Boyd Morrison - The Midas Code

“That’s it?” Stacy said.

“Understand that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, so I take it very seriously. You should, too. I’ll be in Naples on Sunday. If you can’t be there with the solution to my problem, don’t bother coming.”

As the skies opened up with another downpour, Orr melted into the sea of humanity. Stacy wanted to run him down and pound his head into the pavement, but that wouldn’t help her sister, and she’d get blown up in the process.

“I want to kill him,” she said. “I’ve never said that before about a person and really meant it.”

Tyler, who was also staring at Orr, just nodded. They kept watching until Orr walked around the corner and disappeared.

T yler was eager to read the documents that Orr had emailed to them, but Stacy insisted on stopping at her downtown hotel first to get into dry clothes. The plan was to then go back to Tyler’s house, where they had more room to spread out. While she changed, Tyler went to Gordian’s headquarters to print out the documents and check out a hunch he had about the geolabe. An hour later, he was back at her hotel.

Stacy came out wearing the same jacket and boots, but a fresh shirt and jeans. Tyler expected her to be carrying nothing more than her briefcase, so he was surprised to see her carry-on trailing behind as well.

“Pop the trunk,” she said as she reached the back of the Viper.

Tyler swung around in his seat. “What are you doing?”

“If we’re going to be working on this all night, there’s no sense in bringing me back here. It’ll just waste time.”

“So you’re just inviting yourself to stay at my place?”

“Relax. I’m not planning to throw myself at you. I’m being efficient, that’s all. Besides, it’s not like you’re married.”

Tyler glanced down at his ringless hand. He had been married once and wore the ring for a long time after she died, but it now sat in his nightstand drawer. His love for Karen would never diminish, but he’d decided to treasure her memory by moving forward with his life.

He looked back up at Stacy. “How do you know I don’t have a girlfriend?” Tyler didn’t object to her staying at his place. He was just amused by her brazen forwardness.

“Oh,” Stacy said as if she’d never even considered that. “Do you?”

Tyler had had one relationship since he became a widower. He’d really wanted the long-distance affair with Dilara to work out, but maintaining their connection through phone calls and emails had been difficult. Most of the time she was in Turkey excavating Noah’s Ark, while he was all over the rest of the world. They kept in contact, but developing a relationship wasn’t in the cards when they were separated by ten thousand miles most of the year.

“No,” he said with feigned indignation, “but you don’t have to seem so surprised.” He clicked the trunk release.

“Sorry,” Stacy said as she lifted her bag in. “I just figured you were like me. Driven. Workaholic. No time for romantic entanglements.”

“It’s like talking to a mirror.”

She picked up the thick folder of papers from the passenger seat and got in.

“Are these the pages Orr sent?” she said.

Tyler nodded and put the car in gear. “I made two English copies for us, plus the original in Greek for you.”

Within ten minutes they had entered the Magnolia neighborhood. He turned into the driveway of his two-story Mediterranean-style villa perched on a cliff overlooking Puget Sound and downtown Seattle. He pulled the Viper into the middle bay of a three-car garage, a Ducati motorcycle next to a workbench on the right, and a Porsche SUV with a flat tire on the left.

Tyler pointed at the Porsche’s tire and said, “That’s why we were crammed into the Viper today. I don’t normally take it out in the rain.”

When they got inside, Stacy walked over to the windows. “Carol would love this view.”

Tyler set her bag down in the hall. “You can have the spare bedroom on the right. The sheets are reasonably clean.”

Stacy shot him a get-real look.

“Kidding,” he said. “I wash them daily.”

“I’ll assume it’s somewhere in between.”

She took a spin around the living room, then checked out the kitchen, running her hands over the granite countertop and the cherry cabinets. “This is some house. Gordian must pay pretty well.”

Tyler took a seat and pulled out the three packets of paper. “You don’t have much of a filter, do you?”

“I’m just saying it’s not like you’re hiding the fact that you make money. A mansion. Red sports car. Porsche. Motorcycle.”

“As a partner in the firm, I am adequately compensated, and I enjoy the fruits of my labor.”

“Good for you, Dr. Locke.”

“Shall we get started, Dr. Benedict?”

“Got anything to drink?”

Tyler nodded toward the fridge. “Help yourself. I’ll take a Diet Coke.”

Drinks in hand, Tyler first showed Stacy the other side of the geolabe, which had been hidden from her when it was connected to the bomb. While the front had two dials with Greek writing labeling the discrete points on each dial, the opposing face had a single dial that was divided evenly into 360 individual notches and numbered every thirty notches, like the points on a compass. Tyler didn’t know what they were for, and Stacy suggested that the answer might lie in the manuscript.

They spent the rest of the afternoon reading the translation of the Archimedes Codex, with Stacy referring often to the photocopy of the original Greek. Tyler had seen some of the document before while he was building the geolabe, but most of the pages were new to him.

The dense Greek writing was sprinkled with drawings and mathematical proofs. There were 247 folios in the original document, each page a treasure in itself, revealing the genius of antiquity’s greatest engineer. Tyler wished he could study every one of them, but only thirty-eight of the pages referred to Midas and the geolabe, a word coined by Archimedes. At one point, Archimedes even mentioned that he’d seen the golden hand, supporting Orr’s claim that the codex really had been written to lead someone to Midas’s treasure. Tyler found no explanation for the purpose of the notches.

After going over the copy of the original document, Stacy told Tyler that the codex seemed to end abruptly, which could mean either that some pages were missing or that Archimedes hadn’t completed the manuscript. The reading was slow going, with Tyler stopping often to ask Stacy questions, but by seven o’clock Tyler had completed a first pass-through. After Stacy made a few phone calls, it was clear what their next step had to be.

At seven on the dot, there was a hammering at the door that startled Stacy. Tyler recognized the cadence and yelled, “Come in!”

The lock jiggled as a key went through the motions, and Grant threw open the door. He was by himself.

“Where’s Aiden?” Tyler asked.

“He was with Miles in DC. They should arrive in about an hour.”

“You gave my regrets to the team at Bremerton?”

“I told them you were unavoidably detained on an urgent matter.”

“Good.” The project wasn’t at a critical point. He wouldn’t be missed for five days. Stacy’s show was on hiatus for the summer, so her schedule was easy to clear.

“Have you heard from your father?” Grant said.

When Tyler showed him the video, Grant smiled. “He’s a tough hombre,” he said.

“Which is great for the military, but try being his son.” Tyler tried to smile at his own weak joke, but all he could think of was his dad blindfolded like a prisoner of war.

“He’ll be okay.” Grant slapped Tyler on the shoulder. “Now, what’s for dinner? I’m so hungry I could eat a buttered monkey.”