The Midas Code

Orr knelt and opened his backpack. He took out a smaller knapsack specially created by Crenshaw. It would look like something they might have left behind in the course of their exploration. In reality, it contained ten pounds of phosphorus grenades. The opening was partially unzipped.

No doubt Cavano would make the trip down with her men. She wouldn’t give up the chance to see the Midas chamber again for herself. She’d follow the trail left by Orr’s gum wrapper, and when her group came into this room, she’d be curious to see what Orr had abandoned. When one of her men opened the zipper or picked up the knapsack, the grenades would explode, showering the entire room with burning phosphorus and causing a gruesome death for everyone with her.

Orr armed the device and stood, heaving the backpack onto his shoulder. He frowned as he climbed the steps into the next tunnel. The only downside of the plan was that he wouldn’t get to see Gia Cavano open her surprise.

FIFTY-FIVE

F BI special agent Ben Riegert’s laugh filled the cramped interrogation room of the Hagerstown sheriff’s office. The story was just getting better and better. Mohammed Qasim was laying it on thicker as he went. Riegert’s partner, Jackie Immel, was questioning the other suspect, Abdul bin Kamal, in the next room. He hoped she was getting more out of her guy. This one wasn’t making any sense.

Riegert took another swig of coffee. He’d raced out to Hagerstown from the DC office along with twenty other agents as soon as they heard that a 911 call had come in claiming that a terrorist attack was taking place and a warehouse had blown up.

They found Qasim and Kamal beside the building behind a concrete retaining wall with a young woman and a man bleeding to death from shots to the chest and leg. The ambulance had taken the injured man away, and he was identified as retired Major General Sherman Locke. Riegert hadn’t gotten word about his condition, but the paramedics had said he might not survive. A chopper was flying him to the George Washington University trauma center.

The woman, Carol Benedict, was now being examined at a local hospital. Before she was taken away in the ambulance, she told the local police that she couldn’t remember her abduction, which made Riegert suspect that she’d been drugged. Rohypnol and other date-rape drugs usually caused short-term-memory loss, and the hospital would test for it, but it was probably out of her system by now. Riegert would head there to question her next.

Riegert took a seat opposite the suspect. “So, Mr. Qasim, you claim two guys busted into your house as you were getting your morning coffee and abducted you?” Riegert said without even trying to hide his disbelief. Usually these terrorist types were more than happy to come right out and show pride in their acts, but this guy was different. Qasim looked terrified, not the face of defiance Riegert was expecting.

“I swear that is the truth,” Qasim said.

“Where are you from?”

“I am from Saudi Arabia. I am attending the University of Maryland to get my degree in petroleum engineering.”

“Uh-huh. Why do you think these men kidnapped you?”

“I don’t know! They blindfolded me, put me in a van, and tied me up. Then they picked up Abdul.”

“You know him?”

“Only in passing. We go to the same mosque in College Park.”

“You weren’t associated with him in any other way?”

“We studied the Koran together several times, but that is all.”

“So they took you to this warehouse in Hagerstown. Then what?”

“Then they threw me into this room and locked the door. It had a bed and a bucket and nothing else in it. They gave me water and just a little food.”

Qasim was definitely hungry. Riegert had given him a candy bar, and he chowed it down in two bites.

“So you were in there for more than two days,” Riegert said. “Why?”

“You keep asking me why. Ask the kidnappers why!”

“The kidnappers, huh?” Riegert opened a folder and tossed a photo of a charred body over to Qasim. “The only other person we’ve found in connection with this is that guy right there. Was he a partner of yours?”

“No!”

“Mr. Qasim, a truck was hijacked not too far away the day you claim that you were kidnapped. The driver, a Clarence Gibson, says that two men stopped his truck, took him to a remote forest location, and left him for dead. The trucker said the men spoke Arabic. Know anything about that?”

Qasim stared at him, wide-eyed. “You think I was part of that?”

“You did disappear that day.”

“This is crazy, I tell you!”

“This morning, 911 got a call from a General Sherman Locke that he was being held by terrorists. The police arrive to find a local warehouse blown to hell, and the only survivors are two foreign nationals in the company of a frightened woman and a nearly dead man, who we believe is a newly retired two-star general in the Air Force. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t! I can only tell you what happened.”

“Okay. Take me through this morning.”

“Can I have another candy bar?”