The Book of the Dead

by Richard Preston

  “Yes,” Sherman managed to say. He nodded toward the stereozoom. “I wanted you to take a . . . take a look.”

  Collopy got up, went over to the microscope, removed his glasses, and put his eyes over the oculars. A blurry mess leaped into view. “I can’t see a bloody thing.”

  “The focus needs adjustment, there.”

  Collopy fumbled with the knob, sweeping the specimen in and out of focus as he tried to find the right spot. Finally, he found himself staring at a breathtakingly beautiful array of thousands of brilliantly colored bits and pieces of crystal, backlit like a stained-glass window.

  “What is it?”

  “A sample of the grit that came in the package.”

  Collopy pulled away. “Well? Did you or someone in your department order it?”

  Sherman hesitated. “No, we didn’t.”

  “Then tell me, Dr. Sherman, how did thousands of dollars’ worth of diamond grit come to be addressed and delivered to your department?”

  “I have an explanation—” Sherman stopped. With a shaking hand, he picked up one of the white envelopes. Collopy waited, but Sherman seemed to have frozen up.

  “Dr. Sherman?”

  Sherman did not respond. He extracted the handkerchief and dabbed his face a second time.

  “Dr. Sherman, are you ill?”

  Sherman swallowed. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

  Collopy said briskly, “We have a problem, and I’ve now got”—he checked his watch—“only twenty-five minutes to call this fellow Harriman back. So just go ahead and lay it out for me.”

  Sherman nodded dumbly, dabbed yet again at his face. Despite his annoyance, Collopy felt pity for the fellow. In many ways, he was basically a middle-aged kid who never outgrew his rock collection . . . Suddenly, Collopy realized it wasn’t just sweat the man was wiping away—his eyes were leaking tears.

  “It’s not industrial diamond grit,” Sherman said at last.

  Collopy frowned. “Excuse me?”

  The curator took a deep breath, seemed to brace himself. “Industrial diamond grit is made from black or brown diamonds of no aesthetic value. Under a microscope, it looks like what you’d expect: dark crystalline particles. But when you look at these under the microscope, you see color.” His voice quavered.

  “That’s what I saw, yes.”

  Sherman nodded. “Tiny fragments and crystals of color, every color in the rainbow. I confirmed that they were indeed diamond, and I asked myself . . .” His voice faltered.

  “Dr. Sherman?”

  “I asked myself: how in the world did a sack of diamond grit come to be made up of millions of fragments of fancy color diamonds? Two and a half pounds’ worth.”

  The lab fell into a profound silence. Collopy felt himself go cold. “I don’t understand.”

  “This is not diamond grit,” said Sherman all in a rush. “This is the museum’s diamond collection.”

  “What the devil are you saying?”

  “The man who stole our diamonds last month. He must have pulverized them. All of them.” The tears were now flowing freely, but Sherman no longer bothered to wipe them away.

  “Pulverized?” Collopy looked around wildly. “How can you pulverize a diamond?”

  “With a sledgehammer.”

  “But they’re supposed to be the hardest thing in the world.”

  “Hard, yes. That doesn’t mean they aren’t brittle.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Many of our diamonds have a unique color. Take the Queen of Narnia, for example. No other diamond has quite that blue color, with hints of violet and green. I was able to identify each tiny fragment. That’s what I’ve been doing—separating them out.”

  He took the white envelope in his hand and tipped it out on a sheet of paper lying on the specimen table. A pile of blue grit poured out. He pointed to it.

  “The Queen of Narnia.”

  He took out another envelope, tipped it over into a purple pile. “The Heart of Eternity.”

  One after another he emptied the little envelopes. “The Indigo Ghost. Ultima Thule. The Fourth of July. The Zanzibar Green.”

  It was like a steady drumbeat, one pounding blow after another. Collopy stared in horror at the tiny piles of glittering sand.

  “This is a sick joke,” he finally said. “Those can’t be the museum’s diamonds.”

  “The exact hues of many of these famous diamonds are quantifiable,” Sherman replied. “I have hard data on them. I tested the fragments. They’re diamonds with exactly the right hue. There can be no mistake. There’s nothing else they could be.”

  “But surely not all of them,” said Collopy. “He can’t have destroyed them all.”

  “That package contained 2.42 pounds of diamond grit. That’s equivalent to about 5,500 carats. Adding in the amount that spilled, the original shipment would have contained roughly 6,000 carats. I added up the carat weights of the diamonds that were stolen . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Well?” Collopy asked at last, no longer able to contain himself.

  “The total weight was 6,042 carats,” Sherman said in a whisper.

  A long silence filled the laboratory, the only sound the faint hum of the fluorescent lights. At last Collopy raised his head and looked Sherman in the eye.

  “Dr. Sherman,” he began, but his voice cracked and he was forced to start over. “Dr. Sherman. This information must not leave this room.”

  Sherman, already pale, went white as a ghost. But after a moment, he nodded silently.

  4

  William Smithback Jr. entered the dark and fragrant confines of the pub known as the Bones and scanned the noisy crowd. It was five o’clock and the place was packed with museum staff, all lubricating themselves after the long and dusty hours spent laboring in the granite pile across the street. Why in the world they all wanted to hang out in a place whose every square inch of wall space was covered with bones, after escaping just such an environment at work, was a mystery to him. These days he himself came to the Bones for one reason only: the forty-year-old single malt that the bartender kept hidden under the bar. At thirty-six dollars a shot, it wasn’t exactly a bargain, but it sure beat having your insides corroded by three dollars’ worth of Cutty Sark.

  He spied the copper-colored hair of his new bride, Nora Kelly, at their usual table in the back. He waved, sauntered over, and struck a dramatic pose.

  “‘But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?’” he intoned. Then he kissed the back of her hand briefly, kissed her lips rather more attentively, and took a seat across the table. “How are things?”

  “The museum continues to be an exciting place to work.”

  “You mean that bioterror scare this morning?”

  She nodded. “Someone delivered a package for the Mineralogy Department, leaking some kind of powder. They thought it was anthrax or something.”

  “I heard about that. In fact, brother Bryce filed a story on that today.” Bryce Harriman was Smithback’s colleague and archrival at the Times, but Smithback had secured himself a little breathing room with some recent—and very dramatic—scoops.

  The hangdog waiter came by and stood by the table, silently waiting to take their drink orders.

  “I’ll take two fingers of the Glen Grant,” Smithback said. “The good stuff.”

  “A glass of white wine, please.”

  The waiter shuffled off.

  “So it caused a stir?” Smithback asked.

  Nora giggled. “You should have seen Greenlaw, the guy who found it. He was so sure he was dying they had to carry him out on a stretcher, protective suit and all.”

  “Greenlaw? I don’t know him.”

  “He’s the new V.P. for administration. Just hired from Con Ed.”

  “So what’d it turn out to be? The anthrax, I mean.”

  “Grinding powder.”

  Smithback chuckled as he accepted his drink. “Grinding powder. Oh, God, that’s perfe
ct.” He swirled the amber liquid around in the balloon glass and took a sip. “How’d it happen?”

  “It seems the package was damaged in transit, and the stuff was dribbling out. A messenger dropped it off with Curly, and Greenlaw just happened by.”

  “Curly? The old guy with the pipe?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “He’s still at the museum?”

  “He’ll never leave.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “In stride, like everything else. He was back in his pillbox a few hours later, like nothing had happened.”

  Smithback shook his head. “Why in the world would anyone send a sack of grit by messenger?”

  “Beats me.”

  He took another sip. “You think it was deliberate?” he asked absently. “Someone trying to freak out the museum?”

  “You’ve got a criminal mind.”

  “Do they know who sent it?”

  “I heard the package didn’t have a return address.”

  At this small detail, Smithback grew suddenly interested. He wished he’d called up Harriman’s piece on the Times internal network and read it. “You know how much it costs to send something by messenger in New York City these days? Forty bucks.”

  “Maybe it was valuable grit.”

  “But then, why no return address? Who was it addressed to?”

  “Just the Mineralogy Department, I heard.”

  Smithback took another thoughtful sip of the Glen Grant. There was something about this story that set off a journalistic alarm in his head. He wondered if Harriman had gotten to the bottom of it. Not bloody likely.

  He extracted his cell. “Mind if I make a call?”

  Nora frowned. “If you must.”

  Smithback dialed the museum, asked to be put through to mineralogy. He was in luck: someone was still there. He began speaking rapidly. “This is Mr. Humnhmn in the Grmhmhmn’s office, and I had a quick question: what kind of grinding powder was it that caused the scare this morning?”

  “I didn’t catch—”

  “Look, I’m in a hurry. The director’s waiting for an answer.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is there anyone there who does?”

  “There’s Dr. Sherman.”

  “Put him on.”

  A moment later, a breathless voice got on. “Dr. Collopy?”

  “No, no,” said Smithback easily. “This is William Smithback. I’m a reporter for the New York Times.”

  A silence. Then a very tense “Yes?”

  “About that bioterror scare this morning—”

  “I can’t help you,” came the immediate response. “I already told everything I know to your colleague, Mr. Harriman.”

  “Just a routine follow-up, Dr. Sherman. Mind?”

  Silence.

  “The package was addressed to you?”

  “To the department,” came the terse reply.

  “No return address?”

  “No.”

  “And it was full of grit?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What kind?”

  A hesitation. “Corundum grit.”

  “How much is corundum grit worth?”

  “I don’t know offhand. Not much.”

  “I see. That’s all, thanks.”

  He hung up to find Nora looking at him.

  “It’s rude to use your cell phone in a pub,” she said.

  “Hey, I’m a reporter. It’s my job to be rude.”

  “Satisfied?”

  “No.”

  “A package of grit came to the museum. It was leaking, it freaked someone out. End of story.”

  “I don’t know.” Smithback took another long sip of the Glen Grant. “That guy sounded awfully nervous just now.”

  “Dr. Sherman? He’s high-strung.”

  “He sounded more than high-strung. He sounded frightened.”

  He opened his cell phone again, and Nora groaned. “If you start making calls, I’m heading home.”

  “Come on, Nora. One more call, then we’ll head over to the Rattlesnake Café for dinner. I gotta make this call now. It’s already after five and I want to catch people before they leave.”

  Quickly, he dialed information, got a number, punched it in. “Department of Health and Mental Services?”

  After being bounced around a bit, he finally got the lab he wanted.

  “Sentinel lab,” came a voice.

  “To whom am I speaking?”

  “Richard. And to whom am I speaking?”

  “Hi, Richard, this is Bill Smithback of the Times. You in charge?”

  “I am now. The boss just went home.”

  “Lucky for you. Can I ask a few questions?”

  “You said you’re a reporter?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “This is the lab that handled that package from the museum this morning?”

  “Sure is.”

  “What was in it?”

  Smithback heard a snort. “Diamond grit.”

  “Not corundum?”

  “No. Diamond.”

  “Did you examine the grit yourself?”

  “Yup.”

  “What’d it look like?”

  “Under coarse examination, like a sack of brown sand.”

  Smithback thought for a moment. “How’d you figure out it was diamond grit?”

  “By the index of refraction of the particles.”

  “I see. And it couldn’t be confused with corundum?”

  “No way.”

  “You also examined it under a microscope, I assume?”

  “Yup.”

  “What’d it look like?”

  “It was beautiful, like a bunch of little colored crystals.”

  Smithback felt a sudden tingling at the nape of his neck. “Colored? What do you mean?”

  “Bits and fragments of every color of the rainbow. I had no idea diamond grit was so pretty.”

  “That didn’t strike you as odd?”

  “A lot of things that are ugly to the human eye look beautiful under the microscope. Like bread mold, for instance—or sand, for that matter.”

  “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 trust
ees 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?”