She stared at the piled maps, seeing lines and designs and colors and more lines and designs. And no answers at all.
“The problem isn’t that the plateau is too well known,” Cole said, pulling another transparency out and lining it up with the underlying maps, caressing Erin with every motion, every breath. “The problem is that we don’t know nearly enough.”
She tried to speak, but couldn’t. His strength, his heat, his very breath surrounded her.
Yet all she could think about was getting closer.
“This transparency shows what kind of plants grow,” he said, allowing his lips to linger against her neck. “Plants change with elevation, rainfall, and soil. They can tell you whether limestone or sandstone or volcanic rock is underneath the soil.”
He moved another transparency onto the pile. He took a lot of time stacking it, for each movement of his arms caressed another soft curve of Erin’s body.
“This shows roads, trails, dams, airstrips, towns, houses, windmills, microwave relays, and whatever else man has added to the landscape. Look at it, honey. Look at it real carefully.”
As he spoke, he released her from his touch. She stared at the final transparency, trying to gather thoughts scattered by the unexpected splinters of pleasure that had pierced her with every brush of his body against hers. Gradually she realized that the final map had the least marks of any map on the pile.
Man had touched Western Australia only lightly, and the Kimberley barely at all.
“In that pile is everything we know about the Kimberley,” Cole said. “Put your hand over a part of the map. Any part.”
Puzzled, she did as he asked.
“You have a few thousand square miles under your hand,” he said. “Lift it and tell me what we know about that piece of land.”
She moved her hand aside, looking at the transparency and then at the key that ran down the side.
“No paved roads,” she said. “One graded road, and a few station roads that are little better than wild-animal trails. Five station houses.” She leaned closer. “Three of them are abandoned. A handful of windmills.” She leaned forward even further, looking through the top map to the one just beneath. Again she looked at the color key on the map’s margin. “Lowland grasses, spinifex, scrub gum.”
Cole lifted the top two transparencies, letting her see the ones underneath more easily.
“Parts of three stations,” she continued. “About seven mineral claims sort of in a line.” She bent lower. “The claims run along a river,” she said, reading through to the topographic map. “Well, some of the year it’s a river. The rest of the time it’s dry. Dashed lines, right?”
“Right. Go on.”
Frowning, she went on to the next map. “The land is nearly flat. Sand and sandstone. No permanent water.”
“What else?”
There was a long silence while she sifted through the maps again. Finally she looked up at him. “That’s it.”
“Think about it, Erin. Thousands of square miles, and you’ve summed up man’s knowledge of it in less than three minutes.”
She made a startled sound.
“You could call the station owners pioneers and you wouldn’t be wrong,” he said. “The twentieth century is only a rumor out in the Kimberley. Western Australia is a different place, a different land, a different time. Civilization is whatever you can carry in on your back.”
After a moment she asked, “How old was Abe?”
“Had to be eighty, at least, when he died.”
“What was his health like?”
“He could walk most men into the ground. He could drink the rest right under, including me.”
She frowned. “Then there’s no place on Abe’s cattle station or on his claims that he was too old to prospect?”
“Doubt it. Not when I knew him, anyway. And he discovered his jewel box before I knew him.”
“All right, what about Sleeping Dog One, Sleeping Dog Two, and all the rest?” she asked. “What makes you so certain those mines are worthless?”
“I’ve been in Dog One. It’s a pipe mine, pure and simple, and not much of one at that. Nearly all bort. The diamonds in that tin box came from a placer mine with a high percentage of gem-quality stones.”
“What’s bort?”
“Industrial diamonds,” he said, “useful only for abrasives or drill bits.”
“No gemstones at all?” she asked.
“Nothing like your diamonds. His were all sharp edges, flaws, and yellow to brown.”
“Are all Abe’s mines like that?”
Cole smiled at the disappointment in Erin’s voice. “I’m afraid so, honey. Not one of them is located on or near a modern river course, either, which means the Dog mines just aren’t a likely source of placer diamonds.”
With a gloomy expression she looked at the maps. “What did you mean, modern rivers? What other kind of river is there?”
Absently Cole’s fingertips smoothed over the paper as he thought about the passage of time over the face of the land, time transforming everything it touched, wearing down old mountains and building new ones.
“Paleo-rivers,” he said finally. “Old as the hills. Older.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Kimberley Plateau has spent a billion and a half years above sea level. That makes it the oldest land surface on earth. Almost every bit of the rest of the Australian continent—and the other continents too—have been recycled top to bottom in one way or another in the last billion and a half years. Not the Kimberley.”
Cole leaned away from Erin for a moment, pulled a big opaque map of Australia from the bottom of the pile, and spread it out on top.
“Look here,” he said. “Australia is the flattest inhabited continent on earth. The driest, too. The Kimberley Plateau is about the only thing west of Ayers Rock that’s high enough to make a decent hill anywhere else in the world.”
She made a startled sound and looked at the map again.
“In the center of Australia,” he said, “the land is so flat that rain collects in circles like dew on a gigantic picnic table.” His long index finger traced the shallow rise of the Kimberley Plateau. “This area stayed high and dry, but the rest of Australia, the flat center and the even flatter southwest, have been underwater more than above. There are huge limestone and sandstone beds covering those areas to prove it.”
When Cole looked up he found that Erin was focused on the map with an intensity and intelligence that was almost tangible.
“At the edge of the Kimberley the land rumples a bit,” he continued. “The locals call them mountains. Anyone else would call them hills. They’re what’s left of a limestone reef that was buried and then resurrected by erosion.”
“‘A dead sea’s bones,’” she quoted softly, remembering a phrase from Abe’s poetry.
Cole’s eyes narrowed. He pushed the continental map aside and pulled out the map of the Kimberley Plateau. He traced the line of the Napier Range and the other limestone ranges that ring the Kimberley today, as the living reefs once ringed the Kimberley long ago. Seven of Crazy Abe’s claims straddled limestone outcroppings. Three of them were within the boundaries of the station itself. None was near a Dog mine.
“Cole?” she asked, sensing his intensity.
Instead of answering, he grabbed another map, this one showing major modern watercourses. There were no year-round rivers, but in the wet more rain came down than even the parched, porous land could absorb. The result was a series of on-again, off-again “rivers” that were little more than flood channels several miles wide.
She watched while his intent, nearly silver eyes measured distances and catalogued possibilities. The speed and decisiveness of his work suggested an intelligence that was as impressive as his physical strength.
Watching him, she had to admit just how drawn she was to him—and never more so than now, when the intelligence and discipline in him were real enough to touch.
Don’t even think about being his lover.
She wasn’t the kind of person who did anything by halves. If she gave herself to him physically, it would be impossible not to give the rest of herself as well. There was no guarantee he wanted anything more than her body. It was a recipe for disaster.
Yet the lure of him sank into her more deeply each moment she was with him.
Without warning, Cole looked up and caught Erin’s luminous green eyes admiring him. When she realized it, she looked away hastily.
“Well?” she asked, gesturing to the map.
He shrugged. “About two-thirds of Australia can lay claim to being the burial ground of a dead sea’s bones.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointed.
“On the other hand, when it comes to checking existing claims, I’ll concentrate on the areas with limestone outcroppings first.”
A smile transformed her face. “Then I helped?”
He grinned. “I hope so. We’ve got a hell of a lot of land to cover any way you look at it.”
“Is there a river?”
“Not the way you mean it. There were paleo-rivers, though. They drained into the shallow sea where reefs formed. There were beaches, too, maybe like Namibia’s beaches, where every time you dig down to the oyster line you come up with diamonds running out of both hands.”
“Where are the old rivers on Abe’s claims?”
“I never saw any sign of them,” Cole said, “but they’re there. They have to be.”
“Because of the diamonds?”
“No. Because the Kimberley Plateau has always been there, and a sea was usually there, and water always runs down to the sea.”
Unconsciously, she worried her lower lip with her teeth, something she often did when nervous or thinking hard. “What about your maps? Do they show old rivers?”
“No. The only maps I can get my hands on are of the tectonic sort. They’re useless if you’re looking for something that’s smaller than a hundred square miles.”
“How big are diamond pipes?”
“Most of them are only a few hundred square acres on the surface. A lot of them are smaller. A few are huge.”
“Talk about a needle in a haystack…”
“I’d settle for that,” he said sardonically. “If it was a needle, I’d whistle up an industrial-strength magnet and suck that baby out in nothing flat.”
His eyes went back to the maps. Instantly he was absorbed, pursuing some line of thought Erin could only guess at. She watched him openly, wishing her cameras were lying on the table instead of on the chair next to her bed. Though she rarely did portraits, preferring the timeless beauty of wilderness to the transient faces of humanity, she wanted to photograph Cole. Like the land, there was more to him than his harsh exterior.
16
London
Hugo van Luik passed down the long hallway like a ghost. The lush green wool carpeting, the tapestries, and the heavy curtains soaked up every sound his steps made. A closed-circuit television camera mounted on the woodpaneled wall tracked his progress. Depending on the time of month, this office was the repository of anywhere between two and three billion dollars in rough diamonds.
When he reached the heavy, hand-carved wooden door at the far end of the hall, he stopped and tapped a four-digit code into the security key pad. The lock retracted, allowing him to push the door open and pass into the next long hallway to the next electronic locks, until finally he was inside the conference room.
Although meetings of the “steering committee” of the Diamond Sales Division of Consolidated Minerals were “unofficial,” “advisory,” and never publicized, such gatherings were crucial to the economic expectations and requirements of the nations that attended. Individual diamond sight-holders always made their needs known to the DSD through formal channels, but what happened in this room today would determine how—or whether—those needs would be met. To an extent startling to outsiders, DSD enhanced or diminished the economic health of nations.
Van Luik checked his own watch. Given a choice, he would have put this meeting off for five weeks, until the next sight. By then the monsoon season would have started in Western Australia and the matter of Abelard Windsor’s dangerous bequest would be moot for another six months. But putting off the meeting wasn’t possible.
Abruptly he turned to the majordomo who was hovering by the half-open door.
“Send them in.”
The representative from Israel strode in first. Moshe Aram was lean, wiry, and fit. He was a member of the Israeli secret service, Mossad. The diamond trade was too crucial to Israel’s economy to be left in the hands of diamantaires or politicians. That was how the troubles had begun back in the 1970s.
The United States representative, Nan Faulkner, followed on Aram’s heels. Faulkner sat down, poured herself a glass of ice water, drank it, and poured another. Then she lit a cigarillo and balanced it on the lip of a heavy crystal ashtray that had been put at her place.
Van Luik nodded at the woman but said nothing. Although Faulkner was an old hand at DSD meetings, van Luik always maintained his distance from her, believing her to be a political token rather than a real player in the game of international power.
He went to his own chair at the head of the table and watched calmly while the others took their places. There was little polite talk. Each person was there to ensure that his country’s interests in the diamond trade were presented to the diamond cartel.
The Soviet representative, Boris Yarakov, looked un-usually surly. Attar Singh, India’s representative to the cartel, was as politic as Yarakov was boorish. Singh had no choice but to be accommodating. India no longer produced diamonds, so it no longer commanded the attention it once had. What India brought to ConMin and DSD was a bottomless well of cheap labor willing to spend its hours and its eyesight on the task of shaping and polishing diamonds so tiny they would once have been sold for industrial use at a quarter the price of polished goods.
The Continental diamond trade was represented by Nathaniel Feinberg. As with India, the Continental interests were cutters and polishers rather than producers of rough diamonds. They had less power in the diamond cartel than the owners of the gem-producing diamond mines themselves. Those mines were the treasure and bane of the diamond cartel’s existence: There were more than enough mines to fill the world demand for gems.
Australia had used its own geologists, rather than ConMin’s, to explore the vast Kimberley Plateau. The Argyle diamond mine had been the result. Because the remote Argyle strike was monstrously expensive to develop, Australia sought outside capital. Once the banks learned that Australia wasn’t a member of the diamond cartel and thus had no guaranteed market for the Argyle’s output, development money dried up.
The power games hadn’t stopped there. India, unhappy with the cartel, had offered to guarantee a market for Argyle’s melee diamonds. The banks were approached again, guaranteed market in hand. Before the loan went through, the Indian government was privately informed that DSD would undercut India’s markets by flooding them with below-cost stones of the same size, quality, and cut as India would produce from the Australian mine. DSD and ConMin were rich enough to absorb the losses indefinitely.
India wasn’t.
No single diamond-producing country could survive a pissing contest with the contents of DSD’s London vaults. India withdrew its offer to finance the development of the Argyle mine, and Australia did what every other individual or nation with a diamond mine had done.
Australia cut a deal with ConMin.
Ian McLaren was Australia’s representative to DSD. He watched van Luik warily, and with good reason. ConMin had a long memory.
Van Luik opened the Moroccan leather folder in front of him, signaling that the session was open. Immediately everyone began passing single sheets of paper to the head of the table. Each month the mining countries put forth a projected production figure, and each month the cutters and polishers stated their expected needs for raw
material. It was up to van Luik to reconcile those two sides of the diamond equation.
He collected the “prayers” of each cartel member, but the papers were a formality. The same figures had been faxed to van Luik the previous day. In any case, the prayers were useless. He’d known for the past week how the next three months’ output of DSD diamonds would be distributed.
Swiftly van Luik lined up sheets from producers opposite those from buyers and compared amounts with the agenda in his head. There would be some very unhappy people leaving the building today. It wouldn’t be the first time, and van Luik wasn’t fool enough to believe it would be the last.
“Mr. McLaren,” van Luik said abruptly, “DSD can’t at this time provide a guaranteed market for the undeveloped Ellendale pipes. As you know, the gem content of Ellendale was very high for a pipe mine. Somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty to eighty percent, was it not?”
“Yes, but—”
“Are you not aware,” van Luik interrupted, “that the market has barely recovered from the disaster of 1980? This most definitely is not the time to bring a new gem mine into production.”
“Then could we anticipate a price increase on our industrial diamonds?” McLaren asked curtly.
“Regretfully, no. If the price of industrial diamonds goes much higher, Japan would be tempted to begin mass-producing them in their labs, and then Australia would be left with a hugely expensive, hugely unprofitable mine and no way to repay the cost of its development.”
“But—”
“I will be at the Argyle mine shortly to discuss long-range planning for its product. Be assured Australia’s interests are DSD’s interests as well. For the moment, the last thing either of our interests need is one more gem diamond mine.”
Without waiting for a response, van Luik slipped McLaren’s prayer to the bottom of the stack and addressed the problems created by the next sheet in line.
“Mr. Singh, you will receive two-thirds of the melees you requested,” van Luik said.
Death is Forever Page 13
