The Midas Code

Stacy nodded but said nothing.

Tyler dreaded seeing his own video, but Sherman Locke sat in the same chair in seemingly good shape, though he was blindfolded and grizzled stubble dusted his face. Tyler checked the USA Today Web site just to make sure of the date on the front-page story.

Then Tyler saw Sherman’s hands, and he ran the video again, freezing it when his father’s fingers were contorted in a particular orientation for just a second. He showed it to Grant and Stacy.

“Another message?” Grant asked.

“I think so.”

Stacy frowned. “What do you mean, another message?”

Tyler hadn’t told her about the first message when he received it because he didn’t want to raise false hopes that his father might be able to free Carol.

“You were surprised yesterday when I said he wasn’t going down without a fight,” he said to Stacy.

“No, I thought you were nuts.”

Tyler brought up the previous day’s video. “Look at his hands. He sent me a message.”

Stacy peered at the video, and then her eyes went wide. “Sign language.”

“If you weren’t looking for it, you’d think he was just straining against the cuffs.”

“What did he say yesterday?”

“He couldn’t do full signs because they require motion, so he just formed letters. Two sets. The first two letters were M and K. I think he was saying ‘I’m okay.’”

“And the second set?”

“ F and M. ”

Stacy thought about it for a moment and then laughed. “Eff ’em?”

“Right. His way of saying that he was planning to fight back.”

“What did he say today?”

Tyler played the second video again. “Today’s message is a little harder to figure out. Again two sets of letters. Actually, the first are letters and the second are numbers.”

“Maybe he’s trying to tell you how many kidnappers there are,” Stacy said.

“I doubt it. The numbers are nine and zero. Ninety.”

“And the letters?”

“ S and R. ”

“SR 90?” Stacy clapped her hands together in triumph. “State Road 90! He’s telling you where he is!”

Tyler didn’t share her enthusiasm. “Possibly. But that wouldn’t help us narrow down the search very much. There must be hundreds of miles of State Road 90s in the US. It’s got to be something else.”

“I’ll see what Google comes up with,” Grant said as he tapped on his own laptop. His face fell when he saw the results. “This is not good.”

“Why?” Tyler said.

“Because the first result that comes up for SR 90 is an entry for strontium-90.”

Tyler shuddered as a chill ran up his spine. Given that his father used to head up the agency responsible for rooting out weapons of mass destruction, it wasn’t a huge leap to guess that strontium-90 was what he meant. Grant rubbed his forehead as if he were massaging a headache.

“What’s strontium-90?” Stacy asked.

“It’s a highly radioactive isotope,” Tyler said. “My father could be saying that Orr has gotten hold of some Sr-90.”

“How radioactive is it?”

“Sr-90 is one of the key constituents of the radioactive dust from the Chernobyl disaster.”

“Where could Orr get his hands on something like that?”

“Radioactive materials are available on the black market,” Grant said. “It says here that Sr-90 is found in spent nuclear fuel. It’s also used as a power source in old Soviet thermal generators.”

“And if Orr has some,” Tyler said, “he could be planning to make a dirty bomb.”

“Which is what?” Stacy asked.

“It’s also called a radiological weapon. A poor man’s nuclear bomb. You set off a conventional bomb along with some radioactive material and it coats everything around it with fallout dust. The radiation could be dangerous enough to render a major city uninhabitable for decades. For some reason, Orr may be in possession of a weapon of mass destruction.”

“And both my sister and your father were kidnapped in-” A gasp caught in Stacy’s throat. “Oh, God.”

Tyler slowly nodded. The last time anyone had seen Sherman and Carol was in Washington, DC.

TWENTY-EIGHT

T yler wished he hadn’t eaten so much for dinner. The idea that Orr was building a WMD was turning his stomach.

“I hate to bring this up,” Stacy said, “but maybe we should reconsider calling the FBI now.”

“And tell them what?” Tyler said.

“That Jordan Orr has his hands on strontium-90.”

“Does he?”

“You just said he did.”

“That’s what I say. You said it could be a state highway, which it also could be.”

“Or an address,” Grant said. “Or someone’s initials. Or any one of a hundred other things.”

“Then there’s the question of why Orr would want a dirty bomb. If he’s planning to blackmail the US government, he wouldn’t need us for that.”

“Maybe he wants to nuke the Midas chamber once he finds it,” Grant said. “It almost worked for Goldfinger.” When Stacy gave him a confused look, he continued, “You know, the James Bond movie where the villain Goldfinger is going to set off an atomic bomb inside Fort Knox.”

“But Goldfinger already had a stockpile of gold that would rise in value once the nuke went off,” Tyler said. “I don’t think Orr has a stack of gold lying around that he wants to increase in value.”

“But what if talking to the FBI could lead to finding Carol and your dad?” Stacy said.