Authors: Boyd Morrison
A
strong tailwind helped get the Gulfstream into Heathrow ten minutes before 2
P.M.
Tyler had requisitioned a motor pool car from Gordian’s London facility for him and Stacy to drive west to the estate leased by VXN. He had also called ahead to ask for a meeting with the estate’s owner or resident, but the assistant he talked to said the owner of the company was very busy and had no time for them. Only after Stacy jumped in and used her celebrity credentials to explain that the request involved an ancient puzzle devised by Archimedes did the assistant tell her that the owner would agree to an audience if Stacy and Tyler could get there by four o’clock.
Grant would be heading in the other direction, straight into the heart of London during rush hour, so he opted to ride the express into Paddington Station, then take the Underground to the stop nearest the British Museum. His appointment had been easier to make. With a few carefully worded clues revealed by the codex, Grant had persuaded an archaeologist named Oswald Lumley to provide his expertise on the Parthenon.
Tyler had placed the cushioned pack containing the geolabe in the back of the Range Rover in case they needed to consult it when they were at the estate. He then wished Grant good hunting and left the airport, with Stacy riding shotgun.
On the drive, Tyler called Aiden MacKenna hoping to get an update on tracking down Jordan Orr.
Over the SUV’s speaker, Aiden’s answer came out sounding groggy. It was just a little past six in the morning in Seattle.
“Were you up all night?” Tyler asked as he drove on the M3 motorway toward Basingstoke.
“Caught a few winks between database searches,” Aiden said. “I’ll sleep later.”
“Thanks, Aiden.” Tyler was truly appreciative that he worked with friends who would go all out to help him like this. “Any luck?”
“Of course, the credentials he gave us when he hired you to build the geolabe turned out to be bogus. Now he seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Without prints, we don’t have much to go on.”
Before Tyler left Seattle, he had the geolabe dusted for fingerprints, but as he suspected, Orr hadn’t been that sloppy.
“What about the auction-house heist?” Stacy asked.
“Scotland Yard ran into a dead end on that,” Aiden said. “None of the perpetrators were ever caught, and none of the art objects resurfaced.”
“You’d think he would have made enough money on the robbery to retire to Fiji in style.”
“Maybe it wasn’t enough for Orr. During my search, I ran some calculations based on the size of the block of gold Orr told you he found in the Midas chamber. You said the golden statue of the girl was lying on top of a solid-gold cube six feet on each side, right?”
“Along with walls made of gold,” Tyler said.
“And who knows how thick those are. But just consider the pedestal itself, and remember how dense gold is. If it’s twenty-four karat, it would weigh about a hundred and eighteen thousand kilograms, or around four million ounces. If it were melted down and sold on the open market, the cube alone would be worth around four billion dollars.”
Stacy coughed. “Four billion? With a
b
?”
“Give or take, depending on the price of gold.”
Tyler had been so busy worrying about his father and trying to interpret the clues in the Archimedes Codex that he hadn’t calculated the money involved, but hearing the figures made him realize what they were up against. Criminals would kill their own families for a hundredth that amount. No wonder Orr was going to such elaborate lengths to get the treasure.
Any legitimate treasure hunter would get only a small percentage of the take, if anything, once the Italian government got involved. That’s why Orr was so desperate to keep it a secret.
“What about the tracker?” Tyler said. “Has Miles decoded the signal?”
“Still working on that. I’ll get back to you when we’ve got it.”
“Okay. And let me know the minute you have anything on Orr.”
“Absolutely,” Aiden said, and hung up. Tyler had no doubt that, if there was a way to track down Orr, Aiden would find it.
“If Orr is really after the gold in that chamber,” Tyler said, “why would he make up that story about seeing the Midas Touch in action?”
“Because he’s messing with us,” Stacy said. “I’ve met guys like him before. They like to manipulate people. They get off on it.”
“I’m just trying to figure out his angle. What about the hand?”
Stacy shook her head. “You’ve got me. Archimedes does talk about the hand in the codex. He saw it in person, which means the golden hand is at least twenty-two hundred years old.”
“I know. That’s what bothers me.”
“Because the hand is so old or because it looks so real?”
“Both.”
“Like I said before, I don’t have a scientific background, but it did look pretty convincing.”
“However it was made, there was nothing magical about the transformation.” Tyler simply refused to believe that a magical power could perform alchemy in violation of every known chemical law.
“Would you bet our families’ lives on that?” Stacy asked.
Tyler didn’t answer, because it didn’t matter what he believed. His mission was to find the map left by Archimedes so that he could get his father back.
They were silent for the rest of the drive. When they reached the gates of the estate thirty minutes later, Tyler pressed the buzzer.
“What is your business?” a man said in a thick Italian accent.
“My name is Tyler Locke. We have an appointment.”
“Yes. Drive to the house.”
The ten-foot-tall gates slowly drew apart. Tyler wheeled the Range Rover along a winding brick driveway toward a gray stone mansion a half mile away.
As they got closer, he realized how immense the home really was. The front façade alone was at least a hundred feet long. He could picture the original owner reigning over a vast estate of feudal vassals.
Several cars were parked in front of the mansion, but only one caught his eye. It was a red Ferrari 458 Italia, with a top speed of more than two hundred miles per hour. Tyler was a connoisseur, regularly driving loaners when Gordian tested them for auto and insurance companies at its track in Phoenix, but he hadn’t yet driven an Italia.
He parked the Range Rover next to it and got out to take a closer look before they knocked on the door. For just a moment, he imagined himself hearing the roar of the car’s mid-engine V8 behind his head.
The clop-clop of approaching hooves made him turn around.
A chestnut horse trotted toward them. Tyler instinctively backed away.
“What’s the matter?” Stacy said.
“I don’t like horses,” Tyler said, eyeing it warily.
Stacy looked at him as if he’d said he hated rainbows. “Who doesn’t like horses?”
“Me.”
“Why?”
“They’re big and they’re unpredictable.”
“They’re friendly.”
“I forgot. You grew up on a farm.”
“I practically lived on my horse, Chanter, when I was a teenager. Have you ever ridden one?”
“Yes,” Tyler said, but he didn’t elaborate.
The rider pulled on the reins and expertly guided the horse to a stop. She was a striking woman in her thirties, dressed in impeccable traditional English riding togs and helmet. A black ponytail flicked back and forth every time she moved her head.
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” the woman said to Tyler, her Italian accent softer than the security guard’s. “I saw you looking at her.”
Assuming that the woman was either the home’s owner or related to the owner, Tyler didn’t want to kick off his introduction by insulting her.
He nodded cautiously and said, “Definitely. What breed is she?”
“Breed?” She looked down at the horse and laughed with a throaty roar. “You must not be much of a rider.” She patted the horse’s neck. “This is Giuseppe, and he’s a male. An Arabian. The beauty I meant was my Ferrari.”
Tyler joined in the laughter at his gaffe.
“Prancing horses I know,” he said, meaning Ferrari’s logo. “Five hundred and sixty horsepower, in the case of this lovely lady. She must be a treat to drive.”
The Italian looked Tyler up and down, almost as if he were a horse she was considering purchasing.
“She is. Maybe I’ll take you for a spin later.”
Her inflection left no doubt that the double entendre was on purpose.
The woman dismounted and led Giuseppe toward them. Tyler willed himself to stand his ground. Stacy, on the other hand, held out her hand and stroked the horse’s nose. In return, Giuseppe nuzzled her palm.
“See?” she said to Tyler. “He’s a sweetheart.”
Tyler wondered what it was about women and horses.
“He doesn’t care for our equine friends?” the woman said.
“I’m more of a mechanical type,” Tyler said. He held out his hand. “I’m Tyler Locke, and this is Stacy Benedict. We called earlier today.”
The woman took his hand in a strong grip, and then shook Stacy’s.
“When I heard what you wanted to talk about, I couldn’t resist meeting you,” she said. “Welcome to my home. I am Gia Cavano.”
Stacy stifled a tiny gasp too late at hearing the name Gia. Tyler held his own amazement in check. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the woman who owned the next key in Archimedes’ puzzle had the same name as someone they’d heard about the day before from Orr, who had told them two things about his childhood friend Gia.
One, that Orr had discovered the Midas chamber while exploring the tunnels of Naples with her. And two, that if Gia found out that they were also searching for it after all these years, she would kill them.
A
s he exited the train at Holborn tube station, Grant wasn’t swept along with the crush of rush-hour passengers, one of the benefits of being a big man. Instead, the mass of people flowed around him or stepped aside when he approached. He strode briskly along the station’s platform trying to make up for lost time, a backpack containing the Archimedes translation slung over his shoulder.
The trip on the Underground had taken longer than he’d expected, so he had only fifteen minutes until his appointment with Dr. Lumley. Grant stopped at streets only long enough to remember to look right instead of left so that he wouldn’t be run over. He hadn’t been to England in years and would have loved to explore the neighborhoods and see how much things had changed since his last visit, but that would have to wait for next time.
Despite Tyler’s determined optimism, Grant knew that his friend was worried about his father. Tyler and his dad had their icy patches, but Grant had perceived some thawing lately. The two had started speaking again, even if it was sporadic. But when someone threatened your own blood, it didn’t matter how close the two of you were.
Grant and Tyler weren’t blood, but they might as well have been, and if Grant could help his friend by solving this crazy riddle, he would do whatever he had to.
In another five minutes, he walked through the front courtyard of the British Museum and into the entryway. Though admission was free, a small display asked for a donation to enter the museum. Grant hadn’t had a chance to get any British currency, so he took out a twenty-dollar bill and tucked it into the slot before heading into the Great Court.
The soaring ceiling made the space feel airy despite being packed with tourists wandering around the beige marble floor in search of antiquities like the famed Rosetta Stone. Steel latticework supported the impressive glass skylight that wrapped around the central reading room.
Grant waited at the information desk until the confused American in front of him could be convinced that the museum did not have a display of Harry Potter’s Quidditch broom.
“I’m looking for the office of an archaeologist named Oswald Lumley,” he said.
After a quick call, a curatorial assistant arrived to guide Grant down to see Dr. Lumley. She led him through a maze of halls and stairs before showing him into a cramped office stacked high with books on every surface. So much for the modern paperless office.
A short balding man in his sixties circled from behind the desk as the assistant made her exit. His striped dress shirt had seen better days and was stretched by a slight paunch. Like most archaeologists, Lumley wasn’t likely to be cracking any bullwhips.
“Dr. Lumley,” Grant said.
“And you must be Grant Westfield,” Lumley said. He didn’t say it, but his arched eyebrows made it clear that a brawny ex-wrestler was not what he’d been expecting. “I’m happy that you sought me out.”
“And I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice.”
“Not at all. Not at all. After I saw the sample from your manuscript, I was eager to hear more.”
When he had first called the museum, Grant had used his connection to Stacy, hoping her reputation would get him an audience with someone. He claimed that he was a consultant for the TV show
Chasing the Past,
which was researching an ancient manuscript owned by a private collector. After being routed to several different archaeologists, his call was taken by Lumley.
To make sure he got Lumley’s attention, Grant had faxed one sheet of the original Greek codex from the section he needed the archaeologist to examine. There was no mention of Archimedes or Midas, just the allusion to Herakles and Aphrodite. Since the Archimedes Codex had been stolen before the auction house could catalog it in detail, there was no way Lumley might suspect that Grant’s manuscript was the stolen one.
Lumley waved to a chair. “Please sit down.”
They each took a seat, and Grant gave Lumley an abbreviated rundown of his interest in the codex, especially the reference to the seat of Herakles and the feet of Aphrodite. Then he showed Lumley the full section of the translated codex. Lumley spent ten minutes reading it, gasping in astonishment every few paragraphs.
Finally, he looked up and said, “Remarkable.”
“Can you help us decipher it?”
“I think I might. Or, at least, part of it. But I’d like to review the Marbles in person before I draw any conclusions.”
“Great,” Grant said as he stood. “Let’s take a look.”
Lumley held up a finger. “Forgive me, but I must make one call before my colleague leaves for the day.”
“No problem. I can go on ahead.”
“Perfect. If you return by the route you took to arrive at my office, you’ll see signs leading you directly to the display containing the Elgin Marbles. I shall join you momentarily.”
Buoyed by the prospect of new information in their quest, Grant took the stairs back up two at a time. He was eager to see what clue the Elgin Marbles held. He just hoped the archaeologist wouldn’t take long.
When Grant Westfield was safely out of earshot, Lumley took out his cell phone. He didn’t want the call to go through the museum’s central switchboard. He chose the contact listing that had no name, just the number he’d been given if any ancient Greek documents relating to the Parthenon came to his attention. As a senior archaeologist in the museum, he had been able to wrest Westfield’s original inquiry away from a more junior staff member.
Lumley’s call was answered on the second ring. He didn’t need to say who it was. His voice quavered as he spoke.
“I think I’ve found what you’ve been looking for.”