Authors: Boyd Morrison
T
yler wasn’t happy about having to wait for a shower when he and Stacy rendezvoused as planned with Grant at the Heathrow Airport Marriott. For convenience, they’d reserved a suite with a living area between a king room for Stacy and another one with double beds for the guys. Grant was already in the bathroom, so Tyler had to endure the smell of horse and river muck for a little longer. Tyler had their luggage sent over from the plane, and the clean clothes beckoned from his suitcase. After Grant finished, Tyler took his turn, feeling grateful for the invention of indoor plumbing.
After they ordered dinner from room service, Grant regaled them with his findings at the museum and his fight with Sal. Gia Cavano must have sent her men in London to abduct Grant as soon as she heard from the curator.
In turn, Tyler and Stacy recounted their visit to Cavano’s estate. When Stacy came to their escape from the mansion, she began to tease Tyler with wicked glee.
“And when we got to the stable,” she said, “it was obvious the only way we were going to get out of there was on horseback, but Doctor Fraidy Pants here almost blew it because he’s scared of horses.”
“I am not scared of horses,” Tyler protested. “Not any more. Now I just hate them.”
“You looked scared to me.”
“Wait a minute,” Grant said, pointing at Tyler. “You got him to ride a horse today?”
“Why is that so hard to believe?” Stacy asked.
“Weren’t you almost killed by one when you were a kid?” Grant asked Tyler. “I thought you said you’d never get on one again.”
“I didn’t have much choice,” Tyler said.
“Hold on. What’s this about almost getting killed?”
Tyler sighed. He didn’t enjoy telling the story. “When I was ten, my father took me and my sister to a ranch for a weekend. I was big into go-karts and motocross, not horses. I hadn’t been to a farm in my entire life until that morning.”
“I can’t even imagine that,” Stacy said. “I’ve been riding since I was four.”
“Well, I’d never seen a horse up close until I got to that ranch. I was a little hesitant at first. Those things are even bigger when you’re a kid. We got lessons for a couple of hours—walking, trotting, cantering—and I was feeling okay. Not loving it like my sister was, but okay. As I was dismounting, I put my foot in the stirrup by accident and for no good reason the horse spooked.”
“That can happen.”
“Not with a car, it can’t. My Viper has never decided to hit the gas after I opened the door to get out. Anyway, the stupid horse took off running with me dragging alongside, bouncing around like a can tied behind a honeymooner’s car. After a couple of spins around the corral, my boot finally came off, but not before I bashed my head on a fence post. I spent three days in the hospital with a concussion and a torn ACL. Needless to say, I hadn’t been on a horse again until today.”
“And now you’re cured?” Grant said.
“Very funny. Next time I hope we get stuck with a couple of ATVs instead.”
“Still, we couldn’t have gotten away without them,” Stacy said.
“My horse didn’t have to jump off the bridge to do it.”
Tyler told Grant about their ride through the fields and the river incident.
“Sounds like more fun than my day,” Grant said.
“Why didn’t you tell me that story this afternoon?” Stacy asked Tyler.
“We didn’t have time,” he replied. “Besides, would it have made any difference?”
A knock at the door stopped her from answering. Tyler checked to make sure it really was their dinner and let two busboys in. The feast spread out across three serving carts.
As they ate, they tried to figure out their next move.
“The most important priority is to get the geolabe back,” Tyler said. “Without it, we’re still missing one of the three keys of Archimedes’ puzzle to find the map.”
“Can’t you just make another geolabe?” Stacy said.
“It would take weeks to forge all those gears,” Grant explained. “They require delicate machining. Tyler had to find a bronze specialist to make it the first time.”
“And we only have another four days. We need that one back, so we’ll have to figure out a way to get back into Cavano’s estate and liberate it.”
“We can’t. She’s leaving tonight.”
“How do you know that?”
“Cavano either assumed I didn’t understand Italian or she didn’t care. When she gave the geolabe back to her bodyguard, she said, ‘Put it in the trunk. We’ll take it to Munich with us.’”
“Crap,” Tyler said. With Cavano on the move, it would be exponentially more difficult to get the geolabe back. “Okay. I had Aiden send me an audio recording of the call from Pietro’s phone in Cavano’s office. I was hoping we’d get some intel about when they’d be out of the house, but maybe it’ll tell us about her travel plans instead. Intercepting them en route is our only option. We’ll have you listen to it and see if there’s anything useful.”
Tyler’s own phone had been drenched and was ruined. Before they reached the hotel, they had stopped at a cellular-phone store and gotten a replacement, transferring his number and his backed-up contact list to it.
“What about the text on the tablet?” Stacy said.
“And all the stuff about the Parthenon?” Grant said.
“None of that matters if we can’t get the geolabe back. I’ll talk to Aiden and see if they’ve been able to decode the tracker signal from the geolabe.”
Stacy’s head snapped up. “Oh, my God! If Orr figures out that we lost it, he might hurt Carol and your father.”
“Then we need to make sure he doesn’t find out.” He looked at his watch. “Speaking of which, it’s time for our daily check-in. Ready?”
He dialed and put the call on speaker. Orr answered immediately. “Right on time. How is the search going?”
Tyler ignored the question. “Are Carol and my father all right?”
“You go first. Then I send the proof-of-life.”
Tyler told him about the tablet and its link to the Parthenon, but he left out the details. All Orr had to know was that they were making progress.
“Where are you off to next?” Orr asked, as if he were talking to a friend about his vacation plans.
“Munich,” Tyler said. “We’ve tracked down a document there that we think might be helpful.”
“Good. Then carry on. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”
“What about your end of the deal?”
“Check your email.” Orr hung up.
Tyler opened the laptop and pulled up his email app. In addition to the recording Aiden had sent, he had another message from Orr. Two videos were attached.
Stacy put her hand to her mouth when she saw the first video, which showed Carol sitting in a chair, her wrists and ankles cuffed, the man with the ski mask and newspaper standing next to her. Carol was alert and wore no blindfold. She looked terrified but unharmed.
Tyler squeezed Stacy’s arm. “Are you okay?”
Stacy nodded but said nothing.
Tyler dreaded seeing his own video, but Sherman Locke sat in the same chair in seemingly good shape, though he was blindfolded and grizzled stubble dusted his face. Tyler checked the
USA Today
Web site just to make sure of the date on the front-page story.
Then Tyler saw Sherman’s hands, and he ran the video again, freezing it when his father’s fingers were contorted in a particular orientation for just a second. He showed it to Grant and Stacy.
“Another message?” Grant asked.
“I think so.”
Stacy frowned. “What do you mean,
another
message?”
Tyler hadn’t told her about the first message when he received it because he didn’t want to raise false hopes that his father might be able to free Carol.
“You were surprised yesterday when I said he wasn’t going down without a fight,” he said to Stacy.
“No, I thought you were nuts.”
Tyler brought up the previous day’s video. “Look at his hands. He sent me a message.”
Stacy peered at the video, and then her eyes went wide. “Sign language.”
“If you weren’t looking for it, you’d think he was just straining against the cuffs.”
“What did he say yesterday?”
“He couldn’t do full signs because they require motion, so he just formed letters. Two sets. The first two letters were
M
and
K.
I think he was saying ‘I’m okay.’”
“And the second set?”
“
F
and
M.
”
Stacy thought about it for a moment and then laughed. “Eff ’em?”
“Right. His way of saying that he was planning to fight back.”
“What did he say today?”
Tyler played the second video again. “Today’s message is a little harder to figure out. Again two sets of letters. Actually, the first are letters and the second are numbers.”
“Maybe he’s trying to tell you how many kidnappers there are,” Stacy said.
“I doubt it. The numbers are nine and zero. Ninety.”
“And the letters?”
“
S
and
R.
”
“SR 90?” Stacy clapped her hands together in triumph. “State Road 90! He’s telling you where he is!”
Tyler didn’t share her enthusiasm. “Possibly. But that wouldn’t help us narrow down the search very much. There must be hundreds of miles of State Road 90s in the US. It’s got to be something else.”
“I’ll see what Google comes up with,” Grant said as he tapped on his own laptop. His face fell when he saw the results. “This is not good.”
“Why?” Tyler said.
“Because the first result that comes up for SR 90 is an entry for strontium-90.”
Tyler shuddered as a chill ran up his spine. Given that his father used to head up the agency responsible for rooting out weapons of mass destruction, it wasn’t a huge leap to guess that strontium-90 was what he meant. Grant rubbed his forehead as if he were massaging a headache.
“What’s strontium-90?” Stacy asked.
“It’s a highly radioactive isotope,” Tyler said. “My father could be saying that Orr has gotten hold of some Sr-90.”
“How radioactive is it?”
“Sr-90 is one of the key constituents of the radioactive dust from the Chernobyl disaster.”
“Where could Orr get his hands on something like that?”
“Radioactive materials are available on the black market,” Grant said. “It says here that Sr-90 is found in spent nuclear fuel. It’s also used as a power source in old Soviet thermal generators.”
“And if Orr has some,” Tyler said, “he could be planning to make a dirty bomb.”
“Which is what?” Stacy asked.
“It’s also called a radiological weapon. A poor man’s nuclear bomb. You set off a conventional bomb along with some radioactive material and it coats everything around it with fallout dust. The radiation could be dangerous enough to render a major city uninhabitable for decades. For some reason, Orr may be in possession of a weapon of mass destruction.”
“And both my sister and your father were kidnapped in—” A gasp caught in Stacy’s throat. “Oh, God.”
Tyler slowly nodded. The last time anyone had seen Sherman and Carol was in Washington, DC.
T
yler wished he hadn’t eaten so much for dinner. The idea that Orr was building a WMD was turning his stomach.
“I hate to bring this up,” Stacy said, “but maybe we should reconsider calling the FBI now.”
“And tell them what?” Tyler said.
“That Jordan Orr has his hands on strontium-90.”
“Does he?”
“You just said he did.”
“That’s what
I
say. You said it could be a state highway, which it also could be.”
“Or an address,” Grant said. “Or someone’s initials. Or any one of a hundred other things.”
“Then there’s the question of why Orr would want a dirty bomb. If he’s planning to blackmail the US government, he wouldn’t need us for that.”
“Maybe he wants to nuke the Midas chamber once he finds it,” Grant said. “It almost worked for Goldfinger.” When Stacy gave him a confused look, he continued, “You know, the James Bond movie where the villain Goldfinger is going to set off an atomic bomb inside Fort Knox.”
“But Goldfinger already had a stockpile of gold that would rise in value once the nuke went off,” Tyler said. “I don’t think Orr has a stack of gold lying around that he wants to increase in value.”
“But what if talking to the FBI could lead to finding Carol and your dad?” Stacy said.
“Let’s think about what would happen if we got the FBI involved right now. I’m not saying it’s the wrong thing to do, but we have to be smarter than Orr about this. Grant, you play the FBI.”
“Okay, but I’m not putting on a suit.”
Tyler got up and paced. “I call you up and tell you that my father and Stacy’s sister have been kidnapped.”
“When were they kidnapped?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“And you’re just calling now? From London?”
“We were worried about Orr killing them.”
“And you’re coming forward now because …?” Grant asked.
“Because I have new information that the kidnappers may have an unknown quantity of strontium-90.”
“What’s your evidence?”
“My father sent us a message via sign language. I have the video.”
“Maybe he’s sending you his location. Why jump to the conclusion that it’s strontium-90?”
“My father is a retired general who specialized in tracking threats from radioactive materials.”
Grant shook Tyler’s hand. “Thank you, Dr. Locke. We’ll start our manhunt for this Jordan Orr and alert every agency in the country that there is the possible threat of a nuke. By the way, we’ll need to tap your phones and have you come back to the US.”
Tyler stopped and pointed at Grant. “And now Orr finds out he’s being investigated and kills Carol and my father.”
“Or maybe he sets off his radiological weapon prematurely,” Grant said. “Or he doesn’t set it off, because we can’t be sure he has one. Right now it’s just a hunch.”
Stacy threw up her hands in defeat. “Okay, okay, okay. You’ve made your point. We don’t call the FBI. So what’s the alternative? We’re just going to go along with Orr’s demands?”
“No,” Tyler said. “If he really has a WMD and my father has seen it, Orr will never let him live whether or not we can lead him to the treasure.”
“And Carol?”
When Tyler didn’t say anything, Stacy folded her arms and crossed to the window.
“I know it looks hopeless,” he said, “but the good news is that if we can get the geolabe back, we can stop playing defense and go on offense.”
“Offense?” she said.
“The next time we see Orr, we won’t let him get away.”
“What about your dad and Stacy’s sister?” Grant said.
Tyler took a deep breath. “We trade with Orr. His life for theirs. Then we bring in the FBI.”
“Let’s just tell him we’ve solved Archimedes’ puzzle and meet him in Naples,” Stacy said. “Why are we going through all this?”
“Because I’m sure Orr has some way of knowing if we’re lying about where the entry to the tunnel system is. He wouldn’t go to all this trouble without that kind of safeguard. We have to show up holding some aces because I’m sure he’d call our bluff.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“The plan is to figure out a way to get the geolabe back from Cavano. Let’s listen to the audio file from Cavano’s office.”
Tyler played it back. The voices on the phone were muffled, and they faded in and out as people walked around the room. He just hoped Stacy could catch enough of it to do them some good.
She peered intently at the computer as she jotted down notes. Tyler admired how she was handling all of this, never complaining, focusing completely on the job at hand. But he could see that the strain was beginning to wear on her. He’d seen it before with soldiers in his command who were suddenly thrust into battle. They wanted to stay strong for their buddies, but the haunted stares and creased brows betrayed their fears.
That’s why he and Grant had joked around when things got too grim on their tour of combat duty. Some of their subordinates appreciated it, but a few found it off-putting. Those were the guys Tyler had to worry about the most. So far, Stacy didn’t worry him.
After a couple of playbacks, Stacy stopped the audio. “Here’s what I could understand. After Cavano finished swearing about the mess you made of her office, a man said, ‘Do you still want to leave on the six-twenty tomorrow?’ Cavano said, ‘No, move my reservation to the eight-thirty. Just make sure the Ferrari is ready to go in Brussels by the time I get there. I’ll call Rödel in the morning and tell him I may not reach Boerst until four. The meeting shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes.’” Stacy looked up from her notes. “Any idea what all that means?”
“Apparently she’s flying to Brussels,” Tyler said. “But you said earlier she was going to Munich.”
“Maybe she’s stopping in Brussels on the way.”
“I’ll see if I can find the flight,” Grant said as he tapped on the keyboard. After a few minutes he said, “Not a flight. Eurostar. The high-speed Chunnel train. Leaves from St. Pancras.”
“So she must be taking the train to Brussels, then driving to Munich from there,” Tyler said. “That’s why the geolabe is in the trunk. The car is being shipped ahead to meet her in Brussels. What about Boerst and Rödel?”
Grant checked again. “I can’t find Rödel, but Boerst is a German commercial real-estate brokerage headquartered in Munich. Rödel might work there.”
“We’ll find out tomorrow. Anything else about the brokerage?”
“Says they specialize in international transactions.” Grant scrolled down the page. “Boring … boring … boring … Wait a second. This is cool. Their new headquarters building in the heart of Munich features a state-of-the-art robotic parking garage.”
“A what?” Stacy said.
Tyler got a distant look in his eye. “You drive into a bay and park your car on a movable platform. You get out, take your ticket, and the platform automatically slides out of sight to an empty spot inside the structure. No valet ever touches the car. The purpose is to maximize space in crowded areas like city centers.”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Grant said.
Tyler nodded. “If she leaves the geolabe in the car during her meeting, Munich might be the best opportunity to get it.”
“Do we leave tonight or tomorrow?” Grant asked.
“It’s been a long day,” Tyler said. “Let’s get some sleep and clear our heads.” He looked at Stacy. “You, too. You can try to interpret the tablet in the morning.”
Tyler and Grant stood, but Stacy didn’t turn for her room.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” she said.
Grant yawned. “I’ll call our pilot and tell him to be ready at seven. Should get us into Munich before nine. Night.” He closed the bedroom door behind him.
Stacy and Tyler sat down. He locked his eyes on hers. Every time she started to speak, the words caught in her throat. Tyler finally interrupted the silence.
“We’re going to catch Orr,” he said. “I promise.”
She gave him a thin smile. “You don’t have to promise. You can’t, really.”
“I know.”
She paused again before speaking. “I was going to say I’ve never been through anything like this before, but I realized how stupid that would sound.”
“That’s okay. I haven’t been through anything like this, either.”
“Yeah, but you’ve been in the Army. You’ve faced death before.”
“So have you.”
“My parents, yeah. But this is different.”
“Yes, it is.”
She held his gaze. “I just wanted you to know that Carol was going to law school because she wanted to become a prosecutor.”
“If she’s anything like you, she’ll make a damn fine one.”
“What I mean is, she wanted to catch the bad guys. She would never forgive me if we let Orr use a nuclear weapon. Even if she … ” Her voice trailed off with the scenario she couldn’t utter.
“My father would feel the same way. But it won’t come to that.”
“I won’t ask how you know that. But thanks for saying it.”
She stood to leave, and Tyler did the same. Before she went into her room, she surprised Tyler and gave him a hug, her hands tight against his back. She barely came up to his shoulder, and he held her head gently to his chest. He soaked in the comforting warmth of her body against his. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how much he needed it. Before Tyler realized it, he was tenderly caressing her hair.
They stayed like that for a minute, neither wanting to let go, before Stacy silently pulled away and went into her room. Tyler was acutely aware that he was now alone.
He was also exhausted, but before he could go to bed he had one call to make.
“Hey, Tyler,” Aiden said. “Was Stacy able to translate the audio I sent?”
“She was. We now have an idea where the geolabe will be, but we need the tracker location to make sure it’s where we think it is. Did our guys have any luck deciphering the signals that the geolabe was emitting?”
“I’m able to help you there. The recordings you made in the lab ended up being comprehensive enough for them to decode the tracking signal. It’s broadcasting GPS coordinates every thirty seconds. Off-the-shelf technology. I’ll send you the URL where you can get the updates.”
“Will it alert Orr that we’re tapping his feed?”
“You know me better than that. I’ve cloned the Web page where he gets the tracker feed. He’ll never know.”
“Outstanding work.”
“Even better, I’ve got some info on your new lady friend, Gia Cavano.”
Tyler had texted her name to Aiden in the hope that he could track down some information on her. Tyler wanted to know what kind of woman he was dealing with. He was already convinced that she was as dangerous as Orr had warned them.
“What about her?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Why?”
“Because I found her name using some creative and not technically legal searching of the Interpol database. Apparently, they think she’s an up-and-comer in the Camorra. I found pictures of what she supposedly did to some of her enemies. The worst involved a meat grinder. The authorities haven’t been able to pin anything on her, though.”
Aiden was right. Tyler didn’t like it.
“What’s the Camorra?” he asked, though he thought he knew the answer.
“The Camorra is to the Naples area what the Cosa Nostra is to Sicily, but more vicious. You’re being chased by the Italian Mafia.”