still intact. The nylon shoelaces would be perfect. Tyler untied one of the shoes and unlaced it.
He took both ends and rubbed them on Midas’s hand.
“Open the bottles,” Tyler said. Stacy started with the seawater bottle.
Tyler dipped the shoelace into the water while Stacy filmed. Within seconds, a blush of gold encrusted the tip of the lace. They repeated the steps with the gold-bearing fresh water. This time the effect was even greater, because the solution had a stronger concentration of gold than the seawater. Tyler took the golden lace out and marveled as the water dripped from it.
Stacy gaped at it. “My God! It works!”
“Incredible,” Tyler said. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself, and he knew others might feel the same.
“Let’s take a sample to test when we get back,” he said. “Take that Tupperware container out and open it.” Stacy hadn’t yet touched anything, so her gloves were clean.
While she got the container, Tyler took a breath and ripped Midas’s hand off, rings and all. He dropped it in the empty container, and Stacy put the lid back on. He removed his gloves as carefully as he could to avoid exposure to the microbes and set them aside. Stacy took her gloves off as well.
Tyler held up the laces for Orr to see. “This is what you were searching for,” he said. “I hope it drives you nuts coming so close and not getting it.”
“Nothing has changed except for who’s holding the gun,” Orr said. “We can still make a deal for the information you want.”
“The only deal I’m going to make with you is that I will guarantee you a short, miserable life if anything happens to Sherman or Carol.”
“That’s too bad, because now you’re too late.”
“Really? Why’s that?”
Orr smiled and nodded behind Tyler.
He turned to see Gia Cavano silently entering the cavern. Behind her was a man with a submachine gun pointed at Grant’s head.
SIXTY-ONE
C avano didn’t care if Tyler and Stacy were helping Orr by choice or against their will. She knew Orr well enough to believe that he had taken Tyler’s and Stacy’s relatives hostage, but that didn’t make her inclined to share the treasure with anyone. If she let them go, the Italian authorities would be on her before she could get a tenth of the gold out.
With her submachine gun, she opened fire, but Tyler and Stacy dove behind the golden coffin, bullets pinging off the wall behind them. None of the shots were aimed at Orr, who flattened himself on the floor. She wanted him alive. A bullet to the head was too good for him.
Tyler didn’t return fire with the pistol Cavano had seen him holding. He obviously wouldn’t want to hurt his friend. Sal stood behind Grant, using him as a shield.
The astounding golden chamber was just as she remembered it, except for the dead body in the pit below, its head a mess of gore. Cavano was already drenched from the humidity that condensed on her skin.
She noticed Orr’s bloody face and called across the long chamber. “I see you’ve done all of the hard work for me, Dr. Locke.”
“You okay, Tyler?” Grant said.
“Not bad,” Tyler yelled from behind the coffin. “How about you?”
“Your warning worked for me, but three of Cavano’s men used up their nine lives.”
“And for killing my men,” she said, “Jordan has earned the most painful death I can possibly imagine.”
“Listen, Gia,” Tyler said. “I think the one thing we can agree on is that we all want Orr dead. But right now I need him alive.”
“Yes, Grant told us why you have been such a thorn in my side for the last few days. Good to see you again, Jordan. I hope you’re in pain.”
“You can’t kill me, Gia,” Orr said. “The gold isn’t worth what you think it is.”
“If it’s only a few billion dollars, I think I’ll be fine.”
“It’s not. It’s a few million.”
“Shut up, Orr!” Tyler yelled.
In the face of so much gold, Cavano laughed, and Sal joined in.
“I’m serious,” Orr said. “Scratch the wall next to you. You’ll see that the gold is only a few millimeters thick.”
Cavano looked at Sal, who shrugged. Was her whole assessment of the treasure that far off? She dragged the nose of her gun across the wall. She stared in horror when it left a gouge of gray tuff behind.
“The statue is solid gold,” she said. “I know it is.”
“The statue is, but the pedestal isn’t,” Orr said. “The girl might weigh a few hundred pounds. You’d clear twenty million euros at best. I know your business is in much deeper debt than that.”
He was right. The purchase of the Ministry of Health building had exhausted her organization’s funds. Without a major influx of cash, she would be at the mercy of the other Camorra clans, who would sweep in and gobble up her budding empire.
“How about I share a billion dollars with you?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I have an auction planned for the Midas Touch.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I can find my own buyer.”
“Not the group I have assembled. I’m the only one they’ll trust.”
Cavano paused. “And why should I trust you?”
“You don’t have to. You can come with me to the auction. We’ll split the payment into two accounts. If I’m lying about the deal, you can kill me then. But if I’m not, you go your way and I go my way. Forget about this whole vendetta thing and we’ll both be super-rich.”
Cavano walked back and whispered to Sal in Italian. “What do you think?”
“It looks like he’s right about the wall,” Sal whispered back.
She nodded. Later she would figure out how to get her vengeance, but for now she couldn’t afford to risk killing Orr. She was about to agree to his terms when Tyler called out.
“One problem with your plan, Gia! I’m right behind the coffin. I can dump Midas’s body into that pool in three seconds, and then you’ll have nothing. Once it’s in the water, the body will turn to gold in a matter of hours, and the microbes that are responsible for the Midas Touch will disappear forever.”
“You do that and Grant is dead.”
“We’re dead anyway, so you better cut me in on Orr’s deal, too.”
Cavano thought about it. She had no desire to cut anybody else in on the deal, but she couldn’t lose the Midas Touch, either.
“All right,” she said. “But I want to see a working sample first.”
“Do we have a deal?”
“I swear on my husband’s grave.”
After about thirty seconds of silence, Tyler said, “All right. You come down to the pit. I’ll keep an eye on Orr, and Stacy will bring the sample down to you. You try anything and I’ll kill Orr and dump Midas into the water. Then nobody gets anything. Sound good?”
Perfect, Cavano thought. “Sounds good. We’re coming down. If Stacy tries anything, she dies first. Then Grant. Then you.”
She whispered into Sal’s ear again. “When I’m sure we’ve got it, kill Grant, then Tyler. I’ll take care of Stacy.”
Sal nodded.
Cavano had lied when she swore on her husband’s grave, but she was a good Catholic. To her way of
