The Midas Code

“Sure. After we hear your story about what happened today.” By “we,” Riegert meant the recording apparatus and the eight men squeezed into the observation room behind the one-way mirror.

Qasim took a sip of his water and cleared his throat. “All right. I was sleeping in my prison cell when a noise woke me up. I think it was a fight. I heard a buzz and then shouting. It sounded like someone fell. And then shots. Many shots.”

“How many?”

“I can’t remember. There must have been more than ten.”

“Then what?”

“I heard a truck start up. Yes! I remember now. I got a glimpse of a semi truck inside the warehouse before they put me in the cell.”

Excellent. This guy was burying himself, and Riegert wasn’t going to stop him. “Did you get a look at the truck?”

“Only for a moment. All I can say is that the cab was blue and it had a long silver trailer.”

That matched the description of the one hijacked from Gibson.

“So the truck was there?”

“But I didn’t know it was stolen.”

“Okay. So the truck started. How did you get out of the cell?”

“It sounded like someone was crawling outside my door. Keys jangled, and then my door unlocked. I thought it might be the men who kidnapped me, so I stayed away. It swung open, and I saw an older man lying in a pool of blood. So much blood.”

Riegert appreciated Qasim’s training. He could make up a story on the fly better than most criminals he dealt with.

“And this was General Locke. Did he say anything to you?”

Qasim nodded. “He had a beard and his clothes were dirty, so I knew he was a prisoner like me. I rushed over to him, of course. He was very weak, but he said, ‘The building is rigged to blow. We need to get out.’”

“And that’s when you saw the explosives?”

“Yes. I’ve worked on oil-well blowouts in Saudi Arabia, so I could recognize what those barrels were. I took the keys from General Locke and opened Abdul’s cell. We heard the woman, Ms. Benedict, screaming, so we let her out, too. I carried the general out the nearest door while Abdul helped Ms. Benedict. We ran behind the retaining wall, and that’s when the building exploded. I still hear ringing in my ears.”

“And that is when the police showed up. Well, Mr. Qasim, that is quite a story. And you think Mr. bin Kamal is telling the same story?”

“He must, because it’s true!”

Two raps on the door, and it opened. Immel poked her head in. “Got a minute?”

“I’ll get your candy bar,” Riegert said, “and then we’ll go over this again, Mr. Qasim.”

The suspect nodded shakily and gulped the rest of his water. He was certainly nervous, and Riegert intended to find out why.

Riegert closed the door behind him. “You will never guess the fantasy this guy has cooked up.”

“I know,” Immel said with a chuckle. “I’ve got my own tall tale from bin Kamal. Some snow job about him being kidnapped right out of his house and then thrown in a locked room inside the warehouse.”

Riegert frowned. “And shots fired in the warehouse before Locke opened their cells with blood all over him?”

His partner stopped smiling. “You’re getting the same story?”

“Sounds like it.”

“Well, it gets weirder. We were trying to contact Locke’s son or daughter, but we couldn’t reach either of them. We did get his son’s boss, Miles Benson, president of Gordian Engineering.”

“Why is that weird?”

“Because the first thing he said when we told him about the warehouse was that we should go over there with a Geiger counter.”

FIFTY-SIX

K nowing that they would be descending into the well, Grant had Cavano and her men stop for ropes and other climbing gear before they headed to the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore.

When they arrived, they found the rope anchored to the inside of the well, so they knew Orr had already gone down. Cavano had brought four men with her, Sal and the three least injured of the men from the galleria. All five were armed with submachine guns equipped with mounted flashlights. Two of her men went first, and then Grant went down. Normally, he was an expert at rappelling, but he was still woozy from the concussion and slipped twice on the way to the bottom.

One of the men steadied the rope while another watched Grant wander around the chamber with a flashlight, looking for any sign that Tyler was all right.

He spotted a crumpled bit of white paper and bent to pick it up. He began to unfold it, but before he could read it, Cavano shouted, “Give me that!”

She detached herself from the rope and held out her hand. Grant put it in her palm.

Cavano frowned at it for a moment and then handed it back to him.

“What does that mean?” she demanded.

Grant shined his light on it. Two words were scrawled in Tyler’s handwriting.

Louis Dethy.

It was a message left for Grant. Tyler knew that he was coming. He might even know that Cavano and her clan would be with him, so he’d coded it in case it gave Grant an advantage. But what was Tyler trying to tell him?

Grant struggled to shake off the effects of the concussion and focus his mind. Louis Dethy. He recognized the name but couldn’t quite grasp where he’d seen it.