Relic (Pendergast, #1)

Kawakita smiled. It had been so simple.

After Frock and Margo had blundered up to him at the party, his initial skepticism had quickly changed to fascination. He had been on the periphery before, not really paying attention. But practically from the minute he’d hit Riverside Drive that evening—carried along in the stream of countless other hysterical guests who’d rushed from the opening—he began thinking. Then, in the aftermath, he began asking questions. When later he’d heard Frock pronounce the mystery solved, Kawakita’s curiosity had only increased. Perhaps, to be fair, he’d had a little more objective distance than those who’d been inside the Museum that night, fighting the beast in the dark. But whatever the reason, there seemed to be small defects with the solution: little problems, minor contradictions that everyone had missed.

Everyone except Kawakita.

He’d always been a very cautious researcher; cautious, yet full of insatiable curiosity. It had helped him in the past: at Oxford, and in his early days at the Museum. And now, it helped him again. His caution had made him build a keystroke capture routine into the Extrapolator. For security reasons, of course—but also to learn what others might use his program for.

So it was only natural that he’d go back and examine what Frock and Margo had done.

All he’d had to do was press a few keys, and the program reeled off every question Frock and Margo had asked, every bit of data they had entered, and every result they had obtained.

That data had pointed him toward the real solution to the Mbwun mystery. It had been there under their noses the whole time, had they known what questions to ask. Kawakita learned to ask the right questions. And along with the answer came a stunning discovery.

A soft knock sounded at the warehouse door. Kawakita walked down the stairs to the main floor of the warehouse, moving without sound or hesitation through the gloom.

“Who is it?” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

“Tony,” said the voice.

Kawakita effortlessly slid back the iron bar from the door and pulled it open. A figure stepped through.

“It’s dark in here,” the man said. He was small and wiry, and walked with a distinct roll to his shoulders. He looked around nervously.

“Keep the lights off,” said Kawakita sharply. “Follow me.”

They walked to the far end of the warehouse. There, a long table had been set up under dull infrared lamps. The table was covered with drying fibers. At the end of the table was a scale. Kawakita scooped up a small handful of fibers and weighed them, removing several, then dropping a few back on. Then he slid the fibers into a Ziploc bag.

He looked at his visitor expectantly. The man dug his hand into his pants pocket and extended a wad of crumpled bills. Kawakita counted them: five twenties. He nodded and handed over the small bag. The man grabbed it eagerly, and began to tear open the seam.

“Not here!” said Kawakita.

“Sorry,” the man said. He moved toward the door as quickly as the dim light would allow.

“Try larger amounts,” Kawakita suggested. “Steep it in boiling water, that increases the concentration. I think you’ll find the results very gratifying.”

The man nodded. “Gratifying,” he said slowly, as if tasting the word.

“I will have more for you on Tuesday,” Kawakita said.

“Thank you,” the man whispered, and left. Kawakita closed the door and slid the bolt back in place. It had been a long day, and he felt bone tired, but he was looking forward to nightfall, when the sounds of the city would subside and darkness would cover the land. Night was rapidly becoming his favorite time of the day.

Once he reconstructed what Frock and Margo had done with his program, everything else fell into place. All he’d needed was to find one of the fibers. But that proved a difficult task. The Secure Area had been painstakingly cleaned, and the crates had been emptied of their artifacts and burned, along with the packing material. The lab where Margo had done the initial work was now spotless, the plant press destroyed. But nobody had remembered to clean out Margo’s handbag, which was notorious throughout the Anthropology Department for its untidiness. Margo herself had thrown it in the Museum incinerator several days after the disaster, as a precaution. But not before Kawakita had found the fiber he needed.