Not much better, Delaney thought; Andy shouldn’t be removing specimens from the collections at all. Shrugging, he said, “I don’t know — maybe it’s from an ancestor of the common cat. Or even a skunk. This is more your field than mine.”
“But how old do you think it is?”
“Who cares?” he replied, though he knew full well what Brandt was getting at. He wanted Delaney to conduct another one of his experiments to determine the age of the specimen. If Brandt spent half as much time on his own research as he did poking his nose into Delaney’s, he’d have a full professorship by now.
But Delaney wasn’t interested in trying out his new process like it was some sort of game; he knew it could be extremely important, in ways that even he could not yet fully envision, and he wanted to make sure that every trial he did, every test he conducted, brought him closer to perfecting the technique. Although the research into radio isotopes and their relative rates of decay had begun in 1941 while Professor Willard Libby had been working at Princeton under a Guggenheim grant, Libby had since been recruited by Columbia, where he was now involved on a top-secret project. Consequently, it was up to Delaney to carry the torch.
Only the day before, he had been given direct orders, by an officer of the OSS, to do just that.
“So, what do you think?” Brandt asked, with an encouraging grin. “Can you do it?” With his perfect white teeth and his blond cowlick, he looked like a kid out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
“Do what?” Delaney said, pretending not to follow.
“Date it.”
“Is this just another one of your fishing expeditions, or do you actually need this information for some valid, scientific purpose?”
“Scientific purpose,” Andy said, trying to look suitably sincere. “Scout’s honor.”
For all Delaney knew, the kid still was an Eagle Scout. “Leave it on the counter,” he said, “and if I have time, I’ll run some tests.”
Andy put it down next to the microscope, saying, “But let me know when you’re doing them. I’d like to observe.”
Given the chance, Delaney thought, he’d probably like to observe him shaving, too. In a way, it was flattering — Andy had plainly adopted him as his unofficial mentor — if only he could ignore the guy’s pushiness.
As if sensing that he might have gone too far, Andy adopted a more casual tone, and said, “So, you heard about what happened last night at the art museum?”
“No. I’ve been too busy working.” The implicit admonition was lost on Andy.
“The janitor was attacked by a flock of bats.”
“What?”
“In the museum. The conservation wing.”
“Jesus. Is he okay?”
Andy’s fingers riffled idly through the mail lying on the counter — including the OSS packet. “He’s at the hospital in town.”
“Leave those alone,” Delaney said, moving the missives out of reach.
“Sure, sorry. But I hear it’s not looking good. Might be rabies, might be something even worse.”
Rabies could be bad enough. A boyhood friend had died of it. But bats, attacking a human en masse? And inside a campus building? It seemed impossible.
He hastily wrapped up his work, stashed most of his important papers in a double-wide green metal locker bolted to the wall, then ushered Andy out into the hall. Shutting the door after him, he said, “Don’t take any more specimens out of the downstairs labs unless you first get permission from your department chair.”
Andy gave him a mock salute and headed back to his department. Delaney rushed down the stairs and over to the art museum, wondering if Lucas had heard the news. The campus, always quiet between classes, was unusually so now, given the sparse enrollment. He saw almost no one, apart from a loiterer or two outside Fine Hall, where they were no doubt hoping to catch a glimpse of Einstein.
At the entrance to the museum, one of the university’s campus police was standing guard with a walkie-talkie clipped to his lapel. “Sorry,” he said, “the museum’s closed for the day.”
“I’m faculty,” Delaney said, flashing his laminated ID card.
“Closed to everyone.”
“And I have this,” he added, drawing the OSS clearance letter from the inside pocket of his Windbreaker.
The proctor looked it over, but this decision was undoubtedly beyond his pay grade.
“I have to get started,” Delaney said. “I’m expected in the conservation wing.”
With some hesitation, the proctor let him pass, and Delaney made his way through the deserted galleries, lined with classical statuary, and into the European painting and fine arts galleries. Nowhere did he see any sign of a bat attack. Bursting through the rear door marked “CONSERVATION: Authorized Personnel Only,” he saw a janitor in gray coveralls bent over a bucket, wringing out a mop. “Excuse me,” he said, “have you seen Professor Athan?”
Straightening up, the man said, “Last I noticed, he was mopping this floor.”
Delaney looked appropriately bemused. “Since when did you join the custodial staff?”
“Somebody had to do it,” Lucas said, glad to have the company. “Security’s so tight now, only I could get in.” He’d been at it for an hour, and his back was as tight as a drum. “In fact, how the hell did you manage it?”
“You forget,” Delaney replied, waving the OSS letter. “I’m on this job, too.”
“So you’ve met with the charming Colonel Macmillan?”
“Right after you did. The seat was still warm.” He looked around the room. “I heard about what happened last night, but I still can’t believe it.”
“Nobody can. There were exterminators in here earlier to give us the all-clear, and even they said they’d never heard of anything like it.”
“I hope that Wally pulls through okay.”
Lucas nodded in agreement and gestured at the tarp loosely draped over something large mounted in the middle of the room. “That damn thing has brought nothing but bad luck everywhere it’s gone.”
“What do you mean?”
He tapped his eye patch and said, “This happened about a minute after I’d found it.”
“I didn’t know.”
“How could you?” Lucas hadn’t told him the whole story, nor had he mentioned the German boy blown to bits, or Private Toussaint, who had lost a leg. Or, for that matter, the ship that had almost been sunk transporting it to the United States; he’d noted the name of the USS Seward on the transportation papers.
“All I’ve seen so far is a faint photograph. You want to show me what all the fuss has been about?”
Lucas couldn’t think of any reason to refuse, but at the same time he could hardly bear to expose the ossuary. The whole time he’d been cleaning up in the conservation room, he’d done his level best to avert his eyes from the hulking shape beneath the tarp. He had hoped never to see the thing again, and now, here it was, not only deposited on his doorstep, but requiring his diligent study.
Leaning the mop against the wall, Lucas stepped to the platform and took hold of the tarp. What was he so afraid of? It was just a box of bones. Taking a deep breath, and with a grand gesture like a magician completing a trick, he pulled the tarp away. “Behold… the eighth wonder of the world.”
The photo hadn’t done it justice, nor had his own memories. A great white chest — calcite alabaster, if he had to guess — its gabled roof and elaborate carvings had been largely worn away by time. But it was clear that a lot of trouble had been gone to in order to create this thing, and there was something that was still unnervingly potent about it.
“I found it at the bottom of an iron mine outside Strasbourg. Thirty seconds later, a land mine went off, and I was flying through the air. When I came to, I was bumping along in the back of an army ambulance.” Only the mayor, standing outside the ring of ore carts, had been spared. He’d applied the tourniquet to Toussaint’s leg and come to their rescue.