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Authors: Madge Swindells

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BOOK: Hot Ice
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Chris arrives in London’s celebrated diamond quarter with more than half an hour to spare. Looking around, she finds a small coffee bar that’s clean and comfortable and the coffee smells great. Choosing a table by the window, Chris orders black filter coffee and a croissant, and settles back to consider her morning.

Talking to Rowan and Ben has knocked away her preconceptions, leaving her with a sense of unease. This is a new ball game. Winning is the code she lives by, but she has to believe in her client’s right to win before taking on a case. She needs to be on the side of the angels, but in this business there are no angels, only ruthless greed. Who can say that a ‘legitimate’ diamond is one produced by members of the London-based diamond cartel? Or that a quality rough discovered by an impoverished African farmer on his own land
is illegal, classified as a blood diamond, and therefore not his to sell? Aren’t the rules a gigantic hoax to maintain artificially high prices? So who suffers? The brain-washed public who are ripped off? Or the maimed and displaced children of civil wars? Or jobless African peasants who have thrown off the yoke of colonialism only to find themselves up against a new kind of ‘ism’?

For a moment she seriously considers quitting, but what about Sienna. Chris longs to uncover some small clue that will help the police to find Sienna and her kidnappers. She feels sure there’s a connection and she believes she can guess what it is.

Indian polishers specialise in the smaller, cheaper diamonds, some so small you would need a magnifying glass to see them, which are used to brighten the surfaces of cheap jewellery. In the past forty years these polishers have created a worldwide market for cheap diamond jewellery and they are also the only buyers for these small, brownish roughs which have always been considered the waste product of the diamond industry. What better way to persuade Mohsen Sheik to buy low-grade, ‘blood’ diamonds than by kidnapping his only daughter.

But how could someone like Sienna survive such an ordeal? For a second Chris is overcome with images: Sienna crying her eyes out over a dying bird…and later, smuggling milk to the dorm’ to feed a baby squirrel knocked from its nest by a
violent storm…and she succeeded in rearing it. Sienna’s shocked face when her first love dumped her.

‘For goodness’ sake, pull yourself together,’ Chris mutters as she wipes a stray tear from her cheek. She glances at her watch and pays her bill, before hurrying out into the moist London morning.

 

Trans-Africa Diamonds Ltd is situated at the edge of London’s diamond quarter in an eight-storey staid and solid building that looks as if it has stood there for centuries. Chris approaches a desk in the old-fashioned entrance hall, where a uniformed security man directs her to the Chairman’s suite of offices. David Marais’ secretary, an elegant Chinese woman, shows her into his den and leaves her sitting opposite his desk.

Chris studies the photographs on the wall: rugby teams, cricket teams, rowing and skiing shots. There are several paintings of wildlife and some stunning photographs of wild birds and flowers. Half an hour passes, so she takes out her notebook and jots down the relevant details of her conversation with Ben. Feeling bored and impatient, she tries to imagine what a man with this much power and wealth would look like:
red-veined
from too much rich living, overweight, balding and arrogant, with a booming voice and a costly diamond signet ring.

Her image shatters as the man himself hurries
into the room. He grins apologetically as he grips her shoulders and kisses her on both cheeks.

‘I’m so sorry I’m late. I hate keeping people waiting, but my flight was delayed. I’ve just returned from Namibia.’ His voice is soft, but deep, and there is the faintest trace of a South African accent. As she watches him unpacking his briefcase, she’s trying to work out the source of his sex appeal. He’s not good looking, his face is blunt and square, but his eyes are crystal blue and a thatch of straight blond hair falls forward over his forehead. Add to that, he’s tall and slender, with a smile so warm his entire face is brought into play. A total smile! But does that explain that mysterious power that leaves you weak in the knees. Early fifties, she guesses, feeling strangely drawn to him.

‘So this is your first day at FI,’ he rushes on, while stacking the files in his cabinet. ‘You must be very bright to get in there. Good luck with your investigation.’

‘Thanks.’

‘OK!’ He rubs his hands together. ‘Now we can get down to business. Ben asked me to give you the low-down on the industry. Everyone in the industry would like to see you succeed. We need to know just how much of a problem this diamond laundering has become. Let’s dispense with formalities, I’m Dave and you’re Chris. Is that OK with you?’

He raises one eyebrow and she grins, feeling at
home with him. Dave’s glance lingers. ‘You’re a little younger than I was expecting. You packed a lot of studying into a few years.’

‘I suppose I did.’

Dave opens a door behind his desk and beckons Chris to follow. The back passage leads to a small elevator and moments later they are descending slowly.

Dave grins at her. ‘It’s not as bad as it seems…there’s only three basement levels, but the lift is slow so it seems much more. This building once housed a bank and we’re descending to the former vaults. In the Second World War the War Office bought the building. Their essential personnel worked down here on the second basement level, and they housed their documents on the floor below.’

The lift door opens and they step into bright neon light reflecting on the whitewashed walls of a long passage. Dave presses the dimmer switch.

‘Of course, I’ve redecorated and changed all the fittings…all Spanish…beautiful, aren’t they?’

Taking her arm, Dave leads Chris along a well-lit underground passage while Chris dutifully admires the door handles and circular steel light fittings set into the ceiling. She watches as Dave places his index finger over a smooth black patch. He swears.

‘You have to find the precise, hidden spot and then…bingo.’ He winks lewdly and she can’t help laughing. The door slides open and they walk into
a long, low room filled with benches, with overhead spotlights shining on numbered glass containers. Each bowl is half full of large diamonds. She walks slowly forward, trying not to gasp. Billions of pounds of gems are glistening in the spotlights all around her.

‘Use this,’ he says, taking a small eye-glass. ‘It’s called a loupe. Place it in your eye socket like this…’ He demonstrates and drops it. ‘Damn!’ Passing her the loupe, he pushes a velvet card towards her.

Chris stares at the diamond’s curious golden sheen. Pushing the loupe into her eye, she peers into the depths. All at once she’s lost amongst brilliant shafts of yellow light, like sunbursts of golden prisms. Each slight tremble brings a moving mosaic of uninterrupted brilliance.

She gasps. ‘Incredible!’

She puts down the loupe and steps away, unable to clear her mind of the vision of golden light. Dave is watching her curiously and Chris wonders why she feels this strange sense of intimacy. Perhaps he reminds her of the father she never had.

‘I feel I must warn you, Chris, as a friend – I hope we shall be friends, so please don’t take this the wrong way – millions of pounds are being pocketed by the diamond launderers. They’re flooding the market with blood diamonds bought cheaply in Africa and sold at current inflated prices maintained by our costly advertising. Their profits
are massive. If anyone gets in their way, they would kill, believe me. It sounds melodramatic, but it’s true. So while I’m here, whenever you need me, just call. At the same time, I wish you would ask Rowan to transfer you to something less dangerous.’

‘I’m not quitting,’ she murmurs.

‘I’m getting to like you, Chris, but it’s important that you and Ben uncover this laundering network fast. As I said, let me have regular updates on your progress. I may be able to help you.’

‘But Dave, our briefs are confidential. Both Rowan and Ben impressed that on me.’

He laughs softly. ‘But in a way, I’m your client, Chris. I’m acting for the government of a certain Central African Republic. Let’s get down to work and maybe you’ll have time to have lunch with me. Look here.’

She touches the smooth rosy sheen of a pile of strangely shaped roughs. They lie in a bowl like red pebbles from a distant planet’s shores.

‘South American,’ Dave says, running his hand through them. ‘Real beauties. Every one of them is worth a million, if indeed there were buyers with all these millions. As it is they remain in our stockpile, worthless and not even earning interest until they can be sold. Maybe one of them might go for a million next year.’

‘What if you let the gems find their own price levels? Supply and demand is a reliable system.’

‘And what if someone pays a small fortune for a
diamond ring and the price tumbles soon afterwards? Diamonds must have a guaranteed value.’

A feeble argument, Chris decides, but she keeps quiet.

‘Come over here.’ Dave pauses in the centre of the room and Chris follows him.

‘Namibian, a hundred and twenty carats.’ He points to a pure white rough on a velvet dais. Chris ogles at it.

‘In the Seventies, this famous diamond, which was on display at a Namibian mine, was stolen by an Ovambo mineworker. Unbeknown to management, he was a member of a West African liberation movement. There was a hue and cry, but it was never found. No one could work out how it had been smuggled out of the mine. Perhaps you know that the miners strip naked and pass through scanning machines at the end of each shift…just in case they’ve swallowed a few gems. Years later, the Ovambo told his story. The diamond was hidden inside a golf ball and sent flying over the tall, boundary fence during a game. Eventually it fell into our hands and we named it
Golfer’s Dream
.’

‘So you do buy stolen gemstones.’

‘Good God, Chris. I feel like a mole locked in with a terrier. That purchase was made long before blood diamonds became a dirty word.’

He takes her arm and walks her to the end of the room, but when they reach the glass shelves he
doesn’t release her. ‘Each stone along this bench has a curious story. This diamond ring was once part of the Russian Royal family’s collection. It was given to Anastasia by a relative, perhaps because of a curious flaw that forms an “A”. Eventually it became known as the
Anastasia
.’ He releases her arm and hands Chris a loupe.

‘Looks like an upside down V to me. I can’t see the crossline.’

‘Keep looking. It’s has a very old-fashioned cut which does nothing to reveal the true beauty of the stone. We intend to re-cut it soon. Then perhaps we’ll destroy the curse.’

‘A curse? You’re joking.’

‘Probably. Do you want to hear the rest of the story?’

‘I’ll buy it.’

‘Once upon a time the ring was bartered to a Cossack officer by an escaping nobleman, to purchase a safe passage to Odessa. This was at the time of the Russian revolution. The nobleman was murdered by the Cossack who travelled to Iran. He found work laying oil pipes across the desert until he died of dysentery. The diamond changed hands a number of times, but each time the owner was killed, or died soon afterwards. Finally the widow of a quinine planter escaped the Congo during the revolution, hiding the diamond in her body. She was raped several times and the diamond was pushed up into the neck of her womb. When she
reached Brussels it was removed by surgeons. Convinced of the curse, she sold the gem to our agent, but she died of septicaemia a week later.’

‘No more.’ Chris holds up her hand. ‘I’m not superstitious, but I’m not fond of gruesome stories.’

He laughs. ‘All right. Here’s a success story for you. This small stone, like millions of others, was formed billions of years ago in an exploding star. Later, as part of a meteor, it roamed through time and space for billions of years until it was caught up in the Earth’s magnetic pull. It plummeted into our planet, perhaps a half a billion years ago, and deep in the earth it grew by adding layer after layer, each layer a clone of the original minute speck. There it remained until forced to the surface by a volcanic eruption, which dumped it deep in the Namibian desert where it lay for millions of years, until the Orange River flooded one year and carried it down to the sea, leaving it just off the coast of Alexander Bay. It would have remained there forever if it weren’t for today’s enterprising geologists who found a way to dredge up the diamonds hidden under the sea.’

Geologists like her father! But this was her secret and Dave would never know about Dad.

 

‘Let’s get back to my office,’ Dave says when they have exhausted the complicated subject of polishing and marketing diamonds. ‘How about lunch?’

‘I’d better get back. After all it’s my first day,’ she says. ‘I’ll leave lunch for another time, if you don’t mind.’

‘But I do mind. You can’t work without food. My secretary checked with Ben and it’s OK. He’s too busy to see you right now, so you’re stuck with me.’ Dave studies her curiously.

Chris has run out of excuses. She walks arm in arm, like old friends, to a small, discreet fish restaurant not far from Dave’s offices where he entertains her with stories of the African bush while they eat grilled prawns and drink ice-cold Portuguese green wine.

Eventually she steers Dave back to the diamond industry and listens intently while he reels off facts and statistics.

‘Would you mind telling me what this is all about?’ she asks when they’re drinking coffee. ‘You seem to know an awful lot about me.’

‘I saw you on TV. I thought you were very brave. When I heard that you were joining FI I asked Rowan about you. I was intending to hand you over to my PRO this morning, but when I saw you again I changed my mind. Beautiful young women don’t often walk into my office nowadays.’

She laughs and leaves it at that.

When they reach his headquarters, Dave turns suddenly serious. ‘Be careful, Chris. Don’t talk about your work. If you need to ask questions, say you’re writing a book about diamonds. Better still,
come and ask me. There’s little I don’t know about the industry.’

BOOK: Hot Ice
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ads

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