The Midas Code

THIRTY-EIGHT

Orr 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.

Orr would become rich beyond belief, while the people who’d made his life hell would lose everything. He relished the poetic justice of it.

Gaul sat next to him watching a movie, while Phillips and Crenshaw were back in the US completing their part of the plan. There was no sense discussing the mission with Gaul until they got to Italy, not with so many potential eavesdroppers around them.

Orr had the entire sequence in his head. With all the heists he’d pulled in the past, meticulous preparation was second nature to him. Of course, he’d had to put it all down on paper for Gaul, Phillips, and Crenshaw, but he made sure they’d burned all the evidence once it had been committed to memory.

After they arrived in Rome, it would be only an hour and ten minutes on the Frecciarossa high-speed train to Naples. There he’d rent a car and pick up the items he’d sent by overnight service — items that would have gotten him arrested if he’d checked them on an airline flight.

Orr hadn’t been to Naples in five years, but he remembered it well enough. At a population of more than four million for the Greater Naples metropolitan area, the sheer size of the city would let him do his business without alerting Gia Cavano. Cavano was well-connected in the city, but Orr had cultivated a wide range of aliases to travel under, only one of which she knew besides his real name.

That meant he could get into Naples a day early, put everything into motion, and wait for his bigger problem: Tyler Locke.

Was Locke really accomplishing his task? Orr suspected that he was at least trying. The tracker showed the geolabe first in England, then in Munich. What information Locke and Benedict were gleaning in those locations Orr couldn’t guess, but it didn’t really matter. He was results-oriented, and Locke was the type who delivered.

If Locke and Benedict failed, Orr had a much less lucrative but simple backup plan. He’d let Cavano know that he would reveal the existence of the gold chamber to the Carabinieri, Italy’s national police force, unless, of course, she cut him in on the deal and shared the take. The Italian authorities would never let her get away with looting a national treasure if they knew about it. Sharing the spoils with Cavano would be a bitter consolation prize, but it was better than nothing. She wouldn’t care much for it, either, since he was the one who’d double-crossed her originally.

Orr had every confidence in himself, but where plans often had the potential to go awry was with his partners in crime. That’s why he’d chosen the participants in this job so carefully. Gaul and Phillips were solid. Not that they didn’t have their faults. Gaul was a gambler, always in debt, but that made his need for money useful. Phillips’s weakness was women, throwing away thousands at upscale S and M clubs. Orr shuddered at the thought of the diseases he must be afflicted with, although he didn’t worry about leaving Phillips with Carol Benedict. Phillips was the masochistic type. He wouldn’t be interested in a helpless woman.

On the job, Gaul and Phillips were total professionals. Orr had worked with each of them many times before, and they’d never let him down.

Crenshaw was the wild card. A brilliant bomb-maker, but squirrelly enough to be a prospective liability. Phillips would take care of him when the time came.

Orr had no doubt that Gaul and Phillips would eventually blow through their two-million-dollar shares and become threats, but by that time he would be safely ensconced in the lifestyle that a billion dollars could provide. If those two so much as implied that they would blackmail him, he would have many tools at his disposal to silence them.

When he’d first formulated his long-term plan all those years ago, he’d debated whether to go into an arrangement with Cavano. The discovery of the Archimedes Codex had made the uneasy alliance pay off. She’d needed his expertise, and she had the resources to make the theft possible. Returning the manuscript to her, however, would have made Orr another of her minions, sharing in the proceeds, but nothing more than a bit player.

That wasn’t enough for him. When his parents died, he had given the authorities the name of his relatives in Naples. But Cavano’s father had made it clear that they would not help him. He felt that the suicide of Orr’s father was a disgrace and the murder of his mother dishonorable. Whether Cavano had been aware of her father’s refusal to take him in Orr didn’t know and didn’t care. She had to pay for the sins of the father.

But Orr wouldn’t kill her. He had discovered how close she was to losing her position as the head of a Camorra crime family and that the Midas treasure would reverse her financial slide, making her one of the most powerful leaders in Naples. So he would take the fortune they had found together and make it his own. She wouldn’t see a single ounce of the gold.

Orr guzzled the last of his champagne and leaned the chair back to the full sleeping position. To help him doze off, he entertained the wonderful thought of her world crumbling around her. Cavano would lose the status she had grown accustomed to, just as Orr had all those years ago.

Then the other Camorra families would take her down and finish the job for him.

THIRTY-NINE

As soon as the National Archaeological Museum in Athens opened its doors on Saturday morning, Grant bought three tickets and went inside. While he cased the museum, Tyler and Stacy went out shopping for supplies. They’d left the tracker from the geolabe in the airplane to give Orr as little information as possible about their movements.

The flight from Munich the night before had taken only a couple of hours, so the three of them had spent the rest of the evening thinking about how to steal the replica of the Antikythera Mechanism. It was a risk they all agreed to take, but it would really be Tyler putting his neck on the line despite Grant’s objections.

Using photos and a map of the museum they’d found on the Web, Tyler sketched out a plan for getting the replica out. It wasn’t foolproof by any means, but it seemed solid if the layout of the museum matched their information. There was minimal possibility of anyone getting hurt, except for Tyler if he got caught.

The classically designed building was laid out with marble-floored halls wrapped around two central open-air courtyards. The only way to the Antikythera Mechanism was to wind through the maze of exhibits toward the rear of the building and then walk back through an outer hall, where the pathway ended at a tiny room on the north face of the museum. Without the map, Grant would have been totally lost. Greeks and their labyrinths, he thought.

Grant took photos as he walked, as if he were just a tourist gawking at the bronze and stone statuary on display. He made only a token gesture to point the camera at the art objects, instead focusing most of his attention on the location of the cameras and attendants in each hall. Most of the attendants looked like young, casually dressed college students, one to each room.

Sweat soaked Grant’s shirt. He’d never before been in a museum that lacked air-conditioning. He thought respite from the heat outside was one of the benefits of visiting a museum in the summer, but the National Archaeological Museum was stifling. He couldn’t feel much of a breeze. The visitors seemed to be moving most of the air.

Grant passed a few display cases containing ancient gold jewelry and pottery fragments. Each of the cases was attached to the ceiling by a coiled cord. That would be the electricity for the lighting and the alarm system.

It was ten minutes before Grant saw his first guard. The man in a blazer was chatting with one of the pretty young attendants. The only thing he was armed with was a walkie-talkie. A key chain dangled from his belt attached by a retractable cord. Grant made sure to get a picture of him.

Grant continued on until he reached the room that held the original Antikythera Mechanism.

His first impression was That’s it?

The ancient bronze device was in the center of the room, mounted in a display case with glass all the way around. The device had been discovered in the remains of a two-thousand-year-old shipwreck and consisted of three separate pieces corroded by exposure to seawater. None of the pieces were larger than Grant’s hand. He was amazed that a replica could be built on the basis of what was there, but next to it was another, identical display case with the glittering bronze reproduction. It was mounted on a clear base and rested on a pedestal, but it didn’t appear to be attached to the base in any way.

The cases were seven feet tall, with the top foot taken up by a metal cap that contained the light. Grant walked around until he saw the hole that Stacy had told him to look for. It was for the unique key that every museum had specially made to access its displays. The proper way to reach the object inside was to switch off the motion-detector alarm, insert the key that unlocked the cap from the ballistic glass, and open the front window. If the key was turned without deactivating the alarm, the central security room would immediately be alerted that someone was making an unauthorized entry into the case.

Between the two cases was a stand that showed X-ray images of the original Antikythera Mechanism, which was how they’d seen the internal gears without damaging the artifact.

Grant pivoted around and saw that only one of the cameras was in place. The mount for the second camera was empty, which meant that part of the room couldn’t be monitored remotely. He backed into each corner and snapped more photos. Some of the other display cases around the room had gaps behind them that were big enough for Tyler to use, including one that was directly under the lone camera.

The exhibit hall dead-ended in the next room, which had a fire exit that opened out to the north side of the building. An attendant sat in a chair next to the exit.

With his interior survey complete, Grant wound his way back out of the museum and walked around to the exterior of the north side so that he could see where the fire exit led.

A courtyard filled with broken pieces of marble sat between the fire exit and the street that bordered the museum property. Trees shaded a bus stop and an information kiosk, and the fence that separated the courtyard from the sidewalk was lined with parked motorcycles and scooters, which in Athens were more numerous than cars.

Grant clicked through his photos and concluded that he’d seen enough. It wasn’t a perfect setup, but it was damn close.

He dialed Tyler, who picked up on the first ring.

“How’s it look?” Tyler said.

“I’m sorry to tell you,” Grant said, “but I think your crazy scheme might actually work.”

FORTY

Tyler hung up the phone as he and Stacy exited the hotel.

“Grant says we’re a go,” he said. They were both dressed in shorts, with Tyler in a T-shirt and Stacy in a tank top. He noticed a tattoo of two small Chinese symbols on her shoulder. “What does that mean?”

She pulled her shoulder forward to look at it and said, “A promise I made to myself when I was a teenager itching to get off the farm. It means ‘adventure.’ I guess I found it.”

“I like it.” Tyler lifted the sleeve of his T-shirt to reveal his own tattoo: a castle with a sword through it. “That was my battalion’s insignia. It was a popular tat in the unit, so I decided, what the hell? Grant has the same one on his arm.”

Tyler watched as she traced the outline with her finger and nodded in appreciation. The intimate moment lingered until he lightly cleared his throat.

“You ready?” he asked her, putting his helmet on.

“Hell, yeah,” she said, donning her own helmet. “I love motorcycles.”

Tyler started the second of the two BMW motorcycles that he and Grant had rented. It would be much easier to zip around in the dense Athens traffic with it.

While Grant was scouting the museum, Tyler and Stacy had called various stores looking for the supplies he’d need. Since Tyler didn’t speak Greek, Stacy had done all the talking. It had taken almost an hour to find a paint-ball store and an electronics store that sold what they required.

Armed with the addresses on his phone, Tyler would drive while Stacy navigated. He gave her the backpack to wear.

Stacy hopped on the back of the BMW and pressed herself against Tyler, wrapping one arm around his waist.

“Just tell me where to turn,” he said, and roared off.

In twenty minutes, they were in the western part of the city. Even though Tyler had looked at the map before they left, he felt disoriented. He couldn’t even pronounce the words on the signs.

Stacy pointed to a store on the right. This sign he didn’t need to read. It had a picture of a paintball splatting against a stylized figure, so he knew they’d arrived at the first location.

He pulled to a stop, and they dismounted. Stacy removed her helmet and shook out her hair, her blond tresses bouncing back and forth. Just a hint of perspiration glistened on her neck, and her tank top and shorts revealed her toned form.

He eyed her until she said, “Undressing me with your eyes?”

Tyler felt blood rush to his face. “No, actually I was trying to dress you.”

“I’ve never heard that one before.”

“It just occurred to me that no clerk in his right mind would forget you.”

“Why, thank you.”

“I’m not objecting to how you look, but we don’t want someone making that connection between this sale and what goes on later. So just pay in cash and get out as fast as you can.”

Tyler took the backpack from her and pulled out his Mariners cap.

“Hold still,” he said. He took off her sunglasses and gathered up her hair until it was piled on top of her head. She kept her eyes on him as he tried not to tug on her hair. She didn’t help, amused at his struggle.

Holding her hair in place with one hand, he plopped the cap on, then put the sunglasses back on her. “Don’t take them off inside.”

“That was very gentle of you,” she said.

Tyler flushed again. “When you work with bombs, you have to have a light touch.”

“Is that right?” She tilted her glasses down.

“You getting saucy with me?” he asked.

“Twelve near-death experiences in three days make you appreciate life.”

“We’ll try to minimize those from now on. You know what we need in there?”

Stacy nodded. “A flameless electric-ignition smoke grenade. It’s not a phrase I learned studying ancient Greek, but I’ll get the point across.”

“Great. And make sure it’s the half-million-cubic-foot model.”

“I’ll get two, just in case.”

“Good. And buy other supplies with it. Doesn’t matter what, but make the smoke grenades seem like an afterthought.”

“No sweat. Be right back.”

Tyler waited by the motorcycle. Stacy came back out five minutes later.

“Any problems?” he asked.

“Piece of cake.” She opened the bag. “Is this what you wanted?”

He looked inside the bag and saw the two grenades. He couldn’t read the writing, but they were the right dimensions. She’d also bought two bags of paintball ammunition and a generic black baseball cap.

“That’s them,” he said.

“The hat’s for you, since I took your Mariners cap.”

Stacy stuffed the bag into the backpack and took off the sunglasses. Her smile was gone.

“You sure you want to go through with this?” she said.

“You mean at the museum?”

“I mean, the possibility of you spending ten years in a Greek prison if you get caught.”

“Believe me, I wish there was another way. I like my freedom as much as the next guy.”

“But don’t you think this is insane?”

“Absolutely. I also think it’s insane that someone kidnapped my father and your sister to force us to find a treasure map created by Archimedes so that this criminal can find the Midas Touch. But if Orr really has nuclear material for a dirty bomb, we have to do everything we can to stop him.”

Stacy considered that. “Why do you think Orr would want a dirty bomb?”

“Who knows? Maybe it’s his backup plan. If I don’t go along with him, he threatens to detonate the bomb. Or if he can’t find the Midas vault and get rich that way, maybe he’ll blackmail the US with the nuke.”

“Or maybe the two aren’t linked at all.”

Tyler shook his head. “I’m sure to Orr they are. He has some kind of plan, but I have no idea what it is.”

“And you’re sure Sr-90 means strontium?”

“No, but my father is an expert in WMDs. If that’s what he was trying to tell me, he’d know we’d connect the dots when we looked it up.”

Stacy peered at him for a few seconds, and then smiled.

“Then we better go get this remote igniter that you need,” she said as she put on her helmet.

Tyler did the same. “Sounds good to me.”

Stacy gave him the backpack and held out her hand.

“What?” Tyler said.

“The keys, please.” She winked and flipped down the visor. “It’s my turn to drive.”

FORTY-ONE

Gia Cavano stormed into the entryway of her villa along the Mediterranean coast just west of Naples and picked up the first thing she could grab, a crystal Steuben vase displayed on the hall table. She hurled it into the wall, showering the floor with glass shards.

The destruction felt good, but she still burned with fury.

As a maid rushed over to sweep up the remains of the vase, Cavano stomped through the living room and onto the terrace overlooking the sea. Her cousin Salvatore followed her. He wasn’t too bright, which Cavano liked, but he was efficient and provided the necessary brawn. He’d been a faithful servant since her husband died.

“Quell’idiòta, Pietro!” Cavano yelled, kicking one of the chairs over. “If he weren’t already dead, I’d kill him,” she continued in Italian.

“Locke will pay. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Do you realize what yesterday cost me? The wrecked Lamborghini and the repairs to the Ferrari will cost over three hundred thousand euros, not to mention the destroyed BMW and the Zonda I had to buy.”

“And we lost three men.”

“Yes, of course. Three more families to feed.” The Cavanos looked after their own, especially when soldiers died. It guaranteed their loyalty to know that their families would be secure.

Rödel had sent a car to pick her up when the Zonda ran out of gas. She left the police to investigate the death in the Boerst garage and the disintegrated Lamborghini. The Ferrari was found not long after with two bullet holes in it. Through Rödel, she reported it stolen and left the city before they could ask her any questions.

Now she had full ownership of the Ministry of Health building, but demolition work couldn’t begin until Monday morning. Even with her power, she couldn’t compel the Italian unions to bring in the heavy machinery she’d need on a weekend.

As long as she kept Orr at bay until she broke through into the tunnels, the gold would be all hers.

But Locke had followed her specifically for the device. The video recordings that Rödel had supplied for her showed that Locke had tried the BMW first and had fought Pietro, eventually pushing the car over the edge. The cap Locke wore had hidden his face, so the police wouldn’t be able to make a positive identification, and she certainly wasn’t going to report him. She wanted to take care of him herself.

She just had to figure out why he’d risked so much to get it. It was obviously critical to his search, as was the tablet he’d stolen. Eventually he would come to Naples. He and Orr would have to.

“Are we keeping watch on the airport and the train station?” she asked.

“I have men waiting at both. If Orr, Locke, Benedict, or Westfield shows up, we’ll know.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. Orr was a master at hiding his identity, and he’d know he would be vulnerable in Naples. Locke, on the other hand, seemed determined and resourceful, but he wasn’t a criminal skilled at covering his tracks.

“Put feelers out to all the hotels, too. Have them look for anything different from the typical tourist or businessman.”

“What should we do if we spot any of them?”

“Protecting the gold is the first priority.” Sal was the only one of her men who knew what they were searching for.

“So we should kill them when we find them?”

Cavano paused. Killing them on sight was the smart thing to do. Three shots, execution style. Naples had the highest murder rate in western Europe, and the polizia made few arrests.

But unease crept over her. What if Orr or Locke already knew how to find the gold? If she killed either of them, she wouldn’t know what the other was planning. If they got to the chamber before she did, she might lose out on the Midas treasure altogether.

“Kill them only as a last resort. Capture them if you can. But do not let them get away, no matter who has to die to prevent it.”

“Understood.”

Cavano paced as she tried to think like her adversary. “Orr is looking for some other way to the gold. I’m sure the tablet and Locke’s device have something to do with his search, but I don’t know what.”

“What about the British Museum?” Sal said. “When I was following Westfield, he talked to Lumley for a long time.”

“When I called Lumley back, he told me that he couldn’t decipher what the codex meant.”

“Maybe the device has something to do with the codex and that’s why Locke took it back from us.”

That stopped Cavano. Maybe Sal wasn’t as dumb as she thought.

She felt her blood pressure rising again. Lumley had withheld information from her. She retrieved her phone and dialed the archaeologist’s cell.

“Hello,” he said tentatively.

“It’s me. Don’t lie to me this time. Tell me what you told Westfield.”

“I didn’t lie. I really couldn’t help him—”

She didn’t have time for this. “If you don’t tell me what you know, I will strap you to a table and make you watch as I pull out your entrails one by one.”

Lumley gulped audibly. “All … all right. Of course. Mr. Westfield was particularly interested in two statues of the Parthenon’s west pediment — Herakles and Aphrodite.”

“Why?”

“The codex referenced those two figures as a key to some kind of puzzle, but I don’t know what.”

“Have they come back to the museum?”

“Oh, no. I don’t think they would.”

“You mean they solved the puzzle?”

“I don’t know. The codex implied that one would have to be at the Parthenon in person to understand what it meant.”

At the Parthenon. “Grazie, Doctor.”

“Am I free now?”

“No. I may call again at any time, and if you don’t answer, I will take that as a sign of disrespect. Do you understand?”

Lumley wheezed into the phone. “Absolutely.”

She hung up.

With a day’s head start, it was possible she was already too late to get Locke, Benedict, and Westfield, but it was the only lead she had.

“Get Adamo and Dario,” she said to Sal. “Since they were at the museum, they’ll recognize Grant Westfield. Send them to Athens tonight. I think Locke and his friends may be there already.”

“Should I go with them?”

“No, I want you here in Naples. If they slip through, they’ll come here next.”

“What should Adamo and Dario do in Athens?”

“Find photos of Locke and Benedict to give them. I want them at the Parthenon from opening to closing.”

“And if they find all three of them?”

Getting them all back to Italy would be difficult. The best bet would be to charter a boat.

Cavano could already feel her heartbeat ease and her muscles relax. For the first time in twenty-four hours, she felt back in control.

“We don’t need all three,” she said. “Capture Locke. Kill Benedict and Westfield.”

FORTY-TWO

It was 2:45 in the afternoon, and with the 3:00 closing time fast approaching, the visitors at the National Archaeological Museum were beginning to wander back toward the entrance. Using the tickets Grant had bought earlier in the day, Tyler and Stacy had entered the museum separately.

Tyler had put on a collared shirt and jeans for the operation, with the backpack slung over his shoulder. His earpiece was in and connected to his cell phone’s open line to Grant, who was with their motorcycles next to the emergency exit.

“You ready out there?” Tyler said.

“A little crowd at the bus stop, but otherwise we’re good to go.”

“Give me a shout if something wicked comes that way.”

“Will do.”

Tyler wore the new black cap on the off chance that his Mariners cap would be connected to the Munich garage incident. He pulled the bill down and made sure to keep it between his face and the cameras in each room as he followed Grant’s directions to the room with the Antikythera Mechanism. Having studied the photos thoroughly, Tyler knew exactly what to expect, but seeing it in person for the first time he was still amazed at how much the replica sitting behind the glass looked like the geolabe he’d built. Other than the single knob on the side of the Antikythera Mechanism, as opposed to the dual knobs on the geolabe, they were virtually identical.

The attendants from this room and the one with the emergency exit were chatting, paying no attention to Tyler. No other tourists were around, giving him the chance he needed.

He positioned himself directly beneath the working camera next to a display case that had a small space between it and the wall. Tyler knelt as if to tie his shoe, plopping the backpack next to him. With a smooth motion, he removed the smoke grenade from the pack and rested it behind the display case. Unless someone was looking for it, it wouldn’t be seen.

He stood back up and pretended to spend a few more minutes reading the captions on the Antikythera Mechanism. A walk around the case holding the replica showed him the keyhole that would unlock the front glass.

He strolled back out the way he’d come, just another visitor browsing relics from Greece’s ancient past. He really did wish he had more time to inspect the fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism. It was incredible that he’d been looking at a device more sophisticated than any other created for fifteen hundred years.

They’d planned to set things in motion in the gallery containing tombstone sculptures, about a hundred feet from the room with the Mechanism. When he turned into the hall, he saw Stacy peering intently at the statue of a robed man carrying a bowl into which offerings would be placed.

She made a slow 180-degree turn, and Tyler nodded as her eyes passed over him. It was a go.

Grant had noted the locations of all the fire alarms, and Stacy found one near a group of elderly tourists listening to a guide speaking English. She pulled it discreetly as she walked by. A Klaxon began to blare.

The sound came from horns in the ceiling, so no one turned to where Stacy had just been standing. She looked as confused as the rest of the patrons.

Attendants began to appear from both ends of the hall. Fire was a major threat to the artwork, but the sprinklers were not set to come on automatically for fear of damaging the statues unnecessarily.

Tyler gripped the unfolded Leatherman in his pocket, waiting for his cue.

Within seconds, a guard appeared. He was speaking loudly into his walkie-talkie and headed directly for the alarm pull. He stopped in front of it and swung around, looking for any hint of a fire.

The tour group was watching the guard, not moving toward the exit as Tyler had hoped. He sidled up to one of the group members, a gentleman who looked to be in his eighties.

“Did you hear that?” Tyler said.

“Hear what?” the man said.

Tyler pointed at the guard. “I think that guy said there was a fire in the back of the museum.”

That seemed to be confirmation enough for them, and the tour group began shuffling toward the front exit.

Stacy was already engaged in an animated conversation with the guard in Greek, performing her bit to perfection. She gestured at the ceiling as if the fire might be up there. She put her hand on the guard’s back. Two attendants who had joined them also looked up. Whatever Stacy was saying, they were buying it.

Tyler took the Leatherman out of his pocket, the wire cutters at the ready. The guard’s keys were dangling off his left hip. Tyler stood next to him as if he were also trying to see the cause of the alarm.

Stacy yelled, and that was his cue. He bent slightly, grasped the keys, and snipped the cord. The guard didn’t feel a thing.

Tyler turned and headed back toward the Antikythera Mechanism.

As soon as he made the turn into the next room, he bumped three display cases with his hip. According to Stacy, each case would have a silent alarm built in. The sudden motion would set them off, creating more distraction.

Then he flicked the button on the remote, igniting the smoke grenade. Grant had spent his lunchtime rigging the igniter. The flameless paintball grenade could be set off just by holding a nine-volt battery to the leads, but it could also be attached to a simple electric ignition switch and activated with a push-button remote.

The grenade began to spew out enough smoke to cover a football field. In three minutes, the entire hall would be full of the nontoxic gas. Tyler just needed it to fill the room that held the Mechanism replica.

He flipped through the keys until he found the odd-shaped one that opened the display cases.

The attendants in the room cried out in alarm. Tyler was only twenty feet away now and saw an orange cloud of smoke billowing through the entryway. The two attendants came out hacking and coughing, convinced that the gas was poisonous.

Tyler had expected them to go out the emergency exit. Their sudden appearance complicated things, but he decided to just go for it.

Tyler skirted around them and plunged into the room, which was now completely engulfed in smoke. Unable to see more than a foot in front of him, he moved to the display case by feel.

He was about to insert the key when he felt someone latch on to his arm. One of the attendants had gotten brave and gone back into the smoke to save Tyler. She pulled on him insistently shouting at him in Greek.

Tyler nudged the attendant forward and made as if to follow her out. But once she got two steps ahead, he stopped and went back to the case, confident that she wouldn’t know where he’d gone. He ran his hand along the top until he found the keyhole. He inserted it, and with a twist the case popped open. Orange smoke flooded into the purified air inside the case.

Tyler unzipped his backpack. He snared the Antikythera Mechanism replica and stuffed it into the bag. Then he wiped the keys down with his shirt and tossed them into the case.

“Got it,” he said.

“You’re clear,” came Grant’s reply.

Tyler walked toward the exit door, pushed it open, and tumbled through, holding his hand over his face and wheezing for the benefit of anyone who might be watching.

He stumbled to where Grant waited with the motorcycles. No one else was near the bus stop. Any looky-loos were drawn to the museum entrance.

They both got on their bikes, rocketed away, and made a circuit around the museum. When they reached the front, Stacy was running toward them.

She hopped on Tyler’s ride, and they took off.

Three intersections later, they stopped at a red light. They heard some sirens, but all of them were headed toward the museum.

“Any problems?” Grant shouted above the traffic.

“Other than the attendant making a last-second grab for me, it went off without a hitch,” Tyler replied. He turned to Stacy. “Nice acting job. I almost looked up at the ceiling myself.”

“I have to please my public,” she said. “Think the attendant will be able to identify you?”

“With all that smoke? She’ll be lucky to remember it was a man.”

“You mean, you’ll be lucky.”

The light turned green. “I’m highly skilled at being lucky,” Tyler yelled over his shoulder as he opened the throttle, putting more distance between them and the scene of the crime.

FORTY-THREE

After they dropped Stacy off at the hotel, Grant and Tyler went to a local metalwork and fabrication shop they had rented. Tyler paid the owner a handsome fee to leave them alone for the evening with the grinding, cutting, and welding tools they would need to remove the gear from the Mechanism replica and transfer it to the geolabe.

The approach to constructing the replica was different from the one Tyler had used on the geolabe, so he had to remove the axle from the gear before he could fit it to the geolabe. The entire process took seven hours, and by midnight he had all forty-seven gears of the geolabe back together. The dials spun freely, as if the gear had been in place from the beginning. The geolabe was once again in working order.

“Now we just have to wait until morning,” Grant said, as he gathered up the scattered pieces of the replica. “The Acropolis opens at 8 A.M.”

“Shouldn’t take us more than ten minutes once we’re up there. Then we can head back to the airport. With the hour time difference, we’ll be in Rome by lunchtime.”

Landing in Naples was too risky. They didn’t know how far Gia Cavano’s influence reached, but Tyler didn’t think it extended to Rome. They’d hire a car and make the one-hour drive down to Naples in time to meet with Orr.

Tyler rubbed his eyes. He needed a good night’s sleep, but he didn’t know if that was going to be possible with his mind racing.

Grant must have seen the worry etched on his face. “Your dad’s going to be okay, you know.”

“I know. He’d want me to be more worried about that nuclear material than about him.”

“I still can’t figure why Orr would want it. It’s bizarre.”

“It has something to do with the gold,” Tyler said. “Why else would he have us hunt for the treasure and prepare his nuclear material simultaneously?”

“If he sets that thing off in DC,” Grant said, “it’ll turn Washington into a ghost town for the next twenty years.”

“Maybe he’s got a grudge against the government.”

“Yeah. He might hate paying taxes even more than I do.”

Tyler placed the geolabe in his backpack, then paused before speaking. “Do you think we’re doing the right thing not calling the FBI into this?”

Grant shrugged. “Man, I don’t know. It could go either way. They do have more resources than we do, even with Aiden’s snooping powers and Miles’s connections. On the other hand, I think you’re right that Orr would find out. The longer he thinks we’re on our own, the longer he doesn’t do anything to the general or to Stacy’s sister.”

“I know. And I know my father’s not going to sit idly by while they hold him hostage. Keeping Orr occupied could give him a chance to break out.”

“You think he’ll try something?”

Tyler nodded. “If we can’t find him first. But Aiden said there’s no way to track the videos Orr is emailing to us. They’re routed through three different anonymizers in Eastern Europe.”

He didn’t have to go through the rest. Grant had seen Aiden’s email. Gordian Engineering was one of the top forensic accident-investigation firms in the world. Miles had assembled a team of volunteers close to Tyler and gone out to the site of the ferry truck explosion to gather evidence, first calling the local sheriff to notify them that they had gotten a tip about the blast.

Under the sheriff’s guidance, they had sifted through the wreckage and found nothing that would lead back to Orr. The truck had been stolen the day before, and all the bomb components could be found at any Radio Shack. The binary explosive was also impossible to track. Without any other leads and with no injuries, the sheriff was already concluding that it was the work of yahoos who got a kick out of blowing up stuff.

Aiden’s efforts to sniff out Orr through the use of his electronic communications had been no more fruitful. Orr’s cell phone was a disposable. The Web site for tracking the geolabe was set up with a false identity. Unless they got a lucky break, their only opportunity to free Sherman and Carol would be to nab Orr himself.

“All right,” Tyler said, hoisting the backpack. “Let’s get back to the hotel. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

When they reached their suite, they found Stacy in the living room reading over the Archimedes Codex yet again.

“Does it work?” she asked eagerly.

Tyler smiled. “Like a Swiss watch.”

“I’m going to hit the hay,” Grant said. “I’ll set the alarm for seven. I’ll need a good breakfast.”

He shut the door behind him, leaving Tyler alone with Stacy. Tyler set the backpack with the geolabe on the table and sat down next to her. Suddenly, the pace of the past few days caught up with him. He slumped against the back of the couch and closed his eyes.

“Poor guy,” she said. “You look beat.”

Tyler turned his head toward her and cracked his lids. “You look pretty alert.”

“I took a nap while you were gone.”

He twisted his neck around, the muscles sore from bending over the geolabe for four hours straight with no break.

She pushed him up. “Here. Let me work on those knots.”

Before he could argue, Stacy had grabbed his shoulders. For a small woman, she had strong hands. Tyler had to admit that it felt damn good. He leaned into her thumbs, which found the most gnarled spots.

After five minutes of work, the stress wasn’t completely gone, but his muscles were no longer cramped. Tyler leaned back into the cushion and looked at Stacy. Her eyes searched his.

“What?” she said.

“This situation is tough on you, isn’t it?” she said.

“And it’s not tough on you?”

“Of course it is, but I have faith it’ll all turn out for the best.”

“So do I.”

She casually brushed his hair. “No, you don’t. You want to make it turn out all right. That’s why it’s so hard for you. You hate not being in control. I saw you during that car chase on the autobahn. You were in your element. You were certain it would go exactly as you planned, and even if it didn’t, you had confidence that you could react to whatever was thrown at you.”

Tyler looked at her but said nothing.

“That story about getting injured by that horse when you were a kid,” she continued. “You weren’t afraid of being killed. You were afraid of being paralyzed.”

Tyler was shocked at how close Stacy had gotten to the truth. But paralysis wasn’t his fear. Miles was proof that life didn’t end in a wheelchair. A coma was what scared him, the idea that he would be a vegetable the rest of his life, dependent on others, contributing nothing.

“Why are you telling me this?” Tyler asked her.

Stacy put both her hands on his. “Because I want you to know that you’re not alone in this. One way or another, we’re going to get through this. All of us.”

The air seemed to be sucked out of the room, and Tyler got tunnel vision. He was focused solely on Stacy’s bright blue eyes. His breathing came to a standstill.

She leaned closer, her gaze passing from his lips to his eyes. Her grip on his hands tightened. If he moved even an inch more toward her, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself.

Instead, as if they both sensed how wrong what they were contemplating would be, given that Sherman and Carol were still being held prisoner, the moment passed. Tyler turned away, one of the hardest things he’d ever done. He dropped her hands and stood.

“Well,” he said, “I, uh, I should probably get some sleep.”

She stood and crossed her arms, blushing in embarrassment. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

“So … good night.”

“You, too. I mean, see you in the morning.” She gave a halfhearted wave and retreated to her room. “Night.” She closed the door.

Despite the gravity of the situation, it seemed that a tiny portion of the weight on Tyler’s shoulders had lifted. He quickly brushed his teeth and stumbled into bed.

As he closed his eyes, a feeling of serenity settled over him at having Stacy and Grant by his side. No matter what the next day held, they would all be facing it together.