“No bridges?”
“Only on the one major highway,” Cole said. “When the wet is really on, those bridges are under water a lot of the time. They’re built low and with removable railings so that trash doesn’t get caught and create a dam. Even so, they wash out a lot.” He looked over at Erin. “That’s what ConMin is trying to do by offering to fly you all over the world to photograph diamond mines. ConMin knows that if you don’t get into Crazy Abe’s claim in the next few weeks, you’ll have a hell of a time getting in at all until summer dries things out. I should be in the Kimberley right now, prospecting before the temperature goes to a hundred and twenty and the air is too wet to breathe.”
“Then we shouldn’t go to London at all.”
“It will keep Faulkner and van Luik off our backs while Wing sets up things on the other end.”
“Wing?”
“My partner.”
“Oh. That’s right. BlackWing. Dad said something about that.”
“Yeah, I’ll just bet he did.” Cole looked down at Erin. “Don’t worry, honey. If your mine can be found, I’ll find it for you.”
“Yes. Dad said that too.”
Cole walked in silence for a time before he stopped and very gently pulled Erin toward him. When there was no resistance on her part, he bent and brushed his lips over hers.
“Don’t go to Australia. You’ll be safer with your father. He may have gray hair, but he’s one tough bastard.”
She started to object, only to be distracted by the gliding caress of Cole’s tongue over her lips and the warmth of his breath as he spoke urgently.
“The climate and the land have killed men who were much stronger and more experienced than you are,” Cole said simply. “The Kimberley Plateau is no place for a white woman.”
“People told me the same thing about the arctic.” Curious, she tasted his chin as she’d once tasted the green diamond. “Salty. Male. Warm. You taste good, Cole.”
His breath came in with a ripping sound. Swiftly he caged her face between his hands. “Woman, you do love to take risks, don’t you?”
“Risks?” She looked up at him with eyes made dark and mysterious by moonlight. “How so?”
“I could make you stay home. I could crowd you sexually until you turned and ran for cover.”
Erin went very still, searching the hot silver gleam of Cole’s eyes. Then she sighed and smiled almost sadly. “Yesterday you could have, when I didn’t know you. But not today. Today I found out that you’re a hard man but not a cruel one. You’re not at all like Hans.”
“There’s a world full of people who would disagree with you,” Cole said flatly.
“I’m not one of them. I’m the woman you had laid out like a lamb for slaughter, but all you did was stroke my hair while I cried, and then you kissed me so gently I felt like crying all over again. I was certain I’d never trust a man after Hans. I was wrong.” She touched Cole’s mouth with her fingertips. “It’s too late to make me afraid of you. I’m going to Australia, and I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”
Cole told himself that he was sorry he couldn’t intimidate Erin, sorry that she stood so trustingly in his arms, leaning against him, her breath a warmth rushing over his skin.
He told himself, but he didn’t believe any of it.
For a long time he simply held her, listening to the surf and wishing he’d exaggerated the difficulty of living and working in the Kimberley.
But he hadn’t exaggerated. The buildup was a corrosive time, fraying men’s tempers to the point of violence and beyond. The wet wasn’t much better. When the wet arrived, it would wash the land right back into the Stone Age, where the most simple things were difficult. Even survival.
Especially survival.
14
Los Angeles Late at night
“I’ve been attending funerals.” Chen Wing’s voice was thinned by more than the satellite relay joining him to Cole. “They have an unsettling effect.”
Cole smiled grimly. “You didn’t expect to make war on ConMin without suffering a few casualties, did you?”
Wing didn’t reply for a moment. Then he changed the subject. “Have you made any progress?”
“Directly, none.”
Wing muttered a quiet curse in Cantonese.
“Relax,” Cole said. “At this stage, that’s the best news you could hope for. I’ve spent most of the last three days examining maps from the BlackWing files.”
“And?”
“Nothing. That’s good news. If I could find Windsor’s jewel box in a few hours using existing maps, so could any other geologist, including the ones on your staff. You told me they reported finding nothing, correct?”
“Yes.”
“They probably weren’t lying, because the maps told them nothing. The other possibility is that the maps told the story but your geologists withheld it to sell it to someone else. If so, I didn’t find what they were selling.”
“If you haven’t found it, they didn’t. You’re the best. You always have been. Lucky in mines, unlucky in love.”
“Number one, that isn’t how the saying goes,” Cole said. “Number two, my love life is none of your damned business.”
There was a brief silence, followed by a sigh. “I’m sorry,” Wing said, his tone soft, almost whispering. “Funerals have an unfortunate effect on my common sense. One of those funerals was that of my second cousin and brother-in-law, Chen Zeong-Li.”
Images flooded through Cole’s memory, images of the passionate black-eyed woman who was Wing’s sister, the woman who in the end had loved her family and power more than she had loved any man, including Cole Blackburn.
“Zeong was a decent man,” Cole said finally. “I’m sorry to hear he’s dead.”
“Are you? There was a time when you would have killed Zeong and danced on his grave.”
Cole didn’t say anything.
“If you choose to resume the relationship with Chen Lai,” Wing continued, “this time the Chen family would not intervene.”
This time.
The words echoed in Cole’s mind, reminding him of things he would rather have forgotten. Shortly after he’d signed the original BlackWing agreement, Lai had dumped him because the family of Chen disapproved of a non-Chinese husband. A secret lover was tolerated while Cole advanced the Chen family’s mineral business, but when it came to marriage and children it was more important to consolidate blood and business ties in Kowloon.
Now Zeong-Li was dead, Lai was widowed, and the family of Chen was offering Cole the very woman they once had forbidden him.
“No, thanks,” Cole said calmly. “A smart man only wipes his ass with poison ivy once.”
From the other end of the line came a charged silence, followed by the sound of harsh, humorless laughter. “You haven’t changed.”
“Hard to harder, half smart to half smarter. That’s a change, Wing. It’s the only change that matters. I’ve survived.”
“What will you need at Abe’s station?”
Without a pause Cole accepted the change of subject. “I’ll need a helicopter to do photo, radar, magnetic, and scintillometric studies of Abe’s claims. Ideally the information from the last two should be recorded on separate transparencies, laid over the first two, and then integrated with information that I’m putting on the topo and geological maps, but I won’t have time to handle all the integration and programming myself.”
“We have a mainframe here,” Wing said.
“I don’t like that. It increases the chances of a leak.”
Wing said nothing.
Cole shrugged and accepted what wasn’t going to change. “Can you set up a ground station at Windsor’s place—modem, satellite link, and graphic printers to handle the output from your end?”
There was a pause. “I’ll need several days.”
“You’ll get it. What about the inputting on your end?”
“I’ll do it myself.”
“The
n I’ll transmit data as fast as I get it. Set up a secure file in BlackWing’s main computer, code access ‘chunder.’”
“Chunder,” Wing repeated. “Within an hour you can have a printout under that name from any Chen business computer anywhere in the world.”
“Good,” Cole said. “What about the rest of the transparencies I’ll need? Who will do them?”
“My people.”
“Be damn sure you trust them.”
“They are of the family of Chen, and they won’t know the location of the scraps of land they’re working on. They will have only a grid to work from. I am the only one who knows the latitudes and longitudes.”
Cole laughed quietly. He understood Wing’s kind of trust, the kind that was weighed and measured. “That leaves us with just one problem—the helicopter. I put the names of nearby mining exploration outfits through the computer.”
“I saw the printout.”
“Then you know all of them are tied to ConMin in one way or another. The only way we’ll have a chance against the cartel is if we keep them off balance, wondering what’s going to happen next. That means working fast and as quietly as possible. If we have to go to New South Wales or the Nullarbor for the chopper, the logistics of fuel supply will be impossible. If we get one closer to home, ConMin will have a direct pipeline into our operation. Take your pick, Wing.”
“I did. I reran data and selected the five companies that are least indebted to ConMin. Several of those are also indebted to Pacific Enterprises, Inc., Pan-Asian Resources Ltd., or Pacific Rim Development and Resources Ltd.”
Cole recognized all three firms. They were powerful forces in trade among the countries that circled the Pacific Ocean. Apparently all were under control of the Chen family to a greater or lesser degree. “What’s your best pick? Pan-Asian Resources?” he said.
“We have enjoyed amicable relations with them for years, yes,” Wing admitted.
“Which of the Australian firms do they control?”
“Control? None. We are simply in an advisory capacity.”
“Yeah. ConMin does a lot of that too.”
Wing ignored him. “Metalworks and Mines Ltd. is my first choice for a helicopter, with Western Australia Iron and Gold Surveyors second. I will make inquiries immediately.”
“What if neither one comes through for you?”
“I can say with great certainty that Metalworks will have a helicopter available for short-term lease. Do you need a pilot?”
“I’ll fly it myself. What about that list of survey equipment I faxed you?”
“Everything you need will be at the station when you get there,” Wing said.
“Someone to set it up and guard it would be nice. I’m a miner, not an electronics expert, and I’ll be away from the buildings most of the time.”
“Noted. Anything else?”
“Maybe some of the amenities of life. Abe’s idea of furniture was a dirt floor.”
“Noted. Will you require a single bed or a double?”
Cole broke the link without answering. Immediately he put in Matthew Windsor’s number.
It was time to find out what Erin’s father was willing to do for his daughter.
15
Darwin, Australia A day later
“For this I packed my cameras and clothes and sent them to London without me?” Erin asked, disgusted.
“No,” Cole said, without looking up from his maps. “You did that to make ConMin think they had you coming to heel nicely. Confuse, mislead, and misdirect. It’s the only way to survive.”
“One more run through ‘Chunder’ and I won’t care if I survive.”
With that, Erin tossed aside the sheets of Abe’s doggerel. She’d been sitting in the window seat of their Darwin hotel, studying the poem and looking out at the lush tropical landscaping. Her body swung between sleepiness and an irritable kind of restlessness, which was her own personal version of jet lag. She’d be better as soon as she slept, but it was only five o’clock. She had to stay awake for a few more hours. Reading “Chunder” wouldn’t help her.
Cole glanced up from the desk in the living area of the suite. Transparent topographic and geological maps of Australia were spread across the hotel desk in front of him, along with maps showing the distribution of active and reserve mineral claims in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. On top of those maps lay transparencies of the Kimberley Plateau and of Western Australia. A compass, ruler, pencil, and a lined notepad were within reach. The pad was covered with cryptic notes.
He didn’t really expect to find the answer to the Sleeping Dog Mines in the maps, but they gave him something to think about besides Erin’s warm tongue and husky voice approving of his taste. He looked at the sheets of paper she’d tossed aside.
“Did you know that Chunder is Aussie slang for vomit?” he said.
“Lovely,” she said. “Old Great-uncle Abe was a real literary light, wasn’t he?”
A slight smile was Cole’s only response. Chunder was the most elegant of the slang contained in Abe’s doggerel. If Erin had any idea of the meaning of the words she’d been reading aloud, Cole suspected she would have blushed to the soles of her feet. Abe had been a randy bastard right up to the day he died.
“What time is it?” she asked, yawning suddenly.
“Same as it was the last time you asked—too soon to go to bed. You’d wake up a couple hours before dawn.”
“Damn. I’m finally feeling sleepy.”
“Fight it.”
Muttering, she went and stood next to him, looking over his shoulder at the maps.
“Help me stay awake. Explain some more of these maps to me.” She braced herself with a hand on his shoulder as she leaned closer. “This time I’ll try not to yawn in your ear.”
“Sit down before you fall down,” he said, gently pulling her onto his lap.
Instantly she tensed.
Ignoring her rigid body, Cole began pointing out features on the nearest map.
As he talked, Erin gradually began to relax, trusting her weight to the muscular support of his thighs and chest, feeling the heat of his body sink into hers.
Though Cole savored each small softening of her body against his, he kept talking as though nothing but the maps mattered.
“I understand topographic maps,” she said finally, “but what is this one?”
As she leaned forward to point, she shifted in his lap. The pressure of her hips against his groin made his breathing thicken. With a silent curse at his unruly body, he concentrated on the transparency she was pointing to. The clear plastic was four feet by four feet, exactly the scale of the topographic map and covered by seemingly random patterns of rainbow colors.
Deliberately Cole reached around Erin with both arms and slid the transparency over the topographic map. The motion also brushed his biceps against her breasts. The contact made her gasp. Her breath unraveled suddenly, but she didn’t withdraw. His arms moved again, caressing and freeing in the same motion. While he spoke, he traced lines with a calloused fingertip.
“The blue lines are sandstone,” he said. “There’s a lot of it in the Kimberley. The brown crosshatches are limestone. The yellow diagonals are volcanic rocks. The pink dots are water deposits. The white dots are wind deposits. It makes a difference to us, because usually only water deposits contain diamonds.”
As Erin grew accustomed to looking both at and through the transparency, she could see how the water deposits almost always coincided with rivers or beaches or low spots on the topographic map. But there were a few places where pink dots appeared without any sign of rivers or lakes or ocean.
“Is this a water deposit?” she asked. “There’s no sign of water anywhere close.”
Cole looked at the slender finger with its clean, unpolished nail. When he saw where she was pointing, he gave her full marks for quickness.
“That’s what geologists call a paleo-floodplain, a place where a flooding river used to overflow and l
eave silt and stones behind. The river is long since gone, but the characteristic deposits of a floodplain are still there.”
“Does that mean diamonds could be there?”
“If the ancient river flowed through diamond-bearing rock, yes.”
“Did it?”
“Probably not. It didn’t flow through any volcanic rocks.”
She frowned. “I didn’t know the Kimberley Plateau had volcanoes.”
“It does, but they’re real ancient. They’ve been eroded flat and sometimes even down beyond that, to the magma chamber itself. Nothing is left but the barest bones of what once was an awesome piece of living nature. When you’re digging for diamonds, you’re digging up a grave.”
“Lovely thought,” she said beneath her breath.
Cole reached for another transparency and drew it onto the top of the stacked maps. This time Erin didn’t flinch when his arms brushed the sides of her breasts.
“Since nothing volcanic shows on the surface,” he said, keeping his arms around her, “we have to look down below.”
“How?”
“This map outlines stations, mining claims, and mineral reserves in the Kimberley. The stations are green, active claims and reserves are red, lapsed claims and reserves are blue.”
She made a sound of dismay as she saw the network of overlapping lines. “There’s nothing left of the Kimberley. Somebody’s been over every inch of it already.”
“They’ve staked out claims and then abandoned them.”
“Because there was nothing there,” she said unhappily.
His arms tightened, shifting her subtly on his lap, allowing him to brush his lips against her soft hair. “I don’t need virgin land to find pay dirt, because most men are no damn good at what they do.”
The warmth of Cole’s breath against her neck made Erin shiver. It was pleasure rather than fear that rippled over her skin, pleasure that made her lean more fully against him.
He smiled, caressed her again, and went on speaking in a deep, slow voice, as though he had nothing more on his mind than maps.
“Most of Abe’s claims were worked over in the 1920s by men looking for gold. When they didn’t find anything worthwhile, they abandoned the claims. Since then no one has been there except an occasional jackeroo or a walkabout Aborigine.”
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