The Midas Code

FORTY-FOUR

Adamo Cavano climbed the path to the Acropolis with Dario and two other cousins Gia Cavano had added to their ranks when she heard about the theft at the Greek National Archaeological Museum the night before. Some kind of box. Adamo didn’t care. All he knew was that he’d get another shot at that black bastard who had decked him and Dario outside the British Museum.

After arriving in Athens at six in the morning, the first thing they did was buy four pistols and ammo from a local supplier the family knew. Now it was eight, and they could get up to the Acropolis. They bought four tickets and began the long walk up to the summit of the famous hill.

Many who had never been to Athens thought that the Acropolis and the Parthenon were one and the same. In reality, the Acropolis referred to the entire massive rock plateau, while the Parthenon, a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena, was one of several ancient buildings atop the Acropolis. Adamo knew that the buildings were even older than those in his hometown of Naples, but the stone walls and ruins didn’t impress him. It looked like a mess. From this vantage point, the Parthenon was literally a shell of its former glory. The entire thing looked as if it would collapse at any moment.

The sun was already beating down hard, and there was little shade to be found. None of them had really thought about what to wear. Adamo had on his slacks, Ferragamos, and a loose silk dress shirt to hide the gun tucked into his belt. Every tourist they passed was in shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals or sneakers. Adamo and his crew stuck out like flies on a ball of mozzarella.

Nothing they could do about that now. Two of them would take up post at the entrance, while the other two stayed at the ready, nearby. With only one entrance to the Acropolis, Locke and his friend Westfield would have to pass them.

Adamo kept an eye out as they approached the Propylaea, the narrow staircase that led through the portico and onto the main expanse of the Acropolis.

The stairs were already crowded with a group of tourists. How could that be? Adamo and his group had been the first ones through the gate. Then he saw more visitors approaching from his left, and he realized that the path they’d taken wasn’t the only way up to the entrance.

They had each memorized what Locke, Westfield, and Benedict looked like. The three of them were distinctive and wouldn’t be hard to spot. Adamo checked out the tourist group. None of them matched the photos.

He looked around for a good place to sit down. It was going to be a long day, and he didn’t want to be on his feet the whole time. But first he supposed that for the sake of thoroughness he should check the Acropolis to make sure Locke hadn’t arrived first.

He pulled Dario and the other two aside.

“We don’t want any trouble up here,” he said in Italian. “If we spot Locke, take him as quietly as you can. The other two we take for a ride and cap them in the garbage dump. And remember, Westfield is for me and Dario.”

“What if they don’t come so quietly?” Dario said.

“Then Gia said we leave the Greeks some corpses next to the Parthenon, but make sure you get whatever they’re carrying. Dario, you’re with me. We’re going to get the lay of the land.”

Adamo passed the crowd and went up the steps. He squinted at the sun.

If they were going to be up here all day, he would have to get a bottle of water before he settled in.

Because they’d taken the shorter route up, Stacy thought she, Tyler, and Grant would be the first ones on the Acropolis plateau, but that notion was disabused when she saw workmen moving heavy marble blocks with the help of a gantry crane. She was surprised to see them on a Sunday morning, but then she remembered a guide they had passed saying that there was some rush to get part of the restoration completed for an event happening later in June.

She was also surprised to see an elderly man who was pushing his wife in a wheelchair, thinking he must be very spry to get up there so fast.

Stacy had been to the Acropolis a dozen times, but the sight was always breathtaking. Despite the destruction over the millennia, the Parthenon had lost none of its grandeur. Some architects thought it was the most perfectly proportioned building on earth, and she would be hard-pressed to argue with them. The columns were imperceptibly tapered like a cigar to counteract the optical illusion in which parallel straight lines appear to bow toward each other. In addition, to give the Parthenon the appearance of strength the columns leaned inward, but so slightly that they would meet only if they were extended one mile into the sky.

The brilliance of people dead for thousands of years continued to awe her.

As they took a direct route toward the opposite end of the Acropolis, Tyler and Grant couldn’t help but gawk at the array of immense marble columns that supported the remnants of the temple’s roof. Stacy wished she were seeing it for the first time, as they were.

She yelped as she lost her footing on one of the many slick marble slabs that were exposed in the gravel path. Tyler caught her before she could fall.

“You okay?” he said.

“I always forget about the stupid marble. One time I went down on my butt. It’s like standing on inclined ice.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

He looked at her and smiled before walking one. She had awakened late, so she hadn’t had a chance to talk to him about their brief connection last night, but there really wasn’t much to say. She supposed the attraction was the result of the stressful situations they’d faced together. Under the circumstances, however, acting on it was not only inappropriate but a serious distraction they didn’t need.

As they walked next to the temple, she said, “Isn’t it amazing?”

Tyler just nodded.

“How long has it been here?” Grant asked.

“Since 2500 B.C. Back then, all the relief sculptures that ringed the temple would have been painted in bright colors.”

“I can’t imagine that.”

“Most people see the pictures and think it was always white, but spectrography tells us differently now, even though weather has wiped almost all traces of the paint away.”

“Where are the sculptures that England didn’t get?”

“At the New Acropolis Museum built at the southern base of the Acropolis. The old museum is over there.” She pointed at a tired building on the western side of the Parthenon. Wires stretching around it made it clear that the building was closed.

“Looks like it’s seen better days.”

“It was too small and antiquated to house the treasures properly, so they built the new museum not only as a state-of-the-art showpiece but also to counter the British Museum’s insistence that the Elgin Marbles were safer in London.”

“And the Greeks don’t agree, apparently.”

“It’s been a sore point for two hundred years, but the Greeks didn’t have much of a case until the new museum was built.”

They passed the eastern end of the Parthenon. The east pediment was almost completely destroyed, with just the slanted edges of the roof visible on each side. The only statue on the pediment was the reclining Herakles on the left end. With the original still in the British Museum, the Greeks had constructed a reproduction to show what it would have looked like in place. Eight columns supported the roof. Counting from the left, Herakles was between the second and third columns.

Stacy took out a printout of the pediment as it would have appeared in ancient times. Aphrodite’s feet would have been just to the left of the seventh column.

Tyler took another few dozen steps and removed the geolabe from his backpack. Stacy had helped him recalibrate it at the hotel using the Stomachion puzzle, so the dials all pointed to the noon position once again. He turned it on its side as Archimedes had instructed and held it up. Stacy could tell they were too close. It blotted out the entire structure, including the pediment. They would have to back up until it barely covered the columns from end to end, with the top of the geolabe lined up along the base of the pediment.

They stepped back until they were near the edge of the Acropolis, behind a small stone wall surrounding a raised circular platform. Now the geolabe lined up perfectly. While Stacy steadied it, Tyler rotated the first knob until the left-hand dial pointed to Herakles’s rump. Then he flipped the geolabe over and read off the reading from the notches etched in the dial.

“Thirty-two degrees.”

Grant jotted it down. “Got it.”

Tyler flipped the geolabe back and repeated the steps by pointing the right-hand dial where Aphrodite’s feet would be.

“Seventy-one degrees.”

Grant took out a map of Naples and laid it on the stone railing. He traced the lines at those angles from the Castel Dell’Ovo and the Castel Sant’Elmo until they intersected.

“And here we are. The entrance to the tunnels leading to the Midas chamber is going to be somewhere in the vicinity of Piazza San Gaetano.”

He pointed to a square in the heart of Naples. There was no Roman fortress in the vicinity, but it could have been razed thousands of years ago. Or the Syracuse spy just got lost in the tunnels.

Stacy looked up, amazed at how quickly they’d completed their task.

“Really?” she said. “Could it be that easy?”

“It’s not,” Tyler said. His eyes were riveted on something to the right of the Parthenon. “Don’t make any sudden movements.”

“Why?”

“Grant, does that look like a tourist to you?”

Stacy moved only her eyes and saw a man sauntering toward them dressed in a shiny silk shirt and dark pants. Grant slowly turned his head and got the barest glimpse before turning back.

“Nope,” Grant said. “Not a tourist. He’s one of the Italian meatballs I punched out at the British Museum.”

FORTY-FIVE

It didn’t look as if the Italian had seen them yet. Grant was sure it was the same guy. That arrowhead widow’s peak was unmistakable even from this distance.

They’d all flattened behind the wall. Cavano’s man may not have recognized them, but now he might be curious why they had suddenly disappeared.

“How did they find us?” Stacy said.

“I’m guessing it’s my good friend Lumley,” Grant said. “Cavano probably heard about the theft at the museum last night and put two and two together.”

“There’s too much open space to make a run for it,” Tyler said.

“What’s the plan?”

“We need to get this guy isolated. When we capture him, Stacy can act as our interpreter so we can find out who else might be lurking around.”

“Should we use the old bait and tackle?”

Tyler nodded. “And since he knows you, it looks like you’ll have to be the bait this time.”

“He’ll have at least one friend with him,” Grant said. “Probably a guy with a mustache that looks like it was drawn on with a Sharpie.”

“Head around the back of the old museum. When he follows you, I’ll come up behind him.”

“What about me?” Stacy said.

“Stay here.” Tyler handed her the backpack and put his earpiece in. “You’ll be our eyes. If you see mustache man coming, let me know.”

She dialed his phone, and they were connected. “Got it.”

He looked at Grant. “Let’s do this.”

Grant slithered over the railing and dropped down through some scaffolding that had been set up to rebuild part of the wall. He was now below the eye level of Cavano’s man. He scrambled over the rocks until he was next to the rear of the shuttered Old Acropolis Museum.

He looked back and saw that the guy was thirty feet from Tyler’s position and getting closer. He purposefully kicked a rock, and the man’s head jerked around. Grant took off behind the building. A mountain of garbage bags was piled in the corner of the Acropolis next to an unused crane lying against the citadel’s southern wall.

Grant turned the corner. He glanced behind him, but it didn’t look as if the man had followed him. That meant he was going to try to cut Grant off.

Grant took off, running along a narrow-gauge railroad track that had originally been built to transfer artifacts from the Parthenon to the crane so that they could be lowered to the new museum for relocation. A railroad handcart was in his path.

Before he could reach the handcart, the man appeared from around the corner and drew a pistol on Grant, who stopped and put up his hands. The Italian slowly moved forward.

“Hey, I know you,” Grant said with a smile. He knew the man might not speak much English, but it didn’t really matter. “How’s your noggin? I bet you’ve still got a nasty headache.”

“Zitto!” He began to creep toward Grant, the gun never wavering.

Grant understood the universal tone for “Shut up!” but he just needed a few more seconds.

“Listen, I’m really sorry about knocking you out in London, but I thought you were a Hare Krishna asking for money.”

“Zitto!” the man yelled again.

Tyler, who had sneaked up behind the one-word wonder, pressed the knife of his Leatherman to the man’s carotid artery.

“How about you zitto instead?” Tyler said.

The man froze. His lips were twisted with contempt. He wasn’t happy about getting played. His gun remained aimed at Grant.

“Got him?” Grant said.

“Yeah,” Tyler said, “but we’ve got to do this fast. Company’s coming.”

Stacy hadn’t seen the man with the thin mustache sooner because he had gone around the opposite side of the Parthenon. She had been following Tyler fifty feet behind him, keeping an eye out for his blind side, but the gantry crane shack next to the Parthenon had obstructed her view. The only reason she had spotted him at all was because of the blinding reflection of the sun off his silk shirt. He must have seen Tyler, because he had his pistol out.

By this time, the gantry crane workers, who were almost finished setting a marble block onto a ten-foot-high stack, had stopped what they were doing. They were focused on Tyler with his knife to the gunman’s throat, but none of them were making a move to help. Stacy would have to do this on her own. To her right was a four-wheel dolly for moving the marble blocks from the tracks into position for the gantry. It was empty except for two cats lazing in the sun.

In seconds, the second gunman would come around the corner and have a clear shot at Tyler. Although she was unarmed, Stacy had to do something.

She grabbed the dolly’s handle and wheeled it around until it faced the corner of the shack. When she swung it around, the cats jumped off. As soon as she saw the man’s shiny shirt come into view, she pushed with all her strength, the tires crunching over the gravel.

The mustache man, focused on Tyler until he heard the dolly racing toward him, turned in time to get a shot off, but it went wild. Stacy didn’t stop. He was standing on a patch of the slick marble, so he couldn’t get traction to jump out of the way. The dolly crashed into his legs, causing him to pitch forward onto it. Despite his obvious pain, he regained his balance, got to his knees, and brought his pistol to bear.

By this time, Stacy was at full speed. The dolly hit the outer wall of the Acropolis with a jarring thud. The man flipped backward, and before he could arrest his momentum, he tumbled over the side.

Stacy was sure she’d never forget the awful scream that ceased abruptly when he thudded into the rocks fifty feet below.

Through the earpiece, Stacy had alerted Tyler about the second gunman, but Tyler hadn’t been able to make the first man give him the gun before the shooting started. When the shot went off behind him, the sound was so close that Tyler thought he was dead. No one could have missed from that distance. It was just enough of a distraction that the man in his grip was able to twist away from the knife and elbow Tyler in the stomach, driving him to his knees.

The man squeezed off a shot at Grant, who took cover behind the track cart. Then the man somersaulted to his left and aimed at Tyler, who got to his feet and dove for the cover of the stairs leading down to the Old Acropolis Museum entrance. Bullets pinged off the wall behind him.

The situation had gotten ugly quickly. Instead of getting the drop on the bad guy, Tyler and Grant were now helpless. If there were any more than these two, it would get even worse.

Tyler looked around for a weapon, maybe a missile of some kind, but there was nothing except a few stray stones. He peeked out and saw the first gunman notice Stacy and give chase. The second gunman was nowhere to be seen. With no other choice, Tyler picked up the heaviest stone he could and took off after them.

Stacy ran into the area cordoned off by the workmen, who had fled at the sound of the gunshots, leaving the gantry crane still in motion, the marble block nearing its intended position. She got as far as the crane when the Italian grabbed her by the backpack and hauled her to a stop.

Tyler had made up some ground, but not enough. The man whipped around with the gun pressed against Stacy’s head. He shouted something in Italian, and it was clear that he wanted Tyler to give up.

Tyler put up his hands and dropped the rock. Grant skidded to a stop twenty feet to his right.

“What’s he saying?” Tyler asked.

“He said he’s waiting for his friends,” Stacy said. “They’ll have heard the shots.”

“Think he speaks English?”

“Doubt it.”

Tyler saw that they were standing just in front of the tower of blocks. The gunman wasn’t paying attention to the sound of the crane, and the slab that was moving into position bumped up against another block that was already in place, straining its supporting nylon straps nearly to the breaking point. The slab had to weigh a thousand pounds. The gantry crane’s control panel was in front of him, with each button labeled with one letter, but he didn’t know Greek, so he couldn’t tell which was up, down, left, right, forward, or backward.

“How do you spell left in Greek?” Tyler couldn’t read Greek words, but thanks to the formulas he’d used in engineering school he could read Greek letters.

Stacy knotted her brow at the request, then said, “Alpha rho iota—”

There it was. “Got it. Grant, say something to our friend.”

“Hey!” Grant shouted. “Point that gun at me!” The gunman’s gaze flashed to the side just long enough for Tyler to press the “left” button unnoticed. The crane’s chain began to move in that direction, the marble slab twisting around the other block. This was going to be close.

Tyler put up his hands. “When I tell you,” he said to Stacy, “step on his foot and push him backward. But first tell him we’re surrendering.”

She nodded and spoke in Italian. The man smiled a self-satisfied grin. He took the gun away from her head and gestured with it for Tyler to get over by Grant.

The marble slab, pitched at an angle by the taut straps, slowly scraped around the tower. Any second it would be free of the other blocks of marble. Tyler saw it begin to rotate.

“Now!” he yelled.

Stacy stomped on the gunman’s toe. He yelped and let go of her, and she shoved him backward as he hopped in pain. He steadied himself against the tower of marble to regain his footing. The moving slab came loose and swung around in an arc, spinning wildly toward the gunman.

Tyler had been hoping the action would simply provide a distraction, but as it spun the straps loosened and let go. The block dropped onto the Italian’s head and chest with a sickening smack, crushing him to the ground. His legs twitched for a moment, then went still.

Tyler ran over to Stacy. “Are you all right?”

She was breathing hard but seemed unhurt. “I’m fine. How did you know it would do that?”

“I didn’t.”

Grant came over and bent down to look under the block.

“Can you reach his gun?” Tyler asked.

Grant stood up with a disgusted expression and shook his head.

“Let’s get out of here,” Tyler said.

“How?” Stacy said. “This guy said he had friends at the entrance.”

“There’s another way. Come on.”

He took her hand and sprinted toward the north side of the Acropolis, with Grant at his side. He didn’t have time to explain that when he’d seen the woman in the wheelchair and wondered how her husband got her up all those steps he realized there must be an elevator. He’d noticed its metal cage opening to let another wheelchair passenger out on the north side of the Acropolis when they’d walked past the Parthenon.

As they approached the opposite side of the Parthenon, Tyler spotted two more men sprinting toward where they’d heard the gunshots, both carrying pistols. He reached into the backpack and took out the unused smoke grenade from the day before, which Grant had rigged for use in case Tyler needed a backup in the museum. Tyler activated the grenade and tossed it into the open courtyard, where it began to spew orange smoke. Screams erupted from the few tourists who hadn’t been frightened away by the earlier melee.

When the smoke was thick enough, Tyler nodded to Stacy and Grant, and they ran for the elevator. Shock waves from the bullets pierced the air all around them, but the smoke concealed them enough to prevent the Italians from getting a clear shot.

The next two hundred feet were the longest Tyler had ever run, but the sight of the metal cage off-loading a wheelchair passenger kept his motor going.

They reached the elevator and piled in over the operator’s protests.

“Down! Down!” Tyler yelled. Two men emerged from the cloud of smoke behind them, pumping out rounds without much care for accuracy.

The bullets pinging off the metal silenced the lift operator’s protests, and she slammed the cage closed. The lift lowered below the wall before the men could reach them. The operator screamed as bullets ricocheted off the roof, but the heavy steel was too thick for the rounds to penetrate.

Tyler heard one of their pursuers yell “Polizia!” and the shooting stopped. The police must have arrived on the Acropolis.

When the lift reached the bottom twenty seconds later, Tyler poked his head out, but no one was waiting above to take another shot. They apologized to the terrified lift operator and left her cowering in the elevator as they dodged the wheelchairs of a tour group waiting to get on. In five minutes they were back at their motorcycles. Police cars sped past them up the long drive leading to the closest point they could get to the Acropolis entrance.

As they raced back to the hotel to get the rest of their belongings before heading to the airport, Stacy clung to Tyler’s back, shaken by their brush with death. Normally, Tyler would be high-fiving Grant for coming through enemy action like that unscathed, but he couldn’t bring himself to celebrate. He knew that the worst was still waiting for them in Naples.

FORTY-SIX

Peter Crenshaw hummed along to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” as he inserted the detonator into the second-to-last container of binary explosive. He always listened to heavy metal while he worked. It kept his mind sharp while he built a bomb powerful enough to turn him into goulash.

Phillips had been Crenshaw’s only companion since Orr and Gaul left for Europe, and all the guy wanted to talk about was baseball. Records, statistics, players, teams — it never ended. For Crenshaw, that made keeping his iPod fully charged a high priority.

Even though the warehouse had no air-conditioning, the high ceilings allowed the heat to rise, leaving his work area relatively cool. He wasn’t worried about the explosives going off prematurely. They were incredibly stable. Fire, impacts, or electrical charges wouldn’t set them off. Crenshaw had been working virtually nonstop except for food and sleep breaks, so stupid mistakes were the biggest threat.

He placed the lid on top of the fifty-gallon container. Phillips brought over the handcart they’d been using to move the full drums.

“Where do you want this one?” he said.

Crenshaw looked around the perimeter of the warehouse. Identical containers had been placed every fifty feet, as he’d instructed. The wiring between them was complete. That left the walls on either side of the concrete peninsula of cells.

“Put that one next to General Locke’s room,” Crenshaw said. “Against the outer wall.”

By now an expert in handling the drums, Phillips slid the cart underneath and tilted it up. He wheeled it around, and Crenshaw got to work on the last container.

It had been Crenshaw’s suggestion to rig the warehouse to blow after they’d abandoned it. Getting rid of the evidence was paramount if they were going to get away with the crime they were about to commit. And he was proud of his design. The explosives would reduce the entire building to rubble. Three drums of gasoline would char everything that wasn’t blown to smithereens.

Though it was dangerous, working with the powdered explosive was a dream compared with dealing with the radioactive material. That had been more nerve-racking than any other part of the operation, and Crenshaw was glad it was over. He’d worn a heavy lead hazmat suit at all times, but the thought of getting a fatal dose of radiation kept him on his toes. The rewards, however, made the risk worthwhile. Orr thought he didn’t know what this was all about, but Crenshaw wasn’t as naïve as he let on.

Orr had no idea that Crenshaw had hacked into his computer and copied the translated Archimedes Codex. The treasure discussed in the ancient document was confirmed when he peeked into Orr’s pack and saw the golden hand. Orr was after Midas’s vast cache of gold, and Crenshaw’s two-million-dollar share was starting to seem paltry.

No, Crenshaw thought as he mixed the last of the explosive powder, that figure just wouldn’t do. Not for the cleverness of his designs. Not for what his efforts were going to do to make the gold quadruple in value overnight.

He looked over at the truck now labeled WILBIX CONSTRUCTION and smiled. His greatest achievement. That truck would make him go down in history as the person who obliterated America’s superpower status once and for all. A pity no one would ever know it was him. But after the truck blew up, the FBI wouldn’t bother looking for suspects because they would think the perpetrators were already dead.

Snatching the Muslims had been Orr’s idea from the start. He picked two who had questionable ties to radical Islam. Or so it would seem, once they were blamed for carrying out an attack masterminded by Al Qaeda. All signs would point to them. Their sudden disappearance. The trucker who had been allowed to live so that he could report that he was hijacked by two Arabs, played perfectly by Orr and Gaul. The Muslims’ identification found seared but recognizable in the warehouse ruins. Their bodies torn to pieces by the truck blast.

No one would suspect that it was anything other than another bold terrorist attack by America’s sworn enemy.

And that would let Crenshaw and the others retire to the island country of their choice to enjoy the spoils of the operation, with no fear of retribution from the CIA, the FBI, or any other three-letter agency sifting through the wreckage.

Of course, Sherman Locke and Carol Benedict would have to be dealt with, but that was fairly simple. Once they were done with them, Phillips would put a couple of bullets in their heads and dump the bodies in the Potomac so they wouldn’t be linked to the dirty bomb.

Now that Crenshaw thought about it, maybe he would let the world know somehow that it was he who had been responsible. Just not until after he was dead. He could leave some kind of testament describing exactly how he outwitted the brightest investigative minds the US had to offer. Even though he wouldn’t be around to savor the embarrassment and disgust aimed at the people who let him slip through their grasp, he would guarantee that his name would be immortalized in history.

The truck-bomb design was his favorite part, and he would revel in divulging the details. Five hundred pounds of binary explosive packed underneath three hundred gallons of gas, buried in sixty thousand pounds of highly flammable sawdust. The strontium shielded in a special lead case of his design that would blow up and aerosolize the nuclear material just before the larger bomb detonated. The explosion would transform the sawdust into highly radioactive ash, which would coat everything downwind for miles.

Air-handling systems would exacerbate the effect, sucking in the microscopic particles and making them an integral part of every building in the vicinity. The buildings would never be cleaned of the radiation. They would all have to be destroyed to make sure the radioactivity was gone. Even if the authorities claimed that a building was below the level of harmful radiation, who in their right mind would ever want to occupy it again?

After the warehouse was nothing but wreckage, the plan was for Crenshaw and Phillips to drive the truck and the van to their destination, and when Orr wired the payments to their accounts, they would park the semi in the pre-designated location, drive away in the van, and detonate the bomb.

By Monday evening the United States would be changed forever. The stock market would be in ruins, the economy would take a nosedive when the world’s financial hub was no longer inhabitable, and trillions of dollars would vanish overnight.

Amid a crisis the likes of which the world had never before seen, only one certainty among the chaos would remain: tangible goods. Commodities. And the most important commodity in the world was gold.

When the stock and bond markets crashed, investors would flee to gold, causing its value to skyrocket. James Bond’s nemesis Goldfinger had the right plan — nuke the gold reserve to make his own gold more valuable — but by targeting Fort Knox he’d chosen the wrong location.

Yes, the US had a huge stockpile of gold at its disposal at Fort Knox in Kentucky, but it wasn’t the largest depository of gold in the country. That claim to fame belonged to the Federal Reserve Bank, which held more than ten percent of the world’s gold reserves. Depending on the daily close, its value was around $300 billion.

After tomorrow, those reserves would be worthless.

Although the bank’s vault was eighty feet below street level, the building’s air-handling system wouldn’t be able to scrub the radiation from the dust motes circulating through the structure. Five thousand tons of gold would become radioactive.

And what amplified the impact was the fact that the Federal Reserve Bank was located in the same square mile as the New York Stock Exchange, along with all the other investment firms and brokerages that made downtown New York the single greatest concentration of wealth on earth.

At least, it would be for one more day. Then everything would change. And, merely by blowing up a single semi trailer full of sawdust, Crenshaw would eventually be remembered as the man who transformed lower Manhattan from a shining beacon of unholy greed into a desolate wasteland.

FORTY-SEVEN

Thirty thousand feet above the Mediterranean, Tyler, Grant, and Stacy were huddled around the laptop so they could see Miles Benson and Aiden MacKenna on the video chat via satellite. Their Gulfstream jet would arrive in Rome in an hour. Miles and Aiden were on their own plane, heading to Washington to confirm Sherman’s and Carol’s release.

Tyler had expected to have a hard time persuading his boss to go this alone without intervention by the authorities, and he was right.

“I don’t like this plan,” Miles said. “We should have the Feds ready to nab whoever drops off your father.”

“If we do that,” Tyler said, “we’ll have to tip them off to everything, and I’m not ready to take that chance. If I thought there was any danger for you, I wouldn’t go this route.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about. I want to keep you three safe. What about the Italian national police?”

“We can’t call in the Carabinieri. As far as they know, Orr hasn’t done anything wrong in Italy.”

“Yet.”

“Four specialists from Neutralizer Security should be able to handle taking down Orr on our end,” Grant said, referring to the private security contractor Tyler had hired for the job. “I’ve worked with them before. They’re pros.”

“Then why didn’t you hire them in Greece?” Miles said.

“My fault,” Tyler said. “I didn’t expect Cavano’s men to show up at the Parthenon.”

“None of us did,” Stacy said.

“Cavano’s persistent, I’ll give her that,” Grant said.

Aiden pushed his way in for a closer look. “For four billion dollars’ worth of gold, she’d probably take on the entire Carabinieri herself.” Aiden was talking about the cube of gold that supposedly sat in the middle of the chamber.

Miles shook his head. “You see what you’re up against, Tyler? They’ll kill all of you without hesitation to get that money.”

“The strontium adds a new variable to all this,” Tyler said. “If Orr really has a dirty bomb, he’s going to use it. We have to stop him.”

“Are you sure he has it?”

“No, which is another reason we’re not going to the authorities just yet. Once we have Orr, we’ll make him tell us everything.”

“How?”

“We’ll have plenty of bargaining chips, but they’ll be useless until he’s in our hands.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“We’re going to follow his directions to meet him at the outdoor concert. Piazza del Plebiscito is a huge plaza near the Naples waterfront. It’ll be packed with partyers. Orr told us to be there at nine and wait for his call. I’m sure he’s chosen that location because it’ll provide cover for him.”

“Once we get to Rome,” Grant said, “I’ll meet with the Neutralizer team. We’ll drive down to Naples together and set up a lookout near the plaza. We’ll stay out of sight, but we’ll be in constant contact with Tyler. When he gives us the signal, we’ll move in and take Orr.”

“What if he’s got help?”

“That’s where the tracker comes in,” Tyler said. “I removed it from the geolabe. Grant’s going to have it with him. If Orr’s men try to make an early move, Grant will be ready for them.”

“And if he doesn’t deliver your father and Carol?”

Tyler’s muscles knotted at the thought. He threw a glance at Stacy, who looked just as upset as he was about that prospect.

“This is the only option,” he said. “Once we have Orr, he’ll have to bargain with us.”

He didn’t say any more, because he didn’t know how far he’d go. But, looking at Stacy and knowing how much they both wanted Sherman and Carol safely returned, he realized that he might have to go to some dark places in order to get them back in one piece.

Miles sighed. “All right. It’s your call.”

“Thanks, Miles. You be safe.”

“You don’t think I’m showing up without my own security team, do you?”

Tyler smiled. “No, I don’t suppose you would. I’ll call you when we have Orr.”

“Good luck.”

“You, too.”

The screen went blank.

“I’ll call Neutralizer and coordinate with them,” Grant said, and went to the back of the plane.

“So do you think it’ll be that easy?” Stacy said. “Don’t you think Orr has something else planned?”

“Yes, but unless we follow his rules, he’ll never show up. He’s got the leverage for now.”

“But you’ve got the geolabe. We could find the gold ourselves and then meet up with Orr. Then we’d have the leverage.”

“There’s not enough time. If we don’t meet his deadline, I don’t want to think what would happen. Orr doesn’t seem like the type to bluff.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Stacy said.

Tyler paused. “You don’t have to go through with this. I can make the exchange myself.”

“The hell you will. You just said we can’t change the plan. He wants me there, I’m there. I’ll do worse than chop off his ear if he doesn’t tell me where Carol is.”

Tyler couldn’t tell if she was exaggerating or being literal. Maybe she didn’t even know herself how far she’d go to get Carol to safety.

“All right,” he said. “Grant will have us in view the whole time. We’ll be fine. It ends tonight.”

“One way or the other.” Stacy took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Orr’s not going to let them go, is he?”

“Not unless we make him. But we’re not meeting with Orr until he shows us in the next video that they’re still okay.”

Tyler checked his watch. It was noon. They’d arrive in Rome and drive down to Naples in three cars, one for him and Stacy and two for Grant and the Neutralizer team, who would keep an eye out for Orr as they drove in case he planned to ambush them early. Once they were convinced that they weren’t being observed, Grant would separate from Tyler and Stacy, taking the tracker and the Neutralizer team with him to a location where they could watch the piazza. At the same time, Tyler and Stacy would head to the concert with the geolabe.

It wasn’t a foolproof plan, but Tyler was convinced that it was the only way to prevent a major catastrophe and save Carol and his father.

FORTY-EIGHT

Metal handcuffs rattled against Sherman’s cell door.

“All right, General,” Phillips said. “Time for your daily video.”

The cuffs dangled through the door’s portal. Sherman slowly pulled himself off the bed, ready to put his plan into motion. They’d fed him only two meals in the past two days, so he’d laid off the calisthenics and conserved his strength for this moment.

He ran a hand over his five days of stubble and grunted as if standing was an incredible effort. He hadn’t seen a mirror in days, but he figured that he looked even worse than he felt. Good. Better that Phillips think he was completely worn down.

Sherman dragged himself over to the portal and grabbed the cuffs with a sigh. The routine he was supposed to go through was familiar by now. Ankle cuffs first, then wrists. Stand back from the door until it was opened, Phillips training the Taser on him while he turned to show that the cuffs were on and secure.

But this time he was going to shake up the routine.

The pat-down had been thorough when they brought him in, but they’d let him keep his clothes, and his dress shirt gave him something that would make his escape possible. In his palm was a thin plastic stay from his collar. He had quietly bent it at night until he could break it into a piece small and stiff enough to insert into the cuffs.

The handcuffs were the type used by most law-enforcement agencies in the US. When the cuffs were closed, the audible click was the pawl engaging the gear in the ratchet, which prevented the gear from opening, locking the cuffs. But if a shim were inserted between the pawl and the gear, the ratchet wouldn’t engage, leaving the cuff free to open.

The stays in his collar were thin enough for the job. He just had to make sure Phillips didn’t realize the cuffs weren’t locked.

Sherman knelt, placed the cuffs on his ankles, and locked them. He couldn’t prop them open with a stay because they’d come undone as soon as he began to walk, exposing his plan even before it got under way.

He stood and put the cuffs on his wrists as Phillips watched. He made sure to keep the stay hidden as he put the cuff on his left hand. As he closed the cuff, he jabbed the stay into the narrow opening. After a few clicks, he felt the shim slip under the pawl. Now it would slide freely if he tried to open it.

The stay was in place, but Sherman was afraid the cuffs would fall open if he raised them. He held them against his body, backed up, and rotated to show that the ankle cuffs were in place.

Phillips unlocked the door and threw it open. He had the Taser at the ready if Sherman didn’t comply. It wasn’t armed with the cartridge that shot the leads out to twenty feet, so the shock could be applied only at close quarters.

“Let’s go,” Phillips said, bored by the tedium of this daily show.

Sherman shuffled out. The chair was in the same place. Crenshaw held the camera. No one else was there.

Phillips put the balaclava on. Sherman sat and was blindfolded as usual. The rustle of the newspaper told him when they were filming. He recited his name. Nothing new.

After a few seconds, Phillips said, “All right. That’s good enough.”

The blindfold came off.

“Get up,” Phillips said as he pulled the mask off and faced Sherman. Crenshaw was already heading back to his workbench, his iPod earbuds blasting away.

Sherman didn’t move.

Phillips sneered. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“I heard you,” Sherman said.

“Then get your ass out of the chair and back into your cell.”

“Make me.”

“Oh, so you want to ride the lightning again. Doesn’t bother me.”

Crenshaw had his back turned to them. With a wicked smile, Phillips pulled the Taser from his belt.

“At least I get to enjoy part of my day,” he said.

He walked up to Sherman and reached out to tase him in the neck. He came at Sherman slowly, his eyes glinting in anticipation of the paralyzing reaction to the shock.

Sherman quickly worked the left cuff open. When the Taser was within a foot of him, his hand shot out, grabbing Phillips’s wrist. The surprise on Phillips’s face was total, giving Sherman the moment of hesitation he needed. He twisted the Taser down, forced it against Phillips’s leg, and pressed the trigger.

Phillips’s body seized in agony, and he collapsed. Sherman leaped on top of him, sending another jolt into Phillips’s chest.

Sherman stole a look at Crenshaw, who was just turning to see what the commotion was. His opportunity to disable Crenshaw wouldn’t last long, and there were guns on the table.

Phillips’s pistol was in his waist holster. Sherman drew it, dropped the Taser, and rolled off Phillips’s torso. As he raised the gun, Crenshaw spotted him, threw the metal table over, and dove behind it. Sherman’s shots pinged off the underside.

Phillips shook off his daze faster than Sherman had expected and grabbed the Taser. He lunged toward Sherman with it, the high-voltage prongs chittering with sparks, but Sherman snapped off a shot before Phillips could reach him, and the man dropped in his tracks as the bullet blew off the back of his skull.

Sherman had to get the key. As he rifled frantically through Phillips’s pocket, he fired three more shots at the table to keep Crenshaw down. He found the key chain in Phillips’s front pocket, along with a cell phone, and unlocked one of the ankle cuffs so that he’d be mobile.

As Sherman got up to find cover, a bullet slammed into his thigh. He cried out but didn’t go down, knowing that he would be a sitting duck for Crenshaw. As rounds pinged off the concrete walls, he hobbled over to his cell door, leaving a thick trail of blood behind him.

The heavy steel door provided plenty of protection. He winced as he collapsed to the floor behind it. He was only now aware of the frenzied shouts coming from the other cells.

Sherman undid the remaining locks on the cuffs and threw them aside. Then he dialed 911.

After two rings, he heard, “911 emergency. How can I assist you?”

“My name is General Sherman Locke. I’m being held hostage by terrorists. I’ve killed one, but I’m pinned down by another.”

“Can you tell me your location?”

“No. I don’t know where I am. Zero in on the cell signal.”

“All right, sir. I’ll have the police there as soon as I can. How many assailants are there?”

“Just one more, I think.”

Sherman didn’t like being cornered like this, but he didn’t have a fallback position. He discouraged Crenshaw from circling around by firing two more shots. He was running out of ammo.

“Are those gunshots?” the operator said.

Good God. “Yes! He’s shooting at me. That’s why I need the police. Now!”

“Are you hurt?”

“Yes. I’ve been shot in the leg. Have you got my signal?”

“We’re working on it.”

“Well, hurry up, dammit!”

After a pause, the operator said, “I’ve got you. Five two nine Business Parkway in Hagerstown.”

“What state?”

The operator didn’t skip a beat at the odd question. “Maryland. Near the intersection of I 70 and I 81. State and local police are on their way. They should be there in minutes.”

That would put him right between Pennsylvania and Virginia. I 70 was a straight shot to DC, and I 81 led to Philadelphia and the Northeast Corridor. Crenshaw could be in one of a half-dozen major cities within hours with his radiological bomb.

But that wasn’t Sherman’s biggest problem right now. He had seen the barrel next to his cell. He couldn’t tell what was inside, but wires from it led to another barrel, and then another. He could see at least four of them.

Obviously the warehouse was rigged to explode, which would destroy all evidence of Crenshaw and Orr’s operation.

And if Crenshaw escaped, he’d set them off before the police arrived.

Sherman pocketed the phone without turning it off. He had to see what Crenshaw was doing. He gritted his teeth and hopped up onto his one good leg.

He slid the door’s portal aside, but he couldn’t see Crenshaw. Where did he go?

At that moment, the semi’s engine cranked up.

Crenshaw was making a break for it.

The external door of the warehouse was opening too slowly. Crenshaw had the truck in gear ready to go, but the door rose at a maddening rate.

He glanced out the window and saw General Locke staggering toward him, his gun pointed at the cab. Two bullets pierced the door just above his lap, smashing into the dashboard. Crenshaw returned fire.

His first two shots missed, but the third hit the general in the chest. He couldn’t tell how crippling a shot it was, but the general went down in a heap, the gun flying to the side.

The garage door was almost fully open, and Crenshaw could hear the distant wail of sirens. The general must have called the police with Phillips’s phone. No way Crenshaw was going to stick around with this mess.

The original plan, now literally shot to hell, had been to leave one of the Muslims they’d kidnapped in the wreckage of the burned-down warehouse and bring the other with them to leave at the scene of the explosion.

But Crenshaw couldn’t corral one of the Muslims and drive the truck, not without Phillips. So instead the Feds would have to think that a third bomber had gotten away in Manhattan. Same difference. They’d still pin the attack on Al Qaeda.

Crenshaw took one last look at the general, who was still motionless on the concrete floor. He put the truck into gear and roared out of the warehouse.

No cars were around to see him exit. He turned onto Business Parkway and built up speed, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror to make sure the general didn’t make a last-second escape through the open garage door, which was now closing behind him.

The aptly named road was lined with other small warehouses and industrial workshops. None of their residents had any clue that amid the distribution centers and manufacturing buildings was an operation that would change history.

Crenshaw could see two police cars approaching. As long as they didn’t notice the bullet holes in the side of the door, they’d never suspect that he was coming from their destination.

They raced by him. Crenshaw was now a half mile away, with plenty of space between him and the warehouse. He flipped open the safety on the detonator and pushed the button.

A huge orange fireball erupted behind him, followed almost immediately by the noise of a tremendous blast ripping the air. Even though he was ready for it, the size of the explosion startled him. He grinned as he realized that he’d used far more of the explosive than he needed.

The police cars skidded to a stop behind him. One of the officers got out to look at the shattered building, but they never glanced back at him.

Crenshaw turned onto Greencastle Pike, which was only a block from the interstate. Ninety seconds later, he was on I 81 heading to New York. He breathed easier when he’d gone another two miles and the only emergency vehicles he saw were three fire engines speeding in the other direction.

FORTY-NINE

At an outdoor café along Via Chiaia in Naples, Orr checked the tracker signal while Gaul ate a slice of pizza. When he saw where the tracker was, he nodded with satisfaction. His plan was working out perfectly.

It was now eight o’clock, but Locke and Benedict had been in the city since 3 P.M. Orr tossed back an espresso and smiled at the thought of having the Midas Touch in his possession by the end of the night after all these years of searching.

His phone rang. It was Crenshaw.

“Where’s the video?” Orr said. He was supposed to have received the last proof-of-life recording thirty minutes ago.

“The video?” Crenshaw said, his voice cracking. “Jesus, that’s the last thing on my mind!” Orr heard an engine downshift in the background. Something was wrong.

“Where are you?”

“I’m in the truck heading up to New Jersey. The warehouse is toast. Had to blow it early. Phillips is dead.”

Dead? That idiot Crenshaw. “What the hell happened?”

Gaul stopped chewing and looked at the phone.

“General Locke got loose somehow. He killed Phillips, but I was able to shoot the general twice. I would have stayed, but the police were on their way. Locke must have called them.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s in pieces, along with the girl and those two Muslim guys.”

Orr stopped himself from screaming in frustration. This was why he kept his team small. He had to do everything himself if he wanted it done right. Still, if Crenshaw completed his part of the mission, the situation could be salvaged.

“What about the truck?” Orr said. “Is it ready to go?”

“I’ve got the bomb rigged. It’s buried in the trailer under the sawdust.”

“Good. You know where to park it, right?”

“You think I’m doing this on my own?”

“Crenshaw, we are a couple of hours away from finishing the mission. As soon as I call you, I want the timer on that bomb set.”

“No way. You think I’m dumb? I know that you’re after the treasure of Midas. And I want my share.”

Orr’s lip curled in anger. That was not the plan, and no one changed his plan but him.

“What do you want?” Orr said.

“I know that what I’m doing is worth a lot more to you than two million dollars. I want twenty million.”

Orr heard the plastic seams on the phone crack as his grip tightened. “Fine. But you’d better do your part.”

Orr planned to sell off the Midas Touch in a private auction. When the price of gold shot through the roof after lower Manhattan was rendered uninhabitable, he would start the bidding at a billion dollars. Crenshaw was jeopardizing everything.

“I’m not setting off the bomb by myself,” Crenshaw said. “I want you here.”

“What?” Orr yelled, drawing the stares of the other patrons. “Why?”

“Because I want to see the Midas Touch in person. I want to know that it really works.”

Orr snorted in disgust. Asking for more money was one thing. But this weasel was going too far by blackmailing him. He vowed silently that Crenshaw would never get to spend the twenty million.

“Okay,” Orr said, “we’ll be there tomorrow.”

“Oh, and when we see each other, don’t try to kill me. I’ve designed the detonator with a code. You’ll never be able to set it off without me.”

That little pig. Orr couldn’t believe it, but he had no choice but to agree.

“All right. We’ll do it your way. I’ll call you when we have it.”

Orr hung up. He wanted to indulge his rage somehow, upend the table or throw the phone through a plate-glass window, but he had to control himself. The Midas Touch was all that mattered right now.

“What’s the problem?” Gaul asked.

“Sherman Locke and Carol Benedict are dead. Some shootout at the warehouse.”

“Phillips?”

“The general killed him.”

Gaul nodded slowly as he mulled over the news, his face revealing nothing more than his concentration on how it affected their scheme. “What now? Locke won’t show himself without the proof-of-life video.”

Orr checked the tracker again. It was headed straight down Via Don Bosco. If it kept going, as he thought it would, it would be near Piazza del Plebiscito in ten minutes.

Instead of Locke’s number, he dialed Stacy Benedict’s.

“Yes?” she said.

“You have the geolabe?” Orr said.

“Yes.”

“Good. Let me speak to Locke.”

Locke answered. “What?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice. I’ve missed you terribly.”

“Screw you. What about the proof-of-life?”

“I’ll send you the video before we meet. But I need assurance that you have the geolabe with you. Have Benedict take a picture of it right now using your phone. Put her phone next to it so I can see my number and text the photo to me.”

He heard a muffled voice. Locke was covering the mic on his phone.

“It’s on the way.”

Orr’s phone buzzed. He opened the text. There was the gleaming geolabe. His number was easily visible on the phone beside it, meaning the photo had to have been taken in real time.

“Happy?” Locke said.

“Very. I’ll call you in an hour with our meeting location. You’ll get the video then.”

“If we don’t get the video, we don’t show.”

“Oh, you’ll get it. Ciao.” Orr hung up and tapped the table absently.

“We have to accelerate our schedule,” he said finally.

“You sure?” Gaul said.

“Crenshaw’s stupidity crapped all over the original plan. Make the call.”

Gaul nodded and pulled out his phone, dialing the number Orr had obtained through some of his local contacts.

“I need to speak to Gia Cavano,” Gaul said. “A message? Okay, tell her I know how she can find Jordan Orr.”

Gaul grinned. That got their attention. Orr leaned close to the phone so that he could hear Cavano.

“Who is this?” she said.

“I hear you’ve got eyes all over Naples looking for Orr,” Gaul said.

“So? You have information?”

“Better. I can give you a man named Grant Westfield. He’ll tell you where Orr is.”

A pause. “Why should I believe you?”

“Then don’t.”

Another pause. “All right. Where is he?”

“He’s heading down to Piazza del Plebiscito.”

“Alone?” Cavano asked.

“No,” said Gaul, who had seen Westfield and his men less than an hour ago when he intercepted the tracker signal on a city street. “He has company.”

“That’s a big area. How will we find him?”

Gaul gave her the Web address with the tracker location.

“How do I know this isn’t some sort of trap?” Cavano said.

“You don’t. Be careful.” Gaul clicked END.

“Think she’ll do it?” he said.

“She won’t be able to resist. Once her men confirm that it really is Westfield, they’ll take him.”

“What if he’s killed?”

“Then he’s out of our hair. If not, we have provided potent bait for Gia.”

Orr slapped a twenty-euro note down on the table and stood.

“Let’s go. They’ll be here soon.”

He and Gaul gathered up their gear and headed to the car.

Orr felt the adrenaline begin to kick in. He was getting pumped for the operation, as he did before any big heist he pulled. It wasn’t nervous energy. It was excitement at finally putting the plan in motion, because he had confidence that it would succeed. And it wasn’t misplaced optimism at all. He had every piece of information he could possibly need, all thanks to his priceless accomplice, Stacy Benedict.

FIFTY

After dropping off their vehicles, Grant and the four men from Neutralizer made their way toward the Palazzo Reale, the royal palace of Naples built by the Bourbons in the seventeenth century. Grant wished he had a shot of bourbon. He didn’t like the idea of holding back while Tyler went into harm’s way without him.

The palazzo would be the perfect observation post for Piazza del Plebiscito. They would wait in the publicly accessible palace until Grant got the signal from Tyler that Orr had appeared. Then Grant would take two men into the crowd while another two watched them from a discreet distance, ready to wade in if trouble arose.

Grant took the team on a shortcut through the Galleria Umberto. The cavernous indoor shopping plaza was built in the shape of a cross, and the last of the afternoon sun streamed through a 184-foot-high ceiling made of glass and iron latticework with an enormous dome in the center.

Although the streets were packed, the space held few shoppers. The stores were closed for the evening, and the focus was on the concert in the square outside. Everyone on Grant’s team was wearing rubber-soled shoes, so they made no sound on the marble floor.

At the far portico they got three steps outside when two light blue Alfa Romeo sedans marked POLIZIA screeched to a stop in front of them. Four cops jumped out and drew their pistols.

One of the Neutralizer men reached for his weapon, but Grant stopped him. Getting into a gun battle with the Naples police was not on the agenda. They raised their hands. A group of bystanders was already forming to watch, snapping photos of the hubbub.

“What seems to be the problem, Officers?” Grant said. One of the Neutralizer men was fluent in Italian and translated.

“Drop your weapons,” came the reply.

They all looked to Grant, and he nodded. Guns clattered to the sidewalk.

Someone had set them up. Grant had picked this team specifically because they were not from the Naples area, so the chances of them being corrupted by the Camorra were nonexistent. How had the police found out exactly where they would be?

“Tell him we have permits for these weapons,” Grant said. When the policeman who looked as if he was in charge heard the translation, he shook his head. He made them all put their hands on the cars, where they were frisked. Everything in Grant’s pockets, including his phone and the tracker, were confiscated, along with the guns. Then they were all cuffed.

All except Grant.

The four security contractors were shoved into the backseats of the police cars. The lead cop pointed back the way Grant had come and said “Go” in English. He waited until Grant started moving, then the police cars peeled away with their sirens blasting.

Grant didn’t know what was going on, but this couldn’t be good. He had to find a phone and warn Tyler that their plan had already gone to hell. He trotted back through the galleria. When he got to the center, a mountainous figure emerged from an alcove to his right. It was his old friend Sal from the British Museum.

Somehow Cavano had found him. She must have pulled strings with her police contacts to have Grant’s team apprehended.

Another man came in from the left. Two more from in front. Grant turned and saw another pair behind him. He was surrounded. Normally, this would be a good time to shout for the police, but Grant was pretty sure that wouldn’t help.

“I see you took my advice and brought more men this time,” he said.

Sal held up one meaty hand and grinned. “You come quiet, eh? We no hurt you.”

“I know you won’t. I can’t promise the same for you, though.”

That wiped the smug grin off his face.

They hadn’t drawn guns yet, so maybe that meant they weren’t supposed to kill him. At least it was something.

“So you want trouble, eh?” Sal said. “We can make trouble.”

The most effective tactic for taking down a single man when you have overwhelming numbers is simply to rush him and get him down on the ground as quickly as possible. Once he was on his back, it was almost impossible for even the best fighter to fend off attacks from a group that had him pinned.

Instead of taking that approach, only two men approached Grant warily, the others hanging back as, what, reinforcements? Well, if they wanted to be dumb, Grant wasn’t going to stop them.

As soon as they were within reach, Grant swept his leg out, sending the guy on his left to the floor, his head cracking on the marble. The one on his right swung his fist around, but only connected with air as Grant ducked under it. Using all his considerable strength, Grant hammered his fist into his assailant’s solar plexus. With a grunt, the man doubled over and collapsed, gasping for breath.

Grant stood up and smiled at the ringleader. “Pretty sweet, huh?”

Sal glanced at the other three, who rushed Grant. The degree of difficulty was harder this time, but nothing he hadn’t seen in the wrestling ring years before. Of course, those fights were scripted, but thanks to his Ranger training, Grant had learned a few more tricks.

He whipped around and threw an elbow into the chest of the man behind him, then kicked upward, connecting just under the chin of another guy, sending him flying backward. The third man was able to get a knee into Grant’s side, but Grant slapped the man on both ears simultaneously, likely shattering both eardrums.

Grant was feeling good about his progress in beating the crap out of six men when he heard the unmistakable snap of a police baton expanding. Too late, he turned to see Sal swing the baton around, catching him in the back. His kidneys exploded in pain from the impact of the baton’s steel tip, and he dropped to his knees.

Sal reared back for another blow. Grant swiped at his leg with one arm, knocking him over, but the distraction was enough to keep Grant from seeing a second baton sweep down.

A starburst blasted across his vision, and he had the vague sense to turn his head so that his teeth didn’t smash into the stone as he pitched forward.

He battled to remain conscious, if not for his own sake then for Tyler’s and Stacy’s, but the struggle lasted only another three seconds before a feeling of nausea overcame him and his world went black.

FIFTY-ONE

For the third time, Tyler called Grant and couldn’t reach him. Having separated from Grant and the security team earlier in the day, he’d agreed to stay in regular contact. The last time they’d spoken was fifteen minutes ago.

Tyler and Stacy were standing in the nave of San Francesco di Paola, the church that formed the western edge of Piazza del Plebiscito. The church was behind the music stage, and the square was already filling with concertgoers ready for a night of songs and fireworks. Tyler thought the church would be a safe haven until they needed to venture out into the square to meet Orr. Their location would keep him in close proximity to Grant’s team in case Orr made a move early.

They had separated in the afternoon so that Tyler and Stacy could explore Naples, looking for the well Archimedes had identified. With Aiden’s help researching Italian databases and contacting different cultural organizations in the city, they had found four possible wells that might be the one Archimedes was leading them to. They could only hope the well they needed hadn’t been filled in during the intervening years since Orr and Cavano had seen it.

Tyler and Stacy had stopped to look for the sign of Scorpio in each well and found a cluster of dots on the inside of the third one that precisely matched the configuration of the Scorpio constellation. He had called Grant to tell him the location, and that was the last time they had spoken.

“What’s the matter?” Stacy said as Tyler eyed his phone with concern.

“Grant’s not answering.”

“Do you think he can’t get a signal?”

“Unlikely. And if he wasn’t getting one, he’d move somewhere else.”

“Then what happened?”

“I don’t know, but it can’t be good.”

Tyler tried the Neutralizer team members and couldn’t reach them, either. He didn’t like using Grant as bait, but he couldn’t imagine that Orr had been able to get the drop on him and the entire security team.

He put the backpack with the geolabe on the floor and checked the signal for the tracker they’d removed from the geolabe and given to Grant. Instead of broadcasting from the Palazzo Reale, it was en route away from the palace.

“The tracker’s on the move,” he said.

“What?”

“If it’s still with Grant, he’s heading north at a fast clip.”

“What do we do?” Stacy said.

“We abort until we know what happened to Grant.”

“But Carol—”

“Orr won’t kill her yet. Not when he’s this close. We’ll just postpone the meet.”

“Then we need to find Grant.”

“I’m going on my own.”

“But—”

“No buts. I can move faster by myself. I’ll find the tracker and assess the situation. If I can get him myself, I’ll do it. You need to hide someplace safe until I come back.”

“I hate doing that.”

“It’s for my safety, too. As long as you have the geolabe, we still have bargaining power. I’ll drop you off at an outof-the-way pensione. Give me two hours. If I’m not back in that time, call Miles Benson and he’ll help you. Do not meet with Orr on your own, no matter what he tells you.”

Stacy sighed. “Fine. But I don’t like this.”

“Your objection is noted,” Tyler said, putting the backpack on his shoulder. “Now let’s go get the car.”

He opened the front door to the breezeway outside. The semicircular colonnade embraced the piazza. Their car was in a lot to the north. He looked in both directions, but no one in the crowd paid any attention. With tens of thousands of people attending the concert and dozens of ways into the square, the chance that Orr would spot them was small, but with Grant no longer backing him up Tyler had to be prepared for anything.

He waved for Stacy to come out, and they weaved through the strolling crowd.

They had reached the end of the breezeway when a man in cargo pants and a U2 T-shirt stepped out from behind the last pillar and faced them. He had a jacket draped over his folded arms so that his hands weren’t visible.

He stared at Tyler. He had to be one of Orr’s men.

Tyler grabbed Stacy’s arm to run for it but froze when he felt the barrel of a pistol in his back.

“You’re early, Tyler,” Orr said behind him.

“So are you,” Tyler said.

“I had to change my plans. By the way, Gaul has a gun aimed at you.”

“I figured that out.”

With his free hand, Orr removed Tyler’s Leatherman from his pocket, tossed it to Gaul, and pocketed the Glock pistol he took from Tyler’s waistband. He didn’t bother to search Stacy. Her shorts and tank top couldn’t have hidden anything dangerous.

“I’ll take your phones,” Orr said.

Stacy whirled around with her fists clenched, ready to take on Orr, but Tyler grabbed her shoulders to stop her. Orr backed off but kept the gun trained on them from under his folded coat.

“What are you doing?” Stacy said. “They’re going to kill us!”

“If they wanted to kill us, they would have done it already.”

“Listen to Tyler, honey,” Orr said. “Now toss your phones to me.”

“Only if you never call me honey again.”

“Fair enough, sweetie.”

Stacy tensed again, before giving in. Tyler let her go. He took her phone and threw it to Orr along with his.

Orr dropped them both to the ground and stomped on them.

“Now we’re on our own. And finally the backpack. Slowly.”

Tyler didn’t move. “It won’t do you any good.”

“I’d just feel better holding it. I can shoot you in the leg and I’d get it anyway. Your choice.”

Tyler grudgingly held the backpack out for Orr, who took it and rested it on his shoulder.

“Good. Let’s go.” Orr motioned them forward, and he and Gaul fell into step behind them.

“Where are we going?” Tyler said.

“Where do you think?” Orr said.

“I don’t know. And you’re dreaming if you think we’re going to tell you where the well of Archimedes is. This is an exchange, and you haven’t offered us anything yet.”

“I do know where we’re going, thanks to Stacy. The church of San Lorenzo Maggiore near Piazza San Gaetano. You found it there.”

And it suddenly made sense to Tyler. Orr didn’t find them by luck. He had been waiting for them to come out of the church. He would have known where Grant was because of the tracker, but there was only one way he could have known where Tyler was. He and Grant had had a mole in their midst from the very beginning.

Tyler stopped and looked at Stacy, shocked at her betrayal.

“I trusted you,” he said. “You’ve been telling Orr our every move.”

“What?” Stacy said with a puzzled look. “No, I don’t … You can’t think I’ve been helping him?”

Tyler shook his head grimly. “How else could Orr have found us?”

“I don’t know! I’m his hostage just like you are. So is my sister.”

Which Tyler now realized could have been a setup from the very beginning. For all he knew, Carol Benedict was in on it as well.

“Oh, Stacy’s been a good informant,” Orr said, “giving me updates along the way, but she got greedy and demanded more than her fair share. I’d kill her right now, but I still need her.”

“He’s lying!” she shouted at Tyler before turning on Orr. “You bastard!”

“Am I? Then how would I know that you went to Gia’s home outside London? That you rendezvoused with her in Munich? That you went to the Athens museum yesterday and the Parthenon this morning?”

Stacy sputtered, “This is crazy!”

“No, it’s not,” Tyler growled. “The tracker might have told him about our visit to Cavano and Munich, but he couldn’t have known about the Parthenon. We left the tracker in the plane.” He turned to Orr. “Where is Grant?”

Orr smiled. “Dead. Or captured. I don’t really know which, and I don’t care. That’s up to Gia.”

“You told her how to find him?”

“It got him out of the way, didn’t it?”

“And my father?”

“He’s all right. For now.”

Orr was a great liar, but something about his expression made Tyler think he was covering up.

“I want to see him.”

“When we find the treasure, I’ll let him go.”

“If you already know where the well is, why do you need us any more?”

“Because I’m on a deadline, and even though we might have the correct well, I can’t spend days looking for the right tunnel that leads to the chamber. Your expertise with the geolabe will take us there. I have some pages from the codex that you haven’t seen.”

Tyler remembered Stacy saying on Wednesday night that she thought the codex was missing some pages.

“Those pages show how to navigate the tunnels?” he said.

“Using the geolabe, yes. At least, I think they do. You’ll have to figure it out.”

“And if I won’t?”

“I’ll kill you both right here and take my chances on my own. What’ll it be?”

“Don’t listen to him,” Stacy said.

Tyler considered the options and realized that he had none. He didn’t know what was going on with his father, but to have any chance of taking Orr and finding out about the nuclear device, he had to stay alive until he had an opportunity to make his move. If he could escape once he was in the tunnels, he might be able to get back to the surface and get reinforcements. At the very least, he could keep Orr from coming back out.

Tyler nodded. “All right.”

Orr smiled. “Good. Keep walking.”

In three minutes, they were in a parking lot next to a Fiat sedan. Gaul opened the trunk and took out two belts.

“Put your arms up,” he said.

“Why?” Tyler asked. “What are these?”

“Stun belts,” Orr said. “Used in prisons to control inmates. You’ll wear them so that I can keep you in line when we’re in the tunnels. I don’t want pistols sticking out of our belts. With the close quarters down there, you’ll be too tempted to grab for one.”

Orr removed two wristbands from his pocket and strapped them to his left arm. Each of them had a color that corresponded to the color of the belt — red for Tyler and blue for Stacy. The buttons were enclosed in a plastic covering. Orr tapped them lightly. “For easy access.”

Tyler didn’t resist. This meant Orr was planning to give them freer range in the tunnels. If Tyler could figure out a way to get his belt off, he might be able to get away before Orr could activate it.

Gaul snapped the belts on Tyler and Stacy and locked them with a key. The nylon belts were snug enough that they couldn’t be slid off. A box the size of a pack of playing cards was centered over their bellies.

“Get in the backseat,” Orr said. Tyler and Stacy climbed reluctantly into the Fiat. Orr and Gaul got into the front.

As Gaul threaded the car out of the lot, Orr turned in his seat. “Oh, one more thing. Those stun belts have been modified by a colleague of mine. It’ll be difficult for me and Gaul to keep an eye on you at all times while we’re in the tunnels, so these are our fail-safes to keep you from escaping.”

“You think I’m scared of a shock collar?” Stacy said.

“Actually no,” Orr said, holding up a Taser. “But I have this just in case you need some prodding.”

“Then what are the belts for?” Tyler asked.

“As I mentioned before Stacy interrupted,” Orr said, “they’ve been modified. They’re not stun belts any more. They’ve each been fitted with three ounces of C4 and molded into a clever shape charge. If either of you is out of my sight for more than ten seconds, I push this button. I’m told you’d be cut in half before you hit the ground.”

FIFTY-TWO

Concussion. That’s the word that swam into Grant’s mind as he was driven across Naples. He’d experienced one before when a wrestling move went wrong and a chair hit the back of his head. With effort, he focused on recalling the symptoms. Fuzziness: check— squinting helped a little. Nausea: if he’d had a bigger dinner, the backseat would be a mess. Lack of concentration: had he already thought of that? Loss of memory: that was a tough one.

He remembered some of the fight in the galleria, but he didn’t know how he ended up in the car. He tried to focus on the two men on either side of him. One was massaging his knee and the other was holding his stomach. Only the driver and Sal in the front passenger seat looked unharmed. Grant knew there were more guys, but they would be in even worse shape. As far as he could recall, he’d kicked the crap out of five of them. Not bad, but not good enough.

The car was waved through an iron gate and up the driveway to the gaudiest mansion he’d ever seen. Eggshell color, pillars dominating the front, ornate decorations curling around the windows and doors, cherubs adorning the eaves. It looked like the White House redecorated by Liberace.

Two new guys yanked Grant out of the car and hauled him up the steps into the house. He was taken through the foyer and to an outdoor patio that was situated on a cliff a hundred feet above the sea.

He’d only gotten a glimpse of Gia Cavano when she’d hopped into the sports car outside the Boerst building in Munich, but the woman sitting in front of him was unmistakable. Her voluptuous form was squeezed into a tight black T-shirt and black jeans. Her long dark hair was wrapped on top of her head in a sexy updo. She looked sleek and curvy all at the same time. If Grant had been in a bar, he would have sidled up to her by now and offered to buy her a drink.

“Welcome to my home, Mr. Westfield,” Cavano said.

The fuzziness was fading, but Grant had to hold himself steady to keep from falling over. “If you want to invite me over to tea, an engraved invitation would be appreciated next time.”

“You’re a tough man to bring down, I hear.”

“Give me one of those batons and I’ll really show you what I can do. You know, I’m kind of parched.” He nodded at Sal, one of the three men hovering around them, guns at the ready. “Could you ask your girlfriend to get me an ice water? And a Scotch chaser. Neat.”

Sal glared at Grant. Apparently his English was good enough to get the insult.

“Get Mr. Westfield his drinks,” Cavano said.

Sal left, and Grant took a seat without asking.

“You’ve got your tentacles into everything if you could get the police to intercept my men,” he said. “Where are they?”

“Oh, they’ll be fine. A night in jail and then they’ll be free in the morning. Long enough for my purposes.”

“Which are?”

“Jordan Orr. You know where he is?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, I would have known precisely where he is if your meatheads hadn’t interrupted the party.”

Sal returned with the drinks.

“Thanks, Sallie.” Grant took them, chugged the Scotch, and pressed the cold glass of water to his temple.

“Can you find him?” Cavano said.

“Why should I?”

“Because if you don’t, I will have my men throw you off the patio.”

Grant took a sip of water and looked at the long drop to the Mediterranean below. “That is a darn good reason. I’ll have to call Tyler Locke to find out.”

“Tell me his number.”

Grant thought about it for a second and decided it couldn’t hurt to try. He gave her the number and she dialed. She listened for a few moments, then hung up.

“Straight to voice mail.”

That can’t be good, Grant thought. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t be answering.”

“I have a possible reason. I received an anonymous call ten minutes ago telling me that he’s with Jordan. Where are they going?”

Grant’s heart sank. He was hoping that Tyler had gone to ground when he lost contact with the security team, but this must have been Orr’s plan all along. Orr was the only one who could have tipped Cavano off about the tracker. He must have cornered Tyler and Stacy virtually simultaneously, although Grant didn’t know how that was possible. If Tyler wasn’t dead or free, that meant Orr was taking him to find the treasure.

“I have an idea where,” Grant said.

“Show me.”

“First, I want some guarantees.”

“The only guarantee I’ll make is that you’ll die slowly if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”

“That is magnanimous of you, but I need something more. I know you mafia types are people of your word.” Grant didn’t believe that for a second. Criminals were criminals. But he couldn’t just acquiesce to her demands without negotiating. They preyed on weakness, and he wasn’t going to show her any. His words hit their target.

Cavano’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want?” Grant knew that she hungered for the treasure and her vengeance on Orr too much to kill him if he could lead her to them.

“I want a promise on your mother’s grave that you will let me, Tyler, and Stacy go once you have Orr and the treasure.”

“My mother’s still alive. She’s upstairs right now.”

“Okay, swear on your dear departed husband’s soul.”

“You’re working with Jordan. How do I know you weren’t sent here to lure me into a trap?”

“We were forced to work with Orr. We’re just pawns to him.”

“Can you prove it?”

Good question, Grant thought. What would be irrefutable proof?

Proof. He had just the thing.

“Do you have a computer?” Grant asked. “I need to show you an email.”

Sal brought a laptop, but he wouldn’t let Grant touch it. He gave it to Cavano.

“Tell me what to type,” she said.

He gave her the login and password for his email and told her to click on one of the emails that Tyler had forwarded to him with the video of Sherman Locke.

She watched it twice and closed the laptop.

“Okay, I believe that Jordan is forcing you to work for him,” she said. “But if we do find the treasure, and I agree to free you, how do I know you won’t talk about it to anyone?”

“Who would believe us? You won’t let us get away with any evidence.”

Cavano thought about that. “All right. I swear on my husband’s soul that I will not kill you, Tyler, or Stacy if you fulfill your part of the bargain.” She made the sign of the cross.

“No, promise that we will be safe. I don’t want an ‘accident’ to befall us on the way to the airport.”

She sighed. “Yes, you will be safe. I swear it on my husband’s soul.”

Grant stood. “Then we have a deal.” He knew the deal was a sham, but the longer he stayed alive, the longer he had to work out some kind of scheme to find Tyler and get out of this mess.

“Where are we going?” Cavano said as she stood.

“To some place called Piazza San Gaetano. We’re going to church.”

FIFTY-THREE

Tyler couldn’t tell whether the belt Orr made him wear really was rigged with explosives, but it was definitely uncomfortable. It was tight enough that he couldn’t possibly slide it down over his hips. The belt was made of heavy-duty nylon. Even if he found a cutting tool, it would take him several minutes to saw through it. The clasp and key-release mechanism were integrated into the unit housing the explosives, so if he tried to pry it apart, he might set it off.

He wasn’t worried about the C4 itself. The explosive was extremely stable and couldn’t be detonated by impact, even by a gunshot. Tyler always hated movies that showed someone blowing up a brick of C4 by shooting it, because the scenario was complete fiction.

Stacy looked as uncomfortable with her belt as he did, and Tyler was beginning to have second thoughts about how hastily he’d assumed that she was helping Orr. Maybe it was just his rationalization for not wanting to seem like a sucker, but he didn’t want to believe Stacy was capable of betraying him.

But if she wasn’t in league with Orr, Tyler couldn’t figure out how Orr knew every one of their movements. Orr might have learned about the museum heist from the news, but with the tracker on the plane during their stay in Athens, there was no way he could have known that the shootout at the Parthenon involved them. It was almost as if he had access to a second GPS signal …

Tyler suddenly remembered Orr smashing their cell phones. Stacy’s phone had been the only piece of electronics they’d had with them the entire time. Tyler’s phone had gotten ruined when it was dunked in the river. Orr could have been tracking the signal in Stacy’s phone from the beginning. Tyler had been so fixated on the tracker in the geolabe that it never occurred to him that Orr had a backup, which must have been why Orr had made it so easy to find.

Tyler couldn’t be sure that he was right, but he had renewed faith that Stacy was innocent. So Orr was either toying with them or he was trying to keep Tyler and Stacy from trusting each other. Divide and conquer. Tyler would play along for now.

Gaul found a rare parking spot two blocks away from the church at Piazza San Gaetano. They got out and began walking, with Gaul and Orr careful to stay behind Tyler and Stacy. The shops lining the narrow streets were all closed, and the bustle of activity Tyler had seen earlier in the day had dwindled. Scooters occasionally passed them, and the few pedestrians were making their way to tiny restaurants or the entryways of their walkup apartments.

Along the way, Tyler saw a sign for Napoli Sotterranea, the tour service that took people through the ancient passageways winding their way under the city. When he and Stacy had come this way in the afternoon, Tyler had stopped in to ask some questions.

A tour guide explained that no one knew how many tunnels and chambers actually existed underneath Naples. With subways and structural foundations constantly being excavated, new tunnels were found yearly, and some archaeologists speculated that more than thirty miles of tunnels remained undiscovered. Churches and private buildings often refused requests to map out the tunnels underneath them. Tyler had obliquely asked him about the San Lorenzo Maggiore well and whether it connected to the maze that the tourists trod. He told Tyler that he regularly traversed all the known tunnels and had never seen a connection, so the well must lead to one of the still unexplored areas.

The basilica loomed over the tiny Piazza San Gaetano. Like that of most of the other centuries-old churches in downtown Naples, the front door was set back only a few feet from the street. A sign advertised the archaeological excavation under part of the church that had exposed an ancient Greek marketplace.

Though there was no Mass that evening and the archaeological exhibit was closed, the door was wide open to allow worshippers a chance to pray and confess their sins. As the four of them walked in, Tyler mused that the priests would have to be in the confessional a long time to hear all the sins committed by this group.

They bypassed the nave, which was empty of visitors. The well stood in the center of an outdoor courtyard bordered by a cloister. The well opening was topped with a elaborate sculpted frame that was designed to winch the water up in a clay amphora from a pool in the cistern below. The aqueducts had been shut off long ago, so the cistern would now be dry. The well’s frame was now decorated with flowers, hardly the starting point Tyler would ever have imagined for a treasure hunt.

When they were standing at the well, Tyler tried to guess how the spy in the story from Archimedes’ wax tablet wound up here. Had he swum through the tunnels that served as the aqueducts? Tyler pictured the man climbing up the rope that was tied to the winch.

“Show me the mark of Scorpio,” Orr said.

Tyler walked around to the opposite side and pointed inside the well.

The light was fading quickly with the setting sun. Orr played the beam of a flashlight over stones dating from an era hundreds of years before Christ. The marks were just barely visible, fifteen dots carved out of the rock by the spy of Syracuse’s king to identify the location where he intended to return but never did. Tyler had checked the constellations online. The dots matched exactly the arrangement of stars that depicted Scorpio.

“Congratulations, Tyler,” Orr said, while Gaul extracted a rope and climbing gear from the duffel. “I knew this whole mission was a long shot, but you both came through with flying colors.”

Tyler wanted to strangle him right there. “I’m so happy you approve.”

“We’re not done yet. We still need to get down there.”

“We could jump. You go first.”

“Funny,” Orr said, looking around. They were still alone in the courtyard. Tyler didn’t want to find out what Orr would do to someone who innocently stumbled onto them.

Gaul looped the rope around the well’s frame and tested it for strength. It held, so he lowered himself into the well. Three feet down, he hammered a piton into the stone and put a carabiner on it. Gaul tested the metal spike and D-ring to make sure it would hold his weight, then attached a second rope to it.

Tyler understood what he was doing. Both ends of the rope around the frame extended all the way down to the bottom of the cistern. Once the four of them reached the bottom, Gaul would pull one end down and that rope would fall free. That way, no one walking through the courtyard would see the rope attached to the frame and investigate. To climb back up, the second rope would be left attached to the piton and out of sight.

“Okay,” Gaul said. “It’s simple. We’re going to climb down one at a time. I’ll belay you on the way down. Got it?”

They all nodded, and each of them was given a three-belt harness to put on. Tyler put his legs into each of the smaller loops and then buckled the third around his waist. The brake rope was already attached, with the carabiner dangling on the end. Gaul also gave Tyler and Stacy small headband lights that they would use on the climb down.

Gaul went first, his duffel strapped to his back. It took him several minutes to reach the bottom while Tyler and Stacy waited up top with Orr, who stood away from them with his finger ready to trigger the bombs strapped to their waists if he had to. When he was down, Gaul radioed up that he was in place and ready with the Taser.

Stacy went next. Tyler helped her into the well and made sure that her harness was attached properly. She wasn’t tentative about the climb at all. Tyler remembered her talk about exploring ancient ruins and caves with her cameramen in tow, so this descent was nothing new to her. He watched her skillfully climb down until she was out of sight.

For the first time, Tyler was alone with Orr. He stared at Orr, who returned his gaze with his lip curled in a half smile.

“How do you think you and Gaul are going to carry out a hundred and twenty-five tons of gold?” Tyler asked.

Orr laughed quietly. “You think I’m after the gold? I told you. I want the Midas Touch itself.”

“You really are crazy,” Tyler said, shaking his head.

Orr looked as if he was disappointed at Tyler’s skepticism, paused, then said, “Have you ever heard of extremophiles?”

“It sounds like someone who enjoys jumping off buildings wearing a parachute.”

“No. An extremophile is an organism that can exist in conditions that would kill most other life forms. They’re found around volcanic vents on the ocean floor or in acidic hot springs like at Yellowstone Park. They’re microbes called archaea. Some of these microbes have been known to actually digest metals in solution and excrete the solid form. That’s why companies have been trying to mine the ocean floor around these black smokers.”

“And you think that’s what the Midas Touch is?”

“As ridiculous as it sounds, yes. I have researched this my whole life, and that’s my theory. I think Midas’s skin was somehow afflicted with this kind of microbe, perhaps exposed to it during a visit to a hot spring somewhere, but he was immune to its effects. I discovered that many people live with chronic skin diseases. Believe me, you don’t want to see the photos.”

“So how does he turn things to gold?”

“Any object he touched would become contaminated with this microbe. If the object was then submerged in a solution with dissolved gold in it, the object would be transmuted to gold by the microbe.”

“So you think you’ll get rich if you can recover this microbe?” Tyler said. “What makes you think it’s still alive?”

“Over twenty years ago, in that chamber somewhere below us, I saw a man turn to gold in front of my eyes.”

He must have meant the drug runner from Cavano’s childhood tale who chased her and Orr into the chamber. Tyler recalled her saying that the man had touched something inside the golden coffin, something that had caused him excruciating pain. If that was truly the Midas Touch, the king himself may have been immune through some divine providence, but anyone else who came in contact with it would experience mind-bending agony, maybe even death.

“These archaea can remain dormant for thousands of years under the proper conditions,” Orr continued. “Whatever they used to embalm Midas could have preserved the microbe.”

However far-fetched Orr’s theory sounded, he believed it. He almost had Tyler convinced.

“You said the Midas chamber had a pool with a hot spring in it,” Tyler said. “How do you know that’s not the source of this magical ability?”

“I don’t, but I have a way to test it. I have two vials of water with me, one with water containing an acidic mixture of dissolved gold, and another with seawater. If the Midas Touch is real, it will work with those samples as well.”

“Seawater?”

The call came up from Gaul that Stacy had reached the bottom. Orr gestured for Tyler to go next.

As Tyler climbed over the lip of the well and attached his harness, Orr said, “Seawater has minute amounts of gold dissolved in it. If the Midas Touch proves to be as effective as I think it is, you could extract huge quantities of gold from the oceans.”

Tyler’s mind reeled at how much gold that could be. “We’re talking millions of ounces, then.”

Orr shook his head. “You’re thinking way too small. I’ll give you a hint. There are over a billion cubic kilometers of seawater in the world, and the average solubility of gold is thirteen parts per trillion. Now get going.”

Tyler began climbing down. Steadying himself wasn’t too challenging, and the mindless activity allowed him to calculate the staggering sum that was driving this whole venture. Aiden had been far off when he’d guessed that Orr and Cavano were each after a block of gold worth four billion dollars. Tyler went through the math twice and came up with the same stunning figure both times.

If what Orr told him was true, even the most conservative estimate would put the value of all the gold in the world’s oceans at twenty-five trillion dollars.

FIFTY-FOUR

Orr watched as Tyler and Stacy huddled over the geolabe, the copied pages of the codex he had given them, and a lantern to see by. As Tyler talked, Stacy made notes on the copy with a pencil. Tyler had refused to work with her until Gaul gave him a taste of the Taser.

Those three pages he’d held back had been Orr’s ace in the hole. Without them, he knew Tyler and Stacy couldn’t have found the Midas chamber on their own. Not in the maze that faced them.

The floor of the cistern, the chamber that would have held the water supplying the well, sat 150 feet below the church, and its ceiling soared three stories above them, where it was pierced by the well opening. The cistern’s floor was sunk ten feet from the surrounding tunnels, so that a pool would have formed. Now that the aqueducts were shut off, the chamber was dry. Crude steps led up to each tunnel.

Orr ran his hand over the light gray tuff that made up the walls of the room. The solidified volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius, which had erupted regularly since humans first settled in Naples, was so easy to work that the earliest Greek settlers had excavated tons of it for building material. They soon realized that the tunnels could be used as aqueducts to transport water for the city dwellers. The network of tunnels grew as the Romans, who wrested the city from the Greeks in the third century, mined the tuff to make the finest cement in Europe, creating structures that were still intact more than two thousand years later.

Inhaling the dank air and listening to the dull reverberation of their voices, Orr vividly remembered his visit to Naples, when he had played with Gia Cavano in the tunnels despite their parents’ protestations. Some children were scared of dark, closed-in tunnels, but Orr could have explored them all day, marveling at the feat the ancients had accomplished in carving them out.

Those ancients had been as busy as gophers. Four tunnels led away from the cistern. If he hadn’t been looking for them, he wouldn’t have noticed the Greek letters carved into the tuff at the bottom right of each tunnel opening. Alpha, lambda, sigma, and mu. Somehow the geolabe would tell them which letter would lead them in the right direction.

“Which is the right one?” Orr said.

Tyler didn’t look up. “We’re working on it.”

“Work faster. If I think you’re stalling, one of you will end up with a hole in your belly the size of a dinner plate.”

Stacy blanched. She wasn’t planning on trying to fool him.

“We’re doing the best we can,” Tyler said.

“You just sprung this on us,” Stacy said. “It may take time.”

“We may not have much time,” Orr said.

“Why not?” Tyler said.

“Because Gia Cavano could very well be on her way here right now.”

“You son of a bitch!” Stacy spat out. “You told her where we are?”

“I needed your friend Grant Westfield out of the way. Either Gia killed him or, even better, she convinced him to lead her to us. If she doesn’t follow, good for me. If she does follow, I’ll have a surprise waiting for her.”

“What kind of surprise?” Tyler said.

“The nasty kind. Now get back to work.”

Tyler stared at Orr. For a moment, Orr forgot that he was in control and felt unnerved by Tyler’s gaze. Then Tyler refocused his attention on the geolabe. Orr was surprised by his sense of relief. He ran his fingers over the wrist detonators and felt better.

Tyler and Stacy went back and forth between the device and the instructions in the document. As far as Orr could follow, it had something to do with mathematical principles that were beyond him. At one point, Tyler took the pencil and jotted down some calculations. Stacy looked confused by Tyler’s questions as well, but she answered with translations as quickly as he asked them.

In ten minutes, Tyler suddenly stood up with the geolabe.

“You’ve figured it out?” Orr asked eagerly.

“Yes.” If there was any doubt in Tyler’s mind, Orr didn’t hear it.

“How does it work?”

Tyler shook his head. “It’s too complicated to explain.”

“Bullshit.”

“You’re right. I just don’t want to tell you. For obvious reasons.” He pointed to the explosive belt around his waist.

Orr grinned. “You’re a smart guy. But I’ll be keeping tabs on which tunnel we take. If I think you’re stalling by taking us in the wrong direction or I see us doubling back, there really will be no reason to have you both along. Get me?”

“I’ve got you.”

“So which way do we go?”

Orr saw Tyler twirl the top knob on the geolabe. When the dial stopped, he turned it over, then glanced around until his eyes settled on the portal with the sigma next to it. The opening was no more than three feet wide.

“That one,” he said, handing back the pen and the sheaf of papers.

“You’re sure?” Orr said.

“That’s what Archimedes tells me.”

Orr saw no harm in letting Tyler and Stacy see where they were going, so each of them was equipped with a lantern. The lights threw eerie shadows in the otherwise total darkness. The passageway was curved and not wide enough for more than one person at a time. Gaul went first, then Stacy, then Tyler. When Tyler was far enough ahead, Orr followed him in.

Just a few feet in, Orr opened a gum wrapper and pocketed the gum. He loosely balled up the wrapper and dropped it on the ground. The tiny piece of silver foil reflected his light in a pinpoint flash. Now Cavano would find the carelessly dropped bit of trash and know which way to go.

After forty feet, Orr emerged from the narrow tunnel into another cistern as big as the first. Three more passageways led off from it. This time, no Greek letters were present.

“What happened to the markings?” Orr said.

“There won’t be any more,” Tyler said. “The geolabe will tell us which tunnel to take from here on out.” Tyler pointed to the tunnel on their right.

Orr now understood why the geolabe was their guide. The spy for the king of Syracuse must have created his map as he walked, perhaps marking his arm with charcoal to record the direction of each turn. He wouldn’t want to etch the walls with directional indicators that could lead the Romans back to his discovery. But when the spy found the exit, he knew he would need to indicate which tunnel was the starting point back to the treasure, so he’d scratched a letter next to each of the tunnels just below the old water level of the cistern.

Orr used a knife to mark the wall with a small x next to the opening they’d just come through to show him the correct path out once he got rid of Tyler and Stacy. Then he sent the three of them ahead into the next tunnel while he hung back.

Orr knelt and opened his backpack. He took out a smaller knapsack specially created by Crenshaw. It would look like something they might have left behind in the course of their exploration. In reality, it contained ten pounds of phosphorus grenades. The opening was partially unzipped.

No doubt Cavano would make the trip down with her men. She wouldn’t give up the chance to see the Midas chamber again for herself. She’d follow the trail left by Orr’s gum wrapper, and when her group came into this room, she’d be curious to see what Orr had abandoned. When one of her men opened the zipper or picked up the knapsack, the grenades would explode, showering the entire room with burning phosphorus and causing a gruesome death for everyone with her.

Orr armed the device and stood, heaving the backpack onto his shoulder. He frowned as he climbed the steps into the next tunnel. The only downside of the plan was that he wouldn’t get to see Gia Cavano open her surprise.

FIFTY-FIVE

FBI special agent Ben Riegert’s laugh filled the cramped interrogation room of the Hagerstown sheriff’s office. The story was just getting better and better. Mohammed Qasim was laying it on thicker as he went. Riegert’s partner, Jackie Immel, was questioning the other suspect, Abdul bin Kamal, in the next room. He hoped she was getting more out of her guy. This one wasn’t making any sense.

Riegert took another swig of coffee. He’d raced out to Hagerstown from the DC office along with twenty other agents as soon as they heard that a 911 call had come in claiming that a terrorist attack was taking place and a warehouse had blown up.

They found Qasim and Kamal beside the building behind a concrete retaining wall with a young woman and a man bleeding to death from shots to the chest and leg. The ambulance had taken the injured man away, and he was identified as retired Major General Sherman Locke. Riegert hadn’t gotten word about his condition, but the paramedics had said he might not survive. A chopper was flying him to the George Washington University trauma center.

The woman, Carol Benedict, was now being examined at a local hospital. Before she was taken away in the ambulance, she told the local police that she couldn’t remember her abduction, which made Riegert suspect that she’d been drugged. Rohypnol and other date-rape drugs usually caused short-term-memory loss, and the hospital would test for it, but it was probably out of her system by now. Riegert would head there to question her next.

Riegert took a seat opposite the suspect. “So, Mr. Qasim, you claim two guys busted into your house as you were getting your morning coffee and abducted you?” Riegert said without even trying to hide his disbelief. Usually these terrorist types were more than happy to come right out and show pride in their acts, but this guy was different. Qasim looked terrified, not the face of defiance Riegert was expecting.

“I swear that is the truth,” Qasim said.

“Where are you from?”

“I am from Saudi Arabia. I am attending the University of Maryland to get my degree in petroleum engineering.”

“Uh-huh. Why do you think these men kidnapped you?”

“I don’t know! They blindfolded me, put me in a van, and tied me up. Then they picked up Abdul.”

“You know him?”

“Only in passing. We go to the same mosque in College Park.”

“You weren’t associated with him in any other way?”

“We studied the Koran together several times, but that is all.”

“So they took you to this warehouse in Hagerstown. Then what?”

“Then they threw me into this room and locked the door. It had a bed and a bucket and nothing else in it. They gave me water and just a little food.”

Qasim was definitely hungry. Riegert had given him a candy bar, and he chowed it down in two bites.

“So you were in there for more than two days,” Riegert said. “Why?”

“You keep asking me why. Ask the kidnappers why!”

“The kidnappers, huh?” Riegert opened a folder and tossed a photo of a charred body over to Qasim. “The only other person we’ve found in connection with this is that guy right there. Was he a partner of yours?”

“No!”

“Mr. Qasim, a truck was hijacked not too far away the day you claim that you were kidnapped. The driver, a Clarence Gibson, says that two men stopped his truck, took him to a remote forest location, and left him for dead. The trucker said the men spoke Arabic. Know anything about that?”

Qasim stared at him, wide-eyed. “You think I was part of that?”

“You did disappear that day.”

“This is crazy, I tell you!”

“This morning, 911 got a call from a General Sherman Locke that he was being held by terrorists. The police arrive to find a local warehouse blown to hell, and the only survivors are two foreign nationals in the company of a frightened woman and a nearly dead man, who we believe is a newly retired two-star general in the Air Force. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t! I can only tell you what happened.”

“Okay. Take me through this morning.”

“Can I have another candy bar?”

“Sure. After we hear your story about what happened today.” By “we,” Riegert meant the recording apparatus and the eight men squeezed into the observation room behind the one-way mirror.

Qasim took a sip of his water and cleared his throat. “All right. I was sleeping in my prison cell when a noise woke me up. I think it was a fight. I heard a buzz and then shouting. It sounded like someone fell. And then shots. Many shots.”

“How many?”

“I can’t remember. There must have been more than ten.”

“Then what?”

“I heard a truck start up. Yes! I remember now. I got a glimpse of a semi truck inside the warehouse before they put me in the cell.”

Excellent. This guy was burying himself, and Riegert wasn’t going to stop him. “Did you get a look at the truck?”

“Only for a moment. All I can say is that the cab was blue and it had a long silver trailer.”

That matched the description of the one hijacked from Gibson.

“So the truck was there?”

“But I didn’t know it was stolen.”

“Okay. So the truck started. How did you get out of the cell?”

“It sounded like someone was crawling outside my door. Keys jangled, and then my door unlocked. I thought it might be the men who kidnapped me, so I stayed away. It swung open, and I saw an older man lying in a pool of blood. So much blood.”

Riegert appreciated Qasim’s training. He could make up a story on the fly better than most criminals he dealt with.

“And this was General Locke. Did he say anything to you?”

Qasim nodded. “He had a beard and his clothes were dirty, so I knew he was a prisoner like me. I rushed over to him, of course. He was very weak, but he said, ‘The building is rigged to blow. We need to get out.’”

“And that’s when you saw the explosives?”

“Yes. I’ve worked on oil-well blowouts in Saudi Arabia, so I could recognize what those barrels were. I took the keys from General Locke and opened Abdul’s cell. We heard the woman, Ms. Benedict, screaming, so we let her out, too. I carried the general out the nearest door while Abdul helped Ms. Benedict. We ran behind the retaining wall, and that’s when the building exploded. I still hear ringing in my ears.”

“And that is when the police showed up. Well, Mr. Qasim, that is quite a story. And you think Mr. bin Kamal is telling the same story?”

“He must, because it’s true!”

Two raps on the door, and it opened. Immel poked her head in. “Got a minute?”

“I’ll get your candy bar,” Riegert said, “and then we’ll go over this again, Mr. Qasim.”

The suspect nodded shakily and gulped the rest of his water. He was certainly nervous, and Riegert intended to find out why.

Riegert closed the door behind him. “You will never guess the fantasy this guy has cooked up.”

“I know,” Immel said with a chuckle. “I’ve got my own tall tale from bin Kamal. Some snow job about him being kidnapped right out of his house and then thrown in a locked room inside the warehouse.”

Riegert frowned. “And shots fired in the warehouse before Locke opened their cells with blood all over him?”

His partner stopped smiling. “You’re getting the same story?”

“Sounds like it.”

“Well, it gets weirder. We were trying to contact Locke’s son or daughter, but we couldn’t reach either of them. We did get his son’s boss, Miles Benson, president of Gordian Engineering.”

“Why is that weird?”

“Because the first thing he said when we told him about the warehouse was that we should go over there with a Geiger counter.”

FIFTY-SIX

Knowing that they would be descending into the well, Grant had Cavano and her men stop for ropes and other climbing gear before they headed to the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore.

When they arrived, they found the rope anchored to the inside of the well, so they knew Orr had already gone down. Cavano had brought four men with her, Sal and the three least injured of the men from the galleria. All five were armed with submachine guns equipped with mounted flashlights. Two of her men went first, and then Grant went down. Normally, he was an expert at rappelling, but he was still woozy from the concussion and slipped twice on the way to the bottom.

One of the men steadied the rope while another watched Grant wander around the chamber with a flashlight, looking for any sign that Tyler was all right.

He spotted a crumpled bit of white paper and bent to pick it up. He began to unfold it, but before he could read it, Cavano shouted, “Give me that!”

She detached herself from the rope and held out her hand. Grant put it in her palm.

Cavano frowned at it for a moment and then handed it back to him.

“What does that mean?” she demanded.

Grant shined his light on it. Two words were scrawled in Tyler’s handwriting.

Louis Dethy.

It was a message left for Grant. Tyler knew that he was coming. He might even know that Cavano and her clan would be with him, so he’d coded it in case it gave Grant an advantage. But what was Tyler trying to tell him?

Grant struggled to shake off the effects of the concussion and focus his mind. Louis Dethy. He recognized the name but couldn’t quite grasp where he’d seen it.

“Well?” Cavano said.

“I have no idea.” The truth was always the best lie, and Grant wasn’t going to volunteer that Tyler had sent him a secret message.

Cavano stared at him a moment, then let it go. She watched Sal descend from above.

Grant wondered why she’d come along on the expedition. Maybe she was desperate. She was definitely running out of trusted soldiers. With three men lost in Munich, and then another two in Athens and a couple out of action at the galleria, her forces had dwindled quickly. Sure, she could find more grunts, but she might not trust them to keep their mouths shut about what they found. And he’d seen the glint in her eye. She wanted to see the gold again herself.

A bodyguard called to her in Italian as he came out of one of the tunnels leading from the cistern. He was holding what looked like a crinkled gum wrapper.

“Another clue, perhaps,” Cavano said. She took it from him, unwrapped it, and took a sniff. “It’s fresh. I can still smell the mint.”

She gave orders in Italian, then said to Grant, “Rodrigo goes first ahead of us. When he gets to the next room, he calls for us to enter, with you, me, and Sal going last. That way, if Jordan is waiting for us, he only takes out one of my men.”

“Does he know he’s cannon fodder?” Grant said, tilting his head toward Rodrigo.

“He does what I tell him to do. You walk in front of me. I want to see where you are. Sal, you bring up the rear.”

Rodrigo entered the tunnel, followed by the others. Grant had a flimsy plastic flashlight, not heavy enough to do any damage.

They wended their way through the tunnel until Rodrigo reached the next chamber. They halted while he searched for signs that there was no welcoming committee. He gave the all-clear, and they started moving forward again.

As Grant walked, he turned Tyler’s message over in his mind. Louis Dethy. It was obviously a name they both knew, but it was no one at Gordian or in the Army. Then he thought about the last name: Dethy. Grant wondered if he’d been a client of Gordian’s. No, they hadn’t met him. He’d heard about Dethy when they were researching bomb-disposal case studies.

Then it was as if a laser pierced his fog-shrouded brain.

Louis Dethy — trap.

In 2002, Louis Dethy, a seventy-nine-year-old Belgian retired engineer, was found in his own home killed by a gunshot wound to the neck. The police had assumed it was a suicide until one of the investigating detectives opened a wooden chest and barely missed being blasted by a shotgun.

The story was well known in Tyler and Grant’s combat-engineering unit because the police called in military engineers to defuse or disarm nineteen ingenious explosive devices and trick-wired shotguns Dethy had designed. Dethy had killed himself when he’d set one off accidentally. It took the engineers three weeks to clear the house, and Grant’s Army company had nicknamed his home the Dethy-trap.

Tyler was warning him that Orr had left behind a booby trap.

Grant instinctively looked down for any sign of trip wires or pressure plates, but he realized that they would already have been set off by the three men who’d gone before him. He was just glad he wasn’t in front.

As he approached the opening into the next chamber, Grant saw two of the men huddled around some object in the middle of the room, while the third kept his gun trained on Grant. A flashlight played over a partially opened knapsack.

It was the oldest trick in the book. In Iraq and Afghanistan, insurgents would place grenades inside an apparently harmless object and hope that a soldier would be curious enough and stupid enough to pick it up without inspecting it.

Cavano’s men fit that description. They’d never been through war, so it didn’t occur to them not to touch something that was lying around.

Rodrigo bent over and reached for the knapsack. Grant shouted “No!” but it was too late. Rodrigo picked up the sack. Grant turned and ran back into the tunnel, but Cavano was in his way. She lifted her weapon at the threat, but a blast concussion knocked both of them down.

The two men next to the bag had to have been killed instantly, but the third man was too far away from it to be severely injured if it was just a fragmentation grenade. Yet he suddenly began to cough, and then he began to scream.

“Sono infiammato! Sono infiammato!”

White smoke roiled toward Grant, and he pulled Cavano to her feet.

“What happened?” Cavano said. “He’s on fire?”

Grant knew immediately what it was. “Phosphorus! Get back! Go! Go! The smoke is poisonous! Hurry!”

Cavano cried out to Sal, who shuffled back as fast as his big frame could move. The smoke was piling toward Grant. If they got caught in it, they’d be coughing up blood for weeks, their lungs singed by the phosphorus, which burns when exposed to air.

He pushed Cavano to go faster. She cursed at him as she nearly tripped. When they tumbled into the cistern that had been their starting point, Grant didn’t stop. He raced into one of the other tunnels and kept going until he was in the next room. Cavano and Sal followed, their faces a combination of fear, anger, and confusion.

Grant came to a halt.

“We should be okay here,” he said. “The smoke should be pulled up the well by the chimney effect. But if we see any headed this way, we should retreat farther.”

“What happened?”

“Orr planted a booby trap in that room. Your boys took the bait and set it off.”

“They’re dead?”

“If they aren’t yet, they’ll wish they were. The burns from white phosphorus grenades are horrific. I’ve used them in conjunction with high explosives. Very effective and vicious. We called it a shake-and-bake op.”

Cavano’s jaw clenched and her brow furrowed with hatred. “What do we do?”

“Nothing we can do right now. Even with a gas mask for protection, it would burn your skin and set your clothes on fire. We’ll have to wait until it dissipates.”

“How long?”

“Maybe ten minutes. Maybe an hour. Depends on how drafty it is.”

Cavano explained the booby trap to Sal, who spewed what sounded like every Italian curse word in existence. Grant didn’t need to speak the language to know that Sal and Cavano had just made a pact to make Orr suffer in the most terrible ways imaginable.

FIFTY-SEVEN

To Tyler, it seemed as though they’d been in the tunnels for days, but his watch told him it had been little more than an hour. Halfway through, a dull peal, like thunder, had echoed off the walls. It had to be the booby trap Orr had implied when he said he was leaving a nasty surprise for Cavano. Orr even smiled with satisfaction at the sound. Tyler just had to hope Grant had gotten the warning he’d risked writing on a piece of paper torn from the codex translation.

Only a few of the passages were as narrow as the first one, so all four of them often walked through together. At one point, Tyler had caught Orr scratching a mark on the wall of a passageway they’d just come through, presumably so that he could find his way out again. Orr must have been confident that Cavano would be in no condition to trail them, but Tyler made himself believe Grant had survived the explosion and would be following the marks.

Archimedes had made the operation of the geolabe intuitive only to someone who understood his mathematical reasoning. Once Tyler had solved the formula in the codex, the usage of the geolabe was relatively simple, but he wasn’t about to tell Orr that.

Most intersections had four offshoots, but some had three and some had five. To find which direction to go, the top knob would be rotated clockwise so that the top dial would move the same number of zodiac marks as the number of openings at the intersection. The bottom knob would be rotated by the same number, but counterclockwise. Then Tyler would flip the geolabe over, and the dial on the opposing side would show the correct direction to go, with the six o’clock point indicating where they’d come from. After the tenth intersection, Tyler still hadn’t seen the dial point to the six o’clock position. As long as the geolabe wasn’t telling them to backtrack, he was confident that he had interpreted Archimedes’ instructions correctly.

Twice they came across cisterns that were still partially filled with water. Tyler guessed that the tunnels occasionally flooded with rainwater during downpours. Maybe the aqueducts had been filled with water only part of the time, which would have made the trek that much easier for Archimedes’ spy.

As they walked, he kept an eye on Stacy. She had withdrawn, saying only the minimum to keep on the path. Several times she seemed on the verge of saying something to him, but then she closed her mouth and looked away. Embarrassment, anger, fear — Tyler couldn’t tell the reason, but she didn’t need to apologize for anything. In fact, he realized an hour ago that he should apologize to her. After playing the events of today back in his mind, Tyler remembered another event that convinced him of Stacy’s innocence. Tyler would let Orr’s charade continue as long as he could, but at the right time he had to go on the offensive, and when he did, he would need Stacy’s help.

Around the next corner, the passageway ended at the midsection of a steeply inclined tunnel leading up to the left and down to the right. Throughout the walk, the group had gone up or down a few steps, but overall they had stayed on essentially the same level underground. The upward direction of the tunnel abruptly ended at a brick wall.

“What the hell?” Gaul said.

“How old do you think those bricks are?” Tyler asked Stacy.

“At least two thousand years.”

“Maybe they didn’t want anyone to find Midas’s tomb,” Orr said.

“Then why leave the passage we just came through unsealed?” Tyler said.

“I don’t know. You’re the engineer. You tell me.”

“It may have had nothing to do with Midas,” Stacy said. “The tablet said that the Syracuse king’s spy was looking for a way into the Roman fortress. Maybe this leads into it, and the people inside were trying to keep invaders from doing exactly what he was trying to do.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Orr said. “Looks like we go farther down the rabbit hole.”

The tunnel extended downward for another two hundred feet, and they emerged into a room twenty feet long and ten feet wide. At the far end was a pool of water that ran the width of the room and was three feet across. What looked like a foot-wide stone bridge spanned the middle of the pool and ended at the wall. Tyler turned in all directions, but there were no more tunnels.

It was a dead end.

“Is this some kind of joke?” Orr asked.

Tyler looked at him in surprise. “No. This is where the geolabe said to go.” Could he have interpreted the instructions incorrectly?

“If this is it, Tyler, I’m going to press my button. You better come up with something fast to make me think you haven’t been screwing with me this whole time.”

Tyler was acutely aware of the explosive belt digging into his stomach as he walked to the far end and inspected the wall.

A nearly invisible crack stretched across the end wall at a height of six feet. The surface was made of the same tuff that they’d seen throughout the tunnel system, but in some places the pocked gray stone revealed a white layer underneath, as if the tuff were merely a thin veneer. Tyler scratched at the white material with his fingernail, but it didn’t flake away like the tuff. In fact, it abraded his nail, almost as if …

Tyler flipped the geolabe over. The dial was pointing to Aquarius, the water bearer. That had to be a clue.

“What is it?” Stacy said.

He dropped to his knees and held the lantern over the water, which became opaque five feet down, obscuring the bottom.

Tyler smiled at the engineering ingenuity of it.

“Eureka,” he said quietly.

“What?” Stacy said.

“Feel that,” he said, pointing to the white stone under the tuff.

She rubbed it with her finger.

“What’s going on?” Orr said.

“It feels like what I use to smooth my feet,” Stacy said. “Pumice?”

“Right,” Tyler said. “Did you know that pumice is up to ninety percent air?”

“Why does that matter?” Orr asked.

“Because it’s the only rock that floats. It’s ejected by volcanoes like Vesuvius. It floats so well that some scientists theorize that plants and animals might have migrated throughout the Pacific on pumice rafts created by Indonesian volcanoes.”

“And your point is?”

“The whole wall below this crack is made of pumice. The tuff on the front is merely to disguise it. The wall is floating.”

Orr looked confused, then glanced down at the water. “Is that possible?”

“Bricks of pumice could have been cemented together. When the pool of water below was filled, the guides in the side wall kept the end wall in place as it rose with the water until it was firmly seated against the ceiling.”

“And no one would ever know it was actually a door,” Stacy said incredulously. “It makes sense that Midas would have made sure his tomb was protected. Grave robbers were a bane to the ancient world, especially because so many kings insisted on being buried with vast hoards of treasure.”

“Like the pharaohs.”

“Wait a minute,” Orr said. “When Gia and I found the chamber twenty years ago, there wasn’t any door.”

“This pool is probably fed by a spring so that it can be refilled. If there was a drought the year you visited, the level in the pool could have lowered enough to drop the barrier.”

Orr got a faraway look in his eye. “Now I remember. We came down an incline and then crossed a bridge over water. I’d forgotten that detail. This has to be it.”

“Can we swim under it?” Gaul asked.

“I doubt it,” Tyler said. “That would make the floating wall superfluous.”

“Then how do we open it?”

“There must be a lever of some kind to release the water,” Tyler said. “When it flows out, the barrier will lower and let us through.”

Tyler walked around the room and saw no sign of any kind of button, switch, or handle.

Then he realized where it must be.

“It’s in the water. Something like the stopper in a bathtub. Take it out, and the water will drain. Take the belt off me and I’ll open it.” If he dove in with the belt on, the electronics might short-circuit, setting off the bomb.

“No,” Orr said. “I don’t trust you. What if there’s an escape route?”

“It’s the only way to get through,” Tyler said, looking at Orr and Gaul, “so I guess one of you has to do it, then.”

“No,” Orr said again. “Gaul, undo Stacy’s belt and give her a flashlight.”

Stacy fixed him with a hateful stare when she realized that she was the one who would dive into the liquid gloom.

FIFTY-EIGHT

Gaul unlocked the explosive belt from Stacy’s waist and gave her one of the small metal flashlights. She turned to face Tyler. Several times during the walk through the tunnels, she had thought to protest Orr’s accusation of treachery, but she had no explanation for how he had known their movements, and she worried that her denials would ring hollow. But before she dove into the pool, she had to say something.

“Tyler,” she said, “I want you to know that I’ve never deceived you. Carol’s safety is my only priority.”

Tyler didn’t say anything, but his lip curled upward ever so slightly and he winked at her.

Stacy felt a rush of relief. Somehow he knew she hadn’t betrayed him. Suddenly she had a glimmer of hope that they’d get out of this mess. She had an almost overwhelming urge to embrace Tyler, but if she did, she knew that she’d lose control and cry like a girl.

Orr missed the wink. “Go,” he commanded. “That flashlight isn’t waterproof, so it may not last long. We’ll shine our lights into the pool from up here.”

“When you get down there,” Tyler said, “look around but don’t touch anything. Come back up and tell me what you see.”

“What am I looking for?” she asked.

“Some kind of plug or lever.”

She sat and put down the flashlight to take off her shoes and socks. She swung her legs around and dipped her toes in the water. A chill shot up her spine, and she shivered.

“Quit stalling,” Orr said, and shoved her in.

Stacy tumbled forward, and the sudden dunking nearly made her inhale in shock. She kicked to the surface and fought the impulse to climb back out of the frigid pool.

“Bastard!”

“They say it’s better to go in all at once,” Orr said.

“Just give me the damn flashlight so I can get this over with.”

Gaul handed it to her. He, Tyler, and Orr leaned over the pool and held the lanterns above it. The illumination penetrated to the bottom, but she couldn’t tell how far down that was. It was well over five feet, because her feet couldn’t touch.

Stacy wasn’t an Olympic swimmer, but she had spent many days swimming in the lake near her parents’ farm. She wasn’t worried about a little pool.

She took a deep breath, dove under, and kicked down. She played the flashlight around the walls, but the surface looked identical to the walls of the room above.

When she reached ten feet down, she saw the bottom of the barrier suspended above the floor of the pool. Just as Tyler said, the ends were inserted into grooves at each end to guide it up and down. Six feet below the bottom of the barrier were stops where the barrier would come to a rest.

Nothing looked like a lever or a plug, so she turned around. There was a dark spot on the wall directly under where Tyler had been. She swam over to it.

It was a square cavity six feet on each side and three feet deep. She shined the flashlight inside and got a glimpse of a stone lever jutting from the wall. Next to the lever was a flat round disk the diameter of a beach ball.

A small black notch was cut into the rock above the top disk. Stacy put her hand over it and felt her palm sucked onto it. Water was flowing through. This was the control valve.

She was out of breath, so she pulled her hand away and made for the surface.

“Did you find it?” Orr said.

Stacy sputtered water. “I think so.”

“What does it look like?” Tyler said.

She explained the mechanism to him.

“It seems simple enough,” he said. “You’ll need to pull the lever. That should swing the disk aside to allow the water to flow through the drain.”

“Got it.”

“Just be careful. The suction could be strong. You don’t want to get stuck.”

“I can handle it.”

She dove back down. When she reached the cavity, she shined the light on the lever again to get her bearings, but it flickered out five seconds later, succumbing to the water leaking in. Still, it was enough time for her to put her hand on the top handle and brace herself with her back against the side wall of the cavity.

She pushed, and the lever moved an inch. The rush of water increased. She pushed again, and it moved a little farther. Now the outflow was a torrent. She heaved, swinging the disk to the side. Almost out of breath, she kicked against the bottom of the pool, but her foot was swept into the hole.

Her foot plunged in, and the water rushing past threatened to pin her there indefinitely. Terrified at the thought of drowning that way, she gathered her strength, turned over, and pushed her free foot against the wall with every bit of power she had. She extracted her trapped foot and swam out of the way of the flow.

By this time her lungs were screaming for air. In a panic, she flailed her arms to reach the surface. As she broke through, she cried out for help.

A pair of powerful hands grabbed her shoulders and lifted her out of the pool. Tyler laid her down gently, but she didn’t let go. He responded by pulling her toward him in a tight embrace. The warmth of his body felt wonderful, and she buried her face in his chest so they wouldn’t see her sobbing.

“You’re all right now,” Tyler said. “You did it. The water’s draining.” Then he whispered into her ear. “It’s time. Be ready.”

Gaul dropped the belt on top of her and backed away to join Orr at the opposite end of the room as they watched the barrier slowly drop.

“Put it on her,” Gaul said, with the Taser leveled at them. “I want to hear it click shut.” Tyler complied and looped it around her waist, snapping it closed.

A wave of heat washed over them, as if someone had opened the door on a broiling oven.

They all moved to the other side of the room as the cool air from the tunnels rushed in to replace the stifling damp air coming from beyond the descending barrier.

In five minutes the wall had sunk all the way to the bottom, and the air temperature had dropped enough for them to venture in.

They walked across the threshold, through a small antechamber, and emerged at a balcony overlooking a cavern far bigger than any they’d come through in their journey.

Stacy gasped. Nothing could have prepared her for the sight in front of her. This had to be the tomb of Midas, because from floor to ceiling every surface was made of gold.

FIFTY-NINE

The lustrous golden finish reflected the lanterns so that the luminous power was amplified far beyond their meager outputs. The room stretched out before Tyler as if he were standing on the doorstep of El Dorado. The floors, walls, and ceiling were all made of gold, which ended in tendrils reaching for the chamber’s entryway like a creeping mold.

The entry platform to the one-hundred-foot-long by fifty-foot-wide room was a balcony with a solid railing along its length. The chamber seemed to have been excavated from a contiguous mass of volcanic tuff, and the balcony overlooked a massive ten-foot-deep pit that took up more than half the room’s length. Stairs to Tyler’s left led down to the pit, and in the middle of the pit was the statue of a girl lying on a cubical pedestal of gold, just as Orr had described, her left hand missing. The golden pedestal, six feet on each side, had lines of Greek lettering chiseled into it.

A spout of water poured from an opening in the wall into a bubbling pool that ran along the far end of the pit behind the pedestal. The water must have been supplied by a hot spring deep under the crust, superheated by the immense magma chamber that fed Mount Vesuvius. Clouds of steam rose from the pool. The room would have been unbearably hot with the barrier closed.

Another set of stairs led to a ten-foot-high terrace at the opposite end of the chamber, but those stairs were on the right side of the chamber, just past where the pool of water ended. The terrace didn’t have a golden railing as the entrance balcony did, so Tyler could clearly see a gold sarcophagus placed on it in a regal center position atop a platform overlooking the rest of the chamber.

There were no other golden objects in the chamber, so Midas must have been confident that the golden room itself was impressive enough to secure him a heavenly afterlife with the gods.

Tyler observed all of this in just a few seconds. He’d been preparing for the last hour, thinking about how to disable Orr and Gaul without getting tasered or blown up. Now that they had reached their objective, he and Stacy had exhausted their usefulness to Orr. If Tyler didn’t act soon, the two of them would be killed for sure. It was incredibly risky, but he could either try something now and go down fighting or die with a push of Orr’s detonator button.

Gaul and Orr had been so careful to keep an eye on both him and Stacy during the entire journey that he’d had no clear opportunity to strike. Either he would have been killed in the attempt or he would have been defeated and tipped his hand. Tyler knew that he would have only one chance, and he counted on this being the time when Orr and Gaul would be the most distracted, the moment they laid eyes on all that gold.

When they had walked through the entrance, Tyler had angled to position himself so that the two men were on either side of him, with Stacy behind them. As they stood at the balcony of the golden cavern, Orr and Gaul were clearly mesmerized by the bounty the chamber offered.

Tyler took his chance.

Without warning, he pushed Stacy backward out of his way. He used the geolabe to smack the Taser out of Gaul’s hand, and it went flying into the pit below, where it skidded into the pool. With a kick, he sent Gaul crashing down the stairs.

Tyler whirled around, trying to smash Orr’s head with the device, but it only hit him in the back. Orr bent over, his right hand caught between his body and the stone railing. Tyler grabbed his left wrist and tried to wrench the detonators off by undoing the two Velcro clasps.

He got one open, but it slipped out of his hand and fell over the side of the railing. It was the red one that matched the red belt he wore. The detonator for Stacy’s blue belt remained securely fastened. Orr yanked his wrist away and swung the bag on his shoulder around. It slammed into Tyler, knocking him backward.

Before he could catch himself, Tyler tipped over the railing and tumbled through the air.

When Tyler had disabled Gaul with lightning speed and launched himself at Orr, Stacy had understood what he was going for. He needed to get those detonators. One of them had gone flying, but the one linked to her belt was still on Orr’s wrist.

It had looked as if Tyler was going to win in one shot, but Orr had been too quick. She ran toward him to try and stop him, but she got there too late, and Tyler flipped over the railing and out of sight.

Orr reached for the detonator button, so Stacy did the only sensible thing. She jumped on his back and latched on to him, wrapping her legs around his midsection, the explosive charge jammed into the small of his back.

“You touch that button and we both die,” she said into Orr’s ear.

He tried to pummel her with his elbows, but the angle didn’t allow him much leverage. Then he landed one that sent a jolt of agony through her torso so painful that she almost released him, which would have meant instant death.

With one arm laced around his neck, she reached with her other hand and raked his face with her fingernails. Orr screamed as she gouged his right eyeball.

“You bitch!”

Orr propelled himself backward until her back connected with the wall, driving the breath from her. She struggled for air but didn’t ease up. She grabbed her own wrist and pulled as hard as she could, tightening the hold on Orr’s neck.

The strangled wheeze escaping from his mouth told her that it was working. It was only a matter of who would give out first.

Tyler landed with a thud on the hard pit floor, and he felt something pop near his ribs. Pain shot through his chest, but at least his arm had kept his head from slamming into the stone floor. He rolled over and spied the detonator button lying next to the golden pedestal.

Gaul, who was shaking off the fall down the stairs and holding his head, saw the button at the same time and realized what it was. He lunged toward it.

Tyler tackled him, and Gaul pitched onto his face. He continued scrambling for the detonator, but Tyler pulled the cuffs of his jeans, dragging him backward.

Tyler leaped on top of him and punched Gaul in the kidney. Gaul coughed in pain, and Tyler took advantage of the pause to jab his hand into Gaul’s pocket. Gaul recovered, rolled over, and slammed his foot into Tyler’s side.

If the kick had hit his cracked rib, Tyler would have doubled over in too much pain to move. But the kick was to his other side, and though it sent him reeling, he kept hold of the key he’d snatched from Gaul’s pocket.

Released from Tyler’s grip, Gaul scrabbled toward the detonator. Tyler knew that he had only seconds before Gaul had the detonator in his hands.

Tyler frantically stabbed the key into the lock mechanism on his belt and twisted it.

Gaul seized the detonator.

Tyler ripped open the belt and threw it.

Gaul thumbed the cap open. He sat up and had already jabbed the button down when he realized that Tyler had hurled the belt at him.

For just a fraction of a second, Tyler saw Gaul’s reaction morph from triumph to horror before the belt exploded in his face.

Gaul’s head was torn apart by the blast. Blood and gore splattered the immaculate golden floor behind him. It took his body a second to realize that it was no longer alive. Gaul toppled over, twitched a couple of times, and then lay unmoving.

Tyler had saved himself, but Stacy was still in danger.

With the adrenaline masking his pain, Tyler jumped to his feet and ran up the stairs. He got to the top in time to see Stacy clinging to Orr’s back as he slumped to the floor underneath her. Her arms were choking the life from him.

He ran over and forced her arms open. She resisted letting go.

“Stacy!” Tyler yelled. “We need him alive!”

She looked up at him with a wild flash of her eyes, ready to fight. When she saw who it was, she sagged. Tyler’s chest protested, but he caught her.

He set her down and turned Orr over. He had four diagonal scratches across his face, and his right eye was a ruined mess. Tyler removed the detonator from his wrist and checked his pulse.

“Is he dead?” Stacy asked. “Did I … kill him?” Her voice quavered with hope that she’d succeeded and fear of the same.

“No,” Tyler said. “He’s out cold, but he’s breathing.”

He unlocked Stacy’s belt. The adrenaline was wearing off, and Tyler winced as he threw it aside.

“Are you all right?”

“I’ll be fine. Just a bruise.”

“Gaul?”

She had to have heard the explosion, but she obviously hadn’t seen it.

“Dead,” Tyler said.

Stacy started to tremble as she recovered from her battle with Orr. Tyler held her hand, and they both caught their breath.

After a minute, Stacy said, “What do we do now?”

Tyler glanced at the bubbling cauldron of boiling water below. “As soon as he’s awake, Orr either tells us where my father and your sister are or he’s going for a swim.”

SIXTY

Tyler dragged Orr’s unconscious form down the stairs, one slow, painful step at a time. His chest injury barked at him, but he ignored the ache as best he could. Every fiber of his being wanted to stomp the life out of Orr for what the man had done to his father, but he had to keep Orr alive if he wanted to find Sherman, Carol, and the nuclear material.

“Get his bag,” Tyler said to Stacy. “We may not have much time.”

Orr’s feet slapped against the steps until Tyler laid him out at the bottom. Stacy dropped his bag next to Gaul’s. She turned and saw the motionless body.

“Oh, my God!” she cried when she saw the remains of Gaul’s shattered skull.

“Just try to ignore it.” Tyler had seen much worse in the Army. That didn’t make the sight any more pleasant, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. If Cavano had survived the explosion, she might arrive at the Midas chamber any minute, or Tyler and Stacy might run into her and her men on their way out. Neither option would end well if they didn’t have anything to negotiate with. They’d be just as dead as if Orr had done it himself.

Tyler might also find himself bargaining for Grant’s life if Cavano was holding him captive. The first step was to take stock of the chamber’s contents so that he could develop a plan.

He bound Orr’s wrists with the shoelaces from Gaul’s boots, then rifled through Orr’s pockets and took his Leatherman back. He tried checking Orr’s cell phone to see what numbers he had called, but the phone was password-protected. Tyler would have to get Aiden to crack it. He took the canteen from Orr’s belt and passed it to Stacy, who took a swig before giving it back.

As Tyler took a drink, Stacy asked, “How did you know that Orr was lying about my betraying you?”

Tyler wiped his mouth. “Two reasons. First, Orr knew how to find us at Piazza del Plebiscito. We went directly there from the well, and I was with you the whole time, so you had no chance to tell him where we were.”

How Orr had known the correct well could be found at San Lorenzo Maggiore was easier. It was the last well they had visited. Orr knew they would stop searching after they’d located it.

“And the second reason?” Stacy asked.

“He had us photograph your phone with the geolabe. I thought it was odd at the time, but later I realized that he made us do it because the geolabe tracker and your phone were in two separate locations.”

“My phone?” Stacy said with surprise.

“Mine was ruined when I got dunked in the river during the chase at Cavano’s estate. Did you misplace your phone anytime in the last few weeks?”

Stacy looked away for a moment as she thought, then whipped her head back around. “Last week I was eating at a restaurant and I couldn’t find my phone for about five minutes. A man sitting near me said he found it on the floor. At the time, I just thought it had slipped out of my purse.”

Tyler nodded. “That’s it. It only takes a few seconds to clone a SIM card. Orr had us duped from the very beginning, intentionally faking me out with the geolabe tracker. Then he used it to try to sow mistrust between us. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now, but I wanted to keep him off guard.”

“I understand,” Stacy said with a smile. “I’m just glad you had faith in me.”

She unzipped Gaul’s duffel and nearly dropped it when she spied what was inside.

“Look at that,” she said. Tyler saw three canisters of the binary explosive already connected to timing devices. It wasn’t enough to destroy the whole cavern, but with the proper placement it could bring down a large section of the ceiling.

“Orr must have been planning to blow the entrance once he’d secured the Midas Touch so that no one else could get in.”

“What a tragedy that would be.” She handed Tyler a SIG Sauer pistol she found inside. “You’ll probably want this.”

“Thanks.” He searched the rest of the bag, but with the Taser now in the water it was the only weapon available. Orr wasn’t carrying a gun, having put all his trust in the explosive belts.

Tyler opened Orr’s bag and saw the box with the golden hand inside. Next to it was a leather pouch. Tyler opened it to find an ancient book. The cover had no writing on it. He began to open it when Stacy stopped him.

“Don’t,” she said. “That’s the Archimedes Codex. It’s too fragile to handle. You might damage it more than Orr already has.”

Tyler put it back in the pouch. He inventoried the rest of the bag’s contents. Two full clear water bottles, one marked “Seawater” and the other marked “Fresh Water.” Two sets of heavy rubber gloves. An empty plastic Tupperware container. And an older model digital video camera already loaded with a tape.

“What’s that for?” Stacy said.

“If he was going to sell the Midas Touch, he’d want some clear evidence that he wasn’t simply giving his buyer a dud. So he was probably going to film the chamber and the Midas Touch in operation.”

Stacy nodded. “And when he got his sample, he’d show himself blowing up the only entrance to the chamber.”

“He definitely covers all the bases.”

Stacy looked at Orr’s bleeding face. “Not all of them.”

He handed the camera to Stacy. “Start filming.”

“Why?”

“When we get back to the surface, we’re going to need our own evidence to convince the Italian authorities that this really is down here.”

“All right,” Stacy said, “but I’m usually in front of the camera, not behind it.” She took the camera to the center of the pit, opened the screen, and started filming. First, she panned around the chamber, then focused on the statue and the pedestal. She was careful to steer clear of the boiling water churning in the pool along the base of the terrace.

Tyler hoisted Orr’s pack and started slapping his face.

“Wake up, sleepyhead.”

With a groan, Orr began to stir, so Tyler rose and pointed the SIG at him. Orr’s moan turned to a cry and his tied hands flew to his face.

“My eye! What did you do to me?”

“That’s your fault. Now get up.”

“I can’t!”

“Quit your whining. I’ve seen soldiers in battle continue fighting with wounds that make your injury look like a paper cut.”

Orr grimaced as he held his palm to his eye. “What do you want?”

“I want to know where my father and Carol Benedict are.”

“You’ll kill me if I tell you.”

“I’ll do worse if you don’t.”

Stacy was still filming the writing on the pedestal. “My God,” she said.

Tyler didn’t take his eyes off Orr. “What is it?”

“This tells Midas’s whole story. How he got here, the curse of the golden touch, everything. Good God! This statue is his daughter.”

“Midas probably wanted to spend eternity with her likeness.”

“No, this isn’t a statue of his daughter. This statue is his daughter. The writing says that he turned her to gold on purpose after she died to preserve her body for all time.”

Tyler backed up so that he could keep an eye on Orr while he looked at the statue. She had been posed lying down, with her arms at her sides, a beautiful girl perhaps fourteen years old. Her eyes were closed, but he could see the pain in her face. She wore a robe that was just as golden as she was, and her left hand was sawed cleanly from her wrist.

“Document everything. Tell me the rest of the story later.”

Tyler went back over to Orr and gave him a light kick. “I think it’s time we introduced ourselves to Midas. Come with me.”

Orr staggered to his feet, his hands still covering his eye. Tyler nodded toward the stairs. Orr trudged over and climbed toward Midas’s coffin. Stacy followed them and continued to film.

When they got to the top of the terrace, Tyler stopped, shocked at what the sarcophagus had hidden from view up to this point. A skeleton lay on the floor, still clad in shirt, jeans, and shoes, the bones a spotless white, the clothes dis-integrating. The skull was fractured.

Tyler remembered the story Cavano had told him about the fight between the men. One of them got his head bashed in. The other died after touching the body of Midas and falling into the water.

“This one of the men who chased you?” Tyler asked Orr.

He nodded.

“Here’s the other one,” Stacy said, pointing over the side of the terrace.

Tyler looked down and saw a body at the bottom of the roiling pool. Like the girl, this corpse had been transformed into solid gold, clothes and all.

Stacy got a shot of both the body and the skeleton. “Why did the guy in the water turn to gold but this one didn’t?”

“Because he wasn’t exposed to the Midas Touch and then submerged in the hot spring,” Tyler said. “And in this heat the bacteria inside the skeleton guy’s body had a smorgasbord once he died. He probably rotted away in a couple of months.”

“Then the walls couldn’t have turned to gold on their own.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Orr said. “Midas did it before he died. He must have touched the walls and then sprayed them with the water from the hot spring.”

Tyler thought about the golden tendrils at the entrance. That would explain why the gold petered out there.

“There’s only one way to find out if you’re right,” Tyler said. He pointed to the corner. “Now go over there and kneel with your hands on your head.” Orr hesitated. “Do it!”

Orr complied and got on his knees. His right eye was now swollen shut. He kept the good one intently focused on them. Tyler had no doubt that he was just waiting to take any opportunity to gain the upper hand, and a small part of Tyler wished he would try.

“Make one move and I’ll kill you.”

“No, you won’t,” Orr said. “You need me alive.”

“Okay. I’ll shoot you in the kneecaps. So stay there if you ever want to walk without a limp.”

Orr said nothing, but he understood. Tyler turned back to the coffin, but he adjusted his position to make sure he kept Orr in his sight the entire time.

The sarcophagus rested on a golden support platform about three feet high near the edge of the terrace above the boiling pool. Tyler ran his hand over the intricately carved lid. Something felt odd, and he pressed into the gold. Instead of the hard metal surface he was expecting, it gave under his push.

He had been considering how to open the lid. If it had been solid gold, it would have weighed hundreds of pounds. But now he realized that the coffin wasn’t pure gold. It was made of wood. The gold leaf was merely a protective covering.

Tyler unfolded his Leatherman knife and drew it across the platform supporting the wooden sarcophagus. Gold flaked off in several spots, revealing tuff underneath.

Stacy knelt to get a better look, focusing the camera on the slash. “So the pedestal, the walls — everything is just gold leaf?”

“Apparently only organic substances are completely transformed into gold, and even then they would have to be completely submerged in the hot spring for a significant length of time. That would explain why the coffin is only gold leaf. The only substantial amount of gold in this room is in the two dead bodies.”

“As I told you,” Orr said, still on his knees in the corner, “the real value is the Midas Touch itself.”

“Yes, you told me,” Tyler said. “Good for you.”

“Should we see if it really works?” Stacy asked.

Tyler nodded, handing one set of the rubber gloves from Orr’s pack to Stacy. “We’ll need to be careful. Remember, according to Cavano the drug runner was poisoned by whatever he touched in the coffin.”

They put the gloves on. The lid wasn’t hinged, so they lifted it from either end and leaned it against the side.

The mummified corpse of King Midas grinned at them, the skin stretched taught over his leathery withered cheeks. He was wrapped in regal purple robes, and a gold crown adorned with rubies and sapphires capped his head. One desiccated hand lay across his chest, but the other was twisted at his side. Each finger was encircled with a magnificent gold and jeweled ring.

Orr and Cavano’s pursuer must have grabbed the hand, eager to take the rings off, but when he brushed against Midas’s skin, he released the hand before he could remove the rings, and the lid dropped back down.

Orr strained to see. “Is it Midas?”

“He’s here, all right,” Tyler said. “In the flesh, so to speak.”

“He must have spent months or years preparing this chamber and ordered his loyal servants to place him here after his death,” Stacy said. “Then they closed up the chamber behind them.”

Tyler rummaged through the sack and took out the two full water bottles.

He needed an object to test. He turned and saw the skeleton of the Italian drug runner, whose shoes were still intact. The nylon shoelaces would be perfect. Tyler untied one of the shoes and unlaced it.

He took both ends and rubbed them on Midas’s hand.

“Open the bottles,” Tyler said. Stacy started with the seawater bottle.

Tyler dipped the shoelace into the water while Stacy filmed. Within seconds, a blush of gold encrusted the tip of the lace. They repeated the steps with the gold-bearing fresh water. This time the effect was even greater, because the solution had a stronger concentration of gold than the seawater. Tyler took the golden lace out and marveled as the water dripped from it.

Stacy gaped at it. “My God! It works!”

“Incredible,” Tyler said. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself, and he knew others might feel the same.

“Let’s take a sample to test when we get back,” he said. “Take that Tupperware container out and open it.” Stacy hadn’t yet touched anything, so her gloves were clean.

While she got the container, Tyler took a breath and ripped Midas’s hand off, rings and all. He dropped it in the empty container, and Stacy put the lid back on. He removed his gloves as carefully as he could to avoid exposure to the microbes and set them aside. Stacy took her gloves off as well.

Tyler held up the laces for Orr to see. “This is what you were searching for,” he said. “I hope it drives you nuts coming so close and not getting it.”

“Nothing has changed except for who’s holding the gun,” Orr said. “We can still make a deal for the information you want.”

“The only deal I’m going to make with you is that I will guarantee you a short, miserable life if anything happens to Sherman or Carol.”

“That’s too bad, because now you’re too late.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

Orr smiled and nodded behind Tyler.

He turned to see Gia Cavano silently entering the cavern. Behind her was a man with a submachine gun pointed at Grant’s head.

SIXTY-ONE

Cavano didn’t care if Tyler and Stacy were helping Orr by choice or against their will. She knew Orr well enough to believe that he had taken Tyler’s and Stacy’s relatives hostage, but that didn’t make her inclined to share the treasure with anyone. If she let them go, the Italian authorities would be on her before she could get a tenth of the gold out.

With her submachine gun, she opened fire, but Tyler and Stacy dove behind the golden coffin, bullets pinging off the wall behind them. None of the shots were aimed at Orr, who flattened himself on the floor. She wanted him alive. A bullet to the head was too good for him.

Tyler didn’t return fire with the pistol Cavano had seen him holding. He obviously wouldn’t want to hurt his friend. Sal stood behind Grant, using him as a shield.

The astounding golden chamber was just as she remembered it, except for the dead body in the pit below, its head a mess of gore. Cavano was already drenched from the humidity that condensed on her skin.

She noticed Orr’s bloody face and called across the long chamber. “I see you’ve done all of the hard work for me, Dr. Locke.”

“You okay, Tyler?” Grant said.

“Not bad,” Tyler yelled from behind the coffin. “How about you?”

“Your warning worked for me, but three of Cavano’s men used up their nine lives.”

“And for killing my men,” she said, “Jordan has earned the most painful death I can possibly imagine.”

“Listen, Gia,” Tyler said. “I think the one thing we can agree on is that we all want Orr dead. But right now I need him alive.”

“Yes, Grant told us why you have been such a thorn in my side for the last few days. Good to see you again, Jordan. I hope you’re in pain.”

“You can’t kill me, Gia,” Orr said. “The gold isn’t worth what you think it is.”

“If it’s only a few billion dollars, I think I’ll be fine.”

“It’s not. It’s a few million.”

“Shut up, Orr!” Tyler yelled.

In the face of so much gold, Cavano laughed, and Sal joined in.

“I’m serious,” Orr said. “Scratch the wall next to you. You’ll see that the gold is only a few millimeters thick.”

Cavano looked at Sal, who shrugged. Was her whole assessment of the treasure that far off? She dragged the nose of her gun across the wall. She stared in horror when it left a gouge of gray tuff behind.

“The statue is solid gold,” she said. “I know it is.”

“The statue is, but the pedestal isn’t,” Orr said. “The girl might weigh a few hundred pounds. You’d clear twenty million euros at best. I know your business is in much deeper debt than that.”

He was right. The purchase of the Ministry of Health building had exhausted her organization’s funds. Without a major influx of cash, she would be at the mercy of the other Camorra clans, who would sweep in and gobble up her budding empire.

“How about I share a billion dollars with you?”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I have an auction planned for the Midas Touch.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I can find my own buyer.”

“Not the group I have assembled. I’m the only one they’ll trust.”

Cavano paused. “And why should I trust you?”

“You don’t have to. You can come with me to the auction. We’ll split the payment into two accounts. If I’m lying about the deal, you can kill me then. But if I’m not, you go your way and I go my way. Forget about this whole vendetta thing and we’ll both be super-rich.”

Cavano walked back and whispered to Sal in Italian. “What do you think?”

“It looks like he’s right about the wall,” Sal whispered back.

She nodded. Later she would figure out how to get her vengeance, but for now she couldn’t afford to risk killing Orr. She was about to agree to his terms when Tyler called out.

“One problem with your plan, Gia! I’m right behind the coffin. I can dump Midas’s body into that pool in three seconds, and then you’ll have nothing. Once it’s in the water, the body will turn to gold in a matter of hours, and the microbes that are responsible for the Midas Touch will disappear forever.”

“You do that and Grant is dead.”

“We’re dead anyway, so you better cut me in on Orr’s deal, too.”

Cavano thought about it. She had no desire to cut anybody else in on the deal, but she couldn’t lose the Midas Touch, either.

“All right,” she said. “But I want to see a working sample first.”

“Do we have a deal?”

“I swear on my husband’s grave.”

After about thirty seconds of silence, Tyler said, “All right. You come down to the pit. I’ll keep an eye on Orr, and Stacy will bring the sample down to you. You try anything and I’ll kill Orr and dump Midas into the water. Then nobody gets anything. Sound good?”

Perfect, Cavano thought. “Sounds good. We’re coming down. If Stacy tries anything, she dies first. Then Grant. Then you.”

She whispered into Sal’s ear again. “When I’m sure we’ve got it, kill Grant, then Tyler. I’ll take care of Stacy.”

Sal nodded.

Cavano had lied when she swore on her husband’s grave, but she was a good Catholic. To her way of thinking, it was nothing that a few minutes in the confessional wouldn’t take care of.

SIXTY-TWO

Stacy tried not to shake as she walked down the steps carrying the container with Midas’s hand inside. She was more afraid of the Midas Touch than she was of Cavano.

When Stacy got to the bottom of the stairs, Cavano was waiting for her, a black automatic rifle aimed at her. Sal was behind his boss on the other side of the pedestal, with his own gun leveled at Grant.

“Put it down,” Cavano said.

Stacy stopped and put the container on the floor. She turned to go back up the steps.

“Wait!” Cavano yelled. “Leave the gloves.”

Stacy gulped. She carefully removed the gloves by the fingers and laid them down next to the container.

“Now back away, but don’t go up the stairs.”

Stacy did as she was told, her heart pounding. She didn’t know what the next few seconds were going to bring, so she had to be ready for anything.

Cavano put her hand in her pocket and took out a twenty-euro note. Smart, Stacy thought. Easy to rub the microbe onto and dip into the pool to test it.

Cavano put the gun down and donned the left glove first and then the right one. She picked up the container and was about to open it when she got a puzzled look on her face. She peered at her hands with dismay. Too late, Cavano realized that it was she who’d been tricked.

Tyler had seen the opportunity when Cavano insisted on testing the Midas Touch herself. He whispered his plan to Stacy as they were shielded from Cavano by the coffin. With Stacy’s uncontaminated right-hand glove turned inside out, Tyler quickly rubbed Midas’s hand on the fingertips of the glove. He then gently pulled the glove right side out using his Leatherman pliers, careful not to touch the inside lining. Stacy had put the glove on delicately, making sure to ball up her fist so that her fingers wouldn’t touch the microbes.

That was why she’d been so terrified. She was deathly afraid that her hand would slip and make contact with the Midas Touch.

Cavano had been unable to detect the subterfuge, and had assumed the gloves were safe because Stacy had been wearing them. Now Stacy could see the mixture of fear and pain on her face as she endured the toxic side effect of the Midas Touch.

Cavano dropped the container and inadvertently kicked it behind her past the pedestal in her desperation to tear off the gloves. She held up her hands, and Stacy could already see the blisters forming on her fingers.

“What’s the matter?” Sal said.

“Kill them!” Cavano screamed as she dove for her gun. “Kill them all!”

Cavano’s cry was Grant’s cue. He’d been patiently waiting for something like it ever since Cavano took him captive.

Sal raised his gun to fire at Tyler, but Grant charged him. Sal got off a wild volley of shots, and Grant couldn’t tell if they’d hit anything. Sal brought the gun down to smash Grant, but not fast enough. Grant aimed his head at Sal’s midsection like a battering ram and knocked him backward.

Sal’s mammoth frame absorbed the blow without falling. He continued to fire shots, and Grant could feel the hot barrel against his shirt. He grabbed for the gun. They wrestled for it face-to-face, each determined to shoot the other.

Tyler hit the deck when Sal’s gun blazed at him. Stacy raced up the stairs to get out of the line of fire, but Cavano already had the submachine gun in her hands. Tyler covered Stacy’s retreat by snapping off three quick shots with the pistol. He had only one magazine, so rounds would soon become a precious commodity.

Although Tyler missed Cavano, his shots made her duck for cover behind the pedestal in the pit. She fired off random bursts that hit nothing but wall.

Stacy ran along the terrace, but she didn’t dive behind the sarcophagus as Tyler had expected. Instead she lunged for Orr’s legs, missing them by inches.

While Tyler had been engaged in the firefight with Cavano, Orr had taken the opportunity to grab his pack from behind Tyler and was running for the opposite end of the terrace, trying to make an escape. Stacy popped back up and gave chase.

Tyler took aim at Orr, but he didn’t shoot. He couldn’t risk killing Orr until he knew where his father and Stacy’s sister were.

More shots came from Cavano, and Tyler could do nothing more than turn to lay down covering fire for Stacy.

When the shooting started, Orr’s first thought was that this was even better than he had been expecting. They were all fighting one another, and he saw his chance to slip out.

While Tyler returned fire, Orr scrambled over and grabbed his bag, which held the golden hand, the Archimedes Codex, and the video camera. His hands were still bound, but he was mobile. He planned to get off the terrace by jumping over the pool.

Then Stacy had seen what he was doing. She knocked him down, but he kicked her in the stomach. His depth perception was gone, or he would have hit her with a more crushing blow. Still, it was enough, and she went down clutching her belly.

Orr got back up and took a running leap from the terrace. The pool was narrowest in this part of the pit, maybe only ten feet across. He soared into space and landed just inches beyond the edge of the steaming water.

He rolled and saw his target: the container with Midas’s hand. Its exterior was uncontaminated. He scooped it up and stuffed it into his pack.

Orr used the chaos of the gunfight to dig into Gaul’s duffel, still lying against the wall near the water spout. A few button pushes, and he ran for the stairs to the exit tunnel.

He thought ten seconds should be plenty of time.

Cavano knew she didn’t have long for this world, and she wasn’t going out cowering behind some monument to death. Her right hand burned so much from the Midas Touch that she could do no more than prop the gun up with her wrist, shooting left-handed.

She felt as if her veins had been injected with molten lava. If she was going to die, she would take Stacy Benedict and Tyler Locke with her.

After awkwardly slamming another magazine into the gun and racking the bolt, she stood and fired at Tyler’s position. As she stumbled for the stairs, nearly blind from the pain, she kept firing bursts, hoping to hit someone, anyone.

She took the steps two at a time, but her stomach suddenly spasmed, and her head pounded in agony, as if an animal were tearing it apart from the inside. She collapsed at the top step, her finger clenching the trigger back until the gun was empty.

Grant was pinned against the pedestal holding the statue, Sal’s submachine gun choking the life out of him.

Sal was one of the few men Grant had ever met who actually had a weight advantage, and the Italian used it. He leaned his bulk into the gun, and Grant’s vision began to tunnel.

They were near the corner of the pedestal. If Grant could just work his way a few more inches to his left, he could use Sal’s weight against him.

He edged over with a few solid lunges. One more should do it. Grant could see almost nothing at this point, but he felt the open space to his side.

With his last bit of strength, he jostled left and fell backward. Sal couldn’t keep from falling forward.

Grant thrust his legs upward and tossed Sal’s body over his head. With a howl, Sal went sliding and rolling along the floor. The slick surface gave him no purchase, and before he could stop himself he splashed into the boiling water.

Despite the heat, Grant’s blood chilled as Sal’s primal scream echoed through the chamber before gurgling to silence.

Stacy scrambled to her feet after she saw Orr leap over the pool. She rushed to the edge of the terrace, but the lanterns had all gone askew by this point. The odd shadows cast made it difficult to see what he was doing, but she did see him grab the container with Midas’s hand.

Then for a few seconds Orr knelt by the wall, where he rummaged through Gaul’s duffel, his hands still tied together. When he was finished, he picked up his backpack and ran as fast as he could for the stairs exiting the chamber.

A horrible scream registered in Stacy’s ears, but it was in the background with the last of the gunfire. She was too focused on the bag where Orr had knelt before escaping into the tunnel.

Then she realized what Orr had been doing. Gaul’s duffel. The explosives. The timed detonators she and Tyler had found.

Oh, no.

In the center of the pit, Grant was about to emerge from behind the pedestal.

“Get back!” she yelled. “There’s a bomb!”

She turned, but Tyler was right behind her. With all her strength, she shoved him down, and the world exploded.

SIXTY-THREE

For a few moments, Tyler couldn’t figure out what had happened. His ears were assaulted by a roar that seemed to come from everywhere.

When he could remember his name, he pushed himself up. Two of the lanterns were still working. He looked around and saw Stacy lying facedown. She wasn’t moving.

She had saved him. If he’d been standing when the explosive detonated, he would have been pulverized against the far wall.

He gently turned her over. Blood spilled from her side. A shrapnel wound. He lifted her shirt and saw a gash three inches long. He ripped his shirt tail off and pressed it against the wound. He couldn’t tell how deep it was.

Her eyes fluttered open.

“My side hurts,” she said, her voice more annoyed than anything else.

“I know. But you’ll be all right.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you’re a tough woman. Now be quiet and hold this down. I’m going to see if Grant is okay.”

He got one of the lanterns and went to the edge. He shined it down and saw Grant laid out behind the pedestal on the side away from the explosion.

“Grant! Get up!”

He heard a moan in response. “Can’t a guy rest for a minute?”

Tyler’s hearing was coming back. He thought the rushing sound in his ears was the residual effects of the explosion, but it was getting louder. He looked down and saw a crack in the wall, and water gushing through it. The pool started to overflow, and the boiling water streamed across the floor, right at Grant.

“Grant!” Tyler yelled. “Get your ass onto the pedestal right now!”

The crack blew open, and water poured into the pit.

Grant had gotten to his feet and saw the water rushing toward him. He scrambled up onto the pedestal and didn’t stop until he was sitting atop the statue. The water splashed against the side, but he was far enough above it to escape injury. However, it would be only a matter of time before he was swamped, and he would suffer the same agonizing death as Sal.

For that matter, they all would.

A shout from across the chamber got his attention. “Tyler! I thought you’d be dead.”

It was Orr. He had returned, and he’d been able to remove the shoelaces binding his wrists. Tyler didn’t know whether he’d come back to make sure they’d all been killed or to gloat.

“This isn’t over, Orr,” Tyler said.

“Looks like it is to me. Then again, you could try to swim across, but that might be a little painful.” The water was already three feet deep and rising fast.

“Before I leave you to your doom and lock you in here for another two thousand years,” Orr continued, “I thought you might like to know that your father’s dead. So is Carol Benedict.”

“You son of a bitch!”

“Yeah, they’ve been dead since I first saw you this evening, and now you get to think about that for the rest of your short, miserable life while I’m off to enjoy my spoils.” He pointed at his eye. “And this? It’s nothing that a little plastic surgery won’t fix. Ciao!”

He smiled a shit-eating grin, waved a salute, and was gone, sure that Tyler would soon be a distant memory.

SIXTY-FOUR

Tyler wasn’t going to give up that easily. Orr should have known that by now.

Wading or swimming through boiling acidic water was a death sentence, but Tyler wasn’t going to swim. He had a boat.

He ran over to the gilded wooden sarcophagus and tipped it over to lighten the load.

“Sorry, Your Majesty,” he said as Midas’s corpse tumbled out over the edge of the terrace and into the water. He flipped it back over and heaved the lid onto it.

He had to push the sarcophagus down the stairs, but Cavano’s body was in the way. Tyler grasped her jacket, careful not to touch the flaming-red skin that now covered her entire body like a rash, and pulled her until she was clear. He put her back down, and her eyes popped open, the bloodshot orbs nearly bursting from the sockets. Her face was contorted in agony.

“Wa … water,” she wheezed.

Tyler hesitated, but he couldn’t refuse the dying woman’s last request. He retrieved the canteen and tipped it so that water dribbled into her mouth. She swallowed, then gagged, and some of it streamed down her cheek.

“Is Orr … dead?” she croaked.

“No,” Tyler said. “But I’ll catch him.”

She coughed, barely able to force the words out. “You won’t. You won’t find Jordan Orr.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s named for his grandfather.” Her breath caught. “His real name … is Giordano … Orsini.”

Her eyes widened as the pain overwhelmed her. She shrieked, but no sound came out. Her head lolled to the side, and her final breath rushed out. She was dead.

But she got her wish to be the golden girl. The rivulet of water on her cheek left a streak of gold. She would be immortalized in the metal when the chamber was submerged.

“Uh, Tyler?” Grant said. “You might want to hurry before I turn into a three-minute egg.”

So would the rest of them if he didn’t act fast. The water was already four feet deep.

Tyler pushed the coffin toward the stairs, his rib protesting the entire way. When the coffin was at the bottom step, he left it there and went back for Stacy.

“Can you walk?” he said.

Stacy nodded as tears streamed down her face. She had heard Orr’s news about her sister.

He helped her to her feet, and she went ashen from the headrush. He threw her arm over his shoulder and carried her to the sarcophagus.

They got on top of its lid, and it sank until the top bobbed only six inches above the surface of the water.

Tyler took off his T-shirt, wrapped it around Cavano’s contaminated gun, and used the stock as a paddle, rowing as fast as he could.

When he got to the pedestal, there was only a foot of clearance left.

“We’ll sink to the bottom if my fat ass gets on there with you,” Grant said.

He was right. Tyler kept padding. “I’ll push it back to you.”

Tyler rowed as fast as he could until he was at the steps leading up to the exit. He helped Stacy off. She was barely able to move on her own. When she was safely out of harm’s way, Tyler laid the gun on top and used his foot to shove the coffin back to Grant.

He dragged Stacy up to the top of the stairs and laid her down.

“A little help!” Grant shouted.

Tyler went back to the railing and saw that Grant was foundering. The coffin was sinking. Cavano must have put a bullet hole in it. Grant wasn’t going to make it to the stairs.

Tyler searched around him and saw Stacy’s explosive belt. He picked it up by the end and lowered it over the railing.

“Come this way!” he yelled. “Hurry!”

Grant rowed like an Olympic sculling champion. When the coffin was near the wall, he stood and reached for the belt. He supported himself with it using his feet to scrabble up the wall.

Tyler strained to hold on to the belt under the weight of Grant’s 260 pounds. With one last heave he jerked backward, and Grant caught the top of the railing with his hand just as the top of the sarcophagus went under.

A searing pain stabbed Tyler’s side as the rib finally snapped. He ground his molars trying not to cry out. Grant heaved himself over the railing.

“Thanks,” Grant said. “You okay, man?”

Tyler talked through gritted teeth. “Just get Stacy.” He took a breath and stood, taking one last look at the smashed geolabe lying forgotten on the stairs, being covered by the rising water.

He staggered behind Grant as they saw the pumice barrier rising. Orr thought he had penned them in, but it had risen too slowly. There were still two feet of space left.

Grant went over, and Tyler struggled to pass Stacy through. Once she was safe, he used the last of his strength to tumble over the barrier into the cool air of the exterior tunnel.

Tyler staggered to his knees and lay down on his side, not sure if he’d ever get up again.

SIXTY-FIVE

Because Tyler was sucking wind and Grant had to support Stacy as they walked, there was no chance for either of them to catch up with Orr, but at least they could find their way out using his markings.

The tunnel maze seemed to go on forever, but Tyler knew they were getting close to the entry well when they passed three bodies that were burned and mangled by the phosphorus grenades. Tyler, still shirtless, considered taking one of the men’s jackets, but he thought that wearing a burned piece of clothing from a dead man would be even worse than being naked.

Orr had been so sure he’d killed Tyler that he hadn’t bothered to cut the rope that still dangled at the bottom of the cistern. Grant went up first, while Tyler put Stacy in a harness. Grant pulled her up and then helped Tyler get to the top. By the time they reached the surface, it was midnight.

None of them had a phone, except for Orr’s, and because of the password protection Tyler couldn’t use it to call out.

While Grant went to find a working phone, Tyler held Stacy in his lap. She was barely conscious. Her face was pale, and she’d lost a lot of blood. They’d bandaged her up as best they could, but the walk had been hard on her. Tyler stroked her hair.

Her eyes fluttered open. For a second, she couldn’t focus, then she recognized Tyler’s face.

“Hey, I thought I was dead for a minute there,” she said weakly. “Is that the moon?”

Tyler looked up and saw a full moon shining brightly through the clear sky. He instinctively inhaled a deep breath of warm night air, but he stopped when pain convulsed his chest.

“That’s the moon,” he said. “We made it out.”

“Good. I hated that place.”

Tyler smiled.

A look of alarm suddenly bloomed on her face. “Where’s Orr?”

Fresh anger welled up, but Tyler tamped it down. “Don’t worry. We’ll track him down.”

Stacy closed her eyes and sobbed. “Carol. Carol’s gone.”

“Shh. Don’t talk. Save your strength.” Tyler was still in a state of disbelief. The first of the five stages of grief. A part of Tyler hated himself for being so analytical, even now.

Not that he lacked emotion. Every time he pictured Orr’s face, pure hatred flowed through him. He didn’t hate many people. Sometimes he hated himself, like now, when he’d failed so totally. But Orr had earned it, and Tyler swore he would track Orr down if it took him the rest of his life.

He completely understood the powerful need for vengeance. It was appropriate that he’d found it in Italy, so famous for its blood-soaked vendettas.

Grant came trotting back toward them with a cell phone triumphantly held in his hand.

“I got emergency services,” he said. “An ambulance is on the way. I told them it was a heart attack so the police wouldn’t come right away.”

“Where’d you get the phone?”

“Some kid on the street. I saw him talking on it. He told me to buzz off until I offered to trade my Rolex for it. He spoke English, so he helped me with the operator.”

He handed the phone to Tyler, who dialed Miles Benson’s number, one of the few he had memorized. He prayed that Miles would answer the unfamiliar number.

He did, on the second ring.

“Miles Benson,” he said in his curt tone.

“Miles, it’s Tyler.” He could hear the exhaustion in his own voice.

“Tyler? I’ve been trying to reach you for hours! Where the hell are you?”

“I’m in Naples with Grant. Stacy’s badly injured, but we’ve got an ambulance coming. Miles, I think my father is dead.”

“Dead? Jesus. Last time I heard, the general was just coming out of surgery at George Washington University Hospital. Doctors said he’d be in critical condition for a while, but they expected him to make a full recovery.”

For the first time in hours, Tyler felt a surge of energy. “He’s not dead? You’re sure?”

“I know what I heard.”

“What about Carol Benedict?”

“Scared, but she didn’t have a scratch on her.”

“Thank God!” Tyler said. He lowered the phone. “Stacy, it’s all right. Carol’s safe.”

“Carol?” she said, her eyes flashing open. “She’s okay?”

Tyler nodded, and this time Stacy wept tears of joy before her eyes closed again. He put the phone back to his ear.

“Miles, Orr is still alive. Did you find the nuclear material?”

“No,” Miles said, “but the FBI confirmed that the site where we found your dad had unusual levels of radioactivity.”

Damn. Sometimes he hated being right. But not often.

“Have you found anything else?”

“No, the investigation is just getting under way.”

“Tell them to keep an eye out for a Giordano Orsini.”

“Orsini? Who the hell is that?”

“I think it’s Jordan Orr’s birth name. Have the FBI flag him in case he tries to get back into the US. And he has an injured right eye.”

“Will do, but they’re pretty fixated on some Muslims for the explosion.”

“What explosion?” Tyler heard sirens wailing, getting closer. “Never mind. You can tell me on the plane. Can you have the pilots fly the Gordian jet down here from Rome? We’ll meet them at the Naples airport.” Tyler and Grant had made the right decision leaving their passports in the plane. The last thing they needed was a hassle getting back into the US.

“Sure. I’ll get on it.” Miles hung up.

The sirens got the attention of the resident priest, who brought Tyler a shirt from the church’s donation pile. A minute later, two EMTs carrying a stretcher came into the cloisters. Grant handled the priest, while Tyler dealt with the EMTs. They didn’t speak much English, but they made it clear that they’d been expecting a heart-attack victim, not somebody with a bleeding wound.

He eased Stacy onto the stretcher with the EMTs’ help. She looked in bad shape, but still beautiful.

As they strapped Stacy down and rebandaged her, the motion woke her.

“What’s happening?” she said.

“You’re going to the hospital.” He held her hand. “We can’t come with you.”

The police might get involved, and then there would be questions and delays. Tyler and Grant needed to get back to the US and help stop whatever Orr had in mind.

“I wish I could go with you,” Stacy said, her voice a thin reed. “You get him for me.”

“We will.”

“Tell my sister I love her.”

“You’ll tell her yourself.”

“Kiss for luck?”

Tyler smiled. He leaned down and kissed her softly. Her lips burned with heat, but they welcomed his touch.

He pulled away and said, “You won’t need luck. You’ll be fine.” Given her condition, he wasn’t sure about that, but what else could he say?

“The luck isn’t for me,” she said. “It’s for you.”

She slipped into unconsciousness. Tyler and Grant followed her to the ambulance and stayed there until she was safely on her way.

Then, before the polizia arrived, they walked to the nearest busy street and hailed a cab. Within two hours, they were winging their way toward Washington, hoping they could find Orr before he detonated his nuclear weapon.