Zero Hour

hasty tete-a-tete, and my wearing out a pair of shoes to make my way over here.”

“Be glad I’m thorough,” Lathrop said.

Avram looked at him. “Do you honestly think it’s possible I’m being watched?”

“I’m saying if there’s somebody on your tail I don’t spot, you could wind up pacing a federal prison cell instead of the street.”

Avram gave no response. Some things were better left uncontemplated.

He turned his attention to the gem case as Lathrop opened it, focusing on its contents.

Lathrop watched the avid expression spread across his features.

“There you go,” he said. “I thought they might grab you.”

Avram almost gaped. The case’s black foam insert tray held three rows of round, transparent jars, five to a row. Each of the lidded jars was in its own snug compartment and contained a stone of a silky violet-blue. There were radiants, round brilliants, ovals. But though they varied in size, cut, and finish, their smooth purity of color remained consistent.

He tore his eyes from them with effort.

“These gems,” he said. Staring at Lathrop. “They look like Kashmirs.”

Lathrop shook head.

“They are Kashmirs,” he said. “World class.”

“By whose definition?”

Lathrop shrugged.

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck,” he said. “You’re the connoisseur, Avram. You should be able to tell the real thing from a fake.”

Avram’s gaze held on his face a moment, then returned to the stones, enraptured by their cool blue radiance. Whatever notions he’d held of feigning nonchalance had been laughable, but he would settle for a semblance of restraint.

“Do you know about the Kashmir sapphire?” he said. “Its history?”

“I know what I need to know.”

“Then you must be aware that true Kashmirs… not the ones that come from Myanmar and have been given the name because of their similar color… true Kashmirs are the rarest in the world. The most prized.” Avram’s throat was tight. “Most of the cut, polished gems are bought from estates and collectors. And no rough has appeared on the legal market in a quarter of a century. Their only source is — was, I should say — a Himalayan mountain valley over fourteen thousand feet above sea level. Two miles in the clouds. Outside a Pakistani village called Soomjan, in the Padar region near the Indian border.”

Lathrop was silent.

“The British were meticulous about their journals, their chronicles,” Avram said. “There’s one I read from when India was under their rule. It says how, in 1880 or so, a pair of men from the village, game hunters, found the rough sapphires littered underfoot. Right beneath the surface of the ground, where a portion of a slope had given way in a landslide. The hunters had no idea of their value. But they thought the stones might be worth something to local traders who dealt with the colonials, and picked them out of the dirt to barter them at the market for grain.”

Lathrop gave him another shrug.

“You have some reason to believe I’m interested in any of this?”

“I’ve already touched upon a very good one,” Avram said. “Kashmirs… those from the traditional source… aren’t often seen except in antique jewelry settings. Most date back to the Edwardian period, in Great Britain. The mines dug near the original find were depleted within forty years. And fewer and fewer stones have turned up since the 1920s. There’s been no new prospecting. The difficult terrain, its remoteness, accounts for this in part. But mostly it’s the border conflict in those hills. The unending violence. India, Pakistan… they both claim territorial rights to the frontier, India holding it with military troops. Local tribespeople allied with the Pakistanis fighting them from hidden rebel camps in the mountain passes.” Avram paused. “Once in a great while a rough will appear on the black market. Or so I’ve heard. It’s rumored the Kashmiri separatists search for them deep down in the old mines, finance their guerilla campaign… their acts of terrorism, some would say… with profits from the illegal sales.”

Lathrop leaned forward and stared him dead in the eye.

“Avram,” he said, “you sound afraid.”

Avram shook his head with indignation.

“I have certain well-warranted fears, and would think you might appreciate the distinction,” he said, and took a long breath. “Put it however you want, I know the risk of trying to pass these stones off as natural.”

Lathrop stared at him.

“You don’t need to take me at my word,” he said. “Things shouldn’t be any different than before.”

Avram filled his lungs with air again, exhaled. Then he pointed to one of the small round jars in the open case, letting his finger hover just above its lid.

“That oval in there… it’s polished but unfaceted. Known as a breadloaf cabochon, a style popular eighty years ago. I’d estimate it’s a ten or twelve carater. Imagine how skeptical a customer would be should I try to broker it without a certificate of authenticity. A provenance. Then compound that skepticism by the number of sapphires you’ve brought. Even if the mineral and crystal inclusions… the color zones… are what they should be for stones that came out of the Himalayas, my buyers would be more than a little curious about how I’ve managed to obtain one or two of them, forget a dozen. And unless your terms have changed, I expect you’ll want me to take all or nothing.”

Lathrop leaned closer, gave him a fleeting smile.

“Use your smarts, Avram, because I know you’ve got plenty,” he said. “We’re coming from different angles. I’m in for the quick kill. You need to take the long view. Don’t compare the terms of our deal to whatever you swing with your clients.”

Avram looked at him. And kept looking.

“What are you saying?” he said.

“My source is tapped out. After this last fire sale, I’m done. There’ll be no more wearing down your heels to humor me. But your business is in this city. Going to the big club every morning. Showing, bargaining. You sell a couple of these sapphires, make a handsome profit, lock the rest away in a vault. Five, ten, maybe twenty years down the line, whenever you’re ready to retire, they’re going to make some kind of nest egg. You can set yourself up. Your kids, their kids. Clinch your family fortune—”

“Onward unto all generations forevermore,” Avram said dryly. “Now it’s you who’s sounding biblical, my friend.”

Lathrop grinned, full out. This time it took its time leaving his face.

Avram realized his fingertip was still floating perhaps a half inch over the jar that held the large cabochon.

“May I?” he said.

Lathrop gave a nod.

Avram lowered his hand to the gem case, carefully lifted out the jar, removed its lid, plucked the sapphire from inside with two fingers, and rose from his chair. At the window, he laid the stone flat in the middle of his palm and stood admiring its even depth of color, thinking it might have been a bead of frozen blue mist against his flesh, hard as ice, yet somehow at the verge of evaporating into the air, swirling away from him at any moment. Finally he got his loupe out of his pocket and examined the sapphire in the sunlight, the ten-power magnifying lens about an inch from his eye.

What he saw left him stunned. No, more than that. Awed. Lathrop’s other parcels had been lab-cultured marvels, indistinguishable from authentic goods. But this appeared to be on a level of its own. For a laboratory to accurately replicate the visual and gemological properties of Kashmirs would require a technology — a combination of synthesizing technologies — so advanced it boggled his mind.

Lathrop watched him quietly for several seconds after he’d returned to the dresser.

“So, Avram,” he said. “Approve of what you see?”

Avram sat in the chair, his mouth dry.

The sapphire back in his palm, gleaming softly.