Diamonds in the Shadow

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “The cardboard boxes fell apart,” explained Mopsy. “Mom gave Mattu plastic boxes instead.” The seal would be tight. The man couldn't hold the gun and open the boxes at the same time. That would be her chance.

  But he made Mopsy open them.

  The instant she lifted one, she knew she was in trouble. It was way too light.

  She pried it open, knowing already that the diamonds and the ashes were gone.

  Could Jared just be done with the refugees' problems and their needs and their noise? Could Mattu just shut up already? “Oh, please,” snapped Jared. “Stop it with your torture stories. If Victor is so important, why didn't you mention him before?” Jared felt sufficiently hostile toward Mattu to belt him. If Dad felt this way, no wonder he left before dawn and came back after midnight every day.

  “I was scared,” said Mattu. “I misunderstood things, Jared. I thought somehow we were safe. I pretended that, anyway. But no one is safe. You must not let anybody in your family return to the house.”

  “You thought you saw this guy in a car,” said Jared. “Like you can recognize someone in a speeding car, Mattu!”

  “I know Victor. It was him, Jared. He has found the right town. Perhaps through the Internet. Or perhaps just phone calls to the right resettlement agency. Soon he will find the right house. Call everyone in your family. They must not go home.”

  “Fine. Whatever.” Jared flipped open his cell. He hit Mopsy's number first. I better not have a roommate when I get to college, he thought. I can't handle it. I like distance.

  Broken glass fell off Alake's jacket as she walked. On the carpet of Jared's room, the shards glittered more brightly than rough diamonds would.

  Alake was just as shattered as that glass. How could Mopsy be home? American children were always where they were supposed to be. They did not wander. They obeyed the incredible number of rules about where to be when. Mopsy should be safe in school.

  Jopsy barked, wanting to get down and celebrate all the fine people in his life.

  Alake gripped the puppy tightly. Her fingers hurt, but not from holding her dog.

  She had tried never to touch the machinery in this household. These people had machines to brush their teeth and cook their food and clean their floors and write their letters. The only machine Alake had touched in her previous life had been an assault weapon. Her fingers still felt it. Even now, if she touched something cold, like a fork, she would feel the metal where Victor had told her to pull.

  Now her soul and her hopes were as cold as her fingers.

  Don't ask me to hold the gun, she thought. Don't ask me to do the shooting.

  Victor flung the blue containers around. Then he flung Mopsy. “Where are the diamonds?” he shouted.

  Mopsy lay crumpled on the floor.

  Alake neither moved nor spoke.

  But Victor always knew a person's weakness, and he knew this time, too. He said to Mopsy, “Want to know who Alake is? She's a killer. A child soldier. One of mine.”

  If only Alake could have denied this.

  “She stood there,” said Victor, “and watched while her parents were killed. She murdered her own teachers. She watched while her sister was killed. Then she joined me.”

  And that was all true, in a way. And now Mopsy knew the terrible thing Andre and Celestine knew, and she too would avoid Alake and hope not to be contaminated by her.

  “Don't be silly,” said Mopsy, in that amazing American way; the absolute refusal to believe people were wicked. Mopsy staggered to her feet.

  Victor tried again. “Her name isn't Alake, either. Nobody you took in is really named Amabo. I substituted them for a family I killed when the real Amabos did not cooperate.” He smiled at this memory. He had lost yet another tooth. Alake had seen enough American smiles now to know that Americans were made deeply anxious by bad teeth. She was not surprised that Mopsy seemed more upset by Victor's rotting teeth than by his gun.

  Alake had often thought of what she would say when she started to talk. Lovely things. Warm and thankful things. But no. That was not to be. She would speak to survive. She used English, their common language. The loving words she had tried so hard to get out of her mouth for so long had not yet come, but the terrible words came quite easily. “I will get you the diamonds,” she told Victor. “Then you take me and my puppy to New York and leave us there.” Alake did not look at Mopsy. The moments of friendship and kindness were in the past.

  Mopsy gasped. She too had expected Alake's first words to be something else.

  “You know where the diamonds are?” said Victor.

  “I took the diamonds. I came here to get my puppy and then I was going to get the diamonds and leave.”

  Victor laughed. “So you were the strong one after all.” He studied her thoughtfully. “This will work. The police are looking for me, but they won't be looking for a father and his daughter and a dog.”

  Alake did not ask why the police in America were looking for Victor. She could guess. “The diamonds are not in the house,” she said. “In this house, they snoop.”

  “That's what she said,” agreed Victor, aiming his gun at Mopsy.

  “I will not give you the diamonds if you hurt her,” said Alake. “We will go in your car. We must drive.”

  Victor shrugged and shoved Mopsy down the stairs and out of the house. He and Alake both knew he would just hurt Mopsy after he got the diamonds instead of now.

  Alake said, “The puppy might bark. We will leave him in the kitchen.”

  “We're not coming back. You want the dog, you bring the dog.”

  They climbed into the beautiful car. Alake directed Victor down the hill, through the village and into the bleak marina, full of boats but empty of people.

  Jared was exasperated.

  Mopsy had promised Jared to keep her cell charged and on. Had she forgotten? Or was she sitting in class, not daring to answer?

  “What's this about, anyway, Mattu?” Jared demanded. “Summarize it. One word. Don't run on about torture and warlords. I can't stand it.”

  “Diamonds,” said Mattu.

  Wind whipped the blue plastic sheets covering hundreds of boats. Flagpole ropes rattled like bad drummers. Mopsy was squashed in the front seat between Victor and Alake. She was so frightened that she was not even having thoughts; she was all fear.

  “Here,” said Alake.

  Victor stopped the car and got out, dragging Mopsy after him. Alake shut Jopsy in the car. It began to sleet. Mopsy hated sleet. It was like failed, angry snow.

  Salt water or not, the harbor was frozen around the edges. The open water was the color of stones and death. The wind was brutal, slicing like knives through Mopsy's lungs.

  “There was a fifth refugee on our plane,” said Mattu. “Victor. The diamonds are his.”

  Jared felt like some old-fashioned machine, gears slowly moving into place. “And Victor would be … ?”

  “The man who spilled the blood that made them blood diamonds.”

  Blood like Andre's. From chopping off hands.

  Blood diamonds, not conflict diamonds.

  I knew there was danger, thought Jared. That's why I told Mopsy to keep her phone with her. What am I, insane? You don't ask an eleven-year-old to handle her own danger!

  Jared flipped his cell open and hit 411. “Keep talking,” he ordered Mattu.

  “Victor thought a family of four would be less suspicious and we could smuggle his diamonds more easily than he could. Diamonds cast no shadow in X-ray machines, you see, so it is not likely that they will be found unless the person carrying them makes the authorities suspicious.”

  “Prospect Hill, Connecticut,” Jared told the automated voice. “River Middle School.”

  “We expected to land in New York City,” said Mattu, “and then Victor would take the diamonds and go. We four would find our own housing and jobs. But that did not happen. I thought we were free of him. I thought we had disappeared into this little town. But Victor is here. I s
aw him.”

  “You kept some killer's property in my house, when you knew that killer would show up to claim it?” said Jared. The phone company was willing to make the connection at no charge if he pressed one. Jared pressed one. “Hi, it's Jared Finch. I need to talk to my sister, Martha. She's in Mrs. Jackson's sixth grade.”

  Daniel appeared in the hallway, walking toward them with that leisurely, always prepared, exception-to-the-rule manner he had, rather like Tay. Jared grabbed Daniel's arm. Daniel stared at Jared's fingers trespassing on his arm. He gave Jared a warning look. “What do you mean, Mopsy didn't come to school today?” Jared shouted into his phone. What was happening? How could Mopsy not be in school? He disconnected. “Daniel—you drive to school today?” demanded Jared.

  “I drive to school every day.”

  “I need your car.” Jared hustled Daniel down the hall. Mattu followed, which Jared figured was a good thing, because Jared was going to run him over after he'd made sure Mopsy was safe. “You drive, Daniel,” ordered Jared. “We're in a major hurry.” He dialed his house. Nobody answered.

  The blood diamond guy will go to our house, not the middle school, he thought. He understood a hundred things halfway now. The Amabos had come as refugees but also as screens for a smuggler. They had actually thought that the trees and rocks and curving country roads of Connecticut were shelter from a killer who had only to pick up a phone or open a Web site and find them.

  Find us, thought Jared.

  Mattu began explaining Victor to Daniel, who turned out to be a slow, careful driver. Jared didn't even think Daniel was a teenage boy; he was some old coot who couldn't see thirty feet away. “Faster!” he shouted. “Go through the light!”

  Daniel came to a full stop, looked both ways and waited for the green.

  “Victor will be armed,” said Mattu.

  Daniel took his foot off the accelerator. “What do you mean, armed?”

  “That's him!” shouted Mattu, pointing at a gleaming black Lexus that was turning off the tiny main street and heading down the marina lane. “Mopsy's with him. And Alake!”

  “Are you sure?” asked Jared. How could a refugee end up with a new Lexus? Jared went from completely worried to completely skeptical.

  The marina was an unlikely destination for anybody this time of year, let alone an African smuggler, if this even was Victor, and anyway, how could Victor have located Mopsy? As for Alake, she was in school. She'd gotten on the bus first. Jared knew she was at school. “Step on it!” he said to Daniel, just in case.

  Daniel was not a stepping-on-it kind of driver. He was a creeping-along kind of driver. Plus he was driving with one hand, and with his other hand—actually, with his other thumb—he was dialing 911 on his cell phone. “Police,” Daniel said calmly. “Marina Road. An assault in progress.” He said to Mattu, “You better be right. I'm going to be really annoyed if I've cut school and called the police and it isn't about anything.”

  Alake walked out onto the breakwater.

  Mopsy could not believe it. Alake had refused even to get near that breakwater when they'd been here before.

  The rocks were slick with ice. Thick half-frozen water bumped up against them. If Alake lost her balance, she'd slide into deep frigid water under a lid of slush.

  Twenty steps out, Alake fell. Mopsy screamed.

  The man hit Mopsy. “Shut up.”

  Mopsy shut up. My face is broken, she thought. He broke my face.

  Alake caught the rim of a rock and did not fall into the water. She crawled on instead of walking. She did not look back at Mopsy or the man.

  Was this the Alake who had been inactive to the point of being comatose? Mopsy marveled. Had that same Alake taken the diamonds, put them in a Ziploc bag or something and sneaked down to the waterfront? Had she dropped this bag into one of the holes created where the mortar had crumbled?

  It might have looked like a perfect hiding place—a deserted marina in the middle of winter—but the sea would have eaten the bottom out. The hole would go all the way through. The diamonds were probably long gone, sucked out by a violent tide.

  A fierce gust of wind tossed slush onto Alake's face and arms. There was no sign that she noticed. She kept going.

  So a person thinking about diamonds thought of nothing else.

  I don't know Alake after all, thought Mopsy. I made her up to fit what I wanted in a sister.

  Victor was breathing hard. His eyes were glued to Alake.

  Victor is wrong that nobody will know he's masquerading as a father with a daughter and a puppy, thought Mopsy. I'll know. I'll tell the police everything. I even memorized the license plate number.

  Victor glanced back at Mopsy, realized she was dawdling and grabbed her by the face, the way he had grabbed Alake in the kitchen.

  Mopsy saw how true it was, that she was young for her age. Victor would not leave her alive to tell.

  Alake was only a few feet from the end of the rocks when she found the hole. A narrow chink, just wide enough for a hand. She swallowed her terror of the icy unknown and stuck her arm down.

  She felt nothing. She pulled her arm back out and shifted position, sliding hideously closer to the edge. The water slurped eagerly. Wind like a jackal's teeth bit her wet arm. She tried from another angle.

  “I've found the box!” she shouted. “But it's frozen to the bottom. I can't get it free.” She put her eye to the hole. “Your arm is longer.”

  “You first,” Victor told Mopsy, letting go of her face.

  Mopsy knew how deep the water was. If Mopsy slid off, she would drown in her own town at her own beach while her own personal refugee looked for diamonds.

  Alake, who was not Alake.

  Because Victor had killed the real one.

  Mopsy dropped to a crawl. Victor didn't do anything because he was struggling with his own balance. He dropped the gun in his pocket to have both hands free.

  Alake crouched over her diamond hole, scrabbling for what mattered.

  Three people were out on the breakwater. Jared saw them clearly.

  The man Mattu said was Victor.

  Alake.

  And Mopsy.

  What could they be doing there? What could they possibly want out there? What kind of insanity—

  Jared leaped out of Daniel's car, screaming and waving.

  The man called Victor turned to look. He put his hand in his pocket. There was something athletic about his stance—a sort of readiness to make a play. His hand, when he withdrew it from his pocket, looked oddly lengthy.

  He will be armed, Mattu had said.

  Alake stood up.

  Jared was running toward them, ice or no ice.

  But bullets travel faster than humans.

  Victor could kill Mopsy. He could kill Jared. He could hit Mattu and Daniel. He could do it in moments. It was his skill.

  Alake's plan had not yet failed. She could still carry it out.

  Alake thought about her family, these Americans who had welcomed her and asked for nothing in return. She thought about God, and there was time to pray.

  Let me be good, just once. Let me atone.

  She thought about the poem Tay had read, with its promises to keep.

  She had not had time to make promises, but she would keep them anyway.

  She stepped forward.

  She wrapped her arms around Victor and flung herself sideways into the sea, taking Victor with her.

  The sound of sirens filled the air.

  Daniel shouted into his cell phone, guiding the police.

  Jared gathered his bleeding little sister in his arms.

  Mattu caught up.

  But where Alake and Victor had been, there was nothing, not even a hole in the slush. Invisible waves beneath the icy lid of winter had already closed it up.

  In the end, Alake had been the precious gem.

  Alake had been willing to lay down her life. Silent, unloved Alake, who had had but one taste of joy—a few days with a puppy—calmly,
and without fanfare, had given her life for her friends.

  Jared was such an American. Built into the soul of Americans was the desire to help. They didn't always help wisely or well, but they did always leap into the water to try.

  “You hold on to Mopsy,” said Jared fiercely to Mattu. “No matter what, you keep my sister safe.” Jared slid into the water. It was so cold he couldn't open his eyes; so cold he was out of air and strength in one heartbeat.

  I'm going to die, thought Jared, and he knew just how stupid he had been, hurling himself into ice water, when one of his goals in life was Don't be stupid.

  His flailing arm hit stone. The breakwater. He braced his feet against it and flung his arms outward, searching the slushy water.

  God! he prayed, which was all he had time for. He felt something soft and closed his hand on it.

  The cold paralyzed him. He could not pull himself or it to the surface.

  God.

  A particle of strength returned. Jared kicked upward.

  Whose body do I have? he thought. What if I have the killer and not Alake?

  Dull, careful Daniel was also an Eagle Scout who kept valuable things like rope in the trunk of his car. He made a large loop, tossed it to Jared and was hauling him up as the police cars arrived. To Mattu, Daniel said, “You explain this to the police. I'll back up whatever you say. Certainly I don't know what's going on. You got secrets to keep, Mattu, this would probably be the time to keep them.”

  They put Mopsy in the first ambulance.

  They stripped Jared's wet clothes off and popped him on a stretcher next to his sister.

  They put the survivor in the second ambulance.

  They had to wait a while for a third ambulance, but that was all right, because the dead are good at waiting.

  They didn't keep Mopsy in the hospital, just pumped her full of antibiotics and gave her codeine for the cuts and bruises, then sent her home. Mopsy slept and slept, and when she awoke the first time, her mother and father were sitting by her bed, and nothing that had happened in her house or out on the breakwater seemed possible or real. When she woke up the second time, Celestine was there.