The Devil on Chardonnay

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The Devil on Chardonnay Page 23

by Ed Baldwin

“Sir, did you lose your granddaughter because you sent her on a venture to make money you don’t even need?”

  That did it. Meilland’s face turned straight toward Boyd and, with tears filling his eyes, said, “Oh, don’t say that again. No, I didn’t.” He came out of his chair a bit, and wiped his eyes. “I’ll tell you what I know.”

  Boyd moved his chair closer to Meilland and squared it right in front of him, between the big chair and the fireplace. He leaned forward so that their heads were only two feet apart.

  “My grandfather and uncle were minor partners when the diamond cartel consolidated control in the 1920’s. Our family had been in the diamond business for hundreds of years. We changed our name and moved here from Paris before the turn of the last century. Our bank, with its proper French name, handled the bribes and smuggling to get diamonds out of the dozen countries in Africa where they are found. Others did the sales and promotion to the retail jewelry industry.”

  Meilland was freely telling his story now, and he began to regain the mannerisms of the banker, with hand gestures and emphasis.

  “Gradually, the cartel consolidated and became more of a corporate entity, and minor partners were pushed out. We began to compete with the cartel, and our customers were independent diamond cutters in Israel, Antwerp and New York. We also sold to cutters in Lebanon, Pakistan, Qatar and China.

  “Until recently, almost all of the world’s diamonds have come from Africa. I worked with the Portuguese traders in Angola and Mozambique, the Belgians in Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo, the Afrikaners in South Africa, and the French along the coast of West Africa. Others brought out the legal diamonds, facilitated by bribery of government officials. I bought the diamonds their employees stole, or the ones found by illegal miners. I started right after World War II, as a young man of only 22. In Nairobi, I bought the best pink stones stolen by the miners at the Williamson Mine in Tanganyika, then Swakopmund, on the coast of what is now Namibia, buying alluvial diamonds found along the Atlantic beach.”

  The old man was beginning to enjoy his story. He looked beyond Boyd into the fire, eyes on the long lost adventure.

  “Leopoldville was best. I would check into the Intercontinental. Before the porters could take my trunk to the room, there would be miners gathering in the lobby. I bought diamonds from noon until dark, every day. I always had the best room, the best food, the shiny black girls; always the best.”

  He smiled.

  “So you competed with the cartel?” Boyd asked.

  “Yes. They have the industrial diamond market tied up, because they own the mines at the very source of diamonds. The pipe, it’s called. The jewelry market is based on the larger, perfect stones, the ones that are large enough to be noticed along a river bank. The ones fine enough to make a man risk his life for them in the mines or along a remote stretch of river. A man waits 20 years for just the stone. If he gets it out, he can retire. The cartel makes it very hard to steal diamonds from them in the mines, but it happens. If a large stone does get out, they want to prevent anyone else from bringing it to market, it would depress the price. No, the cartel wants to be the only source for the stones that men die for.”

  “So what happened to make you come up with this scheme?”

  “The cartel bribed the governments to stop independent buyers, giving them a monopoly on alluvial diamonds, too. Michelle got the story wrong. We weren’t going to set Ebola out to stop the alluvial miners. They’re our source. We were going to infect some monkeys around the diamond mines. All it would take is a few miners to get sick in those dirty, crowded camps where the miners live for a few months before going back home. We could stop the mining of diamonds in Africa.”

  The old man looked down. The smile from the shiny black girls was as gone as they, no doubt, now were. Old, wrinkled, used up, starved out and dead, the sweaty embrace they had provided in the vigor of their youth to a young Jewish diamond merchant long, long ago forgotten.

  “Was it your idea?”

  “No. The Arab traders came up with the idea. They’ve been in the diamond business for a thousand years. Much of Africa is Muslim, so they already have an advantage. They wanted to try to push the cartel out.”

  “Why you?”

  “Most of my business is now with the Arabs.”

  “What about your Jewish contacts?”

  “Not so much. Mostly the Arabs.”

  “So you’ve been helping Arabs compete with Jews in a traditionally Jewish business.”

  “We broke the monopoly of a few Jews who took advantage of other Jews in the diamond business. Now many diamond cutters have access to the world’s supply of diamonds that were limited to the few before.”

  “So you moved gradually from Jewish clients to Arab clients?”

  The air began to go out of Meilland again and he sank back into the chair, but the story wasn’t over yet.

  “Our reputation suffered. When we started competing with the cartel, we had to smuggle our diamonds out of Africa. We helped people move wealth around the world. We became known as smugglers more than just bankers.”

  “When was that?”

  “My father started before the war. I was at university. Families were moving away from Hitler. They had diamonds to sell. Then in the '50s, there were hard times, too. I was always ready to buy.”

  “So you profited from Jews leaving Germany during the war?”

  “Many did. Yes, I did, too. I admit it.”

  “So, your reputation suffered because of what you and your father did during the war?”

  “The spoken word is sacred to us. We took advantage.”

  “But that wasn’t the worst thing you did,” Boyd said, aggressively now, still not understanding where this was going.

  “I’m a Jew. All I have, I got because I’m a Jew. My family have been honorable Jews for 4,000 years. My punishment for dishonorable dealings was the loss of my granddaughter.” He seemed frantic now, needing to be understood, as if his confession to Boyd would absolve him.

  “So, it’s OK to cheat the Arabs, but not a fellow Jew.”

  “I didn’t cheat the Arabs, I didn’t need to. Just letting them into the cutting and distribution was enough to alienate the other Jews.”

  “This is all way too complicated. How did Mikki get involved?”

  “Michelle became almost possessed. She had no interest in banking or diamonds. She travelled. I worried, so I sent bodyguards.”

  “That was before the Ebola idea.”

  “Yes. I hired Byxbe three years ago. When Byxbe called me and said he’d found the virus and could isolate it and make a vaccine, I told her the plan. She was excited. It was like the days when she was a little girl and everything I did interested her. She stayed here, in Luxembourg City, and worked at the bank, preparing for the time when the cartel would be broken and our status as the alternative would be enhanced. It was a happy time for me.”

  “And now?”

  “Now, there is nothing. I deserve it. I am not a Jew. I am not a grandfather. I am nothing.”

  “So, if there were even a chance Mikki is still alive, you would do anything to get her back?”

  The old man froze. He didn’t even blink.

  “There is a chance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything. I have a great deal of money. I could pay a ransom,” Meilland said quickly.

  “No, it won’t be about money. It’ll be something you know.”

  “Anything.”

  “OK. First, who bought Ebola?”

  “I don’t know. My contact was Hamid Tamim, a diamond trader in Doha.”

  “He came to you with the plan?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, he was just an intermediary?

  “Probably.”

  “So they had the plan and you were their agent in execution,” Boyd asked as he wrote furiously in a notebook.

  “That is accurate.”

  “And how were you to deliver the virus?”

&n
bsp; “Michelle was to meet an Arab trader from Senegal east of the Cape Verde Islands and make the transfer at sea.”

  Boyd shook his head. It was turning out to be so mechanical.

  “What was she to deliver? All of what you got from Byxbe?”

  “No. Just two vials of virus and two of vaccine.”

  “Were there any other customers?”

  “No.”

  “Did it occur to you that they might have some other plan for the virus, something that had nothing to do with diamonds?”

  “No.”

  Boyd was sure he was lying.

  “OK, now to the pirate. Wolf Goebel and Neville St. James died trying to save Mikki and Chardonnay. They were loyal friends and employees. Constantine Coelho was the pirate who stopped us that night.”

  “Constantine?”

  “You know him?”

  “He learned to sail on Chardonnay. His father was a seaman. I loaned him the money to buy his first fishing boat, I taught him how to smuggle and loaned him the money for his first big boat.”

  “So, you created the pirate?”

  “Pirate?”

  “He shot me, Wolf and Neville, and his men planted the dynamite that blew up Chardonnay. That’s piracy.”

  “He wouldn’t hurt Michelle. They were children together. We spent summers in Horta.”

  “Mikki may not be as endearing to all as you think.”

  “Did he take Michelle with him?”

  “He could have. We didn’t see her body. We didn’t see Neville’s either.”

  Now Meilland was thinking fast. His face a mask, he was in high negotiation mode.

  “Listen, Meilland, this game is over. You think you know where he is, you’d better tell me now. They found your buddy Byxbe yesterday morning south of Charleston. Ebola got him. That virus has gotten out everywhere it’s been. It’s in South Carolina, Khartoum, and it’s gonna be wherever Constantine Coelho is. There’s no sign that vaccine has helped anyone. In fact, that may be what killed Byxbe. It’s a long shot, but we’re flying in a new antibiotic that might work if someone gets Ebola. If you want Mikki, you’d better hope I get to her before Ebola does.”

  The logic in that seemed to sink right in.

  “Constantine owns an island,” Meilland said, face sagging in defeat.

  “Where?”

  “He owns Corvo.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

  New York

  “This is Lester Holt with NBC News interrupting afternoon programming. We have breaking news from Africa. The outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in Khartoum, Sudan, reported on the Nightly News last night, has been identified by the World Health Organization as the deadly Ebola virus. That nation has been isolated in the world’s first national quarantine, but enforcement of the quarantine is proving difficult. With the latest, we will go right to NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel in Cairo. Richard, what do you have for us on this shocking development?”

  “Thank you Lester. The Egyptian Army has set up hospitals inside Sudan to treat thousands of refugees fleeing that nation. Tanks and infantry are arrayed along the entire border preventing those refugees’ passage into Egypt. This film, taken from an aircraft this afternoon, shows Wadi Halfa, the first town inside Sudan along the Nile River. You can see the stream of vehicles, camels and people streaming north from Khartoum, some 300 miles to the south.

  “The outbreak of the dread Ebola virus in Khartoum is widely believed to have come from monkeys carried by jihadists camped in the desert just outside town. Jihadists were drawn there by the promise of returning the nation of South Sudan back into the realm of the New Caliphate, as it is being called. The government of Sudan strongly denies having anything to do with this outbreak and disavows any connection with the several hundred jihadists.

  “Reports are coming in that the outbreak began in the jihadist camp and that many of them are among the sick and the dead. However, in a development first reported by Al Jazeera, many of those jihadists seem to have been spared and remain in their camp at Khartoum, claiming that true believers are immune to 'The Wind of Allah,' which has devastated the population of Khartoum. Lester …”

  “Richard, how is the quarantine going?”

  “Lester, it seems strange, but look at these pictures we took this afternoon. You can see the refugees streaming along the road there into Wadi Halfa, and you can see the roadblock there with people milling about. Now, as we pull back, look outside of town in the desert at the trail of trucks and vehicles bypassing the roadblock and headed into Sudan.”

  “Headed into the outbreak?”

  “Yes, Lester. It seems that thousands of jihadists are rushing into this trouble spot to have their faith tested by the 'Wind of Allah.' And, I’m told that the roads from Cairo to Wadi Halfa are packed with vehicles of all types, rushing to jihad.”

  “Thank you, Richard. We’ll be back with Richard Engel later in the broadcast, but now for the report from the World Health Organization on what they know about this outbreak of Ebola.”

  ***********

  When Boyd walked into the American Embassy at 1800 hours local, the embassy staff was still there. It was early evening, and the staff should have been gone for the day, but they were clustered around the big screen in the staff conference room watching the satellite feed of world news. He stopped to watch.

  “What’s up?”

  “That virus outbreak in Africa, it has something to do with jihad,” a staffer said, popping the top on a can of American beer. “The fucking Arabs are going nuts.”

  A clip from Al Jazeera showed an Imam praising the jihadists for carrying the fight to the infidel and praying that many of them would pass the test of faith and survive the “Wind of Allah” to finally, after eight centuries restore the “Empire of the Faithful, the New Caliphate.”

  “Are you Chailland?” a staffer called out from the communications room.

  “Yeah,” Boyd said, feeling the long arm of Ferguson on his shoulder.

  “You’ve got a call.”

  “Is this secure?” he asked, taking the phone from the staffer.”

  “Yeah, scrambled, satellite,” he said, closing the door.

  “Holy Christ, Chailland, we’ve got a shit storm of the first magnitude here. You better know where that pirate is with the Ebola or have that goddamned French banker’s nuts in your pocket.”

  “Both.”

  “Only good news I’ve had all day. The news media wants to know if we’re going to send the Global Response Team into Khartoum, Congress wants a full report of what we know and when we knew it, the president sent his national security adviser over here, and the CDC is saying we botched this thing from the get-go and should have let them handle it. The CIA is getting reports from a half a dozen places that there’s a lot of interest in Ebola, and the price is now $10 million. I’ve got a blue flame under my butt to find this guy and shut him down.”

  “Sucks to be you, sir.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Corvo. It’s one of the Azores. I flew over it last week, didn’t see anything.”

  “Does he have the virus?”

  “Don’t know. Meilland seemed truly surprised that Constantine was involved, but he’s such a good liar I can’t be sure.”

  “So he was in the Azores the whole time.”

  “They were to deliver the virus to a rendezvous east of the Cape Verde Islands. That’s about a thousand miles from the Azores. He could do that in about a day and a half with that souped up tuna boat he has. So he probably delivered the virus before I was even out of surgery the day after Chardonnay blew up. He could have gotten back just as quick or gone somewhere else.”

  “Good work! How’d you find out?”

  “Some Arabs cooked this up to try to put the diamond cartel out of business. They came to Meilland as their agent. An old man, he was willing to kill a million people to get the feeling of power again. He lied the whole time I was with him, always holding something back
in hopes of keeping what he had, and getting what I had. It was just like Cooper Jordan, Lymon Byxbe and Mikki Meilland. You have to take what they say and comb through it to find the truth.”

  “It sounds like we’ve got some solid leads now.”

  “Meilland didn’t intend for the Arabs to get all the virus and vaccine he had, so Constantine almost surely has more,” Boyd said. “Sir, I’ve been on this trail now since June. The closer I get to Ebola, the worse the people are. Constantine Coelho got his start from Charles Meilland, picked up some additional pointers on interpersonal relationships from Mikki, and is now on the leading edge of badass. We need to get that island sealed off, quick.

  “But, Constantine has three tuna boats, meaning he’d have about 30 sailors, maybe more. If they were all on the island at once, that would be a significant force. In addition, he got the final payment for the Ebola, a million in gold. You can buy a lot of firepower on the black market with that, and he’s had three weeks to get it there.”

  Ferguson said, “OK, we’ve got some Marines just out of Norfolk, but they’re at least a week away. It looks like Corvo is about 200 miles from our base at Lajes, that about right?”

  “Yes, sir. We flew out there in a Casa 212. It was right at 200.”

  “We could alert the 82nd Airborne and get some infantry into Lajes in 48 hours.”

  “It’d be tricky to parachute onto an island that’s only a couple of miles wide, and part of it is steep as hell,” Boyd said. “There is a runway there that the Casa lands on, but I don’t know if a C-130 could land on it.”

  “They don’t want to put a C-130 filled with airborne soldiers down on a contested landing strip.”

  “Maybe I can put together an advance party from the Portuguese here to at least hold the runway.”

  “See what you can do.”

  “OK, we’ll need the State Department to lead on this. That’s Portuguese territory there, and they’re real touchy about their space. The first guy on the beach is going to have to be Portuguese. The other issue is their navy. We’re going to need their frigate to block Constantine from jumping into one of his tuna boats and slipping out the back door with Ebola. They have other demands on their resources here. Someone needs to blow in their ear.”

 

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