The Final Cut (A Brit in the FBI 1)

She took a room at the Hotel Kipling, stashed her bag in the room’s safe, showered and dressed, then went next door to the Lord Jim Pub on Rue de Lausanne to have some food before the meeting with Lanighan. It was an English-style pub, full of afternoon revelers drinking microbrews and shouting their drunken opinions at a football match playing on all of the bar’s big-screen televisions. She ordered bangers and mash and wondered, as she had many times, if this would be her last meal. She saw Grant’s face and forced away the sadness and regret.

The food arrived. She forked warm mashed potatoes into her mouth, savoring the salty onion gravy, as authentically British as any she’d had near the River Thames.

She ate slowly, enjoying the meal.

Part of her preparation to steal the Koh-i-Noor diamond was to become an expert, to learn every single aspect of its storied history, even the lore. Especially the lore. She’d found deeper legends, ones she’d only half believed, rarely spoken of, long forgotten in the stone’s tragic path through documented history.

During her studies, she’d come across an old parchment that posed the idea of the three stones. When she’d read it, she’d shaken her head and dismissed the idea as absurd, possibly the result of an opium dream. Now she worked to recall the story, picking over the words to find the truth behind them.

According to the parchments, Sultan Aurangzeb was a visionary. He knew others would kill him for the diamond. To be safe, he had Borgio split the stone in two, and while publicly parading the smaller stone known as the Koh-i-Noor, he’d secreted the much larger stone in a place no one knew.

Over the centuries, this secret was passed down from father to son. While the Koh-i-Noor was fought over, bled over, stolen, and retrieved at the cost of hundreds of lives, the larger piece was kept hidden, safe, its whereabouts passed down from generation to generation.

The parchment claimed a long-ago prince’s son was born blind, and when the father pressed the stone to the child’s forehead, his sight was restored. If the stone could heal—but that was ridiculous.

Could Saleem actually believe this?

Three hundred and fifteen years later, according to the parchment, when Prince Albert had Coster cut the diamond down further, the dust was collected, placed in a velvet bag, and stowed in a safe to be used to edge a skaif to cut more diamonds. This was the normal course of things; any time a diamond was cut, the dust was collected and recycled.

The next day, when the bag was retrieved to be put into service, the young lapidary who picked it up felt something bulky within. The parchment claimed that the diamond dust had reformed into a small stone. Shaken, the fellow shared the story with his wife and fled to Germany to put the stone in his family’s safe. He was found dead on the train to Berlin, his body stripped of its treasure.

And so the third and final piece of the diamond was lost to history forever.

Three stones. A legend only the most dedicated fans of the Koh-i-Noor even knew existed. To hold the three stones in your hand was to have the power of ten thousand men. Its measure was greater than gold, and the man who owned such power would control his destiny, and the destinies of many others.

The curse, though—she had to believe it was real. Every man who’d believed himself lord and steward over the Koh-i-Noor met with a bad end. Only God or a woman could wield the power properly, that part of the warning was quite clear.

Legends. Stories meant to entertain men, to educate, to foster a desire to hunt treasures long lost to the mortal world.

One stone, cleaved into three pieces. One piece, now in her possession, sought after by a man who clearly believed in the magic of merging the three stones.

If the fragments of stories Saleem’s father had shared with her were true, his family had held the largest piece of the diamond for more than four centuries.

Kitsune knew where the third piece was hidden, because Mulvaney had told her.

Only a true descendant of the original Indian line would have the power to unite the stones.

Kitsune shook her head. She knew what the prophecy foretold, but it all seemed too incredible to believe.

She paid her bill and checked her watch. It was time to meet with Lanighan, then leave her old life behind forever.

64

Geneva, Switzerland

Hotel Beau-Rivage

Friday, early evening

One conversation thirty years ago had set him on an exhausting path. Unite the stones, and it will heal man.

To hell with man.

From his sixteenth year, Saleem wanted the god’s diamond, not for India, but for himself. Saleem’s father had been right. Saleem needed the stones united to heal himself.

He often wondered, if they had retrieved the Koh-i-Noor and its mate in time, would his grandfather have truly been healed? He’d seen the man’s face clear of its wretched pain and age when he held the one large piece, seen it with his own eyes.

Would his father, saddled with kidney disease, have lived beyond his sixtieth year?