part of modern-day Turkey-although he wasn’t born there.”
“Where was he from?”
“Some stories say Macedonia. Some say even farther away. No one really knows. But they say that Midas arrived as the son of a peasant at the exact moment that an oracle prophesied that the next leader of Phrygia would appear on a humble wagon. They dubbed Midas’s father king on the spot.”
“Lucky him.”
“And you’ll like this: the king’s name was Gordias. When Midas succeeded his father as king, he dedicated the wagon to Zeus for bringing him this good fortune and declared that whoever could untie the fiendishly complicated knot on its yoke would rule all Asia.”
“You’re talking about the Gordian knot. Alexander the Great was the one who solved the puzzle. Except he simply cut it instead of trying to untie it.”
Stacy smiled. “I assume your company Gordian Engine ering is named for the Gordian knot.”
“It is. The seemingly unsolvable problem with a bold solution. But I didn’t know that Midas was the one who’d tied it.”
“You learn something new every day. That’s why I love my job.”
“What happened to Midas?”
“No one knows, but there are several theories. One is that he’s buried in Turkey. Someone even claims to have found his tomb. Another theory is that he was driven out by invading Persians. The myth says that Midas offended one of the gods and was afflicted with the ears of a donkey for his crime. He fled Phrygia in shame and was never heard from again.”
“All of that makes for a great story,” Tyler said, “but you’re right that the part about the Midas Touch is absurd. Alchemists have tried to create their own version of the Midas Touch for centuries by transmuting lead into gold. They failed every time, because it’s physically impossible.”
Stacy hadn’t taken a science course since high school, so her grasp of chemistry was rudimentary at best.
“Why is it impossible?” she asked. “Maybe it’s some hidden formula that we’ve never found.”
Tyler laughed. “Unless the hidden formula involves a fission reaction, it won’t work.”
“Fission as in nuclear?”
“Lead has a higher atomic weight than gold, meaning it has more protons, so the only way lead can become gold is if it sheds protons. Removing protons from an atom’s nucleus is the definition of a nuclear reaction. I suppose you could accomplish that in a nuclear reactor, but it would be so expensive it wouldn’t be worth the trouble.”
“So you think Orr is crazy?”
“Certifiable if he believes in magic.”
“I can see why he wants you in on this. You built the geolabe. But why me? There are a thousand other PhD classicists out there.”
“My humanities studies weren’t a real priority in college,” Tyler said. “What are Classics, exactly?”
“The study of classical Greece and Rome.”
“Which is why you know Greek. Latin, too?”
“I got my undergraduate degree in linguistics. I’m fluent in Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and German.”
Tyler whistled. “That’s amazing. I wish I knew some foreign languages. Just don’t have a knack for it, I guess. Unless you count ASL. My grandmother was deaf. I also taught it to Grant.”
“Sign language counts,” Stacy said, “but I can’t sign. Just verbal languages.”
“So why Classics?”
“I grew up on a farm near Des Moines. My parents didn’t have a lot of money, so we never traveled except to go camping in Minnesota. I always wanted to see all those wonderful cities in Europe, so I thought getting a Classics degree would help me do that. Halfway through grad school, I realized research wasn’t my calling. I forced myself to finish anyway, but I still had a hundred thousand in student loans to pay back, so when I heard about auditions for Chasing the Past I signed up. I’m not an actress, but they wanted someone with solid credentials rather than some bimbo reading a teleprompter, so I got the job. I paid my loans off in one year.”
“Your parents must be proud. They still in Iowa?”
“They’ve passed away. They were both smokers. Cancer got them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s just me and my sister now. She was in law school. Is in law school, dammit.”
Tyler gave her knee a squeeze. Just a small gesture of sympathy, but she appreciated it.
His phone pinged. “Probably Grant,” he said, but when he looked at the screen, his expression became grim.
“What?” she asked.
“It’s Orr. He says to check my email.”
After a few taps, he leaned in closer and expanded a video on the screen. Stacy heard some words, but she couldn’t make them out.
Tyler angled the phone so that Stacy could see it and restarted the video. The opening frame was centered on a newspaper with today’s date. Then it receded until she could see a man in a black ski mask standing next to another man sitting in a chair. The seated man appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties and was dressed in a suit. His wrists and ankles were cuffed, but he didn’t look injured. In fact, he looked incredibly fit, and not just for his age. He was blindfolded, but his strong jaw and short brown hair left little doubt that she was looking at Tyler’s father.
A voice in the video said, “Name.” The picture changed slightly, as if it had been edited. The seated man then confirmed her suspicions.
“Sherman Locke,” he said with a sonorous baritone, reminiscent of Tyler’s voice but deepened with age.
The proof-of-life video abruptly ended. Stacy closed her eyes and saw in her mind a replay of a similar video she’d received this morning of Carol bound and unconscious.
She shook it off and looked up at Tyler expecting to see rage. To her amazement, he was smiling.
“That son of a bitch,” he said with a chuckle. “Something tells me he’s not going down without a fight.”
THIRTEEN
T yler could tell Orr was no fool by the spot he’d picked for the rendezvous. Only fifteen minutes remained until the Wednesday-afternoon baseball game started, and a crowd of fans massed outside the southwest entrance to the stadium waiting to get in to see the hometown Mariners take on the Angels. Street vendors barked “Programs!” every few seconds, and the sweet smell of kettle corn drifted over them. The worst of the rain had passed, but the roof of the steel-and-brick Safeco Field was closed to shield the fans from the occasional drizzle.
On a normal day, the trip from the ferry dock to the stadium would take just a minute, but the stop-and-go traffic extended the drive by a factor of fifteen. By the time Tyler parked the Viper in the garage, it was 12:30. He bought a couple of hot dogs and some drinks from a street vendor to eat while he and Stacy waited. Neither of them was particularly hungry, but Tyler had learned in the Army that you had to keep up your strength even more than usual in stressful situations.
“So what’s Orr look like?” Stacy asked between bites. “Dark hair,” he said. “Naturally tan. Brown eyes. A little shorter than I am. Roman nose broken and not put back together right. Missing the tip of his left pinkie. Not the prettiest guy to look at.”
“Can’t wait to meet him.”
Twenty minutes went by. They leaned against the wall next to the ticket window, Stacy looking in one direction, Tyler in the other. Twice Stacy pointed out someone that fit the description, but neither of them was Orr.
Right on time, Tyler saw Orr approach from around the corner. He looked just as Tyler remembered,
