Deadly Diamonds (39 page)

In the evening, when the activity settled, the two brothers had a long hour to spend with their father. I think it took most of the hour to convince him that he was free, and that his sons and he were on the threshold of a new life.

I helped with the preparation and distribution of the evening stew and then finally collapsed beside Seamus in the eating area. We were well into a bowl of what was actually a very good concoction before we could really talk. Bantu and Sinda dropped down beside us. They, too, ate for the first time in two days.

The first words I could get out to Sinda were simply, “How did you do this?” One wave of the hand indicated that I meant the empty and waiting village. We all had the same question.

“I knew this village was here. During the conflict, it was raided by rebels. They killed most of the people. Took the rest as slaves. I knew it was deserted.”

Jimbo had the follow-up. “Does anyone know we're here?”

“Some. Not many. I went to the right people in the government. I have a paper that says this village is ours.”

“How did you do it?”

“The easy way. I bribed the right people. Very generously, thanks to what you brought us, Michael.”

“Do we worry about them?”

“No. I told them the bribes would keep on coming as long as they gave us protection. And stayed the hell out of our village.”

I looked at Seamus and nodded at Sinda. “There's the damn genius. Not me.”

I lay back against a box of medical supplies and drew a deep breath for the first time since the plane touched down in Sierra Leone. I could see the bright yellow-red orb of the sun half hidden by the horizon. It reminded me of Benjamin Franklin's question when he looked at the painting of the half sun on the back of John Hancock's chair at the moment they were signing the Declaration of Independence. Was that sun rising or setting?

I looked around at “our” village. The evening meal had been served, and the people who could scarcely walk when we picked them up were now coming out of the huts and gathering together in groups. For the first time, they dared to speak to each other. I knew then that that sun was definitely rising.

We lit a large fire in the center of the village and sat around it talking until I thought the sun would be coming up for a new day. The ideas and plans were flying. Sinda had given it a lot of thought. He said a larger tent would be arriving to be used for a dining hall, looking to the day when all the now invalids would be able to walk to meals.

“We'll put another tent over there for medical supplies. I can't believe it. Some nurses from the city want to come out to work with us. Even a couple of doctors. There'll be more.”

There was talk of a school, because Sinda said some women from other villages wanted to come here and get involved in the work. That meant that eventually there would be marriages and children.

I could see Bantu looking at a large clearing on the edge of the village. “What are you thinking, Bantu?”

“Right over there. We build a church. It'll have a roof for the rainy season, but no walls. We're going to grow. That way it'll hold as many as come to us and want to thank God.”

“Amen.”

The following morning, the hum started all over again. I pitched in for the meal distribution, but then it was time. I felt a real part of this new life, but I had another one that included a senior partner, a practice, and, most importantly, a fiancée.

Seamus and I got together for a ride in the Jeep to the airport. Sinda and Jimbo said their good-byes between running from one tent to another with fresh bandages and whatever help was needed.

Bantu walked us to the Jeep. There was nothing to say that wasn't completely expressed in one long hug. Even for my warrior friend, Seamus.

“Bantu, you said once that you and your brother and your father would find a home anywhere but in Sierra Leone. Are you coming with us?”

He just smiled and shook his head. “I'm home now, Michael.”

Just then we heard Sinda calling. “Bantu, we need help over here!”

Bantu grinned from within. “You see?”

My last view of Bantu was seeing him run to help his father walk to the dining tent. He was still grinning.

I slept through the entire flight home. Reverse culture shock hit me with a vengeance when I walked down Franklin Street the next morning. The streets of Boston never looked so good.

My plans for a career of title searching dissolved in my first two-hour chat with Mr. Devlin. After a long monologue to fill him in on the Sierra Leone adventure, which was to end with my declaration of a new career path of nothing more adventurous than title searches, he jumped in to mention that one of my favorite jockeys at Suffolk Downs had been indicted for murder in a case that smacked of Mafia doings. The jockey was expecting a call from his choice of defense counsel—me.
Sic transit pax
.

About two weeks later, I got a letter with the return address of Freetown, Sierra Leone. The note inside from Bantu brought moisture to my eyes and a watermelon in my throat. It seems that more and more of the victims of the years of conflict were hearing of what was now being called Resurrection Village. New arrivals were coming in every day. Sinda had had to rebribe the governmental authorities to get the rights to two other nearby abandoned villages.

That was good news. Even better was the news that most of our original settlers we brought back from the pit, including his father, had bounced back to the point where they were working their hearts out to serve the new arrivals.

And so it grew. I guess you can't stop the Lord when he has good people in his corner.

When I picked up the envelope to replace the letter, something dropped out of it. It was wrapped in a banana leaf for luck. The note attached said, “May God bless you and your bride as you have blessed us. Bantu.”

Inside the leaf was a sparkling diamond. It will be worn on Terry's finger as our engagement ring forever.

And one last thought. I'm delighted to announce that Terry and I have set the date. The wedding will be next spring.

Needless to say, Father Matt Ryan will perform the ceremony in the Sacred Heart Church in Charlestown.

In view of the passing of Terry's parents some years ago, she will be escorted down the aisle and given away by another father figure, Lex Devlin.

I'm sure it's no surprise that my best man will be my friend and adventure mate these many years, Harry Wong. I can't wait to hear the toast.

Sadly, John Kiley, our chosen organist, is now playing for the Lord, but his beautiful musical spirit will be there for sure.

The reception will be—where else?—the Parker House.

YOU ARE ALL INVITED.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The centerpiece of all the fuss, the diamond, is a unique piece of geology. Particular carbon atoms that, by a happenstance of nature, have been subjected to extreme pressures and temperatures up to 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit for millions of years at a level of 125 miles below the earth's surface are transmuted into a rough, milky stone, 1,000 times harder than rubies or sapphires.

Diamonds are then blasted through the earth's layers during volcanic eruptions in discrete channels called “pipes.” They emerge to lie on or just under the surface of the earth to be mined, usually by some method of sifting, by whoever controls the small plot of the land at the top of the pipe.

Thanks to the hundred-year-old monopolistic trick pulled off by the De Beers Group in capturing most sources of rough diamonds, whetting the appetite of the world's consumers with the hypnotic slogan, “Diamonds are Forever,” and releasing the supply of diamonds in a trickle, the impression has been indelibly created that diamonds are a rarity and therefore legitimately expensive.

Sierra Leone has been uniquely blessed with an abundance of pipes that have left quality diamonds strewn on or just under the surface for the taking. What could have been a natural endowment sufficient to turn the country into a paradise devoid of hunger, poverty, ignorance, and preventable disease has been turned into an unimaginable curse that has placed Sierra Leone at or near the bottom of the United Nations's list of 170 nations in degree of poverty.

The recipe for this curse is a government that has been a poster child for greed, graft, and corruption, combined with a rebel force, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), that has massacred and terrorized
the population in the diamond-rich areas of eastern Sierra Leone in order to control the mining, smuggling, and sale of the diamonds that finance the RUF's war on innocent humanity.

To be clear, the inhuman atrocities—and that is too mild a phrase by any measure—committed by the RUF and its captive child soldiers on many thousands of innocent villagers and townspeople of Sierra Leone are so far beyond anything I would have thought to be within the capability of human beings, that I have scarcely touched on them in the course of this novel. It is not overly dramatic to say that I have tried to convey some sense of the situation without being specific or comprehensive enough to subject the reader to the nightmares I've actually experienced in researching this book.

The diamonds, mined by slave labor, are smuggled by the RUF across the easy compliant border of Liberia. They buy rifles (primarily Kalashnikov AK-47s), ammunition, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. They also buy the drugs fed to the child soldiers to enable them to commit acts under orders that no human being in control of their faculties could bring themselves to commit.

Lest we think that that this war on humanity affects only victims in a small country 4,300 miles from New York, consider this: In 2001, it is reported that representatives of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network were in the Kono diamond district of Sierra Leone to oversee operations and arrange a purchase of millions of dollars' worth of diamonds from the RUF. Time was of the essence. It was only two months to September 11, 2001. Production in the diamond pits by the RUF was reported to be doubled.

The first retaliatory move of the United States after 9/11 was to freeze the financial accounts of bin Laden. If, however, as appears likely from reports, bin Laden was successful in converting millions of dollars in cash to easily stashed and saleable blood diamonds, the funding of Al Qaeda continued.

In March 2000, Robert Fowler, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, released a commissioned report revealing in detail the link between the smuggling trade in “blood” or “conflict” diamonds and the hellish conflicts it finances. Global Witness conducted
a campaign to pressure the United Nations, diamond-producing nations, and the legitimate diamond industry to produce a plan to stem the flow of illicit blood diamonds into the channel of legitimate diamonds that ultimately make their way into the shops of jewelry retailers that you and I patronize.

The result was the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), endorsed and established by the United Nations in 2003. The plan requires participating governments to provide documents certifying the legitimacy of source of all sealed packages of rough diamonds leaving their countries. These certificates are to accompany the rough diamonds through the channels to the diamond cutters and polishers in, e.g., Antwerp, and on to the retailers. Under the plan, participant countries are only allowed to trade their gems with other participant countries. Since 2012, fifty-four participants representing eighty countries have signed on to the Kimberley Process.

It's a step, but how effective is it? Reports indicate that it has had some effect in at least increasing the income from the legitimate diamond trade to the governments of countries that have been most victimized by diamond-fueled conflicts. However, an evil this entrenched and this profitable to smugglers, gunrunners, and mid-level dealers dies hard, if at all. Diamonds are the most easily transported valuable asset in the world. A person can carry enough diamonds undetectably on his/her naked body to finance a lifetime of opulence.

The result is that ineffective monitoring, weak enforcement against violations, bribery and corruption along the way, and a shifting of concern for the issue to the back burner has led to the weakening of KPCS effectiveness. Global Witness and others have noted that trading in blood diamonds unfortunately continues to fuel violence and human rights atrocities. In fact, the documentation of the Kimberley Process not only will not stop the dealing in blood diamonds, it might make detection of the dealing more difficult.

If you're up to a full exposition of the hellish world of blood diamonds, brace yourself, and read the excellent and gut-wrenching
Blood Diamonds
by Greg Campbell.