Glass House (45 page)

Worse, in my twelve-and-under days, I was
scared of his
house
. It was a pre-fab, bought by his mother
through the Sears, Roebuck catalog and put up at the corner of
Illinois and Sixth Street. Its front porch looked east and west
along Sixth, and the ambulances and police cars would scream by at
all hours.

It is Megan Davis’s house. Hers is a
Vallonia, and his was not, but it’s close enough. And his car was
hers, too. Again, he didn’t drive a Chrysler Imperial Southampton,
but his old Chrysler had that pushbutton shifter, so it was close
enough.

My family has its roots in Lawrence, and the
city is essentially as it’s depicted here – the University and
the Hill, the downtown area, the park with the train engine, all of
it. It’s tweaked a little at the edges, but just a little, and
certainly not enough to change the fact that Lawrence still is
fundamentally a small town that’s acquired the trappings of being
bigger over time, even while it stays the same at some level.

The other half of the book is diamonds, of
course. I read through any number of resources in writing those
portions, but I’ll single out two. The first is Matthew Hart’s book
Diamond: Journey to the Heart of an Obsession
. It’s an
immensely readable, non-fiction wandering through the historic,
geological, and political world of diamond mining in South Africa
and elsewhere. Many of the facts and statistics noted about diamond
mining are from Hart’s book, and it was particularly valuable for
its depiction of the world of
diamantaires
and the handling
of rough. When the good and solid pink is being cleaved, and Robbe
Lefevre comments to the effect that polished diamonds are just
ruined rough, the comment is derived from Hart’s reporting about
the
diamantaires
and their belief in that adage. I recommend
the book to anyone interested in learning more about this
fascinating and often tragic industry.

The second is the March 2002 issue of
National Geographic
, with its cover article, “Diamonds: The
Real Story.” Of all the resources I found, that article contained
the best, most revealing photographic and narrative images of the
diamond industry and its locales.

Still, I have to give a notice of an
opposing sort, as well – I’ve seen fit to make things up when
needed, in particular in the creation of diamond mining companies.
De Beers plainly exists, and its basic history is essentially as
described. The notable exception is its swallowing and ultimate
spitting up of the Dutch Consortium, which – like Laurentian
and Ariacht – just as plainly does not exist.

Along the same lines, the most prominent of
the diamonds mentioned here – first, the good and solid pink,
and second, the red diamond Megan gets from Hanley and sets on the
witness stand while Waldoch testifies – are fancy colored
diamonds, and both colors really exist. However, I’ve transplanted
them to South Africa for purposes of the story. Diamonds in these
colors are otherwise found almost exclusively in Australia.

I need and would like to thank any number of
people, but I’ll do so without specific identification. First, to
my family and friends. There is never a substitute for support and
consideration, and they provided it, always and without fail.

Next, to my colleagues at the time I wrote
this, the attorneys and staff at the Rider Bennett law firm in
Minneapolis. Where some might be dismayed at someone in their
midst, undertaking a task like this, they were not, instead being
just the opposite. I cannot express enough appreciation for that
fact. Though the firm itself has now dissolved, they are good
lawyers, and more important, they are good people.

Now a final note. As with any story, let
alone one that contains a good measure of fact-based background,
the risk of errors exists. All the mistakes belong to me.

Note Addendum
(2011 Ebook)

I wrote
Glass House
from 2003 to
2004, and an agent and I shopped it to publishers. I saw it as a
good follow-up to
Judgment Day
, which a few years earlier
had been published in the United States by Simon & Schuster to
some nice reviews, with Japanese publication by Hayakawa after
that.

But
Judgment Day
itself came right at
the start of the real growth in Internet’s usage (Amazon started
selling books, and at that time only books, in 1995), and by the
time
Glass House
came to be, the Internet – with all
its research and entertainment and multimedia possibilities –
was right at the top of the factors that were rewriting the book
and music and movie and retail businesses. Resources for
publication changed, and publication
itself
changed, as
independent and then big box booksellers struggled to find and
shape a place in the new world. They sometimes failed, and the
verdict may still be out on those who’ve managed to make it so
far.

Still, it’s clear enough that tighter times
meant greater reliance on things like established big name authors,
event books, and targeted audiences (think book clubs and the
incredible growth of the young adult genre…). It was, in short, a
totally changed dynamic.

And it’s still changing. The first
International Standard Book Number issued for an ebook came in
1998, Microsoft’s Reader application and Stephen King’s then
digital-only book
Riding the Bullet
both were in 2000, and
in 2004 ebook readers started to come out with enough features and
at reasonable enough prices to make ebooks truly commercially
possible. Now, for the first time, sales of ebooks are starting to
exceed printed books at some sellers.

That’s created new opportunities.

You’re reading this because it’s been
direct-published as an ebook. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope
you’ll recommend it to someone you know, write a review, or send me
an email to let me know if you enjoyed it (
[email protected]
).
I can’t promise I’ll respond to all emails, but I will read
them.

Thanks for reading.

Patrick Reinken

May 8

7:54:14 p.m., British Summer Time

London, England, The United Kingdom

The sound was already deafening, and it was
only beginning. In Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, near
Buckingham Palace and into Hyde Park, outside St. James and the
Houses of Parliament and all up and down the Thames, the gathered
crowds – cramped in shoulder to shoulder in some places –
were screaming and waving hats and shouting out ragged and wretched
echoes of the Westminster chimes that were ringing out from Big
Ben.

It was VE Day again, and the bells were
tolling a celebration. The end of the war was still celebrated, it
was celebrated big, and all of London was screaming out the seconds
toward the scheduled peak of the frenzy.

Their collective cacophony was drowned out
only by the pounding sound of fireworks jetting from Tower Bridge
and exploding in red, white, and blue smoke over the East End and
the Docklands. Dimly, listening very closely, you could pick out
wavering, warbled strains of “God Save the Queen” intermingled with
shockingly poor renditions of “Over There.” Sure, that last one was
from the Great War, not the second one, but few among the mass of
people drunken on Guinness and Bass and Carling would have cared to
make the distinction. The concern was the stout or ale or beer, the
screaming, the getting close to just the right person at just the
right time. History wasn’t exactly on the minds of the
revelers.

The early evening was all outrageous sound
and action in public, but it was silent in some tucked-away
corners. In those places, the world was beginning to shut down.

The power grid was the first noticeable
thing to go. At each central facility and relay station in the
metropolitan area, the computerized management system was being
triggered to initiate a search for new guidelines that were
force-fed to it a second later. The program chewed the input in
less than a breath of time, and the grid shut off, segment by
segment, precisely according to the commands buried in the virgin
code.

Reading the new instructions, the computer
system closed the distribution grid down. It reserved principal and
sole power for itself, and it waited.

May 8

7:55:24 p.m., Greenwich Mean Time

Over the Atlantic Ocean

Sean Ketelsen relaxed, at long last. He
thumbed the button on the armrest and gently eased the seat back a
notch, stretching his legs and letting out a light and long, almost
inaudible sigh. A gin and tonic – more gin than tonic, truth
be known – sat on the fold-out table that crossed his lap, and
his hand circled it easily, keeping the drink steady during the
typical soft bob and weave of jet travel.

Ketelsen looked wearily out the window and
down, toward the shaving-cream-foamy layer of clouds receding below
them. He watched as the colored lights along the plane’s wing
winked off and on, off and on, rhythmically lulling him with their
steady assurances.

It had been a long day. A long day and more.
He’d started it in Tikrit, in Iraq. Two meetings there, both of
them late last night. One with the bad guys, one with the good.

He’d bargained for sales of Misagh-2
missiles with the first group and reported the discussions to the
second, providing best-known names, contact processes, connections,
and supply routes – the whole thing, documented in a dead
drop. He’d transferred everything he’d learned in the year-plus
he’d been in Iraq, turning over the pictures and notes and
fingerprints and anything else he’d managed to collect. And then
he’d endured the rough, hidden and hurried trek out, in all its
forms: jarring drives, a helicopter ride, an escorted blur through
Baghdad, and then the strange and incongruous exit from Baghdad
International. There, he’d been slipped in through the back to
avoid the crowds and security screens but spent two hours waiting
for his DHL military cargo flight, cooling his heels and whiling
away time in a duty free shop, a bar, and a long stretch of doing
nothing but lying flat out on the couches, where he stared at the
PVC-prickled ceiling and struggled to stay awake.

The flight was long. Then another airport,
this one in Frankfurt, but there was no wait this time because
they’d held the plane for him. For
him
, and that was
certainly outside his experience over the past year he’d spent in
beaten-down and bombed-out neighborhoods in Iraq.

And so finally he was here, on this new
flight, a flight home this time. Ketelsen was enjoying this single
moment of nothingness, just him and the drink and the easy movement
of the plane and the drone of the white snow background noise of
its engines. Even his fellow passengers were helping out in that
regard. The plane was full, but the people who were awake were
concentrating on books and magazines and papers and anything that
kept their attention away from having to sit still in the
stuffiness of the recycled air. The rest of them were silent.
They’d dozed away the takeoff and were treating the start of the
Atlantic crossing the same way.

Eyeing those he could see, Ketelsen wondered
who among the passengers might have been important enough,
valuable
enough, to have kept this plane waiting. Any of
them? None? He wondered who among them would have been whisked
through the locked and guarded gate to get to this takeoff, far
from anything resembling customs or security, so that
identities – not to mention weapons – wouldn’t be
noticed.

He smiled drowsily. He moved a hand down and
felt the comfortable and smooth surface of the leather satchel he
carried. He unzipped it halfway and reached into its darkness,
pushing his hand through the contents by touch until he came to the
familiar shape of a Smith and Wesson 422. It was an old model, and
an underpowered pistol at that, but he liked it. He liked the
barrel’s position at the bottom of the block, and he liked the
balance that came from that.

There was a short sheaf of papers beside it,
a copy of the most important pieces of the information he’d
collected and left at the dead drop, but this one was ready for
hand delivery back to Langley.

A collection of congratulations was in store
for Sean on his arrival, and the three or four dozen sheets of
information were the reason why. Not
public
congratulations,
to be sure, but congratulations nonetheless.

Then a vacation, maybe. Some time spent
someplace nice. Someplace warm and with women who dressed in small
patches of fabric instead of protective, layering wraps. Ketelsen
smiled again, sat back, and sipped the drink. He enjoyed the
slightly bitter taste of the Tanqueray while thoughts of bikinis in
Nassau filled his mind.

He set the glass back down and closed his
eyes. Then, secure in his world, he quickly began to doze.

May 8

20.57.47, Central European Summer Time

Paris, France

A shopping mall was buried under the Louvre.
More accurately, it was buried beneath the streets and the
courtyards that lay between the Louvre’s encircling wings. Back
when I.M. Pei added the new entrance at the middle of everything by
dropping his little glass pyramid into the central courtyard, the
planners had the bright idea to dig out the whole area underground
and squeeze in a couple levels of first rate tourist shops down
there, as well.

Now you could check out the Mona Lisa and
Venus de Milo, then make your way out into the ultramodern,
subterranean add-on stores and pick up a tie or tee shirt or
umbrella with “
Musée du Louvre
” written in fancy script on
it. Maybe have a ham and cheese on a baguette, too, with a Coke on
the side.