Glass House (34 page)

And no one even thought of penetrating that
until it was too late. Waldoch himself was already there, after
all. He was the one who was supposed to be watching the place for
them.

But in the end, it was Waldoch who moved the
mine’s security forces, and the security forces who moved
Laurentian and Sullivan. The man with the small Kansas security
firm wound up at the head of a growing and ravenous serpent, just
as he wanted.

Hanley and Megan talked for an hour, with
the agent telling her the story of his involvement with Waldoch,
and Waldoch’s involvement in diamonds. He seemed weary, sitting on
the porch floor with his back to the door that led into the house.
The black windows loomed over his shoulders. His knees angled up in
front of him. His hands were out to his sides, like lean-to
poles.

“He controls Laurentian,” Hanley said. “Plus
some other mines now. And he’s taking diamonds from those mines and
selling them as conflict diamonds.”

“Conflict diamonds?”

“Entire nations in Africa have been built
and run on them. They’re dug up, carted out in something that
passes for secret, and sold to the highest bidder, completely out
of the usual mining and production chains.”

“And the money?”

“Untraceable,” Hanley said. “The proceeds
are used to buy influence, weapons, power, whatever. The money goes
wherever the seller wants, because the diamonds never officially
existed in the first place. Which means the money also never
existed either by the way, making it really well-suited to buying
guns that don’t exist, from people who don’t exist, in places no
one knows about.”

“Where do the diamonds end up?”

“Same place all diamonds do, in rings and
necklaces, on ears, in watches I couldn’t possibly afford. Almost
all of them in North America and Europe. The fact that the diamonds
start out bad doesn’t mean they don’t end up looking good and
selling high.”

“But the same thing can be done legally,
right? He could be selling the diamonds on the open market, then
doing whatever he wants with the money anyway.”

“Nice theory,” Hanley said. “Bad
possibility. All those North Americans and Europeans have gotten
pickier over the years. A little more politically correct. They’re
not so open to the idea that the diamond they’re giving in an
engagement ring originally may have been bought with money that
went for machetes, machine guns, and mortars in some bloody battle
in Africa.”

“You’re saying that with the mines, he can
get whatever diamonds he wants, and he disposes of them as he
pleases.” Megan was spinning it out for herself as much as
anything. Reciting it out loud and hearing how the story sounded.
Whether it was plausible. Whether it fit with the other things she
knew and the things she’d only been able to guess at. “He sells
them in the dark, takes the money, and spends as he chooses.
Weapons, threats, people. And no one can trace it?”

“South Africa is the richest diamond region
in the world,” Hanley replied. “They dig diamonds faster than
anyone in history has. Faster than anyone probably ever will. And I
don’t care what anyone tells you – production rates like South
Africa’s mean no one,
no one
, can keep track of what’s going
on. The mines there spit out rough so fast that if they’re in the
wrong hands, the money supply can’t be exhausted, and it can’t
really be traced in any way that counts.”

“So what’s the end game?” she asked. Megan
had been antagonistic at first, but she’d settled into a peculiar
listening stance since then. She rarely offered questions as Hanley
got deeper into the story. She hardly interrupted at all, but she
spoke up now as Hanley quieted. “What’s the stop point?”

“I don’t know that there is one,” he
replied. “He’s threatening to bootstrap into more control of the
industry in the region. Greater threats, money, and power.
Spreading influence. He’s used his security services to swallow a
number of mines in northwest South Africa, extending that bit by
bit until he’s where he is now.”

“So you say, anyway.”

Hanley gave a smile, a weak one. “So I say,”
he agreed.

“Assuming it’s true, Agent Hanley? Just for
the sake of argument, let’s assume everything you’ve laid out is
true.”

“Yes?”

“You created this.”

“We helped.” Hanley nodded tiredly. “But Mr.
Waldoch has outgrown his shoes.”

“You mean he’s outgrown his usefulness to
you, and now you say you have a problem on your hands.”

Hanley leaned along the wall. He tipped
toward Megan, propping himself on one arm.

“It’s far more than that,” he said. “This
isn’t just someone who isn’t useful to us anymore, so we’re cutting
him loose. This is blowback. This is a man who was operating as an
unofficial but still retained functionary of the United States
government, and who’s now working against us.”

“Working against you how?”

“The FBI has been in Laurentian for over a
year,” Hanley said. “That means long-term placements that were
supposed to
stay
long-term. The agents in place were
smuggling Laurentian rough out, a piece or two at a time. We’d
microphotograph each piece, mapping the markings, gletz cracks,
inclusions, what have you. We isotope-sampled them to identify
molecular content. The idea was to establish a sort of diamond
fingerprint for Laurentian, both for rough in general and for
certain pieces in particular, then use that to trace Laurentian
diamonds into the black market and draw out a chain that connected
Laurentian, with clear knowledge and intent, from black market
diamonds to money and terrorism. So we do the examinations, then
return the rough. Just like we smuggled it out, we’d smuggle the
pieces back in to replace them in Laurentian’s coffers.”

“And now?”

“And now four of our agents are dead. My
partner included. Dozens of others, South Africans, right along
with them.” His voice was level and calm, its tone deep and
soothing. But for the words, he could have been trying to talk a
baby to sleep. He pulled something from his pocket, the object he’d
been fidgeting.

When he held it up, it looked like a small
piece of glass. It was a little larger than a nickel, a clear but
somewhat squared-off marble, and it was the color of blood.

“What is it?” Megan asked. She didn’t take
it, but she did lean and look closely. Even in the poor light, she
could see a depth in the stone, a center point that seemed farther
away than anything that would be possible with a chunk of glass,
and she realized the answer to her question before Hanley could
answer it for her. She realized it because of the pictures –
the one from Claire, the ones in Waldoch’s office.

“It’s a diamond,” she said, amazed.

Hanley nodded. He laid it in his palm and
pushed it gently with his finger, tipping it to one flat side. “The
agent who got this out of Laurentian is dead now,” he said.

He held it out to her, and Megan reached and
took the stone. She rested it in the center of her hand. It was
lighter than she’d have imagined, and it felt warm to the touch.
The heat from Hanley’s grip lingered. It was as though a small fire
were burning inside the diamond.

“How much is it worth?”

Hanley shook his head. “A lot of lives, by
one calculation,” he told her. “Never figured it in dollars, to be
honest. The color and size make it a rarity, though, and rarities
like this one mean value. Extreme value.”

The stone lay in her hand, Megan’s own body
heat rising into it. The diamond held her gaze. She tipped the hand
slightly to turn it, watching as it rolled to another side.

Hanley spoke as she studied it. “People are
dying because our friend Mr. Waldoch is running more than diamond
mines in his glass house. He’s doing more than raking in
money – he’s using his position to gather power and influence,
and there are real men, using real guns, to get all that done.”

Hanley stood up. He dusted his ass with a
swipe of his hands, and his hands with a swipe of his thighs. He
moved to Megan, and he squatted down a couple feet away, where he
could see her more closely.

“In five more years at his rate, maybe
under, Jeremy Waldoch will be one of the wealthiest people doing
business in Africa, and he’ll be within reach of becoming one of
the wealthiest in the world. And people are dead because of it.

“Agents have gone in there, I’ve
sent
them in there, and four of them haven’t come out. Security forces
at other mines have been intercepted, robbed, and killed, and I
don’t mean one or two. We’re talking ten and twenty at a time, once
every month or two. Plus more in South African police forces
ambushed in raids or pushed back in their attempts to help
miners.”

The words hit Megan as though he were
shouting at her, and she tried to imagine the people he was talking
about, but Lora Alexander came to her instead. Lora in her car in a
ditch somewhere, and her mother Claire back at home, handing over a
picture of diamonds and a South African map to Megan and Finn as
they stood in her house.

“So you say,” Megan finally managed once
more, in a soft response. She passed the diamond back to him. She
could see Hanley’s smile better this time. It was bitter or rueful
or resigned. Colored with something negative that she couldn’t
quite place.

“Again,” he said. “So I say.”

He straightened, and he passed her a slip of
paper before going back to his original position by the screen
door. He rested against the door frame.

“There’s a number where you can reach me on
that.”

“Assuming I want to?”

“Yes, of course, assuming that.”

“And when I call you, I’ll be telling you
what?” Megan asked, watching him. “What am I supposed to do in all
this? You tracked me down and came here for something
particular.”

“I suppose I did.”

“And what is that something?”

“Information.”

“About what?”

“Your client.”

“You can do better than that, agent. You’ve
had time to think this out, to plan for this discussion and lay it
all out straight in your head. Just the way you usually do, I
suspect, before showing up on someone’s doorstep with your badge
out. So what is it you think I can tell you?”

“I need evidence of wrongdoing.”

“Wrongdoing,” Megan repeated. Then again,
“Wrongdoing.” And then she went on with the right comments, the
automatic things she typically would say in response to a
suggestion like the one Hanley was laying out. “Ever heard of
attorney-client privilege? Client confidences? Professional conduct
rules? Ethics? Any of those things familiar to you?”

“I’ve heard of them,” he said. “But I’ve
also heard about sons dying, and fathers and husbands not coming
home. Any of those things familiar to you?”

Megan’s gaze shifted to the walnut tree as
Hanley spoke. It seemed more an amorphous shape than anything real
and living at this hour. All black and ominous and reaching, like a
felt cutout that was Borden-glued to a child’s homemade Halloween
card.

At Hanley’s question, Megan got that sudden
flash of the people he was talking about, the dozens or more who’d
died because of Waldoch. It was followed by that recurrent image of
Lora, too, this time with Samuel Chilcott reaching in once more to
take the necklace off her. And of Ben. All those things, all in a
row. Something passed over her face, a look, and it hung there for
a moment before slipping away.

“I’m familiar with losses like that, yes,”
she said, her words sad and barely audible. “I know enough about
them.”

Hanley looked as though he’d been struck.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“Sorry?”

“I’m aware of your husband’s death last
year.”

“Naturally,” she replied. “Why wouldn’t you
be?”

Hanley was silent. He’d overplayed a card,
and he sat on it, quiet, waiting for the moment to fade and
disappear.

“You understand I could go to Waldoch and
tell him everything you’ve told me,” Megan said. “I can do
that.”

“I know. And I know that when the shit comes
down, I could just as easily ask the U.S. Attorney to bring you up
on charges of obstruction of justice.”

Megan didn’t show a reaction. “Which would
go exactly nowhere,” she said.

“I understand that, too. But nowhere’s
relative, isn’t it?”

She was smiling herself now. The hit she’d
taken at the unexpected thought of Lora and Ben and the others was
gone, replaced by smug realization.

“You didn’t just know my husband had died.
You’ve gone over my whole history, you knew what happened to Ben,
and you were counting on my still feeling it.”

Hanley’s head was hanging. His hand was
working the red diamond.

“With all due respect for you and the
Bureau,” Megan told him, “I’ll decide for myself what I should do.
I’ll let you know in that regard. For now, though, I’ll thank you
to leave.”

“I’d like to know as soon as I can,” Hanley
said. “Every day more people will die because of Waldoch.”

“And you think I can stop that?”

“I think you can be a step. Maybe more. A
window in.”

“By ratting him out. By exploiting whatever
weaknesses I know, telling you so you can take advantage of them
and gut my client. All in the name of saving lives of people you’d
like to make me think are like my husband? That’s the approach
here?”

She said it as sharply as she could manage,
but it wasn’t the images of Ben or the other men that came back to
Megan with her words. It was just Lora one final time, upside down
and dying in her car, with the water coming in.

Hanley’s hand was on the screen door’s
latch. “I don’t know,” he was saying. “I can’t balance all those
things. I just know you’ll either do it at this point, or you
won’t. After that, the world falls wherever it may.”