The Midas Code

“Because this afternoon I received a call about an inquiry into an ancient Greek document, one involving the Parthenon, and the bearer of that manuscript happened to say he was working with Stacy Benedict.”

Tyler felt his stomach drop to the floor. She was talking about Grant.

“The only way you could have seen that manuscript is if you’re now working with the person who stole it,” Cavano said. “You see, the boy with me that night long ago in Naples grew up to be the thief who took the Archimedes Codex. He wasn’t just my friend; he was also my cousin from America. His name is Jordan Orr, and I plan to kill him.”

TWENTY-TWO

I n the Duveen Gallery, specially built to display the Elgin Marbles, Grant wandered along the sculptures lining either side. The captions called them metopes, which were square reliefs that had decorated the exterior band running around the top of the Parthenon. Most of them were damaged in some way, whether by an explosion that blew the Parthenon apart in 1687, by weathering, or during their removal.

At either end of the long gallery were the large three-dimensional pediment sculptures that had adorned the eaves of the Parthenon’s pitched roof. Like most of the sculptures Grant had seen in museums, a majority of the Elgin Marbles were missing their heads and hands.

“Magnificent, aren’t they?” Dr. Lumley said behind him. The curator had followed a group of tourists into the gallery, so Grant hadn’t noticed him.

“Couldn’t ask for better,” Grant said, even though they didn’t impress him. Maybe he was missing something. “The captions said something about the Parthenon getting blown up. What happened?”

“A true tragedy. During its first two thousand years, the Parthenon had undergone damage when it was first converted into a church and then a mosque, but it was still recognizable as the temple of Athena. In 1687, the Ottoman Turks occupied Athens and were at war with Venice. For some reason, they thought the Acropolis was the best site to locate a gunpowder magazine. The Venetians lobbed mortar shells at the ammunition storehouse until one of them connected. The entire building blew apart, destroying many of the columns and sculptures.”

Grant nodded knowingly. He and Tyler had been working on the modern version of an ammo dump for the Bremerton naval base. During the design phase, they had reviewed several case studies of ammo storage and transport that had resulted in calamities, such as the World War I transport ship SS Mont-Blanc, which had collided with another ship and exploded in Halifax Harbor. It had been carrying the equivalent of three thousand tons of TNT when the ship blew up. Almost two thousand lives were lost, and five hundred acres of the city were destroyed, either by the pressure wave or by the sixty-foot tsunami caused by the blast. It was the biggest man-made explosion in history until Little Boy leveled Hiroshima.

The devastation of the Parthenon hadn’t made the case list, probably because it happened so long ago. But Grant wasn’t surprised that the explosion had caused so much damage. In fact, he was more surprised that any of the building was left standing.

“That’s a shame,” Grant said.

“Indeed.”

“So these are all the sculptures?”

Lumley chuckled. “Goodness, no. Lord Elgin only procured half of the Marbles. The rest now reside in the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. Of course, they’d like to have them all, but we’ll let our governments wrestle with that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, the Greeks continue to argue that the Turks illegally sold the Marbles to Lord Elgin, who in turn sold them to the British Museum. The museum has maintained for years that the Marbles are safer here, but now that the New Acropolis Museum has a state-of-the-art facility for preserving the sculptures, the Greeks are keen to have the Marbles returned.”

“And what do you think?”

“There is great risk in moving them at all, but I prefer to remain neutral. I am an archaeologist, not a politician.”

“So do you have the sculptures that are referred to in the manuscript?”

“I think we may. You see, the manuscript refers to ‘the seat of Herakles’ and ‘the feet of Aphrodite.’ You may know Herakles better as Hercules.”

Though Grant’s grasp of ancient mythology was limited to what he’d seen in the Disney movies his nieces watched, he nodded. “Sure. Herakles.”

Lumley pointed at a reclining male figure from the east pediment. His head was intact, but his hands were missing. “Do you see that paw there?” Grant squinted and then nodded. Just the barest form of a great cat’s paw peeked out from under the robes the figure lay upon.

“We believe that is a lion’s paw, which would indicate that the figure is Herakles.” Lumley moved to the opposite side and indicated two female torsos, one lying against the other. “No one has been able to determine with certainty who these figures represent, but I favor the theory that it is Aphrodite relaxing upon her mother, Dione.”

The seat of Herakles and the feet of Aphrodite will show the way.