“And the second set?”
“ F and M. ”
Stacy thought about it for a moment and then laughed. “Eff ’em?”
“Right. His way of saying that he was planning to fight back.”
“What did he say today?”
Tyler played the second video again. “Today’s message is a little harder to figure out. Again two sets of letters. Actually, the first are letters and the second are numbers.”
“Maybe he’s trying to tell you how many kidnappers there are,” Stacy said.
“I doubt it. The numbers are nine and zero. Ninety.”
“And the letters?”
“ S and R. ”
“SR 90?” Stacy clapped her hands together in triumph. “State Road 90! He’s telling you where he is!”
Tyler didn’t share her enthusiasm. “Possibly. But that wouldn’t help us narrow down the search very much. There must be hundreds of miles of State Road 90s in the US. It’s got to be something else.”
“I’ll see what Google comes up with,” Grant said as he tapped on his own laptop. His face fell when he saw the results. “This is not good.”
“Why?” Tyler said.
“Because the first result that comes up for SR 90 is an entry for strontium-90.”
Tyler shuddered as a chill ran up his spine. Given that his father used to head up the agency responsible for rooting out weapons of mass destruction, it wasn’t a huge leap to guess that strontium-90 was what he meant. Grant rubbed his forehead as if he were massaging a headache.
“What’s strontium-90?” Stacy asked.
“It’s a highly radioactive isotope,” Tyler said. “My father could be saying that Orr has gotten hold of some Sr-90.”
“How radioactive is it?”
“Sr-90 is one of the key constituents of the radioactive dust from the Chernobyl disaster.”
“Where could Orr get his hands on something like that?”
“Radioactive materials are available on the black market,” Grant said. “It says here that Sr-90 is found in spent nuclear fuel. It’s also used as a power source in old Soviet thermal generators.”
“And if Orr has some,” Tyler said, “he could be planning to make a dirty bomb.”
“Which is what?” Stacy asked.
“It’s also called a radiological weapon. A poor man’s nuclear bomb. You set off a conventional bomb along with some radioactive material and it coats everything around it with fallout dust. The radiation could be dangerous enough to render a major city uninhabitable for decades. For some reason, Orr may be in possession of a weapon of mass destruction.”
“And both my sister and your father were kidnapped in-” A gasp caught in Stacy’s throat. “Oh, God.”
Tyler slowly nodded. The last time anyone had seen Sherman and Carol was in Washington, DC.
TWENTY-EIGHT
T yler wished he hadn’t eaten so much for dinner. The idea that Orr was building a WMD was turning his stomach.
“I hate to bring this up,” Stacy said, “but maybe we should reconsider calling the FBI now.”
“And tell them what?” Tyler said.
“That Jordan Orr has his hands on strontium-90.”
“Does he?”
“You just said he did.”
“That’s what I say. You said it could be a state highway, which it also could be.”
“Or an address,” Grant said. “Or someone’s initials. Or any one of a hundred other things.”
“Then there’s the question of why Orr would want a dirty bomb. If he’s planning to blackmail the US government, he wouldn’t need us for that.”
“Maybe he wants to nuke the Midas chamber once he finds it,” Grant said. “It almost worked for Goldfinger.” When Stacy gave him a confused look, he continued, “You know, the James Bond movie where the villain Goldfinger is going to set off an atomic bomb inside Fort Knox.”
“But Goldfinger already had a stockpile of gold that would rise in value once the nuke went off,” Tyler said. “I don’t think Orr has a stack of gold lying around that he wants to increase in value.”
“But what if talking to the FBI could lead to finding Carol and your dad?” Stacy said.
“Let’s think about what would happen if we got the FBI involved right now. I’m not saying it’s the wrong thing to do, but we have to be smarter than Orr about this. Grant, you play the FBI.”
“Okay, but I’m not putting on a suit.”
Tyler got up and paced. “I call you up and tell you that my father and Stacy’s sister have been kidnapped.”
“When were they kidnapped?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“And you’re just calling now? From London?”
“We were worried about Orr killing them.”
“And you’re coming forward now because…?” Grant asked.
“Because I have new information that the kidnappers may have an unknown quantity of strontium-90.”
“What’s your evidence?”
“My father sent us a message via sign language. I have the video.”
“Maybe he’s sending you his location. Why jump to the conclusion that it’s strontium-90?”
“My father is a retired general who specialized in tracking threats from radioactive materials.”
Grant shook Tyler’s hand. “Thank you, Dr. Locke. We’ll start our manhunt for this Jordan Orr and alert every agency in the country that there is the possible threat of a nuke. By the way, we’ll need to tap your phones and have you come back to the US.”
Tyler stopped and pointed at Grant. “And now Orr finds out he’s being investigated and kills Carol and my father.”
“Or maybe he sets off his radiological weapon prematurely,” Grant said. “Or he doesn’t set it off, because we can’t be sure he has one. Right now it’s just a hunch.”
Stacy threw up her hands in defeat. “Okay, okay, okay. You’ve made your point. We don’t call the FBI. So what’s the alternative? We’re just going to go along with Orr’s demands?”
“No,” Tyler said. “If he really has a WMD and my father has seen it, Orr will never let him live whether or not we can lead him to the treasure.”
“And Carol?”
When Tyler didn’t say anything, Stacy folded her arms and crossed to the window.
“I know it looks hopeless,” he said, “but the good news is that if we can get the geolabe back, we can stop playing defense and go on offense.”
“Offense?” she said.
“The next time we see Orr, we won’t let him get away.”
“What about your dad and Stacy’s sister?” Grant said.
Tyler took a deep breath. “We trade with Orr. His life for theirs. Then we bring in the FBI.”
“Let’s just tell him we’ve solved Archimedes’ puzzle and meet him in Naples,” Stacy said. “Why are we going through all this?”
“Because I’m sure Orr has some way of knowing if we’re lying about where the entry to the tunnel system is. He wouldn’t go to all this trouble without that kind of safeguard. We have to show up holding some aces because I’m sure he’d call our bluff.”
“So what’s the plan?”
