As they wound their way to the ground floor of the Capitol, Carlton shook his head. “I really thought he’d be able to help. Now I’m right back to square one.”
“No, now we’re back to square one.”
“Sorry. We.”
“Except that we’re not.”
“What?”
“I told you I found something, remember?”
“And?”
“Since the U.S. Geological Survey wasn’t forthcoming about old surveys showing diamond deposits in Arkansas, I called a dozen private geologists in Arkansas, large and small. None spoke to me, which told me that there was something to hide. One woman from California finally talked to me. Your Dan Wenzel put me in contact with her. She’s the one who did the estimates for MacLean. She emailed me this after getting Wenzel’s okay.” She handed him a single folded piece of paper.
“A map? This looks like test borings on the MacLean property.”
“Look at the numbers.”
“Estimated deposits ... Ten million carats?” He stared at Erika. “When were these borings taken?”
“Three weeks ago.”
20 FROG
Lower Basement
Main Justice Building
Washington, D.C.
2:02 P.M.
Henri Monet did not possess the personality that the Justice Department ordinarily strived to employ. At thirty-two, the French-American could barely string together three words of English without using French. He had a temper. He suffered from wild mood swings. He was a cultural chauvinist. He took two-hour lunches. He demanded six weeks of vacation a year. He chain-smoked Gitanes cigarettes illegally in his office. But for all of his eccentricities, which Monet enthusiastically attributed to Gallic savoir vivre, the man possessed a talent great enough for DOJ to overlook his personality and give in to his demands.
Monet was a master at computer research.
Un maître.
Henri Monet’s father, a maquisard in the French Resistance, was saved from the Gestapo by the American Army advancing in Normandy in 1944. After the libération of France, he immigrated to the United States. Reasoning that the French lycées created by Napoléon were so good, France was the only country to export its education, he insisted on sending young, American-born Henri to boarding school in France before he continued his life in America. Despite Henri Monet’s French education and cultural chauvinism, like many first generation Americans, Monet was a fierce American patriot and had many a French schoolyard scar to prove it.
“So what is it, Henri?” Carlton was aware of the man’s touchiness when it came to his name and pronounced it in the French manner: ‘On-ree.’ He seated himself in a creaky wooden chair near the large oak desk that filled most of Monet’s cramped underground cave. He had nearly left his office to pack his bags for Hawaii when Monet had rung. First Erika’s discovery of the geological estimates, then Monet’s call. When it rains, it pours.
“Monsieur Carlton,” the thin man began in his thick French accent. He stared at Carlton in the dim light through round metal-rimmed eyeglasses, removed a thick Gitane cigarette from its blue package and lit it with a disposable Bic lighter. He inhaled deeply, pointed at Carlton with his cigarette, and exhaled loudly. "I have found nothing, monsieur Carlton.”
“What do you mean, nothing? You called me down here to tell me you found nothing?”
Monet screwed the cigarette between his yellowed teeth, lifted his palms upward, arched his eyebrows in exasperation. “Simply that, monsieur Carlton.” He removed the cigarette and tapped it on an ashtray stolen from the Tombs, one of Monet’s Georgetown haunts. “There is nothing.”
“Then why did you ask me to come down here? I don’t have time for this, Henri.” He lifted himself from his chair, made for the door.
Monet lifted his cigarette straight up. “Un moment. Just because I found nothing doesn’t mean that I haven’t found something.”
Carlton stopped, turned. “In English, Henri.”
“Pardon. I’m not making sense. I did not sleep last night.”
“That makes two of us.”
“As I said, I researched your histoire about the diamond mine in Arkansas and this man Waterboer who supposedly shut it down. I found nothing. And believe me, monsieur Carlton. I looked.” He wagged a finger in front of his face, theatrically contorted with deep concern. “And when I look, I look, hein? Of course, in the 1920s, there was little radio, no television. I assumed that I would find very little. But I found nothing at all. Particularly about a diamond mine in 1920. Rien du tout.
“I looked everywhere. National newspapers. Local newspapers. Books. Government records. Geological records. Land records. According to the records, this survey”—he picked up the photocopy of Osage’s 1920 geological survey that Carlton had given him— “does not exist. It is not in the records.”
Monet may have been eccentric, but he was a crack cyber researcher. Carlton knew that Monet took his work as seriously as he did. If information was out there—any information—Monet would have found it.
“But if the rumor about this mine is true, it would be strange not to find anything, non? And so it is étrange. Strange. If the rumor is true. But sometimes you do not find what you are looking for.” He paused. “Before starting a research project, first you construct a research strategy.”
Carlton’s exhaustion decreased his ability to decipher the words cloaked in French intonations.
“Your story has many parts, n’est ce pas? There is the diamonds part, the Arkansas part, the Waterboer part, the 1920s part, et cetera. It is only when I put all of these parts together that I found nothing. Rien. But after finding nothing, I decided to research each component separately. And this is why I stayed up toute la nuit.
“For each component, there is beaucoup d’information.” He shrugged. “You can imagine. About diamonds, for example. Hundreds of thousands of pages of articles and books and photos. The same with Arkansas, of course. Tons of littérature. Also with Waterboer. On this there is less, but still énormément. I couldn’t possibly read all of it. So I broke each component down into smaller categories. I broke down diamonds into mining in America, for example. Less information, but still énormément. I broke down Waterboer into America and this man, Nicholas Waterboer. There was much less on this. When I looked at Waterboer and America, I found mostly cases from our ministere—the Justice Department. Cases that tried to hold Waterboer liable for violations of this monopoly law, how you say...”
“Antitrust.”
“C’est ça. Antitrust." Monet mangled the word through a cloud of acrid smoke. “Then I looked up references to the name Nicholas Waterboer. Again, since he lived in the 1920s, apart from references in current history books and in the South African press, there was très peu—very little. In fact, there was only one item in American records. One.” He let the statement dangle much like his cigarette, which had developed an impossibly long ash.
“But one must mine a long time before finding a diamond, n’est ce pas?” He smiled with yellow teeth. The ash fell as he reached for a manila folder on his cluttered oak desk. “This is what I found.” He tendered a document to Carlton.
Carlton looked at the paper intently. It was a high-quality computer printout of a grainy black and white photograph from a newspaper dated 1921. In it were six men dressed in the formal business attire of the early twentieth century assembled around a display case. The man at the far right looked oddly familiar. A caption was scrawled under the photograph.
‘Dedication of the South African diamond exhibit at the New York Museum of Natural History. L to R: Jonathan Pierce Blakely. Gladstone Fricke. Nicholas Waterboer ...’
“So that’s what he looked like, the bastard.” Carlton looked at the man with the wire-rimmed spectacles, white hair, and vivid eyes, continued to read the names in the caption. “...Jacob Storia. Abraham Morgenstein. Zed Galloway.”
“What about these other people in the photo? Can you research them?”
“I already researched them. All night long. Blakely, Fricke, Storia, and Morgenstein were Waterboer’s bankers. Des gros sous. Big money. Waterboer, of course, is Waterboer.”
“And Galloway?”
“That is the most interesting one of all. Dr. Zed Galloway, geologist, worked for the United States Geological Survey. Très interéssant. So I tried to find out more on him from old USGS records.” He exhaled loudly. “Nothing. As though he never existed.”
“How did you find out he worked for the USGS?”
“Ah,” Monet broke into a smile. “Even more interéssant. I looked up the publications in the Library of Congress. Every book published in the United States is in the Library of Congress. This is a French invention, you know. François Premier, the French king in 1537, required that a copy of every book published in France be given to the state, and—”
“That’s fascinating, Henri, but I don’t see—”
“Dr. Galloway was a geologist. He taught at Harvard and published several books. Mostly about diamonds. In 1920, he published his first book. A book on kimberlite pipes containing diamonds in Arkansas.”
“In Arkansas?” Carlton could barely control himself. “And?”
“Calmez vous, monsieur Carlton.” Monet savored the suspense he weaved. “The interesting thing is that I could find all of Galloway’s books except for this one. All of his other books are available in the Library of Congress. I called one of my colleagues in France at the Ecole des Mines, the School of Mines. They didn’t have it on their shelves, but she found a copy in their university computers and emailed it to me. It is Chinese to me, as you say.”
“Greek.”
“Perhaps, but the book has an introduction from the professor that I think you will find très interéssant.” Monet leaned over his desk, removed a printout from the manila folder. “Please read the line I marked in yellow.”
“Arkansas presents an intriguing geological matrix which combines both the intense concentration of kimberlite pipes and a topography that would facilitate mining activity. The yields are incalculable.” Carlton looked up, stunned.
“Look at the credits.”
Carlton glanced downward. At the end of the one page text was the name of Dr. Galloway, followed by the location where he wrote the book. Murfreesboro, Arkansas, 1920. “So it’s true. There really was a diamond mine in the 1920s. It’s not there anymore. Nicholas Waterboer was involved.”
Again, Monet bowed his head. “And now it all makes sense. All of the references to the mine have been eliminated. Galloway probably wrote the book before he was involved with Waterboer, before the mine was shut down, by which time it was too late to eliminate a book already published and sent to universities around the world. Whoever covered this up wasn’t able to eliminate all of the copies sent to other countries. And, obviously, they had not foreseen computer research.”
“But how could Waterboer accomplish that?”
“It is a grosse entreprise. A big enterprise.”
“Not that big. Not in the United States. Not in 1920. Waterboer couldn’t have done this on its own in the U.S. back then or keep something like this hidden all of this time. Waterboer would have needed a lot of help. A heck of a lot more help than a New York law firm. Only one organization is big enough and long lasting enough to pull something like this off. Secretly.”
Monet crushed out his Gitane, looked up at Carlton, and exhaled smoke. “Le gouvernement.”
“Exactly. The question is, who in the government?”
The receptionist informed Carlton in her Southern accent that Mazursky had left for the Senate floor five minutes earlier. Yes, she opined, he had probably taken the underground subway. It was snowing, after all.
He beat all speed records from Main Justice to the Capitol.
Rumpled and badly in need of a shave and a fresh change of clothes, Carlton exited the underground Senate tram and dashed toward the escalator. The move aroused the suspicion of a beefy Capitol security guard. “Hey you! Come back here!” Getting no response, the guard started after him.
Carlton forced his way up the escalator stairs, past the horde of staffers, lobbyists, and pages each making his or her way to their respective legislative destinations. The security guard fought to catch up, but his beer gut made it difficult to squeeze past already irate escalator riders. “Stop him!”
At the top of the escalator, Carlton paused to scan the main Capitol floor. Almost everyone was dressed in cookie-cutter navy blue and gray. He spotted Mazursky in the distance, bounded toward him as the guard continued to lay chase.
“David!”
Mazursky spun around, saw the haggard-looking Carlton running toward him, a frenzied guard fast behind him.
“Hey!” The portly guard finally managed to grab Carlton’s arm with a meaty grip. “Just where do you think you’re going, buddy?” He fought to catch his breath.
Also panting, Carlton reached inside his pocket, flashed his silver badge. “Department of Justice. Official business.”
The guard released him. “Sorry, sir. You could’ve just flashed your ID. You gave me quite a scare. You never know who’s a terrorist.”
“For God’s sake, Pat. What’s going on? You’re making a scene.” Mazursky scanned the area, smiled nervously.
Carlton breathed deeply. “The recent geological surveys. The ones you told me about this morning. The ones you said didn’t show any diamonds in Arkansas. Who did them?”
“What—”
“The surveys. Who did the work?”
“USGS, I think. Why?”
“The United States Geologic Survey? They drafted the surveys?”
“Right.”
“Look at this.” He handed him MacLean’s boring map, still panting. “Three weeks ago. Look at the estimated yield.”
“I don’t understand. The USGS surveys I read-”
“That’s the key, David. The USGS. My computer guy spent the past twenty-four hours researching every record on the planet about diamonds and Arkansas.”
“And?”
“He found zip.”
“That’s what I told you, remember?” Mazursky replied, confused and annoyed.
“No. He should have found something. There should have been something in the records. At least something saying that there were no diamonds. Or very few diamonds. And then he found this.” He handed Mazursky the photo, the introduction to Galloway’s book.
Mazursky scanned both. “So?”
“So he was part of the USGS. That’s the connection, David. The federal government. That’s the missing piece of the puzzle. The feds are the ones who started putting pressure on MacLean. They’re the ones who wanted me to settle and not make this into a trial. They’re the ones who tried to frame Wenzel. They’re the ones who are shipping me out to Hawaii. Dollars to donuts the geological reports in your three recent USGS surveys are bogus.
“There are diamonds in Arkansas, David. This boring survey proves it. Tons of diamonds. And someone in the government is trying to keep that secret.”
“You-”
“I should be institutionalized, right? So before you say it, I’ll say it for you. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories either. Just do one thing for me. Just one. Look into this. Please. From the federal government angle. Please.”
“Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds? Especially coming from a DOJ lawyer? A federal government conspiracy? Come on, Pat. The next thing you’ll tell me is that aliens killed JFK. Why on earth would the federal government keep Arkansas diamonds secret? It doesn’t make any sense. Look, I’m sorry, but I just don’t have the time for—.”
“No,” Carlton interrupted loudly, leaning forward. “You’re wrong. You do have time for this. You’ve got all the time and all the interest in the world.”
“Are you nuts?” Mazursky practically shouted. “Do you have any idea how busy I am? Give me one reason I should do this.” He lifted an index finger into the air. “One.”
“I’ll
give you two hundred million reasons. Next November. Senator Bigham, your boss, is going to make a run for the White House. You know it and I know it. And Bigham’s from Arkansas. If Bigham can blow the cover off this thing; if he can show that the federal government conspired to keep millions, billions of dollars worth of diamonds from production, he’ll get massive press, massive credit, and massive name recognition. On a non-partisan issue. If you blow the cover off of this for Bigham...”
In the global capital of power politics and political maneuvering, there was no need for Carlton to finish his sentence.
21 TAKING
Shaughnessy, McGuire & Wenzel, LLP
Century City, California
2:35 P.M.
Wenzel’s venerable 1939 Lavazza espresso maker hissed with the excess pressure that bled from its old seals. Wenzel walked to his desk, miniature Illy espresso saucer and cup in hand. He sat in his black leather chair, sifted through the bundle of mail Gertrude had organized, opened, date-stamped, and laid out while he attended a very long and very boring client lunch at the Grand Havana Room, his private cigar club in Beverly Hills.
Continuing Legal Education on the Bar materials. Charity appeals. Invitations to legal seminars. California Bar Journal, Los Angeles County Bar Association Journal. Newsletters. Mail from opposing counsel. Interoffice memos. Bills, bills, bills. Résumés, résumés, résumés. A letter from the dean of his law school. United States Department of Justice.
What had Carlton sent? The official-looking white envelope carried the DOJ seal. Below the seal and return address was typed ‘Environment and Natural Resources Division.’ Not Carlton’s division. A green certified mail receipt was affixed to the envelope. Not having received any instructions from Wenzel to the contrary, Gertrude had signed off on it.
Wenzel opened the envelope with a miniature saber letter-opener, a gift from a brown-nosed summer associate. The summer associate was history, the letter-opener remained.
Inside the envelope was a letter on heavy bond letterhead watermarked with the seal of the United States Department of Justice and a check for a huge sum.
Patrick Carlton 01 - The Diamond Conspiracy Page 14