African Ice (27 page)

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (AP)

 

      
Embattled families of the 229 victims of Cranston Air Flight 111 that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in September 2002 are again protesting the possible desecration of their loved ones' final resting spot by treasure hunters
.

 

      
Ari Kryptostolis, a professional treasure hunter operating out of Athens, has confirmed his company will anchor a suction dredge ship above the wreckage site and comb the area for $300 million in missing diamonds
.

 

      
Although 90 percent of the wreckage has been recovered, a stainless steel tube containing the diamonds has never been found. Experts speculate the tube was driven deep into the seabed on impact, and sits buried under a layer of sand. It is Kryptostolis's intention to strip away that sand and expose the tube
.

 

      
It is this proposed action that spokesmen for the families are calling “crass” and even “illegal.”

 

      
They may have a point, according to the law courts of Nova Scotia. Shortly after the crash, an exclusive application to search the area was granted to Lloyd's of London under the Treasure Trove Act. It appears Kryptostolis is in direct violation of that mandate
.

 

      
However, Kryptostolis has also discovered a clause in the Act that may open a legal loophole for him to begin his search within the limits of Canadian law. And it is based on this loophole that he is bringing his ship and crew into the area, ready to begin salvage operations
.

 

      
Lloyd's of London refused to comment on the latest development in what has been a public relations nightmare for the company since they first made their application shortly after the crash. Bowing to pressure from the families, Lloyd's did not proceed with its proposed search for the diamonds. Instead, they paid out the claim to the owner, Gem-Star, a privately owned company operating out of New York, and wrote off the loss
.

      
For now, the grief and suffering of the families has
again been brought to the forefront as a dredge ship prepares to hover above the burial site. Only time will tell whether Kryptostolis will be successful in his search for one of the richest treasures resting on the seabed
.

Samantha read the second-to-last paragraph over and over. Gem-Star had owned the diamonds on Cranston Air Flight 111. What the hell was going on? This was too much coincidence to
be
a coincidence. She stood up and paced the room.

Three hundred million dollars in missing diamonds. Gem-Star. Cranston Air Flight 111. Kerrigan. The diamonds in the Ruwenzori. Her intuition was in overdrive—somehow all of these were related. But how? She slowed her mind down, and analyzed each thought as it came to her. If Kerrigan, and subsequently Gem-Star, had garnered those diamonds from the Congo, then there should be a record somewhere of an expedition preceding the Cranston Air crash by a few weeks or months. He had to send someone in to find them, and if she could tie that team back to Gem-Star, then she would know for sure that the diamonds on that plane were from the find she had just unearthed. Christ, how long had Kerrigan been looking for this vein? And a better question was, why was Gem-Star mixed up in this if Kerrigan was pulling the strings independently?

Sam clicked on the Internet search engine and entered “geologists.” The American Institute of Professional Geologists, AIPG, came up as a hit, and she double-clicked on it. She scanned through its website until she came to the commemorative section, focusing on famous members who had passed away over the years, and geologists who had died while working in the field. She scrolled down to the year 2002. Two geologists had been killed while working abroad that year, one in a traffic accident in London, and the other in Africa. She concentrated on the latter, a Dr. Anthony Leeds.

According to the article, Leeds had headed an expedition into the southern region of the Congo in May 2002. His team had been set upon by hostile natives, and all twelve members killed. Funeral services were in the form of a memorial, as the bodies had been mutilated beyond recognition. She mentally calculated the time line. The expedition went in sometime in April or May, probably to northeastern Congo, not the south as reported. Kerrigan got core samples from the vein, but not the location. He analyzed the rough diamonds, knowing that he was onto an incredible find. But then he made his first mistake. He wiped out the team before he knew exactly where the diamonds were. She nodded to herself—that made perfect sense.

Now that she knew how difficult the kimberlite pipe was to find, she could assume that Kerrigan had felt he could find it if he knew its approximate location. Leeds must have seen through Kerrigan, as she had, and withheld the information. And so Leeds had been killed. Then Kerrigan had tried unsuccessfully to find the diamonds. But for how long? When was the next expedition he sent in? She went back to the AIPG site and continued looking.

The next prominent geologist to die was more than familiar to her. Dr. Samuel Carlson, killed in a plane crash off the coast of Morocco in the spring of 2004. She swallowed hard and fought back tears. She knew the story, and skipped over the details of how both her parents had died when the twin-engine commuter plane had lost altitude and crashed into the Atlantic. She scrolled down further, finally stopping at an entry from late 2005. Dr. Phillip McCullagh, a highly respected hard-rock geologist from Hartford, Connecticut, had disappeared without a trace while leading a team into Sierra Leone. What a pile of bullshit that was, she thought bitterly. The bones Travis had discovered only a few hundred yards from the diamonds were the remains of McCullagh and his team.

So Kerrigan had sent in at least three teams over the past eight years, including hers. He must have spent countless hours between the time he killed Leeds and finally gave up trying to find the diamonds himself and hired another geologist—almost four years. Then he got impatient and hired McCullagh. If McCullagh's crew was the second team, and they had also found the pipe, that meant Kerrigan had repeated his first mistake all over again. And while Kerrigan was the mastermind, it was Mugumba who pulled the trigger. The son of a bitch. He deserved what he got. The man had used his position within the Congolese army to lure innocent people into the jungle and then slaughter them when he got the word from Kerrigan. It was coming together now, but there was still one thing that she didn't get. Why was Gem-Star noted as the owner of the diamonds? If, in fact, Kerrigan was running this show on his own, that was the one piece of the puzzle that didn't fit.

A noise in the courtyard below startled her, and she peeked out the window. Travis and Alain were back.

“How did the car shopping go?” she asked.

“Marvelous,” Alain said, smiling. “We landed ourselves a real beauty. And for half the price the prick was asking.”

“It's a piece of shit,” Travis said, laughing. “And we probably paid twice what it's really worth. But it's a truck, sort of, and it'll get us out of here. How are you? Everything okay here?”

“More than okay. Listen to this.” Samantha took the next ten minutes filling in the men on her speculations. Once she finished, the room was silent. Travis rose and poured some of the tea Samantha had brewed while she talked. He sipped it slowly, and no one spoke, waiting for the team leader to agree or disagree with her conjecture.

“Sam, the diamonds that were leaving New York, en route to Geneva, were they rough stones or cut?”

“Rough,” she answered. “Once they arrived in Geneva they would be sent on to Antwerp to be accurately appraised, then cut and polished.”

“So the three-hundred-million-dollar price tag they placed on the stones could have been just an approximate estimate,” he said and she nodded. “Perhaps far below their actual value.”

She nodded again, then suddenly sat bolt upright. “Christ,” she whispered. “You're not suggesting . . .”

“It's just speculation, Sam,” he said.

“There's a way to find out if we're right,” Sam responded, moving to the keyboard and typing a couple of words into the search engine. A response came back almost immediately. Twenty-seven matches found for “diamond sights.” She clicked on an icon to arrange them chronologically, then looked at the results. She opened numerous files, looking at the contents, then glanced back to him. She nodded.

Alain looked confused. “I'm sorry, guys, I don't get what's going on. Would someone like to tell me what you two are thinking?”

Samantha started. “Kerrigan never introduced Travis or me to anyone inside Gem-Star, so we suspected the company had no idea of what Kerrigan was actually doing in the Congo. Yet Gem-Star showed up as the owners of the diamonds on the Cranston Air Flight 111 manifest. There's a good chance that those diamonds came from the kimberlite pipe we just uncovered.”

“How do you know that?” Alain asked. “That's a hell of a stretch.”

“Not really,” Sam countered. “Only a small percentage of the yearly diamond production is of the quality of our find. And that makes them easily tracked, sort of. The legitimate diamonds come through London, with very few exceptions. The illegitimate stones pass through Switzerland, and believe me, there's a lot of illegal rough floating about. Whichever way the stones enter the pipeline, they eventually head to Antwerp to be cut and polished.”

Alain's eyes lit up as he started to get the drift. “So even if someone steals a bunch of diamonds from a mine in, say, South Africa, and smuggles them to Switzerland, they end up going through the same process as legitimate diamonds. With De Beers and the Diamond Trading Company controlling production.”

“Exactly. De Beers knows that it can't control all the roughs from every mine in the world, but what they can control is the diamond auctions, or sights, as they're called in the industry.”

“So what did you get from looking on the Internet under ‘sights'?” Alain asked.

“We know that three hundred million dollars in diamonds belonging to Gem-Star went down with Cranston Air Flight 111 on September 2, 2002. We also know that hostile natives killed a prominent geologist, Dr. Anthony Leeds, in the Congo in May of 2002. It's not that much of a stretch to guess that he found the pipe and brought a good deal of rough out with him. Kerrigan had him killed and kept the diamonds, but couldn't find the pipe. Now this is where it gets interesting. Somehow, someone at Gem-Star found out about the diamonds. I have no idea how. But they must have, because in September the company loaded an indestructible steel tube onto a plane bound for Geneva. From there the diamonds would have been shipped to Antwerp to be cut and polished, and their true value established. But something happened. The plane crashed.”

“So Kerrigan didn't
want
the diamonds to reach Geneva,” said Alain. “Once they reached one of the sights, the quality of the gems would be revealed and Gem-Star would know that the three hundred million dollars they thought they had put on the plane was undervalued. And a mining company would pick up quite quickly on an error like that. Davis Perth would be asking Kerrigan a lot of questions.”

“Precisely,” Sam said. “And what's the best way to be sure the diamonds never reach Geneva?” She waited a moment, then answered her own question. “Don't put them on the plane.”

“I didn't see that part of it,” Travis said softly. “I thought they were in the cargo hold, just as the manifest said.”

“No, and the reason I know for sure are the sights that followed over the next ten months. Look here,” she said, pointing to the screen. “Extremely high-quality Sierra Leone stones reached nine of the next sixteen sights. Except they weren't from Sierra Leone, they were from our kimberlite pipe in the Ruwenzori. Kerrigan never loaded those diamonds onto the plane. He kept them and then sold some of them over the next few months at these sights. I'm positive of that.”

“But when the plane arrived in Geneva,” Alain began, “they would find out that the tube was empty. . . .” He stopped, open-mouthed.

“Exactly,” Samantha said, her face dark. “It makes you wonder what brought down Cranston Air Flight 111.”

Patrick Kerrigan reached for a towel, then stepped from the shower onto the thick mat the hotel provided for its premier guests. He rubbed the plush towel across his head quickly, drying his hair enough to comb it out, and put in some gel to hold it. He stood in front of the mirror, admiring what he saw. Fifty-three years of age and in peak physical condition. Rich and powerful, and still filled with the driving ambition that had brought him this far in life.

The phone rang and he walked into the living room and answered it. A hushed voice spoke to him from across the Atlantic.

“We've found her,” the man said from his office deep in the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

“Where is she?” Kerrigan asked, his pulse quickening.

“She's in Cairo. Her IP address popped up for a couple of minutes on the Internet, then went down again. But it was long enough to get a pretty good fix.”

“Where in Cairo?”

“Somewhere near the Mausoleum al-Husain. The service provider she signed on with is quite small. They only cover the area south of the Sari-Ramsis to the northern tip of the City of the Dead. I'll try to get the exact address, but it could take a while.”

“How long?” Kerrigan asked, impatient.

“One, perhaps two days,” his informant responded.

“Okay,” he said, pondering the time delay. One day was fine, two was stretching it. “Try to be back to me within twenty-four hours.”

“I'll do my best,” the voice said; then the line went dead.