He handed the camera to Stacy. “Start filming.”
“Why?”
“When we get back to the surface, we’re going to need our own evidence to convince the Italian authorities that this really is down here.”
“All right,” Stacy said, “but I’m usually in front of the camera, not behind it.” She took the camera to the center of the pit, opened the screen, and started filming. First, she panned around the chamber, then focused on the statue and the pedestal. She was careful to steer clear of the boiling water churning in the pool along the base of the terrace.
Tyler hoisted Orr’s pack and started slapping his face.
“Wake up, sleepyhead.”
With a groan, Orr began to stir, so Tyler rose and pointed the SIG at him. Orr’s moan turned to a cry and his tied hands flew to his face.
“My eye! What did you do to me?”
“That’s your fault. Now get up.”
“I can’t!”
“Quit your whining. I’ve seen soldiers in battle continue fighting with wounds that make your injury look like a paper cut.”
Orr grimaced as he held his palm to his eye. “What do you want?”
“I want to know where my father and Carol Benedict are.”
“You’ll kill me if I tell you.”
“I’ll do worse if you don’t.”
Stacy was still filming the writing on the pedestal. “My God,” she said.
Tyler didn’t take his eyes off Orr. “What is it?”
“This tells Midas’s whole story. How he got here, the curse of the golden touch, everything. Good God! This statue is his daughter.”
“Midas probably wanted to spend eternity with her likeness.”
“No, this isn’t a statue of his daughter. This statue is his daughter. The writing says that he turned her to gold on purpose after she died to preserve her body for all time.”
Tyler backed up so that he could keep an eye on Orr while he looked at the statue. She had been posed lying down, with her arms at her sides, a beautiful girl perhaps fourteen years old. Her eyes were closed, but he could see the pain in her face. She wore a robe that was just as golden as she was, and her left hand was sawed cleanly from her wrist.
“Document everything. Tell me the rest of the story later.”
Tyler went back over to Orr and gave him a light kick. “I think it’s time we introduced ourselves to Midas. Come with me.”
Orr staggered to his feet, his hands still covering his eye. Tyler nodded toward the stairs. Orr trudged over and climbed toward Midas’s coffin. Stacy followed them and continued to film.
When they got to the top of the terrace, Tyler stopped, shocked at what the sarcophagus had hidden from view up to this point. A skeleton lay on the floor, still clad in shirt, jeans, and shoes, the bones a spotless white, the clothes dis-integrating. The skull was fractured.
Tyler remembered the story Cavano had told him about the fight between the men. One of them got his head bashed in. The other died after touching the body of Midas and falling into the water.
“This one of the men who chased you?” Tyler asked Orr.
He nodded.
“Here’s the other one,” Stacy said, pointing over the side of the terrace.
Tyler looked down and saw a body at the bottom of the roiling pool. Like the girl, this corpse had been transformed into solid gold, clothes and all.
Stacy got a shot of both the body and the skeleton. “Why did the guy in the water turn to gold but this one didn’t?”
“Because he wasn’t exposed to the Midas Touch and then submerged in the hot spring,” Tyler said. “And in this heat the bacteria inside the skeleton guy’s body had a smorgasbord once he died. He probably rotted away in a couple of months.”
“Then the walls couldn’t have turned to gold on their own.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Orr said. “Midas did it before he died. He must have touched the walls and then sprayed them with the water from the hot spring.”
Tyler thought about the golden tendrils at the entrance. That would explain why the gold petered out there.
“There’s only one way to find out if you’re right,” Tyler said. He pointed to the corner. “Now go over there and kneel with your hands on your head.” Orr hesitated. “Do it!”
Orr complied and got on his knees. His right eye was now swollen shut. He kept the good one intently focused on them. Tyler had no doubt that he was just waiting to take any opportunity to gain the upper hand, and a small part of Tyler wished he would try.
“Make one move and I’ll kill you.”
“No, you won’t,” Orr said. “You need me alive.”
“Okay. I’ll shoot you in the kneecaps. So stay there if you ever want to walk without a limp.”
Orr said nothing, but he understood. Tyler turned back to the coffin, but he adjusted his position to make sure he kept Orr in his sight the entire time.
The sarcophagus rested on a golden support platform about three feet high near the edge of the terrace above the boiling pool. Tyler ran his hand over the intricately carved lid. Something felt odd, and he pressed into the gold. Instead of the hard metal surface he was expecting, it gave under his push.
He had been considering how to open the lid. If it had been solid gold, it would have weighed hundreds of pounds. But now he realized that the coffin wasn’t pure gold. It was made of wood. The gold leaf was merely a protective covering.
Tyler unfolded his Leatherman knife and drew it across the platform supporting the wooden sarcophagus. Gold flaked off in several spots, revealing tuff underneath.
Stacy knelt to get a better look, focusing the camera on the slash. “So the pedestal, the walls-everything is just gold leaf?”
“Apparently only organic substances are completely transformed into gold, and even then they would have to be completely submerged in the hot spring for a significant length of time. That would explain why the coffin is only gold leaf. The only substantial amount of gold in this room is in the two dead bodies.”
“As I told you,” Orr said, still on his knees in the corner, “the real value is the Midas Touch itself.”
“Yes, you told me,” Tyler said. “Good for you.”
“Should we see if it really works?” Stacy asked.
Tyler nodded, handing one set of the rubber gloves from Orr’s pack to Stacy. “We’ll need to be careful. Remember, according to Cavano the drug runner was poisoned by whatever he touched in the coffin.”
They put the gloves on. The lid wasn’t hinged, so they lifted it from either end and leaned it against the side.
The mummified corpse of King Midas grinned at them, the skin stretched taught over his leathery withered cheeks. He was wrapped in regal purple robes, and a gold crown adorned with rubies and sapphires capped his head. One desiccated hand lay across his chest, but the other was twisted at his side. Each finger was encircled with a magnificent gold and jeweled ring.
Orr and Cavano’s pursuer must have grabbed the hand, eager to take the rings off, but when he brushed against Midas’s skin, he released the hand before he could remove the rings, and the lid dropped back down.
Orr strained to see. “Is it Midas?”
“He’s here, all right,” Tyler said. “In the flesh, so to speak.”
“He must have spent months or years preparing this chamber and ordered his loyal servants to place him here after his death,” Stacy said. “Then they closed up the chamber behind them.”
Tyler rummaged through the sack and took out the two full water bottles.
He needed an object to test. He turned and saw the skeleton of the Italian drug runner, whose shoes were
