Relative Danger

by Charles Benoit

  “You mean jewels, right?” Doug said.

  “There were jewels, yes, but it was one jewel in particular that they were after.”

  “The eye?” Doug guessed.

  “The eye?” Aisha said, squinting a bit as she said it. “Oh I get it. That’s cute. It wasn’t ‘the eye,’ although I bet that’s what your uncle and Charley called it. No, it was Al Ainab, the grape. It was a red diamond about this big.” She held up her hand, making a circle with her index finger and her thumb.

  “Diamonds come in red?”

  “Diamonds can come in several colors, actually. Of course colorless diamonds are the norm, but if other elements are found in the diamond structure you can end up with colors. Golden-yellow is the most common, and there is also a brownish colored diamond, but the two really rare colors are blue and red. We used to think the red color came from manganese impurities, but the latest gemological research seems to indicate that the red color is the result of a sub-atomic deformation in the carbon structure. Colored diamonds are worth far, far more than flawless clear diamonds, and blue and red are worth the most. You know the Hope diamond? That’s a blue diamond. Al Ainab is supposed to be the largest red diamond in the world. It didn’t hurt that it has an interesting history either. How much do you know about eleventh century Iran?”

  Absolutely nothing, he thought. “Just the basics,” he said.

  “Well then,” she continued, “you probably recall that Seljuks took over the Samanid Dynasty around 1040. The Seljuks were from what is now, roughly, Afghanistan—raiders but surprisingly decent rulers, as far as absolute monarchies go. Within twenty years they captured Baghdad and were the power in what we call the Middle East. They ruled for about a hundred years.” She stood up and walked over to one of the many bookcases in the room and took out a thick leather-bound file. The papers were arranged with different color tabs separating the sections. She walked back across the room and sat down next to Doug. She smelled of warm vanilla and he felt the blood rushing from his head when she slid her hips against his.

  She flipped through the pages saying something about having samples of the arts of the era.

  “Did you study this stuff in college?” Doug asked. “I mean, do you have a Ph.D. or something in history?”

  “I wish,” Aisha Al-Kady said, pulling a stack of papers from the folder. “My undergrad degree was in archeology and I’ve completed most of my Master’s work. There are a lot of history courses in the program so that’s where I picked up what I know. The diamond is a hobby, I guess. More like an obsession, really.”

  “Did you go to school in the states?”

  “Of course. My family’s rich and I’m spoiled. Here it is,” she said, focusing on her notes. “Al Ainab was owned by the Seljuk sultan Tughril. At this time, the so-called Middle Ages, diamonds were valuable as talismans—good luck charms. It was believed that diamonds in general made you invincible in battle or protected you against poisons or scurvy or arthritis. And if a plain old, colorless diamond helped, imagine what a rare, red diamond would do. Tughril was supposed to have carried our diamond with him when he took Baghdad. There’s a manuscript in Malta that states that a crusader from an obscure branch of French nobles saw it when he was held prisoner by Salah al-Din around 1188. I have the transcription but I’m afraid it’s in Latin.”

  “Darn,” he said. It was like having someone give him directions in a city he had never been to; the words sounded vaguely familiar but he had no real idea what she was talking about. But she smelled so good and was sitting so close he was willing to listen.

  “After that,” Aisha continued, “the jewel disappears for a bit. There’s a mention of it in an official dispatch to Rome from a Jesuit emissary at Akbar’s court in Fatehpur-Sikri in 1575, and he says that it was mounted on a short ceremonial staff. It may have been re-cut soon after. I have an old college friend who lives in Beijing who tells me some department of antiquities has a detailed description of what may be the jewel—along with an illustration—dating from the early 1700s, but I don’t know how carefully she has checked it out. Richard Burton claims to have seen it….”

  “The British actor?” Doug said.

  “The Scottish explorer. He made some wild claims in the 1850s, all sorts of fantastic discoveries along the upper Nile, most of which turned out to be true by the way, but this might have been an embellishment to spice up one of his stories, something he did as well. It’s so hard to do any research on it because so many myths have been made up and it’s been connected, somehow, to just about every important person in world history. I seriously doubt if ninety percent of what I’ve read about it is true.”

  “So maybe it doesn’t exist at all,” Doug said. “And even if it did once exist it may have been lost. How do you know it’s still around?”

  Aisha smiled. “I’d agree with you, Doug, if it wasn’t for this.” She flipped through the file and pulled out a manila envelope. “My grandfather saw it around 1921 in Paris. He was working for a jeweler who specialized in buying stolen goods.”

  “A fence.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “My grandfather didn’t know much about jewels then but he did know how to work a camera.” She opened the metal clasp and removed a black and white photograph from the envelope. It was a close-up of a jewel lying on a cloth; next to it a French coin provided a sense of scale. It was almost round in shape with several large facets ringing the center of the stone. Even without color Doug had to admit it was beautiful.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Aisha said.

  “How big is it?” Doug Pearce asked.

  “Straight size wise, it’s about this big,” she said, again making a ring with her thumb and index finger. “About one and a half inches in diameter.”

  “How many carats is that?” Doug said, mimicking the shape she made with his fingers.

  “Carats don’t tell you size, they tell you weight, but of course the larger the size the more carats you have. Your grape is eighty-three point six carats.”

  “My God, that’s huge,” and he thought of how proud Ted the bartender was when he showed off the one-carat ring he bought for his fiancée. When she left him for the UPS guy, he heard she sold it for three grand.

  “Like I said, it may be the biggest red diamond ever. The next largest red diamond, the Moussaieff Red, is just over five carats.”

  “And? You know I gotta ask.”

  “Who knows what it’s worth. What would someone pay for the Hope Diamond? Or the Kohinoor? Or the Star of Yakutia? When you have a diamond this large the question is not how much it costs but how are you going to find a buyer. It would be a steal at eight million and easily worth twice, three times that, but how many people have that kind of money to spend on one diamond? You know the most common use of gold in the U.S.?” she asked as she riffled through the leather folder.

  Oh great, time to look stupid, Doug thought. “Maybe gold deposits at Fort Knox? An industrial use for a lot of gold?”

  “High school rings. Yes, really, those class rings everyone buys and gives to their sweetheart and never sees again. And that’s not a lot of gold per ring. So what do you think the market is for diamonds of this quality?”

  Doug looked at the back of his left hand as he held up the picture. “It would make one impressive engagement ring.”

  “It’s too big for a ring, really, but you’re right, it would be impressive.”

  “So what would your grandfather do with it if he had it?”

  Aisha shrugged her shoulders. “Knowing my grandfather? He’d keep it in a desk drawer and look at it about once a year.”

  “Is that what you’d do, stick it in a desk drawer?” he asked.

  “I’m a bad person to ask. It’s beautiful, but that’s not what interests me. Really, it’s the history. Someday I’d like to publish the definitive biography on that stone. I think it’s just fascinating. So what would I do with it?” She re-filed the photo and straightened the papers in the folder. Doug
stared at her hands and then past her hands, past the folder, to her legs, wrapped in those tight, black jeans. She bounced her knees slightly as she slid the pages back in place. Doug’s gaze wandered off her knees and up her thighs.

  “What would you do with it if you got your hands on it?” she asked.

  “Hands on what?”

  “Hello!…the diamond. What would you do with it if you had it?”

  Doug thought about it for a moment and then sighed. “I really don’t know. I mean, yeah, I’d sell it, but like you said, to who? I don’t know any fences and I doubt that the local jeweler would be interested. I’m assuming that if you split the diamond up….”

  “Cut the diamond,” she corrected him. “You cut a diamond, and pray to God you don’t split it.”

  “Whatever. I assume it would lose much of its value.”

  “One hundred percent of its historical value, that’s for sure,” Aisha said. “You’d probably end up making more money, though. Like I said, who can afford it but sultans and emperors? Not a lot of those left. You’d still have to find someone who could cut this rock without damaging it. But, yes, smaller, one carat diamonds are much easier to sell. You’d make a couple of million quite easily.”

  “I could deal with a couple million,” Doug Pearce said.

  “And I could do with a couple more,” Aisha said as she stood up to replace the folder. Doug watched her walk back to the bookshelf. Did she sense him watching or did she always move her ass like that, he wondered.

  “Assuming you got a hold of the diamond,” she said over her shoulder, “you’d still have a little problem with the rightful owner.”

  “Come on, he couldn’t still have a claim to it, after all these years, could he?”

  “His estate—he died in the Thirties—has a very active claim on the diamond. In many cases, international art theft, as you probably know….”

  No I don’t, he thought.

  “…has no statute of limitations. The rightful owner has claim to it in perpetuity.” She replaced the notebook and walked over to the computer. Doug couldn’t see what she was doing but the hidden speakers started playing some soft, Arabic sounding music. “If you found the diamond you’d either have to sell it on the black market to someone who would keep the purchase quiet, meaning you’d have to sell it for a fraction of what it’s worth. A tiny fraction. Or,” she said, adjusting the volume on the screen, “you’d have to have an excellent diamond cutter—who’d be willing to work illegally, of course—cut the stone so it couldn’t be traced. But then there goes the diamond’s real value.”

  “So no matter what I do,” Doug said, “I’m going to lose a fortune. I’ll try to keep that in mind when I find the diamond.”

  Aisha smiled as she looked over at Doug, the soft blue light of the computer screen tinting her white tee shirt. “Ah, the truth comes out. You’re after Al Ainab.”

  “I guess,” Doug said, “but I’m just as interested in what happened to my uncle.”

  Aisha walked back to the couch and stood, leaning one knee on the coffee table, her hands on her hips. “Just as interested? Millions of dollars interested?”

  “Alright. The more I know about the jewel the more interested I become. But realistically,” he said, looking up at her as she posed—and it was definitely a pose—“what am I more likely to find? The solution to a fifty-year-old murder or a million-dollar grape?”

  “Is neither an option?” Aisha said, tilting her head to the side as she said it.

  “Neither is a possibility. More likely a probability.” Most likely, he thought, a certainty.

  “Enough diamond talk for now. You get me started on that topic and I’ll never let you go. So, is this an all-business trip or can you squeeze in some tourist activities?”

  “I definitely have time for that.” Choose your words carefully now Dougie, he thought. “Do you know anyone who could show me around?”

  “Come on,” she said, reaching for a purse on the back of the leather chair, “I’ll give you a lift back to the city. It’ll give me a chance to tell you all about my special ‘First Time to Casablanca’ package tour.”

  Chapter 6

  “I hope you are no judge of wines,” Sergei Nikolaisen said as one of the swarm of waiters filled their glasses. “With Moroccan wines it’s best to be ignorant. Less painful.”

  “Well then this will be quite painless.” Doug sipped the wine. As he predicted, it tasted fine to him.

  “The wine industry here is not so young as you’d expect but even the French cannot beg a decent vintage from this soil. I can order a bottle of French wine if you’d prefer? No? Fine then, we’ll go native. And, if you don’t mind,” he motioned for the maitre d’, “I’ll have the chef put together something special for us.”

  A relay of waiters spent ten minutes arranging various plates, bowls, and covered dishes with the unstated goal of filling every open space on the table with some food item. Sergei explained what each dish contained and warned Doug which spices to avoid. Sergei kept the conversation light as they ate, and it wasn’t until after the train of waiters had cleared away their display and they were sipping the French port forced on them by the owner that he asked Doug about his trip.

  “Like I said, it’s a favor for a friend. She wants me to look up some of her old friends and pick up a couple of gifts. Nothing important.”

  “Well don’t let the touts hear you say that. They’ll have you off to their ‘uncle’s shop’ pricing second rate carpets before you know what hit you,” Sergei said. “I’d offer to help but I doubt that your friends and mine run in the same circles. I’m not a jet-setter like yourself.”

  Doug smiled. “I have to admit this is only my second international trip. I’m not as jet-set as you think.”

  Sergei Nikolaisen nodded his head. “You pull it off admirably, young man.” It was a compliment and an exaggeration and Doug knew it.

  “And you? I’d guess it’s not tourism that brings you here.”

  “You’d guess correctly. I was recently retired from the Berlin Art Museum. Of course they called it a well-earned respite from a lifetime of service,” he said, holding up his glass in mock salute, “and instead of the gold watch gave me a title. Curator emeritus. The end result was the same, I suppose—put out to the proverbial pasture. And I’d like to think many years before my time. Anyway,” he said, his hand making a slight wave in front of his face as if to blow away a bad smell, “I had traveled here and there scouting interesting little items for their collections and, as sort of a farewell tour, the trustees decided to send me to a few places I still had living contacts. They gave me a modest budget and an even more modest honorarium and told me to bring back some treasures. Considering the size of the budget I hope they will be happy with souvenir tee shirts.”

  “So who do you know in Casablanca?” Doug asked. “Maybe you’d know some of the people I’m looking for.”

  Sergei Nikolaisen laughed as he leaned back in his chair. “Douglas, my friends are all gray and dusty. Museum officials and collectors. Even I find them an insufferable lot. They are certainly not the type of people to arouse the interest of old friends across the seas.”

  “But you’re here, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said, still laughing, “and doesn’t that say something sad about me?”

  Doug poured himself another glass of port. Port, he decided, was a lot like whiskey and that was all right by him. “In all your travels did you ever hear much about jewels?”

  “But of course. Would you?” he said, holding out his glass. “While the museum trade is mostly in historical artifacts and the occasional gold coin, we did get offers now and then for gems and the like.”

  “Ever hear of Al Ainab, the Grape?”

  Sergei Nikolaisen pursed his lips and looked up at the ceiling. “No,” he said, drawing the word out, as if waiting for the memory to rush back and cut him off, “I don’t think I have. Is it a ruby then?”

  “I
was told it was a very famous red diamond.”

  “A red diamond? Are you sure? There are few of those, you know. Could it have been a red sapphire?”

  “No, it was a diamond. I was told it was stolen here in Casablanca back in 1948.”

  “Oh that diamond! Of course I heard of that,” Sergei said, leaning back in his chair. “But what did you call it? The grape? How did you come up with that name?”

  “I was told it was an old treasure from some king in Baghdad and Akbar had it and it may have been in China, too, and Africa. What’s so funny?”

  “Oh Douglas, please don’t think me rude, but someone has been pulling your leg.” Sergei put his hand up to cover his smile, yet he continued to chuckle into his palm.

  “You mean there is no red diamond?”

  “There is definitely a red diamond, Douglas, but I’m afraid it does not have the colorful history of your grape. The diamond you are referring to was discovered in a wadi, a dry riverbed, in South Africa around 1910. It was called, simply, the Jagersfontien Diamond, after the closest town, and maybe that’s not such a simple name but it wasn’t called anything so,” he paused, looking for the right word, “so romantic. But it was big, something like eighty carats, if I recall.”

  Doug ran his tongue across the back of his teeth. The port and the wine were making his upper lip feel numb. He was thinking about Aisha and the file.

  “And indeed it was stolen here in Casablanca,” Sergei Nikolaisen continued. “It was a bloody affair, a real mess. Three, four people killed rather brutally. Butchered, really. One of my old friends here in Casablanca is a retired police captain. He worked that case. He said that there was so much blood….” He paused and looked up at Doug. “Anyway, it was a rather unpleasant affair.”

  Doug sighed. He drained his glass and was debating whether it would be rude to polish off the bottle. He decided to be rude and poured another. “I suppose,” he finally said, “that they never caught the thieves?”