Authors: Boyd Morrison
T
yler was eager to read the documents that Orr had emailed to them, but Stacy insisted on stopping at her downtown hotel first to get into dry clothes. The plan was to then go back to Tyler’s house, where they had more room to spread out. While she changed, Tyler went to Gordian’s headquarters to print out the documents and check out a hunch he had about the geolabe. An hour later, he was back at her hotel.
Stacy came out wearing the same jacket and boots, but a fresh shirt and jeans. Tyler expected her to be carrying nothing more than her briefcase, so he was surprised to see her carry-on trailing behind as well.
“Pop the trunk,” she said as she reached the back of the Viper.
Tyler swung around in his seat. “What are you doing?”
“If we’re going to be working on this all night, there’s no sense in bringing me back here. It’ll just waste time.”
“So you’re just inviting yourself to stay at my place?”
“Relax. I’m not planning to throw myself at you. I’m being efficient, that’s all. Besides, it’s not like you’re married.”
Tyler glanced down at his ringless hand. He had been married once and wore the ring for a long time after she died, but it now sat in his nightstand drawer. His love for Karen would never diminish, but he’d decided to treasure her memory by moving forward with his life.
He looked back up at Stacy. “How do you know I don’t have a girlfriend?” Tyler didn’t object to her staying at his place. He was just amused by her brazen forwardness.
“Oh,” Stacy said as if she’d never even considered that. “Do you?”
Tyler had had one relationship since he became a widower. He’d really wanted the long-distance affair with Dilara to work out, but maintaining their connection through phone calls and emails had been difficult. Most of the time she was in Turkey excavating Noah’s Ark, while he was all over the rest of the world. They kept in contact, but developing a relationship wasn’t in the cards when they were separated by ten thousand miles most of the year.
“No,” he said with feigned indignation, “but you don’t have to seem so surprised.” He clicked the trunk release.
“Sorry,” Stacy said as she lifted her bag in. “I just figured you were like me. Driven. Workaholic. No time for romantic entanglements.”
“It’s like talking to a mirror.”
She picked up the thick folder of papers from the passenger seat and got in.
“Are these the pages Orr sent?” she said.
Tyler nodded and put the car in gear. “I made two English copies for us, plus the original in Greek for you.”
Within ten minutes they had entered the Magnolia neighborhood. He turned into the driveway of his two-story Mediterranean-style villa perched on a cliff overlooking Puget Sound and downtown Seattle. He pulled the Viper into the middle bay of a three-car garage, a Ducati motorcycle next to a workbench on the right, and a Porsche SUV with a flat tire on the left.
Tyler pointed at the Porsche’s tire and said, “That’s why we were crammed into the Viper today. I don’t normally take it out in the rain.”
When they got inside, Stacy walked over to the windows. “Carol would love this view.”
Tyler set her bag down in the hall. “You can have the spare bedroom on the right. The sheets are reasonably clean.”
Stacy shot him a
get-real
look.
“Kidding,” he said. “I wash them daily.”
“I’ll assume it’s somewhere in between.”
She took a spin around the living room, then checked out the kitchen, running her hands over the granite countertop and the cherry cabinets. “This is some house. Gordian must pay pretty well.”
Tyler took a seat and pulled out the three packets of paper. “You don’t have much of a filter, do you?”
“I’m just saying it’s not like you’re hiding the fact that you make money. A mansion. Red sports car. Porsche. Motorcycle.”
“As a partner in the firm, I am adequately compensated, and I enjoy the fruits of my labor.”
“Good for you, Dr. Locke.”
“Shall we get started, Dr. Benedict?”
“Got anything to drink?”
Tyler nodded toward the fridge. “Help yourself. I’ll take a Diet Coke.”
Drinks in hand, Tyler first showed Stacy the other side of the geolabe, which had been hidden from her when it was connected to the bomb. While the front had two dials with Greek writing labeling the discrete points on each dial, the opposing face had a single dial that was divided evenly into 360 individual notches and numbered every thirty notches, like the points on a compass. Tyler didn’t know what they were for, and Stacy suggested that the answer might lie in the manuscript.
They spent the rest of the afternoon reading the translation of the Archimedes Codex, with Stacy referring often to the photocopy of the original Greek. Tyler had seen some of the document before while he was building the geolabe, but most of the pages were new to him.
The dense Greek writing was sprinkled with drawings and mathematical proofs. There were 247 folios in the original document, each page a treasure in itself, revealing the genius of antiquity’s greatest engineer. Tyler wished he could study every one of them, but only thirty-eight of the pages referred to Midas and the geolabe, a word coined by Archimedes. At one point, Archimedes even mentioned that he’d seen the golden hand, supporting Orr’s claim that the codex really had been written to lead someone to Midas’s treasure. Tyler found no explanation for the purpose of the notches.
After going over the copy of the original document, Stacy told Tyler that the codex seemed to end abruptly, which could mean either that some pages were missing or that Archimedes hadn’t completed the manuscript. The reading was slow going, with Tyler stopping often to ask Stacy questions, but by seven o’clock Tyler had completed a first pass-through. After Stacy made a few phone calls, it was clear what their next step had to be.
At seven on the dot, there was a hammering at the door that startled Stacy. Tyler recognized the cadence and yelled, “Come in!”
The lock jiggled as a key went through the motions, and Grant threw open the door. He was by himself.
“Where’s Aiden?” Tyler asked.
“He was with Miles in DC. They should arrive in about an hour.”
“You gave my regrets to the team at Bremerton?”
“I told them you were unavoidably detained on an urgent matter.”
“Good.” The project wasn’t at a critical point. He wouldn’t be missed for five days. Stacy’s show was on hiatus for the summer, so her schedule was easy to clear.
“Have you heard from your father?” Grant said.
When Tyler showed him the video, Grant smiled. “He’s a tough hombre,” he said.
“Which is great for the military, but try being his son.” Tyler tried to smile at his own weak joke, but all he could think of was his dad blindfolded like a prisoner of war.
“He’ll be okay.” Grant slapped Tyler on the shoulder. “Now, what’s for dinner? I’m so hungry I could eat a buttered monkey.”
“We’ll have to order out,” Stacy said. “Except for some drinks, the fridge is empty. Not a chef?”
“I like to cook,” Tyler said, “but I haven’t been shopping lately.”
Grant snorted. “When he says he likes to cook, he means he can throw a piece of fish on the grill. He makes it sound like brain surgery. As they say at NASA, it ain’t rocket science. I’ll order us some pizzas.”
An hour later, they’d had their fill of pepperoni-and-green-pepper thin crust, and Grant was up to speed on what had happened at Safeco Field.
At 8:15, there was another knock at the door. This time Tyler got up to open it. Waiting outside were Miles Benson and Aiden MacKenna. Miles was in his iBOT wheelchair, but it was at normal level, on all four wheels, instead of balanced on two.
Aiden was an Irishman with glasses and bushy black eyebrows. Tyler hadn’t yet seen the new addition to his appearance, a black device affixed to his skull with a lead going to a plastic object tucked behind his ear.
“How’s the cochlear implant working for you?” Tyler asked him.
“Huh?” Aiden said.
Tyler raised his voice. “I said, how long until that joke gets old?”
“Never.”
Tyler ushered them in. Aiden made a beeline for Stacy.
“And who is this blond beauty?” he said, taking her hand in both of his.
“Stacy Benedict,” she said. “I love your accent.”
“That’s very kind. And I’m glad to hear yours as well. I’m still getting used to this ugly contraption on my noggin that lets me hear such beautiful sounds.”
“All right, Aiden,” Tyler said, feeling a pang of jealousy. “That’s plenty from you. Stacy, you’ve already met Aiden MacKenna, our resident software expert and database guru. And I’d like you to meet Gordian’s president, Miles Benson.”
They shook hands and got down to business. Miles had struck out finding any more information about Sherman’s abductors before flying back to Seattle that afternoon. Tyler told Miles and Aiden about Sherman, Carol, Orr, and the mission to find the Midas Touch. The two of them were incredulous at first, just as Tyler had been, but when he showed them the video of his father, the doubts ended.
“This has to be completely off the books,” he said. “No police. No FBI. Not even official Gordian involvement. That’s why I wanted to meet here instead of at the office. But I’ll still need some Gordian resources to find my dad.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Miles said.
“Stacy and I have talked it over, and we think Orr will go through with his threat if he finds out the Feds are involved.”
Miles eyed Stacy, who nodded her agreement.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll keep this to ourselves. Any and all Gordian resources are at your disposal.”
“Count me in too,” Aiden said. “My time is yours.”
“Thanks, guys.” He didn’t have to ask Grant. In fact, it would be insulting. Tyler knew that his best friend would be there to watch his back as he had in their Army days.
“I don’t understand why Orr would let you go off on this hunt for the Midas treasure by yourselves,” Miles said. “Seems like he’s taking an awful risk just handing the geolabe over to you and sending you on your way.”
“I thought so too,” Tyler said. “I also thought the timing of the explosion on the truck was convenient. He didn’t detonate it until we were far enough away to be safe.”
Grant narrowed his eyes in realization. “He knew where we were.”
“That was my guess, so I took the geolabe to the RF isolation room back at Gordian.”
“What’s that?” Stacy asked.
“It’s a room for testing electronic emissions from cell phones and other communication devices. It’s completely isolated from all outside radio-frequency sources.”
“You found a signal coming from the geolabe,” Grant said.
Tyler nodded. “It’s equipped with a GPS tracker. That’s how Orr is planning to keep tabs on us.”
“Did you decrypt the signal?” Miles asked.
“Not yet, but I recorded two burst transmissions from it with every detector we have.”
“I’ll get our comm guys to work decoding it. With any luck, we’ll be able to track it back to Orr.” Miles began typing a message on his phone.
“What can I do?” Aiden said.
“We need to ferret out Jordan Orr. Find out anything you can about him. If we get a lead that’s actionable, then we’ll call in the FBI.”
“I’m on it.”
“Great,” Tyler said. “Now, Stacy has a theory about the Archimedes device, the geolabe. Before the codex was sent to the auction house, it was separated from a wax tablet that had been found with it. She thinks the wax tablet may have a message that will be the key to deciphering the purpose of the geolabe.”
“How do you know that?” Grant asked.
“We’ll explain once we get in the air.”
“In the air?” Grant said. “Are we taking a trip?”
Tyler turned to Miles. “I was happy to hear you say that we could use any Gordian resource, because we need one of the company jets. We have to go to England.”
O
rr took another swig of coffee and stifled a yawn as he drove the van into the vacant lot near Baltimore Harbor. With Crenshaw next to him, snoring for the entire five-hour flight from Seattle to Baltimore/Washington International, he’d napped only a few minutes at a time. Now, at 2:15 in the morning, Crenshaw was alert in the passenger seat, and Orr was ready to get back to the warehouse. But this excursion was crucial to the operation, and it had to be done tonight.
A semi was already waiting for them. A beefy black man in blue overalls leaned against the back of the trailer, sweating even though there was a cool breeze coming in off the water. For three years, Greg Forcet had smuggled goods for Orr out of a local shipping warehouse, but the delicate nature of this project meant they wouldn’t be working together again.
Orr put the van into park and looked around. Satisfied that they were alone, he got out, and Crenshaw did the same. As they approached, Forcet eyeballed Crenshaw.
“Who’s this?” he said.
“A friend,” Orr said.
“You never brought friends before.”
“He’s okay.” Crenshaw nodded, but said nothing.
“If you say so,” Forcet said.
“Is the package ready?”
Forcet wiped his brow. “Just like you asked. Real bear taking that thing apart. Took me a couple of hours. That’ll cost you another two grand.”
“You got it. Any problems?”
“No, but I’m glad you warned me to bring those heat-resistant gloves. Those capsules was superhot.”
“That’s the chemical reaction I was telling you about. These kinds of batteries can overheat if you’re not careful. That’s why we had you put them in the thermal-insulation container we gave you. Is it sealed?”
“Signed, sealed, and delivered.”
“Then let’s take a look,” Orr said.
Forcet raised the trailer’s door, revealing his night’s efforts. Nearest to them was the black metal box that Orr had called the thermal-insulation container. He noted with satisfaction that the lid was secure. Behind the box was a cylindrical lime-green object that Forcet had taken apart to get at the capsule. The cylinder was about four feet tall, with Cyrillic characters on the base, and it was designed with projections around the exterior that acted as cooling fins. Metal fixtures, fittings, and tools littered the floor. The sides of the crate that the item came in lay against the trailer wall.
Crenshaw held up an electronic device and waved what looked like a microphone in front of the open door.
“What’s that?” Forcet asked.
“A, uh, temperature gauge,” Crenshaw said. “We need to make sure it’s not overheating.”
“And? Did I do it right?” Forcet never did like having the quality of his work questioned.
After a few more passes, the device beeped and Crenshaw nodded. “We’re below safe limits.”
“We’ll need some help getting all this into the van,” Orr said.
“Hey, I’ll throw that in for free,” Forcet said.
The three of them heaved the thermal-insulation container into the van first.
As he strained at the effort, Forcet said, “What’s this thing made of anyway, lead?”
Orr laughed, not because it was a funny joke, but because Forcet was absolutely right. The box had walls of lead three inches thick.
The finned cylinder was next.
Once they got it secured in the van, Forcet wiped his forehead again.
“Sure is hot,” he said. “What the hell is that thing? Some kind of engine?”
Forcet didn’t normally ask questions, but then again this was the first time he’d seen the contents of a crate he’d delivered to Orr. It couldn’t hurt to tell him now.
“It’s a radioisotope thermoelectric generator,” Orr said.
“That’s a mouthful. What’s it used for?”
“For powering remote lighthouses. Totally automated. Can run for twenty years without maintenance.” Orr patted the cylindrical RTG where a yellowed and torn piece of paper was the only remnant of the radiation symbol that should have been there. “This one is from a peninsula on the Arctic Ocean. Took me months to find.” Although not as long as he thought it would. The diminishing summer pack ice along Russia’s northern coast made getting at these legacies of the Soviet Union much easier.
“Looks ancient.”
“Probably thirty years old.”
Forcet laughed. “I don’t know what you’d do with the battery from a thirty-year-old generator, and I don’t want to know.” He put a hand on his stomach. “I’ll need some Pepto-Bismol or something when I get home.”
He turned to climb back into the trailer. Orr drew a pistol from his jacket and shot him twice in the back, causing Crenshaw to jump back and squawk in surprise. Forcet crumpled to the ground. He gurgled blood for a few seconds and then stopped breathing.
“Jesus!” Crenshaw yelled. “You could have warned me!”
“Don’t be stupid,” Orr said. “If I warned you, I’d warn him.”
Orr put the gun away and took a vial of crack cocaine from his pocket and put it in Forcet’s overalls. It would look like a drug-smuggling deal gone bad.
“I’ve just never seen anyone get shot before,” Crenshaw said, backing away from the fresh corpse.
“Now you have. Congratulations.”
The only heavy items left were the pieces of depleted uran ium shielding Forcet had pried away from the RTG, but Orr and Crenshaw could lift them easily. In ten minutes they had the rest of the trailer’s contents in the van, leaving nothing to link them to Forcet.
Before they got back into the van, Crenshaw used the Geiger counter again.
“What’s it reading now?” Orr asked. He wasn’t crazy about getting into a vehicle full of radioactive material.
“About two millirads per hour,” Crenshaw said. “On the drive back to the warehouse, it’ll be less than you’d get from an X-ray.”
They got in. Orr looked at the lead container. The strontium-90 pellets inside would be cooking along at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. “What do you think the reading would be if we opened the lid?”
“In the range of two thousand rads per hour.”
“Perfect.”
As he put the van into gear, Orr glanced at Forcet’s body lying next to the truck, but he felt no guilt. Radiation poisoning was a nasty way to go. The sweating and nausea were just the first signs. Vomiting, diarrhea, hair loss, and uncontrolled bleeding would have followed.
To his way of thinking, Orr had done his longtime smuggler a favor. After spending more than two hours in close proximity to the exposed capsules, Forcet would have been dead within a week anyway.