Someone knocked on the door twice. “Baby? It’s me. Open up.”
“On my way.”
At first the security locks and latches defeated Erin.
Then she got the sequence correct and opened the door. Her father stood in the hallway, as tall and handsome as ever, dressed in the charcoal business suit, white shirt, and silk tie that was the male uniform in the world of business and diplomacy.
“I wouldn’t mind a hug if you wouldn’t,” Windsor said, his mouth smiling and his eyes very serious.
There was no hesitation before Erin stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her father. He closed his eyes and hugged her in return, lifting her off her feet with the embrace.
“Hugs don’t bother you anymore, do they?” he asked very softly.
For an instant, she looked surprised. Then she realized it was true. She no longer panicked at being held by a powerful man.
“I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right.”
“That’s why you’re leaving the arctic, isn’t it? You’re finally over that schleimscheiber Hans. Thank God, baby.”
Before she could say anything, Windsor released her and stepped back. A woman moved from the shadows, where she had been waiting patiently.
“Hello, Erin Shane Windsor. I’m Nan Faulkner.”
Startled, Erin took the blunt, broad hand that was being held out to her. The fingers were as firm as they were dark. Like the woman herself, the handshake was no-nonsense, controlled, and short. The business suit she wore had a narrow skirt and was a darker shade of gray than Windsor’s. She didn’t wear a tie. She was a solid presence, buxom and broad without being fat. A thin black cigarillo smoked in her left hand. The same hand held a black box with a single gauge on the surface and a wand plugged into the side.
Windsor was the last one through the door. He secured the various locks without a fumble.
Faulkner took one look at the stones shimmering on the table and said, “Holy Christ.”
In a controlled rush, she went to the table. She threw her smoking cigarillo in Erin’s half-empty coffee cup, swept open the curtains to take advantage of the falling light, and switched on the black box. In rapid succession she touched the tip of the wand to stone after stone, beginning with the smallest and working her way up to the biggest.
“Jesus,” she muttered as stone after stone registered in the diamond range of thermal resistance. Then she touched the green stone. It, too, registered in the diamond range. “Sweet. Jesus. Christ.”
After she touched every stone, Faulkner shut off the machine and pulled a loupe from her coat pocket. She scanned each stone before she turned to Windsor.
“All but one of the white ones are of the first water, D, O+, River, Finest White, Blanc Exceptionnel, call it what you will,” she said. “They are the most pluperfect bastards I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing.”
“Shit,” Windsor muttered.
“The colors might be irradiated,” Faulkner continued, “but I doubt it. Radiation is too easy to pick up on. It’s used to cover flaws or off-colors, but these babies don’t have any problems worth mentioning, much less trying to hide. I’m a betting woman, and I’m betting these are high-ticket fancies.”
Windsor said something savage beneath his breath. Then, “How bad is it?”
“Couldn’t be worse. Next to these colored stones, hen’s teeth are as common as sand in the Sahara.”
“I don’t understand,” Erin said.
Faulkner set aside all the diamonds except the green one. “Take an average diamond mine. Only twenty percent of what’s found is gem-quality goods. Less than one percent of the gem-quality stones will be over one carat after they’ve been cut and polished. In other words, less than two-tenths of one percent of a diamond mine’s entire output ends up bigger than a carat of gem goods. Of those, only a goddam small percentage of that is D flawless.”
Erin blinked and looked at the diamonds. They were a lot bigger than a carat.
“I’m too old to be a top color sorter any more,” Faulkner continued, “but I’d bet my firstborn that all but one of those whites is a D. D or not, the bastards will be flawless when they’re cut. Rare diamonds. Very, very goddamn rare.”
Windsor grunted.
“Yeah,” Faulkner said. “But that’s not the worst of it. When it comes to fancies, you have to invent another word for rare. That’s what makes this pile of stones so dangerous. If they were just big and flawless, ConMin would still be able to beat you into line with Namibia’s stones. But Namibia has nothing like these. Nobody does. That green is absolutely singular.”
After a moment of silence, Faulkner turned away from the beautiful, dangerous stones and looked at Windsor. “We should have brought a couple of marines. This is worse than anybody thought. And,” she smiled coldly, “better, too. I’ve waited a long, long time to get van Luik where the hair is short.”
“Are you the agency’s resident diamond expert?” Erin asked.
Faulkner hesitated, then shrugged. “Matt says you can be trusted. I hope he’s right. At the moment I’m a government consultant to the biggest American jewelry trade association. The job requires that I work with a company that can’t operate directly in America because monopolies are illegal here.”
Erin felt the floor shift beneath her feet as she was drawn back into the forest of mirrors that was international power politics. Her father’s world.
Seven years ago that world had nearly destroyed her.
“Have you had them certified?” Faulkner asked, gesturing to the diamonds.
Erin shook her head. “Dad said to stay put. I did.”
Faulkner smiled at Windsor. “You were right.”
“Now that we’ve established that I’m a good little girl,” Erin said coolly, “tell me why it matters.”
“The diamond world is wired together like a power grid,” Faulkner said. “You walk into the GIA out in Santa Monica or into some little appraiser’s office down on Hill Street with these stones and you’d generate a surge that would register in London and Antwerp in a matter of hours. ConMin uses computers to keep track of every important piece of rough in the world, even the ones they don’t own themselves. And believe me, these are important pieces of rough.”
“I’m getting that message. Why does the agency care?”
Faulkner’s eyes narrowed. “Diamonds are a big cash item in the economies of a dozen nations around the world. You’d be surprised what countries will do for American dollars or Japanese yen, especially countries whose ideologies are based on Karl Marx rather than Adam Smith. When my predecessor left, he told me the world revolves on a diamond pivot. It’s not always true, but it’s true often enough to put the fear of God into a heathen like me.”
“That’s why I want you to let me handle it for you, baby,” Windsor said. “I don’t want you hurt again.”
Erin looked at her father. For the first time she noticed the lines in his face, the heavy splash of silver in his formerly dark hair, and the circles beneath his eyes. He looked tired and uncomfortable, as though caught between his impulses as a father and his duty as a sworn officer of an intelligence service.
“Did the diamonds come with a note or a map,” Windsor asked, “or a claim register or a bill of sale, anything to indicate their origin?”
“Everything came in an old tin box that had no markings,” Erin said.
“Delivered by this Blackburn?” Faulkner asked.
Erin nodded. “He told me to have the diamonds appraised by someone not connected to ConMin.” She glanced at Nan Faulkner. “I’m not sure you meet those requirements exactly, but at least I know your first allegiance isn’t to the diamond cartel.”
“Did Blackburn tell you anything else about the diamonds?” Windsor asked.
“Only that they’d belonged to Abe and that two people had died to see that I got my legacy. He told me that I would die, too, if I wasn’t very careful. Then he told me to call you.”
; “I owe him a big favor,” Windsor said. “So do you. He probably saved your life. Let me handle your legacy for you.”
“I couldn’t, even if I wanted to, which I don’t.”
“Why?” Faulkner asked.
“The terms of the will require that I live on the station for five years to gain final title, or until the mine is found, whichever comes first.”
“No amount of money is worth getting killed for,” Windsor said.
“It isn’t the money,” Erin said. “In fact, there’s no guarantee I’ll find a single diamond. Apparently Abe was the only one who knew where the diamond mine was, and he didn’t talk before he died. He didn’t leave a map, either.”
Windsor refused to be drawn away from his main point. “If you’re not after money, why are you going to Australia?”
“It’s a whole new continent,” she said simply. “A whole new world. I want to smell it, taste it, see it, photograph it, live it.”
“That’s the point, baby. You could die there instead of living.”
“I was told the same thing about the arctic.” She tried to avoid a shouting match by changing the subject. “Do you know much about Abelard Windsor?”
Her father shook his head. “Dad never mentioned him.”
“His own brother?”
“Things happen, Erin. Things that tear families apart.”
Things like Hans Schmidt, foreign agent.
But neither father nor daughter spoke the thought aloud.
Erin got up, took the tin box from her oversize purse, and pulled out the sheaf of papers. “Until I knew the stones were real, I didn’t know if the whole inheritance was an elaborate hoax. Frankly, after reading ‘Chunder from Down Under,’ I thought Great-uncle Abe might have concocted the whole thing in some Australian psycho ward. Here. Read this. Clues to finding the mine are supposed to be in it.”
For several minutes the only sound in the room was that of dried, rough paper rustling as Windsor scanned a sheet rapidly, then passed it to Faulkner. He glanced up after the fifth sheet.
“Is it all the same?” he asked.
“Different words,” Erin said, “but the same.”
He grunted, shuffled through the remaining pages, then took the first page from Faulkner again.
“It doesn’t improve with rereading,” Erin said dryly. “I’ve read it and read it and read it, using all the tricks and tools I learned as an English major at the university.”
“And?” Windsor asked.
“I didn’t find any meanings but the obvious one. The hero eats raw croc liver, drinks, talks about black swans, drinks, pees, drinks, apparently screws everything that moves and some things that don’t, eats more raw croc, pees. And he drinks. Did I mention that?”
“It could be a code or cipher of some type,” Faulkner said. “Would you mind if we copied it and sent it to Washington for analysis?”
“An Australian might be more helpful than a code expert,” Erin said. “Do you know what ‘chunder’ is? Poetic thunder, maybe?”
“Never heard of it,” Windsor said. “My parents might have been Australian, but they never talked about their life before America.”
“That’s kind of odd, isn’t it?” Erin asked.
Windsor shrugged. “Runs in the family, like chasing after a diamond mine that might not exist but could kill you anyway.”
The daughter’s shrug was an exact match of the father’s.
“Shit, baby. Why are you really doing this? What does Australia have that you don’t have here? A crazy old man’s mythical diamond mine? Is that what you want from life?”
“It’s not a bad start,” she retorted. Then she sighed and tried to put into words something she’d sensed about herself but never pinned down. “After Arctic Odyssey, there just hasn’t been another project I wanted to do. I found some peace in the arctic, but I don’t believe anymore that it’s my future. Maybe Australia is. Maybe it isn’t. I won’t know until I go there.”
“What about here in America?”
“I don’t think I’d see you any less if I live in Australia than I’ve seen you while I was living off and on in the arctic.”
“Baby—”
“That’s just it,” Erin interrupted calmly. “I’m not a baby. I’ve been making my own decisions for seven years.”
Windsor closed his eyes for an instant, then opened them again, focusing on his daughter, the image of the woman he’d loved and lost when a drunk driver failed to hold his lane at ninety miles an hour.
“It’s all yours, Nan,” he said finally. “I told you she wouldn’t turn it over to me.”
Windsor went to stand by the window, his back to the room, clearly separating himself from whatever happened next.
“I have a child myself,” Faulkner said, lighting up a thin cigarillo. “If he were in this kind of fix, I’d be standing by the window and letting your father explain the facts of life. A good man, your father. But he’s personally involved, so he’s not calling the shots for the agency on this one. I am.”
Motionless, Erin waited while Faulkner drew on her cigarillo and blew out a streamer of smoke.
“Let’s build a couple of scenarios,” Faulkner said. “If we assume Abe was simply crazy and had nothing more on his station than cow shit and flies, there’s no problem. You go to Australia, and then you stay there or come home. No big deal. Right?”
Erin nodded.
“A pretty scenario,” Faulkner said, staring out the window. “It would be nice if it was true. But I’ve got a gut certainty it isn’t.”
“Why? Just because you and my father have chosen to live in a world of conspiracies and betrayals and lies doesn’t mean that my world has to be that way.”
“Until you became Abe’s heir, you had the choice,” Faulkner said calmly. “Now you don’t. Consider this scenario. Maybe the diamonds are real but not from Australia. Maybe they were stolen from Namibia by dissidents who used them to purchase arms.”
“Then how did Abe get them?”
“Does it matter? The normal route for submarine goods—smuggled diamonds—is to European or American cutting centers via Egypt. Maybe some of Abe’s old prospector buddies were smugglers. Maybe they preyed on the smugglers or knew those who did. Maybe Abe was a smuggler himself. What do you think, Matt?”
“I hope to hell he was, because it would mean there’s not much danger for Erin in Australia. Smugglers certainly wouldn’t approach her to buy or sell or hold their goods. Smuggled goods would also answer the question of why Erin was warned off ConMin. ConMin, after all, would be the legal owners of those diamonds.”
Erin didn’t like what she was hearing, but there was a logic to it that she was too intelligent to dismiss.
“But that scenario still leaves open the question of Abe’s ‘jewel box,’” Windsor continued. “Was it simply a cache for stolen Namibian gems? If so, then Erin is in some danger if she goes to Australia, because other people—smugglers—will know about the cache.”
“Your father’s right,” Faulkner said, turning back to Erin. “The danger to you could be finessed if Abe was just a smuggler, a channel. You could go to Australia with a cadre of expert bodyguards and stage a determined, very public search of the station premises. You wouldn’t find jack. You’d leave to take photographs of the outback and then fade from the picture. Nobody would ever bother you again.”
A long plume of smoke rose from Faulkner’s full, beautiful lips.
“Here’s another scenario,” Faulkner said. “Assume Abe was crazy like a fox. Assume he really had God’s own diamond mine hidden somewhere on his station. A mine that could yield tens or even hundreds of pounds of diamonds like that handful on the table.”
Faulkner watched Erin’s instant disbelief followed by speculation and then by unhappy realization.
“That’s right,” Faulkner said, nodding. “You’re talking about the kind of money that goes beyond wealth to become power. Raw political power. The kind of power that people,
corporations, and nations kill for.”
“I don’t want that,” Erin said instantly.
“What you want and what you get ain’t the same thing,” Faulkner said sardonically. “Scenario number four. Do you have any idea how many new gem-quality diamond mines have come into production in the past fifty years?”
“No.”
“I do,” Faulkner said. “I did a survey that’s locked in a vault in Virginia right now. New mines have entered production in the Soviet Union, in Australia, and in a few African republics that can be brought to heel by the cartel. The Soviets had to invent some polite ideological fictions, but they fell right into bed with ConMin because ConMin controlled the world outlet for their stones. Australia did the same. But only a handful of mines have been discovered, maybe a new one every decade.”
“Not surprising,” Erin said. “Diamonds are rare.”
“That’s what ConMin tells us every chance it gets,” Faulkner retorted. “The diamond cartel has hundreds of geologists exploring all over the world. They’re the cream of the diamond geologists, the expert elite. They have never—repeat, never—found a diamond mine. Not once. The only new mines in the last fifty years were found by prospectors who didn’t get paid by ConMin, prospectors who were working over ground that ConMin geologists had already thoroughly explored. Does that suggest anything to you?”
“Either ConMin’s geologists are very bad, ConMin’s luck is incredibly bad, or ConMin doesn’t want to find new mines,” Erin said.
“Fast, brief, and right on target. Too bad you hate your daddy’s profession,” Faulkner said. “I could use you, but only if you use your damned brain. Think about anonymous diamonds and warnings, ConMin, and Crazy Abe’s jewel box. The diamond cartel has its hand in any new mine, anywhere in the world, that’s capable of producing significant amounts of gem-quality rough diamonds. That monopoly has political as well as economic ramifications.”
“The diamond pivot again?” Erin muttered, not wanting to believe, but finding less and less justification for doubt.
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