The Midas Code

Then he flicked the button on the remote, igniting the smoke grenade. Grant had spent his lunchtime rigging the igniter. The flameless paintball grenade could be set off just by holding a nine-volt battery to the leads, but it could also be attached to a simple electric ignition switch and activated with a push-button remote.

The grenade began to spew out enough smoke to cover a football field. In three minutes, the entire hall would be full of the nontoxic gas. Tyler just needed it to fill the room that held the Mechanism replica.

He flipped through the keys until he found the odd-shaped one that opened the display cases.

The attendants in the room cried out in alarm. Tyler was only twenty feet away now and saw an orange cloud of smoke billowing through the entryway. The two attendants came out hacking and coughing, convinced that the gas was poisonous.

Tyler had expected them to go out the emergency exit. Their sudden appearance complicated things, but he decided to just go for it.

Tyler skirted around them and plunged into the room, which was now completely engulfed in smoke. Unable to see more than a foot in front of him, he moved to the display case by feel.

He was about to insert the key when he felt someone latch on to his arm. One of the attendants had gotten brave and gone back into the smoke to save Tyler. She pulled on him insistently shouting at him in Greek.

Tyler nudged the attendant forward and made as if to follow her out. But once she got two steps ahead, he stopped and went back to the case, confident that she wouldn’t know where he’d gone. He ran his hand along the top until he found the keyhole. He inserted it, and with a twist the case popped open. Orange smoke flooded into the purified air inside the case.

Tyler unzipped his backpack. He snared the Antikythera Mechanism replica and stuffed it into the bag. Then he wiped the keys down with his shirt and tossed them into the case.

“Got it,” he said.

“You’re clear,” came Grant’s reply.

Tyler walked toward the exit door, pushed it open, and tumbled through, holding his hand over his face and wheezing for the benefit of anyone who might be watching.

He stumbled to where Grant waited with the motorcycles. No one else was near the bus stop. Any looky-loos were drawn to the museum entrance.

They both got on their bikes, rocketed away, and made a circuit around the museum. When they reached the front, Stacy was running toward them.

She hopped on Tyler’s ride, and they took off.

Three intersections later, they stopped at a red light. They heard some sirens, but all of them were headed toward the museum.

“Any problems?” Grant shouted above the traffic.

“Other than the attendant making a last-second grab for me, it went off without a hitch,” Tyler replied. He turned to Stacy. “Nice acting job. I almost looked up at the ceiling myself.”

“I have to please my public,” she said. “Think the attendant will be able to identify you?”

“With all that smoke? She’ll be lucky to remember it was a man.”

“You mean, you’ll be lucky.”

The light turned green. “I’m highly skilled at being lucky,” Tyler yelled over his shoulder as he opened the throttle, putting more distance between them and the scene of the crime.

FORTY-THREE

A fter they dropped Stacy off at the hotel, Grant and Tyler went to a local metalwork and fabrication shop they had rented. Tyler paid the owner a handsome fee to leave them alone for the evening with the grinding, cutting, and welding tools they would need to remove the gear from the Mechanism replica and transfer it to the geolabe.

The approach to constructing the replica was different from the one Tyler had used on the geolabe, so he had to remove the axle from the gear before he could fit it to the geolabe. The entire process took seven hours, and by midnight he had all forty-seven gears of the geolabe back together. The dials spun freely, as if the gear had been in place from the beginning. The geolabe was once again in working order.

“Now we just have to wait until morning,” Grant said, as he gathered up the scattered pieces of the replica. “The Acropolis opens at 8 A.M. ”

“Shouldn’t take us more than ten minutes once we’re up there. Then we can head back to the airport. With the hour time difference, we’ll be in Rome by lunchtime.”

Landing in Naples was too risky. They didn’t know how far Gia Cavano’s influence reached, but Tyler didn’t think it extended to Rome. They’d hire a car and make the one-hour drive down to Naples in time to meet with Orr.

Tyler rubbed his eyes. He needed a good night’s sleep, but he didn’t know if that was going to be possible with his mind racing.

Grant must have seen the worry etched on his face. “Your dad’s going to be okay, you know.”

“I know. He’d want me to be more worried about that nuclear material than about him.”

“I still can’t figure why Orr would want it. It’s bizarre.”

“It has something to do with the gold,” Tyler said. “Why else would he have us hunt for the treasure and prepare his nuclear material simultaneously?”