release.
“Sorry,” Stacy said as she lifted her bag in. “I just figured you were like me. Driven. Workaholic. No time for romantic entanglements.”
“It’s like talking to a mirror.”
She picked up the thick folder of papers from the passenger seat and got in.
“Are these the pages Orr sent?” she said.
Tyler nodded and put the car in gear. “I made two English copies for us, plus the original in Greek for you.”
Within ten minutes they had entered the Magnolia neighborhood. He turned into the driveway of his two- story Mediterranean-style villa perched on a cliff overlooking Puget Sound and downtown Seattle. He pulled the Viper into the middle bay of a three-car garage, a Ducati motorcycle next to a workbench on the right, and a Porsche SUV with a flat tire on the left.
Tyler pointed at the Porsche’s tire and said, “That’s why we were crammed into the Viper today. I don’t normally take it out in the rain.”
When they got inside, Stacy walked over to the windows. “Carol would love this view.”
Tyler set her bag down in the hall. “You can have the spare bedroom on the right. The sheets are reasonably clean.”
Stacy shot him a get-real look.
“Kidding,” he said. “I wash them daily.”
“I’ll assume it’s somewhere in between.”
She took a spin around the living room, then checked out the kitchen, running her hands over the granite countertop and the cherry cabinets. “This is some house. Gordian must pay pretty well.”
Tyler took a seat and pulled out the three packets of paper. “You don’t have much of a filter, do you?”
“I’m just saying it’s not like you’re hiding the fact that you make money. A mansion. Red sports car. Porsche. Motorcycle.”
“As a partner in the firm, I am adequately compensated, and I enjoy the fruits of my labor.”
“Good for you, Dr. Locke.”
“Shall we get started, Dr. Benedict?”
“Got anything to drink?”
Tyler nodded toward the fridge. “Help yourself. I’ll take a Diet Coke.”
Drinks in hand, Tyler first showed Stacy the other side of the geolabe, which had been hidden from her when it was connected to the bomb. While the front had two dials with Greek writing labeling the discrete points on each dial, the opposing face had a single dial that was divided evenly into 360 individual notches and numbered every thirty notches, like the points on a compass. Tyler didn’t know what they were for, and Stacy suggested that the answer might lie in the manuscript.
They spent the rest of the afternoon reading the translation of the Archimedes Codex, with Stacy referring often to the photocopy of the original Greek. Tyler had seen some of the document before while he was building the geolabe, but most of the pages were new to him.
The dense Greek writing was sprinkled with drawings and mathematical proofs. There were 247 folios in the original document, each page a treasure in itself, revealing the genius of antiquity’s greatest engineer. Tyler wished he could study every one of them, but only thirty-eight of the pages referred to Midas and the geolabe, a word coined by Archimedes. At one point, Archimedes even mentioned that he’d seen the golden hand, supporting Orr’s claim that the codex really had been written to lead someone to Midas’s treasure. Tyler found no explanation for the purpose of the notches.
After going over the copy of the original document, Stacy told Tyler that the codex seemed to end abruptly, which could mean either that some pages were missing or that Archimedes hadn’t completed the manuscript. The reading was slow going, with Tyler stopping often to ask Stacy questions, but by seven o’clock Tyler had completed a first pass-through. After Stacy made a few phone calls, it was clear what their next step had to be.
At seven on the dot, there was a hammering at the door that startled Stacy. Tyler recognized the cadence and yelled, “Come in!”
The lock jiggled as a key went through the motions, and Grant threw open the door. He was by himself.
“Where’s Aiden?” Tyler asked.
“He was with Miles in DC. They should arrive in about an hour.”
“You gave my regrets to the team at Bremerton?”
“I told them you were unavoidably detained on an urgent matter.”
“Good.” The project wasn’t at a critical point. He wouldn’t be missed for five days. Stacy’s show was on hiatus for the summer, so her schedule was easy to clear.
“Have you heard from your father?” Grant said.
When Tyler showed him the video, Grant smiled. “He’s a tough hombre,” he said.
“Which is great for the military, but try being his son.” Tyler tried to smile at his own weak joke, but all he could think of was his dad blindfolded like a prisoner of war.
“He’ll be okay.” Grant slapped Tyler on the shoulder. “Now, what’s for dinner? I’m so hungry I could eat a buttered monkey.”
“We’ll have to order out,” Stacy said. “Except for some drinks, the fridge is empty. Not a chef?”
“I like to cook,” Tyler said, “but I haven’t been shopping lately.”
Grant snorted. “When he says he likes to cook, he means he can throw a piece of fish on the grill. He makes it sound like brain surgery. As they say at NASA, it ain’t rocket science. I’ll order us some pizzas.”
An hour later, they’d had their fill of pepperoni-and-green-pepper thin crust, and Grant was up to speed on what had happened at Safeco Field.
At 8:15, there was another knock at the door. This time Tyler got up to open it. Waiting outside were Miles Benson and Aiden MacKenna. Miles was in his iBOT wheelchair, but it was at normal level, on all four wheels, instead of balanced on two.
Aiden was an Irishman with glasses and bushy black eyebrows. Tyler hadn’t yet seen the new addition to his appearance, a black device affixed to his skull with a lead going to a plastic object tucked behind his ear.
“How’s the cochlear implant working for you?” Tyler asked him.
“Huh?” Aiden said.
Tyler raised his voice. “I said, how long until that joke gets old?”
“Never.”
Tyler ushered them in. Aiden made a beeline for Stacy.
“And who is this blond beauty?” he said, taking her hand in both of his.
“Stacy Benedict,” she said. “I love your accent.”
“That’s very kind. And I’m glad to hear yours as well. I’m still getting used to this ugly contraption on my noggin that lets me hear such beautiful sounds.”
“All right, Aiden,” Tyler said, feeling a pang of jealousy. “That’s plenty from you. Stacy, you’ve already met Aiden MacKenna, our resident software expert and database guru. And I’d like you to meet Gordian’s president, Miles Benson.”
They shook hands and got down to business. Miles had struck out finding any more information about Sherman’s abductors before flying back to Seattle that afternoon. Tyler told Miles and Aiden about Sherman, Carol, Orr, and the mission to find the Midas Touch. The two of them were incredulous at first, just as Tyler had been, but when he showed them the video of his father, the doubts ended.
“This has to be completely off the books,” he said. “No police. No FBI. Not even official Gordian involvement. That’s why I wanted to meet here instead of at the office. But I’ll still need some Gordian resources to find my dad.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Miles said.
“Stacy and I have talked it over, and we think Orr will go through with his threat if he finds out the Feds are involved.”
Miles eyed Stacy, who nodded her agreement.
