“How much would something like this be worth?” she wondered aloud.
Orr answered. “About eighty thousand dollars at today’s prices. Just for the weight of the gold, of course. I’d bet the hand itself would fetch several million at auction. If you could find a buyer, that is. Stolen property is hard to get rid of.”
“Why are you showing this to us?” Tyler asked Orr.
“Because I need you to believe that what you’re searching for really exists. Otherwise, I’m just a crackpot with some idiotic quest that can’t possibly be achieved. You’ll just go through the motions hoping you can figure out some way to find your father, which won’t happen, by the way.”
“You’ve got everything figured out, haven’t you?” Tyler said.
Orr grinned again. “Not everything. That’s why I need you two.”
“All right,” Tyler said. “We’ll do it your way.”
Orr held out his hand. “I’ll take the bag back.” Tyler zipped it back up and gave it to him.
“What now?” Stacy said.
“Suppose we believe your story,” Tyler said. “The Midas Touch existed, and there’s a buried treasure somewhere under Naples. You’ve seen it before. You know where it is. Why don’t you just go get it yourself? Why go to all this trouble?”
“Just because I’ve seen it before doesn’t mean I know how to find it.”
“What does that mean?” Stacy said.
“It’s a long and complicated story, but it boils down to this. There are two ways to get to the treasure. I can’t go the way I’ve been before for reasons that you don’t need to know, which means I need the second way to find it. Archimedes’ way. Using the map he created.”
“Archimedes lived over twenty-two hundred years ago. Do you really think that map still exists? Or that it even still applies? Naples has been built over by the Greeks, Syracusans, Romans, Italians. Not to mention Vesuvius blowing up every once in a while, covering everything with ash.”
“When Gia and I were in the tunnels, we came across one cistern where we saw light coming through a well opening far above our heads. That’s the entry point I’m looking for. Unfortunately, there are thousands of wells in Naples, not all of which are documented, and most of which have been plugged up.”
“Why the test on the ferry?” Tyler said.
“I couldn’t hire you for the job, could I?” Orr said. “You’d turn me in. Now that I know that you can solve Archimedes’ puzzle, I think you can figure out where the map is. And I have a time limit.”
“What’s the deadline?” Stacy said, and cringed when she realized the double meaning.
“You’re funny,” Orr said. “I need to have the map in my hands by Sunday night. In Naples.”
“Are you kidding?” Tyler said. “It’s Wednesday. You want us to solve a twenty-two-hundred-year-old riddle in just four days?”
“I don’t have any choice. If I haven’t found Midas’s tomb by then, the Fox will get it.”
“Who’s the Fox?” Stacy said.
“It’s Gia’s nickname. We’re in a race to find it first. She would kill you in a second if she thought you were anywhere near finding it, so you’ll want to be careful.”
“But we have no idea where to start!”
“You will. The night I acquired the golden hand, I also retrieved an ancient manuscript written by Archimedes himself. Luckily, I was able to get to it before it was photographed and appraised for the auction catalog.”
“That’s where you got the instructions for building the geolabe,” Tyler said.
“Right. I had a translation done by a retired Classics professor, but he was in his eighties and not up to the challenge of a mission like this.”
“Who is he?”
“It doesn’t really matter, because he is currently dead.”
By the look in Orr’s eyes, she doubted that the professor died of old age.
“I’ll be emailing you a file of photographs of the Archimedes Codex as well as the translation,” Orr said. “That should give you a good head start in your search, but I’m sure we missed something. Your job is to figure out what it was. I want daily updates on your progress. If you fail to deliver an update, or I think you’re holding back, I will remove an ear from both Sherman and Carol. Understand?”
Stacy swallowed hard.
“We’ll give you the updates,” Tyler said, “but we want proof that my father and Stacy’s sister are all right.”
“I’ve already sent you proof-of-life videos.”
“I want one every day, with proof that their ears are intact. You miss a day, and this is over.”
Orr thought about it, then nodded. “Fair enough. Once a day.” He looked around at the crowd hustling for one of the four entrances to get into the game that had just started. “It looks like it’s time for me to go. I’ll be in touch.” Orr slung the backpack over his shoulder.
“That’s it?” Stacy said.
“Understand that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, so I take it very seriously. You should, too. I’ll be in Naples on Sunday. If you can’t be there with the solution to my problem, don’t bother coming.”
As the skies opened up with another downpour, Orr melted into the sea of humanity. Stacy wanted to run him down and pound his head into the pavement, but that wouldn’t help her sister, and she’d get blown up in the process.
“I want to kill him,” she said. “I’ve never said that before about a person and really meant it.”
Tyler, who was also staring at Orr, just nodded. They kept watching until Orr walked around the corner and disappeared.
FIFTEEN
T yler was eager to read the documents that Orr had emailed to them, but Stacy insisted on stopping at her downtown hotel first to get into dry clothes. The plan was to then go back to Tyler’s house, where they had more room to spread out. While she changed, Tyler went to Gordian’s headquarters to print out the documents and check out a hunch he had about the geolabe. An hour later, he was back at her hotel.
Stacy came out wearing the same jacket and boots, but a fresh shirt and jeans. Tyler expected her to be carrying nothing more than her briefcase, so he was surprised to see her carry-on trailing behind as well.
“Pop the trunk,” she said as she reached the back of the Viper.
Tyler swung around in his seat. “What are you doing?”
“If we’re going to be working on this all night, there’s no sense in bringing me back here. It’ll just waste time.”
“So you’re just inviting yourself to stay at my place?”
“Relax. I’m not planning to throw myself at you. I’m being efficient, that’s all. Besides, it’s not like you’re married.”
Tyler glanced down at his ringless hand. He had been married once and wore the ring for a long time after she died, but it now sat in his nightstand drawer. His love for Karen would never diminish, but he’d decided to treasure her memory by moving forward with his life.
He looked back up at Stacy. “How do you know I don’t have a girlfriend?” Tyler didn’t object to her staying at his place. He was just amused by her brazen forwardness.
“Oh,” Stacy said as if she’d never even considered that. “Do you?”
Tyler had had one relationship since he became a widower. He’d really wanted the long-distance affair with Dilara to work out, but maintaining their connection through phone calls and emails had been difficult. Most of the time she was in Turkey excavating Noah’s Ark, while he was all over the rest of the world. They kept in contact, but developing a relationship wasn’t in the cards when they were separated by ten thousand miles most of the year.
“No,” he said with feigned indignation, “but you don’t have to seem so surprised.” He clicked the trunk
