Boyd Morrison - The Midas Code

Escape was no longer Sherman’s highest priority.

A strong tailwind helped get the Gulfstream into Heathrow ten minutes before 2 P.M. Tyler had requisitioned a motor pool car from Gordian’s London facility for him and Stacy to drive west to the estate leased by VXN. He had also called ahead to ask for a meeting with the estate’s owner or resident, but the assistant he talked to said the owner of the company was very busy and had no time for them. Only after Stacy jumped in and used her celebrity credentials to explain that the request involved an ancient puzzle devised by Archimedes did the assistant tell her that the owner would agree to an audience if Stacy and Tyler could get there by four o’clock.

Grant would be heading in the other direction, straight into the heart of London during rush hour, so he opted to ride the express into Paddington Station, then take the Underground to the stop nearest the British Museum. His appointment had been easier to make. With a few carefully worded clues revealed by the codex, Grant had persuaded an archaeologist named Oswald Lumley to provide his expertise on the Parthenon.

Tyler had placed the cushioned pack containing the geolabe in the back of the Range Rover in case they needed to consult it when they were at the estate. He then wished Grant good hunting and left the airport, with Stacy riding shotgun.

On the drive, Tyler called Aiden MacKenna hoping to get an update on tracking down Jordan Orr.

Over the SUV’s speaker, Aiden’s answer came out sounding groggy. It was just a little past six in the morning in Seattle.

“Were you up all night?” Tyler asked as he drove on the M3 motorway toward Basingstoke.

“Caught a few winks between database searches,” Aiden said. “I’ll sleep later.”

“Thanks, Aiden.” Tyler was truly appreciative that he worked with friends who would go all out to help him like this. “Any luck?”

“Of course, the credentials he gave us when he hired you to build the geolabe turned out to be bogus. Now he seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Without prints, we don’t have much to go on.”

Before Tyler left Seattle, he had the geolabe dusted for fingerprints, but as he suspected, Orr hadn’t been that sloppy.

“What about the auction-house heist?” Stacy asked.

“Scotland Yard ran into a dead end on that,” Aiden said. “None of the perpetrators were ever caught, and none of the art objects resurfaced.”

“You’d think he would have made enough money on the robbery to retire to Fiji in style.”

“Maybe it wasn’t enough for Orr. During my search, I ran some calculations based on the size of the block of gold Orr told you he found in the Midas chamber. You said the golden statue of the girl was lying on top of a solid-gold cube six feet on each side, right?”

“Along with walls made of gold,” Tyler said.

“And who knows how thick those are. But just consider the pedestal itself, and remember how dense gold is. If it’s twenty-four karat, it would weigh about a hundred and eighteen thousand kilograms, or around four million ounces. If it were melted down and sold on the open market, the cube alone would be worth around four billion dollars.”

Stacy coughed. “Four billion? With a b?”

“Give or take, depending on the price of gold.”

Tyler had been so busy worrying about his father and trying to interpret the clues in the Archimedes Codex that he hadn’t calculated the money involved, but hearing the figures made him realize what they were up against. Criminals would kill their own families for a hundredth that amount. No wonder Orr was going to such elaborate lengths to get the treasure.

Any legitimate treasure hunter would get only a small percentage of the take, if anything, once the Italian government got involved. That’s why Orr was so desperate to keep it a secret.

“What about the tracker?” Tyler said. “Has Miles decoded the signal?”

“Still working on that. I’ll get back to you when we’ve got it.”

“Okay. And let me know the minute you have anything on Orr.”

“Absolutely,” Aiden said, and hung up. Tyler had no doubt that, if there was a way to track down Orr, Aiden would find it.

“If Orr is really after the gold in that chamber,” Tyler said, “why would he make up that story about seeing the Midas Touch in action?”

“Because he’s messing with us,” Stacy said. “I’ve met guys like him before. They like to manipulate people. They get off on it.”

“I’m just trying to figure out his angle. What about the hand?”

Stacy shook her head. “You’ve got me. Archimedes does talk about the hand in the codex. He saw it in person, which means the golden hand is at least twenty-two hundred years old.”

“I know. That’s what bothers me.”

“Because the hand is so old or because it looks so real?”

“Both.”

“Like I said before, I don’t have a scientific background, but it did look pretty convincing.”

“However it was made, there was nothing magical about the transformation.” Tyler simply refused to believe that a magical power could perform alchemy in violation of every known chemical law.

“Would you bet our families’ lives on that?” Stacy asked.

Tyler didn’t answer, because it didn’t matter what he believed. His mission was to find the map left by Archimedes so that he could get his father back.

They were silent for the rest of the drive. When they reached the gates of the estate thirty minutes later, Tyler pressed the buzzer.

“What is your business?” a man said in a thick Italian accent.

“My name is Tyler Locke. We have an appointment.”

“Yes. Drive to the house.”

The ten-foot-tall gates slowly drew apart. Tyler wheeled the Range Rover along a winding brick driveway toward a gray stone mansion a half mile away.

As they got closer, he realized how immense the home really was. The front facade alone was at least a hundred feet long. He could picture the original owner reigning over a vast estate of feudal vassals.

Several cars were parked in front of the mansion, but only one caught his eye. It was a red Ferrari 458 Italia, with a top speed of more than two hundred miles per hour. Tyler was a connoisseur, regularly driving loaners when Gordian tested them for auto and insurance companies at its track in Phoenix, but he hadn’t yet driven an Italia.

He parked the Range Rover next to it and got out to take a closer look before they knocked on the door. For just a moment, he imagined himself hearing the roar of the car’s mid-engine V8 behind his head.

The clop-clop of approaching hooves made him turn around.

A chestnut horse trotted toward them. Tyler instinctively backed away.

“What’s the matter?” Stacy said.

“I don’t like horses,” Tyler said, eyeing it warily.

Stacy looked at him as if he’d said he hated rainbows. “Who doesn’t like horses?”

“Me.”

“Why?”

“They’re big and they’re unpredictable.”

“They’re friendly.”

“I forgot. You grew up on a farm.”

“I practically lived on my horse, Chanter, when I was a teenager. Have you ever ridden one?”

“Yes,” Tyler said, but he didn’t elaborate.

The rider pulled on the reins and expertly guided the horse to a stop. She was a striking woman in her thirties, dressed in impeccable traditional English riding togs and helmet. A black ponytail flicked back and forth every time she moved her head.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” the woman said to Tyler, her Italian accent softer than the security guard’s. “I saw you looking at her.”