Death is Forever (7 page)

People don’t walk up to you and hand you a million bucks in a tin box. Not in the real world. Not even in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. It’s just flashy glass, baby. Next time this Blackburn guy calls he’ll be selling you a map to the mine.

Matthew Windsor’s cool, faintly impatient voice echoed in Erin’s ears as she stared at the phone she’d just hung up. She hissed out a curse. Part of her agreed with her father. Another part of her believed that the stones were real, because Cole Blackburn was real.

All too real.

She turned away from the phone but couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation. After a few more verbal pats on the head, her father had agreed to make “discreet inquiries around D.C.” for Erin. When—and if—he had anything interesting, he would call.

She hadn’t argued. As a senior officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, her father had access to every database in the government, from the FBI to the U.S. Geological Survey.

She was still running the conversation through her mind when the phone rang. The instant she picked up the receiver, her father began speaking in a clipped voice.

“Describe Cole Blackburn,” Windsor said.

“Big,” Erin said, running through a kaleidoscope of impressions in her mind. “Even bigger than Phil. Not fat. Hard. Caucasian. American accent. Intelligent. Confident. Moves well. Black hair. Gray eyes. Well-defined mouth, off-center smile. Faint scar along left jawline. Random scars on his hands. Big hands, by the way. Long fingers. No rings. Expensive clothes but not fancy. There’s nothing fancy about the man. In all, I suspect he’d make a bad enemy.”

Windsor grunted. “You’ve got a good eye. That’s Blackburn to a T.”

“I’m a photographer, remember? I make my living looking at things.” She waited. Only silence came over the line. “What’s going on, Dad? Is Cole Blackburn a con man?”

“I can’t go into it on the phone, baby.”

Anger flashed through Erin. Part of it sprang from her loathing of the world she’d run from for seven years, but most of her anger came from even older memories of being shut out of the enigmatic world of spy and counterspy that consumed so much of her father’s life.

“Did Blackburn show you any identification?” Windsor continued.

“Just himself. To a T, I believe you said. Should I believe what he told me?”

“Baby, I can’t—”

“Yes or no,” she cut in. “One word.”

“It’s not that easy. I’ll be in L.A. tomorrow. We can talk about it then.”

Erin looked at the phone as though it had grown fur. “You’re coming to L.A.?”

“Don’t sound so shocked. I haven’t seen you for almost a year.” His voice changed, becoming harder. “Just to make sure I don’t miss you, stay put in the hotel room. Have room service take care of the food. Rest up. Do you hear me, baby?”

“Yes,” she said, understanding that Windsor didn’t want her to leave the room. “But I don’t like it.”

“I’m not wild about it myself,” he said flatly.

There was a three-beat pause before she said, “All right. I’ll be here when you get here.”

“In your room.”

“In my room,” she said between clenched teeth.

There was the sound of air rushing, as though Windsor had let out a relieved sigh. “Thanks. It means a lot to me. I love you, baby.”

Before she could answer, her father was gone. Throughout her life, he’d told her many times that he loved her, but for the past seven years he hadn’t waited to find out if she loved him in return.

Slowly Erin hung up the phone and wandered restlessly around the room, turning on lights against the darkness beyond the closed drapes, wondering why her father had insisted she stay in the room.

Maybe he’ll tell me tomorrow.

Maybe not.

Matthew Windsor had spent his entire life in the forest of mirrors that nation-states created to mislead one another. Discretion was as natural as his heartbeat. Most of his life had been lived in places he couldn’t admit to having been, not to his wife or his daughter, perhaps not even to the son who had also become an officer of the CIA.

She understood the necessities of her father’s work, but she resented his job deeply, not only because of what it had done to her but also because of what it had done to the intelligent, thoughtful, loving man she knew her father to be. Secret wars meant secret lives, and secret lives made human trust impossible.

Erin wanted to trust her father, just as she wanted to trust the rest of the world. But trusting everyone wasn’t a very bright way to live and could be a very painful way to die. She’d been lucky once.

Next time she might not live to learn.

Late-afternoon light burned through the west-facing windows of the hotel suite. As the shafts of sunlight flowed across the rosewood tabletop, thirteen rough crystals shimmered to life. Erin Windsor stood very near the table, bent over her camera equipment, totally focused on the stones. She was consumed by the pure colors, entranced in a dazzling new world seen through the extreme close-up lens of her camera.

She’d spent the day totally focused on the mysterious, breathtaking crystals, waiting for her father. More than once she’d despaired of capturing the subtle play of light and the violently pure colors, the flashing glitter and fathomless shadows, the tiny rainbows chained among the curved hollows that high magnification revealed on the surface of the stones. When she turned the diamonds just so, light fragmented across the table. When she turned the stones another way, light glowed from within like flame burning within ice. When she turned them yet another way, light pooled and shimmered as though the crystals were alive, breathing.

“Are you really diamonds?” she muttered in a combination of frustration and curiosity.

The afternoon light changed, deepened, becoming a golden torrent. The crystals burst into flame.

For an instant Erin froze over her camera, transfixed by the changed stones. They were a song sung in silence, inhuman in their beauty, the translucent tears of a rainbow god.

Suddenly she didn’t care if the crystals were diamond or YAG, zircon or quartz. She worked like a woman possessed, triggering the camera, shifting stones, composing shots, reloading film, driven by the stones’ savage beauty and her own equally savage need to capture the instant when crystal and light became lovers, each transforming the other.

Not until the light was spent within the crystals and the stones slept once more did Erin straighten and move away from the camera. Unconsciously she put her hands in the small of her back and stretched, relieving the tension of hours bent over the arrangement of lens and bellows and tripod. She felt exhausted and exhilarated at once, an explorer returning from an undiscovered land, her mind full of new visions and yet hungry for more.

Reluctantly she turned away from the stones and looked at her watch, wondering if she should set up some fixed-light shots or if her father would arrive soon, bringing with him unanswered questions from a past she didn’t want to discuss. Maybe he would have answers for her future instead, answers she could listen to without feeling angry and betrayed.

Someone knocked on the door twice. “Baby? It’s me. Open up.”

“On my way.”

At first the security locks and latches defeated Erin.

Then she got the sequence correct and opened the door. Her father stood in the hallway, as tall and handsome as ever, dressed in the charcoal business suit, white shirt, and silk tie that was the male uniform in the world of business and diplomacy.

“I wouldn’t mind a hug if you wouldn’t,” Windsor said, his mouth smiling and his eyes very serious.

There was no hesitation before Erin stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her father. He closed his eyes and hugged her in return, lifting her off her feet with the embrace.

“Hugs don’t bother you anymore, do they?” he asked very softly.

For an instant, she looked surprised. Then she realized it was true. She no longer panicked at being held by a powerful man.

“I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right.”

“That’s why you’re leaving the arctic, isn’t it? You’re finally over that schleimscheiber Hans. Thank God, baby.”

Before she could say anything, Windsor released her and stepped back. A woman moved from the shadows, where she had been waiting patiently.

“Hello, Erin Shane Windsor. I’m Nan Faulkner.”

Startled, Erin took the blunt, broad hand that was being held out to her. The fingers were as firm as they were dark. Like the woman herself, the handshake was no-nonsense, controlled, and short. The business suit she wore had a narrow skirt and was a darker shade of gray than Windsor’s. She didn’t wear a tie. She was a solid presence, buxom and broad without being fat. A thin black cigarillo smoked in her left hand. The same hand held a black box with a single gauge on the surface and a wand plugged into the side.

Windsor was the last one through the door. He secured the various locks without a fumble.

Faulkner took one look at the stones shimmering on the table and said, “Holy Christ.”

In a controlled rush, she went to the table. She threw her smoking cigarillo in Erin’s half-empty coffee cup, swept open the curtains to take advantage of the falling light, and switched on the black box. In rapid succession she touched the tip of the wand to stone after stone, beginning with the smallest and working her way up to the biggest.

“Jesus,” she muttered as stone after stone registered in the diamond range of thermal resistance. Then she touched the green stone. It, too, registered in the diamond range. “Sweet. Jesus. Christ.”

After she touched every stone, Faulkner shut off the machine and pulled a loupe from her coat pocket. She scanned each stone before she turned to Windsor.

“All but one of the white ones are of the first water, D, O+, River, Finest White, Blanc Exceptionnel, call it what you will,” she said. “They are the most pluperfect bastards I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing.”

“Shit,” Windsor muttered.

“The colors might be irradiated,” Faulkner continued, “but I doubt it. Radiation is too easy to pick up on. It’s used to cover flaws or off-colors, but these babies don’t have any problems worth mentioning, much less trying to hide. I’m a betting woman, and I’m betting these are high-ticket fancies.”

Windsor said something savage beneath his breath. Then, “How bad is it?”

“Couldn’t be worse. Next to these colored stones, hen’s teeth are as common as sand in the Sahara.”

“I don’t understand,” Erin said.

Faulkner set aside all the diamonds except the green one. “Take an average diamond mine. Only twenty percent of what’s found is gem-quality goods. Less than one percent of the gem-quality stones will be over one carat after they’ve been cut and polished. In other words, less than two-tenths of one percent of a diamond mine’s entire output ends up bigger than a carat of gem goods. Of those, only a goddam small percentage of that is D flawless.”

Erin blinked and looked at the diamonds. They were a lot bigger than a carat.

“I’m too old to be a top color sorter any more,” Faulkner continued, “but I’d bet my firstborn that all but one of those whites is a D. D or not, the bastards will be flawless when they’re cut. Rare diamonds. Very, very goddamn rare.”

Windsor grunted.

“Yeah,” Faulkner said. “But that’s not the worst of it. When it comes to fancies, you have to invent another word for rare. That’s what makes this pile of stones so dangerous. If they were just big and flawless, ConMin would still be able to beat you into line with Namibia’s stones. But Namibia has nothing like these. Nobody does. That green is absolutely singular.”

After a moment of silence, Faulkner turned away from the beautiful, dangerous stones and looked at Windsor. “We should have brought a couple of marines. This is worse than anybody thought. And,” she smiled coldly, “better, too. I’ve waited a long, long time to get van Luik where the hair is short.”

“Are you the agency’s resident diamond expert?” Erin asked.

Faulkner hesitated, then shrugged. “Matt says you can be trusted. I hope he’s right. At the moment I’m a government consultant to the biggest American jewelry trade association. The job requires that I work with a company that can’t operate directly in America because monopolies are illegal here.”

Erin felt the floor shift beneath her feet as she was drawn back into the forest of mirrors that was international power politics. Her father’s world.

Seven years ago that world had nearly destroyed her.

“Have you had them certified?” Faulkner asked, gesturing to the diamonds.

Erin shook her head. “Dad said to stay put. I did.”

Faulkner smiled at Windsor. “You were right.”

“Now that we’ve established that I’m a good little girl,” Erin said coolly, “tell me why it matters.”

“The diamond world is wired together like a power grid,” Faulkner said. “You walk into the GIA out in Santa Monica or into some little appraiser’s office down on Hill Street with these stones and you’d generate a surge that would register in London and Antwerp in a matter of hours. ConMin uses computers to keep track of every important piece of rough in the world, even the ones they don’t own themselves. And believe me, these are important pieces of rough.”

“I’m getting that message. Why does the agency care?”

Faulkner’s eyes narrowed. “Diamonds are a big cash item in the economies of a dozen nations around the world. You’d be surprised what countries will do for American dollars or Japanese yen, especially countries whose ideologies are based on Karl Marx rather than Adam Smith. When my predecessor left, he told me the world revolves on a diamond pivot. It’s not always true, but it’s true often enough to put the fear of God into a heathen like me.”

“That’s why I want you to let me handle it for you, baby,” Windsor said. “I don’t want you hurt again.”

Erin looked at her father. For the first time she noticed the lines in his face, the heavy splash of silver in his formerly dark hair, and the circles beneath his eyes. He looked tired and uncomfortable, as though caught between his impulses as a father and his duty as a sworn officer of an intelligence service.

“Did the diamonds come with a note or a map,” Windsor asked, “or a claim register or a bill of sale, anything to indicate their origin?”

“Everything came in an old tin box that had no markings,” Erin said.

“Delivered by this Blackburn?” Faulkner asked.

Erin nodded. “He told me to have the diamonds appraised by someone not connected to ConMin.” She glanced at Nan Faulkner. “I’m not sure you meet those requirements exactly, but at least I know your first allegiance isn’t to the diamond cartel.”

“Did Blackburn tell you anything else about the diamonds?” Windsor asked.

“Only that they’d belonged to Abe and that two people had died to see that I got my legacy. He told me that I would die, too, if I wasn’t very careful. Then he told me to call you.”

“I owe him a big favor,” Windsor said. “So do you. He probably saved your life. Let me handle your legacy for you.”

“I couldn’t, even if I wanted to, which I don’t.”

“Why?” Faulkner asked.

“The terms of the will require that I live on the station for five years to gain final title, or until the mine is found, whichever comes first.”

“No amount of money is worth getting killed for,” Windsor said.

“It isn’t the money,” Erin said. “In fact, there’s no guarantee I’ll find a single diamond. Apparently Abe was the only one who knew where the diamond mine was, and he didn’t talk before he died. He didn’t leave a map, either.”

Windsor refused to be drawn away from his main point. “If you’re not after money, why are you going to Australia?”

“It’s a whole new continent,” she said simply. “A whole new world. I want to smell it, taste it, see it, photograph it, live it.”

“That’s the point, baby. You could die there instead of living.”

“I was told the same thing about the arctic.” She tried to avoid a shouting match by changing the subject. “Do you know much about Abelard Windsor?”

Her father shook his head. “Dad never mentioned him.”

“His own brother?”

“Things happen, Erin. Things that tear families apart.”

Things like Hans Schmidt, foreign agent.

But neither father nor daughter spoke the thought aloud.

Erin got up, took the tin box from her oversize purse, and pulled out the sheaf of papers. “Until I knew the stones were real, I didn’t know if the whole inheritance was an elaborate hoax. Frankly, after reading ‘Chunder from Down Under,’ I thought Great-uncle Abe might have concocted the whole thing in some Australian psycho ward. Here. Read this. Clues to finding the mine are supposed to be in it.”

For several minutes the only sound in the room was that of dried, rough paper rustling as Windsor scanned a sheet rapidly, then passed it to Faulkner. He glanced up after the fifth sheet.

“Is it all the same?” he asked.

“Different words,” Erin said, “but the same.”

He grunted, shuffled through the remaining pages, then took the first page from Faulkner again.

“It doesn’t improve with rereading,” Erin said dryly. “I’ve read it and read it and read it, using all the tricks and tools I learned as an English major at the university.”

“And?” Windsor asked.

“I didn’t find any meanings but the obvious one. The hero eats raw croc liver, drinks, talks about black swans, drinks, pees, drinks, apparently screws everything that moves and some things that don’t, eats more raw croc, pees. And he drinks. Did I mention that?”

“It could be a code or cipher of some type,” Faulkner said. “Would you mind if we copied it and sent it to Washington for analysis?”

“An Australian might be more helpful than a code expert,” Erin said. “Do you know what ‘chunder’ is? Poetic thunder, maybe?”

“Never heard of it,” Windsor said. “My parents might have been Australian, but they never talked about their life before America.”

“That’s kind of odd, isn’t it?” Erin asked.

Windsor shrugged. “Runs in the family, like chasing after a diamond mine that might not exist but could kill you anyway.”

The daughter’s shrug was an exact match of the father’s.

“Shit, baby. Why are you really doing this? What does Australia have that you don’t have here? A crazy old man’s mythical diamond mine? Is that what you want from life?”

“It’s not a bad start,” she retorted. Then she sighed and tried to put into words something she’d sensed about herself but never pinned down. “After
Arctic Odyssey
, there just hasn’t been another project I wanted to do. I found some peace in the arctic, but I don’t believe anymore that it’s my future. Maybe Australia is. Maybe it isn’t. I won’t know until I go there.”