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explained. “Took six men to uncrate it. But there’s a crowbar among the tools in back. We should be able to tilt it up. But we’ll have to be careful.”
    “I’ll go get it,” Kowalski said.

    As he stepped away, the telephone on Elizabeth’s desk rang. She crossed toward it and checked the caller ID on the handset. “It’s security.” She checked her wristwatch, then glanced to Gray. “It’s already after closing hours. They must be checking on how long I’ll be working down here.”
    “Tell them at least another hour.”
    She nodded and picked up the phone. She confirmed who she was, then listened. Her eyes widened. “I understand. We’ll be right up.” She hung up the phone and turned to Gray. “Someone called in a bomb threat. Here at the museum. They’re evacuating the building.”
    Gray remained silent. He knew such a threat, especially now, was no coincidence. He read the same understanding in the woman’s eyes. “Someone knows,” he said slowly. “After today’s shooting on the Mall, no one will dismiss a bomb threat. It’s the perfect cover to run a covert sweep of the building.”
    He turned to study the omphalos.
    Time was running out for delicacy.
    Kowalski must have understood this, too. He returned from the back of the storage room. “I heard,” he said. Instead of the padded crowbar, he hefted a large sledgehammer on his shoulder. “Get back.”
    “No!” Elizabeth warned.
    But Kowalski clearly wasn’t taking no for an answer. He closed the distance in one stride, raised the hammer over his head, and swung it down.
    Elizabeth gasped in fear for the centuries-old artifact.
    But instead of hitting the ancient stone, the sledgehammer slammed into the slats of the pallet that supported the omphalos. Wood splintered and broke. Kowalski lifted the hammer again and cracked more slats on the same side.
    With half its weight now unsupported, the great stone tilted toward the crushed side of the pallet—then slowly toppled over, upending itself. More slats were pulverized under its weight, but it seemed undamaged from its slow roll.
    Kowalski shouldered the hammer.
    Elizabeth stared at the man, her expression wavering between horror and awe.

    Gray hurried to the pallet and dropped to a knee. The object hidden under the omphalos now rested in plain view. It was not a polished stone . Gray lifted his Gamma-Scout reader toward it. It read hot, but no worse than the binoculars they’d found earlier.
    Satisfied, Gray retrieved it and stood.
    Elizabeth stumbled back as he straightened.
    Kowalski’s eyes tightened. “A skull? Is that what this is all about?”
    Gray examined it closer. The skull was small and missing its lower jaw. He turned it over. The remaining teeth displayed prominent fangs in a protuberant muzzle. “Not human,” he said. “From the size and shape of the cranium, I’d say it’s simian. Possibly a chimpanzee.”
    Kowalski’s expression soured even further. “Great,” he drawled out. “More monkeys.”
    Gray knew the large man had developed a distaste for all things simian following a previous mission. Something to do with baboons…or apes. Gray could never get a straight story from the man.
    “But what…what’s that attached to the skull’s side?” Elizabeth pointed out.
    Gray knew what she meant. It was hard to miss. Affixed to the temporal bone, just above the opening to the ear canal, rested a curved block of stainless steel.
    “I’m not sure,” he answered. “Maybe a hearing aid. Perhaps even one of the new cochlear implants.”
    “For a damn monkey?” Kowalski asked.
    Gray shrugged. “We’ll have to examine it later.”
    “Why did my father bring that here?”
    Gray shook his head. “I don’t know. But someone wanted to stop him. And someone still wants it back.”
    “What do we do?”
    “We find a way out of here. Before anyone knows we recovered it.”
    Gray took a moment to search the rest of the pallet, in case the professor had left