“But you said the grit looked brown.”

“Only when blended together.”

“I see. What’d you do with the package?”

“We sent it back to the museum and chalked it up as a false alarm.”

“Thanks.”

Smithback slowly shut the phone. Impossible. It couldn’t be.

He looked up to find Nora staring at him, annoyance clear on her face. He reached over and took her hand. “I’m really sorry, but I’ve got another call to make.”

She crossed her arms. “And I thought we were going to have a nice evening together.”

“One more call. Please. I’ll let you listen in. Believe me, this is going to be good.”

Nora’s cheeks grew pink. Smithback knew that look: his wife was getting steamed.

Quickly, he dialed the museum again, put the phone on speaker. “Dr. Sherman?”

“Yes?”

“This is Smithback from the Times again.”

“Mr. Smithback,” came the shrill reply, “I’ve already told you everything I know. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a train to catch.”

“I know that what arrived at the museum this morning was not corundum grit.”

Silence.

“I know what it really was.”

More silence.

“The museum’s diamond collection.”

In the silence, Nora looked at him sharply.

“Dr. Sherman, I’m coming over to the museum to talk to you. If Dr. Collopy is still around, he would be wise to be there-or, at least, to make himself available by phone. I don’t know what you told my colleague Harriman, but you’re not going to fob the same stuff off onto me. It’s bad enough that the museum allowed its diamond collection-the most valuable in the world-to be stolen. I’m certain the museum trustees wouldn’t want a cover-up scandal to follow hard on the heels of the revelation that the same diamond collection had just been reduced to industrial-strength grinding powder. Are we clear on that, Dr. Sherman?”

It was a very weak and shaky voice that finally issued from the cell phone. “It wasn’t a cover-up, I assure you. It was, ah, just a delay in the announcement.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”

Smithback immediately made another call, to his editor at the Times. “Fenton? You know that piece on the anthrax scare at the museum that Bryce Harriman filed? Better kill that. I’ve got the real story, and it’s a bombshell. Hold the front page for me.”

He shut the phone and looked up. Nora was no longer mad. She was white.

“Diogenes Pendergast,” she whispered. “He destroyed the diamonds?”

Smithback nodded.

“But why?”

“That’s a very good question, Nora. But now, darling, with my infinite apologies, and an IOU for dinner at the Rattlesnake Café, I have to go. I’ve got a couple of interviews to conduct and a story to file before midnight if I’m going to make the national edition. I’m really, really sorry. Don’t wait up for me.”

He rose and gave her a kiss.

“You’re amazing,” she said in an awed voice.

Smithback hesitated, feeling an unaccustomed sensation. It took him a moment to realize he was blushing.

Dr. Frederick Watson Collopy stood behind the great nineteenth-century leather-topped desk of his corner office in the museum’s southeast tower. The huge desk was bare, save for a copy of the morning’s New York Times. The newspaper had not been opened. It did not need to be: already, Collopy could see everything he needed to see, on the front page, above the fold, in the largest type the staid Times dared use.

The cat was out of the bag, and it could not be put back in.

Collopy believed that he occupied the greatest position in American science: director of the New York Museum of Natural History. His mind drifted from the subject of the article to the names of his distinguished forebears: Ogilvy, Scott, Throckmorton. His goal, his one ambition, was to add his name to that august registry-and not fall into ignominy like his two immediate predecessors: the late and not-much-lamented Winston Wright or the inept Olivia Merriam.

And yet there, on the front page of the Times, was a headline that might just be his tombstone. He had weathered several bad patches recently, irruptions of scandal that would have felled a lesser man. But he had handled them coolly and decisively-and he would do the same here.

A soft knock came at the door.

“Come in.”

The bearded figure of Hugo Menzies, chairman of the Anthropology Department, dressed elegantly and with less than the usual degree of academic rumpledness, entered the room. He silently took a chair as Josephine Rocco, the head of public relations, entered behind him, along with the museum’s lawyer, the ironically named Beryl Darling of Wilfred, Spragg and Darling.

Collopy remained standing, watching the three as he stroked his chin thoughtfully. Finally he spoke.

“I’ve called you here in emergency session, for obvious reasons.” He glanced down at the paper. “I assume you’ve seen the Times?”

His audience nodded in silent assent.

“We made a mistake in trying to cover this up, even briefly. When I took this position as director of the museum, I told myself I would run this place differently, that I wouldn’t operate in the secretive and sometimes paranoid manner of the last few administrations. I believed the museum to be a great institution, one strong enough to survive the vicissitudes of scandal and controversy.”

He paused.

“In trying to play down the destruction of our diamond collection, in seeking to cover it up, I made a mistake. I violated my own principles.”

“An apology to us is all well and good,” said Darling in her usual crisp voice, “but why didn’t you consult me before you made that hasty and ill-considered decision? You must have realized you couldn’t get away with it. This has done serious damage to the museum and made my job that much more difficult.”

Collopy reminded himself this was precisely the reason the museum paid Darling four hundred dollars an hour: she always spoke the unvarnished truth.

He raised a hand. “Point taken. But this is a development I never in my worst nightmares anticipated-finding that our diamonds have been reduced to…” His voice cracked: he couldn’t finish.

There was an uneasy shifting in the room.

Collopy swallowed, began again. “We must take action. We’ve got to respond, and respond now. That is why I’ve asked you to this meeting.”

As he paused, Collopy could hear, coming faintly from Museum Drive below, the shouts and calls of a growing crowd of protesters, along with police sirens and bullhorns.

Rocco spoke up. “The phones in my office are ringing off the hook. It’s nine now, and I think we’ve probably got until ten, maybe eleven at the latest, to make some kind of official statement. In all my years in public relations, I’ve never encountered anything quite like this.”

Menzies shifted in his chair, smoothed his silver hair. “May I?”

Collopy nodded. “Hugo.”

Menzies cleared his throat, his intense blue eyes darting to the window and back to Collopy. “The first thing we have to realize, Frederick, is that this catastrophe is beyond ‘spinning.’ Listen to the crowd out there-the fact that we even considered covering up such a loss has the people up in arms. No: we’ve got to take the hit, honestly and squarely. Admit our wrong. No more dissembling.” He glanced at Rocco. “That’s my first point and I hope we’re all in agreement on it.”

Collopy nodded again. “And your second?”

He leaned forward slightly. “It’s not enough to respond. We need to go on the offensive.”

“What do you mean?”