Hannah snarled as my voice rose.
“Shut up,” Kruger told her.
46
I was in a good mood when I got back to the hotel. Kruger was lined up. He’d come to Angola in a month. In the meantime, he gave me a list of the equipment I had to acquire. I stopped at the front desk and had the list faxed to Cross at the mine.
Going up the elevator and down the hall, I was almost skipping. Everything was coming up roses. I opened the suite door and stepped in, grinning like a banshee.
I lost my grin as I saw Eduardo and the gun in his hand.
“Close the door,” he said. “I don’t want to disturb the other guests if I have to shoot you.”
I closed the door.
Marni was in a chair by a window.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded. “We’ve been chatting about things. Mostly how much he doesn’t like you.”
“You have ruined my life,” Eduardo said. “But now you will reconstruct it for me.” He gestured with the gun at papers on the desk. “First you will sign the papers selling me the mine. You will find that the price of the mine has dropped. It is now one rand.”
Eduardo didn’t look like he had fared well since the last time I saw him. His suit and shirt needed freshening, his eyes were bloodshot from too little sleep or too much liquor. Worse, his hands were trembling—not a good sign when he’s holding a gun pointed at me.
“That’s about two bits where I come from. I would be crazy to sell it to you for that price.”
“No, no, not crazy, you are erasing the errors of your past ways. I would be dead now if I had not gotten out of the country before your friend Colonel Jomba caught me. Don’t think I don’t know what the two of you are up to. Or that you wanted me out of the way so that the two of you will have no interference with your schemes. And that puta you make schemes with, I know what you and her and her husband are up to.”
“What if I won’t sell you the mine for pennies?”
“That would please me very much, very much. I would first shoot you in the foot, the top of your foot, where all the bones are. Then I would shoot your kneecap—”
“I get the idea. Where do I sign?”
“It is not that easy, senhor. You may sign the paper and then as soon as I leave, call the police and claim you were forced to sign.”
That thought had occurred to me.
“Do you recall that you put a gun to my head and made me call my bank and transfer to you all the money I had in the world? Do you recall that, senhor? Do you recollect making me give you all of the money I spent a lifetime earning?”
“I recall taking back the money you stole from me.”
“Exactamente! That is exactly it. And now, I will take back what you stole from me!”
He came closer and nudged my arm with the gun. He was wide-eyed. His movements had a nervous intensity to them, as if he was wired from something besides life.
The crash of breaking glass suddenly sounded—a riveting, stunning noise.
Eduardo and I both froze. Marni had smashed a large window, swinging a chair into it. The chair disappeared from sight, on its way down a dozen stories.
I recovered first. I grabbed his gun hand at the wrist. The gun went off and a bullet went into the floor. Marni screamed out the window—“Fire!”—as we struggled. The guy was wiry and stronger than I would have guessed. I tried getting the gun from him and it went off again. I butted his face with my forehead, smashing his nose, and twisted him around until he went down and put my knee in his stomach. Flat on his back, nose gushing blood, wind knocked out of him, the bastard stuck his thumbnail in my eye. I flinched back, feeling his gun hand twisting out of my grip—
Marni hit him on the head with the base of a lamp. It caught him off guard and he went limp for a second and she hit him again. He went real limp. I took the gun from his hand. Breathing hard, I told her, “Get me something, a necktie, I’ll going to tie him up. And call the police.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.”
She was right—that smashed window had probably been heard by ships at sea.
We had dinner in our room that evening—after we changed rooms.
The police had taken Eduardo away. We killed the rest of the day until early afternoon giving statements and signing papers, including a promise to return to Cape Town if needed by the justice system.
When Eduardo came out of the daze Marni put him in, he cursed me—and put curses on me—using various Portuguese-Angolan words and phrases you see on bathroom walls. When he called Marni a puta, I kicked him in the stomach.
“He’s tied up,” Marni said.
“Yeah. Makes it easier to kick him.”
I wasn’t sure if she was going to laugh—or cry. Actually, she did a little of both.
“What’s funny?” I asked her.
“I was so happy to be in Cape Town where we wouldn’t get murdered.”
During dinner that night, she was quiet and melancholy.
“Still thinking about Eduardo?” I asked.
“No, I was thinking about death. You told me that you lost your mother early. So did I. My mother killed herself, after she strangled my baby brother and tried to kill me.”
I was stunned. “Jesus.” I didn’t know what else to say.
Marni shrugged. “She was crazy, mentally ill, maybe driven that way by my father. He was very demanding and critical, she was submissive and lacked confidence. As strange as it seems, she didn’t kill out of malice. I think she couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to kill her children because she didn’t want them to suffer like she had.”
“Marni, I’m sorry—”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s something I have to deal with, mostly avoiding contact with my father.”
“Maybe it makes you frightened to get involved with a man.”
“Is that what we are, involved?” she asked.
“I don’t know what we are, sometimes I don’t know who I am. The death of my parents left me fatalistic about life, I thought I had to fill it with good times, wring out as much fun and joy as possible before the grim reaper came knocking. Now, I don’t know. Doing an honest day’s work and seeing the result makes me wonder if I don’t want to accomplish something more permanent than seizing the moment.”
I lay in bed that night with her head on my shoulder, her soft, warm breathing against my neck. Neither of us were in any mood for wild, passionate sex. We just cuddled close.
I tried to imagine the horror of watching your mother murder your sibling and then try to murder you. The Medea Syndrome, Marni called it, named after the goddess in the play by Euripides and Greek mythology who killed her children to punish her husband, Jason, leader of the Argonauts and seeker of the Golden Fleece, after he deserted her for another woman. The spurned Medea killed their children in revenge.
I tried to analyze my feelings for Marni. Was it lust? Sympathy? Now that I had gotten what I wanted, the velvet rubbed off my dick as Cross would say, was I ready to move on?
No great revelation came, but one thing puzzled me. I wanted to be with her, not just for the moment. I wanted to make her proud of me and to protect her. But I had never felt this way before.
47
We took a flight back to Luanda two days later.
Almost being murdered had put a little damper on Marni’s R and R. At first I thought she was more traumatized by the incident than she would admit, and that her emotions were raw after she revealed her family secret; we were on the plane before I found out what was really bothering her.
“Win, what did Eduardo mean when he said you were involved in something with Colonel Jomba?”
“I cut Jomba in on the money I retrieved from Eduardo. It’s a form of paying taxes. If I hadn’t done it, he would have hung me from a meat hook and used me as the hood ornament on his jeep.” That was the truth. At least part of it. The other part was that Eduardo had gotten wind of the deal with
Jomba, but Marni would have thrown me out at 38,000 feet if she knew I was involved in a diamonds-for-weapons exchange.
“It sounded to me like he was referring to something else, something he wasn’t involved in.”
“I pay the UNITA the usual protection money all the mine owners do. Jomba is the bagman for the collection.” That was true, too. So far I had managed to neatly evade her questions by making statements that were unimpeachable.
“Eduardo also said something about a woman you were involved with, he used the Portuguese ‘whore’ word to describe her—and me.”
I kissed her hand. “I don’t ask questions about your past.”
“I’m not questioning your past. He made it sound like there was something up. I know that you stayed with João Camona in Lisbon. His wife, Simone, is influential in a Portuguese-Angolan relief organization because her husband has donated money, but everyone knows that Carmona has been involved in the blood-diamond trade.” She held onto my arm and looked at me with earnest eyes. “You wouldn’t get involved in anything like that, would you? You know the suffering, the horrors that blood diamonds have brought to Africa.”
I kissed her cheek and brushed her lips with mine. “Sweet-heart, Eduardo was on drugs and hallucinatory.” Another brilliant end run around the truth. I should have been a lawyer.
She shook her head. “We’re approaching Luanda. Now tell me the truth, the moment you get off this airplane, you’re going to forget you even know me. I’m going tromping back to the jungle to hand out food packages, and you’re going to head back to New York where women don’t smell of mosquito repellent.”
“Never.” I kissed her nose. “I’ve never felt about anyone like I do about you.” That was the truth.
We left the plane and walked together into the terminal. A surprise was waiting for me. A woman was holding up a handkerchief with the name WIN LIBERTE chalked on in lipstick.
It was Simone.
Oh shit. I thought I muttered it under my breath but it came out. “I can explain,” I told Marni.
The look on her face told me there was no way I could explain.
“Hello, forgive me for my little joke.” Simone shook hands with me and Marni. She said to me, “I’m sorry, I showed up unexpectedly. I tried to reach you, but your man at the mine said you were out of town. Some things have come up in regard to our deal with Colonel Jomba that require immediate attention.”
“I’ll be with you in a moment.”
I escorted Marni to a taxi. I gestured at one of the guards-for-hire and gave him money to ride shotgun into town with Marni.
“You’ve slept with her, haven’t you.”
It wasn’t a question.
“And you’ve got a dirty deal going.”
There was nothing I could say.
She left angry and hurt. As I watched the taxi leave, Simone appeared beside me.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“You are a bitch.”
She kissed me on the mouth. “Of course, I am. But at least I’m good at it. It’s the only way a woman can deal with men who think they are in charge of the world.”
“What are you here for? Drop in on your broom to ruin my life?”
She laughed. “Oh, no, please, don’t tell me that the dashing and glamorous Win Liberte has fallen in love—and with an idealistic little bookworm. At least you could leave me for a movie star.”
“I can’t leave someone I never had.”
We got into a taxi together.
“Is it going to complicate matters if I stay at the same hotel that you and Marni are in?” she asked.
“Marni’s meeting friends from work and flying back to diamond country this afternoon.”
“Good. I was worried I was going to spoil your evening.”
“You’re not. I’m taking you to your hotel and dropping you off. I have an afternoon charter upcountry, too.”
She put her hand on my upper thigh. “You’re angry at me. I really am sorry.”
“Let’s get down to business. Why are you here?”
“All right.” She spoke low, so the driver and guard couldn’t hear us. “The timetable for the trade has moved up. The political conditions in the country are deteriorating. Savimbi and the government are constantly at each other’s throats, the peace accord could go up in smoke anytime.”
“What do you care? These people will still need bullets to kill each other with.”
“If open war breaks out, Angolan diamonds will get designated conflict diamonds and the certification will be useless.”
“What exactly is Jomba up to?”
She shrugged. “War, a coup, a revolution, who knows? These people have any number of ways of killing each other. Our deal is with Jomba, alone. We can’t deal with Savimbi without alienating Jomba, who is looking to take over the UNITA. Many UNITA leaders are of the same mind as Jomba—tired of Savimbi’s leadership. If the peace process is completely implemented, the rebels will have to disarm. And they will lose their diamond money.”
“So we arm Jomba so he can kill Savimbi and turn the country into a bloodbath. Is that about the lay of the land?”
She padded my arm. “What’s the matter, Win? Did your United Nations girlfriend tell you how terrible it is to trade diamonds for arms? Haven’t you been down here long enough to understand how this place works? If we didn’t provide tanks and guns for these people to kill each other with, they’d be doing it with spears.”
“Did you ever meet Bernie?”
“What?”
“Bernie—the guy I called my uncle, the one who invested my inheritance in the mine—did you ever meet him?”
“No, I don’t think so, I don’t remember.”
She was a good actress, but I could tell she was lying. My question rattled her.
“What’s so important about this deal that you and João are willing to risk more money in a blood-diamond deal that might go south? From the way you live, you don’t look like you have to worry where your next meal is coming from.”
“It’s the fire diamond.”
“The fire diamond?” I knew what she was talking about, my father told me a ruby diamond had been stolen from him, but I pretended ignorance. It wasn’t hard for me, in this game where there are puzzles wrapped in enigmas and surrounded by mystery.
“The Heart of the World, a diamond that’s ruby-red, very rare, perhaps the most valuable diamond on earth that isn’t in a museum. João told you he got into money troubles in that deal that broke your uncle, but he didn’t tell you that the Bey was holding his fire diamond for the debt. There’s going to be an exchange in this deal with Jomba. The Bey is giving Jomba weapons for diamonds, and the Bey will give us the fire diamond. But the Bey can’t be trusted.
“The Heart of the World is worth more than the whole diamond deal put together. João is afraid that the Bey will try to keep it, or Jomba will find out about the diamond. If he does, he will grab it.”
“What would prevent Jomba and the Bey from getting together and doing a deal behind João’s back?”
“They don’t know each other. Jomba doesn’t know who’s supplying the weapons and the Bey doesn’t know who he’s delivering them to. João won’t even reveal the time and place until the last moment.”
“No honor among thieves?” It was looking more and more like I was going to be left holding the bag. An empty one.
“Maybe you can explain something to me.” I counted on my fingers. “Jomba’s getting guns, the Bey’s getting blood diamonds, João’s getting the world’s most valuable gem, and I . . .”
She squeezed the top of my leg. I disliked and distrusted this woman, but her touch sent my testosterone level up. What fools men are.
She said, “I have some information that might surprise you. That man who used to manage your mine—what was his name?”
“Marques, Eduardo Marques.”
“Yes, him. He approached João recently about the mine, asking for his help to buy it.”
I kept my face blank, but it was tough. My instant reaction was that they were in on it with Eduardo. João would play all ends against the middle.
“Win, you’re sitting on a gold mine, as you Americans would say. Marques had a geological report done that revealed a kimberlite pipe on the property.” She hesitated. God, she was a good actress. But I wasn’t a good actor. “From the look on your face, I think you know what I’m talking about.”
“I know Marques has something up his sleeve. He tried to buy the mine before I fired him for stealing. He claims he has a South African group behind him. He made another offer to buy the mine recently, wanting to trade lead for diamonds.”
“Lead for diamonds?”
“He had a gun. Why didn’t you and João tell me Marques was a crook when I was in Lisbon?”
“We didn’t know, he called João few days ago. João turned him down, of course. João was a friend of your father’s and is now your partner in diamond trading. He wouldn’t dishonor his relationship with you.”
It was getting harder to keep a straight face. Not only did my father consider João a world-class thief, but João stole the fire diamond from him. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was in on the deal to steal the mine from me. I expected to hear from the South African lawyer that Eduardo’s partners included João.
We pulled up to the hotel.
“Are you through with me?” I asked.
“Not quite. I told you the time schedule has moved up. You will have to be in Istanbul in three days to finalize the arrangements.”
“Excuse me, there must be a problem with my hearing. You didn’t say I was to be in Istanbul in three days?”
“The Bey wants to meet you. He doesn’t like dealing with someone he’s never seen. He wants to look you over. And he and João have to make the final arrangements for the weapons delivery and marketing the diamonds.”
Heat of Passion Page 23
