The Midas Code

by Boyd Morrison

  Fearing eventual defeat at the hands of the Romans, Archimedes must have created this room to secure his most valuable possessions. He’d been right to worry about his legacy. According to the Greek historian Plutarch, when Syracuse was captured a Roman soldier burst into Archimedes’ study. Instead of surrendering, Archimedes defied the soldier and went back to his drawings. The soldier killed him, despite orders to capture the engineer alive.

  The room before Tyler held dozens of mechanical devices more intricate and beautiful than he would have thought possible for an inventor of that period. One was a globe that showed the map of the known world at that time. Another device suspended the earth, the sun, and the planets so that they would rotate in their orbits. A third one could have easily been a counting machine, literally the world’s first computer.

  Agog at the genius on display, Tyler knew that Orr had been after the wrong treasure all along. The wealth of amazing mechanisms in this one room would alter everything that historians had assumed about the scope of knowledge in the ancient world.

  Tyler stopped when he spotted a table holding an exact duplicate of the geolabe, an original version of the Antikythera Mechanism constructed by Archimedes himself. He approached it with reverence. The only difference between the one in his hands and the one on the shelf was the green patina on the ancient version.

  Next to the device were documents laid out across the surface. One was clearly a map of Neapolis. Tyler recognized the island where Castel dell’Ovo now stood, as well as the Naples acropolis, the two landmarks that had led him to the well.

  Beside the map were a series of drawings. Without touching them, Tyler inspected them more closely. They looked like sketches of statues. One of them was familiar, and then he realized what it was: the statue of Herakles from the east pediment of the Parthenon, drawn in incredible detail, which would be nearly unrecognizable to anyone who had seen the eroded and handless remnant in the British Museum. There were dozens and dozens of drawings, some of them long-distance views of the ancient temple, some of them close-ups.

  “My God,” Stacy said as she came through the entry hole and gawked at the wealth of drawings. “Do you realize what this will do for our understanding of ancient Greece? No one has ever found drawings of what the Parthenon looked like two thousand years ago.”

  “Archimedes must have drawn these pictures himself and then used them when he designed the geolabe.”

  The rest of the group entered the room, all agape at the treasure trove. While the archaeologist gesticulated wildly and spoke rapid-fire Italian, Stacy directed the camera crew as to how she wanted to document the once-in-a-lifetime discovery.

  Tyler, who smiled as he recognized Stacy in her element, stepped back, happy to be out of the spotlight. It was time again for Archimedes to speak from the past and change history.

  AFTERWORD

  Exploring the history, settings, and technologies that I drew on for The Midas Code was almost as much fun as writing the book itself—sometimes even more fun when it meant racing down the autobahn at 150 miles per hour in the name of research. The world has a wealth of astonishing places to visit and mysteries to delve into, which made it difficult to choose just a few to include in the novel. It might surprise the reader to know how little I had to make up for this story.

  Although the geolabe is fictional, its real-world cousins, the Antikythera Mechanism and its replica, are on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. The display cases for them are just as I described, and a security camera in the room with the Antikythera Mechanism really was missing the day I visited. Although theories abound as to the function of the Antikythera Mechanism, the best guess is that it was used to predict the motion of the sun, the stars, and the planets. For more on the Antikythera Mechanism, I recommend the intriguing Decoding the Heavens, by Jo Marchant.

  Who built the Antikythera Mechanism is also open to argument, but many archaeologists believe its design could have originated from antiquity’s greatest scientist and engineer, Archimedes. His long-rumored treatise, On Sphere-Making, has eluded historians for more than two thousand years, but if it ever comes to light we may discover that Archimedes’ genius was even greater than we imagined.

  In fact, Archimedes’ manuscript may still exist somewhere. As recently as 1998, a codex called the Archimedes Palimpsest was purchased at auction, the Greek writing hidden for hundreds of years under the text of a thirteenth-century prayer book. If you’d like to read more about that fascinating story and about Archimedes’ puzzle, the Stomachion, I highly recommend The Archimedes Codex, by Reviel Netz and William Noel.

  The Greeks invented steganography and did hide messages under the wax of writing tablets. Another real method of concealing communications was to shave a messenger bald, tattoo the message onto his head, and wait for the hair to grow back before sending him on his mission. Slow, yes, but it got the job done.

  As of today, the British Museum in London and the New Acropolis Museum in Athens continue to spar over the fate of the Elgin Marbles.

  I have yet to park my own car in a robotic parking garage, but the structures do exist in many European countries. They’re starting to make their way into crowded downtown areas in the United States, so I may get to try one out someday.

  If you ever want to eat in a real bank vault, there are several restaurants in New York City offering that unique experience.

  Naples is a beautiful city, and it’s hard to believe that a vast world of subterranean tunnels and caverns exists under the bustling metropolis. Every year more underground passageways are discovered, so I’m sure we’ll continue to learn more about their Greek and Roman excavators. To get a feel for the dark and claustrophobic spaces, take a tour of the tunnels at Napoli Sotterranea, near Piazza San Gaetano, the next time you’re in Naples.

  The Camorra has been entrenched in the Naples area for more than a century, and women are starting to take over some of the crime families. For a sobering exploration of the Camorra, read Gomorrah, by Roberto Saviano.

  The bizarre true tale of Louis Dethy’s booby-trapped home needed no embellishment from me.

  The strontium-90 nuclear fuel from radioisotope thermoelectric generators is a real threat to international security. Many of the devices have gone missing since the collapse of the Soviet Union, raising the specter of the radioactive material being used in dirty bombs. Security analysts around the world are already searching for them, and some were found when the thieves turned up with severe radiation sickness.

  While the Midas Touch is a fantasy, distilling gold from water is not. Extremophiles, which are microbes called archaea, thrive around hot springs and black smokers on the ocean floor, and some species consume the heavy metal dissolved in the water before excreting it as a solid. No one has yet figured out how to profitably extract the tiny concentrations of dissolved gold from seawater, but billions of ounces of it are waiting for whoever can.

  The legend of Midas is just that—a legend. But, as with most legends, there is some historical basis for the characters involved. Scholars do think that Midas was a king of Phrygia in modern-day Turkey, but to this day no one has found his birthplace or tomb. If and when someone does find his final resting place, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that a huge cache of gold was buried with Midas. I hear that guy was rich.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’m fortunate to know so many smart and capable people. Without them, this book wouldn’t be in your hands.

  My agent, Irene Goodman, is a dream. Every writer should have it so good. I couldn’t navigate the publishing business without her.

  My foreign-rights agents, Danny Baror and Heather Baror, are the best in the business and a blast to hang out with.

  Sulay Hernandez, my wonderful editor at Touchstone, was incredibly patient in guiding the book from its crude early stages to a polished product. I’m lucky to work with one of the publishing industry’s rising stars.

  Stacy Creamer, David Falk, Shida C
arr, Marcia Burch, and the entire team at Touchstone deserve a hearty round of applause for the amazing effort they’ve put into the novel.

  Although I consulted with several people on this book, any errors in fact or detail, whether intentional or not, are mine alone.

  David Phillips, professor of history of UCLA, is fluent in Greek and advised me on the nuances of the ancient language, including the translation in the prologue.

  Jennifer Hesketh, a riding instructor at Wimbledon Village Stables, taught me the finer points of cantering on an English saddle.

  Alessandro Fusaro, a guide at Napoli Sotterranea, gave me a fantastic tour of underground Naples, answering all my odd questions without blinking.

  My good friend and trauma surgeon, Dr. Erik Van Eaton, spelled out the effects of concussions as well as many other medical issues.

  I’d like to thank Susan Tunis for again focusing her sharp editorial skills on my work.

  My brother, retired Lieutenant Colonel Martin Westerfield, is a former Air Force pilot who gave me the inside scoop about the US military.

  My sister, Dr. Elizabeth Morrison, curator of medieval manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum, was a valuable resource for my countless questions about ancient codices, foreign languages, and museum operations. And, as a thriller fan, she’s an expert at finding those pesky plot holes.

  My father-in-law, the geologist Dr. Frank Moretti, continues to be one of my treasured early readers, giving me feedback that improved the book immensely.

  Finally, it is impossible to overstate how much I cherish having such an understanding, supportive, and loving partner as my wife, Randi. She was intimately involved in the development of this story from beginning to end, and I want to thank her from the bottom of my heart.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Also by Boyd Morrison

  PROLOGUE

  WEDNESDAY: THE DEATH PUZZLE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  THURSDAY: THE ARCHIMEDES TABLET

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  FRIDAY: LA CAMORRISTA

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  SATURDAY: THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  SUNDAY: THE MIDAS TOUCH

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  MONDAY: VENDETTA

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  SIXTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS