Boyd Morrison: The Midas Code

She forced a smile in return. “I’ll freak out later.”

“I’ll join you. What’s next?”

She read the third item on the sheet. “Carefully remove the canvas covering.”

The canvas was tied at the bottom with twine. Tyler loosened it and pulled the cover off to reveal a gleaming bronze box one foot tall and six inches wide.

Stacy moved closer to get a better look. The box had two dials on the front, but it wasn’t a clock. As far as she could see, the hands weren’t moving and the dials were ringed with Greek lettering, not numbers. Each dial was divided into twelve segments and labeled with words spelling out signs of the zodiac. Two small control knobs were attached to its left side.

The object looked brand-new, although its design was definitely not modern. The box was clearly the endpoint of the wires, but she had no earthly idea why it was connected to a bomb.

“What the hell is that?” Stacy said to herself. She was surprised when Tyler answered.

“It’s a replica of a device designed by Archimedes. It’s called a geolabe. Like an astrolabe, but for terrestrial instead of astronomical use.” She could tell that he wasn’t guessing. He plainly recognized it.

She gaped at him. “How do you know that?”

He fixed her with a grim stare. “Because I’m the one who built it.”

T he parking spot along the beach in West Seattle provided a beautiful view of Puget Sound. Jordan Orr would be able to watch the ferry until it turned past Bainbridge Island for the final leg into Bremerton. If the ship made it that far. The bomb was set to go off long before then.

In the passenger seat of their rented SUV, Peter Crenshaw trained binoculars on the ferry, now visible as it passed the north tip of West Seattle.

“If Locke doesn’t disarm the bomb in time,” Orr said, “you won’t need those to know.”

“I’m just checking the deck for unusual activity. Making sure he hasn’t sounded the alarm.”

“He won’t. By now he knows that I meant everything I said.” A jogger approached, and Orr couldn’t tell if she was watching them because she was wearing sunglasses. “Put those down before someone notices. No one’s going to think we’re bird-watching.”

Crenshaw put the binoculars on the seat next to him and went back to monitoring the two video feeds on his laptop. The first was from the camera hidden in the visor of the truck.

The second feed was from the back of the truck. Orr watched Stacy Benedict reading the instructions he’d created while Tyler Locke removed the drawstring pouch, opened it, and poured out the contents: fourteen pieces of a puzzle created more than two thousand years ago.

“How did he sound?” Crenshaw asked in an irritating whine. “Think he can do it?”

“I have faith in Locke,” Orr said. “He’s the best at what he does, and he’s the only one who can help us accomplish our mission.”

“And if he can’t?”

“Then Washington’s going to need a new ferry.”

Orr leaned over to check the GPS tracker and saw that it was operational. It showed the truck in the middle of Puget Sound, right where it was supposed to be.

He caught a whiff of body odor from Crenshaw and rolled down his window. Crenshaw was a skilled bomb designer, but his personal hygiene was atrocious. Given his scruffy beard and greasy hair, Orr wouldn’t be surprised if the pig hadn’t showered in a week. His belly protruded as if he were smuggling a beach ball under his T-shirt, and flecks of powdered doughnut dusted his chin. The man disgusted Orr, but the alliance was necessary.

Orr had trolled Internet sites for months disguised as an anti-tax radical until he met Crenshaw in an underground chat room devoted to rants about the US government. Crenshaw was an electrical whiz whose penchant for building sophisticated pipe bombs got him kicked out of college. He escaped prison on a technicality, but his social inadequacies made him unemployable. Crenshaw still lived in the basement of his mother’s home in Omaha, nursing his hatred of Uncle Sam.

Orr and Crenshaw had started sending private messages about what they could do to strike a blow for the common man. After he’d gained Crenshaw’s trust, Orr suggested that they get together at some property Orr had rented in upstate New York. Orr even paid for Crenshaw to fly out. Together, they shot guns, and Crenshaw showed off by building bombs with materials Orr provided. Shortly after that, Orr had presented his plan to Crenshaw, who readily agreed to participate. The two million dollars Orr promised him had made the decision easy.

As Crenshaw grabbed his sixth doughnut, Orr shuddered at the man’s lack of self-control. Orr couldn’t understand how someone could let himself go like that. Crenshaw had never lacked for food or shelter or a comfortable lifestyle, no matter how much he belly-ached about the government screwing him over. Orr had been through hardship Crenshaw couldn’t imagine, but he didn’t dwell on it. There was only one person he could rely on, and that was himself.

Ever since his parents died when he was ten, Orr had been on his own. Until then, his parents had lived lavishly and spoiled their only son. He’d had everything he could possibly want: a huge house, any toy he asked for, private school, vacations to Europe and Hawaii. But one night his father, an investment banker, crashed into a bridge abutment near their home in Connecticut, killing both himself and Orr’s mother instantly.

The police found no skid marks and his father’s foot was jammed against the accelerator, so the deaths were ruled a murder-suicide. The life-insurance company paid nothing on his father’s policy, and his mother, a housewife, had none. Orr didn’t believe the coroner’s finding until he learned that his father had not only been fired two months before the crash but had also been blackballed by every firm on Wall Street for whistle-blowing on an embezzlement scheme. With their lavish lifestyle, the family had been living a hand-to-mouth existence, spending every dollar his father brought in and more, so the firing left them deeply in debt. Whether the car crash was accidental or intentional, the result was the same. Orr was left penniless.

He was placed in foster care, and went through a succession of low-life guardians who either were hosting him to collect the welfare checks or wanted a kid who could act as a live-in servant. He got back at the world by stealing from his neighbors. At first it was just a buck or two to buy some candy or a comic book, but the amount grew until he was bringing in serious cash. He got caught only once, when he broke into a house not realizing that the husband had come home unexpectedly with his mistress, and the time he spent in juvenile detention made him vow never to let that happen again. When he was sixteen, Orr ran away and started working construction by lying about his age.

For the next ten years, he bounced around the US, taking legitimate or illegitimate jobs, whatever paid. Then, during a bank renovation, one of his co-workers approached him and asked if he wanted to make some easy money. The guy planned to rob the bank, but he was too clever to attempt a daytime heist.

Instead, they sabotaged the wiring for the security equipment and made off with a hundred thousand dollars that night. But Orr had inherited his father’s free-spending ways and blew through most of his share in two months. It was the end of his construction career and the beginning of the more high-risk, high-reward career as a thief.

He absorbed everything he could about the art of breaking into secure facilities, educating himself by reading and working with better burglars than he until he had mastered the profession. The jobs kept getting bigger, with Orr planning the heists down to the most minute detail and assembling crews that could be trusted to do their jobs, but the money never lasted.