Zero Hour

Malisse looked at him.

“I hope my ears are not too visibly perked,” he said. “Else the hounds see me for a hare.”

“Better the other way around, eh?”

“Best not to be seen at all in my game.”

Lembock watched him a moment, then gave a calm little smile.

“I want to tell you what I know,” he said, and motioned toward the ceiling with his head. “They are words I haven’t yet shared with those above us.”

Malisse considered a moment, then shrugged.

“My acrophobia keeps me from getting any closer to the rooftop than our present height,” he said. “This anxiety limits, as well, my direct contact with the Secretariat, and reinforces my choice to keep my professional dealings here at your level.”

“So I trust we have an understanding?”

“Clear and absolute, yes.”

“Then I’ll get straight to it.” Lembock inhaled, the ever-present rasp in his breath. “Somewhat over a year ago, a jewelry maker in Tel Aviv acquired a parcel of thirty-eight round-cut Ceylon blue sapphires from a New York broker, a member of the Club. They were small — each about four millimeters in size — but of high quality, weighing approximately a third of a carat each.”

“Their GIA gradings?”

“Clarity was rated as VS Type Two… nearly flawless to the unaided eye. Color is a deep violetish blue, six- five saturation.”

“Enhancements?”

“The typical blow heating done near Sri Lankan mines.”

“They are Code E, then?”

“Yes.”

“Very nice, if unremarkable,” Malisse said. “What did they go for wholesale, do you know?”

“Two thousand five hundred dollars, U.S. currency.”

Malisse grunted. Again, that seemed normal.

“You mentioned Sri Lanka,” he said. “I would imagine, then, that the sapphires come from Ratnapuran gem mines… ”

Lembock shrugged.

“The source wasn’t divulged,” he said. “Of course, a broker is under no obligation to share that information.”

“Understandable,” Malisse said. “And a common policy, is it not?”

“Every middleman’s worry is to be cut out of the process, their very warranted insecurity premised on being nonessential,” Lembock said, nodding. “In the field, they are sometimes joked about in a disparaging way. Called schnorrers. Sponging, conniving beggars.”

“Because their commission adds to the selling price.”

“And on the simple theory that leaving them out of a sale reduces the price,” Lembock said. “Most purchasers would rather bargain directly with the manufacturer. There is so much aggressive competition in the marketplace these days, so much pressure to best a rival dealer’s lowest markdown, that it is becoming truer and truer to say this is also favored on the supply side… although many dealers still prefer to use brokerages.”

Malisse thought for a moment, mopping himself with his handkerchief. There were, he knew, different reasons for that preference, all legitimate. Conditions of anonymity stipulated by collectors in antique and estate sell-offs, the simple lack of a sales, marketing, and distribution force by a gem producer… to name a couple.

“The sapphire transaction,” he said. “What was unusual about it?”

“Nothing,” Lembock said. “Aside from the broker being known chiefly as a trader of diamonds.”

“Comparably graded merchandise?”

“Very,” Lembock said. “Decent, but not close to the best.”

Malisse looked at him.

“Then there is either more going on than a broker’s minor diversification, or you are losing me,” he said.

“I’m not sure, Delano, that you are ever lost,” Lembock said, and paused. “But I want to move ahead a half year or so to last June. Knowing he had to make a trip to New York, the broker contacts the same buyer to inquire if he is interested in another parcel of small round-cuts similar to the previous stones… this time offering several sapphires of a higher grade along with them. Ceylons again. VS Type Two. Again violet-blue, six-five saturation. This time they are between six and eight carat ovals. No enhancements… their Code N certifications guaranteed in a detailed laboratory report and a second evaluation by a highly accredited gemologist.”

“Asking prices?”

“Twenty-five hundred dollars per carat. The largest sold for almost thirty thousand dollars.”

“Quite a stride for the broker.”

“Yes,” Lembock said. “And what if I were to tell you he was also at the Miami bourse earlier that month for a delivery to a regular wholesale customer, his typical parcels of so-so diamonds… and that he showed that customer, in addition, a matched pair of blue and pink oval-cut sapphires? Top-notch, Ceylon, six carats each, priced in the neighborhood of two thousand per carat?”

Malisse lifted an eyebrow. “If you were to say that, I would begin to think it less likely our broker had stumbled upon a fluke one-time contact than found a new and steady source of merchandise. I would further have some thoughts about whether his strides, plural, had raised him into an entirely different league.”

Lembock nodded.

“The Florida wholesaler reluctantly passed,” he said. “Financial constraints prevented him from making the investment on speculation — without a resale to a jewelry maker or retailer lined up — but he was impressed, and asked whether he might keep our seller in mind should he have a need for those sapphires, or sapphires of that caliber, in the future. He offered to tell anyone else who might be in the market about the stones.”

“An offer which, I take it, was accepted.”

“With appreciation,” Lembock said. “And seven months later, earlier this month, he did mention the broker to a close friend in Germany, a fellow wholesaler who’d won a high-end designer client with a consistent demand for select goods.”

“Such selfless generosity to a competitor.”

Another faint smile appeared on Lembock’s face, crinkling the lines around his eyes.

“Our trade borders on the incestuous,” he said. “Everyone knows somebody, who knows somebody else, who happens to know the first person, and has a fair chance of being married to his or her relative… and all this makes for very bankable assets.”

“One hand washes the other.”

Lembock gave another nod.

“As it turned out in this case, the friend’s hand already had been washed.”

“He knew of the broker?”

“From a common acquaintance, the Tel Aviv buyer I mentioned,” Lembock said. “Moreover, our broker had just sold him an exquisite gem… one that put the matched ovals to shame.”

“Sapphire again.”

“Padparadscha sapphire,” Lembock said. “Cushion-cut. Almost nine carats. Perfect symmetry, intense color saturation.”

Malisse’s eyebrow, which had remained raised, now bent to a sharply acute angle.

“It must have been worth — what? — fifty, sixty thousand dollars?”

“The stone sold for over seventy-five, our broker and purchaser meeting right here in Antwerp only days ago to finalize their deal.”

Malisse formed a spout with his lips and exhaled a stream of air.

“How did you learn of it?” he said.

Lembock looked at him.

“The Miami dealer could see how a second-rate broker he’d known for many years might come upon several