It was late in the evening by the time Peter made it back to his hotel in London. The lobby was quiet, the common room empty except for a pair of middle-aged women making out on the couch. The clerk had temporarily abandoned his post at the check-in desk. No one seemed to notice as Peter hurried up the creaky stairs to his room.

Inserting the key, he turned the handle and peeked inside. The plastic drinking cups he had stacked behind the door that morning before slipping out were still standing. No one had entered the room, at least not through the door. Locking it again, he fell onto the bed and stared up at the cracked and mildewed ceiling.

Then he sat up abruptly.

Anna.

Taking his burner phone, Peter called King County Hospital in Seattle and for the third time that day asked to page Dr. Brisling.

A minute letter, Peter's phone rang, and he answered it. "Hello? Dr. Brisling?"

"Uh . . . is this Robert Hughes, Thames Water Utilities? I left you a message earlier."

It certainly sounded like Brisling. "No, this is Peter Barshman from King County Hospital, Anna Jankowsky's friend."

"Oh." A long pause. "Where are you?"

"That doesn't matter. How's Anna? Did she see you?"

"Yes."

The word rang cold in Peter's ear. "Is she going to be OK? Is she safe?"

Another pause. "I'm afraid I have some terrible news."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, Peter." A quick breath. "Anna's dead."

Adrenaline surged through Peter's chest and throat.

"The police found her in her apartment. They called me because my name was on a bottle of seizure medicine I prescribed her. But it wasn't that. There were . . . signs of violence."

Jesus, no.

" . . . maybe someone she knew, because the door hadn't been forced. Something about a stolen passport and her ex-boyfriend . . ."

God, what did they do to her?

". . . the police are looking for you. They want to know where you are." The doctor's voice was fading in and out like the buzzing of a fly.

No!

Peter hurled the phone against the wall, and it clattered to the floor. Leaping from the bed, he stomped on it until its screen fizzled out and little chunks of phone guts skittered about the room.

He knelt on the gritty floor, elbows propped on the bed, hands knitted together as if to pray. He raised them over his head and smashed them down against the mattress. He screamed as loud as he could, and something snapped deep in his throat. In muted rage, he pummeled the bed until at last his arms gave out. Then he buried his face in the sheets and wept.

A sound woke him. He lay curled up on top of the bed, fully clothed, pillow damp with tears. He reached for his phone and remembered that it lay in pieces on the floor. It was still dark outside. Cold lamplight seeped through the curtains, etching the room in lines of gray and black.

Then he heard it again: the creaking of floorboards in the hallway just outside his room. He slid from the bed, crept to the door, and pressed his ear to it, heart pounding in his throat. From deep within the wood came a soft clicking noise, like a beetle under the bark of a tree.

Someone was picking the lock.

He pressed his back to the wall on the hinge side of the door and watched in horror as the handle turned. With a soft clunk, the door popped inward a fraction of an inch, and Peter froze. Then the door began to open. A black boot stepped into the gap. A head covered with a black watch cap peeked inside. Below it, four gloved fingers curled around the edge of the door.

Peter lowered his shoulder and coiled his body. Now! He rammed the door, but the intruder had already slipped inside. The door slammed shut, and Peter went sprawling across the floor. Scrambling to his feet, he prepared to defend himself.

The intruder crouched before the bed, his compact form silhouetted against the faintly glowing curtains.

Peter launched himself at the intruder, chin up, arms wide for the tackle.

With a yelp, the intruder sidestepped, but Peter caught hold of something, a belt maybe, and together they tumbled over the bed, crashing to the dusty floor beneath the window, Peter on top, the intruder squirming beneath him.

He was small and thin, but strong as a python. Peter grabbed the intruder's right wrist and pinned it to his back, bearing down with all his weight. In response, the intruder threw back his head, smashing Peter in the nose. Blinded by white-hot pain, Peter groped with his left hand until his fingers found the watch cap. Flinging it aside, he took a fistful of silky hair and pulled back hard.

Someone in the next room was pounding on the wall.

Hot blood dripped from Peter's nose onto the back of his right hand. The intruder gurgled something unintelligible and with his left hand reached back at an impossible angle, gripping Peter's left forearm, the gloved fingers crawling up to his elbow.

Zap! A bolt of lightning shot down Peter's left arm to his fingertips, and he let go.

The intruder wriggled free and jumped to his feet.

Peter raised his good arm to ward off the attack, but it never came. Instead, the intruder threw off his gloves, staggered to the bedside lamp, and fumbled for the switch. In the sudden light, he fell back against the wall, clutching his left shoulder as he slid down. He settled on the floor, legs splayed, head lulled forward, face obscured with raven hair. "Help me."

It was a woman's voice.

"Please."

Peter shot to his feet and loomed over her, snuffling back the blood dripping from his nose, shaking the life back into the fingers of his left hand. The intruder raised her head, hair parting to a pallid face twisted with pain.

It was Nechama Davila, the Israeli archaeologist.

She wore black combat boots, black pants, and a form-fitting black jacket with many pockets. She cradled her left arm in her lap, the shoulder slumped and misshapen. A dislocation.

Peter had seen it happen during his college rugby days, two-hundred-pound men brought to their knees by the pain. He even knew how to fix it.

"Put your right hand flat on the floor," he commanded. When she complied, Peter knelt and pinned it there with his left hand. Then with his right hand, he unzipped her jacket and carefully peeled it down to the elbows in order to hobble her arms. Releasing her right hand, he grabbed the collar of her undershirt and raised his right fist.

"How did you find me?" he said. More blood dripped from his nose onto his left arm. "Tell me!"

"Corbett . . . Zickafoose."

"How do you know that name? Who told you?" Anna was the only other person who knew.

Peter yanked her close, and her head flopped back, throat exposed. His knuckles cracked. "What the hell did you do to her?"

"No," she gasped, struggling to raise her head, eyes clenched in pain. "She was dead when I got there . . . called 911 . . . I didn't touch her . . . I swear."

Peter's fist loosened a notch. "Why did you go back?"

"My phone . . . I . . . I left it there. It . . . must have fallen—"

Her face went slack, and her sweaty forehead slumped against Peter's chest. He eased her limp body back against the wall. It would be easier this way. Wiping his bloody hands on the back of his jeans, he took her left elbow. With steadily increasing force, he pulled downward until he felt the deep-seated clunk of the joint settling back into its socket. Gently, he laid her out on the floor.

Peter had just grabbed a towel from the sink when Davila awoke.

"Easy now," he said, raising his right hand. With the other, he pressed the towel to his bloody nose.

She sat up, grimacing and gingerly testing her shoulder. "How long was I out?"

"Not long."

The adrenaline was subsiding, and Peter began to feel woozy at the sight of his own blood everywhere. He went down on a knee, bowing his head, nose and forehead throbbing. When the feeling had passed, he looked up at Davila. "Tell me what happened to Anna."

She leaned back against the wall and drew her knees up. "I don't know. I found her on the floor in the main room. There might have been a struggle. Someone had emptied her handbag onto the kitchen table. Then I found my phone wedged between the cushions of the sofa. It must have fallen out when we are all in her apartment, when you startled me with that earring, and I ran."

"That still doesn't explain how you knew what name I'd be using. Only Anna knew that."

"When I was searching her apartment for my phone, I found Corbett Zickafoose's wallet." She went on to explain how in the wallet were Corbett's student ID and gym card, but not his driver's license or credit cards. "It took little imagination to guess what you'd done. Corbett Zickafoose was listed on a flight to Amsterdam, connecting to London. CCTV at Heathrow confirmed it was you. I had you followed to this hotel. And when I arrived early yesterday morning, I followed you myself to the British Museum. I know you spoke with a curator there, Adriana Fitzimmin. I asked her what about, but she refused to tell me anything."

Peter tossed the bloody towel onto the floor beneath the pedestal sink. "Why break into my room then? Why not just knock?"

"I didn't think you were here. The clerk said he saw you leave this morning but hadn't seen you return."

"So what were you looking for?"

"Information about the Ramallah Ossuary." Her dark eyes probed Peter's face. "I believe your father was killed because of it. Your friend as well. And now your life is in danger."

"Because of an artifact?"

"Yes." She got up and sat on the edge of the bed. From her jacket, she took a tiny metal object and dangled it in the air, a little charm with the body of a lion and the wings and head of an eagle. It was identical to the earring Peter had found in the ashtray of his father's truck.

"So it was yours," said Peter.

"No!" she said, clenching it in her fist. "These are the tokens he leaves behind."

"Who leaves behind?"

"He is called Gryphus. He's wanted for the murders of over two dozen Jewish men, boys, and male infants. My government has been hunting him for months now."

"Are you saying this Gryphus murdered my dad?"

She nodded.

"But we're not Jewish."

"Yet your father's murder bears all the other hallmarks. After he kills, Gryphus incinerates his victims and leaves behind one of these tokens." She opened her fist slowly, as if the creature within might fly away. "This is a gryphon, gryphus in Hebrew. It's an ancient symbol for retribution and revenge."

"Revenge for what?"

"No one knows, but your father's murder now suggests it has something to do with the Ramallah Ossuary."

"Does Gryphus want the artifact too?"

"No," she said, pocketing the charm. "He's the one who stole it from us."

"Wait. I'm totally confused. If Gryphus stole it, why were you questioning my dad?"

She explained that the ossuary had been found in the West Bank city of Ramallah in 1985. It quickly disappeared into the Jordanian black market only to resurface years later in a cache of Jewish antiquities buried beneath one of Saddam Hussein's palaces in Baghdad.

"My government made a deal with the Iraqis to buy the ossuary back." Davila took in a deep shuddering breath. "The exchange was to take place in the middle of the desert. But shortly after the exchange, our team was ambushed."

"Gryphus?"

She nodded. "He murdered everyone and stole the ossuary."

"Why would he steal it?"

"To sell it on the black market. The artifact holds immense cultural and religious significance, for both Jews and Christians alike. And if the Israeli government were willing to pay millions of dollars for it, then others might pay even more."

"Where do you come into this?"

"After the ambush, the Israel Antiquities Authority began monitoring the black market for any signal of the ossuary. For two years, we heard nothing. So we stirred up the waters a bit and laid a trap."

"Like a sting operation?"

"Yes. The IAA leaked information into back channels claiming we had finally recovered the ossuary and were keeping it at headquarters in Jerusalem."

"But Gryphus would know you were lying."

"Of course he would. But potential buyers wouldn't. They would want to see our ossuary before investing in what Gryphus had to offer. If we could identify even one of these potential buyers, he or she might lead us back to Gryphus. We created a fake ossuary to show them. IAA technicians are as skilled at perpetrating forgeries as they are at detecting them. But we needed a way to differentiate those who had seen the original ossuary from those who had not."

"How could you do that?"

"Simple. We altered the words of the ossuary's inscription. Then we waited for someone to point out our mistake."

"My dad."

"Exactly. He visited IAA headquarters in Jerusalem just three weeks ago."

"He did mention going to Israel." It was the last time Peter had seen the man alive, lying on a cot beside him, his face peaceful and ruddy, blood draining from his body.

"So what did he tell you about the ossuary?" said Davila.

"Nothing."

"Are you sure?" Her coal-black eyes shimmered in the dim light.

"I would have remembered something like that."

She sighed. "When he saw our fake ossuary, he immediately identified the flaw in its inscription. But he refused to tell us how he knew. That's why I went to Seattle, to question him."

From a pocket of her cargo pants, she unfolded a large sheet of paper and laid it out on the bed. It was a charcoal rubbing of an inscription, the letters primitive and angular.

"The ossuary I showed you in Seattle was the fake one. This is a copy of the real inscription. It's a language called Aramaic, a close cousin to Hebrew. Aramaic is what Jesus and the Apostles would have spoken." She held the paper down with her palms. "There are actually two inscriptions here, in two different styles. The first identifies the person whose bones the ossuary held, someone called Rab Mag. It means chief magician in Middle Persian, possibly a reference to the caste of astrologers and priests from the ancient kingdom of Māda."

"You mean like the Magi from the Bible?" said Peter.

"That's how some would interpret this, although the story of the Magi from the Gospel of Matthew is considered little more than a fable, even by your Roman Catholic Church. And most scholars agree that Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem as the New Testament claims."

"Yeah, but I can see why your people would want to keep this under wraps."

She frowned. "We're not afraid of the truth, just the twisting of it. But this artifact belongs to the State of Israel, to be studied with the utmost care by the best scholars, Jews and non-Jews alike—like we did with the Dead Sea Scrolls."

"I don't really care what you do with it. I just want to know why my dad thought it was so important."

"Perhaps it's the second inscription, here. It was added after the first, and by another hand, an epitaph of sorts, written by someone called Shimón bar Rab Mag."

A thrill ran through Peter.

"In English, it reads, Simon, son of Rab Mag, cast the mustard seeds into the West.'' But in our fake inscription, we substituted East for West; that's what your father—"

"Mustard seeds?" said Peter.

She looked up sharply. "Does that mean something to you?"

"Yeah, I think you just answered my question."

"How?"

Peter checked his watch. "I'll show you in four hours."

"Why four hours?"

"Because that's when the British Museum opens."

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