Death is Forever (6 page)

“That’s the most famous aspect of ConMin’s holdings,” he said. “But diamonds are only part of it. ConMin also deals in everything from iron ore to rare earth elements. Their specialty is strategic minerals. ConMin is the most powerful, most lucrative, and most discreet cartel on the planet.”

Erin flipped through the poetry quickly, then returned to the will and read aloud, “‘Trust no man who deals with ConMin,/He’ll sell your soul for a handful of tin.’”

Cole didn’t react.

“Are you employed by ConMin?” she asked.

“No. I don’t like working for anyone.”

She considered that for a few seconds, then smiled slightly. It was a point of view she shared. “Is that why Abe sent you?”

“Your great-uncle didn’t send me. I haven’t seen him in years.”

Silence, then the sound of papers being shifted while Erin scanned the sheets of doggerel again.

“Are you a lawyer?” she asked without glancing up from the papers.

“I’m a diamond prospector. Do you know anything about diamonds, Ms. Windsor?”

“They’re hard, they’re expensive, and they’re rare.”

“And some of them are extraordinary,” he said softly. “Some of them are well worth killing for.”

She measured him for a long moment. “Are my great-uncle’s diamonds extraordinary?”

“All the stones I saw of his were bort, which is the lowest grade of industrial diamond, which is the lowest grade of diamond, period.”

“Worthless?”

“Not quite. But nothing to make my pulse leap, either.”

Wryly, she wondered just what it would take to disturb this very controlled stranger. “Then my great-uncle’s diamonds aren’t extraordinary at all, are they?”

“Hold out your hand.”

“What?”

“Hold out your hand.”

“Why?”

“Just do it, Ms. Windsor.”

“Go to hell, Mr. Blackburn.”

His expression didn’t change.

Erin had the feeling she’d been tested in some way she didn’t understand. She had no sense of whether she’d passed or failed or would be tested again.

Moving with a deftness surprising in such a big man, Cole opened the worn velvet bag and poured the contents out on his own palm. Erin watched while light slid and shimmered over the marble-size objects, as though they were wet or oiled. Most of the stones were colorless. Several were a deep, lovely pink. One was a green so pure it looked like condensed, concentrated light.

Automatically she reached for the green stone, then stopped, looking up at Cole’s eyes. For the first time she realized that his eyes weren’t a colorless gray. Tiny shards of pale blue and green and silver radiated out from the pupils in a subtle display of color that was hypnotic.

“Hold out your hand,” he said softly.

This time she didn’t hesitate.

Cupping Erin’s smaller hand in his own, Cole poured the stones into her waiting palm. They made muted crystal sounds when they moved against one another.

“These can’t be diamonds,” she said, her mouth dry.

“Uncut, unpolished, extraordinary. They’re diamonds. And they’re yours, for better or for worse.”

Silently she picked up diamonds at random, as though to assure herself of their reality. She held up first one, then another, toward the overhead light. The stones were transparent. They drew light the way a magnet draws iron.

“They’re vsi or vvsi, or flawless,” Cole said.

“What?”

“Very small imperfection or very, very small imperfection.”

“I wasn’t looking for flaws. It’s just…
the colors
. My God, I didn’t know that colors like this existed short of rainbows and lasers. So pure. So damned pure.”

“You should look in your mirror more often,” he said.

“What?”

“The green diamond is a dead match for your eyes.”

Her head snapped up at the personal comment. Suddenly she realized she was standing very close to a man she didn’t know, his hand was cupped beneath hers, and his breath was mixing with hers in an intimacy that should have terrified her. For the space of one shared breath, two, three, she waited for fear to spread through her body, a fear that had been brutally beaten into her seven years ago.

Her pulse raced, but not from fear. It came from an elemental female response to being close to a man she found very attractive. The realization that she was once again capable of a sexual response to a man went through her mind like sunrise through night, changing everything it touched.

“Which of Abe’s mines did those diamonds come from?” she asked, her voice low, almost husky.

“I don’t know.”

“Are there more like these?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does anyone?”

“I don’t know.”

Erin looked at the powerful, impassive stranger who was still standing close to her. “What do you know, Mr. Blackburn?”

“That I prefer to be called Cole.”

She retreated across the room, opened the curtains, and looked out over the glittering city that was condensing from the darkened sky.

“What do you know about the source of these diamonds, Cole Blackburn?”

“They’re probably Australian, but not from any known mine. They’ve been out of the mother pipe a long, long time. The green diamond is unique. The pinks are superb. All but one of the whites is of the first water.” He paused, then added calmly, “I also know that if you keep your inheritance, you’ll have to give up standing in front of windows.”

Swiftly she turned to face him. “What does that mean?”

“Ask your father.”

“My father is a difficult man to reach. You’re right here. I’m asking you.”

“If I tell you,” Cole said, “you’ll have a thousand doubts and questions to match. If your father tells you, you’ll believe him. That will save time.”

“It would be even quicker if you tell me right now.”

“Whoever owns the Sleeping Dog Mines is a deer at the beginning of hell’s own hunting season,” Cole said.

“Why?”

“The colored diamonds are unique. ConMin has nothing like them in its vaults.”

“So?”

“If there’s a mine full of stones like yours, ConMin has to control that mine’s output or lose its monopoly. Monopoly is power. Right now ConMin has enough power to cut deals with First World nations, to control Second World nations as often as not, and to buy Third World nations outright. The Sleeping Dog Mines threaten ConMin’s power,” Cole said, “which threatens the entrenched interests of various nations who have a stake in the diamond tiger. When you ride that tiger, the only rule is survival. ConMin has ridden for more than a century.”

Erin looked at the gleaming, shimmering stones. “You make my legacy sound more like a curse than a gift.”

“It is.” Cole looked at his watch. “Call your father. The first thing he’ll want to do is have the diamonds appraised. Make very certain that the appraiser does not have ConMin connections, or the appraisal will be worse than useless. I’d give you the name of a reliable appraiser, but then your father would assume conspiracy.”

“You must know my father quite well.”

“I’ve never met him, but I’ve dealt with men like him. I’m one myself.”

“CIA?” she asked coolly.

“No. Survivor.”

When Cole looked up from his watch, Erin froze. His intensity was as real as the diamonds she held. He was wholly focused on her in the same way that she focused on her photography when she worked. At that instant she was the only thing in the world that existed for Cole Blackburn. To be the focus of such scrutiny was both unnerving and exhilarating.

“You don’t like taking orders,” Cole said in a soft voice, “and I don’t like giving them. But I know what the stakes are. You don’t. At least two people died getting those stones into your hands. I’m betting that you’re intelligent enough not to defy me for no better reason than temper. If I’m wrong, I’ll survive. You won’t. You have a choice. Trust your father, trust me, or trust God that the next stranger coming through that door doesn’t have a gun in one hand and a revised version of Crazy Abe’s will in the other.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You do that, Erin Shane Windsor. Think very hard. And while you’re at it, think about ‘Uncertain Spring’ and the gosling that froze to death in an unexpected blizzard.”

For a slashing instant she remembered the cruel, beautiful dawn when she’d discovered the gosling lying rigid beneath a glittering shroud. She’d wept at seeing the tiny body encased in ice.

And then she’d taken out her camera to catch the brutal perfection of a time and a place and a dawn that owed nothing to man.

“Life has always defined death, and death, life,” Cole said, watching her intently. “Anyone who understands that as clearly as you do should be able to decide how much a diamond mine that might not exist is worth—but whether or not the mine exists, owning it could cost your life. When you understand that, you’ll sell your inheritance to someone who knows the territory.”

“Someone like you?”

“Yes.”

“What would you pay me for a mine that might not exist?”

“More than you need. Less than your life is worth.” He turned and walked to the door, opened it. “I’ll call you at the end of the week. If you want to reach me before then, call BlackWing. The number is in the tin box with the rest of your legacy.”

The door closed, leaving Erin alone with a handful of extraordinary diamonds.

For a long time Erin stood motionless, staring at the rough diamonds in her palm, absorbing a reality she’d never known before, watching light shift and shimmer through their mysterious crystal cores. Curious, she touched the tip of her tongue to the green stone. It was cool, clean, faintly salty. She tasted her own skin for comparison. Less salt. She tasted one of the colorless diamonds. No taste at all.

He held this stone, not the others.

She could see him cradling the green diamond in his palm, smoothing his thumb over it, watching the heart of summer shimmer and glow in his hand.

The salt I tasted came from his skin.

A strange shimmer of awareness shot through the pit of her stomach. What unnerved her even more was that she wanted to taste the stone again.

I tasted him.

Erin shoved the stones back into the worn velvet bag as though she’d been burned. Restlessly she picked up the first sheet of poetry and began to look for clues to the location of a diamond mine that might or might not exist. She scanned the sheets quickly, then more slowly, frowning.

When she was finished, she read the sheets again, shaking her head. None of it made sense. Although diamonds were mentioned several times, drinking, pissing, and screwing were mentioned much more often. There was no mention of a mine at all.

Muttering about crazy old men, Erin stuffed the pages back into the tin box and picked up the will again. When she finished reading it, and its warning, she felt no more at ease. Remembering her conversation with Cole Blackburn wasn’t any comfort either.

Whoever owns the Sleeping Dog Mines is a deer at the beginning of hell’s own hunting season.

You make my legacy sound more like a curse than a gift.

It is. Trust your father, trust me, or trust God that the next stranger through that door doesn’t have a gun in one hand and a revised version of Crazy Abe’s will in the other.

The words echoed uneasily in Erin’s mind as she stood in the silent room. Mysteries were her father’s meat and wine. He lived in a world where every act was examined, cut into thin sections, put under an electron-scanning microscope, with the results argued at the highest levels of government. It was a world where every man had more than one shadow, where names changed more often than Paris fashions, where betrayal was the only thing that could be trusted.

Her father’s world.

Her brother Phil’s world.

Her ex-fiancé’s world.

Erin’s head moved in an abrupt, negative gesture that sent streamers of hair sliding across her cheek. Automatically she brushed the strands aside. Just as automatically she brushed aside memories that had nothing new to teach her. Treachery existed. Betrayal existed. She accepted that.

But she no longer existed for them.

Seven years ago she’d been a victim in an undeclared war. She wasn’t a victim any more. She’d learned to defend her body with techniques both ancient and modern. She’d learned to defend her mind by discovering other worlds, incredible worlds, places where ice was alive and mountains radiated light, places where people laughed and shared their last bite of food with a hungry stranger, places where death existed, yes, but as a natural extension of life processes rather than as a premeditated act of perversion and political power.

Perhaps there was even a place out there where the incredible green stone was real, a place where the restlessness in her body would be stilled, a place where she could trust men again.

And if not all men, then at least one.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Erin asked herself softly. “You can’t answer that question alone. What’s important is the future, not the past.”

The phone felt cool in Erin’s hand, smooth, an impossibly perfect surface against her sensitive skin. It was the thing she found most startling about civilization, all rough surfaces smoothed into a beguiling perfection. A false perfection, because beneath the surface terrible things seethed, waiting to explode into life. The primitive world was exactly opposite, its rough surfaces concealing a serenity of emotion that was beguiling…and also, in its own beautiful way, false.

Primitive and civilized shared one central truth: Death always waited for the unwary, the unlucky, or the unwise.

But life also waited, a fire burning beneath ice.

Erin punched in the telephone number that remained the same no matter where her father happened to be stationed at any given time. When the phone was answered, she spoke quietly, clearly, and hung up.

Then she sat on the bed, stared at the handful of stones that could be diamonds or glass, and waited for Matthew Windsor to be summoned by his beeper to return his daughter’s call.