Map of Bones (Sigma Force 2)

Gray turned his attention to the open sarcophagus. He slipped a penlight from his nearby backpack and examined the interior. It was unlined. Just flat gold surfaces. He noted a bit of white powder sifted over the bottom surface. More latent powder? Bone ash?

There was only one way to find out.

He turned back to his pack and pulled out a collection kit. He used a small battery-powered vacuum to sniff up some of the powder into a sterile test tube.

“What are you doing?” Rachel asked.

“If this is bone dust, it may answer a few questions.”

“Like what?”

He sat back and examined the test tube. There was no more than a couple grams of gray powder. “We might be able to test the dust for age. Find out if the stolen bones were from someone who lived during Christ’s time. Or not. Maybe the crime was to recover the family bones of someone in the Dragon Court. Some old lord or prince.”

Gray sealed the test tube and packed the sample away. “I’d also like to get samples of the broken glass from the security vault. It might give us some answers as to how the device shattered bulletproof glass. Our labs can examine the crystalline microstructure for fracture patterns.”

“I’ll get on that,” Monk said, slinging off his pack.

“What about the stonework?” Rachel asked. “Or other materials inside the cathedral?”

“What do you mean?” Gray asked.

“Whatever triggered the deaths among the parishioners might have affected the stone, marble, wood, plastic. Something that could not be seen with the naked eye.”

Gray had not considered that. He should have. Monk met his eyes and shrugged his brows. The carabiniere lieutenant was proving herself to be more than a pretty package.

Gray turned to Kat to organize a collection methodology. But she seemed preoccupied. From the corner of his eye, he had noted her interest in the reliquary, all but ducking her head inside to investigate. She now crouched on the marble floor, bent over something she was working on.

“Kat—?”

She held up a tiny mink-haired brush. “One moment.” In her other hand, she held a small butane pistol-lighter. She squeezed the trigger and a tiny blue flame hissed from the end. She applied the flame to a pile of powder, plainly whisked from the reliquary with the brush.

After a couple seconds, the gray powder melted, bubbling and frothing into a translucent amber liquid. It dribbled over the cold marble and hardened into glass. The sheen against the white marble was unmistakable.

“Gold,” Monk said. All eyes had been drawn to the experiment.

Kat sat back, extinguishing her torch. “The residual powder in the reliquary…it’s the same as in the tainted wafers. Monatomic, or m-state, gold.”

Gray remembered Director Crowe’s description of the lab tests, how the powder could be melted down to a slag glass. A glass made of solid gold.

“That’s gold?” Rachel asked. “As in the precious metal?”

Sigma had provided the Vatican with cursory information on the tainted wafers, so their bakeries and supplies could be examined for further tampering. Its two spies had also been informed, but plainly they had their doubts.

“Are you sure?” Rachel asked.

Kat was already busy proving her assertion. She had an eyedropper in hand and dribbled its contents onto the glass. Gray knew what filled the eyedropper. They had all been supplied it by the labs back at Sigma for just this purpose. A cyanide compound. For years, miners had been using a process called heap leach cyanide recovery to dissolve gold out of old tailings.

Where the drop touched, the glass etched as if burned by acid. But rather than frosting the glass, the cyanide carved a trail of pure gold, a vein of metal in glass. There was no doubt.

Monsignor Verona stared, unblinking, one hand fingering his clerical collar. He mumbled, “And the streets of New Jerusalem will be paved with gold so pure as to be transparent glass.”

Gray glanced quizzically at the priest.

Vigor shook his head. “From the Book of Revelations…don’t mind me.”

But Gray saw the way the man drew inward, turning half away, lost in deeper thoughts. Did he know more? Gray sensed the priest was not so much holding back as needing time to dwell on something.

Kat interrupted. She had been leaning over her sample with a magnifying lens and an ultraviolet lamp. “I think there might be more than gold here. I can spot tiny pools of silver in the gold.”

Gray shifted closer. Kat allowed him to peer through her lens, shadowing the glass with her hand so the blue sheen of the ultraviolet light better illuminated the sample. The veins of metallic gold did indeed seem pocked with silvery impurities.

“It might be platinum,” Kat said. “Remember that the monatomic state occurs not just in gold but any of the transitional metals on the periodic table. Including platinum.”

Gray nodded. “The powder might not be pure gold, but a mix of several of the platinum series. An amalgam of various m-state metals.”

Rachel continued to stare at the etched glass. “Could the powder just be from the wearing down of the old sarcophagus? The gold crumbling with age or something?”

Gray shook his head. “The process to turn metallic gold into its m-state is complicated. Age alone won’t do this.”

“But the lieutenant might be onto something,” Kat said. “Maybe the device affected the gold in the reliquary and caused some of the gold to transmute. We still have no idea by what mechanism the device—”

“I may have one clue,” Monk said, cutting her off.

He stood by the shattered security case, where he had been collecting shards. He stepped to a bulky iron cross resting in a stanchion not far from the case.

“It looks like one of our forensic experts missed a shell,” Monk said. He reached out and plucked a hollow casing from beneath the feet of the crucified Christ figure. He took a step back again, held the casing out toward the cross, and let it go. It flew through six inches of air, and with a ping, stuck again to the cross.

“It’s magnetized,” Monk said.

Another ping sounded. Louder. Sharper. The cross spun half a turn in its stanchion.

For half a second, Gray did not comprehend what had happened.

Monk dove for the altar. “Down!” he screamed.

Other shots rang out.

Gray felt a kick to his shoulder, throwing him off kilter, but his body armor saved him from real injury. Rachel grabbed his arm and yanked him into a row of pews. Bullets chewed wood, sparked off marble and stone.