“Where the hell did you get that?” he asked as he stared at Conrad.
“Well, you remember when I went to the bathroom at the airport…?”
“You’re kidding me?”
Conrad shook his head slowly. “Someone’s got to watch your back.”
“Well, I don’t think there’s any need for that here,” he said as he put the gun down on the table. “We’re not back in the US of A now, you know. This is France, and they don’t take too kindly to people carrying concealed weapons here.”
“In that case, maybe you should tell them,” said Conrad.
“Sounds like good advice to me,” said Eloise, trying very hard not to sound scared.
“Let’s all just cool down for a second, shall we?” said Carter, “Why don’t we all just sit down and keep calm, huh? No one’s going to hurt anyone. Right, Conrad?”
Conrad nodded and sat down at the table. Carter looked at Eloise and Jacques standing in the doorway. “You too,” he said.
“No way! I’m not moving till you tell us who you are,” retorted Eloise, loudly but a little unsurely.
Carter sighed. Slowly, he took his wallet from his pocket and showed Eloise his FIDT identity card. She looked at it carefully.
“So what are you? Some sort of private investigator?” she asked
“Something like that,” replied Carter as, reluctantly and slowly, Eloise and Jacques walked forward and sat at the table in the saloon. Carter sat down facing Jacques from the other end of the table whilst Eloise and Conrad were side by side with their backs to the boat’s starboard window. Eloise shuffled as close to Jacques as she could and as far away from Conrad as possible.
“You know, there’s no reason for you to be afraid of us,” said Carter. “We’re the good guys. It’s the ones we’re trying to track down that you need to watch out for.”
“So who are they? And what’s it got to do with us anyway? And what the hell is the FIDT?” questioned Eloise.
There was something about Carter which made Eloise believe him, even trust him; his voice was quiet and reassuring and his manner relaxed, almost tired.
“Well, it’s a long story,” began Carter, “but I guess you’re entitled to hear it. Maybe you should secure the boat, Jacques. This could take a while.”
Jacques nodded and went to the helm station at the front of the saloon. The others sat in silence as they heard the anchor chain rattle over the bow of the Esprit.
“OK,” Carter took a deep breath as Jacques returned to his seat, “Conrad and me, we’re working for an organisation called The New York Federation of International Diamond Traders, the FIDT, like on my identity card.” Jacques stared at Carter as he continued. “The Federation works with other national and international organisations which, together, are responsible for the distribution of most of the diamonds produced in the world. It’s our job to track down people who try to cheat the system, usually by feeding fake diamonds into the market and passing them off as the real thing.”
“But surely there are ways of detecting fakes aren’t there?” Eloise’s fear had subsided, to be replaced with interest and curiosity, but Jacques kept throwing a glance at Conrad. Each time he did, Conrad smiled back at him and patted the gun which he had reclaimed from the table and pushed into his waistband.
“Yes, that’s true. And it’s easy enough to detect diamond substitutes. Zirconia for instance. Our members don’t have too much trouble distinguishing between substitutes and the real thing. No, where the trouble starts is with synthetic diamonds. These are real diamonds. They have all the properties and attributes of real diamonds, except that they’ve never seen the inside of a diamond mine.”
“I didn’t think it was possible to make diamonds artificially,” said Eloise
“Most of the commercially produced synthetic diamonds in the world are very small, poor quality and easily distinguished from the real thing. They can only be used for industrial purposes. Drill bits, glass cutters, that kind of thing. Not for jewellery. And their value is relatively low. But for a while now, people have been trying to make bigger, better, gem quality stones and some of them have succeeded. The Russians, for instance, have been making gem quality synthetics for quite a few years and synthetic diamonds are now getting so good that it takes special, very expensive equipment to detect them, equipment that jewellers just don’t have.”
“And you think someone’s been feeding some of these synthetic diamonds into the system illegally?” queried Eloise, “Mixing them in with natural diamonds at some point?”
“Yeah! That’s right! ” Carter looked pleased. “Your mother was right. She said you were bright.”
The silence was deafening.
The only sound was the gentle lapping of the sea against the hull of the Esprit as all eyes turned to look at Carter. He closed his eyes, realising what he had done. In a moment of carelessness, he had got carried away and had said something stupid. He cursed himself and opened his eyes again to find Eloise staring at him, her face challenging him. After several seconds of silence had passed, she spoke.
“What did you just say?” she asked, daring him to try to extract himself from the hole he had just dug for himself. Carter cleared his throat.
“About the diamonds?”
“About my mother. How come you know my mother?” Eloise tilted her head threateningly as she spoke.
“Your mother? Oh yes. Didn’t I tell you? Your mother and I, we were at university together.”
“No, you didn’t tell me. And, anyway, that was twenty-odd years ago. I wasn’t even born then. So how do you know about me. And about how bright I am? When did you last speak to my mother?”
“I spoke to her yesterday.”
“About this?”
“Yes.”
“But what have synthetic diamonds got to do with her? Or me, for that matter?”
“Well, they appear to be coming from a mine owned by your grandfather.”
Eloise’s mood changed from one of intellectual interest to one of apprehension. But she was angry too.
“Are you trying to tell me that you think my grandfather is involved in this… this scam?”
“I don’t know for sure but it’s possible, yes. Likely, even.”
Eloise got up from the table. “I think I’ve heard enough of this rubbish,” she said and stormed out of the saloon onto the aft deck.
Moments later, she was standing at the aft guard rail, staring out into the distance as Carter came up behind her and touched her on the shoulder. She shied away from his touch.
“What about your brother Eloise? What about Rob?” he said, desperate to get her back on side.
Eloise rounded on him, her eyes bright and challenging. “What about him?” she said. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that he was involved as well. Well if he was, you’re never going to know because he’s dead!” She glared at him and went to hit him with her clenched fist but he caught it in mid-air and held her with a stare. She grimaced and a lonely tear trickled down her cheek. Carter let go of her fist and her hand dropped to her side.
“No, Eloise, I’m not going to say that. But I do believe he died because of it. I think, somehow, by chance, by accident, unknowingly, I don’t know how but somehow, he got caught up in it. He probably wasn’t even aware of his involvement.”
“You haven’t got a shred of proof of any of this, have you?”
Carter stood silently and looked away into the distance. The atmosphere bristled in the silence that followed before Carter suddenly turned back to face Eloise, his face animated and lively. He grabbed her by the shoulders, frightening her.
“Maybe there is a way I can prove it to you,” he said. “Come back into the saloon with me and let me try.” He looked at her intensely and she backed away from him. As she did she could feel the Esprit’s guard rail behind her.
“Come on, Eloise. Let me try. Please?” pleaded Carter as he gently guided a hesitant Eloise towards the saloon. Jacques and Co
nrad, who had come out onto the deck behind Carter, followed them back inside and took their seats again, waiting expectantly.
“If I’m right,” said Carter, “this will convince you.”
Slowly he took an envelope from his jacket pocket and removed the printout of Rob’s email from it. Eloise’s eyes widened as he unfolded it.
Carter spread the document out on the table. “Conrad, the book please.” Conrad went to the bookcase and extracted the copy of Robin Hood and passed it to him.
Carter looked at the first group of numbers on Rob’s email, it read 161893. He turned to page sixteen. They all watched Carter as he ran his finger down the page counting the lines as he went.
“Line eighteen,” he said to himself as he got to it, “and word number nine, and the third letter. That’s a C.” He looked at Conrad. “Well go on, write it down.”
Conrad reached into his pocket for the ball point pen and small note pad which he always carried with him. “C,” he said as he wrote it down on a fresh page.
Carter leafed quickly through the book to find the next few letters. “O … N … F … I … R … M … Confirm. That’s the first word of the message,” he said. “Looks like maybe I was right!”
As Carter read out each letter, Conrad repeated it and wrote it down. When, ten minutes later, Carter got to the end, he looked up.
“OK, that’s it. Read it back to me,” he said.
Conrad looked at his pad and began to read the decoded message. “Confirm transfer of merchandise at three pm Friday eighth July on board Hedonist in Nice.”
Carter looked at Eloise. “That do it for you?” he asked.
Eloise knew Carter was right but she didn’t want to admit it, at least not to him. She searched for a flaw in his argument.
“The message doesn’t say anything about diamonds,” she said. “The ‘merchandise’ could be anything.”
Carter looked at her. He raised his eyebrows and cocked his head to one side as if to challenge her to admit what she knew to be the truth. She looked away from him through the window into the distance, hating to believe him but knowing that he was right. She reached into the pocket of her shorts to see if the sheet of paper she had taken from the book the previous day was still there. It was. Slowly, she extracted it and held it out to Carter.
“I suppose you’d better see what this one says too.”
As Eloise got up to leave the saloon, Carter looked at her with compassion in his eyes. She noticed and knew for sure then that he did not wish her any harm but she still found it difficult to accept that her grandfather was involved in anything illegal. Especially if, as Carter had suggested, Rob had been killed because of it. It was hard for her to believe that Philippe would be a party to the murder of his own grandson. She went out onto the aft deck again.
When Eloise had left the saloon, Carter opened up the sheet of paper she had given him. He looked at it for a few seconds and then compared it with the printout of the message Rob had received.
“It’s the same as the other one,” he said. “Except handwritten.”
Carter got up and went out to join Eloise at the stern of the boat where she was standing quietly and looking out to sea.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “But surely you must believe me now?”
Eloise looked round at him, resigned to the truth but still trying to pick holes in his argument.
“There’s still nothing there to connect my grandfather to all of this,” she said.
“I’m afraid there is,” replied Carter. “Apart from the mine in Guinea, this used to be one of his boats.”
Carter looked round and saw that Jacques had come out onto the deck and was standing watching them. He motioned to Jacques to come closer and they passed each other as Carter returned to the saloon. Jacques came up behind Eloise. He didn’t say anything, he just put his arm round her.
“You’re not involved in any of this are you, Jacques?” she said, turning and looking into his eyes as she spoke.
“Of course not. This boat used to belong to Monsieur Lacoste and now it’s mine, that’s all.”
Jacques pulled her closer to him and kissed her on the forehead as Carter came back out onto the deck.
“We can go back to Port Grimaud now,” he said as he approached Eloise and Jacques. “We have what we came for.”
Jacques nodded his acknowledgement to Carter but waited until Eloise was ready to let go of him before leaving her to go to the helm station and get the Esprit under way.
“I’m sorry you had to find out about all this, Eloise,” said Carter as the Esprit made her way back to Port Grimaud, “I promised your mother that I would try to keep you out of it and I would have liked to have kept my promise to her.” Eloise gave a brief nod of her head, accepting what Carter had said, before he continued. “But, now that you do know about it, is there anything you can tell me that you think might help?”
Eloise shook her head.” No,” she said, “I’ve told you everything I know.”
“OK, but if you think of anything, please call me. I can always be contacted on this number.” Carter held out a card and Eloise took it. “Your mother has the number too. Can I trust you not to speak to anyone else about this?”
“Yes, but…”
“No buts, Eloise. You must promise me. I know Philippe is your grandfather but if he is involved then he’s also involved in your brother’s death. Please remember that.”
CHAPTER 10
The basement room smelt of years of disuse. Long ago, the stench of rotting vegetation had deserted the place leaving only a slight tell-tale impregnation in the stone walls. Now, the solid floor was covered in a fine film of dust and grime which, in the more remote parts of the room, had remained unmolested for many years so that even the centipedes, en route to more fruitful pastures, left footprints.
At one end of the room, a collection of old and broken furniture was piled high, reaching the joists of the floor above. At the other end, even the stone steps from the kitchen above looked tired, an indent in each one marking the thousands of footsteps it had withstood.
The rest of the room was bare except for a sturdy wooden high backed dining chair with arms, which looked much too solid to have been reclaimed from the pile, and which had been placed in the middle of the room under the single light bulb hanging from a hook screwed into the joist above it.
Sitting on the chair, and tied to it with thin ropes which bit into his wrists and ankles, was Antoine. He looked up pleadingly at Henri, a small but mean looking man, who was standing over him. Behind Antoine stood Albert, a large and muscular man, and to one side, in a corner of the room where he was almost invisible, stood Gilles.
Henri was not getting the information he wanted but both he and Gilles were determined to find out everything Antoine knew. Henri drew back his hand and, with all the force he could muster, struck the little man. Antoine’s head moved to the right as the blow landed and he felt a searing pain in his cheek.
“This is not a game, du Bois,” Henri said. “You will tell me what I want to know.”
Antoine was not a strong man, physically or in any other way. He had already taken all the punishment anyone could expect of him and blood was running down his face into his mouth from the cut left by Henri’s ring.
“Are you ready to talk yet?” Henri’s voice was menacing.
“OK, OK,” said Antoine, his voice shaky and faltering. “What do you want to know?”
“That’s better. Why did you make me hit you?“ Henri smiled insincerely and turned away from Antoine. “Now then, first of all, who were those people you took to see Jacques Armand?” He turned back to Antoine, his face hard again. “What do you know about them?”
Antoine shrugged. “Not much,” he said.
“Who are they?” insisted Henri as Albert struck Antoine from behind on the back of the head.
“I don’t know anything for sure,” he said. “I got the job through the agency and I was paid in cash.
”
Henri prepared to hit Antoine again, pulling his arm back over his shoulder. As he saw this, Antoine hurriedly added, “But I saw a letter one of them had. I only saw part of it but at the top of the letter I think it said The New York Association… or was it Federation? Yes, it was Federation. The New York Federation.”
“The New York Federation!” snapped Henri, “What sort of a name is that?”
“I… I don’t know. That was all I could see. Just The New York Federation.”
Henri turned away from Antoine and threw his hands in the air in frustration. “OK, Antoine. So they are something to do with an organisation called The New York Federation… maybe The New York Federation of something. Have I got that right?”
Antoine nodded enthusiastically, looking more frightened than ever as Henri turned back to face him, putting his hands on the arms of the chair and leaning forward so that his nose was almost touching Antoine’s.
“Why did they want to hire Jacques’ boat?”
Antoine tried to move his head back, away from Henri, but his freedom of movement was limited by the back of the chair.
“They wouldn’t tell me anything,” he said, closing his eyes and screwing up his face in anticipation of another blow from Henri or Albert. When neither of them struck him, he opened one eye and looked at Henri through it. “All they said was that they wanted to charter the boat today.”
Gilles came out of the shadows and motioned to Henri to join him by the steps.
“He’s no use to us,” he said. “He doesn’t know anything.” Gilles looked at Antoine and lowered his voice. “Get rid of him.”
Henri nodded as Gilles climbed the steep steps to the door at the top and left the basement of the old farmhouse.
_________________________
Once the Esprit had returned to Port Grimaud and berthed, Carter and Conrad disembarked and set out to walk from the Capitainerie to the café where they were to meet Antoine and his driver. As they did, Carter turned to Conrad.
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