Seven Wonders by Ben Mezrich

worn it every year to the charity gala, and not just because she liked the way it felt against the hot, naked skin above her spine.
    “I’d certainly make an exception,” Agastine started, but he was interrupted as a short, stocky man with thinning hair the same color as his ill-fitting gray suit sidled up next to one of the Ukrainians, and bowed slightly in Jendari’s direction.
    “Excuse me, monsieur, madames—Ms. Saphra, if I could borrow you for a moment?”
    Jendari felt no small sense of relief to see the stocky man in gray. Agastine, for his part, did not conceal his disgust at the poorly dressed interloper; the tiny metal pin affixed to the lapel of the man’s suit, identifying him as a museum employee, only made the indignity of the interruption that much worse. Agastine gave the man a look, then put an arm around each of his Ukrainian girls’ waists, and steered them toward the ice-buffet at the head of the room. When he was out of earshot, Jendari exhaled, depositing her drink onto the tray of a passing waiter.
    “That’s an image that’s going to make me pray for early onset Alzheimer’s, Mr. Grange.”
    Grange took her by the hand and began leading her through the crowdof tuxedos, toward an unmarked door beneath the dorsal fin of the hanging blue whale.
    “In a moment, I’m going to show you something that will make you forget all about them.”
    Jendari felt the excitement rising as she let the stocky man pull her along, nodding at the guests she recognized as they ploughed forward, thankfully too fast to hear anything but the most cursory congratulations on the fabulousness of the party. She knew it looked strange, her being pulled along like a toddler in a tantrum by the only man in the room who wasn’t wearing a tux. But she had known Henry Grange a very long time, and he wasn’t the type to get this excited unnecessarily.
    He reached the door, flashed a magnetic ID card against the plate by the doorframe, and then led her into an auxiliary hallway. The hallway was gloriously quiet, the noise from the gala swallowed up by the thick carpet beneath Jendari’s red-soled Louboutins and the wood-paneled walls.
    Grange didn’t say a word as he continued to pull her forward. There were very few men Jendari would have let lead her along like this; but she had known Grange more than a decade, and she had never seen him this excited—which meant whatever he was about to show her was certainly going to overshadow the gala in the Hall of Ocean Life.
    Two turns later, a near sprint through a pair of identical corridors, and they went through another locked door into a dimly lit exhibit hall that Jendari immediately recognized. To be fair, it would have been hard to miss the sixty-three-foot-long Indian canoe hanging from the ceiling. The canoe dated back to the nineteenth century, and had been carved from a single cedar tree. Covered in detailed aboriginal artwork, it was perhaps the most famous example of Northwest Coast Indian art, and along with the blue whale, was one of the museum’s most iconic displays. During daytime hours, the room would have been so full of civilians gawking at the intricate woodwork, it would have been impossible to stroll at any pace more than ashuffle through the rectangular hall, let alone at a jog.
    At the moment, Jendari would have happily used the canoe for kindling, if burning the damn thing would have gotten Grange to explain why he was dragging her through the desolate museum on high heels and at full speed in the middle of the night.
    “Just a little farther, Ms. Saphra. I promise it will be worth it.”
    They were at a near sprint again, gliding past the canoe and out through the back of the exhibit, and into the Hall of Human Origins. Jendari felt her interest perk up as they moved past the three skeletons at the front of the hall—representing seven million years of human evolution, from apelike ancestors to modern Homo erectus. Jendari had spent many hundreds