Eritrea
After leaving Badn, Mercer and Gibby made good time on their drive north to the foot of the Hajer Plateau. Mercer drove aggressively, racing across the desert like a professional rally driver. After recovering from his hangover, Gibby enjoyed the breakneck pace as only the young can. He would ululate when the heavy truck became airborne as Mercer rocketed out of shallow defiles, the deeply lugged tires spinning off plumes of dust when they came free of the earth.
Despite Mercer’s best efforts, they managed to cover only sixty miles in their intended direction, though the odometer showed they had traveled close to a hundred and fifteen. The terrain was too difficult for a more direct route. Also, Mercer did not take Negga’s warning about landmines lightly and steered the vehicle over only the worst of the ground — that which would have naturally slowed an advancing army and was thus less likely to be booby-trapped.
Even with Negga’s directions that the Valley of Dead Children was on the western side of the plateau, Mercer and Gibby still had over a hundred square miles to investigate. According to Mercer’s map, the area resembled a huge maze with hundreds of tall, isolated hills, box canyons, and meandering valleys that crisscrossed each other in complex patterns. He tried to match the map features to what was actually outside the four-wheel drive and quickly discovered the cartographer had simply drawn a representation of the region. No time had been taken to accurately depict every geographical landmark. For all practical purposes, the map was worthless. Instead, he taped the drawing he had done of the valley entrance to the dashboard and used it to guide him.
The territory had been carved by wind and water over the past few million years, the mountains worn down to stubs of harder rock. Having no idea into which mountain the valley was cut, Mercer and Gibby drove around each of them completely, checking the terrain against the drawing and coming up blank every time. They spent three days doing this before Mercer decided to attempt a desperate shortcut.
“This isn’t going to work,” Mercer told Gibby around noon on the third day.
In frustration, he powered the Land Cruiser up the slope of one of the taller hills, a seven-hundred-foot ascent in low range that loaded down the engine so badly that they reached the summit at a walking pace and the motor was on the verge of an explosive overheat. He twisted the key angrily, and in the sudden silence he could hear engine fluids boiling like a cauldron.
He snatched a pair of binoculars from the backseat and jumped onto the precarious load strapped to the Toyota’s roof. He turned slowly in place, the powerful Zeiss lenses pressed to his eyes.
“There’s a valley about two miles to the east that looks like it was once the major waterway through this area. If the kimberlite pipe broke through the surface, erosion would have spilled some stones or at least trace elements into the streambed.” Gibby didn’t have Habte’s command of English, so he looked at Mercer blankly. “Don’t worry, my friend. We may be on to something.”
It was just possible he could jump-start their search, he thought as he leapt back to the ground. He felt that same stirring of hope he’d experienced when the kidnappers mistakenly told him he was searching for a mine.
Surface topography had changed so much over the eons that the ancient river now appeared as if it had flowed uphill, but Mercer had no trouble telling in which direction the waters had once poured. He drove northward for nearly a mile and kept the Toyota canted at an angle as he guided it on one of the banks, suspecting that the streambed might be mined. They reached a sharp bend in the stream in the shadow of yet another mountain, a beige sandstone monument that offered little shade from the murderous sun. Gibby threw open his door as soon as Mercer braked.
“Don’t!” Mercer shouted just seconds before the boy stepped onto the dusty soil.
The temperature in the vehicle skyrocketed past a hundred degrees. Sweat flowed freely from Mercer’s pores, stinging his eyes and making his vision swim. Yet his concentration was total as he continued with the antenna probe. It took twenty minutes before he felt confident enough to step out of the truck and a further two long hours to ensure that the immediate area around the Land Cruiser was unspoiled.
“Get the shovels. It’s time to work.” He threw the antenna into the truck and stripped off his shirt. His torso gleamed like bronze, and the bunched muscles in his arms moved like oiled machinery.
They attacked the bank where the water’s fury would have smashed into it, forcing the ancient river to give up some of the debris it carried. Miners coveted spots like this when panning for gold. Rivers would disgorge pockets of the precious metal in similar curves when the currents eddied and could no longer support the weight of the raw nuggets. Alluvial diamonds were also ensnared in such natural traps, their specific gravity being greater than most other suspended material caught in the flow.
For hours they dug in silence. Occasionally, Mercer would dump a shovelful of gravel onto a plastic tarpaulin and pour water over it from their diminishing stores. Apart from their legendary properties of defraction, diffusion, and hardness, one of diamond’s lesser known attributes is its inability to remain wet. Pour water on it, spray it, or douse it and its surface will bead and dry instantly. He used his finger to stir the dirt, wetting it all, picking though it carefully, examining the minute chips of stone that showed brightly in the mud. Satisfied, he would scrape the mess off to the side and continue digging.
The hole was over eight feet wide and nearly six deep when it got too dark for Mercer to accurately study the samples. The sun was a distant red disk painting the desert in thousands of hues — from deepest black to the rich vermilion of a rose petal. He had known when they started digging that they might come up with nothing this close to the surface. Northern Eritrea’s bedrock, formed during the Archean era, was some of the oldest anywhere on the planet. Its depth below the surface could be a mile or more, and in the millions of years since its creation, thousands of types of soils had been deposited on it. What Mercer needed was a core driller, a machine that could probe miles below the surface and return with samples. Bitterly, he realized hand-digging a few feet into the earth was a waste of time. His earlier hope evaporated.
“If there is a pipe around here and if it reached the surface and if it was worn down by erosion, there’s no guarantee it followed this watershed, and even if it did, any evidence might be buried two thousand feet or more,” Mercer told Gibby. “We’re going to have to keep driving around and find the valley the hard way.”
Mercer tossed one more shovel load of dirt onto the rim of the hole. He heaved himself out of the pit, extending his hand to Gibby and hauling the slender Eritrean to ground level. He looked at the spilled dirt on the plastic sheet and hunkered down to inspect the muddy pile, spreading it around, crushing a hard lump of ancient clay with his fingers. He began picking through it as he had fifty times that day with fifty other samples, his body mechanically going through the motions while his mind was already preparing for sleep. One small lump of rock had not been wetted when he dumped water on the pile. He reached over and shook the canteen over it. A few drops landed on the stone, beaded instantly, and trickled off.
“Gibby, get the flashlight!” Mercer almost choked as he spoke. His mouth had gone dry. He shook the canteen over the stone again, but it was empty. “And more water!”
The lad caught Mercer’s urgency and scrambled to get the required items. He was at Mercer’s shoulder an instant later. Night had come swiftly, and Mercer shone the flashlight on the kidney bean-sized stone between his fingers. The pebble was dark, cracked, and scarred, but there was a translucency to it, similar to pure quartz. Shaking slightly, Mercer tipped a liter bottle of water over his hands, washing away the accumulated grit from his skin, but no matter how much he poured over the stone, it remained perfectly dry.
“Is it?” Gibby breathed, his eyes fever bright as he looked at the stone.
Mercer didn’t respond. He strode to the Toyota, pressed a sharp corner of the octahedral crystal to the front windshield, and drew the stone across the glass. The screech set his teeth on edge. There was a deep white scar on the safety glass.
He was grinning when he spun back to Gibby, tossing the stone to the startled young man.
“It’s too rough to ever sit in an engagement ring, but you’re holding about twelve carats of industrial diamond, my friend.” Mercer whooped. Gibby looked at the stone, understanding at last, and added his own cries.
