Skeleton Coast (Oregon Files 4)

“I’m just curious why you even care,” Juan hedged.

“Because someone tried to kill me today and I want to know why and I think you can help.”

“I’m sorry, Sloane, but I’m just the captain of a rust bucket not long for the breakers yard. I can’t help you.”

“So you’re not denying what I saw.”

“I don’t know what you saw but there’s nothing special about the Oregon or her crew.”

She stood up and walked unerringly to where the tiny camera had been mounted in the frame of an old picture of an Indian actress who’d been famous fifteen years ago. She pulled the picture from the wall and the camera popped free to dangle by its wire. “Oh, really?”

This time blood did drain from Juan’s face.

“I noticed it when you said ‘that’s obvious’ after getting the note from Maurice. I assume someone is monitoring us right now.” She didn’t wait for Juan to reply. “I’ll make a deal with you, Captain Cabrillo. You stop lying to me and I’ll stop lying to you. I’ll even go first.” She sat back across from him. “Tony and I didn’t hook up through an Internet chat room. We work together in the security division of DeBeers and we really are looking for a sunken ship that might be loaded with about a billion dollars’ worth of diamonds. Do you know anything about diamonds?”

“Only that they’re rare, expensive, and if you give one to a woman you damned well better mean it.”

That made her smile. “Two out of three.”

“Two out of three, huh? I know they’re expensive and I know they’re rare so you must have men casually giving you diamonds all the time. You’re certainly attractive enough.”

Her smile turned into a little laugh. “Ah, no. They are expensive and you should mean it, but diamonds aren’t rare. They’re not as common as semiprecious stones but they’re not as scarce as you’re led to believe. The price is kept artificially inflated because one company controls about ninety-five percent of the market. They control all the mines so they can set any price they wish. Every time a new diamond field is discovered they are there to buy it up and eliminate any chance of competition. It’s a cartel so tight it makes OPEC look like amateurs. It’s so controlling that several executives would be arrested for antitrust violations if they ever set foot in the United States.

“They dribble out stones from their vaults at a very selective pace in order to keep prices at a constant. If inventories dwindle they increase production and when there is an excess of stones they hoard them in their London vaults. Bearing all this in mind, what do you think would happen if a billion dollars in diamonds were ever to be dumped in the marketplace?”

“Prices would drop.”

“And we lose our monopoly and the whole system comes crashing down. All those women out there would realize the rocks on their fingers aren’t forever after all. It would also ripple through the world’s economy, destabilizing gold prices and currencies.”

That was something Juan knew a little about since it was only a couple months ago that he and the crew thwarted an attempt to flood the world’s gold market. “I see your point,” he said.

“If such a treasure-laden ship existed, there are two ways our office would prevent this from happening. Number one is wait to see if someone else finds the diamonds and simply buy them all outright. Obviously this would be expensive, so we would want to take the second route.”

“Check to see if the rumor of a sunken treasure is true and find it for yourselves.”

Sloane touched the tip of her nose. “Bingo. I was the person who first pieced together the story behind the treasure so I was given the lead on this trip. Tony’s ostensibly my assistant but he’s absolutely worthless. This is a big deal for me and my career. If I could find the stones I would probably be named VP.”

“Where did the diamonds come from?” Juan asked, interested in what she had to say despite himself.

“Fascinating story there. They were originally mined in Kimberley by members of a tribe called the Herero. The Herero king knew there was a battle coming with the German occupiers of his homeland and thought if he had the diamonds he could use them to buy English protection. For a decade or so his men worked in Kimberley and snuck stones back to Hereroland when their contracts ended. From what I was able to learn, workers would cut themselves in the arm or leg a couple of months before starting their contracts. When they arrived at Kimberley charts of their bodies were ma

de noting all the old scars they had. Once they were in the workers’ compound a tribesman who had been there for a while and had already pilfered a suitable stone from the pit would reopen the wound and slip it inside. When it came time to leave a year later, the guards at the workers compound would check the chart made when the Herero first showed up. They would often surgically reopen fresh scars to check for hidden stones, a popular smuggling system after the more obvious down-the-throat technique, which was literally voided with laxatives. But the old scar was on their chart and wouldn’t be checked.”

“Damned clever,” Juan remarked.

“According to what I was able to discover they had sacks and sacks of only the largest and clearest stones when the tribe was robbed.”

“Robbed?”

“By five Englishmen, one just a teen whose parents were missionaries in Hereroland. I was able to put the story together from the father’s journal because after the robbery he went to track his son. His journal reads like a torturer’s checklist of things he wanted to do once he caught the boy.

“I won’t bore you with the details, but the teenager, Peter Smythe, hooked up with an adventurer of the old school named H. A. Ryder as well as three other men. As part of their plan they cabled Cape Town to have a steamship, the HMS Rove, wait for them off the coast of what was then called German South West Africa. They planned to cross the Kalahari and Namib deserts on horseback and meet up with the ship.”

“And I take it the Rove was never heard from again?”

“She left Cape Town right after receiving the telegram from Ryder and was later reported lost at sea.”

“Say all this is true and not another myth like King Solomon’s mines. What makes you think it would be in this area?”