Gaul sat next to him watching a movie, while Phillips and Crenshaw were back in the US completing their part of the plan. There was no sense discussing the mission with Gaul until they got to Italy, not with so many potential eavesdroppers around them.

  Orr had the entire sequence in his head. With all the heists he’d pulled in the past, meticulous preparation was second nature to him. Of course, he’d had to put it all down on paper for Gaul, Phillips, and Crenshaw, but he made sure they’d burned all the evidence once it had been committed to memory.