Heat of Passion

by Harold Robbins

  I kissed her. “How come you’re so smart?”

  “I read the guidebook. The place you chose to stay, the Nellie—officially the Mount Nelson Hotel, is world-class. You have good taste.”

  I shrugged modestly. Actually, it was Cross who told me where to stay.

  “I want to take a ride on a Tuk Tuk and go to the beach,” she said.

  “What the hell is a Tuk Tuk?”

  “A three-wheeled taxi, built around a motorbike. It got its name from the sound the engine makes. Tuk, tuk, tuk—”

  I went back to my papers.

  Kruger sounded like a textbook, hardheaded, rebellious Afrikaner. He became a geologist–mining engineer for De Beers early in his career. He left the big company and worked as an independent in the Kimberly area. He filed for a number of patents for inventions in regard to gold and diamond mining, and frequently ended up in lawsuits over unauthorized use of his work. For the past decade, he’d been locked in litigation with an outfit that he claims is infringing on his patented method of finding blue earth.

  The report stated that Kruger had been arrested for punching the attorney representing his opponents and on another occasion, for taking possession of the company equipment in the field—at the point of a gun.

  As part of his probation on the gun charge, he left the mining area and moved to Cape Town.

  There was a handwritten note at the end of the report: Idealistic bastard—principles more important than money.

  I closed my eyes and gave it some thought as the plane made its descent. How to approach Kruger had been on my mind since Cross got back to me with his name. I hadn’t called to let him know I was coming—it was too easy for someone to say no over the phone or get out of town in a hurry. I was going to cold-call him, show up at his door without warning. The fact he had a love affair with guns didn’t boast my confidence level.

  But the handwritten notation at the bottom of the report gave me an idea.

  43

  We checked into a suite at the Nellie. Marni marveled at the elegance and quaintness of the luxury hotel. “It’s from the days when the Orient Express went from Europe to Asia and men like Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato battled for an empire in diamonds.”

  “Great,” I said, pulling her to me. “Let’s have dinner in bed.”

  “No, no, this is my chance to eat in a real restaurant, where I don’t have to worry about the water, fleas biting my ankle, or a stray bullet.”

  We ate at the best French restaurant in Cape Town. We ended up having dessert in bed.

  The next morning, we took a taxi downtown to a gem dealer Cross told me about. I parked Marni outside for a few minutes while I went in to sell some roughs. When I came back out, I shoved a thick wad of rand into her purse.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Exotic see-through lingerie, captivating perfume—hell, get a tiger-skin coat or something.”

  She gave the money back to me. “They have lions in Africa, not tigers, and they’re an endangered species.”

  “So are you. I’m not taking the money back. Put it in a poor box if it bothers you so much. I’ll meet you back at the hotel in a couple hours.”

  “It’s too much money.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not my money, I stole it.”

  Kruger lived in what South Africans called a Coloured neighborhood, “Coloured,” according to my taxi driver, being the official designation of people of mixed European and African blood. “That’s half of us in Cape Town,” he said.

  As we pulled up to a small, unimposing house with a chain-link fence and overgrown yard, I asked the driver, “What would you call this neighborhood? Poor, middle-class?”

  He thought for a moment and spit out the window before he decided. “Not poor, not middle-class. Maybe better than poor people, not as good as middle people.”

  That’s about how I had tagged it. Which brought up an interesting point—why was a successful engineer-geologist, with a bunch of inventions to his name, living in a run-down house in a run-down neighborhood? I thought I knew the answer. If I didn’t, he’d probably run me off the property.

  “Stay put,” I told the taxi driver. “If you hear shots, call the police.”

  “If I hear shots, I’ll call them from home.”

  There was no lock on the gate, but I looked over the yard before I entered. Chain-link fences usually meant there was a big dog in the picture. I got across to the house without being attacked by Cujo and knocked on the door. After a couple more knocks, the door was answered by a black woman in her forties or early fifties. Too attractive to be a housekeeper, I took her for Kruger’s wife.

  “Ya?”

  “Good afternoon. I’m here to see Mr. Kruger.”

  She frowned as she looked me over. “Mr. Kruger doesn’t see anyone without an appointment.” She had an Afrikaner accent.

  “It’s rude of me to call like this, but I don’t have your phone number. I have information for him about his blue-earth exploration system.”

  My answer stymied her. Which was my intent. I probably could have told Ed McMahon sent me from a sweepstakes company with a million dollars and she’d have slammed the door in my face. But I said the magic words.

  “Wait.”

  She closed the door. A minute later it was opened by a middle-aged man. Kruger was small-built, ruddy-complexioned, and sported a permanent frown.

  “Who are you? What do you want? I’m busy.” What came out “waat” with his accent.

  “I can help you with your fight over your blue-earth technique.”

  “How?”

  I held up a five-carat rough. It wasn’t as primo as the one I gave Marni at the mine, but it was worth thousands of South African rand.

  “I want five minutes of your time because I think we can help each other. I’ll leave if it turns out I’m wrong or you can throw me out. Either way, you keep the stone.”

  “How can you help me?”

  “Five minutes,” I said.

  He hesitated. As he did, a big Rottweiler or some other lethal-looking breed that would have scared the dog poop out of Cujo stuck its head out between Kruger’s leg and the door frame.

  “Five minutes,” Kruger said. “Then I put Hannah on you.”

  I hoped Hannah was his wife.

  I followed him into a room cluttered with equipment, books, and dust. The dog followed me.

  He sat on a stool next to a desk piled high with papers and books. I remained standing. So did the dog.

  “I own a mine in Angola, the Blue Lady. You did a report on property adjoining the mine, property that belongs to me. The person who ordered it was my manager, Eduardo Marques. I want to see that report.”

  “If the report belongs to you, you must have it.”

  “I don’t have it. I think Marques was pulling a fast one, having a report made behind my back, then trying to buy my property cheap.”

  “If the report was paid for by Mr. Marques, then it belongs to him, get it from him.” He stood up. “This has nothing to do with the litigation I am involved in over my invention.”

  “It does on two levels. First, like you, I’m being screwed by someone I trusted. I worked hard for what I have,” I almost choked on the lie, “and Marques is trying to steal it. And I need money to keep the fight going. If it turns out you can help me, if there’s money to be made, I’ll be willing to cut you in. You’ve been fighting thieves for years. I don’t know your personal circumstance, but you may need money for that fight.”

  I did know his circumstance—he designed a system that should have put him on easy street and instead, he was living someplace between poor and “middle.” I waited while he pondered my words. It was obvious that his first inclination was to throw me out, or sic Hannah on me, but I hoped I had pressed the right button. He was idealistic and fanatical about the technique he invented. From what I gathered, he was offered plenty to settle his lawsuits, but refused—unlike yours truly, he was not willing to sell his
soul to the devil. He wanted truth and justice. Rather than offering him money, what I was offering was a way to keep fighting.

  “I don’t understand your request. You say you want to see the report. What the report says, the report says. Offering me money won’t change the results.”

  “You’re right. The report might say it’s a dry hole. But the present mine operation is a dry hole—and there’s an attempt to drive me out of business and take it over. My gut tells me there’s something else out there.”

  “I consider my work for clients as confidential. You are not the one who paid me, you are not my client.”

  I pulled papers from my inside pocket. “This is a copy of government records showing that the property belongs to the Blue Lady and that I am the owner. I am fighting a thief who has no right to my property—the same as you are.”

  He put on glasses and examined the papers.

  “You know what?” I said. “This whole thing can be settled by a quick look at the report. I’m assuming it shows positive findings for diamonds. If it doesn’t, I’m wasting both our time.”

  “I can’t show you the report.”

  “Fine, fuck it, if you want to help crooks, go ahead.” I turned to leave.

  “I can’t show it because I don’t have it. He took it.”

  “He?”

  “Your mine manager. He was here yesterday.”

  44

  Marni lugged packages to the elevator. A nice man with a smile held the door for her and inquired as to her floor.

  “Top level,” she said.

  “Mine, too,” he said.

  He seemed to be the nervous type, smiling, but a little hyper. It occurred to her that in Angola, he would be called a mestizo—half-African, half-European ancestry. In South Africa, by a law intended to discriminate, he was a Coloured.

  “Looks like you bought out the stores,” the man said.

  She laughed. “Not quite, but I did put a dent in a few of them. I’ve been in the backcountry for a while, and I’m afraid I went wild when I saw shelves and racks full of clothes.”

  “You’re an American.”

  “Yes. You have a slight accent that almost sounds like what I hear in Angola.”

  “I am Angolan.”

  “Really? What a coincidence. I flew in from there yesterday.”

  “On business?”

  “My friend is here on business, he’s a mine owner, but I’m taking a few days off from world food-mission duties.”

  He held the door open for her after the elevator doors swung open on the penthouse floor.

  “Such a worthy organization, you food people, I have seen your staff distributing food many times.”

  He grabbed one of the bags she was losing her grip on.

  “Here—let me take that.”

  “Oh, thank you.”

  He followed her down the hall, carrying the bag.

  She stopped at the door to her suite, put her bags down, and got the card key out of her purse.

  “Thank you, I can handle it now,” she said, intending it as a good-bye, as she pushed the door open and put some of the bags inside. But he still stood there and handed her the remaining bags. After she put them down and turned around, he stepped in and swung the room door shut behind him.

  He pulled a gun from his coat pocket.

  45

  I stared at Kruger like he’d just told me I had the Big C.

  “Eduardo Marques was here?”

  “Right where you are standing, Mr. Liberte.”

  “You gave him my report?”

  “I gave him his report. He paid for it.”

  “Sonofabitch.”

  Hannah growled. Maybe she didn’t like bad language.

  “Okay, that’s fine, give me a copy, too.”

  “He paid me a bonus to give him the original and not keep a copy. He told me that there was going to be litigation over the land and that it would be to my benefit if I didn’t have a copy. I lost most of what I accumulated over the past thirty years in litigation. The idea of not sitting on court evidence appealed to me.”

  “There’s no litigation. Marques was nothing but a mine manager, he has no right to anything. He’s got someone with money behind him trying to keep the report a secret to drive down the price of the mine. You never kept a copy?”

  “No. I’ve done hundreds of reports over the years, thousand actually. If I kept copies of them, I would need a room to store them.”

  “And I suppose you can’t store the results in your head, either. You don’t know your exact findings?”

  “Of course not, it was a long, complex study.”

  “Okay, sorry I—”

  “But I can give you my overall opinion.”

  That stopped me. “Which is?”

  “Inconclusive. But I saw some indicators that blue earth might be present.”

  “What did you find?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t tell you much. The report was inconclusive. I didn’t have all the materials I needed to make a full analysis. I assume that as a mine owner, you know how the hunt for blue earth is made.”

  “I sort of inherited the mine.”

  “I have my own technique and equipment for analyzing the materials, but geologists all use the same raw materials in making the search. I examined earth samples, taken from the surface and from drilling cores down to a hundred feet. I was looking for ‘indicators,’ clues that there is blue earth in the area.

  “To understand an indicator, you have to realize how diamonds are formed in the earth. All the diamonds that will ever exist on earth were formed billions of years ago deep in the earth. But,” he held up his hand, “at the same time diamonds were being formed, and shoved up in kimberlite pipes, other minerals were being formed and moved up with the diamonds. Kimberlite pipes are not enormous in size and are usually buried, making them hard to find.”

  Kruger grabbed a glass jar containing a number of stones.

  “Hunting for these small deposits in the vast earth would be like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack—unless we had clues. The clues are that other mineral objects are created and scattered in the same process by which diamonds are created and shoved upward.

  “We call these materials ‘indicators’ because they can indicate that diamonds are in the same general area. Since some of these indicators are much more widely spread than diamonds, they are easier to find.”

  He pulled some stones out of the jar.

  “Some indicators are these green chrome diopsides . . . and here, there are garnets of many colors, pink, purple, green, yellow, orange. These gems are related to diamonds, having been created in the same catastrophic convulsions of the earth as diamonds. But, they are not as rare as diamonds, or hard, nor do they have the brilliance of a diamond. In my opinion, the indicator that provides us with the best clues that there is a kimberlite pipe of blue earth in the area is a stone designated G-ten, a class of garnet called ‘pyrope.’ ” He rummaged through the jar and came up with a dark red stone. “This is a pyrope. The name is derived from an ancient Greek word for ‘fiery-eyed.’ ”

  “Did you find pyropes when you examined my property?” I asked.

  “I never examined your property. The peace treaty had not been reached in Angola between the rebels and the government and I wouldn’t risk my life by going there. Your Mr. Marques had samples taken and he shipped them to me to be examined. I can’t tell you exactly what my findings were without seeing my report, but I remember very well that it was both promising and inconclusive.”

  “What was promising?”

  “There were indicators present. The report was inconclusive because I told Marques that I needed more raw materials, more drilling for core samples. That was over a year ago. He said a new partner was coming in and he would get back to me. I never heard back from him until yesterday. Like you, he showed up without an appointment.”

  The “new partner” was probably Bernie. João hustled Bernie
into buying the diamond mine, but Bernie must have somehow gotten wind of the exploration Eduardo was conducting. It wasn’t the sort of thing that Eduardo could keep as an absolute secret—drilling required large equipment.

  I had an idea of how Bernie might have found out that Eduardo was drilling for core samples. You can’t do anything in Angola without getting a permit—and paying both a license fee and a bribe. Bernie would have a record search done in Luanda before buying the mine. That search could have brought up licensing for the drill equipment. With that knowledge in hand, he might have confronted Eduardo, even if it was by telephone, and learned that there were indicators. For all I knew, Bernie had come to Angola and met with Eduardo.

  “You understand,” Kruger said, “more work must be done, more tests, before the matter can be pinned down. If a kimberlite pipe is found, it may turn out that you can tunnel to it from your present mine, or that you must start from scratch and open an entirely new mine. You’ll need expert engineering and geological advice during the whole process.”

  “Can you come to Angola and conduct the search?”

  “I wouldn’t go to that hellhole for all the tea in China.”

  “I’m not in the tea business, Mr. Kruger, but I suspect that diamonds are eminently more valuable, pound for pound. You didn’t want to come into a war zone. There’s peace now, if nothing else, a hiatus in the fighting. It’s a window of opportunity.”

  “For which of us?”

  “Both of us. Eduardo Marques is not a fool. He spent his life running diamond mines. It’s in his blood, he can smell them. You’ve confirmed that they’re probably out there, it’s a matter of pinning down the spot. You’re both a mining engineer and a geologist. You can find the pipe and find the best way to reach it.”

  I took the jar of minerals from Kruger and set them on his desk. I wanted his full attention. Hannah growled as I leaned toward her master.

  “Shut up,” I told Hannah. “Look, Christiaan, your balls are to the wall and you’re almost broke from fighting those bastards who stole your process. They got the gold mine and you got the shaft. You come to Angola, like a couple of Texas wildcatters, we’ll bring in a diamond pipe that will blow the lid off the mountain. You come back here and kick ass on those thieves—and we’ll both live happily ever after. What do you say?”