Deadly Diamonds (14 page)

“Get in, Bantu. No questions.”

Bantu followed the order. In an instant they were coursing along the rough ground behind the buildings. When they cleared the last building, Jimbo cut back onto the main road and turned away from the town. The lights of the Jeep found the dirt-and-gravel path that penetrated the solid jungle mass of vegetation. The ride through the jungle was rough, but Jimbo seemed to know it well.

Bantu grabbed the roll bar over the seats for stability. He let his tightly strung nerves unwind. Their destination was a complete mystery beyond the short reach of the headlights, but he knew that he was out of immediate danger, and Jimbo had so far shown no inclination to do him harm. In spite of the roughness of the dry dirt road, Bantu's hands locked on the roll bar, and he managed to slip into a sleep of exhaustion.

His first awareness that they had driven all night came with his waking glimpse of sunlight on an expanse of windswept water that stretched beyond his sight.

“I bet you never see the Atlantic Ocean, Bantu.”

Bantu just shook his head. His second awareness was that they were driving along a paved road that skirted the largest village he had ever seen.

“This here Freetown. This the capital of Sierra Leone. But you don't care 'bout that. You just wanna sell what you got in dat bag. Right?”

Bantu was still leery of giving too much information. He just continued to look at sights that were beyond anything he had ever imagined. Jimbo pulled the Jeep over to the curb and put it in neutral. He turned to face Bantu.

“Looka here, Bantu. We gotta make some understanding. You hear me?”

Bantu looked over at him with his full attention and some newly aroused flares of caution.

“Here's where we are, Bantu. You got them rough stones and no way to get a good price for 'em. They what these people call ‘conflict diamonds.' Sometimes they say ‘blood diamonds.' I guess you know why. Ain't no one in this country gonna give more'n a tenth their value. You hear?”

Bantu took it in. He had no argument.

“Okay. So here's me. I got no diamonds, but I got good contacts. I got people, got a way to turn them stones into enough money to make us both happy. You hear me?”

Bantu slowly nodded with clear hesitation about where Jimbo was going.

“See now, that's no good, Bantu. The only way this works is we gotta trust each other. I never done you nothin' but good, right?”

Bantu nodded again.

“Den say it. You gotta talk to me. Can't just hide behind them nods. Gotta talk.”

Jimbo sat back and waited.

Finally Bantu spoke. “Why do you do this for me?”

“All right. Now we talkin'. I be honest. I know you got the rough diamonds in that bag. I can help you get more money for 'em than you think in the world. I won't steal from you, and I won't betray you. I just want a fair share for my part. There be more'n enough for both. But you gotta believe in me. Else I leave you right here and I say to hell wichu. So what's gonna be?”

Bantu knew he was at the crossroads of his life. He had only his intuition to guide him. With nothing else to go on, he looked into Jimbo's eyes, and the decision was made. He nodded.

“You gotta say it.”

“I believe you.”

“Okay, den, Bantu. You gimme the bag. You hand it to me.”

It was like handing over his soul. It was one thing to say it and another to actually part with his hope for his father's life. Again he
was moved by intuition. He reached inside of his shirt and took out the bag. He held it out to Jimbo.

Jimbo looked deep into Bantu's eyes and took the bag of rough diamonds out of his hand. He just held it for ten seconds. Then he handed it back to him.

“Good. Now I know you trust me, Bantu. No matter what happen, we never go back on that trust. You hear me?”

Bantu spoke the word. “Yes.”

“Then we got things to do.”

Jimbo put the Jeep in gear and drove farther along the beach road. He stopped at a beach house where, for a few coins, Bantu could shower the crusted grime of the pit off of his body. Back in the Jeep, they drove to a shop such as Bantu had never seen. It held men's clothing finer than anything he had ever encountered.

“First, we get you outta them RUF rags. They not so popular here.”

Bantu stripped off the RUF shirt that still had the faded blood stains from the Kamajor ambush in the jungle. Jimbo grabbed it out of his hand and threw it into the gutter before they went into the shop.

Jimbo told the man who greeted him with a broad grin what he wanted. In fifteen minutes, they walked back to the Jeep. Bantu was wearing new chino pants, new sandals, and a collared shirt that bore no political associations. Jimbo looked him over before they got into the Jeep.

“You look good. Now we go do business.”

As Jimbo drove into the center of the city, every block of Freetown was a revelation to Bantu. Most of the buildings still bespoke the waste and desolation of decades of civil wars and the uselessness of a government more devoted to corruption than rebuilding.

They drove through streets of the city teeming with refugees from the conflicts between government soldiers, the RUF, and the Kamajors—all for armed control of the pits that held the diamonds in the eastern half of Sierra Leone.

Jimbo mused to Bantu along the route that even the name of the city—Freetown—was a contradiction. It had been founded in the eighteenth century by the British as a free refuge for African slaves in America who had agreed to fight against the colonists in the American Revolution. That high moral purpose never stopped its later denizens from profiting from the ongoing traffic in newly captured African slaves.

In no less a contradiction, the swarms of refugees showing scars and lost body parts Bantu saw on their route through so-called Freetown gave clear evidence of the ongoing slavery of the Sierra Leone population to the rough gems that cursed the land.

Jimbo pulled up in front of a building on Charlotte Street. There were many signs throughout the city declaring simply “Diamond Merchant” in neat stenciling, as opposed to the crudely scrawled lettering in the town they had just left. The sign over the front door here bore the added legend, “Morty Bunce. Diamonds Bought and Sold.”

Bantu looked at the sign. “You know him?”

“I know him for more years than you've been alive.”

“Can you trust him?”

“I trust him as far as I could throw this fine building. Maybe less.”

“Then why—?”

“Because he got contacts. He's English and Irish. Ninety percent them other diamond dealers Lebanese. They do us no good. He might.”

He turned to face Bantu. “You gonna have to talk here. So be on your toes. Now listen. Here's how we do.”

Jimbo was sucking air by the time he reached the second-floor landing. He knocked and opened the office door to the voice inside. The short, round man with a perspiration-covered bald pate jumped to his feet when he saw Jimbo. His short legs carried him around his desk to grab Jimbo's hand and pump it.

“Long time, my friend. What brings you out of that rotten jungle?”

“Business, Morty. Only kind of business that keeps either of us in this crazy country. Right? This my friend, Bantu.”

Both Jimbo and Bantu noticed the hesitation before Bunce offered his hand. Jimbo knew Morty could see through the new clothing to a boy who still showed unmistakable signs of RUF treatment. Morty had no scruples about dealing for stones from RUF, Kamajor, or the devil himself, but not at close quarters in his own office.

“You say business, Jimbo. I'm intrigued.” He held up his hands to ask what business.

“My friend has some merchandise. I told him you give him fair price.”

Bunce took his seat behind his desk. He locked a grin in place and leaned over the desk toward Bantu. “Perhaps I could see the merchandise?”

Jimbo nodded to Bantu. With some uneasiness, Bantu took the bag out of his shirt and laid it on the desk. Bunce's small hands wrestled with the strings and opened the bag. He poured the small nuggets out on a piece of black felt. His expression remained as flat as a poker player's. Jimbo watched for the dilation of his eyes as he picked up one stone after another and raised them to the eyepiece held to his right eye. What he saw raised Jimbo's expectations.

When Bunce had examined the last stone, he put down the eyepiece and went into deep thought. Jimbo knew it was a game. He had reached a figure the instant he poured the gems onto the felt. He had even calculated the profit he'd make on them.

Bunce leaned back with a doleful look and spoke directly to Bantu. “I know where these came from. They're from the conflict zone around Kono. They don't bring much around here. Not like the legitimate stones from Namibia, South Africa, Botswana. You know what I'm saying? Isn't that right, Jimbo?”

Jimbo gave a noncommital shrug to emphasize that he was keeping out of the bargaining.

Bunce looked back at Bantu.

“But, since you're a friend of Jimbo, I'll do better than anyone. I'll be generous. I'll give you three thousand English pounds.”

Bantu looked down at the diamonds, which he had not seen out of the bag until that moment. Bunce took that instant to wink in Jimbo's direction. That meant another three thousand pounds to Jimbo for not interfering with the deal.

Bantu slowly gathered up the gems and put them back in the bag. He looked at Jimbo who simply shrugged to say, “It's up to you. It's your game.”

Bantu looked back at Bunce. He remembered Jimbo's instructions. “You give me the money now?”

“Right this minute. Wait here.”

Bunce got up and hurried his little body into an adjoining room and shut the door. In a minute, he called to Jimbo to join him. In a few minutes, Bunce reappeared with a stack of British pound notes. Jimbo came back behind him smiling.

Bantu laid the bag on the desk with his hand still holding the string. He pointed to a place beside it. Bunce was slightly surprised by the formal procedure, but he caught on and laid the stack of bills where Bantu pointed. At the same time, they each picked up what they had bargained for.

Jimbo and Bunce grinned at each other, shook hands, and Jimbo led Bantu out of the office and down the stairs. When they reached the sidewalk, Jimbo and Bantu leaned against the Jeep.

They waited ten seconds before the mélange of city sounds was split by the high-pitched shriek from the second-floor window. Bunce was leaning halfway out the window until he spotted Bantu and Jimbo casually resting against the Jeep.

His yells were punctuated by air-stabbing thrusts of his little fists.

“You get the hell up here, you little blighter. And you too, you Mandingo trash. Who the hell you think you're dealing with?”

Jimbo eased his body off the Jeep. “Don't get yourself in a stew, Morty. You'll have a stroke, and then you be no good to us. We have more business with you.”

Together they climbed the stairs slowly to give Bunce time to get control of his blood pressure. They came into the office to find Bunce pacing like a small tiger.

“What the hell you think you're doing here?” He was stabbing his finger at the bag Bantu had given him on his desk, and the pile of small pieces of common gravel he had poured out of it. “You think you can cheat me. I could have you—”

“Sit down, Morty. Sit down.”

“The hell I will.”

“Morty. Sit yourself down. No one's cheating. You notice we still here.”

Jimbo took the packet of pound notes out of his pocket and threw them on the desk. He nodded to Bantu, and Bantu did the same.

Bunce scooped up the notes and dropped back into the chair behind his desk. “You are one crazy Mandingo. You trying to kill me?”

“No, Morty. Educate you. Now let's do real business. I know you got some of them blood diamonds from those RUF pits around Kono. So does my friend, Bantu. Like you said, ain't neither of you gonna get a tenth what they worth anywhere on the African coast. You remember you told me you could do a deal with some buyer in Ireland. You remember?”

“So.”

“So, this. You said you gotta get 'em there. You gotta smuggle 'em in. Meet the people. Do the deal. Get back out. You remember?”

Bunce looked over at Bantu. He was not comfortable with Jimbo's laying out details in front of a stranger.

“You listen, Morty. Who gonna do all that for you? You told me you can't leave this place. So never mind. I got a man can do that for you.”

“Who?”

“My friend here, Bantu.”

Bunce started to laugh and then just shook his head in disbelief. “I think those ants in the jungle have been eating your brain. You playing another trick on old Morty here, Jimbo?”

“No. No. No. Sit there. You listen, Morty. This man twenty years older'n he looks. Nine years now, he took everything the devil in hell
could throw at him. You know them RUF. He survived it. It made him strong. Gotta cool head too. He don't panic at nothin'. I seen it.”

Bunce raised his hands with a half smile.

“Jimbo, you idiot Mandingo, this is business. This is a business deal. What the hell does he know about business?”

Jimbo picked up one of the wads of pound notes and threw it into Bunce's lap. “He just did a scam on you. Cool as can be. Took you for six thousand pounds, countin' my kickback. Who else ever did that?”

Bunce still had the half smile, but he looked over at Bantu.

“How the hell did he do that?”

“When he had you go into the other room to the safe, get the money, he switch'd 'em. He picked up the pebbles from the street before we came in. He had 'em in his shirt.”

“Except that was your idea, Jimbo. Not his.”

“Don't matter whose idea. He pulled it off. And, another thing, he's honest. Won't cheat you. He made his point and, look here, he give you back your money. He could be heading for Conakry right now. You never find him.”