Sandstorm (Sigma Force 1)

Safia leaned closer. She felt with her fingers. The tail end of exposed vessels ended abruptly as they did on the first one. “I’ll have to work carefully.”

She reached for the array of picks, chisels, and tiny hammers. With the proper tools in hand, she set about with the precision of a surgeon. Hammer and chisel to break away the larger chunks of brittle sandstone, then pick and brush to clear away. In a matter of minutes, the right atrium was cleared.

Safia stared down at the crisscrossing of what appeared to be coronary vessels. But they mapped out a perfect letter.

Sandstorm

It was too complex for mere chance.

“What letter is that?” Clay asked.

“There’s not a direct corresponding letter in English,” Safia answered. “The letter is pronounced somewhat like the sound wa…so in translations it’s often listed W-A or even U, as that’s what it sounds like orally. Though in truth, there are no vowels in Epigraphic South Arabian script.”

Kara met her eyes. “We have to remove the heart,” she repeated. “If there are more letters, they’d be on the opposite side.”

Safia nodded. The left side still remained locked in the stone chest. She hated to disturb the statue any further, but curiosity drove her to pick up her tools without argument. She set to work. It took her a full half hour to remove the sandstone clamped around the heart. Finally, she attached the suction clamp and gripped the handle with both hands. With a prayer to the old gods of Arabia, she pulled evenly up, using all the muscles in her shoulders.

At first, it appeared to be stuck, but it was merely heavier than she had anticipated. With a determined grimace of effort, she lifted the heart free of the chest. Bits of sandstone and loose grains showered down. At arm’s length, she swung the prize around to the library table.

Kara hurried over to join them. Safia placed the heart on a square of soft leather chamois to protect it, then unfastened the suction clamp. The heart rolled slightly, once released. A small sloshing sound accompanied it.

Safia glanced at the others. Had they heard it, too?

“I told you I thought the thing was hollow,” Clay whispered.

Safia reached and rocked the heart on the chamois. The center of gravity rolled with the rocking. It reminded her oddly of one of those old Magic 8 Balls. “There’s some type of fluid in the center.”

Clay backed up a step. “Great, it had better not be blood. I prefer my cadavers desiccated and wrapped like mummies.”

“It’s sealed tight,” Safia assured him, examining the heart. “I can’t even spot a way to open it. It’s almost like the bronze heart was forged around it.”

“Riddles wrapped inside riddles,” Kara said, and took her turn rolling and checking the heart. “What about more lettering?”

Safia joined her. It took them half a moment to orient themselves and find the two remaining chambers. She ran her finger over the largest, the left ventricle. It was smooth and bare.

“Nothing,” Kara said, surprised and baffled. “Maybe it wore away.”

Safia checked more thoroughly, painting it with a bit of isopropyl alcohol to clean its surface. “I see no scoring or trace. It’s too smooth.”

“What about the left atrium?” Clay asked.

She nodded, turning the heart. She quickly spotted a line arcing cleanly over the face of the atrium.

Sandstorm

“It’s the letter R,” Kara whispered, sounding slightly frightened. She collapsed down on a chair. “It can’t be.” Clay frowned. “I don’t understand. The letters B, WA or U, and R. What does it spell?” “Those three ESA letters should be known to you, Mr. Bishop,” Safia said. “Maybe not in that order.” She picked up a pencil and drew them out as they should be spelled.

Sandstorm

Clay scrunched his face. “ESA is read like Hebrew and Arabic, from right to left, opposite of English. WABR…UBR. But the vowels are excluded between consonants.” The young man’s eyes widened. “U-B-A-R. The goddamn lost city of Arabia, the Atlantis of the sands.”

Kara shook her head. “First a meteorite fragment that was supposed to guard Ubar explodes…and now we find the name written on a bronze heart.”

“If it is bronze,” Safia said, still bent over the heart.

Kara was shaken out of her shock. “What do you mean?”

Safia lifted the heart in her hands. “When I pulled the heart out of the statue, it seemed way too heavy, especially if it’s hollowed out and full of liquid. See where I cleaned the left ventricle with the alcohol? The base metal is much too red.”

Kara stood, understanding dawning in her eyes. “You think it’s iron. Like the meteorite fragment.”

Safia nodded. “Possibly even the same meteoric iron. I’ll have to test it, but either way it makes no sense. At the time of the sculpture’s carving, the peoples of Arabia didn’t know how to smelt and work iron of this quality, especially a masterful piece of art like this. There are so many mysteries here, I don’t even know where to begin.”

“If you’re right,” Kara said fiercely, “then that drab trading post unearthed in the desert back in 1992 is a far cry from the whole story. Something is yet undiscovered.” She pointed to the artifact. “Like the true heart of Ubar.”

“But what do we do now? What’s the next step? We’re no closer to knowing anything about Ubar.”

Clay was examining the heart. “It’s sort of strange that the left ventricle has no letters.”

“ ‘Ubar’ is only spelled with three letters,” Safia explained.

“Then why use a four-chambered heart and spell the letters in the direction of blood flow?”

Safia swung around. “Explain yourself?”

“Blood enters the heart from the body through the vena cava into the right atrium. The letter U.” He poked a finger at the stumped large vessel that led to the right upper chamber and continued his anatomy lesson, tracing his way. “It then passes through the atrioventricular valve to the right ventricle. The letter B. From there, the blood leaves for the lungs via the pulmonary artery, then returns oxygen-rich through the pulmonary vein to the left atrium. The letter R. Spelling out ‘Ubar.’ So why does it stop there?”

“Why indeed?” Safia mumbled, brow furrowed.

She pondered the mystery. The name Ubar was spelled in the path that blood traveled. It seemed to imply a direction, a flow toward something. A glimmer of an idea formed. “Where does the blood go after it leaves the heart?”