The Midas Code tl-2 Read online

  Unable to have children because of a series of miscarriages, she encouraged her cousins to build families themselves, promising to bring them wealth as long as they remained loyal to her. They stayed by her side because she delivered on her promises, and some of them had married into families from Albania, Libya, and England, expanding her reach into the arms, drug, and financial sectors. She had pushed into legitimate businesses that allowed her and her extended family to maintain a lifestyle far better than that of her rivals, who had to hide in the Naples fortress neighborhoods of the Secondigliano. Plummeting profits had recently begun to jeopardize her position, though.

  Now she was facing new assaults on the expansion of her businesses. Chinese and Russian gangs were supplying other families with arms and men. Without a radical change in the situation soon, she would become a bit player in the Camorra.

  But she had something none of the other families had: the secret to finding the Midas vault, a treasure so vast that she would be able to elevate her stature in Naples and become the new “boss of bosses.”

  And that’s what this trip to Munich would allow her to accomplish.

  Hans Rödel, the vice president of Boerst Properties and Investments, was negotiating her purchase of the building along Piazza Cavour that had been out of her grasp for so long. She was going through a German firm so the Italian authorities wouldn’t know that the new owner was going to be a Camorrista. She had been trying to buy the Ministry of Health building for the past six years and only now was about to close the deal, allowing her to tear apart its foundation and probe into the tunnel that she and Orr had found as children.

  Rödel would help her sell the gold on the market once she began recovering it. It had to be done quietly, or the Italian government would seize her property, claiming it as a national treasure. She would die before she let that happen.

  Cavano placed the bronze device back into its case and considered what to do about Locke and Benedict as well as Grant Westfield, whose identity had been revealed to her by Oswald Lumley. Orr had chosen his search team well, but he obviously hadn’t told Locke about their connection. The engineer seemed too smart to deliberately deliver himself to her home so conveniently. Locke, Benedict, and Westfield were a mortal threat. If they helped Orr find the Midas treasure before she did, it could ruin her.

  That meant she had to find them and persuade them to divulge how she could find Orr. Failing that, she would simply kill the three of them, setting back Orr’s efforts to take what was rightfully hers.

  Cavano’s network of informants in European police departments meant that she had eyes and ears everywhere looking for any sign that Locke had surfaced. All she had to do was hold Orr off until next week. The demolition would commence on Monday, with an estimated two days needed to break through to the tunnel. Once she had the gold in her possession, the race would be over, and it wouldn’t matter where Orr and his friends tried to hide. She would have unlimited funds to spend on the vendetta and would spit on each of their graves.

  The blood of her dead enemies proved that no one got away with betraying Gia Cavano.

  THIRTY

  In the Audi rental sedan provided courtesy of Gordian Engineering, Tyler sat in the passenger seat while Grant drove out of Franz Josef Strauss Airport and onto the A92 autobahn toward Munich. Stacy sat in the back reading her printouts of the writing on the tablet. The flight had taken less than two hours, giving them plenty of time to get to the Boerst building and scout the location before Cavano arrived. He was just glad that his company had the resources to fund this venture, something Orr surely must have known when he picked Tyler for his blackmail scheme.

  Stacy had spent the flight poring over Archimedes’ tablet, scraping the beeswax from it as best she could under the circumstances. More than once she’d winced at the process, which destroyed the writing on top, but the only other method would be painstaking analysis using a CT or MRI machine. Tyler had convinced her that they didn’t have that kind of time, and she reluctantly agreed.

  Even after millennia, the writing on the bare wood had been preserved remarkably well by the tablet’s layer of beeswax. They took photos of the writing and sent copies to Aiden and several other email addresses for safekeeping.

  They had debated whether to bring the tablet with them in the car. Taking the geolabe with them hadn’t gone so well, so they left the tablet behind with the pilots, who would remain on standby with the plane. On any other occasion, Miles would object to the extravagance of that expense, but with Sherman Locke’s life at stake and now a suspicion that strontium-90 was involved, he hadn’t uttered one word of objection.

  “Are you ready to tell us what the tablet says?” Tyler asked.

  Stacy scribbled a few more lines on her notepad and said, “Just a minute, bunny.”

  Grant belched out a laugh. When the rental-car agent had seen Tyler’s last name, she’d snickered. When Tyler asked her why, she told him that the German pronunciation of Locke was a name you’d give to a pet. Grant and Stacy had ribbed him for the past twenty minutes about it.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”

  “Let me guess,” Grant said. “We have to find some other old document somewhere.”

  “You’re not even close,” Stacy said, and her eyes sparkled with wonder as she handed the translation to Tyler, who read the text aloud:

  The spy of King Hieron has brought us a gift that may yet win our war. While seeking an underground path to enter the Roman fortress, the spy came upon the treasure of King Midas, a vault of gold the likes of which has never before been seen. As proof of his find, the spy produced a golden hand of such excellent design, it could not have been fabricated.

  Three keys — this tablet, a manuscript, and the Parthenon — provide the map for finding the treasure, which cannot fall into Roman hands or they will rule the Earth and all who dwell within it.

  Grant gaped at Tyler. “So it’s real?”

  “Apparently,” Tyler said. “And Archimedes created this puzzle so that someone other than the Romans would find the treasure. But why didn’t they go after the gold themselves?”

  “Because for two years,” Stacy said, “the city of Syracuse, which was a Greek city-state on what is now the island of Sicily, was under siege by the Roman Navy. If the city fell — which it eventually did, resulting in the death of Archimedes — the Romans could have found the map and claimed the treasure, funding their military campaigns for a hundred years. That’s why Archimedes used the Parthenon as the third key. It was the most famous building in the world at the time, but the Romans wouldn’t have access to it.”

  “And we know the Romans never found the gold,” Tyler said, “because Orr and Cavano saw it. Now we have to follow Archimedes’ instructions to find it again.”

  “Keep reading,” Stacy said. “I’ve tried to translate his writing as plainly as possible.”

  As the seat of Herakles is to the island of Megaride, the feet of Aphrodite are to the Parthenope acropolis.

  All dials must start by pointing to the top position. When you are facing the Parthenon, the geolabe must lie on its side with its knobs up so that it blocks all but the pediment. As the shadow moves on the sundial, rotate the left-hand knob so that its dial points at the seat of Herakles. The opposing dial will now reveal the direction from Megaride.

  With the geolabe in the same position, rotate the right-hand knob so that its dial points to the feet of Aphrodite. The opposing dial will now reveal the direction from the Acropolis.

  Thus, the combination of directions will reveal the well from which you will begin your journey. From that point, marked by the sign of Scorpio, the geolabe will show the way.

  Tyler read it a second time to make sure he got what Archimedes was suggesting.

  “Incredible,” he said. “He’s telling us to use triangulation to home in on how we get into the tunnels.”

  “How does triangulation work?” Stacy asked.

  “You use trian
gulation to pinpoint a location using two other points. You don’t need the distance to the location from those two points, just the angles. Once you have those, you can draw a line from each point, and where they cross is the location you’re looking for. So the directions from the island of Megaride and the Parthenope acropolis will point to the tunnel entrance. It’ll be a crude approximation because the angles provided by the geolabe won’t be exact, but it will give us a small region to search.”

  “And we get those angles from the Parthenon?”

  “In a way. Let’s take it one step at a time.” Tyler read the first paragraph out loud:

  As the seat of Herakles is to the island of Megaride, the feet of Aphrodite are to the Parthenope acropolis.

  Tyler turned to Grant. “You said that Lumley showed you statues of Herakles and Aphrodite on the Parthenon’s pediments, right?”

  “Yeah. But they’re both in the British Museum now.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We can look up where they used to be on the building itself. I’ll text Aiden to find some detailed schematics of the Parthenon.”

  “Why?” Stacy said as he typed the message.

  “Because I think Archimedes had visited the Parthenon at some point and constructed the geolabe based on its dimensions.”

  “What is Megaride?” Grant asked. “Sounds like a roller coaster at Disney World.”

  “Tyler pronounced it wrong,” Stacy said. “It’s Maygah-REE-day. I know I’ve heard it before. Let me look it up.”

  She used Tyler’s laptop.

  “Aha!” she said. “Megaride used to be an island off the coast of Neapolis, but they’ve built a stone pier to it now, creating a peninsula. It’s now a famous attraction in Naples called Castel dell’Ovo, a fortress first built in the twelfth century.”

  “But it says the second point is the Acropolis,” Grant said. “You’re telling me the triangle is formed with two of its points in Naples and Athens?”

  “It says the Parthenope acropolis,” Stacy corrected. “Acropolis is a generic Greek term for the high point of the city. In Parthenope — Naples today — the acropolis would have been what’s now another castle called Castel Sant’Elmo, on a bluff that has a commanding view of the city. Megaride and the acropolis would have been the two most prominent locations in Neapolis in Archimedes’ time.”

  “Which makes them perfect for two triangulation anchors,” Tyler said. He looked at the map of Naples that Stacy had brought up on the laptop. “Once we have the angles from those two points, we’ll know where to start our search for the tunnel.”

  “So how do we get those angles?” Stacy asked.

  Tyler read the next two paragraphs to them:

  All dials must start by pointing to the top position. When you are facing the Parthenon, the geolabe must lie on its side with its knobs up so that it blocks all but the pediment. As the shadow moves on the sundial, rotate the left-hand knob so that its dial points to the seat of Herakles. The opposing dial will now reveal the direction from Megaride.

  With the geolabe in the same position, rotate the right-hand knob so that its dial points to the feet of Aphrodite. The opposing dial will now reveal the direction from the Acropolis.

  “The shadow on a sundial moves in the clockwise direction, of course,” Stacy said.

  “And all dials pointing to the top refers to the calibration we did,” Tyler said. “That’s why we needed the Stomachion puzzle. Orr’s original translator realized it related to the geolabe, but he didn’t know how. The dials had to be zeroed out to the twelve o’clock position before we could use the geolabe. Archimedes says that the geolabe must lie on its side to reveal only the pediment, which is the triangular part at the top.”

  “Makes sense,” Grant said. “Lumley said the façade of the Parthenon was build in the shape of a golden rectangle.”

  “And if the geolabe is also in the shape of a golden rectangle, it would be a perfect match.”

  “But we need to be at the Parthenon to use it,” Stacy said. “I get it now. Only a Greek would be able to go to Athens and see the Parthenon in person. Even if you had the other two keys, they would be useless if you couldn’t get to the Parthenon.”

  “Right. We have to actually be standing there, knowing where the seat of Herakles and the feet of Aphrodite would be, and then twist the knobs until the dials point to those locations. That’s what the three hundred and sixty notches on the third dial of the geolabe are for. They’ll give us the correct triangulation angles. Then we transpose those to the island of Megaride and the Parthenope acropolis.”

  Tyler read the last paragraph:

  Thus, the combination of directions will reveal the well from which you will begin your journey. From that point, marked by the sign of Scorpio, the geolabe will show the way.

  “So the triangulation will lead us to a well?” Grant asked.

  “Many of the points of entry into the Naples underground are wells leading to the cisterns and aqueducts that carry water into the city,” Stacy said. “The spy must have come out of the Midas treasure chamber and wended his way through the tunnels until he found an exit. Droughts were not uncommon, which would make it possible for him to walk through the tunnels that served as aqueducts and were normally filled with water. The spy marked his exit well with the sign of Scorpio so that he could find it again. Maybe the mark on the well will still be there.”

  “So all we have to do to find this well,” Tyler said, “is go to the Parthenon with the geolabe, turn it on its side, twist the knobs to get the angles of triangulation, and transfer them to a map of Naples.”

  “Sounds easy when you put it that way,” Stacy said. “But we need the geolabe to do it. Then the triangulation will lead us to the map.”

  “Wait a minute,” Grant said, snapping his fingers. “There is no map.”

  No map? Tyler thought. There had to be a map. How else would they find the treasure?

  From that point, marked by the sign of Scorpio, the geolabe will show the way.

  Up until now, Tyler had just assumed that a map was hidden somewhere, possibly in this well. But Grant was right. The map wouldn’t be hidden in the tunnels. The spy would have brought his drawn map back with him to Syracuse, and Archimedes would have destroyed it to keep it from falling into Roman hands.

  Tyler sucked in a breath at Archimedes’ boundless ingenuity.

  The geolabe will show the way.

  The geolabe wasn’t leading to a map that would show them how to find the Midas treasure. The geolabe was the map.

  THIRTY-ONE

  After two days cooped up in his cell, Sherman Locke was spending most of his time trying not to go stir-crazy. He’d persuaded his captors to let him read the newspaper they used in the proof-of-life video, but the copy of USA Today could have been purchased anywhere, so it didn’t tell him anything about his location. With a diet of Subway sandwiches and McDonald’s hamburgers, he could be anywhere. He spent the majority of his time doing calisthenics. When his chance at escape came, he would need to be ready.

  The only time they let him out of the cell was to record the daily proof-of-life video. His two choices were to escape when he was brought out for the video or to break out of the cell. With just the one crude window in the heavy steel door, the cell was virtually impregnable. That left overpowering two or more guards while he was shackled at his wrists and ankles, then breaking Carol out before escaping the building.

  The odds were slim, but he had a plan. The only question was when to try it.

  On his first day, only two men had been there to make the video. Sherman would have tried his plan on the second day, but three of them had been present. There was no way he could take out three men. It had to be when there were only two recording him.

  He had the means to get out of the handcuffs, but the problem was the short time he had to put them on after they handed him the cuffs through the hole in the door. If they weren’t paying attention, he just might be able to make his plan work, bu
t it would require split-second timing, and he’d get only one chance.

  The garage door opened, letting in reflected rays of the dawning sun through the crack in the portal.

  Sherman rose and went to the door. Through the sliver of space, he saw the second van return and pull in next to the semi they’d brought in the day before. The trailer of the semi was the same steel gray it had been when they brought it in, but Gaul had pasted a new logo saying WILBIX CONSTRUCTION onto the blue cab’s door over the old logo saying DWIGHT’S FARM SERVICES. Sherman hadn’t seen any clue to what the trailer might contain.

  Crenshaw had been working around the clock on some kind of project out of Sherman’s view. Sherman would occasionally hear the grind of metal or see the bright spark of a welder, but otherwise he couldn’t tell what Crenshaw was doing. The man would emerge wearing headphones and nodding his head to music, and he kept his interactions with the other men to a minimum.

  The van door opened, and Gaul, Orr, and Phillips got out dressed entirely in black. Gaul stuffed a balaclava in his pocket and slid the side door open. He and Phillips pulled two handcuffed men out. They were both wearing hoods, which Gaul removed, revealing two skinny dark-skinned men in their twenties, one in a short-sleeved white shirt and slacks, the other dressed in a T-shirt and gray sweatpants. Both were of Middle Eastern descent.

  “Who are you?” the one in the T-shirt said in a thick Arabic accent. “Why have you kidnapped us?”

  “I have done nothing wrong,” the other one said, sobbing. “I am in this country legally.”

  “I know,” Orr said. “Why do you think we chose you?”