Sandstorm (Sigma Force 1)

Another torch…someone was in the gallery…

Harry felt his heart pounding in his throat. A breakin. He fell against the neighboring wall. His fingers scrambled for his radio. Through the walls, thunder reverberated, sonorous and deep.

He thumbed his radio. “I have a possible intruder here in the north wing. Please advise.”

He waited for his shift leader to respond. Gene Johnson might be a wanker, but he was also a former RAF officer. He knew his shit.

The man’s voice answered his call, but dropouts ate most of his words, interference from the electrical storm. “…possible…are you sure?…hold until…are the gates secure?”

Harry stared back at the lowered security gates. Of course he should have checked to see if they had been breeched. Each gallery had only one entrance into the hall. The only other way into the sealed rooms was through one of the high windows, but they were wired against breakage or intrusion. And though the storm had knocked out main power, the backup generators kept the security grid online. No alarms had been raised at central command.

Harry imagined Johnson was already switching cameras, running through this wing, bearing down on the Kensington Gallery. He risked a glance into the five-room suite. The glow persisted deep in the gallery. Its passage seemed aimless, casual, not the determined sweep of a thief. He did a quick check on the security gate. Its electronic lock glowed green. It had not been breached.

He stared back at the glow. Maybe it was just the passing of some car’s headlights through the gallery’s windows.

Johnson’s voice over his radio, cutting in and out, startled him. “Not picking up anything on the vid…Camera five is out. Stay put…others on the way.” Any remaining words disappeared into the ether, fritzed by the electrical storm.

Harry stood by the gate. Other guards were coming as backup. What if it wasn’t an intruder? What if it was just the sweep of headlights? He was already on thin ice with Fleming. All he needed was to be made a fool of.

He took a chance and raised his torch. “You there!” he yelled. He thought to sound commanding, but it came out more of a shrill whine.

Still, there was no change in the wandering pattern of the light. It seemed to be heading even deeper into the gallery—not in panicked retreat, just a meandering slow pace. No thief could have that much ice in his veins.

Harry crossed to the gate’s electronic lock and used his passkey to open it. The magnetic seals released. He pulled the gate high enough to crawl under and entered the first room. Straightening, he lifted his torch again. He refused to be embarrassed by his momentary panic. He should’ve investigated further before raising the alarm.

But the damage was done. The best he could do was save a bit of face by clearing up the mystery himself.

He called out again, just in case. “Security! Don’t move!”

His shout had no effect. The glow continued its steady but meandering pace into the gallery.

He glanced back out the gate to the hall. The others would be here in under a minute. “Bugger it,” he mumbled under his breath. He hurried into the gallery, pursuing the light, determined to root out its cause before the others arrived.

With hardly a glance, he passed treasures of timeless significance and priceless value: glass cabinets displaying clay tablets from Assyrian king Ashurbanipal; hulking statues of sandstone dating back to pre–Persian times; swords and weapons from every age; Phoenician ivories depicting ancient kings and queens; even a first printing of The Arabian Nights, under its original title, The Oriental Moralist.

Harry swept forward through the rooms, slipping from one dynasty to another—from the times of the Crusades to the birth of Christ, from the glories of Alexander the Great to the ages of King Solomon and Queen Sheba.

At last, he reached the farthest room, one of the largest. It contained objects more of interest to a naturalist, all from the region: rare stones and jewels, fossilized remains, Neolithic tools.

The source of the glow became clear. Near the center of the domed chamber, a half-meter globe of blue light floated lazily across the room. It shimmered, and its surface seemed to run with a flame of prismatic blue oil.

As Harry watched, the globe sailed through a glass cabinet as if it were made of air. He stood stunned. A sulfurous smell reached his nostrils, issuing forth from the ball of cerulean light.

The globe rolled over one of the crimson-glowing security lamps, shorting it out with a sizzling pop. The noise startled Harry back a step. The same fate must have been dealt to camera five in the room behind him. He glanced to the camera in this room. A red light glowed above it. Still working.

As if noting his attention, Johnson came back on his radio. For some reason, there was no static. “Harry, maybe you’d better get out of there!”

He remained transfixed, half out of fear, half out of wonder. Besides, the phenomenon was floating away from him, toward the darkened corner of the room.

The globe’s glow illuminated a lump of metal within a glass cube. It was a chunk of red iron as large as a calf, a kneeling calf. The display card described it as a camel. Such a resemblance was dodgy at best, but Harry understood the supposed depiction. The item had been discovered in the desert.

The glow hovered over the iron camel.

Harry backed a cautious step and raised his radio. “Christ!”

The shimmering ball of light fell through the glass and landed upon the camel. Its glow winked out as quickly as a snuffed candle.

The sudden darkness blinded Harry for a breath. He lifted his torch. The iron camel still rested within its glass cube, undisturbed. “It’s gone…”

“Are you safe?”

“Yeah. What the hell was that?”

Johnson answered, awe in his voice, “A sodding lightning ball, I think! I heard stories from mates aboard warplanes as they flew through thunderclaps. Storm must have spit it out. But bloody hell if that wasn’t brilliant!”

It’s not brilliant anymore, Harry thought with a sigh, and shook his head. Whatever the hell it was, it at least saved him from an embarrassing ribbing from his fellow guards.

He lowered his torch. But as the light fell away, the iron camel continued to glow in the darkness. A deep ruddy color.

“What the hell now?” Harry mumbled, and grabbed his radio. A severe static shock bit his fingers. Swearing, he shook it off. He raised his radio. “Something’s odd. I don’t think—”

The glow in the iron flared brighter. Harry fell back. The iron flowed across the camel’s surface, melting as if exposed to a wash of acid rain. He was not the only one to note the change.