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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 thatstrange 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 thinkingoutsidethe box as it was throwing everythingintothat 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. “Youdidfigure something out.”
“A hunch at best,” he admitted.
“What?”
“Singapore’s museum may have an extensive collection, but China has itsownnatural 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 studiedwherethis 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 andpromoting 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?”
