James Rollins - Map of Bones

Gray nodded. He had to give Kat credit. She had zeroed in on the most intriguing aspect of these m-state metals. Even Monk sat straighter now.

Kat continued, “While the powder appears inert to analyzing equipment, the atomic state is far from low-energy. It was as if each atom took all the energy it used to react to its neighbor and turned it inward on itself. The energy deformed the atom’s nucleus, stretching it out to an elongated shape, known as…” She searched the article at her fingertips. Gray noted it had been marked up with a yellow highlighter.

“An asymmetrical high-spin state,” she said. “Physicists have known that such high-spin atoms can pass energy from one atom to the next with no net energy loss.”

“Superconductivity,” Monk said with no dissembling.

“Energy passed into a superconductor would continue to flow through the material with no loss of power. A perfect superconductor would allow this energy to flow infinitely, until the end of time itself.”

Silence settled over them as they all pondered the many perplexities here.

Monk finally stretched. “Great. We’ve ground the mystery down to the level of the atomic nucleus. Let’s pull back. What does any of this have to do with the murders at the cathedral? Why poison the wafers with this weird gold powder? How did the powder kill?”

They were all good questions. Kat closed her dossier, conceding that no answers would be found there.

Gray was beginning to understand why the director had given him these two partners. It went beyond their backgrounds as an intelligence specialist and a forensics expert. Kat had a focused ability to concentrate on minutiae, to pick out details others might miss. But Monk, no less sharp, was better at looking at the bigger picture, spotting trends across a broader landscape.

But where did that leave him?

“It seems we still have much to investigate,” he finished lamely.

Monk lifted one eyebrow. “As I said from the start, we don’t have a lot to go on.”

“That’s why we’ve been called in. To solve the impossible.” Gray checked his watch, stifling a yawn. “And to do that, we should grab as much downtime as we can until we land in Germany.”

The other two nodded. Gray stood and crossed to a seat a short distance away. Monk grabbed pillows and blankets. Kat closed the shades on the windows, dimming the cabin. Gray watched them.

His team. His responsibility.

To be a man, you first have to act like one.

Gray accepted his own pillow and sat down. He did not recline his seat. Despite his exhaustion, he did not expect to get much sleep. Monk toggled down the overhead lights. Darkness descended.

“Good night, Commander,” Kat said from across the cabin.

As the others settled, Gray sat in the darkness, wondering how he got here. Time stretched. The engines rumbled white noise. Still, any semblance of sleep escaped him.

In the privacy of the moment, Gray reached into the pocket of his jeans. He slipped out a rosary, gripping the crucifix at the end, hard enough to hurt his palm. It was a graduation gift from his grandfather, who had died only two months after that. Gray had been in boot camp. He hadn’t been able to attend the funeral. He leaned back. After today’s briefing, he had called his folks, lying about a last-minute business trip to cover his absence.

Running again…

Fingers traveled down the hard beads of his rosary.

He said no prayers.

CHÂTEAU SAUVAGE crouched in the mountain pass of the Savoy Alps like a stone giant. Its battlements were ten feet thick. Its single foursquare tower crested its walls. The only access to its gates was over a stone bridge spanning the pass. While it was not the largest castle of the Swiss canton, it was certainly one of the oldest, constructed during the twelfth century. Its roots were even older. Its battlements were built on the ruins of a Roman castra, an ancient military fortification from the first century.

It was also one of the oldest privately owned castles, belonging to the Sauvage family since the fifteenth century, when the Bernese army wrested control of Lausanne from the decadent bishops during the Reformation. Its parapets overlooked Lake Geneva far below and the handsome cliff-side city of Lausanne, once a fishing village, now a cosmopolitan town of lakeside parks, museums, resorts, clubs, and cafés.

The castle’s current master, Baron Raoul de Sauvage, ignored the lamp-lit view of the dark city and descended the stairs that led below the castle. He had been summoned. Behind him, a huge wooly dog, weighing a massive seventy kilos, followed his steps. The Bernese mountain dog’s black-and-brown shaggy coat brushed the ancient stone steps.

Raoul also had a kennel of pit-fighting dogs, massive hundred-kilo brutes from Gran Canaria, short-haired, thick-necked, tortured to a savage edge. He bred champions of the blood sport.

But right now, Raoul had matters even bloodier to settle.

He passed the dungeon level of the castle with its stone caves. The cells now housed his extensive wine collection, a perfect cellar, but one section harkened back to the old days. Four stone cells had been updated with stainless steel gates, electronic locks, and video surveillance. Near the cells, one large room still housed ancient torture devices…and a few modern ones. His family had helped several Nazi leaders escape out of Austria after World War II, families with ties to the Hapsburgs. They had been hidden down here. As payment, Raoul’s grandfather had taken his share, his “toll” as he called it, which had helped keep the castle within the family.

But now, at the age of thirty-three, Raoul would surpass his grandfather. Raoul, born a bastard to his father, had been given title to both estate and heritage at the age of sixteen, when his father died. He was the only living male offspring. And among the Sauvage family, genetic ties were given precedence over those of marriage. Even his birth had been conceived by arrangement.

Another of Grandfather’s tolls.

The Baron of Sauvage climbed down even deeper into the mountainside, hunching away from the roof, followed by his dog. A string of bare electrical lights illuminated his way.

The stone steps became natural hewn rock. Here Roman legionnaires had tread in ancient times, often leading a sacrificial bull or goat down to the cave below. The chamber had been converted into a mithraeumby the Romans, a temple to the god Mithra, a sun god imported from Iran and taken to heart by the empire’s soldiers. Mithraism predated Christianity yet bore uncanny similarities. Mithra’s birthday was celebrated on December 25. The god’s worship involved baptism and the consumption of a sacred meal of bread and wine. Mithra also had twelve disciples, held Sunday sacred, and described a heaven and a hell. Upon his death, Mithra was also buried in a tomb, only to rise again in three days.

From this, some scholars claimed Christianity had incorporated Mithraic mythology into its own ritual. It was not unlike the castle here, the new standing on the shoulders of the old, the strong surpassing the weak. Raoul saw nothing wrong with this, even respected it.

It was the natural order.

Raoul descended the last steps and entered the wide subterranean grotto. The roof of the cave was a natural stone dome, crudely carved with stars and a stylized sun. An old Mithraic altar, where young bulls had been sacrificed, stood on the far side. Beyond it ran a deep cold spring, a small river. Raoul imagined the sacrificed bodies had been dumped into it to be carried away. He had disposed of a few of his own that way, too…those not fed to his dogs.