Savimbi nodded. “And what did Jomba tell you?”
“Nothing. He just looks at me like he’s sizing me for a coffin.”
Savimbi chuckled. “I doubt it. He usually doesn’t leave a large enough piece to bury.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on his chest. “And, senhor, please tell me why you have come to me with this information, rather than simply going along with the arrangements.”
“I don’t get along with João Carmona. There is bad blood between us, going back to the time when my father lived in Lisbon and did business with him. He stole a gem from my father, a family heirloom,” I lied, “and I want it back. It’s part of the deal between João and the Bey.
“Look, let me get down to the bottom line. In a nutshell, I get along fine with the Bey. He’ll deliver the weapons, I’ll take care of the diamond end of the exchange. We have no problems. But I’m afraid Carmona will have me murdered, for my share of the deal.”
Savimbi smiled. His face revealed nothing, but I thought I caught a hint of amusement in his eyes.
“Your assessment of Senhor Carmona is no doubt an accurate one. I once had the opportunity of applying ultimate justice to him. I let him live, bound to a wheelchair, because it suited my purpose.”
“I suspect the world would be a better place without him,” I said.
“What is the status of your mine?” he asked. “I understand it is a losing entity.”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to open any cans of worms by telling him we were prospecting for a kimberlite pipe. But my instincts told me not to lie to the man. “The mine is bleeding money. But I’m pursuing a positive geological report that says there are diamond indicators on the property. If we tap into a pipe, it will increase the payments to UNITA.”
“What do you want out of the transaction you say is coming down between Jomba and the others? Carmona’s share?”
“Nothing, I don’t even want the share promised me. I want nothing to do with Carmona. I’ll never see the share anyway; Carmona will have something up his sleeve to cheat me out of it. I think he was involved in the death of my uncle in New York and creating a serious financial hardship for me. I don’t want anything to do with him. I want the gem he stole from my father and to be left alone so I can get my mine to start turning a profit.” I didn’t volunteer the fact that the Heart of the World was immensely valuable. It would be like waving a hunk of raw meat to a lion.
Savimbi stood up. “My advice to you is to go back to your mine and act as if nothing has changed.”
“What about Jomba and the blood-diamond deal?”
“You have managed to get yourself entangled with very dangerous people, several of them, Carmona, the Bey, Jomba. I suggest you don’t let any of them know that you’ve spoken to me. And that you play the part you have agreed to.”
“But what—”
Savimbi turned and walked out.
The major indicated two bunks. “You will stay here tonight and be driven back to the airplane in the morning.”
After he left, Cross and I stared at each other.
“What the hell,” I said. “I don’t know what just happened, but there’s one positive side to it.”
“Yeah, what?”
“We’re still breathing.”
54
When we got off the plane at the landing field in diamond country, Gomez, my driver, was waiting for us. So was someone else.
“Jesus H. Christ, she’s here,” Cross said.
“She” was Simone. Wearing a safari jacket, boots, and a white shirt, she looked like she had just stepped out of a safari movie. The X-rated kind.
“This is an unpleasant surprise,” I said truthfully.
“I was in the neighborhood and dropped in.” She gave me a kiss on the cheek. She smelled good.
She shook hands with Cross.
“Do I still have a mine?” I asked Gomez. “Or did this woman sell it while I was away?”
He grinned and shook his head. “Senhora arrived yesterday. She stayed in your quarters.”
Wonderful. They assumed Simone was my girlfriend. If I had any secrets, she was privy to them now. A goddamn ant couldn’t get near the mine without being strip-searched, but they give a beautiful woman the keys to the place.
I rode in the backseat of the Rover with Simone.
“The arrangements have been made for the exchange,” she said. She spoke English so Gomez wouldn’t understand her.
“When?” I asked.
“Tomorrow.”
Cross glanced back at me. Tomorrow would be too soon for Savimbi to field troops or however he planned to handle Jomba. I’d have to call Kirk the moment I got back to the mine and hope he could contact Savimbi. From my point of view, it looked like things got worse every time I turned around. Now my life was going to hell in a handbasket.
“How’s it supposed to come down?”
“Jomba has prepared a field for the planes to land on. Before they set down, Jomba is to give me the roughs. We’ll inventory them on the spot and notify the Bey by satellite phone it’s all clear. You’re to certify the stones. The Bey will be along with the shipment. We give him his cut of the stones and your certifications.”
“What happens to you and the rest of the stones? You leave with the Bey?” I asked.
“We don’t trust him. I have a chartered plane back at the field.” She padded my arm. “Don’t worry, you can take your cut before I leave.”
“What happens if things don’t go well between the Bey and Jomba? Suppose Jomba decides to keep the diamonds and the guns?”
“The Bey is not stupid. He will have a number of men with him. And he’ll have the transports rigged to explode if Jomba tries anything.”
I leaned back and closed my eyes, relaxing against the back of the seat. Life was full of surprises. Simone had flown in on her broom. The time schedule for the exchange had gone to hell. And I had found out I couldn’t trust my backup.
Cross didn’t make any lewd remarks or bother to ask who the woman was waiting at the airfield.
He knew Simone.
Now wasn’t that a pisser.
55
The gate guard at the mine ran to the Rover as we pulled up.
“The mine has flooded!”
“Merda! Where’s Kruger?”
“In the mine, with the foreman, trying to get the pumps to work.”
“Show the senhora to my quarters.” I started for the shaft and his words followed me.
“Colonel Jomba was here earlier. He became very angry when he found out you were not at the mine.”
“You’re right,” I told Cross, “you can’t punt when you’re not even on the playing field.”
As the elevator went down the shaft, the operator told me that the lift could only go down halfway.
“What do we do? Jump the rest of the way?”
“No, senhor, you climb down the ladder.”
“Don’t worry,” Cross said, “if you break a few bones, it will only reduce the time Jomba needs to pulverize you. Uh, look, bubba, there’s nothing I can do to help you. I’m going to check on my people.”
I knew he was lying. He was probably going to knock off a piece with his babe Simone and figure out a way to feed me to Jomba.
I wasn’t in a good mood as the lift dropped. I was having a hard time keeping track of the players in the game João had started. The only thing I knew for sure was that they were all on the other team.
The reception area at the bottom of the shaft was wet but not knee-deep in water.
“The water is farther in,” a foreman told me, “but watertight doors are holding back most of it.”
I found Kruger knee-deep in water, banging a wrench at a water pump and cursing it. He looked angry and frustrated enough to use the wrench on me.
“Where the hell did you get this pump? It looks like something Cecil Rhodes would have thrown out in the 1890s.”
“It came with the territory. What happened?”
“Your dynamite crew blew into an underground stream. They’re lucky it wasn’t a watery grave for them. You’re lucky they didn’t destroy the whole damn mine. When you said you didn’t know anything about mining, you weren’t kidding. Did it occur to you that you can’t just turn workers loose underground?”
He had more to say, but he was working on the pump and talking to it. I left him and went back topside.
Cross was waiting for me.
“Jomba was here, Simone talked to him.”
“Good. When do I give blood?”
“Tomorrow. People like your pal Bey and Jomba like to catch everyone flat-footed. I don’t think it has anything to do with us seeing Savimbi. If it did, Jomba would have been waiting for us and we’d be crying in hell by now. They just want to pull a surprise on everyone. But hey, you know, you have a great attitude. No shit, most guys would be pissing their pants. There’s some hairy stuff coming down.”
“I’m crying inside,” I said. “I want you to take Kruger to Luanda until this thing blows over. We’ll come up with an excuse, something we need to check at the mine ministry.”
“You’re sending me to the dugout just as the game’s starting? No way, José.”
“That’s the way it’s going to be. I’m more worried about Kruger than I am about this deal.”
“And I’m worried about our deal. Two mil, remember?”
“From the look on your face, you don’t think I do. I don’t screw people. I told you two million. Whether you’re in Luanda, or at the exchange, your deal with me is the same.”
I walked away. Getting him out of range when the exchange came down was just an excuse. I didn’t want to have to watch my back for one more knife. When I told him the two million was still on the table for him, I wasn’t lying. Unless I found out he had been lying to me.
I knocked on the door to my quarters and let Simone answer it. She had changed into pants and a blouse that didn’t expose anything—and hid nothing.
“You’re a cunt,” I told her.
Her eyebrows went up. “Such language to a married woman. If we were in Lisbon, João would have your throat slit for calling me that. I want your apology.”
“You’re right, it’s no way to talk to any woman. So, okay, you’re a fuckin’ bitch. And your husband has put more rental mileage on your cunt than a rent-a-car. Did you blow Jomba when you saw him?”
I went to the minibar and poured myself a stiff shot of Eduardo’s aged brandy. She followed me, but kept her distance.
“You’re in a foul mood.”
“Who the fuck do you people think you’re screwing with? Do I strike you as someone who just fell off a lettuce wagon?” I went to her bag and took out her satellite phone. Then I ripped the mine phone out of the wall.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“From now on, think of me as your shadow.” I got in close, too mad to let her sensuous femininity play games with my mind. “You’re going to sit down and tell me exactly what is coming down with Jomba, the Bey, and your dirtbag husband.” I held up the phone. “Just think of me as your secretary. You get any calls, I’ll be sure and monitor them for you.”
She had green eyes, not black, but Shakespeare’s description of the Dark Lady, the femme fatale who ran amuck with his emotions, came to mind. The Bard of Avon seemed to be more inexorably attracted to the Dark Lady—and almost fearful of her.
“What are you going to do if I don’t cooperate? If I tell Colonel Jomba you’re not cooperating?”
Good question. But I had an answer. “I’m going to tell him that we don’t need you and João, that when he’s got his guns, he can keep your portion of the diamonds.”
She started laughing hysterically.
“What’s the matter with you?”
It took a moment to get her breath back. And she started laughing again. “I already told him,” she gasped, “that he can have your share.”
56
In the morning, I sent a scowling Cross in a pickup truck to take Kruger to the airfield.
“I feel like I’m being left out,” Cross said. “I could at least stick around so I can identify your body parts after the colonel gets through with you.”
I took Gomez, my driver, aside.
“Senhora Carmona and I have to go to a meeting,” I told him. “We’ll take the Rover.”
“Sim, Senhore.”
“I’ll give you a choice,” I said. “You can drive us or you can stay at the mine.”
“What choice? I am your driver, senhore.”
“There may be trouble. There’s going to be a delivery of merchandise to Colonel Jomba. If things don’t go right . . .”
I didn’t have to draw him a picture. He knew Colonel Jomba and the Angolan war system far better than me.
“No problem, senhore.”
“Okay. If I live through this, you get a year’s pay.”
That brought a smile to his face.
Simone came out of my quarters dressed in a different safari outfit than the one she wore yesterday, even down to the boots.
“You look like you’re on your way to a fashion shoot,” I said.
“Let’s hope there won’t be shooting of any kind.”
I had slept in the room that Eduardo’s girlfriend, Carlotta, had before I canned her. I had to confess I was tempted to sneak back into my own room and climb into bed with Simone. Hell, for all I know, it might have turned out to be my last meal.
She held her hands up, away from her body. “Aren’t you going to search me?”
“No, I trust you.” I laughed about that all the way to the Rover.
When we were settled in the back, she asked, “Did you plan on telling me about your conversation with the Bey?”
“He just gave me time and place,” I lied. Besides the arrangements for the exchange, I told him I had to have the fire diamond in my hand before I signed a single certification.
We were halfway to the field where the exchange was to take place when the satellite phone rang. It was the Bey.
“Jomba has changed the landing spot,” he said. He gave me the new location. It was a strip of road, ten miles in the opposite direction.
I gave Gomez the new rendezvous.
“Better for landing planes,” Gomez said.
I shook my head and said to Simone, “These people don’t take chances, do they?”
“Not when they’re betting their lives. If Savimbi or the government get wind of the exchange, there will be bloodshed. Some of it would be ours.”
We were stopped three times at checkpoints that Jomba’s men had set up. We had no paperwork but each time the soldier in charge stared at me carefully and compared my description with that written on a piece of paper.
By the time we neared the stretch of road chosen as the rendezvous point, the area was bristling with rebel troops and weapons. Not just machine guns mounted on jeeps—I saw tanks and rocket launchers in the bushes. It looked like Jomba was ready for an all-out battle. It occurred to me for the first time that the weapons being delivered could affect a war in which an entire country was at stake.
A black helicopter, a military gunship with rockets in its belly, circled overhead.
“The Bey,” I said. He had told me he would personally check out the terrain before letting his planes land. I knew he wasn’t just talking about the lay of the land.
As we came into the landing area, I saw Jomba at a command post speaking on a telephone. We headed in that direction, but were stopped by an officer.
“Senhore, follow me, preparations have been made.”
He led Simone and me to a tent which had all four of its sides rolled up so only the top shaded the interior. In the middle of the tent was a table covered with a white cloth, a chair, diamond scale, and battery-operated lamp, as well as gallon buckets with lids.
The officer put a bucket on a table and removed the lid. I kept my face blank, acting as though I saw a bucket full of diamonds every day.
They were roughs, of course, uncut, unpolished, but each bucket had more value than most people earned in a lifetime.
The officer pointed at a pile of diamond certification documents. “Please begin.”
“How much time do I have?”
“One hour.”
I sat down and got started. No matter how you hacked it, twenty million dollars’ worth of diamonds was a boatload. It would take days for me to make even a cursory examination of them. And I had an hour.
I shook out a portion of the stones from the bucket onto the table. Determining the size was easy—by eyeballing them I could see that they were all two carats or more. The stones I examined with my loupe were all nearly flawless and the color of most of the stones leaned toward white. There were a number of coloreds, mostly yellow, and even they were good. I was only able to do a random sampling, but I made sure that I examined stones at every level of the bucket. As soon as I had evaluated and weighed one bucket, I went onto the next one.
When the hour was up, the satellite phone rang.
“I’m overhead,” the Bey said.
I stepped out of the tent and waved up at the hovering gunship.
“I could only do a random sampling, but the goods appear to be as represented,” I shouted into the phone.
“Good. Do not let the goods out of your sight. I don’t want to get home and find I have cans of rocks. My transports will land momentarily. After Jomba inspects the weapons, I will be given half the diamonds and certifications for them. You and João get the other half.”
“You get your certifications when I get the fire diamond.”
“Of course. Don’t worry, Mr. Liberte, it is not to my advantage to cheat you—or kill you.”
After I hung up, I saw Simone staring at me.
“You are a fool. João would never let you get away with the red diamond.”
“João’s a long ways away.”
The transports came in, three of them, fat prop jets that landed one at a time on the long, narrow strip of dirt road. As each plane landed, army trucks came out of the bushes and lined up by the cargo doors. I had considered Colonel Jomba little more than a cunning gangster in a uniform, but as I watched the operation, it struck me that at the very least he was an efficient military leader. Everything seemed to come off with precise clockwork.
Heat of Passion Page 27