Boyd Morrison - The Midas Code

“Is it Orr?” Stacy asked.

Tyler nodded and put the call on speaker.

“How are you doing, Locke?” Orr said. “Found the map yet?”

“We’re working on it.”

“I already know you work well under pressure. You have to meet me in Naples in two days.”

Tyler remembered Cavano’s explanation about beginning her excavation on Monday. There would be no wiggle room in Orr’s schedule, but he had to put up at least a token resistance.

“We need more time,” Tyler said. “There’s no way we can finish our task by Sunday.”

“Find a way, or start making funeral arrangements.”

Tyler hesitated a few seconds for effect. “Fine. We’ll be there. How are we making the exchange? I don’t imagine you’re bringing my father and Stacy’s sister with you to Italy.”

“Have someone ready to confirm their release at the Lincoln Memorial that day at 3 P.M. eastern time. At the same time on Sunday, 9 P.M. in Naples, there’s an outdoor concert taking place on Piazza del Plebiscito before a fireworks show. Meet me there. Both you and Stacy.”

“Just me,” Tyler said.

“Both of you, or don’t bother showing up.”

“We haven’t seen our proof-of-life videos today.”

“I’m sending the video now. When I confirm that you’ve solved the puzzle, I will release Sherman and Carol.”

Hearing Orr use their names as if they were friends made Tyler’s bile rise. He didn’t believe Orr was going to give his hostages up that easily, but they had no choice but to continue playing along.

“How will we find you at the concert?”

“I’ll call you with more instructions then. Just make sure you’re there at 9 p.m.” Orr hung up.

Tyler checked his email. Carol and Sherman looked more haggard than they did the day before, but they seemed uninjured. There wasn’t any more signing to decode, however. This video was from the chest up. Sherman’s hands weren’t in the frame.

“Orr isn’t leaving us many options,” Tyler said to Stacy as he showed Grant the video.

She nodded as if she were expecting it.

“Without any more leads from Aiden,” Grant said, “I think we’re going to have to go through with this.”

Tyler sighed. “I think you’re right.”

Ransom handoffs were notoriously messy for everyone involved. Double-crosses were too easy to pull off. One side would bring the money, but the kidnappers would take off with it without delivering the hostage, sometimes by killing the bagman. Or the kidnappers got nabbed by the police as soon as the hostage was recovered. A successful handoff depended on a degree of trust on both sides, but that was sorely missing in this case. Tyler sure as hell didn’t think Orr was going to let any of them go free.

“So what’s the plan?” Grant said.

Tyler had the start of an idea for how to approach the handoff, but he had to mull it over before he told Grant and Stacy. “Let’s work on that later. First, we need to see if the geolabe can be saved.”

The bullet had gone in through the side of the geolabe and out through the top. If it had been struck through the face, the entire device would have been destroyed, but since only a minor portion was damaged Tyler was hoping it could be salvaged. As it was, though, he’d tried turning the knobs, and something inside was definitely broken.

The outer metal faces of the geolabe were fitted together using tiny screws. Tyler unscrewed them using his Leatherman tool and lifted the single-dial plate. As he’d suspected, there was the tracking device affixed to the inside of the plate with epoxy. He set down the plate so that he could inspect the interior.

He shined a flashlight into the device and saw the problem. The gears meshed together precisely. Any warping or misalignment would cause the teeth to miss each other, rendering the device nonfunctional.

“Crap,” he said.

Stacy leaned forward. “Is it bad?”

The gears could be lifted out one at a time. He took out three, all of which were perfectly intact. Then he reached the main universal gear, the one that drove the entire mechanism.

The bullet had grazed just this one gear. A dozen teeth were missing, and the gear was hopelessly bent.

Stacy picked it up and turned it over in her hands.

“Can it be fixed?” she asked, giving it back to him.

Tyler gave Grant a somber look.

“How long to make that gear?” Grant asked.

“A couple of days. If I had the right equipment.”

“A couple of days?” Stacy said. “Can’t you just buy one?”

“This isn’t an off-the-shelf gear ratio,” Grant said. “It requires precision machining.”

“I’ll call Miles,” Tyler said. “We can send out the specs. He probably knows someone in the US who can whip one of these out quickly.”

“It’s Friday afternoon there. Even if we could get the gear fabricated, it wouldn’t make it over to Europe in time for us to fix the geolabe, use it at the Parthenon, and then get to Naples.”

“There’s got to be some way to get a new one more quickly,” Stacy said. “Too bad we can’t just use Archimedes’ original one.”

Tyler put the damaged gear down. That was it.

“We can get the original,” he said. “The gearing inside the Antikythera Mechanism is very similar to the geolabe’s. Its main gear has exactly the same dimensions as this one.”

Stacy laughed and then stopped when Tyler didn’t join in.

“You mean the one in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens? I was joking. It’s corroded and embedded in a rock. It’ll never work.”

“Not the one they found in the shipwreck. The replica. It might require a few modifications to fit it on the axle, but the diameter, thickness, and number of teeth are identical.”

“Isn’t that one also in the National Archaeological Museum?”

“Right next to the original.”

“Wait a second,” Grant said. “You think they’re going to let us borrow their replica of the Antikythera Mechanism, take it apart, and use a piece of it in our own reconstruction?”

Stacy shook her head. “Museums are stingy with their display objects. Even for a respected institution, it would take months of negotiations to get a loan approved by the cultural ministry. For us, there’s no chance.”

“That’s if we asked,” Tyler said.

Grant scowled. “You’re kidding.”

“We’re only going to borrow it. We’ll give it back.”

Tyler expected Stacy to protest, but she stared at the ceiling. He could see that her mind was churning with the implications of his proposal.

“Are you on board?” Tyler asked her.

Stacy’s eyes focused on him. He’d never seen a more serious and determined expression.

“I just saw a video of my sister in handcuffs,” she said. “The question isn’t if we should steal that thing, but how.”

O rr asked the flight attendant for another glass of champagne, and she brought it to him within seconds. He winked at her and got a dazzling smile in return. With a good six hours left on the flight to Rome, he saw no reason not to toast the culmination of years of planning. He even thought Alitalia’s name for first class fit his mood: Magnifica.

He put the footrest up and closed his eyes, but he wasn’t the least bit sleepy. After all this time, he was nearing his final retribution. He visualized Midas’s vault of gold that had haunted his dreams for the past twenty years, running his hands over the gleaming metal that would make him richer than Midas himself could ever have imagined. But, more than the impending wealth, he savored the thought of vengeance for a life snatched from him. His targets would know what it was like to have comfort and prosperity ripped away and replaced by misery and poverty. They would have to scratch and claw out of the abyss the way he had.