The Midas Code Read online

  After university, Boyd Morrison did a PhD in industrial engineering, worked for NASA, and programmed Xbox games for Microsoft. A professional actor and outdoor-sports enthusiast, he is currently at work on his next thriller.

  Visit his website at www.boydmorrison.com

  Also by Boyd Morrison

  The Noah’s Ark Quest

  Copyright

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978-0-74811-938-7

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 Gordian Fiction LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Also by Boyd Morrison

  PROLOGUE

  WEDNESDAY: THE DEATH PUZZLE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  THURSDAY: THE ARCHIMEDES TABLET

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  FRIDAY: LA CAMORRISTA

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  SATURDAY: THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  SUNDAY: THE MIDAS TOUCH

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  MONDAY: VENDETTA

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  SIXTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For Randi. I was saving all my words for you.

  PROLOGUE

  Eighteen Months Ago

  Jordan Orr’s thumb hovered over the detonator. Two dead guards lay at his feet. He threw one final glance at his accomplices, who both nodded ready. Orr tapped the button, and a Mercedes in a car park near Piccadilly Circus exploded three miles away.

  Orr didn’t know and didn’t care if there were casualties, but at three in the morning he didn’t expect any. The important thing was that the authorities would suspect a terrorist attack. The response time from the London police for any other call would more than double, leaving Orr and his men plenty of time to empty the auction house’s largest storage vault.

  Orr pulled the balaclava over his face. Russo and Manzini did the same. Disabling the cameras inside the vault would take time they didn’t have. The alarm would go off the moment the door was opened.

  The vault door was guarded by the double lock of a card key and a pass code. The card key was now in his hand, courtesy of one of the dead guards. He inserted the card, which prompted the system to ask for the code. Orr examined the touchpad. The clever design scrambled the arrangement of the numbers on the keypad every time it was used, making it impossible to guess the code simply by watching someone’s finger movements. But the manager had been careless the day before, when Orr cased the facility as a prospective client. He made no effort to shield the screen from Orr, who recorded the code with a pen-shaped video camera in his jacket pocket.

  Typical complacency, Orr had thought. Security system planners always forgot about the human element.

  Orr typed the code, and the door buzzed, signaling that it was unlocked. He yanked it open and heard no Klaxon, but he knew that the broken magnetic seal had set off the silent alarm at the security firm’s headquarters. At this time of the morning, no one should be accessing the vault.

  Unable to reach the guards, the security company would call the police, but their problem would be a low priority. A terrorist event took precedence over everything else. Orr loved it.

  He led the way in. He’d seen the interior in person, but Russo and Manzini had seen only the video.

  The fifteen-foot-by-fifteen-foot vault was designed to showcase the objects that were to be formally appraised the next day. Jewelry, rare books, sculptures, gold coins, and antiques—valuables hidden away in an English manor’s attic for a hundred years—were illuminated for optimum effect. Together, the items were expected to fetch in excess of thirty million pounds at auction.

  One item was the prize of the collection. In the center display case was a delicate hand made of pure gold. Orr marveled at the lustrous beauty of the metal.

  Manzini, a short balding man with powerful arms, removed a sledgehammer from his belt.

  “Let’s get rich,” he said, and swung the hammer toward the case. The thick glass shattered, and Manzini reached in, removed the golden hand, and wrapped it with bubble wrap before stuffing it into his bag. He moved on to the jewelry case.

  Russo, so skinny that his pants could have been held up by a rubber band, used two hands to swing his own hammer. He smashed the back of the case holding a Picasso drawing and withdrew it carefully to keep it from getting cut by the shards.

  While Manzini and Russo gathered the rest of the jewels and rolled up the artwork, Orr raced to the back of the vault. With a single blow, he liberated three ancient manuscripts and carefully placed them in his duffel. The collection of rare gold coins was next.

  In three minutes, they had emptied the vault’s entire contents into their bags.

  “That’s it,” Orr said. He opened his cell and dialed. The call was answered on the first ring.

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re on our way,” Orr said, and hung up.

  They stepped over the bullet-riddled guards and ran to the building’s entrance. Outside, Orr could make out sirens in the distance, but they were going in the other direction. A stolen cab was waiting for them. The driver, Felder, wore a flat cap, glasses, and a fake mustache.

  They tossed the bags into the car and got in.

  “Success?” Felder asked.

  “Just like the video,” Russo said. “Thirty million pounds’ worth.”

  “A third of that on the black market,” Manzini said. “Orr’s buyer is only paying ten million.”

  “Either way, it’s more money than you’ve ever seen,” Felder said.

  “Drive,” Orr said,
impatient with their giddiness. They still weren’t done.

  The cab took off. Because London has the highest concentration of surveillance cameras in the world, they kept their masks on. After a theft like this, Scotland Yard would pore over every single video for the one clue that would lead back to the thieves.

  Orr was confident that would never happen.

  As they had practiced, the cab reached the boat slip at the Thames river dock only five minutes later. They left the cab sitting at the dock car park and made their way to the cabin cruiser Felder had hired. Orr knew the boat might be traced back to Felder, but by the time it was, it wouldn’t matter.

  As soon as they were on board, Felder, a native Brit who had plied these waters for ten years as tug crewman, threw the throttle forward. They wouldn’t stop until they reached the Strait of Dover, where the plan was to go ashore in Kent and use a rental car to make their final escape on a SeaFrance ferry to Calais.

  While Felder navigated, the rest of them emptied the contents of the bags in the blacked-out forward cabin to take stock of their haul. Russo and Manzini cackled in Italian. The only word Orr, an American, could understand was when they mentioned their hometown, “Napoli.” Naples. He ignored them and carefully inspected the three manuscripts. He found the one he wanted and set it aside. The other two were worthless to him, so he put them back in the duffel.

  By the time they finished sorting the goods, the boat had entered the English Channel. It was time.

  Orr turned his back to Russo and Manzini and drew the silenced SIG Sauer he’d used to kill the guards.

  “Hey, Orr,” Russo said, “when do we meet your contact? I want my money soon, capisce?”

  “No problem,” Orr said, and whipped around. He shot Russo first, then Manzini. Manzini toppled onto Russo, the necklace he’d been fondling still in his hand.

  The wind and the engine noise were so loud that Felder couldn’t have heard the shots. Orr made his way up to the wheel deck.

  Felder turned and smiled at him.

  “Mind taking a few minutes at the wheel?” Felder said. “I’m dying to check out my share.”

  “Sure,” Orr said. He took the wheel with one hand, and when Felder’s back was turned, he shot him twice. Felder tumbled to the deck below.

  Orr checked the GPS and twisted the wheel until he was heading toward Leysdown-on-Sea, a small town on the coast, where he’d parked a second car. The car Felder had hired would stay where it was until it was towed away. Orr didn’t care. There would be nothing to link him with it.

  When the boat was three miles from town, Orr brought it to a stop. The water here would be deep enough.

  Down in the cabin, he lashed all three of the bodies to the interior, planted two small explosive charges below the waterline, and readied an inflatable raft and oars. Once he triggered the bombs, which were just big enough to tear openings in the hull, the boat would sink within minutes.

  He sealed the golden hand, jewelry, coins, and the lone manuscript in a waterproof bag and put everything else into lockers that he battened down. There would be no trace of the boat once it was on the bottom of the Channel. The items like the Picasso were valuable, but they were also too recognizable to sell. He couldn’t take the chance that they would lead back to him. The jewelry and the gold could be broken apart and sold for the gems and metal with little risk. He expected to net two million pounds from them, enough to pay off his debts and fund his ultimate plan.

  But the golden hand and the manuscript he would keep. Although Orr’s accomplices hadn’t known it, the document was the most valuable item they had taken from the vault. In fact, it was arguably the single most valuable object on the face of the earth. The owner must not have realized what it contained, or he would never have tried to auction it.

  Orr did know what it contained. He had checked it himself while Russo and Manzini had been fawning over the gold and the jewels. To the layman, the most important line, heading a section at the end of the document, looked like a string of random Greek letters, but it confirmed the document’s importance.

  ΟΣΤΙΣΚΡΑΤΕΙΤΟYΤΟYΤΟYΤΟYΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΟΣΚΡΑ ΤΕΙΤΟYΠΛΟYΤΟYΤΟYΜΙΔΑ.

  The manuscript was a medieval codex transcribed from a scroll written two hundred years before the birth of Christ. It contained an ancient treatise by antiquity’s greatest scientist and engineer, the man who kept the Romans at bay for two years through his ingenuity alone, a Greek native of Syracuse named Archimedes.

  The codex was written without spaces or lowercase letters, making it tedious to translate, so the manuscript’s complete contents were unknown. But that one line convinced Orr that the manuscript at his feet held the secret to the location of a treasure worth untold billions.

  Orr climbed into the raft and, for the second time that night, pressed the button of a detonator. The explosive charges blasted open two breaches in the boat’s hull. He rowed away but kept close to confirm that the boat was gone before he made his way to land. As Orr watched the boat sink beneath the placid sea, the translation of Archimedes’ text flashed in front of his eyes as clearly as if it were written on the water’s surface.

  He who controls this map controls the riches of Midas.

  WEDNESDAY

  THE DEATH PUZZLE

  ONE

  Present Day

  “Excuse me,” Carol Benedict said as she raced to the Starbucks counter. “You’ve got my drink.”

  The man who was holding her latte already had the lid off, ready to put sugar into her pristine cup of coffee. After her daily six-mile run, no one—but no one—got between her and her caffeine.

  The man, a young guy wearing a Redskins cap and a dopey expression, looked down at the coffee and back at her.

  “You sure?”

  She smiled at him. “Did you order a tall double-shot latte?”

  He shook his head and gave her a sheepish grin. “Sorry, seven a.m. is early for me,” he said. He put the lid back and handed it to her.

  “No problem,” Carol said, and opened the door to a blast of heat.

  By the end of her ten-minute walk back to her apartment, Carol was drenched with sweat. Washington was known for its summer humidity, but Carol had never experienced it until now, her first year taking graduate-level summer classes at Georgetown. She was astounded that it could be so muggy this early in the morning in the middle of June, but her moisture-wicking jogging top and shorts did an admirable job of keeping her from being miserable.

  Carol wasn’t a breakfast person, one of her strategies for staying thin. When she entered her one-bedroom apartment, she cranked up the AC, turned on the news, and drained the last of her latte in between her stretching exercises. In the shower, she turned the water as cold as it would go. The cooling spray made her shiver with goose bumps and even get a little light-headed.

  She picked a tank top and shorts and put her hair in a ponytail, but she’d have to put a sweater in her bag for class. The classrooms at school were always overly air-conditioned.

  A knock came at her door just as she was putting on her shoes. She stood up too fast at the surprising sound, and the headrush nearly made her keel over. She steadied herself against the bureau. The feeling didn’t go away, but it subsided enough for her to walk.

  Who could be at her door at 7:30 in the morning?

  She peered through the peephole and saw a white man in a suit, stocky frame, not much taller than she was.

  “What is it?” she asked without opening the door.

  “Ms. Benedict, I’m Detective Wilson with the Arlington Police Department. I need to speak with you.”

  “Can you please show me your identification?” Living alone, Carol had learned to be cautious.

  “Of course.” He held up an open wallet displaying a badge and an ID with the Arlington PD logo. It looked all right to her, so she swung the door open. She suddenly felt unreasonably fatigued, so she leaned against the doorjamb, her head swimming. If she was getting sick, s
he’d have to power through it. Missing class could hurt her GPA.

  “What’s this about, Detective?” She really had no idea why the police would be here. She hadn’t gotten so much as a parking ticket in her entire life.

  Wilson, who had a thatchy unibrow, stared at her with an unreadable expression. “It’s about your sister, Stacy.”

  A shot of adrenaline cleared Carol’s head.

  “Stacy? Oh, my God! Has something happened?” They had talked just last night, and Stacy seemed fine.

  “There’s a hostage situation at her hotel in Seattle. I need to take you down to the station, where we can coordinate with the Seattle police.”

  “Is she hurt? Is she okay?”

  “She’s unharmed for now, but you’ll need to come with me. I’ll explain the situation on the way.”

  “Sure. Sure. Let me get my purse.” She snatched up her keys and her phone, threw them into her bag, and locked the door behind her. Her heart was thudding at the thought of her sister being held at gunpoint.

  As she went down the stairs, she stumbled and Wilson caught her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “You look pale.”

  “I just feel so tired all of a sudden.” Her vision was getting blurrier by the minute.

  Wilson held her arm the rest of the way to the parking lot, and she was glad he did, because her knees buckled twice.

  Instead of an unmarked car, Wilson steered her to a white panel van. Another man jumped out of the passenger seat and slid the rear door open. Carol’s stomach lurched when she saw that he was wearing a Redskins cap.

  It was the man who had taken her latte at Starbucks. The dopey expression had been replaced by the dead-eyed stare of a cobra assessing its prey.

  She sucked in a breath to scream, but Wilson’s hand went over her mouth.

  “I see you remember my partner,” he said into her ear.

  She tried to struggle, but her arms and legs felt like over-cooked spaghetti, and her mind was getting cloudier by the second.

  Wilson shoved her into the van, and the door slid closed behind her. He snapped cuffs onto her wrists and ankles as the other man started the van and drove off. She tried to scream again, but it came out as a weak mewl. Her tongue lolled in her mouth as if it were coated in syrup.