The distance was nothing. The Germans could be across it in no time.
Arlette clambered lithely forward to lower the jib. Willi de Menten furled in the mainsail. When they reached the shallows, Arlette lowered the anchor into the water.
The bow swung into the wind. She slid over the side and hung on, looking up at de Menten and laughing now.
Hagen could see that they’d done this sort of thing lots of times. He had no right to interfere. He ought not to have come.
She stood in the shallows with hands on her hips. “Richard … Richard, is that you?”
He turned and left them quickly, hoping that she hadn’t seen him clearly. The Church of St. Martin raised its spire above the town of Ypres in the distance, while all around them the almost featureless plain of Flanders spread.
Willi hugged the wheel of the battered Citroen van his father didn’t know he had borrowed. “Well, what now? What the hell do we do, Arlette? This is crazy. He could be visiting any of the cemeteries. There are thirteen of them. Thirteen! We’ll be half the night and all day tomorrow searching for him. And why? What the hell’s he to you? A cemetery on a day like this! An idiot! He must be an idiot!”
The argument had gone on like this all the way back to the harbor, to town, the street outside the butcher shop, and on … “Hush. Turn here. My father said he’d be going to the one at Vlamertinge.”
They swung into the military cemetery, which was just outside the tiny village, not far to the west of Ypres. De Menten took the van in a mad loop and then another and another, raising dust.
The only other vehicle in the parking lot was an ancient taxi they both recognized. Its driver was a displaced dockworker from Rotterdam, a renegade in shabby coveralls, no shirt and scruffy boots.
Henk Vanderheide believed in bathing inside. He scratched under his fleshy chin, sucked on the fag that clung to his protruding lower lip and looked up wistfully as they pulled in beside him and lurched dangerously to a stop.
Arlette leaned out of the cab, a breath of fresh air on the heat of their exhaust and an engine that had probably rebelled. “Henki, have you seen de Heer Hagen? Where is he, please?”
With a start, he realized she was wearing a bathing suit! Grinning hugely, he jerked a thumb over one shoulder to indicate the nearest path. “He’s in among the stones, communing with the departed. You in a hurry or something?”
“Yes.”
He drew on his fag, coughed, wheezed desperately and finally said, “Well, you shouldn’t be. Not in a place like this. It’s far too quiet. Willi, my boy, have you got any beer?”
As she got out of the cab, Vanderheide saw that her feet were bare, her legs …
“Willi, wait for me, please.”
Henki let his eyes rove up her backside. The calves of her long legs were shapely, the backs of her knees soft, tender pads, her thighs, Lord Jesus her thighs, were slender, her ass … Oh God, oh Jesus, what an ass … tight like a young green pear.
Willi yelled at her, “I never want to see you again, Arlette! Go to him then. See if I care!” He hit the wheel, bruising a hand.
She yanked open the door and crawled back up onto the seat. “Willi, listen to me. De Heer Hagen is in trouble. I must go and see what he wants.”
Dragging her beach coat after her, she remembered her sandals, which were on the floor. Giving a muttered “Mother, please,” she slipped these on, tossed Vanderheide a reproving glance and headed for the path.
The two men watched her, Willi with tears in his sensitive eyes, Vanderheide with outright lust, for she walked in that way women who are good in bed walk, slackly, with ease and confidence, as though they know they’re going to get it and want only to hurry.
She reached a grove of lindens, went under these and out across the lawn. Regimented headstones flanked her now, row on row, some with holly, others with roses. Here and there Lombardy poplars threw their shade so that some of the stones were darker than the others.
“Richard, what is it? Why did you leave us like that?”
He was standing alone in the shade before one of the headstones. His back was to her, and for a moment he didn’t turn.
“You shouldn’t have come. I told your father I’d drop in to say goodbye.”
He looked so worried.
“Arlette, go back. Please.”
“Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”
“I don’t know. Everything, I guess. Maybe nothing.” He gave a shrug and smiled then, smiled so gently she found herself loving him all the more.
“Did you come hoping I’d return to work at Dillingham’s?” she asked eagerly. “Lev said you would.”
He grinned sheepishly and pushed the hair back off his brow. “As a matter of fact, I did, but then, on the beach there I thought … well, I thought I had no right to interfere in your life. Besides …”
Her eyebrows arched in puzzled alarm. Was there someone else, someone like Cecile Verheyden?
A sadness swept over him. He thought of Klees, of the wall of broken dolls. He thought of the German war machine, of the Stuka and its siren. He couldn’t drag her into things. It wouldn’t be right, wouldn’t be fair to her. “Arlette, I don’t want to see you hurt.”
She tried to understand, tried to comprehend. When he turned from her, she read the inscription: Corporal William R. Hagen, died 13 October 1918. “So many of them died here, Richard. Over 250,000 in one battle alone.”
“It was a bloodbath,” he said grimly.
Taking out his wallet, he removed a mud-stained, single slip of folded paper. “Just before he was killed, my dad wrote me this. He was out in no-man’s-land and he was worried. The man he was trying to kill had no name but was good—the best my father had come up against. They’d been after each other for days.”
Hagen refolded the thing, found a match and set it alight. “Please don’t be horrified. I can’t keep it any longer. It would only be dangerous for me if I did.”
He was so sad. He didn’t take his eyes from her. “Why?” she asked as the last of the letter fell.
Hagen wanted so much to send her away and yet couldn’t bring himself to do so. “Because, although I still can’t believe it possible, I think I must have met the man who shot him.”
Four
THE STONE WAS A cushioned oval brilliant that had been exquisitely cut, but it was the color that took his breath away. A dark, North Sea blue. A good eight carats. Hagen wanted to shout, Have you any idea how rare that is?
The setting was Edwardian. In addition to the pendant stone, the rope twist of platinum held six clear white, old-mine diamonds, each of at least a carat.
He couldn’t believe his luck. As a matter of course he scanned the antique shops whenever he could—it was a part of the business, a part of keeping oneself aware of things.
The soft chuckle and easy manner betrayed the scoffer of too-high prices. Tavisham of Tate, Tate and Tavisham, Old Bond Street, London, smiled benignly. “Just in from the Continent, are you?”
“In and on the run. London seems the usual.”
The swift eyes met Hagen’s. “Does it ever change?”
“Seems calm enough considering the threat of war. God knows what’ll happen if the Germans start dropping bombs again.”
Point taken. The shop was cluttered with fine old porcelain and crystal. “Diamonds are always the best of security in such times.”
“War does bring out the worried. A pity there are so many of these old pieces on the market.”
Damn the man! Tavisham lightly brushed three troubled fingers across his brow, then fastidiously tightened the knot of his tie. “Were it not for the times, we’d simply have put that stone away.”
Hagen set the diamond down on the felt cloth, then draped the rope of lesser stones on top of it and glanced at his watch. The meeting with Sir Ernest was in forty-seven minutes. Time enough.
The gray business suit was brand-new. A man of means? Tavisham wondered. “Would you be looking for somethin
g suitable for a young lady, sir?”
Again there was that gentle chuckle, the laughter in those gray-blue eyes. “With a war in the offing? No, I’m just interested in where it came from. An estate, I suppose?”
“Fontainebleau, Sir. The piece is French.”
The Tavernier then. Lev would swear to it.
Tavisham said, “Seven thousand pounds, sir, and exceedingly inexpensive at that.”
There’d be tears in Sir Ernest’s eyes. “Two thousand, five hundred. You can keep the old-mine Jagers.”
Ah now, he had let him know for certain what was up. Would they dicker like Titans?
Tavisham shook his head.
Hagen let him have it. “Thanks for your time, then. I must rush.”
He was at the door when the words struck him. “Three thousand, five hundred.”
“Charterhouse Street. You can let me out at Holborn Circus. I’ll walk from there.”
“Righto, guv. As you please.”
The Haymarket, Pall Mall, Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column passed in succession. Crowds of tourists mingled with clerks, porters, typists and men in bowler hats, all hurrying home from work. News vendors hawked the Times, the Daily Mail, the Evening Herald and others.
The taxi turned onto Victoria Embankment and headed east toward Waterloo Bridge and King’s College. Hagen lost himself in thought.
The Hope Diamond was a part of the Great Blue Diamond, the stone Tavernier had brought to France from India in 1668 and had sold to Louis XIV. Already faceted, it had weighted 112 carats. Dissatisfied with its brilliance, the Sun King had had the stone recut to 67.5 carats. The excess, the waste, had been lost—gone forever. No one knew where.
Then in 1792, in the closing days of the French Revolution, the Blue had been stolen along with others. Carried to London, it had disappeared, only to show up again in 1830 as a remarkable dark blue diamond of 44.5 carats and unknown origin.
Rumor had it that they had cut two stones from the residue, one larger than the other. Had the diamond in his pocket been one of them? Had it gone full circle back to France, to Fontainebleau, only to show up in London again? Were the times not those of trouble once again?
It was an absolutely gorgeous stone.
The offices of the Central Selling Organization were along from the Vegetable Market and across the street from the butcher stalls of the Smithfield Market. Though uneasy that the chairman had asked to see him, Hagen found he had to smile. Diamonds and vegetables or sides of beef—it said so much about the man.
Unlike so many of Britain’s corporate leaders, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer had worked his way up from the bottom. First as an apprenticed sorter in London for the firm of Dunkelsbuhler, then as their buyer in Kimberley, South Africa. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the types of diamonds that came from each of the mines, but more than this, far more, he was an extremely astute businessman.
From Anglo-American to Consolidated Diamond Mines of South-West Africa, to De Beers as chairman of its board of directors.
It was an impressive career that spanned more than forty years. The control that De Beers now exercised under Oppenheimer was all but absolute. What mines they couldn’t buy, they convinced their owners to sell them all their product. What promising prospects they couldn’t acquire a controlling interest in, they kept at until they did.
Their whole philosophy was to make diamonds scarce and thus of great value. In this Sir Ernest was simply following the dicta of the original syndicate of ten, or those of Solly Joel, its leader in 1917, who bought sight unseen the whole of the czar’s diamonds from the Bolsheviks for a quarter of a million pounds and then had simply locked them away for years.
Now nearly ninety percent of the world’s diamond production was funneled through the Central Selling Organization’s offices.
Having had the third degree from the Antwerp Committee, Hagen wondered if he would now get it from the chairman.
Bernard and the others were one thing; Sir Ernest quite another. He’d want to know what had happened with Heydrich—yes, of course—but he’d also want an analysis of it. He’d want the state of things in Germany to add to all the other reports that filtered through to him. He’d probably—and here Hagen was all but certain—have heard of Krantz’s interest in him.
It wouldn’t be easy, but with Sir Ernest, as with any good businessman, there was always the unexpected.
This quiet, well-mannered, gentle and unassuming man was waiting at the far end of the sorting room. Hagen sensed the choice of meeting place had been deliberate. The room was long, the man diminutive beyond the seemingly endless row of white, cloth-covered tables on which was gathered in round, flat, conelike piles here, there, everywhere, the week’s assortment of rough gem diamonds.
Windows to the north gave the sorters’ bench light. Apart from Sir Ernest and himself, everyone except the security guards had long since left for the day.
The walls and the ceiling were white, gray-tinged now by shadows. His footsteps echoed, driving home a message he was well aware of long before he ever reached the chairman.
In 1932 the total world sales of gem diamonds had been a mere £20,000. One by one Sir Ernest had closed the De Beers mines in South and South-West Africa. Production had fallen to fourteen thousand carats, less than 1/160 of what it had been in 1930.
Even so, prices had continued to plummet, the market to dry up. In spite of this, Oppenheimer had had to continue buying up the production from the mines he didn’t control, particularly those in Portuguese Angola and the Belgian Congo.
By 1937 the stockpile had grown to over forty million carats of gem rough—twenty years’ supply at the best of times. And now there was La Forminière in the Congo to haunt him. Apart from De Beers, they themselves had a stockpile of nearly thirty million carats of crushing boart alone.
Then, too, there was pressure to move the Antwerp stocks to London and to stop dealing with the Reich.
No matter how one looked at it, the chairman was facing the most difficult time of his life.
“Well, Richard, it’s good to see you again.”
“Sir Ernest, I hope I’m not late.”
They shook hands. The chairman gave a deprecatory wave. “You’re never late, and in any case it would only have given me more time to think. So often now one has to rush. I like the quiet of the sorting room best. Then one can see at a glance what it’s all about.”
Responsibility had aged him even in the past six months. The well-groomed hair was thinner, grayer, the mustache now completely iron gray. The brow was permanently furrowed, the eyes faded with a still and distant dream.
Looking down the length of the sorting tables, indicating the diamonds before them, he said somewhat sadly, “There are always two questions before us, Richard. How do we sell them, and if we do, how do we maintain their price?”
They exchanged a few pleasantries. Oppenheimer asked after his mother, after Bernard Wunsch and Ascher Levinski.
Hagen said they were well, though both Bernard and Lev were worried about the international situation.
Oppenheimer nodded sympathetically. “You people are so much closer to things in Belgium.”
“Sir Ernest, the Nazis must be planning war on a scale never seen before. If so, the market for gems that’s only just beginning to reestablish itself will evaporate.”
“My thoughts exactly. A lot of old stones are suddenly coming on the market. Will it become a tide, I wonder?”
Taking the pendant from his pocket, Hagen handed it to the chairman. At once Oppenheimer was intrigued. He sought the north light only to find it all but gone. Using one of the lamps, he examined the facets, the style of the cutting. Then he drew out a loupe and went to work.
Fifteen minutes later he was using microscope, diamond light, fluoroscope and set of calipers. By then they had removed the stone from its setting and had weighed it at 8.7139 carats. Oppenheimer’s enthusiasm refreshed him. It had been good to work on something together, good
to talk about the situation in Europe while busy with a totally different problem. It pleased him to know that Richard had remembered his passion for collecting colored diamonds.
“Richard, the depth of the blue is right for the Kollur Mine, but the weight is too high.”
“It’s possible, Sir Ernest. Two stones were cut from the residue. Ascher Lev has always maintained they’d surface someday.”
“Ascher Lev. Has he lost the end of his name or something?”
Hagen grinned. Oppenheimer went back to studying the diamond, then asked what he’d paid for it.
Richard could be blunt when he wanted.
They spoke again of the overhang, of the old gem diamonds that were coming onto the market and interfering with the normal course of business. “We’re being forced to buy them as well, Richard. It’s not the best of situations.”
In silence, they looked over the tables where perhaps a quarter of a million carats of gem rough lay waiting to be absorbed. Oppenheimer let the silence grow as he held the blue before him. It had such color he hated to leave it, but things had to be said.
Setting the stone down on the table between them, he turned decisively from it to give Hagen a piercing look. “Richard, what’s this business I hear of with Reinhard Heydrich?”
“He knows the Krupp has asked me to supply the Reich with a year’s supply of industrial stones.”
“And what, exactly, did he say to you?”
“That the two of us should get to know each other, that it …”
“Go on, Richard. Everything.”
Hagen nodded. “That it could be to our mutual advantage.”
“Yet if I understand de Heer Lietermann correctly, Heydrich’s Sicherheitsdienst may well have been responsible for trying to use de Heer Klees to discredit you in the eyes of the Committee?”
“Perhaps Heydrich wanted to apply the stick as well as the carrot? Perhaps his people had nothing to do with it.”
“Perhaps he wanted to shake us up? Was that it? Perhaps he merely wanted to show friendship with an American? There are so many perhapses with a man like Heydrich, Richard, you’d do well to be wary.”
The Alice Factor Page 11