The Sudden Appearance of Hope

by Claire North

  “It happens every time,” said the woman next to me, chewing busily on sunflower seeds as we sat on our bags outside the customs shed. She spat the kernels to one side, and grinned a broad-toothed grin. “You’re lucky; your country is rich. No one cares what rich people do. Hey, want to hear something funny?”

  Sure, why not.

  She grinned a dental-disaster of a grin and in heavily accented English intoned, “Do dolphins ever do anything by accident? No! They do it on porpoise!” and laughed until the tears rolled down her face.

  The bus zig-zagged through the mountains, a nowhere land of empty roads before the Omani border, where we presented our luggage for search. No one bothered to open the pot of sun lotion in which the diamonds were carefully stashed; the drug dogs found nothing interesting as they snuffled along the line. Omani immigration was housed in a faux-Arabian palace, which owed more of its architecture to Disney than Sinan Pasha.

  “You alone?” asked the inspector.

  “Yes.”

  “Married?”

  “No.”

  “You got someone to stay with?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re not married?”

  “No.”

  His lips puckered a little in distaste, but though I was a single woman, I was travelling on a public bus and thus, finding no satisfactory diplomatic reason to reject me, he gave me the visa.

  On the road everything was yellow.

  For a while I counted cars; then I counted shrubs, then there was neither of either to count and I stared at dust and wondered how many grains of sand blew into the sea every year, and whether you could build a pyramid from them. The coast of Oman had been dug and sown with hardy dark green trees and thin, drooping beige fields, but the dust crept across every porch of every nowhere town that hugged the road.

  Words, when I think of Muscat:

  • Welcoming – racks of meat, smiles at every door, the words “you must meet my mother” are spoken in genuine joy.

  • Hot – the sea breeze seems to bounce off the land, the dry blast from the desert scorching your back.

  • Divided – not so much a city as a series of towns, joined together by clogged roads over sharp hills.

  • Unified – every street must conform to a certain style, every office obey strict architectural laws.

  • Old and new – ancient tapestries below; air conditioning above. Bare feet, covered head. Arabesque windows, domed roofs, a place both charming and absurd.

  Street names in Muscat were almost non-existent. The hotel I checked into gave its address as “4th building after the statue of the ship on the left-hand side facing the sea”, before swelling into broader strokes of area and district.

  I sat on a balcony looking out across the ocean, and drank Turkish coffee, the heavy grains rubbing against my teeth. It wasn’t my first choice of hotel, but this wasn’t Dubai; not all places would accept an unmarried woman, travelling by herself.

  In this bubble of quiet sheltered from the world, I turned on the TV and watched the news. The robbery in Dubai ran only as a background story on a few channels, the police confident of speedy success in their investigations. Details were sparse; even the internet seemed to be hushed on the matter. Only one snippet was of any interest – an interview with a man by the name of Rafe Pereyra-Conroy (Prometheus CEO), who turned direct to camera and said: “We personally feel this assault upon our friends and generous hosts, and will do everything in our power to help bring the perpetrator to justice.”

  I studied his face, and saw nothing remarkable in it. Turned the TV off.

  In the bathroom sink, I washed sun cream off the diamonds, then laid them out on a white sheet, wrote the date and time on a piece of paper next to them, took a photo of the whole, and went about selling my stolen goods.

  In an internet café in Muscat, I plugged my laptop into the Ethernet connection in the wall, loaded the photo of diamonds onto my computer, and posted the image onto an ad run through Tor.

  For sale: Chrysalis diamonds, est. value $2.2 million. All offers in excess of $450,000 considered.

  I signed myself _why, and this job done, closed my laptop again, slipped it in my bag, and went in search of company.

  Chapter 14

  Fencing a stolen object is more important than the theft.

  DVD players, watches, phones, family heirlooms, odd bits of gold and silver – a pawnbroker will handle it, at a poor rate. In Florida, a judge ruled that pawnshops need not return stolen goods without having a chance to be heard in civil suit. Crime rose, so did the number of pawnshops.

  “Is there a link between poverty, crime and pawnshops?” asked a journalist from Miami, sent to cover the story as part of a series on declining America.

  “Ma’am,” replied the local sheriff, “do you shit when you eat?”

  In the UK, such a remark would have been a sackable offence. Speaking your mind in public, let alone speaking with reference to bodily functions, is not a thing done by the Ruling Classes. In the US, such brisk imagery is reassuring; almost as reassuring as seeing a sheriff with an AK-47 driving through your neighbourhood. Assuming, of course, that your neighbourhood is middle class and white.

  “Do you shit when you eat?” chuckled an NYU professor who I bribed with chow mein and a night of Elgar in exchange for his knowledge of criminology. “Is shit made of complex biocarbons? Is nature a wonder, is the human body understood? Is society? Are people? Are gross over-simplifications of entrenched socio-economic problems exactly what’s wrong with this polarised country? Hell yes!” He cackled gleefully at this revelation, and scooped up another load of noodles. “You know why the experts don’t have an easy answer? Because a fucking expert’s the guy who knows how complicated the fucking questions are.”

  Later – when he’d sobered up – I asked him the things I really wanted to know. Organised crime. Interpol. Law and digital footprints; everything a budding criminology student might want to ask. And why not tell me? He knew my face; no criminal would have dared been so bold.

  How do you sell stolen diamonds?

  “You hand it off to the courier,” explained an ex-Croatian safebreaker-turned-lawman, his expertise hired out to police forces, universities and, so he whispered as we sat by the Adriatic Sea, “some of the spies, but never the Russians or the Jews, never, I swear on my mother’s life”.

  I had bought his knowledge for €5,000 and a bottle of champagne, and now he threw the drink back as the sun set at our backs and the humid sky filled with diffused pink. “I wouldn’t want to be the courier. He never knows what he’s walking into – the cops aren’t the problem, it’s the guys on the other end of the deal, I mean, they could be anyone, anyone; but it’s the courier who takes that risk, thank God, you hear stories. Show me a nice guy, and put a ten-carat diamond in front of him and I’ll show you a monster, like that.” A snap of his fingers, a gulp of champagne, sunlight through the glass. “You know what the difference is between a professional thief and an amateur one?”

  No. I did not.

  “A pro knows when to walk away. The deal’s too good; the safe’s too tough; the pigs too loud. Fine. Cut your losses. It’s only fucking money, you know what I mean?”

  And if the deal goes through?

  “You get paid. Maybe 5 to 10 per cent if you’re lucky. Best I ever got: 20 per cent of the diamond’s value, and that was unique, a one-off, never happens. But the guy who’s got it now, the fence, he’s gotta shift the product. So he sends it to India, or Africa, maybe. Mozambique; maybe Zimbabwe? They have this thing down there, this Kimberley process, it’s supposed to protect people who mine diamonds and that shit, but what it does is it produces paperwork. So you cut the diamonds, once, twice, maybe ten, twenty times, depending on what you’re going for. And you get a nice new certificate while you’re out there saying that this stone is authenticated shiny and clean, and you ship it off to America or China or Brazil, and you sell it on, worth less than it was before bu
t you know, that’s the cost of doing business.”

  So it’s a business run on trust?

  “Sure, sure. Gotta trust the courier, who’s gotta trust the buyer, who’s gotta trust the guys he’s selling to. Everything’s about trust, and why wouldn’t it be? If you break trust, you end up in prison or dead or both, so you trust to survive and everyone’s okay.”

  I smiled and poured him another glass of champagne.

  Trust: belief that someone is reliable, honest, truthful, good.

  Such beliefs are formed by time, and no one in the world remembered me long enough to trust me. So I did everything myself, and I did it alone.

  Chapter 15

  Muscat, looking at the sea.

  I wanted to sell diamonds, knew that there were buyers out there, a market just waiting to buy.

  I went into the darknet.

  There were eighty-seven different replies to my ad, when I checked into the forum.

  Of these, fifty-one were time-wasting nonsense, ranging from the insulting through to the patently false. That left thirty-six contacts that were suitable for consideration.

  I dismissed the bottom ten and the top ten offers at once. One offer, for two million dollars, stank of idiot insurance company or security service, and the next best, at $1.8 million, came with the words: You can trust us to protect your anonymity.

  I trusted no one, and no one worth my time would assume anything else from me.

  I turned my attention to more convincing offers, ranging from $650,000 to $900,000 in various currencies. Two offered payment in bitcoin, which held some appeal, but one required me to ship the diamonds to South Africa; a risk I was unwilling to take.

  Of the offers remaining on the table, I chose the four most likely: one offering bitcoin, one offering exchange in whichever city I desired, one which requested delivery to India, and a last asking me if I was interested in payment through a casino in Macau.

  Macau fell out of the running when the buyer asked for a preliminary meeting on a private yacht off the coast of Tunisia. The bitcoin buyer dropped out when I pushed for logistic details. Between India and wherever-you-wanted, I went for the lazier option.

  These goods have historical value, wrote wherever-you-wanted, running by the handle of mugurski71. I am employed by a collector. Where would you like to meet?

  Two days scouting in Muscat.

  The ideal location: somewhere public, to minimise the odds of being robbed. Somewhere discreet, so we could inspect each other’s goods in privacy. Somewhere away from CCTV, but with access to transport and escape. I chose the Muttrah souk. Once, it could have been a place of piss-stinking alleys and thieves, of blackened corners and dead ends, tumbling goods and smoke; of fantastical dreams that played on the minds of poets and painters from the West, filling their senses with incense. Now it was a tourist trap for shoppers who still mistook “shiny” for “antique”; carefully cleaned floors and concrete. Where were the exotic baths of naked ladies who haunted the works of Ingres and Matisse, where the djinn of Arabian Nights, the mystic otherworldliness of Al Aaraaf? Why, they were priced out by the housing market, and though the stalls were sagging with goods, bartering could barely scrape you a 10 per cent discount, even if you were American and the starting price was exorbitant.

  I drifted through stalls hanging with silk and cashmere, some more genuine than others. I inspected necklaces of gold, and necklaces of nearly gold, and fat bangles of not-gold-at-all laid out in gleaming brightness, trays packed so tightly together in the stall that the vendor had to stand stick-straight in the tiny gap between his wares. I idled between great brown sacks of saffron and turmeric, cloves and cinnamon; trays of dates, baths of olives, ceilings hung with glass lamps whose shells were pricked out with stars and moons. I clattered between copper cooking pans and shimmied round mannequins decked out in abayas of black and blue. One vendor held out a curved knife sheathed in a case embedded with jewels and hollered in English, “You, you, pretty lady, American, yes, the best, the best, I sell the best!”

  Another caught me looking at a little orange teapot on a table of bric-a-brac everythings and exclaimed, “For your husband!” while across the tight passage, an old man with a white beard said nothing as I examined a chess set carved from veined soapstone, until at last he raised his head before my contemplation and declared softly, “You should only buy if you play.”

  “You’re right,” I replied. “Of course.”

  I choose my spot, plenty of people, plenty of cover, no security cameras in sight; a café selling shisha and tea, where you could duck behind the privacy of damask sheets and lattice frames of rosewood, nefarious deals to make.

  I returned to the hotel room. Proof of funds from mugurski71 was waiting on my computer.

  So was a new message.

  Byron14: Why did you attack Prometheus?

  Under usual circumstances, a message from a stranger is something I ignore. Loneliness has led to many mistakes in my life. I closed the computer and ignored it.

  Two hours later, checking to see if mugurski71 had offered anything more:

  Byron14: I know you are making a deal with mugurski71.

  I considered the message for a while, walked round the room, opened the window to listen to the sea, then went back to the keyboard.

  _why: I don’t discuss business matters.

  Byron14: Why did you attack Prometheus?

  _why: I don’t know what you mean.

  Byron14: You stole the Chrysalis from Shamma bint Bandar at the launch of Prometheus’ new product in Dubai. You humiliated Pereyra-Conroy; you embarrassed his company.

  _why: Who are Prometheus?

  Byron14: They are Perfection. Mugurski71 works for Prometheus.

  I walked away from the computer again, idled round my room, drank cold water, grabbed my toes and stretched until my ears buzzed, sat down again.

  Byron14 was waiting, patient on the other end of the line.

  _why: What’s your interest?

  Byron14: In stealing the Chrysalis from their event, you humiliated Prometheus. They are assisting the UAE in their investigations.

  _why: That doesn’t answer my question.

  Byron14: Have you agreed a meet with mugurski71?

  _why: What do you want?

  Byron14: send a dummy. Contact me when it’s done.

  That was all.

  Chapter 16

  Lying awake in the hot darkness of a Muscat summer.

  Sleeping not a wink.

  Thieves are prone to paranoia. The car in the night, the footfall in the shadow; trust. Who do you trust? In most petty crime, hate is as good a word as honour. Hate the cops, hate the law, hate the world. For this reason, your average two-bit mugger banged up for three years in Pentonville isn’t going to rat on his mates, because, for all they’re backstabbing bastards, they’re not the cops, the pig, the filth, and even if they’re not friends, they’re still your mates.

  Up the crime, up the stakes, up the reasons for betrayal.

  A night run through Muscat, and three men in white call out, Hey, pretty lady, you hot, you sweet, you hot?

  These men might be married, might beat another man to death for even looking at their wives, their sisters, their children, but when a lone Western woman walks through the streets of Oman, that’s fair game, because Western women are like that, aren’t they? They must be, to walk the way they walk, talk the way they talk.

  You sweet, you hot?

  Briefly, I feel the fear of being a woman in a strange land.

  I am the queen of taster classes: self-defence, half a dozen different forms of martial art; fired a pistol on a range in Nebraska, a rifle in Kentucky. I carry a flashlight in my bag which may, with very little effort, be turned into a blunt impact weapon in an emergency, and I am prepared to hurt someone, to really hurt them, if my safety is threatened.

  I carry on running, and count steps as I do, twenty-seven until the men are completely out of sight.

 
; I have been caught by cops three times in my career.

  The first time, I was seventeen years old, and I was nabbed red-handed shoplifting from a department store in Birmingham. The security guard who tackled me held onto my arm until the police arrived. They took my name (false), my address (false), and when they discovered the lie, the sergeant looked me in the eye and said, “It’s a shame, luv, cos we gotta put you through the system.”

  They put me in the back of the police car and drove slowly to the station. I hunkered down low, silent, listening to the cops in front chatting about the game, what their missus had said, how one wished he had more time to see the kids, the other was worried about his dad. When they got to the station one said, “Cuppa?”

  “Lovely-jubbly,” replied the other brightly, and so saying, they got out of the car without checking the rear seat, slammed the doors shut and went in search of their tea break, leaving me sat in the back, forgotten, wondering what I was going to do now.

  In the end, a constable found me, and called the drivers of the car, and asked them what the hell was going on. They had no idea; they recalled being summoned to a shoplifting, but there hadn’t been anyone there to arrest.

  “Then what the hell is she doing here?” demanded their superintendent. “Who is she?”

  I said, “These guys just grabbed me off the street, they grabbed me and said they were going to do things and I don’t know why, they were just saying stuff like I thought maybe they were drunk!”

  Then I cried, which, given the situation, wasn’t very hard, and the cops let me go, and asked me not to sue.

  The second time I was caught, they got me through the darknet.