The Devil on Chardonnay (29 page)

            “Yes, sir.  What did Candido tell you?”

            “He said someone from the boat got into a brawl in Peter’s bar, and that shots were fired.  Neville took Chardonnay out of the harbor to avoid any problems with the Portuguese.  They may have been intercepted by another boat.  I have the paper from Horta here.”

            He pulled a newspaper clipping from his jacket and showed it to Boyd.  It was in Portuguese.

            “All that is correct,” Boyd said, bending to look at the paper.

            Charles roughly translated the article, which was front page, but short.  It said all hands had gone down with the ship and speculated that American drug dealers might have been trying to steal Chardonnay for illegal purposes.  It was defensive about any speculation of wrongdoing by Azoreans.

            “I’m an American federal agent.  We were rescued by the Portuguese Air Force the morning after the explosion.  Our government was able to prevent release of the fact that there were survivors,” Boyd said apologetically. 

            Tears filled the eyes of the old man.

            “She was my only remaining family,” he said. “My wife died in childbirth.  My son drowned in a diving accident, and Michelle’s mother was a suicide.  My brother died five years ago, and his profligate son, a morphine addict, whom I haven’t seen in years, is heir to the bank my grandfather founded.   I am alone.” 

            He bent his head almost into his lap and sobbed, the tears flowing onto his expensive slacks.

            Boyd said nothing.

            “Did she drown?”  He looked up expectantly, like maybe that was better than some other way of dying.

            “Sir, before I tell you what I know, I need to know what you know about Mikki’s trip to the United States.” 

            As he said this, Boyd imagined himself as a streetwise cop on TV.

            “It was a holiday.  She wanted to make a crossing by herself.”

            The old man was obviously lying.

            “It wasn’t a holiday.  It was business.  You sent Wolf Goebel with her as a bodyguard,” Boyd said sternly.

            The old man seemed to sink back into the chair, the adversarial nature of their talk accepted.

            “Did you send her on Chardonnay with $5 million dollars to buy something from Lymon Byxbe?”  Boyd leaned toward the old man, but spoke softly.  Sun Tsu and  Clausewitz both teach that when an adversary retreats, keep the pressure on.

            “Who?”  A feeble response, as Meilland sank further into the chair.

            “Lymon Byxbe,” Boyd said loudly.

            The old man looked up blankly.  The red, rheumy eyes, the tears, the nearly hairless scalp and the quivering lips were all real, but he was still lying.

            “Sir, did you pay Lymon Byxbe to send someone to Africa to capture the Ebola virus, purify it, sneak it into the United States, make a vaccine for it, and then smuggle it out of the United States?” 

            Boyd was leaning right in Meilland’s face.

            Fear turned to terror in Meilland’s eyes.

            “Sir, did you plan to infect alluvial diggers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to manipulate the diamond market?  Did you plan to kill a million people to make some more money?” 

            Boyd was genuinely angry now.  He’d only known half a dozen bankers in his life, and so far they were all crooked.

            “Sir, did you lose your granddaughter because you sent her on a venture to make money you don’t even need?”

            That did it.  Meilland’s face turned straight toward Boyd and, with tears filling his eyes,  said, “Oh, don’t say that again.  No, I didn’t.”  He came out of his chair a bit, and wiped his eyes.  “I’ll tell you what I know.”

            Boyd moved his chair closer to Meilland and squared it right in front of him, between the big chair and the fireplace.  He leaned forward so that their heads were only two feet apart.

            “My grandfather and uncle were minor partners when the diamond cartel consolidated control in the 1920’s.  Our family had been in the diamond business for hundreds of years.  We changed our name and moved here from Paris before the turn of the last century.  Our bank, with its proper French name, handled the bribes and smuggling to get diamonds out of the dozen countries in Africa where they are found.  Others did the sales and promotion to the retail jewelry industry.” 

            Meilland was freely telling his story now, and he began to regain the mannerisms of the banker, with hand gestures and emphasis. 

            “Gradually, the cartel consolidated and became more of a corporate entity, and minor partners were pushed out.  We began to compete with the cartel, and our customers were independent diamond cutters in Israel, Antwerp and New York.  We also sold to cutters in Lebanon, Pakistan, Qatar and China.

            “Until recently, almost all of the world’s diamonds have come from Africa.  I worked with the Portuguese traders in Angola and Mozambique, the Belgians in Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo, the Afrikaners in South Africa, and the French along the coast of West Africa.  Others brought out the legal diamonds, facilitated by bribery of government officials.  I bought the diamonds their employees stole, or the ones found by illegal miners.  I started right after World War II, as a young man of only 22.  In Nairobi, I bought the best pink stones stolen by the miners at the Williamson Mine in Tanganyika, then Swakopmund, on the coast of what is now Namibia, buying alluvial diamonds found along the Atlantic beach.”   

The old man was beginning to enjoy his story.  He looked beyond Boyd into the fire, eyes on the long lost adventure. 

“Leopoldville was best.  I would check into the Intercontinental.  Before the porters could take my trunk to the room, there would be miners gathering in the lobby.  I bought diamonds from noon until dark, every day.  I always had the best room, the best food, the shiny black girls; always the best.” 

He smiled.

            “So you competed with the cartel?” Boyd asked.

            “Yes. They have the industrial diamond market tied up, because they own the mines at the very source of diamonds. The pipe, it’s called.  The jewelry market is based on the larger, perfect stones, the ones that are large enough to be noticed along a river bank.  The ones fine enough to make a man risk his life for them in the mines or along a remote stretch of river.  A man waits 20 years for just the stone.  If he gets it out, he can retire.  The cartel makes it very hard to steal diamonds from them in the mines, but it happens.  If a large stone does get out, they want to prevent anyone else from bringing it to market, it would depress the price.  No, the cartel wants to be the only source for the stones that men die for.”         

            “So what happened to make you come up with this scheme?”

            “The cartel bribed the governments to stop independent buyers, giving them a monopoly on alluvial diamonds, too.  Michelle got the story wrong. We weren’t going to set Ebola out to stop the alluvial miners.  They’re our source.  We were going to infect some monkeys around the diamond mines.  All it would take is a few miners to get sick in those dirty, crowded camps where the miners live for a few months before going back home.  We could stop the mining of diamonds in Africa.”

            The old man looked down. The smile from the shiny black girls was as gone as they, no doubt, now were.  Old, wrinkled, used up, starved out and dead, the sweaty embrace they had provided in the vigor of their youth to a young Jewish diamond merchant long, long ago forgotten. 

            “Was it your idea?”

            “No.  The Arab traders came up with the idea.  They’ve been in the diamond business for a thousand years.  Much of Africa is Muslim, so they already have an advantage.  They wanted to try to push the cartel out.”

            “Why you?”

            “Most of my business is now with the Arabs.”

            “What about your Jewish contacts?”

            “Not so much. Mostly the Arabs.”

            “So you’ve been helping Arabs compete with Jews in a traditionally Jewish business.”

            “We broke the monopoly of a few Jews who took advantage of other Jews in the diamond business.  Now many diamond cutters have access to the world’s supply of diamonds that were limited to the few before.”

“So you moved gradually from Jewish clients to Arab clients?”

            The air began to go out of Meilland again and he sank back into the chair, but the story wasn’t over yet. 

            “Our reputation suffered.  When we started competing with the cartel, we had to smuggle our diamonds out of Africa.  We helped people move wealth around the world.  We became known as smugglers more than just bankers.”

            “When was that?”

            “My father started before the war. I was at university.  Families were moving away from Hitler.  They had diamonds to sell.  Then in the '50s, there were hard times, too.  I was always ready to buy.”

            “So you profited from Jews leaving Germany during the war?”

            “Many did.  Yes, I did, too.  I admit it.”

            “So, your reputation suffered because of what you and your father did during the war?”

            “The spoken word is sacred to us.  We took advantage.”

            “But that wasn’t the worst thing you did,” Boyd said, aggressively now, still not understanding where this was going.

            “I’m a Jew.  All I have, I got because I’m a Jew.  My family have been honorable Jews for 4,000 years.  My punishment for dishonorable dealings was the loss of my granddaughter.” He seemed frantic now, needing to be understood, as if his confession to Boyd would absolve him.

            “So, it’s OK to cheat the Arabs, but not a fellow Jew.”

            “I didn’t cheat the Arabs, I didn’t need to.  Just letting them into the cutting and distribution was enough to alienate the other Jews.”

            “This is all way too complicated.  How did Mikki get involved?”

            “Michelle became almost possessed.  She had no interest in banking or diamonds.  She travelled.  I worried, so I sent bodyguards.”

            “That was before the Ebola idea.”

            “Yes.  I hired Byxbe three years ago.  When Byxbe called me and said he’d found the virus and could isolate it and make a vaccine, I told her the plan.  She was excited.  It was like the days when she was a little girl and everything I did interested her.  She stayed here, in Luxembourg City, and worked at the bank, preparing for the time when the cartel would be broken and our status as the alternative would be enhanced.  It was a happy time for me.”

            “And now?”

            “Now, there is nothing.  I deserve it.  I am not a Jew.  I am not a grandfather. I am nothing.”

            “So, if there were even a chance Mikki is still alive, you would do anything to get her back?”

            The old man froze.  He didn’t even blink. 

            “There is a chance?”

            “Yes.”

            “Anything. I have a great deal of money.  I could pay a ransom,” Meilland said quickly.

            “No, it won’t be about money.  It’ll be something you know.”

            “Anything.”

            “OK.  First, who bought Ebola?”

            “I don’t know.  My contact was Hamid Tamim, a diamond trader in Doha.”

            “He came to you with the plan?”

            “Yes.”

            “So, he was just an intermediary?

            “Probably.”

            “So they had the plan and you were their agent in execution,” Boyd asked as he wrote furiously in a notebook.

            “That is accurate.”

            “And how were you to deliver the virus?”

            “Michelle was to meet an Arab trader from Senegal east of the Cape Verde Islands and make the transfer at sea.”

            Boyd shook his head. It was turning out to be so mechanical.

            “What was she to deliver?  All of what you got from Byxbe?”

            “No.  Just two vials of virus and two of vaccine.”

            “Were there any other customers?”

            “No.”

            “Did it occur to you that they might have some other plan for the virus, something that had nothing to do with diamonds?”

            “No.”

            Boyd was sure he was lying.

            “OK, now to the pirate.  Wolf Goebel and Neville St. James died trying to save Mikki and Chardonnay.  They were loyal friends and employees.  Constantine Coelho was the pirate who stopped us that night.”

            “Constantine?”

            “You know him?”

            “He learned to sail on Chardonnay.  His father was a seaman.  I loaned him the money to buy his first fishing boat, I taught him how to smuggle and loaned him the money for his first big boat.”

            “So, you created the pirate?”

            “Pirate?”

            “He shot me, Wolf and Neville, and his men planted the dynamite that blew up Chardonnay.  That’s piracy.”

            “He wouldn’t hurt Michelle.  They were children together.  We spent summers in Horta.”

            “Mikki may not be as endearing to all as you think.”

            “Did he take Michelle with him?”

            “He could have.  We didn’t see her body.  We didn’t see Neville’s either.”

            Now Meilland was thinking fast.  His face a mask, he was in high negotiation mode.

            “Listen, Meilland, this game is over.  You think you know where he is, you’d better tell me now.  They found your buddy Byxbe yesterday morning south of Charleston.  Ebola got him.  That virus has gotten out everywhere it’s been.  It’s in South Carolina, Khartoum, and it’s gonna be wherever Constantine Coelho is.  There’s no sign that vaccine has helped anyone.  In fact, that may be what killed Byxbe.  It’s a long shot, but we’re flying in a new antibiotic that might work if someone gets Ebola.  If you want Mikki, you’d better hope I get to her before Ebola does.”