“And then what?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sliding off her sunglasses so she could wipe her tears away.
My God! thought Walter. I’ve never seen eyes as beautiful as these, and where did these tears come from so suddenly? Can she do this on command?
“I’ll have to figure that out later,” she said, clearing her throat in an effort to regain her composure. “For now, I need you to find Harry and protect him until we can think of something, some way out of this for him. Do that, and when you’ve found someplace safe, and I know where he is and that he’s all right, I’ll think of something.”
Walter lowered his head, rested his hands on his knees, looked down at the wooden planks of the pier, watching the water reflect the light between the cracks in the boards. I must be crazy, he thought.
“Twenty-five thousand a week,” he said. “Two weeks minimum. Plus expenses. In advance. Cash.”
“You’re no Philip Marlowe,” she said.
“I’m no who?”
“You’re not an old movie buff either, are you?” Conchita was far more amused than Walter could make sense of. “Philip Marlowe was a private investigator, a PI. The Big Sleep? Humphrey Bogart?” She looked at him but he registered nothing. “Marlowe only charged twenty-five dollars a day,” she said. “You might as well be asking for the Czar’s gold.”
“Huh? What’s the Czar’s gold?”
“It’s just a saying,” she said. “You know, like all the tea in China.”
If she expected something from him, a reaction of some kind, she didn’t get it. Walter had nothing to say. Finally, Conchita Crystal flashed him one of her famous smiles and asked, “Cash?”
“Yes,” he said, acknowledging their agreement. A warm smile had already replaced his otherwise slightly bewildered gaze.
“I’ll have the money delivered to your home this afternoon. When will you begin?”
“I already have,” said Walter.
1920
Warm breezes, the scent of fresh flowers and the sounds of newborn birds ushered in the English spring of 1920, sweeping out the harsh winter that had gone before it. Frederick Lacey thought God himself had written a symphony, rising to a mighty crescendo, all the senses in celestial harmony, and dedicated it to Aminette. On the second Thursday of May, Aminette Lacey went into labor. By most accounts, her baby was not due for another two or three weeks. Her husband had prepared well for the birth of his child, as he did for everything. His wife would deliver their child in a rosewood bed, hand crafted, made in Indonesia and shipped to England to be christened by new life in the Lacey family. It traveled around the world on the flagship of Frederick Lacey’s commercial fleet, a vessel like God’s own spring, named Aminette.
Things did not go well. The doctor, the midwife and the attendants were helpless. Aminette hemorrhaged, uncontrollably. As the lifeblood drained from her slender body, she looked sorrowfully into her husband’s eyes. She knew the man who could do anything, could do nothing to save her. A smile as serene as any he ever saw lit up her face as Aminette died holding tightly to her daughter. Lacey pleaded with his young wife, as if by demand alone he could keep her in this world. The last thing she saw before closing her eyes a final time was Frederick’s face, racked with misery, contorted in tears. He named his daughter Audrey.
In less than a week Djemmal-Eddin Messadou made the arduous journey from Georgia to London. Lacey waited to bury his wife until her father arrived. Lacey was devastated. He moved on instinct alone. Djemmal-Eddin too was stricken with grief, but he had seen more death than his young son-in-law and was better able to recover his senses. And recovery was necessary. Djemmal-Eddin did not have the luxury of prolonged mourning. He held the fate of his people in his hands. The Bolsheviks had sworn death to him and to the Transcaucasian Federation of Dagestan, Azerbaijan and his beloved Georgia. The unexpected death of his daughter was a terrible blow softened only a little by the birth of his newest granddaughter. Yet, it was a blow from which he would recover. Aminette’s was but a single human life. And he, her father-although a direct descendant of the Great Shamyl, the Lion of Dagestan-his pain, cruelly suffered at her fate, was solitary. One woman, one man, they are not that important. The death of his country and his countrymen-those who put their trust, their very lives and the lives of their families in his keeping-would be far worse. He told Lacey he could not stay long. When the time came for him to leave, the two men stood together. With firm resolve they shook hands, then they each broke down and sobbed on the other’s shoulder. Those who waited on Djemmal-Eddin waited in respectful silence. No man would interfere at this moment. Two and a half years would pass before Frederick Lacey and Djemmal-Eddin Messadou would shake each other’s hand again.
Solly Joel was in London in May 1920. He had recently returned from a lengthy visit to South Africa, to celebrate his true loves-the fifty-bedroom mansion he called Maiden Erlegh House, on the outskirts of Reading, and the sport of kings, horse racing. Through his ownership of the City amp; South London Railway, Joel knew William Lacey from Liverpool. He had heard stories of the young Lacey and was familiar with his growing reputation and the prestige that came with his victories in The Great War. But it was in tribute to Djemmal-Eddin that he sought an opportunity to pay his respects. Or, that’s what he said. The evening before the Georgian’s return to his native land, Solly Joel was the only guest for dinner. The three men ate together in Lacey’s dining room, a setting that could accommodate three dozen comfortably, and had more than once. Condolences were in order, but there was another, more important purpose to Joel’s visit.
Solomon Barnato Joel, Just Solly to the powerful and powerless alike, may have been the richest man in the world. It was hard to tell, difficult to get an accurate reading on matters as personal as that in those days. Following the mysterious death by drowning of his uncle Barney Barnato, the founder of the DeBeers diamond cartel, young Solly Joel assumed total control of that vast enterprise. From his base in diamond mining, Joel branched out to gold mines and soon manipulated and dominated the world market in both stones and precious metals. A flamboyant character, who thrived on bravado and basked in the glory of public attention, Solly Joel was among the first of the great industrialists and entrepreneurs to invade popular culture. With no thought of profit, he bought up the famed Drury Lane Theater in London and established a stable of the finest racehorses in the world.
His most daring adventure, the one deal everyone speculated about, was his strange and unique relationship with the Russians. When the Bolsheviks deposed the Czar in 1917, they found themselves embarrassed to become the world’s richest diamond owners. Centuries of accumulation, an act of unprecedented rape of Russian national treasure, had now devolved to and given the Communists the world’s largest, most valuable collection of diamonds. Desperate for money, hard currency with real trade value, and ideologically burdened with the Czar’s excesses, the Bolsheviks were easy prey to Solly Joel’s machinations. In a daring stroke of international hubris, Solly Joel offered to take the Czar’s diamonds off their hands and give the Bolsheviks the enormous sum of 250,000 English pounds, the most prized currency in the world. Moreover, Joel made the offer sight unseen. He would take the entire collection, as is. The Russians, in a sign that they understood nothing about money and really did mean it when they said they would usher in a new financial age for the world, accepted. They delivered the goods-in fourteen cigar boxes-and Solly Joel dutifully transferred the quarter million pounds. Improbable as it was-a schoolboy’s logic dictated otherwise-both sides concluded the transaction with apparent satisfaction. One of them had been had, and it wasn’t Just Solly. By securing the Czar’s entire collection for himself, Joel was able to stymie any possibility of the future sale of phony pieces, paraded as secret jewels from the vault of the late Czar. Had this happened, the diamond market might have spun out of control. As well, he completely eliminated the potential for any damage that might affect worldwide diamond prices had others purchased the collection. In this way, Joel ensured that all the Czar’s diamonds would not come on the market at once. Over the coming years, until his own death in 1931, Solly Joel was able to reintroduce, as he called it, piece by piece, some of the most spectacular diamond jewelry ever made. His financial wizardry was such, he did so while increasing prices, not depressing them. Of course, the Bolsheviks had no idea what those stones were really worth. They were the proverbial Christians being tossed to the lions. They were soft food for the predator. Solly Joel bought them sight unseen because he knew their actual value was perhaps twenty or fifty times what he paid. To this day some who know the diamond trade well say that figure was closer to a hundred times what Joel paid. Just Solly rightly figured the Russians for patsies. Why not the
