The Midas Code

“Aren’t we going to get the geolabe?”

“We can’t right now. This way.” They ran for the stables. Tyler was hoping to find a workman’s car inside because it wouldn’t be long before Cavano’s men realized where they had gone.

In half a minute, they’d crossed the lawn and reached the stables. Tyler motioned for her to stay behind him. With the pistol in front of him, he opened the stable door and swept the room. Clear. No stable hands visible. Except for the chuffing of horses and the clopping of hooves pawing at the hay in the stalls, the stable was silent.

There wasn’t a single vehicle in sight.

“We’re out of luck,” Tyler said. “I thought they might have a pickup or something in here. Without a car, we’re stuck.”

“What are you talking about?” Stacy said, pointing at the stalls. “These are even better than cars.”

Tyler blanched when he realized what Stacy was suggesting. She wanted him to ride a horse.

TWENTY-FOUR

A fter a few more profuse apologies, Lumley went back to his office, leaving Grant on his own. As he walked through the hall of Greek statues and vases, Grant texted Tyler to tell him that someone had picked up the scent of the codex and warn his friend to be careful. Tyler replied immediately.

Too late. We got probs of r own. Meet at Heathrow.

That didn’t sound good, but at the moment Grant had to deal with his own situation. No doubt he could take the man tailing him in a fight, but an altercation might get the police involved, which would complicate things. If he had to, Grant would test his skills with Krav Maga, a style of fighting perfected by Israeli commandos, but he remembered an old joke about the merits of martial arts. When an elderly man was told that karate was the oldest form of self-defense, the man replied, “It ain’t older than running.”

Running wasn’t something Grant did often, because speed wasn’t his strength. Strength was his strength. He looped the backpack around both shoulders, leaving his arms free, and he looked at his map of the museum. He was one room over from the gallery with the Elgin Marbles. There were only two exits. He could either go back and exit through the Great Court, or he could keep going forward, which would lead him through the gift shop.

He didn’t like backtracking. Forward. Once he was outside, he would head back to the Underground and lose his shadow in the maze of passageways.

The man stayed thirty feet behind him. Grant checked out his follower in the reflection of the glass cases.

With acne-scarred cheeks and bushy black eyebrows, the guy wasn’t going to win an award in a Brad Pitt look-alike contest. But what he lacked in looks he more than made up for with his size. At least four inches taller than Grant, he had the bulk of a grizzly. The only place the guy would be inconspicuous was coming out of an NFL locker room.

He carried himself as though no one would ever dare give him trouble, which meant that he likely got by on intimidation and brute force rather than any skill, so Grant wasn’t too worried even if the guy confronted him. He just had to make sure he lost the man before reinforcements could arrive.

After the next archway, Grant turned left and picked up his pace, walking through two galleries and past the gift shop to the front entrance. Outside, it was a clear path through the courtyard to the entrance gate. From there it was just three blocks to the tube station.

At the gate, Grant realized that he wouldn’t get that far. As he walked through the gate, two men got out of a BMW and penned him in. Both looked like uglier relatives of the big man following him. One of them had a thin, perfectly shaped mustache that must have taken an hour to trim, and the other had a widow’s peak sharp enough to be classified as a weapon.

Grant turned and saw that the guy behind him had made up ground and was now only ten feet away.

The man with the mustache called the big guy Sal and said something in Italian.

“Si,” Sal said. “Mr. Westfield, you come with us.”

Grant took a look at the three of them, who now had him surrounded. “What if I don’t feel like it?”

Sal held his coat open to show a holstered pistol, warning Grant that he wouldn’t get twenty feet without becoming a bull’s-eye.

“You know, those are illegal in London,” Grant said. “You could get in big trouble if the bobbies caught you with that.”

“ You are in trouble.”

“Gia Cavano sent you, didn’t she?”

Sal’s eyes flickered at the mention of her name. “Get in the car.”

“You really want to cause a stink out here?”

Sal narrowed his gaze in confusion. He probably didn’t know what Grant meant. “Get in the car.”

The three of them moved closer.

Grant remained still, his muscles tensed. “So you want me to get in the car?”

“Now.”

They were within five feet of him.

“I’m going to have to say, screw you,” Grant said.

That got exactly the response he was hoping for. Sal nodded to the other two, who reached for Grant’s arms.