Sandstorm by James Rollins

double galleries of library shelves, pierced iron walkways and stairs, arched piers leading into recessed alcoves. The very bones of the place harkened back to the times of Charles Darwin, of Stanley and Livingston, of the Royal Society of scientists, where researchers wore jackets with tails and gathered studiously among the stacks of books and ancient tablets. Never open to the public, the department of the ancient Near East now utilized the room as a student center and reserve archive.
    But today, deserted of all but a select few, it served as a makeshift morgue. Kara stared across the room to the stone cadaver, headless and armless, resting atop a wheeled stretcher. It was all that was left of the ancient sculpture found in the north wing. Safia had insisted that it be rescued from the rubble and brought up here, out of harm’s way.
    Two halogen lamps lit the body, and an array of tools rested atop a neighboring library bench, set up like a surgeon’s table with scalpels, clamps, and thumb forceps. There were also various-size hammers and brushes.
    Only the surgeon was missing.
    Safia snapped on a pair of latex gloves. She wore safety glasses and a tightly cinched apron. “Ready?”
    Kara nodded.
    “Let’s crack this old man’s chest,” a young man called with the usual crass enthusiasm of an American. Kara, well familiar with all who worked in her gallery, knew Clay Bishop, a grad student out of North-western University. He fiddled with a digital camcorder resting on a tripod, standing in as the group’s videographer.
    “A little respect, Mr. Bishop,” Safia warned.
    “Sorry,” he said with a crooked grin that belied any true remorse. He was not unhandsome for a gaunt bit of Generation X. He wore jeans, a vintage concert T-shirt depicting the Clash, and Reeboks that might have once been white, but this last was only a rumor. He straightened, stretching, showing a strip of his bare belly, and ran a hand over the stubble of his red hair. The only modicum of studiousness to the grad student was the pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses, uncool enough to be fashionable nowadays. “We’re all set here, Dr. al-Maaz.”
    “Very good.” Safia stepped under the halogen lights, positioning herself beside the spread of tools.
    Kara circled to view from the far side, joining the only other person observing the autopsy: Ryan Fleming, head of security. He must have arrived when she had gone to the loo. He nodded to her, but his stance stiffened at her approach, nervous at her proximity, like most of the museum staff.
    He cleared his throat as Safia took measurements. “I came down here when I heard about the discovery,” he mumbled to Kara.
    “Why might that be?” she asked. “Is there a security concern?”
    “No, it was simple curiosity.” He nodded to the sculpture. “Not every day we find a statue with a heart hidden inside it.”
    That was indeed true, though Kara suspected it was a different matter of the heart that had drawn Fleming down here. His eyes spent more time examining Safia than the strange statue.
    Kara allowed him his puppy-dog crush and turned her attention to the prone sculpture. Beneath the shell of blasted glass, a deeper glow of crimson took up the lamplight.
    A heart, a human heart.
    She leaned closer. While the heart appeared life-size and anatomically correct, it had to have been sculpted from some type of ore since the forensic team’s detectors had picked up its presence. Still, Kara almost expected to see it beat if she waited long enough.
    Safia leaned over the statue with a diamond-tipped tool. She carefully scored the glass, forming a perfect square around the buried heart. “I want to preserve as much as possible.”
    Next she placed a suction-cup device atop the glass square and gripped the handle. “I expect the interface between the glass and the sandstone beneath to be weak.”
    Safia grabbed a rubber mallet and tapped firmly along the inside edge of the glass square. Small