Текст книги "Sandstorm"

Автор книги: James Rollins

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

He had to stop them.

Bending down, he retrieved his knife from the floor. “Stay here,” he said softly in Mandarin. He rushed to the main room and used the dagger to pry off the ventilation grille. It snapped open with a pop of screws. He reached within and grabbed the black device hidden inside. The EM grenade was roughly the size and shape of a football.

Palming the device, he fled to the suite’s door and out into the hall. Still without his shoes, he sprinted down the carpeted hall. He analyzed a quick schematic in his head, coordinating where the north exit was in relation to his location on this floor. He did a best-guess estimate.

Eight doors down he stopped and pulled out his security key again. He swiped it through the electronic lock and shoved the door open as soon as it flashed green. “Security!” he hollered, and raced into the room.

An older woman, the same one he had spotted earlier, sat in a chair reading USA Today. She tossed the paper in the air and clutched her robe to her throat. “Was ist los?” she asked in German.

He hurried past her to the window, reassuring her that nothing was wrong. “Nichts, sich ungefдhr zu sorgen, fraulein,” he answered.

He slid the window open. Again it was only enough to stick his head through. He glanced down.

The Lincoln Town Car idled below. The rear door to the sedan slammed shut. Shots rang out. Slugs pelted the side of the car as its tires squealed and smoked, but the car had been bulletproofed, an American-built tank.

Painter leaned back and shoved the football-shaped device out the window. He depressed the activation button and threw the grenade straight down with all the force in his shoulder, hoping for a Hail Mary pass.

He pulled his arm back inside. The wheels of the Town Car stopped squealing as it gained traction. He sent a prayer to the spirits of his ancestors. The EM pulse range was only twenty yards. He held his breath. What was that old saying? Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

As he held his breath, the muffled whump of the grenade finally sounded. Had he been close enough?

He leaned his head back outside.

The Town Car reached the near corner of the tower, but rather than making the turn, it swerved uncontrollably and struck a row of parked cars head-on. The front of the Lincoln climbed up the hood of a Volkswagen Passat and came to a crooked rest.

He sighed.

That was the good thing about EM pulses. They didn’t discriminate about what computer systems they fried. Even those that operated a Lincoln Town Car.

Below, uniformed security personnel poured from the exit and quickly surrounded the disabled car.

“Was ist los?” the old German woman repeated behind him.

He turned and hurried across the room. “Etwas Abfall gerade entleeren.” Just dumping some garbage. He crossed quickly down the hall to the elevator lobby. Retrieving his shoes from the jammed elevator door, he hit the button for the main floor.

His stunt had stopped Zhang’s escape, but it had also surely wiped out the computer he carried, destroying the research data. But that was not Painter’s main concern.

Cassandra.

He had to get to her.

As soon as the doors opened, he rushed across the gambling floor, where pandemonium reigned. The firefight had not gone unnoticed, though a few people still sat calmly in front of their slot machines, pushing their buttons with dogged determination.

He crossed to the north exit and had to run through a series of blockades, flashing his identification, frustrated at being held back. Finally he spotted John Fenton, head of security, and called out to him. He ushered Painter through the shattered exit. Safety glass crunched underfoot and the telltale taint of gunpowder hung in the air.

“I don’t understand why the car crashed,” Fenton said. “Lucky for us, though.”

“Not just luck,” Painter said, and explained about the EM pulse and its twenty-yard range. “A few guests are going to have a hard time starting their cars this morning. And there’ll probably be a few fried televisions on the first floors.”

Outside, Painter saw that the local security had things in hand. Additionally, a row of charcoal gray police cars, lights flashing, wound through the parking lot, circling down upon the site. The MP Tribal Police.

Painter searched the area. Zhang’s bodyguards were down on their knees, fingers laced behind their heads. Two bodies were sprawled on the ground, security coats draped over their faces. They were both men. Painter crossed to them and peeled one suit back. Another bodyguard, half his face gone. He didn’t have to check the other. He recognized Zhang’s polished leather shoes.

“He shot himself,” a familiar voice said from amid a group of security men and a pair of EMTs. “Rather than be captured.”

Painter turned and saw Cassandra step forward. Her face was pale, her smile shy. She was only in her bra. Her left shoulder was lost in a bandage.

She nodded to a black suitcase a few feet away. Zhang’s computer.

“So we lost the data,” he said. “The EM pulse wiped it.”

“Maybe not,” she said with a grin. “The case is shielded with a copper Faraday cage. It should’ve been insulated from the pulse.”

He sighed with relief. So the data was safe. All was not lost…that is, if they could retrieve the pass code. He stepped toward Cassandra. She grinned at him, eyes still shining. He pulled his Glock and pressed it to her forehead.

“Painter, what are you-” She stepped back.

He followed, never letting his gun drop. “What’s the code?”

Fenton moved to one side. “Commander?”

“Stay out of it.” He cut the security chief off and maintained his attention on Sanchez. “Four bodyguards and Zhang. Everyone is accounted for here. If Zhang was onto our surveillance, then there was a good chance he alerted his contact at the conference. They would have fled together in order to complete the exchange.”

She tried to glance to the bodies, but he restrained her with his gun. “You can’t think it was me?” she said, with a half laugh.

He pointed his free hand, never letting his weapon drop. “I recognize the handiwork of a forty-five, like the Sig Sauer you carry.”

“Zhang took it from me. Painter, you’re being paranoid. I-”

He reached to a pocket and pulled out the bug he found taped to the elevator wall. He held it toward her.

She stiffened, but refused to look at it.

“No blood, Cassandra. Not a trace. Which means you never implanted it like you were supposed to.”

A hard edge sharpened her face.

“The computer code?”

She simply stared at him, coldly dispassionate now. “You know I can’t.”

He searched this stranger’s face for the partner he knew, but she was long gone. There was no remorse, no guilt, only determination. He didn’t have the time or the stomach to break her. He nodded to Fenton. “Have your men cuff her. Keep her under constant guard.”

As she was being secured, she called over to him. Her words were plainly spoken. “Painter, you’d best watch your back. You have no idea what a shitload of pain you just stepped into.”

He picked up the computer suitcase and walked away.

“You’re swimmin’ in the deep end, Painter. And there are goddamn sharks all around you, circling and circling.”

He ignored her and crossed toward the north entrance. He had to admit something to himself: he simply didn’t understand women.

Before he could escape back inside, a tall figure in a sheriff’s hat blocked his way. It was one of the MP Tribal Police. “Commander Crowe?”

“Yes?”

“We have an urgent call dispatched through our offices holding for you.”

His brow crinkled. “Who from?”

“From an Admiral Rector, sir. You can speak to him on one of our radios.”

Painter frowned. Admiral Tony “The Tiger” Rector was the director of DARPA, his commander in chief. Painter had never spoken to him, only seen his name on memos and letters. Had word already reached Washington about the mess out here?

He allowed himself to be led to one of the parked gray cars, lights still flashing atop it. He accepted the radio. “Commander Crowe here. How may I help you, sir?”

“Commander, we need you back in Arlington immediately. There’s a helicopter on its way to collect you.”

As if on cue, the bell beat of a helicopter sounded in the distance.

Admiral Rector continued, “You’ll be relieved by Commander Giles. Debrief him on the current state of your operation, then report here as soon as you land at Dulles. There’ll be a car waiting for you.”

“Yes, sir,” he responded, but the connection was already dead.

He stepped out of the car and stared at the gray-green helicopter sailing over the surrounding woodlands, the lands of his ancestors. A sense of misgiving rang through him, what his father called “distrust of the white eyes.” Why had Admiral Rector called him so abruptly? What was the urgency? He couldn’t help but hear an echo of Cassandra’s words.

You’re swimmin’ in the deep end, Painter…and there are goddamn sharks all around you, circling and circling.

3

Matters of the Heart

NOVEMBER 14, 05:05 P.M. GMT

LONDON, ENGLAND

OVER HERE! I found something!”

Safia turned to see one of the men armed with a metal detector call to his partner. What now? The pair had been turning up bits of bronze statuary, iron incense burners, and copper coins. Safia splashed over to see what had been discovered. It might be significant.

Across the gallery, Kara appeared at the entrance to the wing, having heard the shout, too. She joined them.

“What have you found?” she asked with cold authority.

“I’m not sure,” the man said with a nod to his detector. “But I’m getting a very strong reading.”

“A piece of the meteorite?”

“Can’t tell. It’s under this block of stone.”

Safia saw that the block had once been the torso and lower limbs of a sandstone statue, toppled onto its back. Despite the fact that the upper limbs and head had been blasted away, she recognized the figure. The life-size statue had once stood guard by a tomb in Salalah. It dated to 200B.C It depicted a man with an elongated object lifted to his shoulder. Some thought it looked like a rifle, but actually it was a funerary incense lamp, borne on the shoulder.

The destruction of the statue was a tragic loss. All that remained now were the torso and two broken legs. Even these were so blasted by the heat that the sandstone had melted and hardened into a crust of glass over its surface.

By now, others of Kara’s red-hatted forensic team gathered around them.

The man who made the discovery pointed his metal detector at the ruined statue. “We’ll have to roll the block out of the way. See what’s under it.”

“Do it,” Kara said with a nod. “We’ll need crowbars.”

A pair of men slogged away toward the stash of work tools.

Safia stepped protectively forward. “Kara, wait. Don’t you recognize this statue?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look closer. This is the statue your father discovered. The one found buried by that tomb in Salalah. We need to preserve what we can.”

“I don’t care.” Kara pulled her aside by the elbow. “What’s important is that there could be a clue to what happened to my father under there.”

Safia tried to pull her aside, keeping her voice low. “Kara…you can’t really think anything of this has to do with your father’s death?”

Kara waved to the men with the crowbars. “Give me one of those.”

Safia remained where she was. Her gaze swept around the other rooms of the gallery, contemplating it all in a new light. All her work, the collection, the years spent in study…was it more than just a memorial to Reginald Kensington for Kara? Had it also been a quest? To gather research material all in one place, to determine what actually happened to her father out in the desert so long ago.

Safia remembered the story from when they were both girls, told amid much weeping. Kara had been convinced something supernatural had killed her father. Safia knew the details.

The nisnases…the ghosts of the deep desert.

Even as girls, she and Kara had investigated these tales, learning all they could about the mythology of the nisnases. Legend said they were all that remained of a people that once inhabited a vast city in the desert. It went by many names: Iram, Wabar, Ubar. The City of a Thousand Pillars. Mentions of its downfall could be found in the Koran, in the tales of The Arabian Nights,and among the Alexander Books. Founded by the great-grandchildren of the biblical Noah, Ubar was a rich and decadent city, filled with wicked people who dabbled in dark practices. Its king defied the warnings of a prophet named Hud, and God smote the city, driving it into the sands, never to be seen again, becoming a veritable Atlantis of the deserts. Afterward, tales persisted that the city still remained under the sands, haunted by the dead, its citizens frozen into stone, its fringes plagued by evil djinns and the even nastier nisnases, savage creatures of magical powers.

Safia had thought Kara had set aside such myths as mere fables. Especially when investigators had attributed her father’s death to the sudden opening of a sinkhole in the desert. Such death traps appeared not uncommonly in the region, swallowing lone trucks or the unwary wanderer. The bedrock below the desert was mostly limestone, a porous rock pocked by caverns worn by the receding water table. Collapses of these caverns occurred regularly, often accompanied by the exact phenomenon described by Kara: a thick, roiling column of dust above a whirlpool of swirling sand.

A few steps away, Kara grabbed one of the crowbars, meaning to add her own shoulder to the effort. It seemed she had not been convinced by those earlier geologists’ explanation.

Safia should have guessed as much, especially with Kara’s dogged persistence about ancient Arabia, using her billions to delve into the past, to gather artifacts from all ages, to hire the best people, including Safia.

She closed her eyes, wondering now how much of her own life had been guided by this fruitless quest. How influential had Kara been in her choice of studies? In her research projects here? She shook her head. It was too much to grasp at the moment. She would sort the matter later.

She opened her eyes and stepped toward the statue, blocking the others. “I can’t let you do this.”

Kara motioned her aside, her voice calm and logical. “If there’s a piece of the meteorite here, salvaging it is more important than a few scratches on a broken statue.”

“Important for whom?” Safia attempted to match Kara’s stolid demeanor, but her question came off more as an accusation. “This statue is one of only a handful from that age in Arabia. Even broken, it’s priceless.”

“The meteorite-”

“-can wait,” Safia said, cutting off her benefactor. “At least until the sculpture can be moved safely.”

Kara fixed her with a steely gaze that broke most men. Safia withstood the challenge, having known the girl behind the woman.

Safia stepped toward her. She took the crowbar, surprised to feel the tremble in the other’s fingers. “I know what you were hoping,” she whispered. Both knew the history of the camel-shaped meteorite, of the British explorer who had discovered it, how it was supposed to guard the entrance to a lost city buried under the sands.

A city named Ubar.

And now it had exploded under most strange circumstances.

“There must be some connection,” Kara mumbled, repeating her words from a moment ago.

Safia knew one way to dispel such a hope. “You know that Ubar has already been found.” She let these words sink in.

In 1992, the legendary city had been discovered by Nicolas Clapp, an amateur archaeologist, using satellite ground-penetrating radar. Founded around 900B.C and located at one of the few watering holes, the ancient city had been an important trading post on the Incense Road, linking the frankincense groves of the coastal Omani Mountains to the markets of the rich cities of the north. Over the centuries, Ubar had prospered and grown larger. Until one day, half the city collapsed into a giant sinkhole and was abandoned to the sands by the superstitious townfolk.

“It was only an ordinary trading post,” she continued.

Kara shook her head, but Safia was unsure if she was negating her last statement or resigning herself to the reality. Safia remembered Kara’s excitement upon hearing of Clapp’s discovery. It had been heralded in newspapers around the globe:FABLED LOST ARABIAN CITY FOUND! She had rushed out herself to see the site, to help in the early excavation. But as Safia had stated, after two years of digging up potsherds and a few utensils, the site turned out to be nothing more exciting than an abandoned trading post.

No vast treasures, no thousand pillars, no black ghosts…all that was left were those painful memories that haunted the living.

“Lady Kensington,” the man with the metal detector called out again. “Maybe Dr. al-Maaz was right about not moving this bloody thing.”

Both women turned their attention back to the toppled statue. It was now flanked by both of the team members with detectors. They held their devices to either side of the blocky torso. Both metal detectors were beeping in chorus.

“I was wrong,” the first man continued. “Whatever I detected is not under the stone.”

“Then where is it?” Kara asked irritably.

The other man answered, “It’s inside it.”

A stunned moment of silence followed until Kara broke it. “Inside?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. I should’ve thought to triangulate earlier. But I never thought anything could be inside the stone.”

Safia stepped forward. “It’s probably just some random iron deposits.”

“Not from the readings we’re getting here. It’s a strong signal.”

“We’ll have to break it open,” Kara said.

Safia frowned at her. Bloody hell. She dropped to her knees beside the sculpture, soaking her pants. “I need a flashlight.”

She was handed one by another member of the team.

“What are you going to do with that?” Kara asked.

“Peek inside.” Safia ran her hand over the heat-blasted surface of the statue. The sandy surface was now fused glass. She planted the flashlight facedown on the statue’s bulky torso and flicked it on.

The entire glassy surface of the statue lit up. Details were murky through the dark crystalline crust. Safia didn’t see anything unusual, but the glass was only two inches thick. Whatever they were looking for might be deeper in the stone.

Kara gasped behind her. She was staring over Safia’s shoulder.

“What?” She began to pull away the flashlight.

“No,” Kara warned. “Move it toward the center.”

Safia did so, bringing the wash of light over the middle of the torso.

A shadow appeared, a lump in the center of the statue, lodged deep, at the point where glass became stone. It shone a deep crimson under the light. The shape was unmistakable-especially given its position inside the torso.

“It’s a heart,” Kara whispered.

Safia sat back, stunned. “A human heart.”

8:05 P.M.

HOURS LATER, Kara Kensington stood in the private lavatory outside the department of the ancient Near East.

Just one more…

She shook a single orange pill into her palm. Adderall, a prescription amphetamine, twenty milligrams She weighed the pill in her hand. So much kick in such a small package. But maybe not enough. She added a second tablet. After all, she’d had no sleep last night and still had much to do.

Tossing back the pills, she dry-swallowed them, then stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her skin looked flushed, her eyes a bit too wide. She ran a hand through her hair, trying to fluff some body back into it. She failed.

Bending down to the tap, she turned the cold spigot, soaked both hands, and pressed them to her cheeks. She took deep breaths. It seemed like days rather than hours since she had been woken from her bed back at her family estate in the village of Blackheath. News of the explosion had her chauffeured limo racing through the stormy streets to reach the museum.

And now what?

Throughout the long day, various forensic teams had gathered all the necessary samples from the gallery: charred wood, plastics, metals, even bone. Finally, a few slag fragments of the meteorite had been picked out of the rubble. All initial evidence suggested that an electrical discharge had ignited some volatile components deep in the chunk of meteoric iron. No one was willing to say what those components were. From here, the investigation would be carried out in labs both in England and abroad.

Kara could not hide her disappointment. Witnessing the glowing ball of lightning on the video footage had drawn her back to the day her father had vanished into the dust cloud, a spiral of sand sparking with similar crackles of bluish electricity. Then the explosion…another death. There had to be a connection between the past and present.

But what? Was it just another dead end, like so many times in the past?

A knock on the door drew her attention from her reflection.

“Kara, we’re ready for the examination.” It was Safia. In her friend’s voice, she heard concern. Only Safia understood the weight around Kara’s heart.

“I’ll be right out.”

She dropped the plastic pill vial back into her purse and snapped the satchel closed. Already the initial surge of drug-induced energy took the edge off her despair. With one last futile sweep of her hair, she crossed to the door, unlocked it, and pushed out into one of the more handsome research quarters-the famous Arched Room of the British Museum.

Built in 1839, the two-story vaulted chamber, located in the west section of the museum, was of early Victorian design: double galleries of library shelves, pierced iron walkways and stairs, arched piers leading into recessed alcoves. The very bones of the place harkened back to the times of Charles Darwin, of Stanley and Livingston, of the Royal Society of scientists, where researchers wore jackets with tails and gathered studiously among the stacks of books and ancient tablets. Never open to the public, the department of the ancient Near East now utilized the room as a student center and reserve archive.

But today, deserted of all but a select few, it served as a makeshift morgue. Kara stared across the room to the stone cadaver, headless and armless, resting atop a wheeled stretcher. It was all that was left of the ancient sculpture found in the north wing. Safia had insisted that it be rescued from the rubble and brought up here, out of harm’s way.

Two halogen lamps lit the body, and an array of tools rested atop a neighboring library bench, set up like a surgeon’s table with scalpels, clamps, and thumb forceps. There were also various-size hammers and brushes.

Only the surgeon was missing.

Safia snapped on a pair of latex gloves. She wore safety glasses and a tightly cinched apron. “Ready?”

Kara nodded.

“Let’s crack this old man’s chest,” a young man called with the usual crass enthusiasm of an American. Kara, well familiar with all who worked in her gallery, knew Clay Bishop, a grad student out of North-western University. He fiddled with a digital camcorder resting on a tripod, standing in as the group’s videographer.

“A little respect, Mr. Bishop,” Safia warned.

“Sorry,” he said with a crooked grin that belied any true remorse. He was not unhandsome for a gaunt bit of Generation X. He wore jeans, a vintage concert T-shirt depicting the Clash, and Reeboks that might have once been white, but this last was only a rumor. He straightened, stretching, showing a strip of his bare belly, and ran a hand over the stubble of his red hair. The only modicum of studiousness to the grad student was the pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses, uncool enough to be fashionable nowadays. “We’re all set here, Dr. al-Maaz.”

“Very good.” Safia stepped under the halogen lights, positioning herself beside the spread of tools.

Kara circled to view from the far side, joining the only other person observing the autopsy: Ryan Fleming, head of security. He must have arrived when she had gone to the loo. He nodded to her, but his stance stiffened at her approach, nervous at her proximity, like most of the museum staff.

He cleared his throat as Safia took measurements. “I came down here when I heard about the discovery,” he mumbled to Kara.

“Why might that be?” she asked. “Is there a security concern?”

“No, it was simple curiosity.” He nodded to the sculpture. “Not every day we find a statue with a heart hidden inside it.”

That was indeed true, though Kara suspected it was a different matter of the heart that had drawn Fleming down here. His eyes spent more time examining Safia than the strange statue.

Kara allowed him his puppy-dog crush and turned her attention to the prone sculpture. Beneath the shell of blasted glass, a deeper glow of crimson took up the lamplight.

A heart, a human heart.

She leaned closer. While the heart appeared life-size and anatomically correct, it had to have been sculpted from some type of ore since the forensic team’s detectors had picked up its presence. Still, Kara almost expected to see it beat if she waited long enough.

Safia leaned over the statue with a diamond-tipped tool. She carefully scored the glass, forming a perfect square around the buried heart. “I want to preserve as much as possible.”

Next she placed a suction-cup device atop the glass square and gripped the handle. “I expect the interface between the glass and the sandstone beneath to be weak.”

Safia grabbed a rubber mallet and tapped firmly along the inside edge of the glass square. Small cracks appeared, following the prescored lines. Each pop drew a wince from everyone. Even Kara found her fingers balling up.

Only Safia remained calm. Kara knew her friend’s propensity for panic attacks during stressful situations, but whenever Safia labored in her own element, she was as hard as the diamonds on her glass cutter…and as sharp. She worked with a Zen-like calmness and focused concentration. But Kara also noted the glint in her friend’s eyes. Excitement. It had been a long time since Kara had seen such a glimpse in Safia, a reminder of the woman she used to be.

Maybe there was hope for her yet.

“That should do it,” Safia said. She returned the mallet and used a tiny brush to sweep stray chips away, keeping her work surface pristine. Once satisfied, she gripped the suction handle and applied a bit of pressure, first pushing in one direction, then the other, gently rocking the square. Finally, she simply pulled straight up, lifting the block of glass cleanly away.

Kara stepped closer, staring into the statue’s opened chest. The heart was even more detailed than she had first imagined. Each chamber was distinct, including tiny surface arteries and veins. It rested perfectly in its sandstone bed, as if the sculpture had formed naturally around it, a pearl inside an oyster.

Safia carefully freed the glass from the suction device and flipped it over. There was an imprint of the heart’s upper surface in the glass. She turned to the camera. “Clay, are you getting a good shot of all this?”

Crouched by his camera, he bounced up and down on his heels. “Oh, man, this is fantastic.”

“I take that as a yes.” Safia placed the glass on the library table.

“What about the heart?” Fleming asked.

Safia turned and peered into the open chest. She tapped the handle of a tiny brush against the heart. The ring was heard by all. “Metal for certain. Bronze, I’d guess, from the ruddy color.”

“That almost sounded hollow,” Clay commented, shifting the camera tripod to get a better view in the chest cavity. “Do it again.”

Safia shook her head. “I’d best not. See how the sandstone lips over the heart in places. It’s locked in there fairly well. I think we should leave it untouched. Other researchers should see this in situ before we disturb it.”

Kara hadn’t dared breathe for the past minute. Her heart hammered in her ears, and not from the amphetamines. Had no one else noticed it?

Before she could ask, a door slammed farther back in the Arched Room. Everyone jumped slightly. Footsteps approached. Two men.

Safia tilted the halogen light to shine down the hall. “Director Tyson.”

“Edgar.” Kara stepped forward. “What are you doing here?”

The head of the museum stepped aside to reveal his companion. It was the inspector from Central London homicide. “Inspector Samuelson was with me when I heard the news of your brilliant discovery. We were just finishing up, and he asked if he might see the astounding find for himself. How could I refuse, considering how much help he’s been?”

“Certainly,” Kara said in her best diplomatic tone, hiding a flash of irritation. “You’re just in time.” She waved them over to the makeshift morgue, giving up her space. Her own discovery would have to wait a little longer.

Fleming nodded his greeting to his boss. “I guess I’ve seen enough myself. I should go check on the night shift.” He stepped away, but not before turning to Safia. “Thank you for allowing me to observe.”

“Anytime,” she said distantly, distracted by the exposed heart.

Kara noted how the head of security’s eyes lingered on Safia, then turned away, wounded, as he left. Safia was forever blind to all but her work. She had let greater men than Fleming slip from her life.

Inspector Samuelson stepped up to fill the security chief’s spot. He had his suit jacket over one arm, sleeves rolled up. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

“Not at all,” Safia said. “It’s a fortunate discovery.”

“Indeed.”

The inspector leaned over the statue. Kara was certain more than plain curiosity had drawn him here. Coincidences were causes for investigation.

Edgar stood at the inspector’s shoulder. “Simply brilliant, isn’t it? This discovery will draw attention from all around the world.”

Samuelson straightened. “Where did this statue come from?”

“It was discovered by my father,” Kara said.

Samuelson glanced to her, one eyebrow cocked.

Kara noted how Edgar stepped back, eyes on his toes. It was a tender subject to broach.

Safia pushed up her safety goggles and continued the explanation, relieving Kara of the need. “Reginald Kensington had financed an archaeological team to oversee the excavation for the construction of a new mausoleum at a tomb in the town of Salalah on the Omani coast. He discovered the statue buried beside the older tomb. It was a rare discovery: to find a pre-Islamic statue, one dating to 200B.C in such pristine shape. But the tomb had been revered for two millennia. Thus the site was not overly trampled or desecrated. It’s a true tragedy to have such a perfectly preserved artifact destroyed.”