The Midas Legacy

26

Eddie surveyed the shoreline ahead as the helicopter began its descent. ‘Guess that’s where we’re going.’

The two boats had taken their passengers to the island where he, Nina and the Lonmores had landed before travelling to the Pactolus, the chopper returning at Trakas’s summons. With Axelos and one of the surviving yacht crew acting as armed guards, the prisoners were put aboard. Trakas took the front passenger seat, leaving Spencer to sit uncomfortably in the rear under the glares of his father, his stepmother and Anastasia.

The flight west to the Greek mainland took over an hour. A cove at the edge of a range of rocky hills was home to a sprawling boatyard. Numerous craft of varying sizes were under construction or being maintained, but a large factory-like building some way back from the waterline suggested that more went on at the facility than simple repair work. An electrical substation was located beside it, fed by high-tension lines running down from the hillside.

The helicopter landed near a perimeter gate. Eddie saw that it was guarded — and that the two men who hurried to meet the aircraft were armed, Italian Spectre sub-machine guns slung at their waists.

The new arrivals were quickly escorted to the factory, the chopper lifting off behind them. Trakas was greeted by a man in thick-framed glasses, whose report was well received by the shipping magnate. ‘This way!’ he told his unwilling guests with a smile.

‘Where are we going?’ demanded Anastasia.

‘To see the Crucible! Is that not what you wanted?’ He led the way through the facility, accompanied by the man in glasses. A number of assembly lines snaked around it, the mechanical guts of several boats in the process of being pieced together, but the Greek’s destination was off to one side of the long building.

Eddie felt concern when he spotted radiation warning signs on the walls. ‘Oh, great. First the Midas Cave, now this — I’ll be lucky if I don’t sprout a third bloody arm.’

‘There is no need to worry,’ said Trakas. ‘It is perfectly safe.’

‘What’s safe?’ asked Lonmore.

The Greek brought them into an area separated from the rest of the interior by a long partition. ‘This!’ he announced with pride.

A boxy piece of equipment emblazoned with more warning trefoils was raised on a stand. It formed one end of a machine, a hefty yellow-painted metal pipe that ran the factory’s length. The tube was encircled at regular intervals by large coils of copper wire, thick skeins of electrical cabling running to each. ‘A linear accelerator,’ said Anastasia.

Trakas nodded. ‘It was used to strengthen metal parts for boats and stop them from rusting. Ion implantation, it is called. But I have had it modified for a greater purpose.’ He started along the device, Axelos ushering the others after him. ‘Behind us is the particle source. They are accelerated by the magnets in these rings.’ He gestured at one of the copper coils as he passed. ‘By the time they reach the other end, they are going very fast — enough for the neutrons to get through the outer shell of the Crucible.’

‘But not fast enough to get back out,’ said Eddie, remembering Mikkelsson’s description of the process.

Trakas glanced back at him. ‘Indeed not, Mr Chase. They are trapped, to bounce backwards and forwards until they hit atoms of mercury-196. They join together… and turn to gold. Just like the legend of Midas.’

Anastasia’s already angry expression deepened as she glowered at Spencer. ‘You told him about this. All of this is my father’s theory!’

‘His theory, but Augustine’s the one who’s going to put it into practice,’ the young man replied.

‘Very soon,’ Trakas added. He pointed ahead to where people were clustered around the linear accelerator’s far end. ‘Everything is ready for the first test. If it works, and I believe it will, then the bankers will be forced to give up their hold on my country.’

‘You really think you’ll be able to hold the world’s financial system to ransom?’ Lonmore said.

‘I do, my friend,’ the Greek replied. ‘I do.’

The group approached the pipe’s far end. The assembly that had been used to support boat parts for ion implantation had been shifted into a corner, replaced by a much larger and heavier box made of thick metal plates. The messiness of the welding suggested it had been put together at short notice. The container was open at the top, a hinged lid three inches thick raised by a heavy chain running to an electric hoist overhead.

More chains were slowly moving an object from the back of a flatbed truck into the imposing container.

The Crucible.

‘There it is,’ said Trakas proudly as Lonmore and his wife stared in amazement. Even Anastasia could not contain her wonder. ‘It will be filled with over a thousand litres of mercury. According to Fenrir’s theory, that much mercury should produce over twenty kilograms of gold. If it falls short, it does not matter; what matters is that any gold is produced at all.’

Eddie looked up at a man on a walkway who was filming the operation with a video camera. Other cameras were fixed upon stands around the accelerator, silently recording every moment. ‘And all this is to prove you’re not faking it, at a guess.’

‘Yeah,’ said Spencer. ‘Everything’s time-coded, so they’ll know we haven’t made any edits. My idea,’ he added smugly.

‘Bet you’re full of parental pride right now, aren’t you?’ Eddie said to Lonmore. The businessman’s disheartened expression served as his answer.

‘You will also be witnesses,’ added Trakas. ‘I hoped Dr Wilde could be here too — the testimony of the world’s most famous archaeologist would be hard to ignore.’

‘Then maybe you should’ve bloody gone back to get her,’ said the Yorkshireman angrily.

‘There were survivors, Mr Chase. With luck she was one. But she is not the only one who will be believed.’

They reached the end of the steel tube. By now, the Crucible had disappeared inside the container. The chains were detached from its cage and pulled clear by the hoist. The truck moved off to stop at a roller door nearby.

‘This containment chamber is my father’s design,’ Anastasia said of the box, with deep disapproval. She rounded on Spencer. ‘You stole that too?’

‘Why should it go to waste?’ he shot back. ‘The Legacy was never going to use the Crucible anyway. All you would have done was argue about it and block each other’s plans.’

Lonmore turned to his son. ‘I can’t believe you’ve betrayed the Legacy like this, Spencer,’ he said. ‘You’ve given away our secrets — and why? Out of spite?’

‘You know what I can’t believe, Dad?’ Spencer replied with an angry sneer. ‘That you’d kick me out — your own son! — so you could give my seat to some bimbo who worked as your secretary! Can you get any more clichéd?’

‘Don’t you dare call me that,’ hissed Petra. ‘And maybe if you hadn’t been an out-of-control spoiled brat, he wouldn’t have needed to kick you out!’

‘Now, now,’ Lonmore said, feebly trying to interpose himself between the pair. ‘That’s not really fair, Petra.’

‘Oh, so now you’re standing up for your ungrateful waster of a son rather than your own wife?’ she snapped. ‘He is spoiled, Spencer! That’s the only word for him! No, actually, I can think of quite a lot more, but I’ll keep them to myself. But if you hadn’t indulged him in absolutely everything he ever wanted, he might have taken more responsibility for his life instead of relying on you to bail him out!’

Spencer turned his back on the couple. ‘I’m not going to be lectured to by some gold-digger from the typing pool. But this is what happens when blood doesn’t stand by blood, isn’t it? Everything falls apart.’

‘That goes both ways,’ Lonmore said, clearly distressed by the argument.

The man with glasses, who was apparently in charge of technical matters, called out to Trakas. ‘We are ready to fill the Crucible,’ the mogul announced expectantly.

The procedure took some time, but the last of several drums of liquid mercury was finally emptied, its contents pumped into the Crucible. Trakas eagerly issued a command, and the container’s lid closed with a deep, reverberating clang. A rumbling sound came from machinery beside it as vacuum pumps drew out the air. The barrel-chested Greek ushered everyone back behind a free-standing concrete wall that on closer examination had a core of dense, dark metal. ‘Lead,’ he explained. ‘The case is a radiation shield, lined with more lead. It should hold in the radiation, but it is best to be safe, yes?’

The technician made final checks, then returned to the particle source and signalled to those at the far end of the accelerator. ‘We are ready to start!’ Trakas announced, now almost childishly excited. A shout to the cameraman, who gave him a thumbs-up from the walkway. ‘The cameras are rolling. We can begin!’ He turned to Eddie. ‘Thanks to your wife, Midas is about to save Greece. A pity she could not be here with us to witness this.’

The Yorkshireman eyed the armed guards. ‘Yeah, I bet she’d be loving it.’

Trakas waved to the technician. The factory’s overhead lights flickered as a basso hum came from the accelerator. It rose in pitch and volume. ‘When the power has built up, neutrons will be fired into the Crucible,’ he explained. ‘If your father’s theory is correct, Anastasia, when the neutrons trapped inside the Crucible reach a certain intensity, there will be a burst of radiation.’

‘That’s what happened in the Midas Cave,’ Eddie told the Icelander. Despite her angry mood, she nodded, intrigued by what was happening.

The electrical sound from the machine kept climbing. The technician called out again, closing a circuit with a clack loud enough to be heard even down the accelerator’s length. The lights flickered again, and a harsh droning buzz joined the noise. ‘The neutrons are being fired!’ said Trakas.

Even Petra was now engrossed. ‘How long will it take?’

‘I do not know.’ He looked at Eddie. ‘In the Midas Cave, how long?’

‘A few minutes,’ replied the Englishman. ‘But there was a pool that had to fill up with water before anything happened, so…’ He shrugged.

Trakas nodded. ‘We will know when the neutron burst comes. There is a radiation meter inside the box.’ He turned back to the accelerator, peering at it through a slot-like window of thick dark glass.

Eddie surreptitiously glanced at the others to see if they were equally transfixed. The guard’s attention seemed divided between the humming device and his charges… but as Eddie slowly turned his head towards Axelos, he realised the security chief was watching him closely from just beyond easy reach, his gun held ready. Having faced the former SAS man before, he was unwilling to give him a second chance at escape. The Yorkshireman gave him a sardonic look, then looked back at the machine.

A minute passed, more — then the sudden clamour of a bell made the onlookers jump. ‘Is that it?’ asked Lonmore.

‘Not yet, not yet,’ Trakas replied, eyes wide with anticipation. ‘But soon, very—’

Before he could finish speaking, a shrill siren sounded over the bell. The Greek whirled to look back along the accelerator, expression worried, but a shouted report from the technician quickly calmed him. ‘There is no radiation leak,’ he said.

‘Great,’ said Eddie, trying to cover his own relief. ‘I can take off my lead codpiece, then.’

‘Did it work?’ asked Spencer.

‘We will find out soon,’ Trakas told him. The buzz and hum of the linear accelerator ceased as the technician shut it down, then he hurried past the observers to its other end, summoning the other workers to help him begin a series of checks.

It took several minutes before they were completed, but eventually the man smiled and gave Trakas a thumbs-up. His boss congratulated him, then faced his guests. ‘There was a neutron burst,’ he announced. ‘We will soon see if any mercury has turned to gold.’

A loud hiss came from the box as it was refilled with air. The technician made more checks, then collected a Geiger counter and signalled for the hoist to be operated. The chain rattled, and the lid began to open.

The counter crackled alarmingly as vapour swirled out, but the man with glasses seemed unperturbed. He took a reading, then called out to Trakas. ‘It is safe,’ said the Greek. ‘There is not enough radiation to be dangerous.’ He led the group out from behind the wall.

‘So what about the gold?’ Spencer asked.

‘We will soon know.’ With the radiation danger gone, the other workers went into action. They pushed a wheeled stepladder into position alongside the box, a man wearing a hazmat suit and breath mask climbing to its top. The others passed a long tubular probe attached to a hose up to him. He leaned over and carefully lowered the tube into the Crucible, edging it down until it reached the bottom of the crystalline cauldron. ‘Gold is more dense than mercury,’ Trakas explained, seeing that some of his audience were puzzled. ‘It will sink to the bottom. That machine,’ he indicated a portable pump nearby, another hose running into a large empty barrel on a pallet, ‘will suck it out and filter it from the mercury. Then we shall see how much gold I have!’

Another worker started the pump. It rattled and strained, then the hose running from the Crucible pulsed in the arms of the men supporting it. Quicksilver spat from the end of the second tube into the waiting canister.

The pump operator intently watched a glass jar attached to its side as the machine shuddered with the effort of drawing the heavy liquid metal out of the Crucible, then thrust his head nearer as if unable to believe his eyes. He sprang upright, calling out to Trakas in excited Greek.

It took all the tycoon’s effort not to rush over to see for himself. Instead he issued a command. The worker shut down the pump, the other men waiting expectantly as he carefully detached the jar, then hurried with it to his boss.

The cameraman quickly descended from the walkway and joined the group to capture the moment. Trakas took the jar and held it up to the light, making sure the camera had a clear view of its contents. Eddie and the others leaned closer to see for themselves.

Just as in the Midas Cave, another metal had been extracted from the mercury. The system here was more effective than the simple mesh filter used by the monks, the bottom of the jar covered by a layer of what looked like fine sand. Dotted amongst it were larger grains, the biggest a lumpen nugget over a quarter of an inch long.

Their colour revealed that they were more than mere grit.

Trakas gasped in delight, turning the jar to examine the gleaming residuum from every angle. ‘It works,’ he said. ‘It works!’ He reluctantly handed the jar back to the worker, who quickly returned to the pump to reattach it and resume the task of extracting more. ‘The legend is true,’ the Greek tycoon continued to his guests. ‘Midas could create gold. And now, so can I.’