Stone Cold (3 page)

I turned around to look at Ayolo. He had vomited over the car seat. Now he was leaning back with his eyes closed, muttering, perhaps some prayer. After a while George spoke. “You did very well, sir. Where are we going?”

“Away,” I said. “Get on the mobile and call the police. Tell them to look for the grey BMW. Licence number GY3 something-or-other. I didn’t get the last figures.” I reckoned the kidnappers would have ditched the car by now anyway. They had probably stolen it for this job.

I took the first turn to an A road that I found and followed the sign to the nearest town. My hands were still shaking and I had to concentrate hard to keep the car straight. I drove on to the next town, which was Thetford, and followed the signs to Tesco’s car park, then parked, put on the handbrake, leaned back and stopped thinking altogether. The car smelled of Ayolo’s vomit.

After a few minutes I stepped out of the car. We were back in the ordinary world, among the parked cars of people who were doing their shopping. I think I was still trembling but I kept it below visibility level. I stood leaning against the car, breathing in some of Thetford’s air, ordinary, everyday, non-threatening air.

A woman with a child in a stroller was opening the door of a Ford Escort and looking curiously at my Daimler; another was pushing a shopping trolley loaded with the contents of supermarket shelves. A woman came up to me and said, “Excuse me, have you got change of a five-pound note for the parking meter?”

I stared at her for a moment, trying to bring myself back to the world of money and parking meters. It felt like when I speak French and someone suddenly addresses me in English and I have to adjust. She started to turn away when I said, “How much do you need?”

“Two pounds,” she said. I reached into my pocket and found two pound coins and gave them to her. “Don’t you have five pounds?” she asked, still holding the five-pound note.

“It doesn’t matter. Just take them. This is your lucky day,” I said. I reckoned that she had approached me because I was still wearing a chauffeur’s cap. She probably wouldn’t have approached the owner of a Daimler.

George helped Ayolo out of the car. He said some words in what I assumed was his native African language, and then said to me in French, “I want to go home. Back to Brussels.”

“All right, we can talk about that,” I said. “When we get back to London.”

“Not London. Brussels. Now,” he insisted. “I could have been killed.”

Nothing else would do. England had scared him and he wanted to go home right away. He would not even go back to London to get his things; he asked me to arrange to have them sent on.

The only thing I knew about Thetford, the only reason I had ever heard of it, was that Thomas Paine was born here. I was not going to leave without looking at the statue of the great radical who propelled the American colonies towards independence with his pamphlet
Common
Sense
and went on to write
The
Rights
of
Man
.
So
we drove through the main square and I stopped and paid homage to the bronze figure in the three-cornered hat. Then we got on our way again.

Ayolo had his passport with him so we drove straight to Heathrow. It was late evening then and there were no more flights, so we took rooms at an airport hotel and had dinner, along with George. George got a wet cloth from the hotel and cleaned the back of the car where Ayolo had been sick. None of us spoke much.

I had a fish dinner and accompanied it with three Scotch and sodas. Jeremy would have been disappointed: good dining dictated a dry white wine with the fish, but this was medicinal. As I ate I reflected on what had happened and evaluated my performance, as we had been taught to do at OCS. I had not had the experience of armed combat but this was something close to it. How had I done? Well. I had kept my nerve and done the right thing and got us away. But that was getting away, not winning.

What if I’d had to fight back? Provide leadership under fire? It was because I had asked myself questions like that that I had joined the army. When I went to bed I fell asleep soon enough, but woke up two hours later in a cold sweat, seeing before me that blood-smeared face and the pistol pointing at me.

Four years in the army when America was involved in two wars and I had never had a gun pointed at me in anger, but it had happened on a drive in Norfolk.

*

Ayolo left the next morning. I went back to London in the car and told Jeremy what had happened. Ayolo had already telephoned him from Brussels and told Jeremy I had been heroic and saved his life. He seemed to have given the impression that I had fought off a whole army of kidnappers.

“Bloody good,” Jeremy told me. “A good recommendation for Fitzwilliam Harvey Security.”

“I was just doing my job,” I said. I thought I would show him that it is not only the English who can do casual modesty.

I went home, picked up a kebab on the way, and opened a bottle of Merlot. I ate the kebab with a glass of the Merlot, then sat down on the recliner with another glass and looked at the paintings on the wall. An Andrew Wyeth print, to remind Dad, no doubt, of his childhood in New England, and a nineteenth century original of a group of Cherokees, and several other paintings. Like the book of Currier and Ives scenes on the coffee table they were all American, apart from a print of a waterfront scene by a French Impressionist. Dad had made his home in England for the last thirty years of his life, taking a post as Professor of Biochemistry at the University of London after divorcing my mother, and remaining here in this apartment just outside London after his retirement. I suppose he needed this Americana around him to remind him where he came from.

This was definitely Dad’s apartment, his furniture, his paintings, his taste. If I was going to stay here I must get in some things of my own, to put something of my own stamp on it. Staying here gave me mixed emotions. I had not seen my dad very often since he left America, but we were very fond of each other, and I have happy childhood memories. Sometimes, sitting in his recliner, I would feel as if I were a child again sitting in his lap, happy and secure. I would definitely keep the recliner.

That night I saw the kidnapper’s face in a dream again. It happened a couple of times more over the next few weeks, but not again after that.

Jeremy called me again a week later, and it was about the diamond.

CHAPTER TWO

He telephoned in the morning when I was just about to leave the house. “I’ve got something that I think will interest you. You may be the man for it, David.”

“More bodyguarding?” I did not feel like risking my life again for some opulent crook.

“No, nothing like that. This is a big international inquiry. There’s a lot of money involved and some travel. Maybe a lot of travel.”

He wanted me to come over that morning but I said I was busy and would come the following day. Actually, I was not busy in the morning. But I had a job interview in the afternoon, international sales with a chemical company. If I got the job, I could tell Jeremy thanks but no thanks.

The interview did not last long. It was in one of those glass-fronted office buildings that flaunted modernity inside and out. There were two men and a woman behind the desk, but only one did the talking, a Mr Jarrett, a tall man in dark pinstripes with a trim moustache and the look of a man who is proud of where he has got to in life. He said, “I have applicants for this job who have had years of experience in the chemical industry, and applicants who have had a lot of experience in marketing. Can you tell me what you can offer Westwood Chemicals that they can’t?”

That’s a pretty damned negative beginning, I thought, but then perhaps he was just trying to put me on my mettle. If he didn’t think I might have something to offer, he would not have called me in.

I told him I spoke fluent French and German and had worked closely with armies and police forces of other countries, had lived in the Third World, and that I had experience of managing people.

He and said, “Managing people in civilian life is very different from managing them in the army. You can’t just give them orders.” Thanks for telling me that, I didn’t realize it, I thought. But I ploughed on.

“It’s not as different as you might think,” I said. “It’s not just a matter of giving orders. You have to motivate people if you are going to get the best out of—”

“Also,” he said, interrupting me, “you’ll find that the way we do things in England is different from the way things are done in America.” He leaned back in his chair with a smirk.

I got it now. He wasn’t going to give me the job. He had summoned me in just so that he could take an American down a peg, and have his two underlings watch him do it. He was going to get a kick out of this. Why does the whole world have such a fucking inferiority complex about America? We’re not so great.

“I like the way people do things in England,” I said, and got out of my chair. “People are polite, courteous. Most of them, anyway. Not everyone. I don’t think I belong in Westwood Chemicals.”

“Are you telling us that you’re no longer applying for the job?” He was disappointed that he could not go on with his Yank-baiting.

“I’m telling you, Mr Jarrett,” I said, “that you can shove the job up your ass. Or up your arse, as you would say,” and I walked out without closing the door.

*

“And you wanted to go into the
diplomatic
service?” Jeremy said when I told him about this encounter. His office was in Knightsbridge, in a side street behind Harrods, small but with classy furnishings, soft carpet, striped wallpaper with framed pictures of Grenadier Guards and Hussars or some such on the walls. Jeremy sat behind a desk decorated with a picture of his wife and baby in a silver frame. He offered me tea and it was brought to me by a secretary with a voice that matched the bone china cup and saucer.

“This job is extraordinary,” Jeremy said. “A chap in the diamond trade wants us to find out the origin of one particular diamond. Apparently, it’s mega-valuable. We can go anywhere. He’ll pay a substantial fee and expenses.”

I sipped my Earl Grey and asked, “Do we know where the diamond is?”

“Oh yes, some big money Greek has it. He lives in Switzerland. That doesn’t mean we can get to see it.”

“So what does he want?”

“He wants to know where it comes from.”

“That’s important?”

“It is to him. Can I tell him you’re interested? If you are, we’ll go together to see him. His name is Oliver Michelmore.”

Michelmore’s office was in one of those short, dignified streets of small, gracious old buildings situated behind the glitter and bustle of Piccadilly, like parents sitting upstairs while their teenage children have their noisy party. Michelmore’s building was squeezed between two high-priced art galleries that carried nothing later than the nineteenth century.

He turned out to be a tall, thin man with a thin face, permanently pursed lips, and eyes that gleamed peculiarly every now and again behind his rimless glasses. He had a way of using his eyes to punctuate a sentence. He would pause and the eyes would gleam at you to add either an exclamation mark or a question mark to what he had just said, or an invitation to you to respond. He sat in a small, dark office behind a large antique desk, and Jeremy and I sat in armchairs facing him. He spoke in a precise, almost prissy voice. I had the idea that it would not be fruitful trying to exchange small talk with him.

He began, “Mr Root, I’ve already explained to Mr Fitzwilliam that whatever the outcome of our conversation today, it is to remain entirely confidential, and is not to be discussed with anyone else.”

“Of course, I accept that,” I said.

“You’ve worked in military intelligence, so I think you understand secrecy,” he went on. I nodded and he said, “Good, I’ll begin. Mr Root, how much do you know about diamonds?”

“Not much,” I said. “Only what everybody knows. They cost a lot of money. A girl’s best friend and all that.”

“That’s all right. I myself came into the diamond business rather late in my career,” he said, settling back and putting his fingers together in front of him. “I had already made quite a bit of money in finance. Unlike some people who deal in diamonds, I don’t pretend to like them for their aesthetic value. I deal in them because they’re worth a lot of money. If I want something beautiful, I buy a painting.” I glanced up at the painting on the wall behind his desk. It was in oils, dark, showing signs of age in the patina and the hairline cracks. It was a country scene in the style of Constable. In fact, it might have
been
a Constable.

“Diamonds vary enormously in value,” he went on. “The best, a flawless diamond of one colour, may be worth a million dollars a carat. That’s not an enormous amount of money in the diamond trade. There are a lot of million-dollar diamonds around. It’s not the weight so much as the colour that determines the price – the purity and intensity of the colour. So a five-carat diamond might go for five or ten million dollars, or sometimes much more. Another five-carat diamond, a white diamond, say, or even a coloured diamond, might be worth less. They’re usually valued in dollars, by the way.

“Others are worth much less, although they are still valuable as gemstones. A diamond with imperfect green or yellow colouring might go for fifty or a hundred thousand dollars a carat. There are also industrial diamonds, which are used in cutting tools. They fetch a lot less, although they are still valuable.

“There are not many organizations in the world that market diamonds straight from the mine, so it’s usually easy to establish the provenance of a diamond. If an expensive diamond is sold, it comes with a certificate stating where and when it was mined, authenticated by the organization that mined it, and also where it’s been cut and polished.

“A few years ago, a very valuable diamond came on to the market that did not have any such certificate. It’s an absolutely flawless deep blue diamond, twenty-two carats. Magnificent colour. That’s very rare, it’s top quality. One like that doesn’t come on the market very often. It was said that it comes from a new diamond mine in Uzbekistan. Do you know where Uzbekistan is?”

“It’s in central Asia. North of Afghanistan.”

“Right. But nobody has found this new diamond mine. The diamond was offered for sale in London five years ago. As you can imagine, it caused quite a stir. The man offering it for sale was a German. He said that he didn’t own it, he was selling it on behalf of somebody else. He was very secretive about it, he wouldn’t sell it at auction, he sold it privately.

“As I say, he said it came from Uzbekistan. I went to Tashkent on investment business and I took the occasion to follow this up. There are Western businessmen there with a nose for anything like a diamond mine, and plenty of greedy Uzbeks who would lead them to it if there were one. No, it’s not from Uzbekistan, I’m pretty sure of that.

“With a certificate from a mining company, a diamond of that size and quality might be worth fifteen million pounds or even more. In view of the mystery around its origins, it’s been sold for less, I don’t know how much. I also don’t know who it was sold to originally.” I noticed that when he talked about a specific diamond, instead of diamonds in general, he talked about pounds and not dollars.

“For a while there was a lot of speculation in the trade about this diamond, but people lost interest. There are very few mines in the world that have ever produced diamonds of that quality. It couldn’t have been mined at one of those without a lot of people knowing about it.”

“Blood diamond? Africa?” I suggested. I had thrown out the phrase at random. I didn’t have much idea of what it meant.

“Perhaps. I want to know where this diamond comes from. Wherever it is, there are likely to be more. There may be a great big diamond mine somewhere that someone is sitting on and keeping secret. That’s a possibility. If there is, I’d like to know about it.”

He paused in his recitation and shot me one of his looks. It was evidently up to me now to say something to show that I was following him.

“Is it out of the question that it could be a clever fake?” I asked.

“Absolutely out of the question. It’s been examined under a microscope. Nobody pays a few million pounds for a diamond without knowing it’s genuine. You can’t fake diamonds. That’s why they’re special.”

I asked, “Is there any special reason, Mr Michelmore, why you’re interested in this? I hope you don’t mind my asking you.”

“To be blunt, I’m not sure it’s any of your business,” he said. I felt sure I could always count on him to be blunt. “However, I’ll answer your question. Partly because you may want reassurance that you’re not going to get involved in anything criminal. I’ve recently concluded several profitable business arrangements. There’s nothing more in the offing right now. I have capital to spare. The idea of finding a previously unknown diamond mine that could be exploited, perhaps where someone with plenty of funds could exploit it more – that appeals to me. Maybe an opportunity for investment. There could be a lot more diamonds where that came from. A diamond of that size doesn’t come all by itself. If it’s not an investment opportunity, well, I’m just curious anyway. I can afford to indulge my curiosity.”

“You say the diamond was brought here by a German. Does that have any significance?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s possible that the diamond mine is in Germany. I understand that you know Germany.”

“Yes. I did a year there as a student and I did a tour there in the army. And I speak German.”

“So I’ve been told. This could take you back to Germany. We don’t know who this German is. He’s covered his tracks. Perhaps you can uncover them.”

“Jeremy tells me we know who has the diamond now.”

“Yes, a Greek by the name of Stavros Stakis, who lives in Switzerland. His wife wears it on occasion. It’s been seen on her. But that’s only recently. Stakis may have bought it from this German and kept it hidden for five years, but that’s unlikely. I want you to find out where he got the diamond. Trace it back to its source.” A pause and another gleam from his eyes.

“Who is this Stavros Stakis?”

“As I say, he’s a rich Greek. I’m not surprised that you haven’t heard of him. He keeps his name out of the papers.”

“How did he make his money?”

“Shipping and then property. He owns chunks of Abu Dhabi and New York and Montreal, and probably some other places. I’ve made some enquiries. He seems to be pretty unscrupulous. A civil servant with the Quebec Provincial Government went to jail for taking a bribe from him. He lives in a big house in the mountains near Villars. He plays his cards close to the chest.”

“So if I knocked on his door and said, ‘Please tell me about that diamond’?”

“He’d kick you down the nearest Alp. If it were that easy, I wouldn’t have called on FHS. No, it’s going to require a lot of ingenuity. Are you interested?”

I said I was interested. So Jeremy arranged terms with him. FHS would pay me a salary while I was on the job, to be arranged between Jeremy and me, plus expenses, with a bonus for FHS, and presumably for me, if I succeeded in finding out where the diamond came from.

I was worried. As we left the office I said to Jeremy, “Look, I agreed because you agreed, but I have no idea how to go about it.”

“Neither do I.”

“But you said we’d do it.”

“This is civilian life, old boy, and the government doesn’t send me a pay cheque every month.”

Jeremy gave me some expenses in advance, and had some FHS cards printed with my name on them. I wrote a letter in French to Madame Helena Stakis. I said I was a magazine writer working on an article about jewellery, and I would like to come and talk to her about some of her jewellery, which I had heard was unusual. I said we might want to photograph her wearing some of it. I reckoned this might appeal to her vanity.