Hot Ice (3 page)

Since Bertram moved in, Chris’ bedroom has doubled as her office. It’s warm and sunny, with high ceilings and big windows, has plenty of space, and it overlooks the garden. It’s Sunday. Chris is sitting cross-legged on the floor searching the newspaper for news of Sienna. This morning her mind is all over the place, like an unschooled horse, perhaps because she’s tired. There’s still no news of Sienna and Chris’ fears for her friend are preventing her from sleeping well. Just about every kidnapping film Chris has seen comes to mind in unguarded moments.

Then there’s Bertram, whose presence is an ongoing irritation. She can forgive him for his long, grey, unwashed locks, the dandruff on his shoulders, his browning teeth, and even his stained fingers, but does he have to look so damned humble? Even worse, Bertram has laid a guilt trip on her. She feels mean and that’s not how she likes to see herself.

‘I’ll get used to him,’ she mutters. ‘Madness to resent him. Hasn’t he just unlocked the door of my prison. Free…at last.’

Forcing herself to let go, Chris concentrates on her breathing. In…out… Just let your mind go blank…don’t hang on to thoughts. Let them go. In…out… But lately a niggling question bothers her. ‘Has Mum ever actually liked me?’ Sometimes it seems that she’s little more than a convenience…in Mum’s world.

A bad thought…let it go.

The sun comes out. She hears Bertram’s car being driven out of the carport. Abandoning the floor, she grabs her jeans. It’s a lovely day. The starlings are squabbling over their peanut butter sticks, blue tits crowd on to every perch of their seed feeders. The roses need cutting back and the beds need weeding and the bird-bath needs a good scrub, but she has the entire day free to spend in the garden.

Mum is sitting in the living room by the open french windows, reading the newspaper. She looks up and frowns. ‘Your jeans have a hole in them. You’d better throw them out.’

‘My gardening togs…I’m going to potter.’

‘No work from the office? This is a first, isn’t it?’

This is her cue so she might as well tell Mum everything.

‘Listen Mum, I’ve been offered a new job with more money; in fact, much more money. I’ve joined a company that investigates business problems…
fraud, that sort of thing. I’ll be travelling at times…or so they tell me…so I’m glad Bertram’s here.’

Mum looks bewildered. ‘You’ve dropped law, after all that expense and hard work!’

‘Not exactly. I need law and finance to do this job.’

Mother’s face shows conflicting emotions: hurt, surprise and a touch of fury. She puts the newspaper down, folding it slowly and carefully, smoothing each page on the table in front of her. Then she smiles to herself.

‘You’ve found the perfect way to hit back at me…now, of all times.’

‘No, you’re wrong. Why do you always jump to the worst conclusions?’ Her voice is
high-pitched
… a dead give-away that she is hurt.

Mum presses home her advantage. ‘Take my advice and stay where you are.’

‘Mum, listen. I was offered the job when I was hospital. I said ‘no’ at first, but then Bertram moved in and…well, let’s face it, you have someone to keep you company. You don’t need me. Surely you understand. I have nothing except my career, so I have to enjoy it.’

Mum is getting ever more furious. Chris looks away and examines the roses below the old stone steps. They are covered in hips. She’ll prune them.

‘Don’t blame me if you never date. You’re antisocial. Blood will out.’ Mother’s martyred tones
signal the start of a familiar tirade. Once Chris used to provoke her, just to glean some news about her father.

‘Mum, for once in your life try to see someone else’s problems instead of your own selfish needs.’

Chris has thrown down the gauntlet. She’s never done that before. She zips up her big mouth, oozing regret, as Mum gives a bleat that squeezes her heart. ‘How can a daughter talk to her mother like this?’ she gasps. ‘You’re cruel, just like your bloody father. You’re clever like him, too, and at least you never let me down with money. I can’t say we’re close, but I blame your father for that. All those costly boarding-schools he paid for turned you into a stranger.’

‘So the educational trust fund from Grandpa…was that fiction?’

‘Yes,’ Mum admits grudgingly.

In the long, uneasy silence Chris walks to the window to hide her curiosity. Somewhere in Africa lurks the donor of sperm and cheques who can pay, but can’t love. She longs to find him.

‘You never think.’ Mother’s accusing voice breaks into her reverie. ‘What if it doesn’t work out? I mean…Bertram and I. You have a lovely job at the firm. It pays well. You are well thought of. Why can’t you stay there?’

‘Wrong tense, Mum…had! I gave notice and they asked me to leave right away. Evidently they prefer an immediate cut-off if someone is quitting, but 
they paid me three-months’ notice. It will help towards the cost of another bathroom.’

Mum isn’t listening. ‘You can’t escape your genes. Your father was off on any reckless adventure with no thought for commitment, disappearing for months on end without so much as an apology, or any idea of when he’d return.’

Bitter drops of information, but over the years they’ve been guarded like precious gems. ‘You get your kicks from danger…just like your father.’ ‘You’re damned selfish, like your father.’ ‘As for running after an armed thug…that’s your father all over.’ Mum only talks of
him
when she’s hurt or angry. Chris decides to break the unspoken rule and question her.

‘So what does he do?’ she ventures gently.

‘He’s a geologist…mainly freelancing for himself. He finds and registers claims, and sells them to the big mining houses. He roams all over Africa…and Alaska. He was well thought of, but he liked to be free. I used to sit around for months waiting for him to return to Johannesburg. I never knew when he’d come…or leave.’

‘He should be easy to find,’ Chris mutters to herself. ‘What was his first name?’

‘Leave it, Chris.’ Two red spots appear on Mum’s cheeks and her perfume wafts past on a wave of heat.

‘Mum. I have a right to know about him. If you don’t want to help me, I’ll find out in my own way.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

Is she? Chris changes the subject fast. ‘You must have loved him very much.’ She waits silently, wondering if she should leave, but Mum needs to talk.

‘He’d arrive out of the blue in his battered 4x4 to sell whatever claims he’d registered. I worked for the biggest mining group in the city. I used to help him to get a good price. He kept the best claims secret while he saved the cash to develop his own mine. That was his dream. He never spent much. If we went out it was hamburger and chips, but mostly I cooked at home. After two or three weeks, he’d leave.’

‘So what went wrong?’

Mum gives her a searching look, almost as if she’s wondering whether or not to trust her daughter. ‘You could say that my life was ruined because of a tatty leopard.’ She sighs and then begins to talk.

‘Willem Zuckerman, manager of our mining house, was hosting a big party up at the company’s private game camp, near Botswana. He was worried about a marauding leopard that had killed two children, so when he learned that Dan was back, he asked him to track and kill the beast. Dan was a good hunter…the best…although he only killed for the pot.’

Mum doesn’t have to search for words. She must
have told herself this story so many times. It sounds rehearsed, like the stories her clients tell her as they rewrite the past, laying to rest any blame they might feel.

‘I was furious that we had to join their blasted party on the very day Dan arrived. It was a
seven-hour
drive to the camp with Willem and his new girlfriend, Marie van Schalkwyk. She was the loveliest girl I’d ever seen and only nineteen, while he was fifty-odd. She had a ring on her finger like a rock. She was half Swedish, half Afrikaans, and she was a slut.

‘The moment we arrived, Dan insisted on leaving at once to track the leopard. I begged him to wait until morning and we fought rather bitterly.’

She sighs and straightens her shoulders and Chris realises that her mother is on trial and she is the judge and jury.

‘I had to make the best of a bad job and join Willem and Marie at their table. Later they persuaded me to accompany them on a night safari. I’d only been in the country for a year, straight from Sussex. I hated the harshness of the
bushveld
and let’s face it, once you’ve seen one lion…’

Mum breaks off. She’s not one for quoting clichés.

‘Right from the start, things went badly. We’d only been out for an hour when we had to cross a flooded causeway. Kevin, our game ranger, let the wheel slip off the concrete, so he went to attach the
truck’s winch to a tree across the river, taking his rifle with him, and he never returned. Minutes later we were surrounded by lions. It was freezing cold and damned dangerous and we sat there in the open truck, smelling the beasts, hearing them, as they circled for hours. When one of them actually leapt onto the truck, Willem fainted.’

‘My God! What happened?’

‘Marie drove it off with a bottle of champagne. She was tougher than she looked.

‘Hours later, Dan arrived. He’d tracked the leopard to the river, shot it, and found Kevin’s body. He and Marie went to fetch the corpse. They rolled it in a tarpaulin they had in the boot and they winched the truck onto the causeway. When we got back to camp, Willem went into the bar and drank until he passed out, but by then my fear had turned to fury. We fought and I locked Dan out of my rondavel and tried to sleep, but of course I couldn’t sleep.’

Mum pauses and Chris sees that she has turned quite pale. ‘Go on, then,’ she urges her.

‘Eventually I went to look for Dan and found him in bed with Marie.’ Her voice is so matter of fact, but Chris can see the hurt in her mother’s eyes.

‘To cut a long story short, I never saw him again. When I learned I was pregnant, I tried to contact Dan through his lawyer, but I…well… He avoids me. I’ve never seen or spoken to him since.’

‘What a bastard! Yet he supported me through school and university.’

She sighs. ‘All expenses. Whatever I asked for, as long as it was for you.’

‘How unfair. He was the wrong-doer, not you. I should have been your lawyer.’

‘Yes,’ Mum says woodenly.

Mum has a hunted look in her eyes and Chris knows that this isn’t the whole story, but how can she hurt her mother further by probing into her private life. All she really wants is information to help her find her father.

‘Mum, at least you’ve got me and I love you. I’ll never let you down, but I need to find my roots…it’s like a compulsion…even if I only see him once. Maybe he’d like to see what he’s been paying for. I’d certainly like to see him. That’s my right.’

‘You had a lot of rights and so did I. He denied us any of them…except money…and even that comes through his lawyer in New York. I’m telling you now, I don’t want you prying into my life. Do you hear me! The past…whatever I did…is buried. It must stay that way.’

‘Well, at least I know my father’s name. Dan Winters! It has a nice ring to it.’

‘Dan Kelly.’

‘Kelly! But…I thought…’

‘No, sorry.’

Chris swallows her hurt. ‘Kelly is Irish, isn’t it?’

‘He’s American…the best geologist in Africa.
Everyone acknowledges that.’

‘So where is he?’

‘How should I know. Somewhere between the Cape and Cairo. Or maybe he went back to the States. I never knew where he was when I was dating him, so how should I know when I haven’t seen him for close on thirty years?’

Their shared hurt brings a sense of camaraderie. ‘I’m so sorry, Mum.’

Chris feels strangely deflated as she saunters into the garden. Mum isn’t the type to have an illegitimate daughter. She’s been knocked badly. Bloody man. She’ll never mention him again. She’ll forget him. The past is none of her business. But of course he’s her business. He’s her bloody father, isn’t he.

Grabbing the trowel, she begins to hit on the weeds that have spread in the flower beds, punching and pulling and pounding. Damned weeds! Damned grass gets everywhere. But how perfectly awful. Strictly speaking, she doesn’t have a father at all. But is that really true? Nowadays unmarried fathers seem to think they have rights. The same rights as married ones. A father is a father, married or not.

The weeds are stunned, knocked out, kaput, dumped in a bucket ready for a bonfire. Armed with an axe, she turns in her bereavement to some fallen branches.

She could laugh when she remembers all her silly
dreams. She used to visualise the inevitable grand reunion when Father, looking strangely like Anthony Hopkins, would admit that he’d erred and that he needs her. By now the scene has become so real she can smell his aftershave and feel the stubble on his cheeks as he hugs her close. Variations on this theme have been played out dozens of ways over the years. She sighs and makes an effort to switch off her futile longing. She’s twenty-nine, she’s never had a father and she certainly doesn’t need one now. But all the same… There and then she decides that she will contact a South African Missing Persons’ Agency and set in motion a search for her father.

Chris wakes feeling optimistic. It’s Monday morning and the first day of her new job. She’s wearing a tailored black suit, black court shoes and a white silk blouse, and she makes the office by eight a.m.

When Jean Morton, strong-featured, fiftyish, with iron-grey hair and a trace of a moustache, ushers her into a single office overlooking Regent’s Park, Chris tries to disguise her glee. There’s a green carpet, Venetian blinds, modern furniture and, best of all, a lockable filing cabinet and a wall safe large enough to take two dozen files.

Jean, once Ben’s, now half hers, is trying to establish her authority and get to grips with who and what Chris is and how much of a threat she is likely to become. She explains how the expenses work and jots down Chris’ details for a company credit card. She pries a bit further than she has to, and fills Chris in on company gossip: Rowan is an
unknown quantity who seldom socialises in the office, but he brings in most of their business from the many clubs and associations he networks. Ben and his wife have agreed to split, but Ben is depressed since he learned that Annette plans to return to Paris with their children. Janice Curtis, IT, is supposed to be on hand to help everyone with research, but she’s built up a three-week backlog doing private work, so it’s quicker to cope without her. Jean dismisses them all with a contemptuous chuckle.

Ben arrives at nine-thirty, looking so sad that it hurts.

‘Pretty good view from here,’ he says as he sits on the other side of her desk. ‘We’ve been having a reshuffle and I grabbed this office for you. Do you have everything you need?’

‘Yes, thanks. I like the office and the view. I’m going to love being here.’

She smiles warmly and watches the sadness fade from Ben’s eyes.

‘It’s not a picnic, I assure you. We have to crack this case as soon as possible. The reason for the hurry is that various non-governmental organizations, called NGOs, based in London and America, are about to combine their resources to persuade the public to boycott diamonds. They were very successful with furs some years back. If they aimed their skills at diamonds the resulting boycott would send the industry into a slump. No one wants
that. Developing countries would be badly affected, miners would lose their jobs, and, incidentally, it would reflect badly on us. Several demonstrations have taken placed in the States recently.’

‘Why would anyone want to boycott diamonds?’

‘Because most of the civil wars in Africa were financed by diamonds and the resulting cruelty – injuries from mines, limbs hacked off, children forced to be soldiers…you know the score – has sickened every right- thinking person. Hence the term “blood” diamonds.’

‘But do all the blood diamonds come from wartorn territories, Ben?’

‘No. The point is these diamonds are not legal. They might be blood diamonds mined to finance civil wars, or diamonds that are surplus to a country’s quota, or stolen gems. Masses of roughs are stolen from legitimate mining houses every year. In other words, the diamonds are illegal in terms of a United Nationals mandate, and since most of them are from conflict zones, the term
blood
diamonds is most appropriate.

‘Apart from these problems, we now have a kidnapped bride. I’m sure there’s a connection here, although I haven’t found what it is. By the way, whatever information we find – that’s relevant to a crime – goes to the police, via Rowen. That’s how we operate. The police are currently stumped, so let’s hope we find something that sets them on the right trail.’

Surely now is the time to tell Ben that Sienna was once her best friend and that her father dominates India’s diamond industry, but she can’t bring herself to confide until she knows exactly what it is that the kidnappers want from him.

Ben breaks into her thoughts: ‘How about coffee? It’s a lovely day. They make good coffee round the corner and the pavement tables overlook a garden square.’

‘Sounds great. Let’s go.’

As soon as they are out of the office, Ben relaxes and shrugs off their work. He asks how her wound is healing and, in turn, she asks about his children. Before long, Ben is telling her of his constant travelling, which is part of their job, and the havoc this plays with a marriage. She senses the anger that Ben is trying to conceal and his sadness at the prospect of losing his children. Chris has the feeling she could immerse herself in his life and never want one of her own. Don’t set your cap at Ben, Chris lectures herself as they walk back to the office. He’s not the type to let his family go.

‘OK, let’s get started,’ Ben says, when they reach Chris’ office. ‘This is the boring part…facts and figures. I’ll try to be brief. Stop me if there’s anything you don’t understand.’

‘Sure.’

‘A century of brilliant, international advertising campaigns have built up a world diamond market
of around $5 billion a year. I’m not talking about rough diamonds. The market is valued as cut and polished stones set into jewellery of some kind, such as rings.

‘Prices of diamonds are kept at an artificial peak by a rather canny marketing ploy, which I’ll explain to you now. The world’s forty-five main diamond producing countries – excluding America – jointly market their roughs through a central marketing organisation in London, which is called the Diamond Trading Company, or DTC. They play the market very carefully, limiting the supply of diamonds offered to the world’s markets so that there is never quite enough to satisfy the demand. The way they do this is by a quota system: depending upon the production capacity of an individual mine, each company is given a quota and the remainder is supposed to be held in stockpiles – awaiting market growth, I suppose. Billions of carats are held back all over the world, sometimes even left in the ground, but guarded, and that is why diamonds have kept their rarity.’

He breaks off, gets up and walks to the window restlessly.

‘Prices of
roughs,
as rough diamonds are called, offered to dealers are not open to negotiation. Buyers are carefully selected by the DTC. They represent the world’s leading diamond traders, and they are each offered a parcel of roughs at a certain price on a take it or leave it basis.’

‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing.’

‘Believe it. That’s how it goes.’

‘It must be the first time forty-five nations have got together to fix prices and got away with it…aided and abetted by a UN backed body.’

Ben frowns at her.

‘Am I to believe that you’re liberal, green,
antivivisection
and you loathe the IMF?’

‘Merely veering towards humanitarianism. I don’t like to see the public ripped off.’

‘The UN-backed body was set up to stop diamond revenues being used to fund wars and terrorism. OK, let’s move on. Not long ago the amount of blood roughs entering the world’s markets was estimated to be only four per cent of the total of legitimate diamonds. Nowadays the amount is massive and somewhere along the marketing route the gems become legitimate, complete with certification. Blood roughs are bought cheaply and they sell for top prices in high street jewellers. It’s called
diamond laundering.
No one knows how it’s done and the profits are massive. Once they know, they will be able to stop it.’

‘So we have to find out how it’s done…that’s our job.’

‘Exactly. Remember, not who, or why, simply
how.
’

Chris stirs restlessly. ‘Tell me about the Kimberley Process.’

‘It’s quite simple. To stem the flood of blood roughs landing up in the West, diamond producers got together and created a system, known as the Kimberly Process, which is backed by the UN. Each rough must be sold with a certificate, showing which mine it hails from, the country, the carats, and so on. Each of the forty-five producers, as well as cutters and retailers, are issued with a “
licence to trade in gems
”. Breaking the rules by buying or selling an illegal rough leads to their licence being revoked. No one in the industry will trade or buy from a producer or a dealer without a licence. In other words, to break the rules is commercial suicide.’

‘Let’s home in on this term
illegal,
’ Chris says.

‘Perhaps illicit is a better description. A UN-backed body has some standing,’ Ben argues. ‘You can’t ignore the ferocity of the civil wars. It’s a way to stop diamonds from funding these terrorists.’

‘Yes, Ben. But is that really what it’s all about? I doubt it. The wars were mainly over by the time the Congo was expelled from the Kimberly Process, for exporting vastly more diamonds than it produces. So what’s it all about?’

‘I see you’ve been doing your homework. To answer your question, it depends where you’re standing, Chris. For the public and the NGOs, it’s all about stopping the wars and the suffering. For the big mining houses it’s about keeping out the competition.’ Ben is getting impatient. Clearly he
doesn’t like teaching. Chris decides to cool it.

‘Right now, diamonds are being laundered on a massive scale. I have a hunch that al-Qaeda are behind it, using the profits they make from buying and selling diamonds to stockpile arms, just as SWAPO did in the Seventies and UNITA in the Angolan Civil War. That should start you off. You’ll pick up the rest as you go along. You seem to know a lot about the industry. I’ve been on this investigation for over a month and I’ve got nowhere, other than infiltrating several militant Islamic groups.

‘I’m sorry, Chris, but you’re about to be thrown into the deep end. I have to fly to New York as soon as I can. Something’s come up. It’s a family matter. My sister’s married a moron. Sometimes I long for the days of the
Shadchan
.’

Chris raises one eyebrow questioningly.

‘Traditional Yiddish marriage broker, usually old, widowed and female, but invariably she made good choices, better than most young women do, better than I did. My sister, Sharon, went for looks and forgot about brains. She married into a diamond cutting family and now they’re in trouble.’ He sighs and gets up restlessly. Soon he’s pacing the office.

‘I’d better explain about it, since it’s relevant to this investigation. Sharon married Jonathan Bronstein, a diamond cutter whose family own Bronstein’s, a well-known firm of New York
diamond dealers, which has been in the family for three generations. Unbeknown to Sharon or the family, Jon has been buying blood roughs on the cheap from an unlicenced, backstreet Liberian trader. Jon used private funds of his own which he keeps in a Swiss bank. Despite the fact that this was a strictly private deal, the company’s licence to deal in diamonds has been revoked, which spells ruin for the entire family, all of whom have shares in the company, including his father, who is the chairman. From now on, they can’t buy from or sell to any reputable dealer.’

‘What was he going to do with the diamonds?’

‘Sell them, of course, and make a large profit which he’d keep to himself. There’s always a buyer at a cut price. Jon was caught red-handed by Kimberley Process officials following a tip-off – he must have been boasting to his colleagues – and they are using him to make a point.’

‘Can’t he appeal against such an arbitrary decision?’

‘I’ll try to help him.’

‘Really! So what can you do?’

‘If I could trace the Liberian dealer who sold him the roughs I might be able to prove that they didn’t originate in any war area. Jon doesn’t know how to contact him.’

‘He’s a diamond launderer, I assume.’

‘No. He merely sells blood roughs, which terrorists – or freedom fighters, depending upon
your point of view – smuggle over the border to Liberia. Freeman makes no effort to launder them. That’s why they’re so cheap.

‘Look, there’s one thing you should know. Traditionally, all diamond deals are conducted with the utmost secrecy…usually for cash…and sold again for cash. Only a fool get’s caught and that means Jon.’

Ben is getting impatient with her, but she still has a couple more questions.

‘I see. Thanks. Tell me, Ben, how do these Kimberley Process guys know one diamond from another?’

‘Practically speaking, they don’t. There’s a new process that enables chemists to analyse minute sediments of water deposits in the diamond’s grooves which tells them from which area the rough originated. Of course that’s unrealistic in terms of the masses of diamonds that reach the market each year. That’s the whole point of the certificates, all diamonds entering or leaving a country must be transported in tamper-proof containers and the certificates of origin must be made out by the mine’s management.’ Ben hesitates, running his fingers through his hair. ‘Jon’s such an arsehole.’

He glances at his watch. ‘You have an appointment at ten-thirty this morning with David Marais. He’s the chairman of Trans-Africa Diamonds Ltd, one of the top five diamond
companies in London. They have mines all over Africa. He’s also a friend of Rowan’s and he’s offered to get his staff to help you with your research.’

‘Thanks. I’m astonished that the chairman would bother to waste his time on a PA.’

‘No doubt he’ll turn you over to his PR department. Good luck. See you after lunch.’

Suddenly the enormity of her undertaking catches Chris with a body blow. How on earth do I start? Where do I look? Chris can’t help wondering if she’s over-estimated her ability.