African Ice

by Jeff Buick

  “Let him come,” Alain Porter said sharply. “It’s not like we’re helpless here.” He walked over to the far wall and yanked open a crate. He lifted a Vector MINI from inside and held it up. “We managed to get two of these and a CR21 Assault rifle onto the chopper. And Travis had the Sako sniper rifle with him as well. We can take care of ourselves.”

  “We’re short on ammunition, Alain,” Travis reminded him. “We’ve only got the clips that were in the guns, plus what we had strapped to our belts. And that’s not much. Two hundred rounds, tops.”

  Alain looked thoughtful. “That’s not enough. A firefight lasting less than two minutes will chew that up. We need to find more bullets.”

  Travis nodded, then turned to Samantha. “You brought some diamonds out with you. Can I see them?”

  “Sure,” she said, disappearing into her bedroom for a moment, then returning with the small suede bag. She carefully shook the contents onto the coffee table. “There are forty-seven in all,” she said, anticipating the next question. “Thirty-two stones, nine shapes, two cleavages and four macles.” Travis looked bewildered. “They’re all diamonds, right?” She nodded. “Then they’re all stones, aren’t they? That’s what they call diamonds—stones. Like that movie with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.”

  “Romancing the Stone?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “Hollywood takes liberties with things when it’s convenient. And the stone in that movie wasn’t a diamond. It was sapphire or topaz or something like that. Anyway, stones, shapes, cleavages and macles are names used when sorting roughs, as we refer to uncut diamonds, for size and value.” She grinned as Alain reached over and picked up the largest diamond on the table. “That’s a cleavage. One of the least valuable roughs in the lot.”

  “But it’s the biggest,” he protested.

  “Ah, the male thought pattern that size means everything. Well, in diamonds size is important, but not necessarily the crucial element in determining value. If you look at that particular diamond under magnification, which I have, you’ll see that it has no crystallographic features. It’s imperfectly formed, and has numerous fractures running through it. If you tried to cut this diamond, it would likely shatter. You’d be left with plenty of tiny diamonds for engagement rings, but nothing of real substance.”

  “What about this one?” Travis lifted a triangular-shaped diamond from the bunch.

  “That one is a macle, even more useless than a cleavage. The problem with macles is they usually have a seam running through the twinned octahedron. That one is thick enough to cut into a decentsized brilliant, but only if it doesn’t split when the cutter makes his first point cut.”

  “I’m getting confused,” Alain said, setting the cleavage back on the table. “What’s a brilliant?”

  “It’s a method of cutting the rough to produce a finished stone. There are lots of ways to cut a diamond. Venetians have been cutting diamonds since the early 1300s. Most of the cutting and polishing is done in Antwerp now. They’ve been at it since sometime in the fifteenth century.” She picked up an average-looking rough from the pile and held it up for Travis and Alain to see.

  “Now this stone has value, great value. A talented cutter could probably fashion a brilliant square cut, or Barion cut as we geologists refer to it, from this rough. It will have twenty-five facets on the crown,” she pointed at the top of the rock, “and an additional twenty-nine on the pavilion. The cutter will lose very little of the original weight, and the fire will be absolutely stunning. This, gentlemen, is a milliondollar diamond.”

  “A million dollars? Are you serious?” Alain asked, taking the stone from her outstretched hand.

  “Minimum. And the majority of the diamonds in that pile are comparable in quality and size. You’re looking at over twenty-five million dollars in diamonds, once they’re cut.”

  Both men sat in silence. In less than three hours, Samantha Carlson had picked up or chipped from the exposed rock face a fortune in precious stones. In less than three hours. The enormity of the find staggered the imagination. What could a fully equipped mining operation glean from the find? Five hundred million, perhaps a billion? Enough to destabilize the world diamond market? Possibly. Probably. No wonder Patrick Kerrigan was relentless in his search for the holy grail of the diamond world. The possibility for one man to dictate terms to the Diamond Trading Company was unheard of, until now. Travis sighed and shook his head in disbelief.

  “Is this formation capable of affecting the world market?” he asked.

  Samantha didn’t answer immediately. She rose from her chair and walked softly to the window that looked over the inner courtyard. Travis’s question was a tough one, and not one she took lightly. She was a geologist, not an economist, but the tightly controlled diamond trade was well known to those involved in the industry. And as she mentally presented the arguments, one important question shot to the forefront. What was Kerrigan’s ultimate plan? Did he intend to flood the market with high-quality stones, driving the price into the toilet? Doubtful. Or was it simply the money he was after? Perhaps. Or did he want it all? Was his quest to control the world’s most lucrative natural resource, with the possible exception of oil? A market that had resisted every parry and thrust of a hostile takeover since the inception of De Beers in 1888. It was ludicrous, but the more she dwelled on it, the more real it seemed.

  Kerrigan was already a very wealthy man; Farid Virgi had confirmed that. It made sense that his quest would be more for power and control than simply for money. But that line of thought ran into a major snag. It wasn’t Kerrigan who controlled the expeditions, but Gem-Star. Kerrigan drew a healthy salary and bonuses for managing the operations, but the real benefit was to the corporation. Sam thought back to the meetings in New York at Gem-Star’s corporate headquarters. Kerrigan’s corner office with the eclectic décor of more than fifty countries, the waterfall with the rough diamonds in the reception area where Kerrigan had met her on her first visit. Meeting Travis, and the three of them discussing the mission. Then suddenly it hit her. Maybe there wasn’t a snag. Maybe it was Kerrigan who controlled things in New York. She turned back to Travis and Alain.

  “One thing before I answer.” She leaned on the sill as she spoke. “Did you ever meet Davis Perth, Gem-Star’s CEO?”

  “No. He was sailing in the South Pacific, somewhere near Borneo.”

  “All your dealings were directly with Kerrigan?”

  Travis nodded.

  “Did you ever get an expense check or plane tickets, or anything from any other Gem-Star employee?”

  “No. I dealt with Kerrigan, no one else.”

  Sam nodded. “Then the answer to your question is yes. I think the formation we discovered could not only affect the global market, I think it could give Kerrigan control over it.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t think Gem-Star has any knowledge of this expedition, or the last one, for that matter. I think this is Kerrigan’s baby. Neither you nor I had any contact with any Gem-Star employees, other than through the main switchboard. He even met me in the reception area the first day I came in to see him. He financed our expedition, and looked to the rewards as personal gain, not corporate. And it doesn’t make sense for a successful, private corporation that’s been profitable for decades to kill their contract geologists. I think it’s Kerrigan, and I doubt it’s the first time he’s done it.” She went on to explain what Farid had discovered about Kerrigan, from teetering on the brink of financial disaster to multimillionaire within seven short years. All while on a fixed salary.

  “That bastard,” Travis vented. “He’s running his own operation under the guise of an established mining company. So it was definitely Kerrigan who gave Mugumba the orders to kill us and to wipe out the previous expedition.”

  “Or expeditions. Who knows how long this prick has been looking for this formation. We could be his third, fourth, tenth, who knows?” Sam added.

 
; “We know one thing for sure,” Alain said quietly. “He’s a cold-blooded murderer who will stop at nothing to achieve his goal.” He paused for a moment, intent on his fingertips. “And you two,” he said, looking to Sam and Travis, “are the only ones who know where they are.”

  “Is there anything we’ve done since we arrived in Cairo that could lead him to us?” Samantha asked, moving away from the window. “The money you gave Greg Adamson for piecing Troy back together, was that from Kerrigan’s account?”

  “Yes, but I eliminated any paper trail. I withdrew the funds from the Swiss account, but routed them through the Caymans, then the Bahamas before making the deposit into Greg’s account. The things you can do with satellite technology and a Chase Manhattan customer card.”

  “Smart thinking, Travis.” Sam smiled at him. “Anything else?” Both men shook their heads. The trio had spent most of their time in Cairo sequestered in the apartment, and a few thousand dollars in cash had enticed their Lear pilot to file an erroneous flight plan, leaving that as a dead end. Any trail that Kerrigan and his men could pick up in the Congo would go cold long before it showed the way to Cairo.

  “You mentioned using the Internet to watch for an announcement by Gem-Star in the New York Times,” Travis said, motioning to the computer that sat on the desk only a few feet away. “Can Kerrigan get a fix on the location where you’re signing on to the Internet?”

  “He could if I hadn’t spoofed my IP address in case Kerrigan put a sniffer out,” she responded.

  “What the hell did you just say?”

  “I set up a proxy; it’s a kind of firewall that protects my Internet signature from anyone who knows my IP address and is looking for me.”

  “Without it, they could track you here?”

  “With the right tools, yes,” she said. “Kerrigan probably has a person somewhere monitoring things electronically, and the first thing he’d do if he’s looking for us is put a sniffer out on all our IP addresses.”

  “What are the chances they pick Cairo off the map as the most likely place for us to go?” Alain asked Travis.

  “That’s a possibility. The choices coming out of northern Congo are limited. Casablanca, Tangiers, Abu Dhabi, or Tripoli. And Cairo, of course. If they’re smart, they’ll make an educated guess.”

  “And where would that put them?”

  Travis shrugged. “Most likely Cairo.” His eyes met hers and the words did not need to be said. They were in a precarious situation. Armed, but short on ammunition. Waiting to be ambushed without knowing whom their attackers would be. Unable to access their private bank accounts or use their credit cards. Waiting. Just waiting for Kerrigan to make his move.

  EIGHTEEN

  Flight 843 from London touched down on Cairo’s steaming tarmac just before noon. The business-class passengers deplaned first and Patrick Kerrigan led the way. He scanned the crowded terminal, knowing a driver from the hotel would be present to pick him up. The sign was in Arabic, but he recognized the characters that formed his name, introduced himself and slipped into the limo. The car was air-conditioned and quiet, blocking out most of the omnipresent horn honking that greeted every visitor to Cairo. He watched the city through the windows, marveling at what a cesspool it had become. Sixteen million people jammed into a space large enough to fit one million could produce nothing but a disaster. The air was heavy with the acrid stench of diesel and gas fumes, mixed with the fetid exhaust from the factories. Kerrigan kept the windows tightly closed as they entered the congested quarters of Al-Abidin and neared the Semiramis Hotel. It was a moderate defense against the toxic air, mostly ineffective.

  The limo swung south onto Sari Kurnis an-Nil and then turned away from the river toward the Semiramis Inter Continental Hotel. The driver waved to the security guards and cruised up the sweeping drive to the front entrance, jumped from the car and opened the passenger door. Kerrigan tipped the man and entered the hotel lobby. A friendly blast of cool air hit him as he strode through the foyer, glancing at the terraced fountains and huge pillars that stretched thirty feet to the sculptured ceiling. He checked in and was shown to the most luxurious of the hotel’s seventy-three suites. He flipped open his laptop and connected to the net. Six new messages awaited retrieval. Four were from Internet companies that somehow managed to breach his firewalls with their stupid giveaway offers and he immediately deleted them. One was from Gem-Star’s corporate office, the other from Liam O’Donnell. He ignored the Gem-Star e-mail and opened O’Donnell’s communiqué.

  His hired killer was en route from Ireland with three of his men and would arrive at six o’clock Cairo time. They constituted the first of two teams; the second group of three mercenaries were to remain in Belfast until needed. Kerrigan checked his watch—five hours until their arrival. He phoned down to the front desk and checked on the reservations for Liam and his men. One suite and three additional rooms were confirmed. He opened the Gem-Star file and perused it. His secretary was wondering why she couldn’t contact him at his London hotel, and could he please phone in? He placed an international call, knowing he’d get her voice mail as Cairo was seven hours ahead of New York, putting the Big Apple time at six A.M. His secretary was dedicated, but not that dedicated. He let her know he’d call in later and hung up. He placed another overseas call, this time to the Washington, D.C., area. A man answered on the second ring.

  “It’s me,” Kerrigan said. “Anything yet?”

  “Wait a minute while I scramble the call,” his contact at the National Security Agency said, and for a moment the line went blank. “Okay, we’re clean on this end, you okay over there?”

  “Hotel phone, but no one’s interested in what I’m up to over here. It should be all right.”

  “Okay.” The voice sounded hesitant. “I traced the latest debit from your Swiss account to a branch of the National Bank of the Cayman Islands. The money was forwarded from that account fifteen minutes later to the Bahamas, but I’ve run into some snags. I’ve got the transit number, but I can’t access the actual account information.”

  “Why not?” Kerrigan asked, already irritated.

  “They used a Canadian bank, the CIBC, and their security measures are state of the art. It’s going to take a while to hack into their system.”

  “I pay you a lot of money to get information for me. Please get it.”

  “Yes, sir. As quickly as possible.”

  “Any hits on her e-mail?”

  “No. She’s either not signing on to the Internet, or she’s put some sort of proxy in place. Either way, she’s invisible right now.”

  “Keep monitoring her IP address and concentrate on Cairo. Get a list of every local server and plug into them. If she comes online, I want to know when and where.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kerrigan hung up and dialed an inside line at the Central Intelligence Agency at Langley. He received the same information from his CIA mole as he had from the man employed with the NSA. Kerrigan reiterated the instructions about tracing Samantha’s IP address and terminated the call. He stood in the center of the room for a few minutes, trying to place himself in Carlson’s shoes. What would they do? Where would they go? He felt reasonably sure that Liam O’Donnell was correct in his assumption that they were in Cairo. But where? He strode over to the window and looked down over the madness that stretched almost to the pyramids of Giza. Sixteen million people, and he was looking for three or four. Needles in the haystack, and this was one mother of a haystack.

  He turned from the window and changed out of his business casual into a black tux. He slipped a thin billfold into his breast pocket and took the elevator to the main floor. The casino entrance was just off the lobby and he entered, asking for the baccarat tables. One of the casino managers appeared from nowhere and insisted on personally escorting him to the private gaming rooms and seating him opposite the dealer. Kerrigan extracted his billfold and placed a note on the table. The pit boss nodded at the new player and placed the equivalent
of two hundred fifty thousand U.S. dollars in Egyptian pounds on the table. He slid the money across to Kerrigan.

  “Good luck, sir,” he said politely. Kerrigan just nodded and looked to the cards being dealt. He had at least five hours to kill, and a quarter million dollars would either carry him through or make him some serious money. He didn’t care which.

  Liam O’Donnell and his men were scheduled from London to Cairo aboard a British Airways A-340 Airbus. The flight was rough, with violent turbulence at 35,000 feet. The pilot opted to try 31,000 feet, but that almost proved disastrous. As the warm air rising from the Mediterranean collided with the cold Atlantic breezes, it threatened to tear the plane apart. Cabin service was suspended, then oxygen masks dropped from the overhead consoles, sending frightened passengers into a frenzy. Liam watched in bewilderment as act after act of extreme cowardice confronted him. The woman beside him screamed hysterically until he gave her a stiff elbow to her temple, knocking her senseless. A few of the calmer, more rational passengers actually clapped when he shut her up. They were midway through the flight before the pilot managed to drop below the opposing air masses and get the plane back under control. His seatmate slept until they began their descent into Cairo.

  Once on the ground, O’Donnell moved efficiently through customs. The remainder of the first team joined him at the luggage carousel. They retrieved their bags and left the airport in a Mercedes taxi, giving the driver the address to the Semiramis Hotel. His watch, corrected to Cairo time, read just after seven P.M. when they checked in to the hotel. The desk clerk informed Mr. O’Donnell that Mr. Kerrigan was at the baccarat table in the casino and to please change into something formal and join him. O’Donnell found his room, threw his luggage on the bed, changed into some freshly pressed dress pants and headed out.