No doubt, Guan-yin and Zhuang were similarly armed—though the triad lieutenant had left his saber at the hotel on the other side of the expressway. As an extra precaution, Guan-yin wore a crimson silk niqab that wrapped her head and neck, with a gauzy veil over the lower half of her face, hiding her tattoo and scarring.

  Zhuang shifted closer to Gray. “What do you hope to gain from coming this early? If the Chinese strike, it will surely be after hours, under the cover of night. And we can already see inside the museum via its security cameras.”

  “Cameras are not as good as one’s own eyes.”

  While they had been traveling here, Sigma’s resident tech guru, Jason Carter, had hacked the camera feed, offering them a continual view into the museum. But Gray had not been satisfied. There remained too many blind spots. Before nightfall, he wanted to get a better lay of the land, which was best done on foot.

  Painter had already confirmed that nothing out of the ordinary had happened at the museum so far. Apparently, it remained unmolested.

  Sigma’s director had also delivered a care package to their hotel. It held encrypted sat-phones and e-tablets, radios and throat mikes, but most importantly it contained a quad of IVAS military goggles. The Integrated Augmented Vision System eyewear not only came with the latest night-vision tech, but it allowed the hacked camera feed to appear in the heads-up display inside the goggles.

  Before leaving the hotel, Gray had them all insert radio earpieces and tape throat mikes in place. The devices were nearly invisible unless one looked closely. He wanted the group in constant communication. He split the remainder of their gear into shoulder packs, which they all carried.

  Gray checked his watch and got them all moving more swiftly. “We need to pick up the pace.”

  At noon, they were scheduled for a private tour arranged by Sigma’s contacts at the Smithsonian Institution. It had not been difficult to arrange. Sigma’s headquarters were buried beneath the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall. The site was chosen due to its proximity to both the extensive research labs of the Institution and to the neighboring halls of power in D.C. The location had served the group in the past—and did again now. This tour would allow his team access to the museum’s private spaces, while also bypassing the metal detectors and bag searches at the public entrance.

  Gray continued around to the front of the museum. Its façade changed dramatically. The far corner of the building had been carved away, forming a reef of exposed balconies. They were overgrown with trees, shrubs, and ferns, all cascading down in a fall of leafy vegetation. It was meant to represent the lush cliffs of Singapore’s outer islands. Other gardens also surrounded the museum.

  Seichan joined Gray, allowing Zhuang to drop next to her mother. “Where are we supposed to meet the museum director?”

  He pointed away from the wide steps leading up to the public entrance. “There’s a group entrance around the side. That’s where Professor Kwong should be waiting.”

  They all strode briskly through the midday bustle. Gray continued to watch all around. So did Seichan.

  “You were doing a lot of reading during the flight,” she whispered. “Did any of it offer a clue as to what the Chinese might be searching for here?”

  “No. The museum contains more than a million specimens. But only a fraction is displayed in the museum’s galleries. Everything else is stored in dry and wet labs on the upper floors. Areas that are off limits.”

  This was the other reason Gray had wanted to arrange a behind-the-scenes tour. The museum covered more than ninety thousand square feet, but the public galleries encompassed only a quarter of that space.

  Gray searched up at the towering structure. “Odds are that whatever the Chinese are after is in one of those restricted areas.”

  “That’s still a lot of ground to cover. Didn’t that strange mind of yours narrow anything down for us?”

  “I’m not a miracle worker.”

  Still, Gray knew he had been recruited into Sigma for that strange mind—far more than for his military background with the Army Rangers. While growing up, Gray had always been pulled between opposites. His mother had been a deeply devout Catholic who staunchly challenged Church dogma. His father had been a roughneck oilman who had been disabled in midlife and forced to assume the role of a housewife. Maybe this upbringing made Gray look at things differently, to try to balance extremes. Or maybe it was something genetic, ingrained in his DNA, that allowed him to see patterns that no one else could.

  After a decade with Sigma, he had come to realize his talent wasn’t so much a matter of thinking outside the box as it was throwing everything into that box and shaking it until some semblance of order revealed itself.

  “And you remain entirely baffled?” Seichan challenged him.

  He glanced sidelong at her.

  She studied his face. He tried to keep his features stoic, but she knew him too well. “You did figure something out.”

  “A hunch at best,” he admitted.

  “What?”

  “Singapore’s museum may have an extensive collection, but China has its own natural history museums in Shanghai, Beijing, even Hong Kong. All with similarly vast collections. So why dispatch a team here? What’s so important about this museum?”

  Seichan shrugged.

  “I had Jason cross-reference the various databases of regional museums, looking for items that are unique to this location. And while there are many specimens found nowhere else, nothing struck me as overtly unusual or that could be tied in any way to a wrecked submarine and strange quakes.”

  “So you hit a dead end.”

  “I did—until I studied where this collection originated. The history of the museum itself is more intriguing than its contents.”

  “How so?”

  “Both the founding of Singapore and the founding of this museum tie back to a man named Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. In 1819, he established the port city that would become modern Singapore. But he was also an avid naturalist who loved this region’s flora and fauna, making countless discoveries. To preserve and showcase the biodiversity, he started the Singapore Institution in 1823, which was the first incarnation of the museum here. It was later renamed the Raffles Museum in his honor, then again changed to the National Museum of Singapore in 1965. Even now, it remains the oldest such institute in all of Southeast Asia. Eventually, though, its natural history section—and all its specimens—were moved here to this new location in 2015.”

  Seichan frowned at him. “Why does any of that matter?”

  “History always matters.”

  Her frown deepened. “Get to the point, professor.”

  “Within this building, at the heart of the collection, are legacy artifacts that trace directly to Sir Stamford Raffles, to when he first started the collection, to before he ever set foot in Singapore. His interest in natural history preceded his arrival here, going back to when he was the lieutenant-governor of Java. There, he had been the president of the Batavian Society, a scientific group interested in preserving and promoting the natural history of the East Indies. Some of the artifacts in the museum date back to that time period.”

  “And why’s that important?”

  “It might not be, but while Raffles was lieutenant-governor, the region suffered one of the world’s most devastating tectonic events. The eruption of Mount Tambora. It triggered quakes, swept a series of tsunamis throughout the region, and darkened the skies with an ash cloud that swept around the world.” He looked at her. “Sound familiar? With the apocalyptic predictions made by the geology team at Titan Station, the Chinese could be looking for something preserved from that catastrophic event, something they deem important enough to warrant raiding the museum.”

  Seichan lifted one brow, questioning this line of supposition. “Is that what your strange mind led you to?”

  “Like I said,” he countered with a shrug, “it’s only a hunch.”

  Still, he left unsaid what he truly believed.

  My hunches are seldom wrong.

  1:34 P.M.

  Seichan climbed behind Gray as they followed Professor Darren Kwong, the current head of the museum, up a curving stair to the mezzanine level. The curator was a short Malaysian man with a ready smile and an open manner. He wore a knee-length lab coat over a white shirt and red tie, likely representing the two colors of Singapore’s flag. The man clearly took great pride in his country and this establishment.

  “Now we come to our Heritage Gallery,” Kwong exclaimed with a sweep of his arm toward a section of the museum that looked like a turn-of-the-century library. The gallery was lined by tall wood-and-glass cases full of old books, artifacts, and curiosities. “Here we have on display the museum’s earliest history. Feel free to open some of the cases and drawers. We wanted to make it feel as interactive as possible.”

  Gray did just that, lingering over each glass case as he walked down the row. From their prior talk, Seichan knew this was an area of special interest to Gray. The same could not be said of her.

  Seichan tried not to exhale her impatience as she lagged behind the pair. Their group had spent an hour touring the main floor’s fifteen zones, which hallmarked the region’s biodiversity—from the origin of life through all its branches, stems, and leaves. The span covered millions of years.

  And it had felt like it.

  Her mother and Zhuang remained below, waiting for a light show that would further highlight the three towering sauropod skeletons, whose long necks and skulls rose beyond the mezzanine level. With everyone’s radio earpieces and throat mikes in place, they could stay in communication. Guan-yin and Zhuang also surreptitiously watched the public entrance, keeping alert for any suspicious visitors.

  Gray straightened and faced Kwong. “I see you’ve divided the Heritage Gallery into two sections, covering Sir Stamford Raffles on one side and William Farquhar on the other. The timelines of their contributions and discoveries overlap extensively. Why are they kept separately?”

  Kwong’s smile broadened. “Because otherwise we might be haunted by their ghosts. Sir Raffles and Major-General Farquhar both helped found Singapore and were equally avid naturalists. They competed for discoveries, fought over recognition, and disparaged each other at every turn, sometimes quite heatedly, all the way until their deaths. So, we dared not put them into the same cabinet together.”

  Gray shifted to the cabinet with FARQUHAR stenciled at the top. “How did the two become so embittered? According to his placard, it was Raffles who appointed Farquhar to oversee Singapore after the city was founded?”

  “Ah, you see, Raffles wasn’t happy with the lax manner in which his appointee undertook the assignment. Farquhar failed to follow the instructions that Raffles had left. Under Farquhar’s helm, slave-trading flourished in Singapore, along with the spread of opium and other vices. Friction grew between them, worsening with every passing year. Then Farquhar committed an act so heinous that Raffles abruptly dismissed him from his post.”

  Gray frowned. “What did he do?”

  “Stories vary, but it’s said that their animosity had grown so fierce at the end that Farquhar had sought to dig up some dirt on Sir Raffles, something that would drive his competitor out of the region. Hearsay at the time was that Raffles was harboring some great secret, but no one knew what it was. Rumors abounded of a great treasure or some shameful truth. Farquhar enlisted allies from local criminal elements, mainly among the Chinese who facilitated the opium trade in the city, to root out his secret. When Raffles learned of this ploy, he sacked Farquhar immediately.”

  Gray glanced Seichan’s way with a raised brow, as if scolding her for doubting him. He turned back to Kwong. “Did he ever find out what that secret was?”

  The curator shrugged. “Not that I know of, but Farquhar continued to have good relations with the Chinese, who awarded him a departing gift, a silver cup that cost seven hundred dollars, an exorbitant sum at the time. It was also the Chinese who assisted him with his naturalist efforts, supplying artists who completed nearly five hundred illustrations for him.” Kwong led Gray down the case on that side. “You can see a few here.”

  Gray followed, bending down to study an intricate plate of a brightly colored bird. “If Farquhar had learned Raffles’s secret, then the Chinese would have likely known about it, too.”

  “I would imagine so, but nothing ever came of it.”

  “At least, not yet,” Gray mumbled.

  Kwong glanced his way. “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” Gray straightened. “When did this all take place?”

  “Back in 1823.”

  Gray frowned at the curator. “That’s the same year the museum was founded, when it was called the Singapore Institution.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Who did Raffles assign to take Farquhar’s place? To oversee the city. And his new museum.”

  “A physician, a man named Dr. John Crawfurd.”

  “A physician?”

  “And fellow budding naturalist. Crawfurd had worked under Raffles when he was the lieutenant-governor of Java.”

  Seichan drew closer.

  Gray and his damned hunches . . .

  Gray kept his focus on Kwong. “So Crawfurd was in Java with Raffles when Mount Tambora erupted in 1815.”

  Kwong’s brow pinched in confusion. “I suppose he was. Though I can only imagine what that horrible event must have been like for the two men.”

  Gray glanced at Seichan. “Let’s hope we only have to imagine it.”

  2:09 P.M.

  Gray rose up in the elevator with Seichan and Dr. Kwong. The director tapped a keycard to allow the cage to access the five floors of the museum above the two public ones. They were headed into the working heart of the museum.

  As the elevator climbed, Gray pondered the puzzle in his head. Had Raffles and Crawfurd discovered something during the Tambora eruption, a secret that Farquhar later uncovered and shared with his Chinese conspirators? Clearly whatever it was hadn’t made any sense at the time because Farquhar had never exposed what he had learned. Neither had the Chinese, but they were notoriously detailed recordkeepers. Some account could have been preserved over the passing two centuries. Whatever secret Raffles had kept, he had placed Dr. John Crawfurd, a trusted friend, to act as its steward, hiding it in a museum that would come to bear his name.

  But what was so important that it required such secrecy?

  The elevator door hissed open onto the third floor, and Kwong led them over to a door that also needed a keycard to open. As they stepped through, a sharp tang stung Gray’s nose. Ahead and spreading across the breadth of the museum were shelves upon shelves of glass specimen jars of various sizes.

  Kwong drew them along the rows. “These first two private floors hold our wet collection, both vertebrate and invertebrate species, all suspended in ethanol.”

  Gray now recognized the source of the tang in the air. They passed a researcher wearing a face shield, bent over a table. A coiled, striped snake had been freshly decanted from a bottle next to it. The specimen lay sprawled on a tray. A fume hood hummed over the workstation, but it failed to completely vacuum away the alcohol evaporating off the soaked specimen.

  Kwong drew them to a shelf and stopped before a collection of tiny jars that looked far older than the others. The handwritten labels were faded and peeling. The bottles held a collection of tiny crabs, some no larger than a thumbnail.

  “You showed interest in our museum’s history,” the curator said. “These crustaceans were collected by a Royal Navy ship—the HMS Alert—from a Singapore beach back in 1881. Yet, they look as fresh as the day they were caught.”

  “Impressive.” Gray peered closer, then straightened to face Kwong. “How far back in age does your collection go?”

  “That’s hard to say. In the early days of the museum, specimens were often donated by the public. They came from explorers and adventurers or were sold to the Singapore Institution by locals. Oftentimes with poor provenance. Confounding matters, many of the labels disintegrated long ago.”

  Gray glanced back to Seichan, who trailed them. Her lips were sealed tight with distaste as she looked across the drowned collection.

  Kwong led them onward to the far side where a door opened into a stairwell. They headed up again.

  Gray climbed alongside the director. “In regard to those historical specimens, were any of them contributed by Stamford Raffles?”

  “Of course. We have a few on display in the Heritage Gallery downstairs.”

  “Yes, but none were dated as far back as the museum’s founding in 1823.”

  “Ah, those treasures are kept in a locked vault.”

  “Really? You still have them? I’d love to see them.”

  “We can end the tour there if you’d like. The specimens inside are not of any real scientific importance. We have better examples in the greater collection. They’re simply locked up due to their age. So, I hope you’re not disappointed.”

  Gray nodded.

  Me, too.

  When they reached the next floor, Kwong led them into a sprawling labyrinth of tall metal cabinets, all stacked tightly against one another, forming solid walls. Each cabinet had a steel wheel affixed to its end, which allowed it to be rolled right or left down a track.

  Kwong waved as he passed along them. “This floor houses our dry collection. These compactors allow us to efficiently use the space, to store as many specimens as possible. The cabinets hold thousands of drying shelves where specimens are preserved.”

  He continued past a room where several researchers bustled about, pinning insects to boards. One woman concentrated on delicately pinning and separating the legs of an arachnid the size of Gray’s palm. As they forged on, Kwong elaborated on the drying, freezing, and preservation methods for the specimens. Gray let him drone on, not wanting to press him too hard or risk raising warning bells by being too direct.

  Still, time was running short.