Skimming wasn’t the only thing I was looking for. I was still bugged by the way Eduardo had dropped the news that there was an offer to buy. The identity of the buyers was vague. And the part about having to make an immediate decision was hardly the way the sale of a mine was done, even in a war zone. Not to mention that no one would make an offer on the mine if they hadn’t come here and examined it thoroughly. And had it re-examined during the escrow.
The thought occurred to me that Eduardo could be in on the sale, a silent partner, maybe even deliberately keeping production down in order to drive the selling price of the mine down.
As I was going through the books, I started looking for inconsistencies, something that would tell me that more diamonds were being taken out than were being accounted for. I checked the tonnage of ground dug up and processed compared to the number of carats month after month, but it remained reasonably consistent. I went over the quantity and quality of stones reported from the sorting room and compared them to what was sold to wholesalers, but again there was little inconsistency.
I decided to check the books for prior years to see if there was a pattern.
“Give me the accounting summaries for the past ten years,” I told the bookkeeper.
“There aren’t any.”
“Why not?”
“Senhor, the mine has only been open for two years!”
Now why hadn’t I thought of that? Be just as dumb as you can, Win, I told myself, sticking my head back in the accounts.
I spent all morning re-examining the books, looking for some inconsistency that would reach out and poke me in the eye, but nothing took a shot at me. I had to be missing something.
Finally, I concluded he wasn’t cooking the books. The real tip-off for that conclusion was not my inadequate accounting knowledge, but the way the bookkeeper reacted to my request to see the books. She was surprised, even irritated, but not fearful. And Eduardo came by once to say hello during my examination and wasn’t sweating it, either.
He had to be stealing the diamonds before they were accounted for. And Cross had a part in it.
When I was finished, Eduardo asked me into his office.
“Are you satisfied with your examination of the records?”
“Yes, everything appears to be in order.”
“Good, good. Now that you’ve confirmed again the mine’s poor financial condition, I must encourage you to accept the offer to sell. I received it by telephone this morning. Regretfully, I must also inform you of my own plans to leave your employ. My wife and children are anxious for me to return to our house in Luanda.”
“I’m sorry to hear you’re leaving. That, of course, would have some effect on my consideration of the offer. What exactly am I being offered?”
“Basically, it is a cash payment to you of five hundred thousand American dollars. Naturally, half of any sale proceeds would go to UNITA.”
“Who’s making the offer?”
“A South African corporation. I understand it is only recently formed, a partnership of several wealthy businessmen with experience in diamond mining. Since the offer is for cash, they do not see fit to provide further information about themselves.”
“Frankly, Eduardo, the quarter million I’d net out after giving half to the rebels wouldn’t pay my liquor bills. And that doesn’t mean the government in Luanda won’t grab the rest as I try to board a plane. What do you get out of the deal?”
“Nothing, of course; you own the mine, and I will be leaving anyway. The amount on the paper is just their public offer. Arrangements could be made for a direct deposit into a Swiss bank account of half a million dollars, in your name alone. Conversely, on paper, the UNITA would see that you are only getting half that amount, thus you would owe them only one hundred twenty-five thousand. I shouldn’t say this, but I suspect the new owners could be induced to pay the fee to Savimbi’s people, letting you net out the full half million.”
I pretended to think about it while I tried to sort out how many layers of deceit I was facing. For a guy who wasn’t getting anything out of the deal, Eduardo not only knew a hell of a lot, but had all the angles covered—right down to upping the ante.
My bullshit detector was wailing like an air-raid siren. The guy was too eager to see me walk away with money in my pockets, even if it was chump change compared to what I used to have. And he didn’t even ask for a bonus for working up the deal. He was doing it out of the sweetness in his heart.
I didn’t like it.
Eduardo had a connection to the offer, something that was going on under the table. The threat to quit was to pressure me into selling. I didn’t need any pressure, but I needed a hell of a lot more money than clearing out a few hundred thousand. For a mine I had over five million invested in.
“Let me think about it.”
“The buyers need—”
“Christ, I need some time, Eduardo, I just got here. I’m not kicking the offer out of bed, I just want to let it mull around my mind a bit, maybe talk to my lawyer and accountant. Just tell the buyers I’m giving it some thought. The mine’s not going anywhere.”
29
I decided to check out the mine on my own—without Eduardo hand-feeding me what he wanted me to see. I wanted to learn every detail of the operation. I might soon be running the mine by myself. It wasn’t something I could do in a few hours, but a diamond mine didn’t take a rocket scientist to supervise, either, especially when I would only do it until I could find another manager or get a legitimate offer to buy.
The most complicated thing about a diamond mine was to not do something stupid and flood it, cause a cave-in—or, most commonly, get caught without spare parts and a mechanic for a piece of critical machinery that closed down the whole mine when it went out, like the elevator, conveyor belts, and crusher.
Unlike a coal mine, there was little risk of explosion at the Blue Lady, nor were there the miles of tunnels that are often found in other types of mines. Geological studies and test bores gave clues to where diamonds and dangerous sources of underground water might be found and determined the direction tunneling took. If I could keep the machinery running, the workers on the job, and cash coming in from sale of the production, I could keep the mine afloat until lightning struck. Or so I hoped.
I needed to learn enough basics about the operation, and names, faces, and functions of key personnel, so that if Eduardo walked out, I could keep the mine going until I found a replacement. Most of the time, the guy who oiled the gears of the conveyor belts and elevator, or knew how to keep them going with a wrench and a kick, was more important to the daily operation than the mine manager, who spent 99 percent of his time in his office on the phone or shuffling paper. Or humping the bookkeeper.
I took the elevator cage down to the operations level and grabbed the duty foreman.
“Let’s take a walk, I want to learn the operation.”
His Portuguese was limited, but he got the idea. With a little Portuguese, a few local expressions I’d picked up, and a lot of hand signals, we were able to communicate as I asked him about everything I saw.
Before the crusher, I spotted a small rough and rubbed it between my fingers, feeling the soapy film that would cause it to stick to grease down the production line.
Four hours later, after getting the general idea on how the explosives are handled, learning how to set the crusher, close flood doors, lay a rail track, replace an elevator cable, and a hundred other nitty-gritty procedures, I got to the grease table. Along the way, I showed a mechanic how to diagnose a problem with the gas engine of a small tractor that pulled train cars. A gas or diesel engine was something I understood better than anyone at the mine. The only thing I knew better than an engine was a woman’s working parts.
As I watched the grease-table worker put the grease-and-diamonds concoction into the sieved baskets, he carefully removed a stone about two carats in size and offered it to me. I smiled and thanked him. Then I practiced removing the grease-an
d-diamonds muck and greasing the table, to make sure I knew exactly how it was done.
He knew less Portuguese than the foreman, but between the two, I got across the question of how often the grease-table worker put aside stones for Eduardo as he had just done for me.
“He says a few stones a week, perhaps, that’s all,” the foreman said. The foreman wasn’t stupid. But he was honest. He kept a blank face when he confirmed my suspicion that the grease table was where Eduardo was skimming the diamonds. I told the foreman I would add a bonus onto this week’s pay for each of them—if our discussion stayed under a hat.
I did some quick calculations on the stones I had seen in Eduardo’s office, from what I was just told by the grease-table worker, and how much the fat man who buys diamonds pays for them. I figured Eduardo was pocketing maybe a couple thousand a week in diamonds. Not an insignificant amount, nor was it petty cash in Angola. But considering that half the mine’s reported output ended up in the pocket of the government or the warlords, had the money gone back into the mine’s production it wouldn’t have amounted to a hell of a lot.
There was no way that Eduardo’s grease-table skimming was changing the financial picture of the mine.
I wondered if the South African offer was nothing more than a blood-diamond laundering scheme like João had in mind—blood diamonds for weapons. That was a good possibility. It was a losing mine and could be bought at a cheap price.
But as I went to the sorting room to check out the operation of weighing and grading the stones, a thought nagged at me.
The mine is worth every dollar Bernie paid for it.
Bernie had his faults, but he wasn’t a fool, even though he acted like one sometimes. Hey, Bernie, put everything you have into a blood-diamond mine in a war zone halfway around the world! Throw in the kid’s inheritance, too!
In New York, when I was stunned by the fact I was broke, I bought into that scenario. But after talking to João in Lisbon, seeing the mine, and thinking about Bernie, it didn’t ring true.
I said it aloud to hear what it sounded like: “Bernie was no fool.”
Bernie knew my father didn’t trust João. He wouldn’t have jumped into bed with him. Not on a whim. Yeah, big profits in blood diamonds and owning a diamond mine was the right kind of pizzazz for Bernie. But Bernie was no fool. Hell, Bernie ran the business for over ten years after my father died. He was no ball of fire, but he kept it running—without driving it into the ground until this Angolan deal raised its ugly head.
I had to accept the premise that Bernie was too conservative to risk everything in a diamond-laundering scheme with João. The only way that Bernie would have risked so much was if he thought it was a sure thing. I could see how it probably came down. He would have been attracted to a blood-diamond deal with João. It was quick profits, a big return on investment, and an element of criminal conspiracy that Bernie would have enjoyed.
Bernie wasn’t my dad, he wasn’t as smart in making deals or as personable in selling himself. Bernie had an Achilles heel—his ego. But he also had a sharp eye for the diamond business. What he lacked in innate intelligence he made up for in osmosis—the diamond business was in his blood since he’d spent a lifetime in it. Until the mine deal, he hadn’t just maintained my trust fund, he increased it each year despite my high rate of spending. I’d been so angry at him after finding out I was broke, I hadn’t given him the credit he deserved.
The blood-diamond deal from João would have been too risky for Bernie to have gambled everything on. Mulling it over, I couldn’t see Bernie risking the whole nine yards without a backup plan. He must have thought he had a fallback position. But it failed.
What the hell did Bernie, Eduardo, and the South African syndicate know about the mine that I didn’t know—and I was sure João didn’t know, either?
And what happened to turn the deal so sour that Bernie did the big Dutch? Or did he have help out that window?
Another intuitive flash hit me.
Bernie must have known something about the mine that made him risk big money on it. That had to be it. Bernie was too smart to have bought into a business hemorrhaging red ink without a backup plan.
There was one more thought that nagged me. I wondered where Simone was during the negotiations with Bernie. Bernie wasn’t stupid when it came to money, but how was he when it came to women?
If there was anyone in the world who could talk a dog like Bernie off a meat wagon, it was Simone.
Simone. Bernie. Blood diamonds. The Blue Lady.
It gave me a headache.
I went to my room and drowned myself in a bottle of vinho verde.
30
The following morning, as I was deciding what to do about the mine bleeding red ink, I received a visit from the devil.
I hadn’t finished my learning process so I went into the mine with the incoming day shift. Few of the miners spoke much Portuguese, but I latched onto the same foreman from yesterday who could communicate well. I had deliberately avoided Cross and Eduardo the prior evening, taking dinner alone in my room—and drinking most of it.
“Have you worked other mines?” I asked the foreman.
He shrugged. “A few.”
“Anything different about this one?”
“Maybe some have better equipment, some have worse, some hit blue earth, some yellow, some just plain brown and no diamonds. This mine is about the same as most, not rich, not poor.”
“We have to hit a kimberlite pipe for it to be rich, correct?”
“Very much so. We hit blue dirt, everyone happy.”
He meant both the owner and the miners because the miners got a bonus when the haul exceeded certain limits.
“Has the mine ever hit blue dirt?” It was a shot in the dark.
He shook his head. “No blue, just the yellow. But there are diamonds in the yellow. Only not rich like the blue. But we will hit the blue dirt someday, eh senhor? That’s why we call her the Blue Lady. A lady isn’t a puta.”
“I hope she lives up to her name.”
I made him show me everything again, twice over. I knew from car and boat engines that if the gods willed it, it wouldn’t be the big motor part that was going to cost the race when it blew—it would be the one-inch rubber hose or the paper-thin gasket that would go south.
“I want to see all spare parts, too,” I told the man who handled the inventory of parts and equipment. The backup inventory was slim, not only because of the mine’s finances but the difficulties involved in importing equipment. About half the time shipments disappeared between the plane’s belly and the customs warehouse.
“We often buy back from thieves the parts that get shipped to us,” the parts man told me. “And then there are the taxes. The government collects one tax, the rebels collect another. If the equipment has to be hauled overland by truck, there are many tolls to be paid, also.”
Bartering with other mines for parts was also part of the game. It wasn’t an organized process. I soon learned that despite my arrogance, I had a lot to learn. Yeah, I knew more about repairing the engines used to run mine equipment than Eduardo did. But I was completely ignorant regarding how to get a replacement belt for a generator, when you couldn’t call the local parts store and have it sent over.
There were mostly empty shelves in the wire cage where the parts were kept. The parts keeper said that Eduardo had slowly been reducing the inventory of spares, telling him that the mine couldn’t afford to carry backup parts. It made my blood boil because I realized it was part of Eduardo’s plan to keep the mine in the red. Equipment cost many times more here than in Europe or the States, but most of it was still a small-expense item compared to the overall cost of running the mine. A broken fifty-dollar pulley on the elevator could put the entire mine out of business until it was replaced. The mine would be down, but most of the overhead would keep piling up because the workers remained on-site.
The parts keeper had a cousin who did much of the gofering and negotiati
ng for him when parts were needed. He worked the entire mining region.
“Give me a list of everything we need,” I told the parts keeper. “And everything that typically goes out on us. You know from past history what we need most of the time. Put your cousin to work filling the list now, before we need the stuff.”
A thought struck me. “Will your cousin take roughs instead of cash for parts?”
The parts keeper gave me a noncommittal shrug but I saw that I had hit a home run. The mine paid UNITA out of its proceeds from the sale of roughs. By buying the equipment with stones that didn’t go into the UNITA pot, I’d be getting the equipment at a big discount. And the cousin would be happy because he’d be getting a greater value in diamonds than he could have gotten in cash. I wondered how many other mine expenses I could pay with diamonds. Maybe I’d talk to Cross about paying him off in roughs. After I figured out what I was going to do about Eduardo—and found out whether Cross was in on whatever Eduardo was pulling.
I was watching the blasting process when one of the miners came along and handed me a message. Cross wanted to see me.
He was waiting in the elevator. “Hop aboard, the devil’s waiting topside.”
“This goddamn country is too hot for the devil.”
“True, but this guy is called El Diablo—except to his face—because he’d scare the balls off Satan himself. Colonel Jomba is the regional enforcer for Savimbi and his UNITA.”
“What does he want?”
“What do these people ever want? It’s rent time. Eduardo will let him check the books and give him the percentage of what the mine produced, but Colonel Jomba made a specific request to talk to you. Privately.”
“Why?”
“Beats the hell outta me.”
Heat of Passion Page 16