Among the Ruins

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  “Jean-Baptiste Tavernier,” Rachel said. “A French merchant who documented his travels to India in the mid-1600s. Is this the man we’re looking for?” She chewed on her lower lip. Vicky noticed that Nathan watched her.

  She pulled up the search results on her screen, working her way down the list.

  “He was a traveler,” Rachel went on. “But he was also a jeweler.” She was following up on the index pages at random. “He made six journeys to the East, visiting India and Persia. He wrote a book about his experiences—Travels in India. He was quite an expert on pearls. Here!”

  She slapped her hand on the book. “Check out this page on pearls in the royal treasury.”

  Nate moved his chair closer to hers. He read the section on the pearl treasure chest aloud.

  “I’m not sure what we’re contemplating here. A jewel heist? A theft from the inside of Iran’s most heavily guarded bank, followed by an attempt to smuggle the jewels out of the country on a yacht on the Caspian Sea?”

  Rachel paged through the book, ignoring Nate.

  “Tavernier visited a diamond mine in 1642, the Golconda mine in India. He’s famous for discovering a massive stone, the Diamanta Grande Table. I have to say, it sounds pretty fantastic.”

  “The Great Table Diamond,” Nate translated into her ear. Rachel gave him a funny look.

  “Have you heard of this thing? It’s not like it’s the Kohinoor or the Hope.” An instant later, she contradicted herself. “Jesus God, look at the size of it!”

  Vicky was reading the laptop screen as swiftly as Rachel flipped pages in the book. She had the tingling sense they were onto something.

  “Tavernier saw the Table Diamond for sale in India, a stone of superlative quality. Very rare, pale pink—he estimated its weight as two hundred and forty-two carats.” Vicky allowed herself a smirk. “That, my friends, is a very big stone.”

  Rachel picked up the story. “The Great Table Diamond belonged to the Mughal emperors of India. When Nader Shah raided India in 1739, he’s said to have captured the diamond. Then it disappeared for a time. It was next seen by a gemologist named Harford Jones Brydges, who visited Shiraz in 1791. The prince of the court wanted Brydges to find a buyer for his diamonds, so he showed him a stone called the Darya-e Nur. Brydges said it matched Tavernier’s description of the Diamanta Grande Table exactly. Brydges had a copy of Tavernier’s sketch.”

  “A clear stone of the first water, pure in color and table-cut,” Vicky supplied.

  “Great Holy God,” Rachel muttered. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  She held up a color plate in the book.

  “There’s a reason Zahra strung those initials together, there’s a reason she was looking for Meen and Tushingham. They made an unbelievable discovery.”

  Vicky stared at her, surprised. And a little bit worried. Rachel wasn’t given to hyperbole.

  “The mineralogists from the ROM authenticated the Great Table Diamond. The stone Brydges saw was the same stone Tavernier described. But somewhere along the road, the stone was split in two: an ornament called the Darya-e Nur.” She pronounced the name carefully. “And a smaller stone set in a tiara worn by the wife of the Shah. That piece is called the Nur-el Ain, the Light of the Eyes. The Darya-e Nur and the Nur-el Ain are a significant part of the royal treasury.”

  “Oh my God,” Vicky whispered. She was staring at Nate’s laptop.

  Puzzled, Nate said, “This gets us no further forward than the Yellows did. How could anyone break into a vault of the Central Bank?”

  Vicky enlarged a window on the screen. Rachel looked at it and shrugged.

  “Zahra’s drawing of the coffin, yes, I know. I studied it so much I went cross-eyed.”

  “No,” Vicky breathed. “This isn’t Zahra’s drawing.”

  Rachel frowned. It was the same image Khattak had sent from Esfahan. The wooden box with a corner lopped off, shaded with parallel lines.

  “What are you talking about? Of course it is.”

  Vicky pointed to the description, her heart hammering in her chest.

  “This is Tavernier’s sketch of the Diamanta Grande Table.”

  * * *

  There were only five diamonds in the world that rivaled the Darya-e Nur. Two formed part of the British Crown Jewels. A third was the Orlov, held at the Kremlin. The fourth and fifth, the Nizam and the Jubilee, were privately owned. Tushingham and Meen’s authentication of the Great Table Diamond had been heralded as an earth-shattering discovery. It attached a fabulous history to the stones.

  Rachel reviewed their discoveries: the reference to the Yellows, the letters on Zahra’s sleeve, the sketch of the Diamanta Grande Table, Zahra’s visit to Shiraz.

  It wasn’t easy to separate the facts from conspiracies and rumors. The question Nate had raised remained: How could anyone have stolen a priceless treasure from the Central Bank?

  Rachel continued to read. The next time the Darya-e Nur was worn in public was by Reza Shah in 1926. The founder of the Pahlavi dynasty had worn it to his coronation. In 1968, on the final crowning of a Shah of Iran, Reza Shah’s son had followed suit.

  Rachel stopped abruptly. She read the paragraph again, wanting to be sure.

  Mohammad Reza Shah had worn the Darya-e Nur as an ornament in his kepi.

  Otherwise known as a military cap.

  * * *

  Nate took the book from Rachel’s hands. He was studying the color plate illustration of the Darya-e Nur. A blazing pink beauty now a flawless table-cut diamond, it was mounted on an embellished frame and garnished with hundreds of smaller diamonds and a sprinkling of rubies. Lion and sun symbols surmounted the pink stone, a small feathered crown appearing above it, a setting designed in the 1800s.

  One of the facets of the pink stone was inscribed in Persian with the name of a former ruler: The Sultan, Sahib Qiran, Fath Ali Shah, Qajar 1250. Or A.D. 1834, the year of Fath Ali’s death.

  Nate seemed dazed at the thought of it.

  “Impossible,” he said. “And easy enough to check if any part of the treasury is missing.”

  Rachel was well ahead of him. She studied the elaborate setting of the pink diamond, tumblers falling in her mind. This was about people, the people Zahra Sobhani had made a point of consulting. She was beginning to understand why.

  “I don’t think that was Zahra’s trump card. You have to connect the chain of events.”

  After the first sip, Vicky had let her coffee grow cold. Now she moved away from the laptop, taking in the view of the Bluffs through the cantilevered windows, the light spinning above the layer of clouds.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “You have to put them in chronological order. While she was in Toronto, Zahra made several calls to her husband. She tried to track down the authors of this book, presumably to ask questions about the diamond. She paid a visit to Winfield Park, which reminds me, we need to see him. Then she left for Iran to track down Mehran, first in Tehran, then in Shiraz. After she went to Shiraz, she was able to obtain a meeting with a representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader. Suppose you’re right. Suppose it wasn’t possible to steal the Darya-e Nur without raising a national outcry. What if the diamond isn’t missing?”

  It was barely ten in the morning, and the others seemed exhausted—Vicky fed up with not knowing the answers, Nate trudging along as if he hadn’t slept in weeks.

  “I’m sorry, Rachel. I still don’t understand.”

  Rachel managed a diffident smile.

  “Franklin Yang told us Winfield Park is a gemstone cutter. Chances are there’s a gem cutter at the jeweler’s shop in Shiraz as well.”

  And when they still looked blank, Rachel tapped the book.

  “What if the diamond isn’t missing?” She said it in a whisper. “Suppose there was a substitution. Suppose the Darya-e Nur in the Central Bank is actually a replica. It would explain why Zahra wanted to find the coronation footage. She’d want to compare earlier and later versions of the stone.�
�

  She pointed to the illustration in Tushingham and Meen’s book.

  “It says here, it’s impossible to remove the Darya-e Nur from its setting without damaging the diamond. What if someone was able to replicate the ornament, setting and all? And that’s why Zahra wanted to meet with Winfield Park, to find out if it could be done. It also explains why no alarm was ever raised. No one knows about the switch except the person who arranged it.”

  Rachel could tell Vicky wanted to believe her. A jewel heist, a murder, an international conspiracy—it was the story of a lifetime. It would catapult Vicky’s career into the stratosphere.

  But Vicky was quick to point out the holes in Rachel’s theory. And that made Rachel realize how seriously Vicky took her work. She wanted to publish the truth, she wasn’t given to aimless conjecture.

  “Remember the book’s introduction. Tushingham and Meen discuss the security precautions taken to protect the crown jewels. Back then, they were only allowed to examine the jewels for a few hours a day, in full view of the guards. Imagine how much the bank has updated its security since the 1960s. How would a switch have been managed?”

  Rachel’s enthusiasm was undefeated.

  “It can only have been in one place: the exhibit for the Chinese delegates. We have to find out what Zahra knew about that exhibit. I can get the boss on that, right away.”

  She flushed at the admiring look Nate gave her.

  “It’s possible,” he said. “Barely.” He glanced at Vicky. “And quite a story, better than anything I could give you.”

  Vicky’s eyes were on fire. “You have to let me have it. When we’re done with this, I mean. When Inspector Khattak’s safe.” More diffidently, she added, “Haven’t I earned your trust by now?”

  Rachel considered this. She was warming up to Vicky. She would invite her for a walk along the Bluffs. She took Nate’s company as a given.

  She answered honestly. “I can’t promise, but if it’s the right thing to do, you’ll have it.”

  “It explains a great deal,” Nate cut in, oblivious to the rapprochement between the two women. “It would have been a hell of a trump card for Zahra to play. If she could prove there was a substitution, she could easily have gotten a meeting with a representative of the Supreme Leader. She’d have something to trade for the release of Roxana.”

  Rachel hadn’t thought that far ahead. Now she remembered the woman who’d fought so bravely for those who were still detained, only to meet her fate at Evin.

  Why? Rachel asked herself. Coincidence?

  So many years after the stolen election and the uprising of the Greens, Rachel didn’t believe Zahra Sobhani’s activism had inflamed the sensibilities of the regime.

  As fantastic as Rachel’s theory was, if she was right, Zahra had been in a position to expose someone who couldn’t afford to be exposed: the person who’d stolen the Darya-e Nur, Iran’s imperial treasure.

  Whoever that person was, they’d wanted Zahra dead.

  46

  Winfield Park wasn’t who Rachel expected to meet. She’d imagined a man in his sixties with a posh voice and a pin-striped suit, distinguished by a monocle of dubious reliability and a tendency to perch his weight on a silver-headed cane. She realized she was picturing the Monopoly man.

  Maybe because he was a well-known gem cutter, or because of his somewhat stodgy name. Or perhaps because he lived in Lawrence Park, an affluent neighborhood centered on Mount Pleasant. It presided over the lake, touting green views instead of winds, an important distinction in a city so frequently riven by winter. Quiet roads wound about a thickly wooded ravine. The air was cool, the afternoon light fleeting, the tree branches shaking off the winter.

  Park’s home was tucked back from the streets on the upper slope of a hill. It had sweeping views over a park with carefully tended hedges. An avenue of fairy-drift lime trees bordered a flagstone path, the house a copper-roofed jewel floating above the trees. A maid admitted them to the house, leading them to a great room that functioned as a gallery.

  Here the ceiling was a smooth, gold maple, shining upon a row of narrowly aligned glass cases, whose contents seemed to sparkle. Rachel thought first of marbles. They glittered on miniature pedestals, reflecting a prismatic light. At the back of the room, a long light unspooled through a company of windows, over the leaves of trees whose branches creaked like hinges. The back garden descended into the ravine.

  “This puts your little cottage in the shade,” she mumbled to Nate.

  He grinned. He was posing as a consultant to the police; she supposed since he acted as an unofficial resource, it was a reasonable description of his efforts. Winfield Park nodded at them both as he crossed into the gallery.

  He was a diminutive Asian man in his late forties, elegantly dressed in a plum sweater and black slacks. His smile was cautious, his manner circumspect. His blue-black hair lay across his skull like a cap. His face was unexpectedly bony, a contrast to his delicate hands. An enormous marquise diamond blazed from one finger of his hand.

  Park had built his reputation on the replication of world-renowned gemstones. Rachel would lay odds she was staring at a replica of the Star of Africa behind his head.

  Nate settled himself into the background, passing from case to case as Rachel drew closer to Park. A scent like powdered dust rose from the fine knit of his sweater. He explained he’d just come from his workshop, and she wondered if he’d chosen this remote lot for his home to minimize his neighbors’ complaints when he used whatever kind of tools were involved in the faceting of gemstones.

  “You said on the phone you wanted to talk about my meeting with Zahra Sobhani.”

  Rachel withdrew Zahra’s date book from her purse.

  “You met with her on January 11. Did that meeting take place here?”

  “Yes. She wanted to see my collection. I thought she’d be impressed by the Tavernier Blue.”

  When Rachel’s face looked blank, Park went on to add, “The Tavernier Blue was the original iteration of the Hope Diamond—a huge blue stone that stunned the world. It’s been conclusively proven that the Tavernier rough was cut first into the famous French Blue, a stone worn by no less a personage than Louis XIV. The Hope Diamond was then cut from that stone—and is there a diamond more famous in the world?”

  This was a question Rachel couldn’t begin to answer.

  She flicked a quick glance at Nate. He raised his eyebrows as she followed Park to a case in the center of the room. Here the stones were lit by cunningly positioned cabinet lights. They gleamed on their pedestals like tiny pulsing hearts.

  The pieces were curated, detailed credits rested on silver salvers beside each stone. Park indicated a violet-blue stone that would have fit nicely in Rachel’s palm. Two smaller blue stones were stationed to either side, each with its own description. To the naked eye, the color of the stones was similar, while the faceting of each was unique.

  “This is the Tavernier Blue,” Park said with quiet pride. “The precursor of the Hope.”

  “And was Zahra impressed by it?”

  Park frowned. He led them away from the Blue with noticeable regret.

  “She was preoccupied, so alas, no. Though she did pay some attention to the sketch of the Tavernier Blue.”

  Rachel looked back at the card beside the Blue. It featured a reproduction of Tavernier’s sketch of the stone in each of its iterations. The style of the illustration was identical to Tavernier’s sketch of the Diamanta Grande Table.

  “Mr. Park, was this the only sketch that interested Zahra? Did she ask about any of your other replicas?”

  Park plucked the note card from her hands.

  “She was far more interested in how I made them and what I did with them. I use cubic zirconia, you know, and I do original research on the pieces for the most accurate projections of size, weight, and appearance. Faceting one of the more famous stones is a process that takes me months, sometimes years—and that’s if the preliminary modeling has
already been done.”

  Rachel looked for the Darya-e Nur, trying not to get distracted by a felicitous display of opals—if she’d had a fondness for such things, she liked the sporadic fire of the stones. Park noticed her interest.

  “I cut my teeth on opals.”

  From his droll delivery, Rachel guessed it was a well-tried joke. Nate strolled past her, no longer directionless, murmuring names as he passed.

  “The Florentine, the Beau Sancy, the Moussaieff Red, the Black Orlov, the Mogok Ruby, the Great Table, the Nur-el Ain. A most impressive effort, Mr. Park.”

  “A lifetime of labor,” Park rejoined. “But certainly not love’s labor lost, I take great pleasure in crafting these pieces.”

  Rachel followed Nate to a case sheltered before one of the windows. On the top tier of the display, two stones were exhibited, each with a detailed history. One was a sketch Rachel had come to recognize: the little wooden coffin, or the Diamanta Grande Table.

  “Zahra must have asked you about this.”

  Winfield Park hitched up his shoulders in a fastidious gesture.

  “She compared both sketches. She took quite an interest in the Great Table.”

  Rachel examined his replica. She’d been expecting a regal diamond of enormous proportions mounted in a setting befitting the crown jewels. The pale pink tablet lying on its bed looked like a flat glass slab, disappointingly lacking in glamor.

  She moved on to the Nur-el Ain. The oval-cut brilliant was more along the lines of what she’d imagined as a stone worth killing for, with its glittery, exquisitely worked facets.

  “It reminds me of the Pink Star,” Nate said to Park.

  “The Steinmetz Pink—the Vivid Pink? I assure you, apart from weight, the two stones have nothing in common. The Steinmetz is a South African stone, different in color, cut, and quality.” Park flicked a hand at an imaginary speck of dust on his trousers, the gesture transmitting his scorn. “The Nur-el Ain is without question the superior stone. Its history alone is riveting.”