The Midas Code

“It may have had nothing to do with Midas,” Stacy said. “The tablet said that the Syracuse king’s spy was looking for a way into the Roman fortress. Maybe this leads into it, and the people inside were trying to keep invaders from doing exactly what he was trying to do.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Orr said. “Looks like we go farther down the rabbit hole.”

The tunnel extended downward for another two hundred feet, and they emerged into a room twenty feet long and ten feet wide. At the far end was a pool of water that ran the width of the room and was three feet across. What looked like a foot-wide stone bridge spanned the middle of the pool and ended at the wall. Tyler turned in all directions, but there were no more tunnels.

It was a dead end.

“Is this some kind of joke?” Orr asked.

Tyler looked at him in surprise. “No. This is where the geolabe said to go.” Could he have interpreted the instructions incorrectly?

“If this is it, Tyler, I’m going to press my button. You better come up with something fast to make me think you haven’t been screwing with me this whole time.”

Tyler was acutely aware of the explosive belt digging into his stomach as he walked to the far end and inspected the wall.

A nearly invisible crack stretched across the end wall at a height of six feet. The surface was made of the same tuff that they’d seen throughout the tunnel system, but in some places the pocked gray stone revealed a white layer underneath, as if the tuff were merely a thin veneer. Tyler scratched at the white material with his fingernail, but it didn’t flake away like the tuff. In fact, it abraded his nail, almost as if…

Tyler flipped the geolabe over. The dial was pointing to Aquarius, the water bearer. That had to be a clue.

“What is it?” Stacy said.

He dropped to his knees and held the lantern over the water, which became opaque five feet down, obscuring the bottom.

Tyler smiled at the engineering ingenuity of it.

“Eureka,” he said quietly.

“What?” Stacy said.

“Feel that,” he said, pointing to the white stone under the tuff.

She rubbed it with her finger.

“What’s going on?” Orr said.

“It feels like what I use to smooth my feet,” Stacy said. “Pumice?”

“Right,” Tyler said. “Did you know that pumice is up to ninety percent air?”

“Why does that matter?” Orr asked.

“Because it’s the only rock that floats. It’s ejected by volcanoes like Vesuvius. It floats so well that some scientists theorize that plants and animals might have migrated throughout the Pacific on pumice rafts created by Indonesian volcanoes.”

“And your point is?”

“The whole wall below this crack is made of pumice. The tuff on the front is merely to disguise it. The wall is floating.”

Orr looked confused, then glanced down at the water. “Is that possible?”

“Bricks of pumice could have been cemented together. When the pool of water below was filled, the guides in the side wall kept the end wall in place as it rose with the water until it was firmly seated against the ceiling.”

“And no one would ever know it was actually a door,” Stacy said incredulously. “It makes sense that Midas would have made sure his tomb was protected. Grave robbers were a bane to the ancient world, especially because so many kings insisted on being buried with vast hoards of treasure.”

“Like the pharaohs.”

“Wait a minute,” Orr said. “When Gia and I found the chamber twenty years ago, there wasn’t any door.”

“This pool is probably fed by a spring so that it can be refilled. If there was a drought the year you visited, the level in the pool could have lowered enough to drop the barrier.”

Orr got a faraway look in his eye. “Now I remember. We came down an incline and then crossed a bridge over water. I’d forgotten that detail. This has to be it.”

“Can we swim under it?” Gaul asked.

“I doubt it,” Tyler said. “That would make the floating wall superfluous.”

“Then how do we open it?”

“There must be a lever of some kind to release the water,” Tyler said. “When it flows out, the barrier will lower and let us through.”

Tyler walked around the room and saw no sign of any kind of button, switch, or handle.

Then he realized where it must be.

“It’s in the water. Something like the stopper in a bathtub. Take it out, and the water will drain. Take the belt off me and I’ll open it.” If he dove in with the belt on, the electronics might short-circuit, setting off the bomb.

“No,” Orr said. “I don’t trust you. What if there’s an escape route?”

“It’s the only way to get through,” Tyler said, looking at Orr and Gaul, “so I guess one of you has to do it, then.”

“No,” Orr said again. “Gaul, undo Stacy’s belt and give her a flashlight.”

Stacy fixed him with a hateful stare when she realized that she was the one who would dive into the liquid gloom.

FIFTY-EIGHT