The Midas Code

As they had practiced, the cab reached the boat slip at the Thames river dock only five minutes later. They left the cab sitting at the dock car park and made their way to the cabin cruiser Felder had hired. Orr knew the boat might be traced back to Felder, but by the time it was, it wouldn’t matter.

As soon as they were on board, Felder, a native Brit who had plied these waters for ten years as tug crewman, threw the throttle forward. They wouldn’t stop until they reached the Strait of Dover, where the plan was to go ashore in Kent and use a rental car to make their final escape on a SeaFrance ferry to Calais.

While Felder navigated, the rest of them emptied the contents of the bags in the blacked-out forward cabin to take stock of their haul. Russo and Manzini cackled in Italian. The only word Orr, an American, could understand was when they mentioned their hometown, “Napoli.” Naples. He ignored them and carefully inspected the three manuscripts. He found the one he wanted and set it aside. The other two were worthless to him, so he put them back in the duffel.

By the time they finished sorting the goods, the boat had entered the English Channel. It was time.

Orr turned his back to Russo and Manzini and drew the silenced SIG Sauer he’d used to kill the guards.

“Hey, Orr,” Russo said, “when do we meet your contact? I want my money soon, capisce?”

“No problem,” Orr said, and whipped around. He shot Russo first, then Manzini. Manzini toppled onto Russo, the necklace he’d been fondling still in his hand.

The wind and the engine noise were so loud that Felder couldn’t have heard the shots. Orr made his way up to the wheel deck.

Felder turned and smiled at him.

“Mind taking a few minutes at the wheel?” Felder said. “I’m dying to check out my share.”

“Sure,” Orr said. He took the wheel with one hand, and when Felder’s back was turned, he shot him twice. Felder tumbled to the deck below.

Orr checked the GPS and twisted the wheel until he was heading toward Leysdown-on-Sea, a small town on the coast, where he’d parked a second car. The car Felder had hired would stay where it was until it was towed away. Orr didn’t care. There would be nothing to link him with it.

When the boat was three miles from town, Orr brought it to a stop. The water here would be deep enough.

Down in the cabin, he lashed all three of the bodies to the interior, planted two small explosive charges below the waterline, and readied an inflatable raft and oars. Once he triggered the bombs, which were just big enough to tear openings in the hull, the boat would sink within minutes.

He sealed the golden hand, jewelry, coins, and the lone manuscript in a waterproof bag and put everything else into lockers that he battened down. There would be no trace of the boat once it was on the bottom of the Channel. The items like the Picasso were valuable, but they were also too recognizable to sell. He couldn’t take the chance that they would lead back to him. The jewelry and the gold could be broken apart and sold for the gems and metal with little risk. He expected to net two million pounds from them, enough to pay off his debts and fund his ultimate plan.

But the golden hand and the manuscript he would keep. Although Orr’s accomplices hadn’t known it, the document was the most valuable item they had taken from the vault. In fact, it was arguably the single most valuable object on the face of the earth. The owner must not have realized what it contained, or he would never have tried to auction it.

Orr did know what it contained. He had checked it himself while Russo and Manzini had been fawning over the gold and the jewels. To the layman, the most important line, heading a section at the end of the document, looked like a string of random Greek letters, but it confirmed the document’s importance. ?????????????Y??Y??Y??Y?????????????????Y???Y??Y??Y????.

The manuscript was a medieval codex transcribed from a scroll written two hundred years before the birth of Christ. It contained an ancient treatise by antiquity’s greatest scientist and engineer, the man who kept the Romans at bay for two years through his ingenuity alone, a Greek native of Syracuse named Archimedes.

The codex was written without spaces or lowercase letters, making it tedious to translate, so the manuscript’s complete contents were unknown. But that one line convinced Orr that the manuscript at his feet held the secret to the location of a treasure worth untold billions.

Orr climbed into the raft and, for the second time that night, pressed the button of a detonator. The explosive charges blasted open two breaches in the boat’s hull. He rowed away but kept close to confirm that the boat was gone before he made his way to land. As Orr watched the boat sink beneath the placid sea, the translation of Archimedes’ text flashed in front of his eyes as clearly as if it were written on the water’s surface.

He who controls this map controls the riches of Midas.

WEDNESDAY

THE DEATH PUZZLE

ONE

Present Day