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While Hagen and Lucas headed for the museum, local police hit Napp’s house and found no one home.

That’s vaguely promising.

Hagen figured the person calling down the end of the world would not do it from his living room. A criminal mastermind would be surrounded by ancient artifacts.

Narcissists did like to do things with a bang.

On the Saturday before Christmas, the doors of the Pittsburgh Museum of Ancient Art were closing early to the public, but a flash of their badges gained Hagen and Lucas entry.

“We’re looking for Dr. Alfie Napp. Where’s his office?” Lucas’s tone brooked no refusal from the security guard on duty.

The guard, a young man of about thirty with close-cropped dark hair, gestured behind him. “Take a right after the ticket office, keep going, and look for a gray door at the end of the Egyptian Art corridor.”

“Sounds easy to miss.” Hagen wanted to tell the security guard to lead them there, but the guard was ushering the last of the patrons through the exit.

“There’s a small plaque with Napp’s name.” The guard waved them on.

Hagen led the way through the empty exhibition halls. The lights had already been turned down so that only small, bright spotlights shined on the pieces in their vitrines. The rest of the halls lay in shadow. The clop of Hagen’s oxfords on the stone floor echoed loudly as he walked.

He never had enough time for museums. His father had preferred vintage car rallies to art exhibitions, and while Hagen had inherited an enthusiasm for vintage vehicles, he was rarely able to indulge his interest in culture and the arts.

No time to get excited about any hobby. Now, as he passed the worn, ancient stonework shipped from half a world away, the glittering Egyptian faience, and the painted coffins, he wondered if Stella would enjoy a weekend browsing these museums.

Maybe one day, when this was all over—if it ever ended—they could come back to the city and take in the sights. Maybe get some tickets to a show. She’d like that.

Though she might like the museum more with the lights on and people in the galleries.

“This place feels like a mausoleum.” Lucas was clearly getting the same vibes as Hagen.

However, even though the space was dark and empty, Hagen felt eyes on him, and it gave him the creeps.

A stone hawk watched without blinking as he crossed the floor. A jackal-headed statue, ten feet tall, looked down on him. Black eyes painted on a sarcophagus seemed to follow him all the way into the passage behind the gallery.

Clear of the Egyptian art, the corridor stretched in both directions and was lined with doors marked Private .

“Napp.” Lucas pointed at the plaque on a gray door .

Hagen knocked once and entered quickly without waiting to be asked.

Dr. Alfie Napp’s office was much more comfortable than Professor Whelan’s bare room at the university. The herringbone parquet floor was polished, and a lamp in the corner had a bronze art deco stand that matched the museum’s architecture and cast a warm orange glow through the room.

Sitting at his desk in front of a cuneiform tablet perched on a Perspex mount, Dr. Napp looked less like a museum curator and more like a man about to head to the gym.

He wore black joggers and a fitted nylon shirt.

Hagen hoped he was in such good shape in ten years, let alone the twenty-plus Napp had on him.

Does he seem like the Administrator?

A magnifying lamp on the desk, shining on the tablet, lit the top of Dr. Napp’s full head of salt-and-pepper hair. His rimless half-moon glasses, the only acquiescence to age, made his eyes appear smaller.

He lifted his chin and lowered his pen onto his notebook to acknowledge the apparent intrusion.

“Agent Yates, is it? How are you?” He shook Hagen’s hand. “And a friend?”

“Colleague. This is Special Agent Lucas Sullivan.”

“What a pleasant surprise. Please.” He stretched a hand toward the chairs in front of the desk.

“How good to see you again, though if you’ve come to take up my invitation to see the collection, this isn’t a great time.

The museum is closed now.” He checked his watch.

“And I’m afraid I have an engagement coming up. Maybe tomorrow?”

An engagement at the gym? Or an engagement with the end of the world?

Hagen took off his coat and settled into the seat. “This won’t take long. ”

Dr. Napp pulled on a single blue nitrile glove. Holding the tablet in place on its mount, he slid the artifact to the side of the desk.

Hagen removed his notebook. He flicked the end of his pen toward the tablet. The clay slab was square, with a curved, cream-colored surface, covered with the lines and dots and triangles that Hagen now found so familiar. Looked like the top edge had chipped off at some point.

“What does that one say?”

“This? You remember the tablets you saw at the Laurel Mount library when we met? I had this one brought over from there to study. It’s little more than a receipt, just like those ones.

That’s what most of these things are. It’s how people like me spend our careers, translating these…

these chicken scratches into lists of grains and barrels of ale.

” Dr. Napp chuckled. He peeled off the glove and waved his bare fingers in front of the inscription.

“A lot of learning and effort to understand this stuff for not much reward.”

He spread the glove on the desk beside his phone. “And once we’ve read these things, we put them on display for visitors to ignore on their way to the Egyptian mummies and Incan gold. And who can blame them?”

Lucas didn’t let Dr. Napp wallow in self-pity. “I’m sure it can’t be all bad. You must work on some interesting documents sometimes, some things that matter.”

“Oh, I do. In fact, I’d say that everything I work on matters.”

“Pretty proud of the work you do, huh?”

Napp lowered his eyebrows at Lucas. If Lucas was aiming for an emotional response from the scholar, he wasn’t getting far.

“It’s not all of note.” Napp seemed modest. “Most of the time, what I, and people like me, discover, decode, and produce is ignored entirely. Sometimes, I think I could translate and publish something absolutely earth-shattering, and no one would even know.” Dr. Napp eased himself back into his seat.

“Earth-shattering? Like end of the world shattering?” Hagen prodded.

Napp’s frown deepened. “End of the world?”

“Murder, mayhem. That kind of thing.”

Lucas and Hagen were falling into a rhythm, one piggybacking on the other. Hagen wondered if that was how Lucas and Journey were effective teammates.

But Napp didn’t seem bothered by their dogpiling questions. “Ah, yes. You’re investigating a murder related to cuneiforms. You and your partner mentioned that the other day.”

Hagen eyed the tablet at the end of the desk. Something like that object, perhaps even that tablet itself, was responsible for the murders they were investigating. And could be responsible for many more to come.

“Looks like it. Someone placed a…some sort of prophecy online. Allegedly a translation of one of these tablets. And he’s been inciting people to commit murder ever since.

He says that sacrifice will redeem people’s souls, both the killers’ and the victims’, and ensure the killers’ survival in the new world to come.

He’s been very effective, this cult leader. You haven’t heard anything about it?”

Dr. Napp’s eyes widened. “Not at all. Prophecies aren’t unusual on objects like these, though they’re not very common. I haven’t heard of anything new. And certainly nothing that could do something like you’re describing. That sounds terrible.”

“So there’s been no talk among other curators? Professors? Experts? No one has been discussing some new horoscope that members of the public are taking seriously? ”

“No, no. Nothing at all. Are you sure the translation is real? Perhaps someone’s just making it all up.”

Hagen wondered if Napp was being intentionally evasive. He tapped his pen against his notebook. He had to think, to find a way in. Dr. Napp was showing no sign of nervousness. If he was worried about talking to the FBI just hours before his big moment, he was hiding it well.

He increased the pressure. “Yeah, maybe the whole thing’s fake.

You could be right. But it doesn’t look fake, and even a fraud would need some kind of knowledge base to be persuasive enough to convince the masses of some prophecy.

Personally, I’d barely heard of those things,” he jabbed his pen in the direction of the tablet, “before these cases started.”

Dr. Napp chuckled quietly. “Oh, I wouldn’t feel bad, Agent Yates. Plenty of people are unfamiliar with cuneiform, even though it was the earliest form of writing and people really should know about it.”

“But if few people do know about this stuff, an expert would be the likeliest culprit. You don’t agree?” Lucas leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees, a subtle tactic used to crowd an interrogation subject.

Dr. Napp removed his glasses. He rubbed both eyes with one hand. When he dropped his hand, he looked like an old owl wondering whether to bother hunting a mouse that night. Some prey was so small, it was barely worth eating.

“I’m afraid without seeing this translation, I really couldn’t tell.” Dr. Napp shoved his glasses back on and looked at his watch again.

Hagen noticed the timepiece was expensive, a Patek Philippe.

“Now, it is getting late. And as I said, I do have an appointment this evening. Perhaps we could carry on…tomorrow? ”

“Do you think there’ll be a tomorrow?” Lucas tilted his head, curious.

Napp held the other agent’s gaze a moment. “We never know, do we?”

Hagen remained leaned back in his seat. He could be the good cop. The unhurried cop. “In that case, we won’t keep you much longer. Almost done. Where are you going, by the way?”

“Where am I going? I…have a dinner. With some colleagues.”

“You seem a bit underdressed.”