Boyd Morrison: The Midas Code

“How do I know he’s all right?” Tyler asked.

“He’s unavailable to talk at the moment because he’s being taken to a secure location, but when he’s safe and sound, I’ll send you verification that he’s fine.”

“What do you want?”

“First, put the phone back on speaker. Stacy should hear this, too.”

Tyler switched it on. “Go ahead.”

“I did what you asked, you bastard!” Stacy yelled. “Now you hold up your end of the bargain!”

“I’m not letting your sister go just yet,” Orr said.

Tyler and Grant looked at each other in confusion, then at Stacy.

“Sister?” Tyler said.

“Good. Stacy followed her instructions and didn’t tell you about Carol. For that, Stacy’s sister will get to keep all her fingers.”

“No! You let her go!”

“Not so fast,” Orr said. “Now that you’ve passed your test, I have a mission for you.”

“What mission?” Tyler asked.

“I want you to find the location of the Midas Touch for me.”

Tyler wasn’t sure what Orr meant. “Is that the code word for something?”

“No code word. No metaphor. No brand name. I mean the actual Midas Touch that can turn objects to gold.”

Grant snorted in disbelief. Tyler could only gape. That was about the last thing he would have guessed Orr was going to say. Tyler thought the kidnapping was going to be about paying a ransom or maybe even using his top-secret clearance to gain access to government files.

But the Midas Touch? It was ridiculous. Everyone knew it was a myth about the corrupting power of greed. King Midas was given the wondrous ability to turn anything he touched into gold, which he initially thought was a blessing. But when his feast of celebration became inedible at his touch, Midas realized that this talent was a curse. He begged the gods to rid him of it, and they did, but not before he accidentally turned his own daughter into gold.

“Say that again,” Tyler said.

“You heard me right,” Orr said. “The Midas Touch. The two of you are going to find it, or your father and Stacy’s sister are dead. If you find it, I’ll make a trade with you.”

“Are you serious?”

“Deadly. I promise you that the Midas Touch does in fact exist.”

“Okay,” Tyler said slowly. He was already wondering how he could give the impression of going along with this wild-goose chase while figuring out how to find his father.

“I’ve seen it for myself, and I can prove it to you.”

“If you’ve seen it, why do you need us to find it?”

“That’s a story better told in person. Meet me at 1 p.m. outside the southwest corner of Safeco Field and I’ll tell it to you. Just you and Stacy. No police and no Westfield, or both your father and her sister are gone.”

The Viper’s clock read 10:10. There had to be a ferry back to Seattle before noon.

“We’ll be there,” Tyler said. He hung up and closed his eyes, trying to absorb the news of his father’s abduction. He concentrated on breathing, because it felt as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him.

They were all quiet for a moment until Grant broke the silence.

“By the way, I’m Grant Westfield,” he said. “I’ll be your chauffeur back to the ferry today.”

He held his hand out to Stacy, who gave it a firm shake. “Stacy Benedict.”

“Yeah, you’re from Chasing the Past. I didn’t recognize you at first.”

“Thanks for picking us up.”

“Anything for Tyler. But would you mind telling me why some lunatic just blew up a truck you were driving?”

Tyler explained about the puzzle to deactivate the bomb, that it was some kind of test to prove to Orr that they could carry out his insane quest.

“And how did he know my name?” Grant said. “Who is this guy?”

“You met him once. His name is Jordan Orr.”

“Wait a minute. The guy who hired you to build the geolabe?”

Tyler nodded. “And I’m guessing Stacy knows him, too.”

“Only since this morning,” she said. “I was in town for a fund-raiser, and I get a call that my sister, Carol, was kidnapped. All he told me was to get on the ferry and not to tell you about her or he would hurt her.”

Tyler dug his fingernails into his palms until the knuckles were white. He’d never been angrier in his life than he was at that moment. If he had known about Stacy’s kidnapped sister, he might have been able to warn his father in time. Tyler wanted to yell and scream and pound his fists against the dashboard. But it was Orr he wanted to throttle, not Stacy. She was as much a pawn in this as he was.

Tyler shook his head and took a deep breath until the moment passed.

“It’s good we decided not to talk in the truck with Orr listening in,” he said to Stacy. “We’re going to have to be very careful dealing with him.”

She turned to him, and Tyler saw her face etched with fear. “Just promise me that my sister will be all right. I know you can’t really promise that, but do it anyway.”

Tyler nodded. “I promise. We’ll find a way to get them both back safely.”

“There’s something I want to know,” Stacy said. “If you built that device, the geolabe, how did Orr get hold of it?”

“I was approached by Orr last year, after Miles twisted my arm to go on your show. I mentioned on the program that I had an interest in Archimedes. Orr showed me a translation from an ancient Greek document with instructions for building an object called a geolabe and told me it was from a private collector. It sounded like an intriguing job, so I said yes.”

“And you weren’t suspicious of this mysterious request?”

Tyler nodded. “Mildly, but the project seemed harmless enough. I had one of my guys, Aiden MacKenna, look into the documents to see what he could find, just out of curiosity. Nothing came up. It wasn’t until a month after I delivered the completed project that Scotland Yard released a long-lost photo of a manuscript page that matched my document verbatim. Only then did we realize that it had been stolen.”

“Did you report it to the police?”

“Yes, but by that time Orr had been tipped off and disappeared.”

“How long did it take you to build this thing?”

“About three months,” Tyler said. “Without Gordian’s engineering resources, it would have taken a lot longer to decipher the schematics.”

“That doesn’t make sense, though,” Stacy said.

“Why?”

“Because if he blew up the ferry, the geolabe would have been destroyed along with it. Why did he risk losing something that would take so long to build again if we couldn’t solve that puzzle?”

Tyler’s skin prickled at the thought of how close they had been to becoming permanent denizens of Puget Sound.

“Orr must have decided that you and I were the only people on the planet who could solve the Archimedes puzzle, so if we failed the geolabe was worthless to him. Now that he knows we can operate it, we’ve become indispensable to him. We’re a package deal along with the geolabe.”

“This is crazy,” Stacy said.

Tyler shook his head at the colossal understatement. “Which part? That Orr thinks the Midas Touch exists or that he thinks Archimedes constructed a device that will lead us to it?”

T he van slowed, but with the blindfold on, Sherman Locke couldn’t tell whether it was because they were approaching another turn or because they had reached their destination.

They’d been traveling for over an hour, mostly at highway speeds, which meant they could be in DC, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia. After he was hit with the Taser, a cloth had been stuck in his mouth and his wrists and ankles were cuffed. He was thrown into the back of a panel van, with the fake hotel staffer driving and the phony Army officer in back with him. He was frisked thoroughly, and his car keys, wallet, and phone were taken.