The Midas Code

by Boyd Morrison

  Tyler understood what he was doing. Both ends of the rope around the frame extended all the way down to the bottom of the cistern. Once the four of them reached the bottom, Gaul would pull one end down and that rope would fall free. That way, no one walking through the courtyard would see the rope attached to the frame and investigate. To climb back up, the second rope would be left attached to the piton and out of sight.

  “Okay,” Gaul said. “It’s simple. We’re going to climb down one at a time. I’ll belay you on the way down. Got it?”

  They all nodded, and each of them was given a three-belt harness to put on. Tyler put his legs into each of the smaller loops and then buckled the third around his waist. The brake rope was already attached, with the carabiner dangling on the end. Gaul also gave Tyler and Stacy small headband lights that they would use on the climb down.

  Gaul went first, his duffel strapped to his back. It took him several minutes to reach the bottom while Tyler and Stacy waited up top with Orr, who stood away from them with his finger ready to trigger the bombs strapped to their waists if he had to. When he was down, Gaul radioed up that he was in place and ready with the Taser.

  Stacy went next. Tyler helped her into the well and made sure that her harness was attached properly. She wasn’t tentative about the climb at all. Tyler remembered her talk about exploring ancient ruins and caves with her cameramen in tow, so this descent was nothing new to her. He watched her skillfully climb down until she was out of sight.

  For the first time, Tyler was alone with Orr. He stared at Orr, who returned his gaze with his lip curled in a half smile.

  “How do you think you and Gaul are going to carry out a hundred and twenty-five tons of gold?” Tyler asked.

  Orr laughed quietly. “You think I’m after the gold? I told you. I want the Midas Touch itself.”

  “You really are crazy,” Tyler said, shaking his head.

  Orr looked as if he was disappointed at Tyler’s skepticism, paused, then said, “Have you ever heard of extremophiles?”

  “It sounds like someone who enjoys jumping off buildings wearing a parachute.”

  “No. An extremophile is an organism that can exist in conditions that would kill most other life forms. They’re found around volcanic vents on the ocean floor or in acidic hot springs like at Yellowstone Park. They’re microbes called archaea. Some of these microbes have been known to actually digest metals in solution and excrete the solid form. That’s why companies have been trying to mine the ocean floor around these black smokers.”

  “And you think that’s what the Midas Touch is?”

  “As ridiculous as it sounds, yes. I have researched this my whole life, and that’s my theory. I think Midas’s skin was somehow afflicted with this kind of microbe, perhaps exposed to it during a visit to a hot spring somewhere, but he was immune to its effects. I discovered that many people live with chronic skin diseases. Believe me, you don’t want to see the photos.”

  “So how does he turn things to gold?”

  “Any object he touched would become contaminated with this microbe. If the object was then submerged in a solution with dissolved gold in it, the object would be transmuted to gold by the microbe.”

  “So you think you’ll get rich if you can recover this microbe?” Tyler said. “What makes you think it’s still alive?”

  “Over twenty years ago, in that chamber somewhere below us, I saw a man turn to gold in front of my eyes.”

  He must have meant the drug runner from Cavano’s childhood tale who chased her and Orr into the chamber. Tyler recalled her saying that the man had touched something inside the golden coffin, something that had caused him excruciating pain. If that was truly the Midas Touch, the king himself may have been immune through some divine providence, but anyone else who came in contact with it would experience mind-bending agony, maybe even death.

  “These archaea can remain dormant for thousands of years under the proper conditions,” Orr continued. “Whatever they used to embalm Midas could have preserved the microbe.”

  However far-fetched Orr’s theory sounded, he believed it. He almost had Tyler convinced.

  “You said the Midas chamber had a pool with a hot spring in it,” Tyler said. “How do you know that’s not the source of this magical ability?”

  “I don’t, but I have a way to test it. I have two vials of water with me, one with water containing an acidic mixture of dissolved gold, and another with seawater. If the Midas Touch is real, it will work with those samples as well.”

  “Seawater?”

  The call came up from Gaul that Stacy had reached the bottom. Orr gestured for Tyler to go next.

  As Tyler climbed over the lip of the well and attached his harness, Orr said, “Seawater has minute amounts of gold dissolved in it. If the Midas Touch proves to be as effective as I think it is, you could extract huge quantities of gold from the oceans.”

  Tyler’s mind reeled at how much gold that could be. “We’re talking millions of ounces, then.”

  Orr shook his head. “You’re thinking way too small. I’ll give you a hint. There are over a billion cubic kilometers of seawater in the world, and the average solubility of gold is thirteen parts per trillion. Now get going.”

  Tyler began climbing down. Steadying himself wasn’t too challenging, and the mindless activity allowed him to calculate the staggering sum that was driving this whole venture. Aiden had been far off when he’d guessed that Orr and Cavano were each after a block of gold worth four billion dollars. Tyler went through the math twice and came up with the same stunning figure both times.

  If what Orr told him was true, even the most conservative estimate would put the value of all the gold in the world’s oceans at twenty-five trillion dollars.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Orr watched as Tyler and Stacy huddled over the geolabe, the copied pages of the codex he had given them, and a lantern to see by. As Tyler talked, Stacy made notes on the copy with a pencil. Tyler had refused to work with her until Gaul gave him a taste of the Taser.

  Those three pages he’d held back had been Orr’s ace in the hole. Without them, he knew Tyler and Stacy couldn’t have found the Midas chamber on their own. Not in the maze that faced them.

  The floor of the cistern, the chamber that would have held the water supplying the well, sat 150 feet below the church, and its ceiling soared three stories above them, where it was pierced by the well opening. The cistern’s floor was sunk ten feet from the surrounding tunnels, so that a pool would have formed. Now that the aqueducts were shut off, the chamber was dry. Crude steps led up to each tunnel.

  Orr ran his hand over the light gray tuff that made up the walls of the room. The solidified volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius, which had erupted regularly since humans first settled in Naples, was so easy to work that the earliest Greek settlers had excavated tons of it for building material. They soon realized that the tunnels could be used as aqueducts to transport water for the city dwellers. The network of tunnels grew as the Romans, who wrested the city from the Greeks in the third century, mined the tuff to make the finest cement in Europe, creating structures that were still intact more than two thousand years later.

  Inhaling the dank air and listening to the dull reverberation of their voices, Orr vividly remembered his visit to Naples, when he had played with Gia Cavano in the tunnels despite their parents’ protestations. Some children were scared of dark, closed-in tunnels, but Orr could have explored them all day, marveling at the feat the ancients had accomplished in carving them out.

  Those ancients had been as busy as gophers. Four tunnels led away from the cistern. If he hadn’t been looking for them, he wouldn’t have noticed the Greek letters carved into the tuff at the bottom right of each tunnel opening. Alpha, lambda, sigma, and mu. Somehow the geolabe would tell them which letter would lead them in the right direction.

  “Which is the right one?” Orr said.

  Tyler didn’t look up. “We’re working on it.”
>
  “Work faster. If I think you’re stalling, one of you will end up with a hole in your belly the size of a dinner plate.”

  Stacy blanched. She wasn’t planning on trying to fool him.

  “We’re doing the best we can,” Tyler said.

  “You just sprung this on us,” Stacy said. “It may take time.”

  “We may not have much time,” Orr said.

  “Why not?” Tyler said.

  “Because Gia Cavano could very well be on her way here right now.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Stacy spat out. “You told her where we are?”

  “I needed your friend Grant Westfield out of the way. Either Gia killed him or, even better, she convinced him to lead her to us. If she doesn’t follow, good for me. If she does follow, I’ll have a surprise waiting for her.”

  “What kind of surprise?” Tyler said.

  “The nasty kind. Now get back to work.”

  Tyler stared at Orr. For a moment, Orr forgot that he was in control and felt unnerved by Tyler’s gaze. Then Tyler refocused his attention on the geolabe. Orr was surprised by his sense of relief. He ran his fingers over the wrist detonators and felt better.

  Tyler and Stacy went back and forth between the device and the instructions in the document. As far as Orr could follow, it had something to do with mathematical principles that were beyond him. At one point, Tyler took the pencil and jotted down some calculations. Stacy looked confused by Tyler’s questions as well, but she answered with translations as quickly as he asked them.

  In ten minutes, Tyler suddenly stood up with the geolabe.

  “You’ve figured it out?” Orr asked eagerly.

  “Yes.” If there was any doubt in Tyler’s mind, Orr didn’t hear it.

  “How does it work?”

  Tyler shook his head. “It’s too complicated to explain.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You’re right. I just don’t want to tell you. For obvious reasons.” He pointed to the explosive belt around his waist.

  Orr grinned. “You’re a smart guy. But I’ll be keeping tabs on which tunnel we take. If I think you’re stalling by taking us in the wrong direction or I see us doubling back, there really will be no reason to have you both along. Get me?”

  “I’ve got you.”

  “So which way do we go?”

  Orr saw Tyler twirl the top knob on the geolabe. When the dial stopped, he turned it over, then glanced around until his eyes settled on the portal with the sigma next to it. The opening was no more than three feet wide.

  “That one,” he said, handing back the pen and the sheaf of papers.

  “You’re sure?” Orr said.

  “That’s what Archimedes tells me.”

  Orr saw no harm in letting Tyler and Stacy see where they were going, so each of them was equipped with a lantern. The lights threw eerie shadows in the otherwise total darkness. The passageway was curved and not wide enough for more than one person at a time. Gaul went first, then Stacy, then Tyler. When Tyler was far enough ahead, Orr followed him in.

  Just a few feet in, Orr opened a gum wrapper and pocketed the gum. He loosely balled up the wrapper and dropped it on the ground. The tiny piece of silver foil reflected his light in a pinpoint flash. Now Cavano would find the carelessly dropped bit of trash and know which way to go.

  After forty feet, Orr emerged from the narrow tunnel into another cistern as big as the first. Three more passageways led off from it. This time, no Greek letters were present.

  “What happened to the markings?” Orr said.

  “There won’t be any more,” Tyler said. “The geolabe will tell us which tunnel to take from here on out.” Tyler pointed to the tunnel on their right.

  Orr now understood why the geolabe was their guide. The spy for the king of Syracuse must have created his map as he walked, perhaps marking his arm with charcoal to record the direction of each turn. He wouldn’t want to etch the walls with directional indicators that could lead the Romans back to his discovery. But when the spy found the exit, he knew he would need to indicate which tunnel was the starting point back to the treasure, so he’d scratched a letter next to each of the tunnels just below the old water level of the cistern.

  Orr used a knife to mark the wall with a small x next to the opening they’d just come through to show him the correct path out once he got rid of Tyler and Stacy. Then he sent the three of them ahead into the next tunnel while he hung back.

  Orr knelt and opened his backpack. He took out a smaller knapsack specially created by Crenshaw. It would look like something they might have left behind in the course of their exploration. In reality, it contained ten pounds of phosphorus grenades. The opening was partially unzipped.

  No doubt Cavano would make the trip down with her men. She wouldn’t give up the chance to see the Midas chamber again for herself. She’d follow the trail left by Orr’s gum wrapper, and when her group came into this room, she’d be curious to see what Orr had abandoned. When one of her men opened the zipper or picked up the knapsack, the grenades would explode, showering the entire room with burning phosphorus and causing a gruesome death for everyone with her.

  Orr armed the device and stood, heaving the backpack onto his shoulder. He frowned as he climbed the steps into the next tunnel. The only downside of the plan was that he wouldn’t get to see Gia Cavano open her surprise.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FBI special agent Ben Riegert’s laugh filled the cramped interrogation room of the Hagerstown sheriff’s office. The story was just getting better and better. Mohammed Qasim was laying it on thicker as he went. Riegert’s partner, Jackie Immel, was questioning the other suspect, Abdul bin Kamal, in the next room. He hoped she was getting more out of her guy. This one wasn’t making any sense.

  Riegert took another swig of coffee. He’d raced out to Hagerstown from the DC office along with twenty other agents as soon as they heard that a 911 call had come in claiming that a terrorist attack was taking place and a warehouse had blown up.

  They found Qasim and Kamal beside the building behind a concrete retaining wall with a young woman and a man bleeding to death from shots to the chest and leg. The ambulance had taken the injured man away, and he was identified as retired Major General Sherman Locke. Riegert hadn’t gotten word about his condition, but the paramedics had said he might not survive. A chopper was flying him to the George Washington University trauma center.

  The woman, Carol Benedict, was now being examined at a local hospital. Before she was taken away in the ambulance, she told the local police that she couldn’t remember her abduction, which made Riegert suspect that she’d been drugged. Rohypnol and other date-rape drugs usually caused short-term-memory loss, and the hospital would test for it, but it was probably out of her system by now. Riegert would head there to question her next.

  Riegert took a seat opposite the suspect. “So, Mr. Qasim, you claim two guys busted into your house as you were getting your morning coffee and abducted you?” Riegert said without even trying to hide his disbelief. Usually these terrorist types were more than happy to come right out and show pride in their acts, but this guy was different. Qasim looked terrified, not the face of defiance Riegert was expecting.

  “I swear that is the truth,” Qasim said.

  “Where are you from?”

  “I am from Saudi Arabia. I am attending the University of Maryland to get my degree in petroleum engineering.”

  “Uh-huh. Why do you think these men kidnapped you?”

  “I don’t know! They blindfolded me, put me in a van, and tied me up. Then they picked up Abdul.”

  “You know him?”

  “Only in passing. We go to the same mosque in College Park.”

  “You weren’t associated with him in any other way?”

  “We studied the Koran together several times, but that is all.”

  “So they took you to this warehouse in Hagerstown. Then what?”

  “Then they threw me into this room
and locked the door. It had a bed and a bucket and nothing else in it. They gave me water and just a little food.”

  Qasim was definitely hungry. Riegert had given him a candy bar, and he chowed it down in two bites.

  “So you were in there for more than two days,” Riegert said. “Why?”

  “You keep asking me why. Ask the kidnappers why!”

  “The kidnappers, huh?” Riegert opened a folder and tossed a photo of a charred body over to Qasim. “The only other person we’ve found in connection with this is that guy right there. Was he a partner of yours?”

  “No!”

  “Mr. Qasim, a truck was hijacked not too far away the day you claim that you were kidnapped. The driver, a Clarence Gibson, says that two men stopped his truck, took him to a remote forest location, and left him for dead. The trucker said the men spoke Arabic. Know anything about that?”

  Qasim stared at him, wide-eyed. “You think I was part of that?”

  “You did disappear that day.”

  “This is crazy, I tell you!”

  “This morning, 911 got a call from a General Sherman Locke that he was being held by terrorists. The police arrive to find a local warehouse blown to hell, and the only survivors are two foreign nationals in the company of a frightened woman and a nearly dead man, who we believe is a newly retired two-star general in the Air Force. How do you explain that?”

  “I can’t! I can only tell you what happened.”

  “Okay. Take me through this morning.”

  “Can I have another candy bar?”

  “Sure. After we hear your story about what happened today.” By “we,” Riegert meant the recording apparatus and the eight men squeezed into the observation room behind the one-way mirror.

  Qasim took a sip of his water and cleared his throat. “All right. I was sleeping in my prison cell when a noise woke me up. I think it was a fight. I heard a buzz and then shouting. It sounded like someone fell. And then shots. Many shots.”