Gray tested the door. It was secured with an electronic lock. It required a magnetic employee card to pass through here. Gray frowned. So how did Polk get through here? Gray touched his throat mike and patched a call to central command.

Painter answered immediately. Commander?

Sir, I need some help. Gray explained where the trail ended. I'll need access past this point.

Hang tight, Gray. I'm going to upgrade your I. D. card's clearance to encompass the Smithsonian museums. Silence stretched for a bit. Gray imagined the director tapping at his computer.

Next to him, Kowalski leaned on the neighboring wall and whistled through his teeth.

Try it now, Painter finally said.

Gray swiped his card. He heard the lock's tumblers release. Got it. I'll let you know what we find.

Ending the call, Gray ducked through the door and set off into the off-limit spaces of the museum. It was not all that different from the rest of the building, if only slightly more utilitarian: marble floors honed to a lustrous sheen by decades of shuffling feet, wan fluorescent lighting, and wooden doors whose frosted glass windows were etched with scholarly enterprises.

ENTOMOLOGY, INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY, PALEOBIOLOGY, BOTANY.

The trail led through the maze then the readings jostled higher as they approached an unmarked door. Gray waved the Gamma-Scout reader toward its handle. The digital numbers spiked. Stepping back, Gray noted a fainter trail continued down the hall. The hallway ahead ended at a cavernous space, lined on the far side by large steel roll-up doors. The museum's loading docks. Gray stared up and down the hall, picturing a ghostly version of Polk. The professor must have entered the museum through the docks, then continued out the museum's front door.

Had he done that to shake a tail?

Kowalski tried the door handle. Unlocked, he said and proved it by swinging the door open.

The dark space ahead smelled of dust, dry hay, and a hint of cedar.

Gray reached inside and found a light switch. He flicked it on. Racks and shelves filled the back half of a cavernous space. Wooden crates with shipping labels stapled to them were stacked in a pile along one side. Several had been cracked open. Old packing straw and more modern Styrofoam packing peanuts littered the floor.

A storage room.

To the left of the door, a single desk supported a computer and printer. Tables stretched along the other side, crowded with pottery and sections of decorated stone blocks. Someone had been taking inventory. Several larger objects rested on wooden floor pallets deeper in the room: a marble statue of a woman with her arms broken away, a corroded bronze sculpture of a bull's head, a base of a stone pillar.

Gray followed the trail inside, wondering what had led the professor to trespass here. Had he just been hiding from a passing guard? But the professor's path seemed direct. It led straight to one of the objects on the floor pallets, a dome of carved rock. The artifact stood waist-high with a hole on top. It looked like a granite model of a volcano, except it was covered with writing. Gray leaned closer to the inscriptions.

Ancient Greek.

Frowning, Gray tested it with the Gamma-Scout reader.

Polk's trail circled around the pallet.

Gray traced the dead man's footsteps. Why had Polk been fascinated with this artifact?

Before he could contemplate it further, a crash sounded to his left. He turned to see Kowalski backing away from one of the tables. He held the handle of an urn in his fingers. The rest of the vase lay shattered at his toes. It it broke.

The man had a gift for the obvious.

Gray shook his head. He should have left Kowalski out in the hallway. He was like a bull in a china shop only a bull had better self-control.

It was wobbly, goddamn it. Still, he sounded angry more at himself. Come over here and see this. He pointed the broken handle toward the table.

Gray stepped to his side. On the table were stacks of ancient Greek coins. From the gap in the second row, one of the coins was missing. Could it be Polk's coin? Was this where he'd got ahold of it?

I bumped the base. Tried to catch it. Kowalski carefully placed the broken handle on the table. It came apart in my hands.

Don't worry about it. They'll just take it out of your paycheck.

Damn it. How much do you think it cost?

A few hundred.

A relieved whistle escaped him. Well, that's not too bad.

A few hundred thousand, Gray clarified.

Oh, sweet motherfu

Kowalski's reaction was cut off by the rattle of the doorknob. Gray started to turn, but Kowalski's thick mitt of a hand grabbed Gray's upper arm and yanked him back. He shielded Gray with his own body while smoothly pulling a

.45-caliber pistol from a shoulder holster.

The slight figure of a young woman entered. She was fumbling with her purse, oblivious of the two in the room. She even swiped blindly for the light switch until she seemed to realize two things at once: the lights were already on and a massive mountain of a man had a pistol leveled at her chest.

She squeaked and backed into the jamb, unable to find the doorway in her fright.

Sorry, Kowalski said and shifted his pistol toward the ceiling.

Gray hurried around the befuddled bodyguard. It's all right, ma'am. We're museum security. We're investigating a break-in.

Kowalski pointed his pistol at the shattered vase on the floor. Yeah, someone broke that. He glanced to Gray for confirmation and collaboration as he holstered his weapon.

She clutched her purse to her chest. Her other hand fixed a pair of petite eyeglasses higher on her nose. With her chestnut hair cut in a bob and her small frame, she appeared to be no more than a college sophomore, but from the crinkled pinch of her eyes, bright with suspicion, she was probably a decade older.

Can I see some identification? she asked firmly and kept close to the open doorway.

Gray held up his black I. D. pass. It displayed his picture, along with the presidential seal embossed in gold. I have a number you can call to confirm who we are.

She squinted at the pass and seemed to relax slightly, but a tension remained in her shoulders. She stared around the room. Was anything stolen?

Maybe you can better answer that, Gray said, hoping she could help. I noticed that there seems to be a coin conspicuously missing from the table here.

What? She hurried over, abandoning any hesitation. With one look at the table, her expression fell into a forlorn look. Oh, no we had the collection on loan from the Delphi museum.

Delphi again.

She glanced to the carved dome of rock, the one that seemed to have attracted

Polk's attention. It may have been because Kowalski was leaning on it. Please don't touch that.

Kowalski straightened. He looked at his palm, as if it were to blame. He had the decency to blush around the collar. Sorry.

May I ask what that is? Gray said casually, nodding to the stone.

Her hands wrung together with worry. The prize of the collection. For the upcoming exhibit. Thank God, it wasn't vandalized by the thieves. She circled it to be sure. It's over sixteen hundred years old.

But what is it? Gray pressed.

It's called an omphalos. Which roughly translates as navel. In ancient

Greece, the omphalos was considered to be the point around which the universe turned. There are many mythologies and stories associated with the omphalos, great powers attributed to it.

And how did you acquire it?

She nodded to the table. It came from the same collection as the rest. On loan from the museum at Delphi.

Delphi? Where the Oracle of Delphi had her temple?

She glanced toward Gray, her expression surprised. That's right. The omphalos graced the inner sanctum of the temple. Its most holy chamber.