By Dawn's Early Light

by Grant R. Jeffrey

  “Bon jour, Monsieur Petrov,” she said, then noted the Russian’s frown.

  “Please, Madame Greenberg,” he said, removing his hat, “unless you speak Russian, may we converse in English? I am not fluent in French.”

  “Of course.” She gestured toward the empty chair before her, then motioned for the escort to fetch another for the second man. “I am pleased to meet you at last. We have found a superlative stone, and I believe it meets your specifications.”

  The Russian had an erect posture, a square chin, and a wide mouth which tipped in a faint smile. “Excellent. Madame, I would like you to meet Benjamin Wildenstein, a jeweler and dealer in diamonds.” The Russian sat and crossed his legs. His companion, a man of about her father’s age, took his seat with grave dignity, then proceeded to examine Devorah’s face with considerable absorption.

  After a moment he flicked a basilisk glance at the Russian, then returned his gaze to Devorah and softly asked a question in Hebrew. “You are married, my daughter?”

  A flush of guilt colored Devorah’s cheeks. He’d seen the wig, of course, which every Orthodox wife wore as a sign of modesty and submission. But she wore no wedding ring, and Devorah suspected he had also noted a most unorthodox flash of rebellion in her eyes.

  Girding herself with resolve, she forced her gaze to remain locked with Wildenstein’s. “No,” she answered in Hebrew. “I am not married.”

  He leaned back, nodding slightly, then rested both hands on the top of his cane and allowed his gaze to drift off to safer territory.

  “Well?” The Russian thumped the table and looked around. “Where is it? I am most anxious to see this diamond.”

  “One moment, sir.” Deliberately slowing her breaths to keep her hands from shaking, Devorah reached for the phone, then halted when she saw movement from the corner of her eye. Reed stepped out of the office, a wooden box in his hand. She exhaled slowly as he came forward and placed the box on the table with an almost ceremonial air.

  He retreated a few steps, then locked his hands behind his back, watching from a safe distance. Devorah stared at the box, her heart pounding hard enough to be heard a yard away.

  “Do not fear,” the old man whispered, speaking in Hebrew again.

  “Speak English,” Petrov snapped, his blue eyes flashing as he glared at the older man. “And open the box. I am on a schedule.”

  Devorah forced her fingers to move. She unlatched the hook, then lifted the hinged lid. Resting inside on a bed of ruby-colored velvet lay an oval stone about an inch wide, three-quarters of an inch deep, and one and a half inches long.

  “It is 208.30 carats,” she said, reading from a small slip of paper attached to the side of the box. “The color is very good.”

  Petrov picked up the stone, tossed it into the air, and caught it in his palm, then nodded as if that ridiculous exercise meant something to him. He then handed the stone to Wildenstein.

  The jeweler pulled a loupe from his pocket, fitted it to his eye, and picked up the stone. Devorah felt her stomach sway as he held it to the light.

  “Well?” Petrov crossed his booted ankle across his knee. “Will it make a perfect diamond or not?”

  “It is clear white, with no yellow and no obvious imperfections,” the old man said, squinting at the stone. “The grain is right for an oval, if that is what you wish.”

  “It is.”

  Recognizing a perfect opportunity, Devorah moistened her dry lips and smiled at the Russian. “Such a lovely stone! I was hoping you would not want to carve it up into several small pieces.”

  Petrov folded his hands and regarded her with a lurking smile. “I am not at liberty, Madame, to discuss my employer’s intentions.”

  The old man took the loupe from his eye, then lifted a bushy brow in Devorah’s direction. “I believe, sir,” he said, slowly shifting his gaze to meet the Russian’s, “you would be wise to purchase this stone.”

  Devorah felt the lump in her throat dissolve in relief. Wildenstein had to know the stone was synthetic, but as long as he was willing to participate in this little charade . . .

  Petrov lifted his chin and boldly met Devorah’s gaze. “What is the price?”

  “Four point five million euros.”

  “Too much! I am authorized to give you two.”

  “Three point five million.” With a slight smile of defiance, she added, “Not a euro less.”

  The Russian paused, pretended to consider the offer, then inclined his head in agreement. “Done. You will have a certified check within a week.”

  With trembling fingers, Devorah wrapped the counterfeit stone in white tissue paper from the desk drawer. “Would you like for us to arrange to have it cut? Some of the best diamond cutters in the world live in Brussels, and we are authorized to provide you with a substantial discount.

  The usual price for cutting a stone this size would be 100,000 euros, but one of our cutters will do the job for half that amount.”

  Petrov’s smile held only a shadow of its former warmth. “I have been told that the best cutters are in New York, Antwerp, and Tel Aviv. With all due respect, Madame, I believe I will take the stone to Antwerp.”

  Devorah glanced at the jeweler as sheer black fright swept through her. If Petrov took the stone to anyone else, he would soon know they had deceived him. And then, depending upon what kind of man he was, he might return to take some sort of vengeance upon her cousins and even the jeweler Benjamin Wildenstein.

  “Monsieur Wildenstein,” she gave the older man a careful smile as she slipped the stone into a felt bag, “I am certain you can convince Monsieur Petrov that our Brussels cutters are skilled. They are more than qualified to create the stone he desires . . . for whatever purpose he chooses.”

  Wildenstein opened his mouth as if he would respond, but the Russian cut him off with a sharp laugh. “I am done with Brussels,” he said, his eyes snapping with maliciousness as he stood and took the stone from Devorah’s hand. “I only came here because this bourse was highly recommended by the London syndicate. But I commend you on your persistence, Madame.”

  “In case you change your mind,” Devorah pulled a slip of paper from her pocket and scribbled a name on it, “contact this man. Yacov Witzun has many contacts in the diamond community, and he will be able to help you.”

  Petrov frowned, but at the last moment he took the paper and thrust it into his pocket. Devorah stood and murmured the traditional blessing. “Mazel U’Bracha.” The Russian ignored the wish for blessing and luck, but Wildenstein whispered the words with her, his sparkling black eyes sinking into nets of wrinkles as he smiled.

  Michael stepped forward to escort Petrov to the door, and Devorah hurried out from behind the table, ostensibly to help the older man into his coat. “Why?” she murmured in Hebrew as she plucked his coat from the wall hook where he had deposited it.

  Watching him, Devorah saw something like bitterness enter his lined face. “What would make a daughter of Israel disguise herself before a Russian?” he asked, turning to shrug into his coat. “Only danger. And I did not lie. The stone is as perfect as a man-made stone can be.” He lifted his chin and sent a smile over the fur collar of his heavy coat. “Do not worry about me, daughter. The Creator of the world, blessed be he, will guard my footsteps in the days ahead. I am an old man and cannot be held responsible if my eye leads me to make a mistake.”

  Devorah stepped back and clasped her hands together. “Mazel U’Bracha,” she repeated, and never had she whispered the benediction with more feeling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Moscow

  0900 hours

  Wednesday, October 18

  CUSHIONED AGAINST A MOUND OF VELVETEEN PILLOWS, ALANNA SAT BEFORE THE fireplace and held her hands to the roaring blaze. A sullen gray cloud, heavily pregnant with snow, hung outside the windows, rattling the glass as the wind sent breaths of frigid air through the suite.

  She shivered as a chilly draft touched her shoulders. Vladimir l
ay on the sofa, surrounded by his morning newspapers, the cordless telephone by his side. He had awakened early in a state of unusual anticipation and seemed content to remain in her suite, but Alanna had no idea what had excited him so.

  The phone rang, shattering the stillness, and Vladimir immediately picked it up. He spoke in Russian, but Alanna had little trouble following his conversation. Fed by a daily diet of Russian soap operas and news telecasts, her comprehension of the language had improved remarkably.

  He paused to listen to the caller, then snapped, “So you have it?”

  Alanna stole a glance over her shoulder. The worried lines that had etched his face last night lifted, and a blush of pleasure rose to his cheeks. “Do not delay,” he said, seeming to stare at the place where his bare toes traced a pattern in the wool carpet. “Find a man in Brussels; we haven’t time to travel the world for a cutter. Find a Jew to do the job—those people have a knack for these things.”

  He paused a moment more, then shifted his gaze toward Alanna. Embarrassed to be caught spying, she blew him a quick kiss and turned back to the fire, lifting her hands to the crackling blaze. She could hear just as well from this position, and Vladimir could not see a telltale flash of comprehension in her eyes.

  “Don’t worry about the check.” Vladimir lowered his voice. “Soon there will not be enough Jews left in the world to care about such things.”

  The phone thumped on the carpet; the newspaper rustled again. After a long, edgy minute, Alanna folded her legs under her gown and hugged her knees. “Is everything all right, Vladimir?” she called in English, injecting a wheedling note of worry in her voice. “Are you going to leave me again?”

  The paper crackled as Vladimir lowered it and peered at her over the edge. “Not yet, my dear. When all is ready, I will go away just once more, then all our partings will be at an end. All of the pieces are falling into place.”

  She smiled at him over her shoulder, then turned back to the fire and rested her head on her bent knees. Her smile faded as she recalled his comment about the Jews.

  She had to tell Daniel. She couldn’t tell him much, for she had no idea what Vladimir was planning, but he never did anything by half-measures. If he wanted to rid the world of Jews, he would do it—quickly and thoroughly.

  She opened her mouth wide in a pretend yawn, tapped at her lips, then pulled herself up off the floor and padded to the kitchen. She’d make Vladimir his coffee, brush his uniform, and suggest that he go out for a breath of fresh air. If all went well, he might leave the suite within the hour and give her an opportunity to contact Daniel.

  Less than twenty-four hours after Petrov left the bourse, Daniel contacted Michael with news that the Russians were in a hurry and might have the stone cut in Brussels after all. He suggested that Michael and Devorah remain in Brussels for at least a week, in case Petrov decided to contact the bourse or Rabbi Witzun. Until he did, Daniel added, the diamond exchange might do well to double their guard and perhaps the Greenbergs should take a room in a nearby hotel. If Petrov discovered he had been given a relatively worthless stone, he might decide to personally take his revenge.

  “I’ve done some checking,” Daniel wrote in his e-mail. “Colonel Oleg Petrov is Vladimir Gogol’s executive officer and most trusted confidant. Not only has he personally overseen the purge of Jews in Moscow, but he is believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than a hundred people who have resisted Gogol’s reforms. Take him seriously, Michael, and keep those people in Brussels out of harm’s way.”

  Michael immediately spoke to Gavriel and insisted that the diamond merchant and his wife take his room at the hotel. He then called Rabbi Witzun, and that generous soul insisted that Devorah and Michael stay at his apartment until the situation resolved. “My home is not large, but you are welcome to share it,” the rabbi told Michael. “And we shall talk of many things while we wait for the Russian to either call us or kill us.”

  He barked a short laugh, but Michael couldn’t see the humor in his statement. After hanging up the phone, he and Devorah left the bourse and moved their bags to the rabbi’s home, a small, dusty space located on the fifth floor of a sprawling complex on the Rue Blaes. The apartment itself looked more like a library than a home, for pine shelving lined the walls and groaned under the weight of myriad books. A solid oak table, laden with a candelabrum and more books, dominated the front room. Behind the small kitchen, Michael found two bedrooms. The rabbi insisted that Devorah take the largest. He and Michael would share a second room furnished with two cots.

  Two days later, Michael felt as though the book-lined walls of the apartment were closing in on him. They’d been waiting for some sign of action or threat from Petrov, yet the Russian had not made a single appearance or phone call. Michael didn’t know if the man was drunk, dead, or on his way back to Moscow.

  He picked up yet another book, saw that it was written in Hebrew, and set it back in its place. The rabbi indulged in an obvious love affair with rare and ancient volumes, but most of them were written in languages Michael couldn’t understand.

  Devorah, however, sat curled up in a wing chair next to the oak table with a book in her lap. She had begun to examine the rabbi’s library soon after their arrival, and she had skimmed through book after book, often looking up with a thoughtful expression. Occasionally she asked the rabbi a question in Hebrew, then debated with him as energetically as she argued with Michael. Michael knew he ought to be relieved that someone else was shouldering the weight of her emphatic opinions, but after a while he began to miss the sharp sting of her comments.

  He stared out the small curtained window, unable to read and growing more uneasy with every passing hour. What if Petrov decided to take the stone to another jeweler? What if he had lost the paper with Rabbi Witzun’s name? He could be at another diamond cutter’s office this minute, his face flaming as he realized he had been deceived by an old man and a young woman . . . both Jewish.

  The heavy ring of the telephone startled him. Michael drew himself up and swallowed to bring his heart down from his throat. The rabbi moved toward the phone, then lifted it to his ear and murmured a soft word of greeting. He listened intently, then answered in English. “Yes, I would be happy to consider the job. Bring the stone to 93745 Rue Blaes, apartment 5-D. Four o’clock, please.”

  Witzun hung up the phone and stared at Michael, his dark eyes shooting sparks in all directions. “The Russian is coming.”

  Michael’s blood was suddenly swimming in adrenaline. “Great! I was afraid he’d gone elsewhere.”

  Devorah lowered her book. “What do you suppose he’s been doing for the past two days?”

  Michael clasped his hands, wishing he and Devorah weren’t alone in this mission. They could have used some good intelligence operators to shadow Petrov over the past forty-eight hours. Resigning himself to reality, he gave Devorah a rueful grin. “He could have been anywhere. Don’t forget—the European Union is headquartered here. He could have been visiting officials on behalf of his boss, even meeting with Adrian Romulus. Or maybe he was just enjoying the nightlife and sleeping during the day.”

  Devorah sat back in her chair, a frown puckering the skin between her dark eyes. “Well, now it’s time to move. Are we ready?”

  Michael rested his elbows on his knees, then looked up and regarded the rabbi with a smile. “What do you think, Rabbi? Are you ready to play the part of a diamond cutter?”

  The rabbi’s somber face lit with mischief. “I have been looking forward to it,” he said, grinning like a boy with a box of matches.

  Devorah tossed her book on the table and moved toward the phone. “I’ll call Gavriel.”

  “Good.” Michael rubbed his hand over his jaw, hearing the rasp of three days’ stubbled growth. If he didn’t get back to the real world soon, he’d have a beard as thick as the rabbi’s.

  In the two days of waiting, they had formed a careful plan. Now he stood and walked to the side of the table, reviewing the
plan for the rabbi’s sake. “Devorah and I will hide ourselves in the bedrooms, Rabbi, while you talk to Petrov. Take the stone, ask for a hundred thousand euros, let him talk you down to fifty thousand, but no less. If he seems talkative, ask for more information about the diamond’s purpose.”

  The unanswered question had remained uppermost in all of their minds. At the bourse they had learned only that the stone would be kept in one piece and cut into an oval. Though that information seemed to indicate the diamond wouldn’t be cut up for use in supercomputers or x-ray machines, at least a hundred other possible uses remained. Daniel had written that he was particularly worried about emergent technology with telecommunications and laser weaponry.

  “Don’t worry, Rabbi.” Devorah held the phone away from her ear as she dialed Gavriel’s number. “Michael and I will be ready. If something goes wrong, we’ll protect you.”

  The rabbi lifted his hands. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  By half past three, Gavriel Greenberg had transformed the rabbi’s oak table into a professional diamond cutter’s workspace. A Diamondlite, a special lamp that provided an artificial light equivalent to northern exposure on a clear day, sat at one end of the table, behind several diamond cutter’s tools.

  “Should I be cutting a stone when the Russian arrives?” the rabbi asked Gavriel.

  “Do whatever you like,” the diamond merchant answered, grinning.

  “You are an artist and therefore allowed to be eccentric.”

  And so, when a knock sounded at precisely four o’clock, Rabbi Yacov Witzun was sitting in his chair reading one of his dusty books. Michael stood and watched through a narrow crack between the bedroom door and the doorframe, his stomach clenched tight, his hand itching for the reassuring heft of his H&K USP .45. Below him, on the floor, Devorah crouched in a ready position, her empty hands pressed to her thighs, her gaze glued to the same opening he studied. They were both trained warriors, but neither of them had brought a gun to Brussels, not wanting to risk detection on a commercial flight. Now Michael wished they had tested the rules.