Ice Angel

by Matthew Hart

  Colored squares and lopsided rectangles swarmed over the surfaces. Bold black lines slashed through the strange design. The weird geometry of the shapes gave a mysterious order to the work. Only when my eyes adjusted did I see what was really there. A single map. The entire construction was a giant map of the Barrens.

  It wrapped around three walls. The center panel showed the heart of the diamond field. The enormous swath included the middle part of Lac de Gras, with its huge north-reaching bays, and above them, the Ekati mine. Each diamond pipe was clearly marked, the mine buildings and the airstrip neatly drawn in. On the right side of the central map was the Diavik mine, depicted in the same detail. An X marked the location of the main pit, a massive structure protected by a coffer dam that allowed the mining of a pair of diamond pipes once covered by the lake. The panels on the walls to the left and right extended the mapped area to the west and east.

  The scale of the map was stunning. A great diamond field, a thousand square miles, spread out in amazing detail—every wrinkle in a shoreline, every ridge and esker. And diamond pipes. At least a hundred. When I stepped closer, I saw that each pipe was described in immaculate hand-lettering. Which had diamonds and which had none. The specific minerals that had drawn explorers to each pipe were meticulously recorded: pyrope garnets, chrome diopsides, even microdiamonds—the tiny dots of pure diamond less than three one-hundredths of an inch in diameter, found in only the richest targets.

  “The colored sections are claim blocks?”

  Mitzi nodded. “They’re color-coded by owner and date of exploration. Mostly the owners are the big mines.”

  I leaned in closer and examined some of the largest blocks. The exploration dates printed on them were long in the past. “I thought owners had to perform active work on a claim in order to keep the title.”

  “Normally that’s what you have to do. You stake a claim, and you have to spend a stipulated sum every year to keep title to that claim. But if an owner discovers a deposit big enough to mine, they can apply some of the costs of the mine development on the discovery claims to the title requirements for the rest of the claims. They call it ‘spreading.’ ”

  “And those costs are enough to cover a very large area.”

  “Easily. Just think.” She stepped closer to the map and spread her hand over the Diavik mine. “Build a coffer dam. Then dig the hole—tens of thousands of tons of rock to move.” She tapped her finger on a black shape. “Build a processing mill to get the diamonds out of the ore.” She swept her hand over the whole scene. “And all the construction equipment has to come in by air or on the winter road.”

  “Winter road?”

  “The ice road. For six weeks in the coldest part of winter, the ice is thick enough to support heavy trucks. They plow a road from lake to lake, from Yellowknife to the diamond field.”

  “And all that money the mines spent allowed them to keep title to large areas,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. And once they have the ground for ten years, they can convert the claims to leases. A twenty-one-year lease on two thousand acres costs them two dollars. They have hundreds of square miles tied up for basically pennies. That’s what all that red and blue territory is.”

  “If the mines hold all that ground, where did Jimmy explore?”

  She hesitated. “This is proprietary information. It’s what we own.”

  “Sure, and if the lawyers have anything to do with it, it’s proprietary information that will soon belong to Xi Fan. This is a bad time to clam up on me, Mitzi. The people who tried to kill us will certainly try to kill Jimmy too, if they haven’t killed him already.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I know it and you know it. So help me understand this before somebody comes in here with a court order—or a gun—and takes it.”

  She buried her face in her hands. Her hair fell forward and uncovered the incision on her scalp. The wound looked pitiful in the harsh fluorescent light. But when she took her hands away, her eyes were dry.

  “The small white blocks,” she said. “They’re unstaked.” There were dozens of them. “Most of them are here.” She drew her finger over the central part of the map. “And the rest are over here at the eastern end of the lake.”

  “Why were those claims not already staked by other people or by the mines?”

  “Lots of reasons. When the diamond rush happened in the early 1990s, it was just crazy. It was winter. They were dropping posts into the snow from helicopters. Claim jumpers were coming in and knocking out posts and putting in their own. Even small prospectors got claims. A lot of them didn’t have financing. They couldn’t afford to explore the claims, so they lost title.”

  “And Jimmy staked them for himself?”

  “At first the big companies grabbed the claims as soon as they came open. Sometimes Dad did contract staking for them, flying in and restaking the claims for the mines. But they didn’t always keep the paperwork on the claims up to date, because they had such large blocks already.”

  Or maybe it was Jimmy not keeping things up to date or creating filing errors that he could take advantage of later. Maybe it was Jimmy knocking out the posts.

  “So the claims Jimmy owned, the claims he used to attract the twins—which ones were they?”

  She kept her eyes on the map. “Dad was secretive,” she said. “I don’t know what he showed them to get their investment. He would have given them some good indicator minerals and let them test the minerals independently.”

  “But how would Fan and Mei know what claims they were buying into?”

  “They were buying into Angel Minerals, and the company owned all Jimmy’s property. He defined it all by map coordinates.”

  “And they wouldn’t know exactly what location the minerals came from.”

  She shook her head. “He was always afraid of claim-jumpers. He knew he was onto a major discovery but wanted to keep it secret until he’d explored it thoroughly.”

  “But all these minerals,” I looked around at the samples ranged on the shelves, “you must have helped collect them.”

  “I did. But Dad took the samples and arranged them according to his own system. There are minerals in this room that I collected. I tagged them and marked them according to where I collected them and when. Then I turned them over to him. When he was alone, he’d remove the tags and use his own identifier code.”

  “There must be a key to the code somewhere.”

  “I guess so, but I don’t have it.”

  She was lying. She’d spent her life on those claims, sampling for Jimmy every summer.

  “OK,” I said, “but where were you planning on staking when we went out to look for Jimmy?”

  She frowned. “You mean why did we have staking posts?”

  “Yes.”

  “We never go into the Barrens without posts. There’s still open ground, sometimes unstaked wedges close to the big mines. You never know.”

  I didn’t believe that either, but a knock on the door interrupted us. “Boat coming,” Pete said when Mitzi pulled it open. “It’s Larry. There’s a couple of Chinese guys with him.”

  Her features hardened. “Are you kidding me? Coming out to my home? In the night?” She yanked open a tall cabinet and grabbed a twelve-gauge Remington. She shoved in two slugs and was pumping one into the breech as she limped out the door and headed for the landing stage. I took a few quick snapshots of the map with my phone. I would check later, but I was sure I recognized a section in the middle. Take away the lavish detail and the colored blocks, and it was the same map the killer had in his wallet. I gave it one last look, pocketed three plastic Ziplocs full of garnets, and went outside.

  16

  M oonlight silvered the bay. A big Whaler with twin outboards was etching a dark line across the surface. Four men stood by the wheel in the center of the boat. Mitzi had the shotgun cradled in her right arm and was just handing a pair of binoculars back to Pete. The boat made a swee
ping approach, slowed, and idled in to the landing stage.

  The man at the wheel was the one who’d been waving papers in Mitzi’s face at the plane dock. The beanpole in the good suit was George Wu, the Vancouver lawyer. Beside him was the muscle.

  One was a stocky kid who wore a long-sleeved tee, tight so he could cross his arms and show off the build he’d got at the gym. His traps bulged like shoulder pads. He had a Mohawk, gold earrings, and tattoos that curled into view at his neckline and wrists.

  The other guy was a mountain. Had to be six-four and pushing three-fifty. I made him for the heavy often standing behind Fan and Mei in the photos from the swanky watering holes, keeping his eye on the crowd. He had hands the size of frying pans, and his arms hung out from his body. His shaved head seemed to be placed directly on his shoulders without the inconvenience of a neck. His face was as unreadable as a block of stone.

  “Hey, Larry,” Mitzi said as the engine noise died, “if you step onto my property, I’ll put a slug through your boat.”

  Possible that the big guy didn’t understand English. Not possible he could fail to catch the drift. She had a make-my-day expression, and call it what it was, a face that could deliver it. A suture must have opened when she’d stomped across the deck: the bandage was red, and a trickle of blood ran down the inside of her leg. Twelve-gauge shotgun at her shoulder. Who thinks that’s a bluff?

  Him.

  The mountain looked at Mitzi with icepick eyes, grabbed the coiled stern line, and sprang from the boat. The guy practically floated. Tinkerbell disguised as a nose tackle for the Chicago Bears. He landed on his feet as lightly as a cat and was bending down to tie the line to a cleat when Mitzi put a slug through the decking two inches from his hand.

  The boom of the gun reverberated on the windless bay. A flock of panicked ducks flew up and tore away, their black shapes winging across the silver water. Very slowly, Tinkerbell stood up. He brushed wood chips from his shiny head. The eyes he fastened on Mitzi glittered like chips of coal. Mitzi racked another slug into the chamber. The spent casing flew through the air and rattled onto the landing stage. The barrel of the gun was as steady as a rock. And it wasn’t pointing at the deck.

  “I will kill this man, Larry,” Mitzi said.

  Wu uttered a sharp command in Chinese. The man on the dock didn’t move. He was locked on Mitzi. Not a tremble in his massive body. His face was a mask. Wu barked at him again. He unpeeled his eyes from Mitzi.

  “Jesus Christ, Mitzi,” Larry said when Tinkerbell was back in the boat. “Do you know what’s going to happen to you when I report this to the police?”

  “Why don’t we find out?” she said. “Call them.” I don’t think anyone missed the fact that the safety was still off. “These people tried to kill us.”

  “Mitzi,” Larry started, but Wu put a hand on his arm and shook his head.

  “Ms. Angel, I’m George Wu,” he said smoothly. “I represent your father’s company, Angel Minerals.”

  “News to me,” she said.

  “I understand it must be. I regret we weren’t able to communicate with you earlier.”

  “I think you did communicate.”

  “Ms. Angel,” he said calmly, “I’ve only just arrived in Yellowknife. The reason I came is that my colleague”—he nodded at Larry—“informed me he was having some difficulty enforcing the decisions of my client.” His lips formed the shadow of a smile. “In the circumstances,” he said, “it seemed to me that I should come up right away to secure the interests of the company, and that would include your interests too, as you are an officer of the company.”

  Everyone was watching her. “Come on,” she muttered to me. “You’re the big-time fed. Say something.”

  “What circumstances,” I said to Wu.

  Wu kept his eyes on Mitzi for a beat, then slid his glance to me. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You said that in the circumstances you had to come up. What circumstances?”

  “And what exactly is your involvement here?” he said.

  “Jimmy has only been missing a week,” I said, ignoring his question. “We’re looking for him. What’s the big rush to grab his company?”

  The stocky kid was glaring rivets at me and shifting his weight from foot to foot in agitation. “I’ll show you what the rush is, tough guy,” he snarled, jabbing a thick finger at me. Tinkerbell placed a square foot of hand on the kid’s shoulder to calm him down. The boat was starting to drift out from the dock.

  “Nothing can be more urgent,” Wu said evenly, “than protecting the interests of shareholders when a company’s affairs have become”—he spread his hands—“uncertain. In that regard, I have some papers Miss Angel absolutely needs to see, because they document my right to take immediate control of the company’s property until such time as James Angel is able to exercise that control himself.”

  By now the boat was a yard away and twisting in the current. Wu had to shift position to face us. The kid with the tats was squirming with suppressed rage. Tinkerbell’s face was a blank slab.

  “Refusal to receive and acknowledge these documents,” Wu said, trying not to look ridiculous as the strip of water between the boat and the dock widened, “will constitute a breach of Ms. Angel’s fiduciary duty as an officer of Angel Minerals. The sanction for such misfeasance would be immediate dismissal from office, a substantial financial penalty, and such other punitive measures as the court may deem appropriate.”

  He was running on empty. If he had any right to take over the company, he was still waiting for a judge to agree. Otherwise he wouldn’t be standing here gassing on the bay. He’d be coming out with cops. By this time the boat was so far out Wu realized he was in danger of looking foolish. He made a signal to Larry, and the engines rumbled into life.

  “I’m sorry you choose this path, Ms. Angel,” he said. But it was me he was looking at.

  17

  These are amazing,” Lily said. She already had her loupe out. One of the garnets shone in her tweezers like a drop of frozen blood. She brought it to the lens and rotated it slowly in the daylight.

  I shoved the coffee cups aside and emptied the rest of the Ziploc onto the white balcony table. The cascade of stones rattled onto the painted metal. I sat down and stirred them with my finger. The light rippled through them like liquid. Lily dropped the stone she was looking at the pile and plucked up a darker one.

  “Like a grape,” she said, holding the mineral directly between the sunlight and her lens. “Very purple.” Her face flushed with excitement. She took a deep breath. I could smell her mint toothpaste when she exhaled. When I didn’t reply, she slid a glance at me. “Very unusual, Alex.”

  “Yes.”

  She tightened her lips impatiently and sorted through the garnets with her tweezers, pushing some of the darker, more deeply purple stones to the side. They burned against the white surface.

  “I hate it when you do this. You go monosyllabic. These are not gemstone minerals,” she said in the tone of someone prompting a dull child for an easy answer. “There is only one reason to collect them.”

  “I know what you’re getting at, Lily.”

  “Well then, say it. These are amazing diamond indicators.” She plucked up a stone and let it drop. It plinked onto the table. She tossed the tweezers impatiently into the garnets. She positioned a chair in front of her, stretched out her perfect legs and crossed her ankles on the seat. She clasped her hands demurely in her lap. Lily had unshakeable confidence in her ability to gain an edge in any confrontation with a male by simply letting them see how good-looking she was. Diamond trading is a male business, so it sometimes worked. If it failed, she could switch to yelling. I had seen it happen on the street in Antwerp. In the diamond quarter, the people she was yelling at were Hasidic Jews and Indian diamond traders. I doubted the shouting had much effect, but everyone enjoyed it. With me she took a different tack.

  “You have strong feelings against your father, Alex. It poisons you.” S
he fixed me with a grave expression.

  He poisoned more than me while he was at it, but I didn’t think my scarred psyche was the theme Lily really wanted to develop. I took the tweezers and Lily’s loupe and picked up a garnet.

  “He made one of the greatest mineral discoveries of the modern age,” she said. “It shattered the old diamond cartel.”

  The stone was the color of dark red wine. I rotated it in front of the lens. A deep purple shadow flashed through it. The shadow vanished and then appeared again as I moved the garnet in the light. In the depths of the stone, I saw a flicker of black.

  “Your father invented a new science,” Lily went on. “Diamond indicator minerals. If you found these minerals, you found diamonds. That’s what you always told me.”

  I put the loupe and tweezers on the table. A thermos of coffee was shoved to one side with the coffee cups. I poured a cup, took a hit, sat back, and watched the girl with the flashing blonde hair. She was back in her kayak, windmilling up the lake as she followed a line of yellow markers. A bike path paralleled the shore, and a man was pedaling along it with a stopwatch in his hand, bellowing out the time as she passed each marker.

  I glanced at the heap of stones. “If you’re asking me to say what these garnets mean, the truth is I don’t know. I’m not a mineral chemist.”

  My father was. He discovered a way to help geologists pick diamond exploration targets. Diamonds are formed in the mantle at depths of a hundred miles. They come to the surface in small volcanoes called pipes. The lava they ride up in is called kimberlite, but not all kimberlite has diamonds in it. He figured out that if you found a certain kind of garnet in a pipe, that meant the pipe would contain diamonds.

  I picked up another stone and let it catch the light.

  “These garnets,” I said, “we don’t even know where they came from.”