Kat was not to blame. Caution was part and parcel of intelligence work. But fieldwork also required swift and certain action, not hesitation.

Especially in its leader.

Up until now, Gray had been going by the book, staying overly cautious, being the leader that was expected of him. But maybe that was the mistake. Hesitation and second-guessing were not Pierce family traits. Not in the father, not in the son. But where was the line between caution and foolhardiness? Could he ever achieve that that balance? balance?

Success on this mission-and possibly their lives-would depend on it.

Finished with his a.n.a.lysis, Gray leaned back. He had blistered his thumb, and the cabin reeked of methyl alcohol. "It's not pure gold," he concluded.

The others glanced to him. Two were working, two drowsing.

"The fake bone is a mixture of elements across the platinum group," Gray explained. "Whoever crafted this, they mixed a powdery amalgam of various transitional metals and melted it down to gla.s.s. As it cooled, they molded the gla.s.s and roughed up the surfaces to a chalky complexion, making it appear appear like bone." like bone."

Gray began putting away his tools. "It's predominantly composed of gold, but there's also a large percentage of platinum and smaller amounts of iridium and rhodium, even osmium and palladium."

"A regular potpourri," Monk said with a yawn.

"But a potpourri whose exact recipe may be forever unknown," Gray said, frowning at the abused piece of bone. He had preserved three-quarters of the artifact untouched and put the remaining quarter through the battery of tests. "With the m-state powder's stubborn lack of reactivity, I don't think any a.n.a.lyzing equipment could tell you the exact ratio of metals. Even testing alters the ratio in the sample."

"Like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle," Kat said, feet up on the opposite bench, her laptop on her thighs. She tapped as she spoke. "Even the act of looking changes the reality of what's being observed."

"So if it can't be completely tested-" Monk's words were cut off by another jaw-popping yawn.

Gray patted Monk on the shoulder. "We'll be in Rome in another hour. Why don't you catch some sleep in the next room?"

"I'm fine," he said, stifling another yawn.

"That's an order."

Monk stood with a long stretch. "Well, if it's an order..." He rubbed his eyes and headed out the door.

But he paused in the doorway. "You know," he said bleary-eyed, "maybe they had it all wrong. Maybe history misinterpreted the words the Magi's bones the Magi's bones. Rather than referring to the skeleton of those guys, maybe it meant the bones were made made by the Magi. Like it was their property. The Magi's bones." by the Magi. Like it was their property. The Magi's bones."

Everyone stared at him.

Under the combined scrutiny, Monk shrugged and half fell out the door. "h.e.l.l, what do I know? I can hardly think straight." The door closed.

"Your teammate might not be so far off base," Vigor said as silence settled around the cabin.

Rachel stirred. Gray glanced up. Until the recent exchange, Rachel had been leaning against her uncle and had napped for a short while. Gray had watched her breathing from the corner of his eye. In slumber, all hard edges softened in the woman. She seemed much younger.

She stretched one arm in the air. "What do you mean?"

Vigor worked on Monk's laptop. Like Kat, he was connected to the DSL line built into the new train's first-cla.s.s cabins. They were searching for more information. Kat concentrated on the science behind the white gold, while Vigor searched for more history connecting the Magi to this amalgam.

The monsignor's eyes remained on his screen. "Somebody forged those fake bones. Somebody with a skill barely reproducible today. But who did it? And why hide them in the heart of a Catholic cathedral?"

"Could it be someone connected to the Dragon Court?" Rachel asked. "Their group traces back to the Middle Ages."

"Or someone within the Church itself?" Kat said.

"No," Vigor said firmly. "I think there is a third group involved here. A brotherhood that's existed before either group."

"How can you be certain?" Gray asked.

"In 1982, some of the Magi burial cloths were tested. They dated to the second century. Well before the Dragon Court was founded. Before even Queen Helena, mother of Constantine, discovered the bones somewhere in the East."

"And no one tested the bones?"

Vigor glanced to Gray. "The Church forbade it."

"Why?"

"It takes a special papal dispensation to allow bones to be tested, especially relics. And the relics of the Magi would require extraordinary dispensation."

Rachel explained, "The Church doesn't want its most precious treasures to be ruled fake."

Vigor frowned at Rachel. "The Church places much weight on faith. The world certainly could use more of it."

She shrugged, closed her eyes, and settled back down.

"So if not the Church or the Court, who forged the bones?" Gray asked.

"I think your friend Monk was correct. I think an ancient fraternity of mages fabricated them. A group that may predate Christianity, possibly going back to Egyptian times."

"Egyptians?"

Vigor clicked the mouse on his laptop, bringing up a file. "Listen to this. In 1450 B B.C., Pharaoh Tuthmosis III united his best master craftsmen into a thirty-nine-member group called the Great White Brother-hood-named from their study of a mysterious white white powder. The powder was described as forged from gold, but shaped into pyramidal cakes, called 'white bread.' The cakes are depicted at the temple of Karnak as tiny pyramids, sometimes with rays of light radiating out." powder. The powder was described as forged from gold, but shaped into pyramidal cakes, called 'white bread.' The cakes are depicted at the temple of Karnak as tiny pyramids, sometimes with rays of light radiating out."

"What did they do with them?" Gray asked.

"They were prepared only for the pharaohs. To be consumed. Supposedly to increase their powers of perception."

Kat sat straighter, lowering her feet from the opposite bench.

Gray turned to her. "What is it?"

"I've been reading some of the properties of high-spin-state metals. Specifically gold and platinum. Exposure through ingestion can stimulate endocrine systems, creating heightened senses of awareness. Remember the articles on superconductors?"

Gray nodded. High-spin atoms acted as perfect superconductors.

"The U.S. Naval Research Facility has confirmed that communication between brain cells cannot be explained by pure chemical transmission across synapses. Brain cells communicate too quickly. They've concluded that some form of superconductivity is involved, but the mechanism is still under study."

Gray frowned. He had, of course, studied superconductivity in his doctoral program. Leading physicists believed the field would lead to the next major breakthroughs in global technologies, with applications across the board. Also, from his dual degree in biology, he was well familiar with the current theories on thought, memory, and the organic brain. But what did any of this have to do with white gold?

Kat leaned toward her laptop. She tapped up another article. "Here. I did a search for platinum-group metals and their uses. And I found an article about calf and pig brains. A metal a.n.a.lysis of mammalian brains shows that four to five percent of the dry weight is rhodium and iridium." She nodded to the sample on Gray's table. "Rhodium and iridium in their monatomic state."

"And you think these m-state elements might be the source of the brain's superconductivity? Its communication pathway? That the pharaohs' consumption of these powders juiced it up?"

Kat shrugged. "Hard to say. The study of superconductivity is still in its infancy."

"Yet the Egyptians knew about it," Gray scoffed.

"No," Vigor countered. "But perhaps they learned some way of tapping into it by trial and error or by accident. However it came about, this interest and experimentation with these white powders of gold appears throughout history, pa.s.sed from one civilization to the next, growing stronger."

"How far forward can you trace it?"

"Right back to there." Vigor pointed to the artifact on Gray's table.

Gray's interest piqued. "Really?"

Vigor nodded, up for the challenge. "As I said, we start first in Egypt. This white powder went by many names. The 'white bread' I mentioned, but also 'white nourishment' and 'mfkzt.' But its oldest name can be found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead Book of the Dead. The substance is named hundreds of times along with its amazing properties. It is simply called 'what is it.'"

Gray remembered the monsignor stumbling on those same words earlier, when they first turned the powder into gla.s.s.

"But in Hebrew," Vigor went on, "'what is it' translates to Ma Na Ma Na."

"Manna," Kat said.

Vigor nodded. "The Holy Bread of the Israelites. According to the Old Testament, it fell down from the heavens to feed the starving refugees fleeing Egypt, led by Moses." The monsignor let that sink in and fiddled with his gathered files. "While in Egypt, Moses showed such wisdom and skill that he was considered a potential successor to the Egyptian throne. Such esteem would ent.i.tle him to partic.i.p.ate in the deepest level of Egyptian mysticism."

"Are you saying Moses stole the secret to make this powder? The Egyptian white bread?"

"In the Bible, it went by many names. Manna. Holy Bread. Shrew-bread. Bread of Presence. It was so precious that it was stored in the Arc of the Covenant, alongside the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments. All stored in a golden golden box." box."

Gray did not miss the suggestive lift of the monsignor's eyebrow, emphasizing the parallel to the Magi's bones being preserved in a golden reliquary. "It seems a stretch," Gray mumbled. "The name 'manna' might just be a coincidence."

"When was the last time you read the Bible?"

Gray didn't bother answering.

"There are many things that have perplexed historians and theologians in regards to this mysterious manna. The Bible describes how Moses set fire to the golden calf. But rather than melting into a molten slag, the gold burned down to a powder...which Moses then fed fed to the Israelites." to the Israelites."

Gray's brows pinched. Like the pharaoh's white bread.

"Also, who does Moses ask to make this Holy Bread, this manna from heaven? In the Bible, he doesn't ask a baker to prepare it. He asks Bezalel."

Gray waited for an explanation. He was not current on his biblical names.

"Bezalel was the Israelites' goldsmith goldsmith. He was the same person who constructed the Arc of the Covenant. Why ask a goldsmith to bake bread unless it was something other than bread?"

Gray frowned. Could it be true?

"There are also texts from the Jewish Kabbalah that speak directly of a white powder of gold, declaring it magical, but a magic that could be used for good or evil."

"So what became of this knowledge?" Gray asked.

"According to most Jewish sources, it was lost when the Temple of Solomon was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century B B.C."

"Where did it go after that?"

"To find hints of it, we skip forward two centuries, to another famous figure in history, who also spent much of his life in Babylon, studying with scientists and mystics." Vigor paused for emphasis. "Alexander the Great."

Gray sat straighter. "The Macedonian king?"

"Alexander conquered Egypt in 332 B B.C., along with a vast part of the world. The man was always interested in esoteric knowledge. Throughout his conquests, he sent Aristotle scientific gifts from around the world. He also collected a series of Heliopolitan scrolls, concerning Old Egypt's secret knowledge and magic. His successor, Ptolemy I, gathered these into the Library of Alexandria after his death. But one Alexandrian text tells a story about an object called the Paradise Stone. It was said to have mystical properties. When solid, it could surpa.s.s its own weight in gold, yet when crushed into a powder, powder, it weighed less than a feather and could float." it weighed less than a feather and could float."

"Levitation," Kat said, interrupting.

Gray turned to her.

"Such a property of superconducting material is well doc.u.mented. Superconductors will float in strong magnetic fields. Even these m-state powders demonstrate superconducting levitation. In 1984, laboratory tests in both Arizona and Texas showed that rapid cooling of monatomic powders could raise their tested weight fourfold. Yet if heated again, the weight vanished to less than zero."

"What do you mean, less less than zero?" than zero?"

"The pan weighed more without without the substance on it, as if the pan were levitating." the substance on it, as if the pan were levitating."

"The Paradise Stone rediscovered," Vigor declared.

Gray began to sense the truth. A secret knowledge pa.s.sed down through the generations. "Where does the powdery trail lead next?"

"To the time of Christ," Vigor answered. "In the New Testament, there continue to be hints of a mysterious gold. From Revelations, chapter two: 'Blessed be the man who will overcome for he shall be given the hidden manna, the white stone of the purest kind.' Also the Book of Revelations describes the houses of New Jerusalem as being constructed of 'gold so pure as to appear like transparent gla.s.s.'"

Gray remembered Vigor mumbling that verse when the puddle of molten gla.s.s had hardened on the cathedral floor back in Cologne.

"Tell me," Vigor continued, "when does gold ever appear like gla.s.s? It makes no sense unless you consider the possibility of m-state gold...this 'purest of all golds' described in the Bible."

Vigor pointed to the table. "Which brings us back to the biblical Magi. To a tale related by Marco Polo out of Persia. It tells the story of the Magi receiving a gift from the Christ child, and this is probably allegorical, but I think it's important. Christ gave the Magi a dull white stone, a Holy Stone. The story goes that it represented a call to the Magi to remain firm in their faith. During their journey home, the stone burst forth with fire that could not be extinguished, an eternal flame, which often symbolizes higher enlightenment."

Vigor must have noted Gray's confusion. He continued, "In Mesopotamia, where this story arises, the term 'high fire-stone' is called shemanna shemanna. Or shortened to just 'fire-stone'...manna."

Vigor leaned back and crossed his arms.

Gray slowly nodded. "So we've come full circle. Back to the manna and the biblical Magi."

"Back to the age when the bones were crafted," Vigor said with a nod to the table.

"And does it stop there?" Gray asked.

Vigor shook his head. "I need to do more research, but I think it continues beyond this point. I think what I've just described is not isolated rediscoveries of this powder, but an unbroken chain of research conducted by a secret alchemical society that has been purifying this process throughout the ages. I think the mainstream scientific community is only now beginning to discover it anew."

Gray turned to Kat, their scientific web crawler.

"The monsignor is right. There are incredible discoveries being made about these m-state superconductors. From levitation to the possibility of trans-dimensional shifting. But more-practical applications are being explored right now. Cis-platinum and carbono-platinum are already being used to treat testicular and ovarian cancers. I expect Monk, with his forensic training, could go into more detail. But there are even more intriguing discoveries just in the past few years."

Gray motioned her to continue.

"Bristol-Meyers Squibb has reported success with monatomic ruthenium to correct cancer cells. Same with platinum and iridium, according to Platinum Metals Review Platinum Metals Review. These atoms actually make the DNA strand correct itself, rebuilding without drugs or radiation. Iridium has been shown to stimulate the pineal gland and appears to fire up 'junk DNA,' leading to the possibility of increased longevity and reopening aging pathways in the brain."