[African Diamonds 01.0] The Angolan Clan

by Christopher Lowery

  “But how did you meet Charlie? And now you say that you also know Laurent and Nick. How do you know about the Angolan Clan? How did you know about Charlie’s funeral? I mean, just tell us. Who the hell is Adam Peterson?” Jenny didn’t swear much unless she was in a rage and it had usually been restricted to Ron. She blushed with embarrassment but sat still, like Leticia, waiting for his answer.

  He sighed, shifting uncomfortably on his seat. “This is going to be very difficult for you to believe. I’m Nick Martinez’s son.”

  Leticia jumped out of her chair. “But Charlie never said to us anything about this. We never knew that Nick Martinez has a son.”

  He took another sip of his coffee. “Neither did he. And strangely enough, neither did I.”

  BOOK ONE

  PART FIVE: 2002 - 2008

  SIXTY-FIVE

  July, 2002

  Geneva, Switzerland

  In July 2002, Nick Martinez suggested to Laurent Bonneville that he might want to contact Adam Peterson, a young diamond dealer from Durban. He’d heard a lot of good reports about him and thought he could be a suitable channel for a steady flow of business. He was reputed to be honest, clever and discreet. This latter quality was of prime importance to the Angolan Clan.

  Laurent met him in Geneva and Adam was immediately intrigued by his presentation of IDD. They had a selection of fabulous Angolan diamonds of the highest quality, in purity, colour and cut. Apparently they were not interested in marketing through the mainstream channels and extracting top rates. At the prices they offered, there was a substantial margin for him, so he was very keen to develop the business with them.

  However, because of the global condemnation of the exploitation of the blacks in the diamond mining industry and the financing of bloody conflicts in African countries, there was a lot of international concern about African gems. Adam knew that he could ruin his reputation if he made a mistake over such a sensitive matter. He wanted to satisfy himself on that point.

  “Tell me truthfully, are these conflict diamonds, blood diamonds? Have they been mined over the dead bodies of the black workers?”

  Laurent turned his still piercing blue eyes on him. “We would never stoop to do such business. These diamonds come from a source we have had for more than twenty-five years. They came exclusively from Angola and they have not been mined during the wars.”

  Adam was intrigued by the Frenchman’s reply. The sample stones shown to him by Laurent were by far the best he’d ever seen. He questioned him to find out more and racked his brains to try to work out how IDD came to have such a store of fine Angolan diamonds, but in vain. He put the question away for later and the two men shook hands on the deal.

  Over the next few years he was a consistent and reliable source of business and eventually became their largest customer. This access to fine diamonds brought him even more renown in his specialised field and it also brought him very substantial profits. He bought as many stones as he could get from them, only twenty or thirty per year in the beginning, then about one hundred for the last couple of years. He was clever in his marketing of the gems, causing no ripples in the market place, which suited IDD perfectly.

  Laurent began to rely on him for a guaranteed thirty or forty per cent of his annual sales, and the two men enjoyed a trusting relationship. He never gave Adam any further information about the stones, nor the names or even the existence of his partners, Nick and Charlie. From time to time Adam wondered about IDD and reflected on Bonneville’s explanation of the source of this apparently endless supply of Angolan diamonds, but he never renewed the discussion. He just took as many stones as they offered, paid his bills on time and continued to wonder where the diamonds came from.

  SIXTY-SIX

  November, 2004

  Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

  It was three-thirty in the morning when Ray d’Almeida carefully opened the door of suite 1627 at the Golden Nugget Hotel in Las Vegas and looked out into the corridor. There was no one in sight, so he closed the door behind him and strolled along to the bank of elevators. Paco was waiting in the lobby and they walked out of the hotel together.

  “How much?” asked Paco.

  “Hundred bucks. You?”

  “Seventy-five.”

  “I keep telling you that size does matter.” Ray laughed. “When it comes to screwing that is,” he added.

  He had been picked up at the bar by a fifty-three year old woman from Palm Springs, whose husband was enjoying a winning streak on the blackjack table. After a couple of drinks, she took him up to her room. She was very demanding and he had to work hard for his money.

  Paco’s ‘date’ was a late fifties, bottle-blonde divorcee, who thought she looked like Marilyn. His job was easier, since she was completely plastered by the time they went upstairs and he had to wake her up to collect his pay.

  The two men had met up several months previously in Arizona, climbing in the Mohawk mountains near Yuma. Paco was from Zaratoga, in central Spain, and had been drifting around the US for over two years. He was the same age as Ray and they decided to team up, both enjoying hiking and climbing in the deserted, mountainous expanses of the southernmost states.

  Ray and his family had left the favela eighteen months before, when his father was finally offered a job in Rio. It was ironic, almost comical. After starving in Brazil for over twenty years, just when his father was almost too old to work he was suddenly in demand. He had got a job with a company that was set up to process rough diamonds. Sergio was an expert diamond cutter, having been trained in Luanda when he was young. He had also found a place for Ray in the company, where he learned to keep the books. They could afford to move to a small apartment in the same area. Close enough to go back to the favela if they had to.

  After making a little money and seeing his father finally earning enough to look after his sister, Alicia, Ray had decided to go walk-about. Fortunately and surprisingly, he had never been in prison and was able to obtain a Brazilian passport and get out of the country.

  He travelled around the coast by sea from Brazil, working his way on a freighter to Venezuela, then on various vessels up through central America, until he reached Mexico. He drifted from Mexico through California, Arizona and Nevada, working at just about every job under the sun. Waiter, gardener, delivery man, even a bank clerk for a couple of months, until he found his true forte as a gigolo.

  This latter was the best paid job he’d found, and he and Paco made a great team, working in tandem. The Spaniard was the same age and height as Ray and with their similar build and Mediterranean looks they were usually taken for brothers. The older women in the bars and casinos couldn’t resist them. Paco wore spectacles and had a rather shy demeanour, whereas Ray was loud and flamboyant, projecting a raunchy image.

  A couple of months before, they had pooled their savings and acquired a beat-up old mobile home, in which they lived and drove from town to town to ply their wares. They had made good money in Vegas this last week. The women were falling over them, but Ray was tired of the scene.

  “How much you got in your pocket?”

  “Eight hundred bucks, give or take.”

  “That means we’ve got amost two thousand between us. How about we take off for the mountains again. I’ve had it with boozing and screwing old ladies.”

  They climbed into the Jayco camper van and headed off into the desert, towards Arizona. At nightfall, they camped out on the slopes of the Black mountains and heated up some supper on a petrol stove, then climbed into their sleeping bags and spent the warm night under the clear, star filled sky. They were back in paradise.

  The next morning they set off at first light, walking and climbing further into the mountain chain, ropes and equipment in their backpacks, along with a few provisions. They stopped for a bite on a high sloping rock face, crisscrossed with narrow crevices. Paco was fascinated by the depth of the fissure that ran alongside them. It seemed to descend forever, but he could see what seemed to be the gli
nt of water at the bottom.

  “I’m going down to see if there’s an underground lake down there.”

  He hammered a metal peg into the rock face and they snagged his rope around it and around a rocky outcrop, to take more strain.

  “Look after my stuff for me. I’ll be right back.”

  He took off his spectacles and handed them to Ray for safekeeping, then climbed down into the fissure and disappeared from view, the rope tightening as he used it to slow his descent, performing a kind of abseil, finding what purchase he could on either wall of the crevice with each foot.

  Ray picked up the Spaniard’s backpack and looked through the few items inside. Surprisingly, his passport, driver’s license and wallet were wrapped in a cloth at the bottom of the bag. There were eight hundred and twenty dollars in the wallet.

  He looked at the passport. It had been renewed in Los Angeles and was valid until 2012. He put on the spectacles and roughed up his hair like Paco’s. When he peered at his reflection in the blade of his pocket knife it was like looking at the passport photo. The driving license was the same, it was valid and the photo looked like him.

  Ray sat and thought to himself, A valid Spanish passport and driver’s license, with a photograph that looks like me. That’s worth a lot of money, much better than Brazilian ones. And two thousand dollars is twice as good as twelve hundred. Same thing with the Jayco. Why have half when you can have the whole thing?

  A dreamy look came into his eyes. Almost absent mindedly he started to saw away at the taut rope with the pocket knife. The fibres split apart, until, with a snap, the rope was pulled down over the edge of the fissure. A second later he heard a shout from Paco. He looked down into the crevice and saw the Spaniard straddling the fissure, a foothold on either side holding his weight.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Just saying goodbye,” he answered. “It’s been great. See you around.”

  Paco looked down at the drop below him then back up to Ray. The movement caused him to lose his footing on the steep walls of the crevice. With a scream, he fell straight down like a rock. He had disappeared completely from view before Ray heard the splash of water from the bottom.

  He was right, he thought to himself. Probably an underground lake.

  The following month, Ray drove back into Las Vegas and went to a discount call shop to phone his sister and father, to wish them a happy Christmas.

  “Hi, Alicia. How’s things?”

  “Ray. Thank God you’ve called. Dad’s sick. He’s lost his job. You’ve got to come home. Right away!”

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  November, 2006

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Haute Nendaz, Swiss Alps

  “Take care, Alicia. I’ll call you a couple times a month. Don’t fret and make yourself sick, you’ve got enough money to get by and I’ll soon send more.”

  Ray d’Almeida climbed into his friend, Lorenzo’s cab, waved to his sister through the back window and settled down for the thirty minute drive to the Antonio Carlos Jobim airport. His Varig flight to London left at seven that evening and his easyJet connection to Geneva was at ten o’clock the following morning. He’d booked the flights separately, using his Brazilian passport for the Transatlantic flight and Paco’s Spanish one for Geneva. Once through UK immigration, he would go back through check-in and fly to Switzerland as a good, honest citizen of the European Community, not a suspicious immigrant from South America.

  There was a good train service from Geneva to Sion and a postal bus to Haute Nendaz, so he would be up there by late afternoon, in time to claim his room. Despite early snow, the resorts were still quiet and there was plenty of available accommodation.

  His job interview wasn’t until the next afternoon, so he had time to get himself sorted out.

  He had fifteen hundred dollars and some Swiss Francs in his wallet, enough to get him by until he started earning a salary, and he’d left Alicia with five hundred dollars, which would see her through for quite a while. She was used to living on very little. Since Ray had returned from the US, almost two years ago, he’d made more money than ever before but he’d had to save as much of it as he could for this trip, so they had continued living in their normal, frugal way.

  Until their father, Sergio, died of a second heart attack the previous year, the medical bills that they had to face, although not enormous, consumed most of Ray’s income and some of his savings. It was only by a lucky chance that he had been able to land a job with enough pay and tips to manage. With the experience of the Las Vegas hotel and casino scene that he’d acquired during his time there, he had talked the manager of the Gold Coast Casino, on the Copocabana beach, into giving him a try out as a croupier. His good looks, easy charm and skill in languages and numbers soon confirmed him as the new ‘king’ of the roulette table and he finally started earning a decent income. The money also enabled him to buy the books that he needed, to learn some new skills. Skills that would be necessary for his project.

  He had devised and started his project shortly after he returned and was looking after his father, whose first heart attack and deteriorating eyesight had caused him to lose his job at the diamond processing plant. Sergio had described to Ray, batches of diamonds that they were receiving for cutting and polishing from a Geneva company called IDD, International Diamond Dealers. He was sure those diamonds were Angolan alluvial diamonds. And he was almost certain that they came from pre-war Angola, and probably from his own mine.

  Ray and Alicia had been too young to understand the catastrophic events which had condemned them to live in the favela for most of their lives, and Sergio had never found the courage to divulge the story to them, but now he needed to unburden himself to his son. In his declining state, it took him a lot of time and much gentle probing from Ray to bring back to mind the details of their flight from the d’Almeida’s mine in Angola over thirty years ago and the subsequent theft of their only source of money.

  As he learned the history of his family’s lost fortune, Ray became overcome by a great sense of injustice, which gradually transformed itself into a burning rage. His rage began to consume him and his mind turned to restitution, and to vengeance. He vowed to find the family’s lost fortune and to reclaim it, whatever the cost. But he knew that it would take every skill he possessed, and some new ones he would have to acquire. He made a list of the things he needed to learn, and started to conceive a project to right the wrongs suffered by his family. It became an obsession that filled his every waking minute from that moment on.

  With his first pay cheque from the casino, Ray bought himself a monthly user card at a local Internet café. He had never owned a computer, so he got friendly with the owner, who taught him the basics. Ray quickly became an expert on Google and his research was extremely rewarding. Between Googling and dredging into his father’s failing memory, he began to improve his knowledge base and to plan his project.

  He said nothing to Sergio about his plan. He didn’t want to distress him any further during what was evident were his dying days. His father had become so weak that he spent most of the day on the same bed that they had owned in the favela. He now ate very little, even by comparison with the minimum food supply that they had been used to all their lives and he was as skinny as a rake. In June, at the age of sixty-two, he suffered a second heart attack and this time he didn’t recover.

  Alicia and Ray were heart-broken. Sergio was the only family they had really ever known. He had somehow managed to look after them all their lives. Despite having to flee from his homeland and being robbed of the small fortune that he’d smuggled out, and suffering the loss of Elvira and the foul conditions they’d experienced in the favela, he had survived. And he had ensured that his children survived. Sergio had been a fine and loving husband and father to his wife and his children and now he was gone.

  The cost of a headstone was out of their reach, and his grave, next to Elvira’s in the public cemetery, was marked only by a wooden stake c
arved with their names and dates of birth and death. After the local priest had said a few words, Ray knelt at the side of the grave and prayed as he never done before. He prayed for his father’s and mother’s souls and he vowed to bring justice to avenge his family’s lost birthright. His furious rage was now transformed into an inexorable determination. He would perfect and execute his project, and God help anything or anyone that got in the way.

  Over the next year he spent all of his spare time working on the computer at the Internet café and studying in the apartment or at the library, preparing himself for the greatest test of his life. In addition to Google, he mastered Word, Excel and PowerPoint. He also became an expert in other new and useful subjects. His project slowly took shape.

  The afternoon after his arrival in Haute Nendaz, Ray went to the SoftSnow Ski Shop, and thanks to his proficiency in languages and confident manner and looks, he was taken on immediately with responsibility for renting skis, boots and snowboards. He would start training the next week, both in the shop and on the piste, and go onto a salary from December 1st. The pay was sufficient for him to send a small amount to Alicia each month. Phase one of his project was in place.

  The following week, he got a lift into Geneva with Jean-Pierre, another ski-bum who had an old van. It was time to initiate phase two. A more delicate task, but one he was well equipped to perform.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  December, 2007

  Geneva, Switzerland

  Adam had driven over to his parents’ house on his way to the airport. Rachel came out to the driveway with him and he kissed her on the forehead then climbed back into his Land Cruiser. “I’ll be back at the end of the week. Don’t worry about me and don’t work too hard at the hospice. Look after dad and make sure he takes his pills.”

  His flight to Geneva at eight that morning was complicated and tiring, requiring stops in Johannesburg and Zurich. The appointment at the Crowne Plaza Hotel was fixed for tomorrow morning at ten thirty, so he would get some sleep there tonight if his flights were on time. He would be back home in five days, hopefully having concluded the largest deal of his life.