Eye of the God (37 page)

Alex shivered, his jaw clenched tight to stop his chattering teeth. Dizziness swirled in his head, and he wobbled in the chair.

“You don't look so good,” Abby said.

“I feel worse.”

“What do you suggest we do?”

His mind raced through every option; his eyes shifted back and forth as though reading an unseen list. Finally, he squeezed them shut and shook his head. “There's nothing we can do,” he muttered. “It's over.”

“What do you mean, it's over?”

His face clouded. “There's no way we can find that diamond now. I'm sorry,” he whispered. For the first time since meeting her, Alex allowed himself to feel regret. It hurt a great deal more than the searing wound above his ear.

Abby returned his gaze, but with a great deal less intensity. She struggled to keep a smile from spilling onto her face. “Alex—”

He winced at the reprimanding tone.

“I never said I didn't know where the diamond was,” she continued, the satisfied note in her voice quite evident.

“What?”

“How much of a fool do you take me for?”

He said nothing, only just beginning to realize how badly he had underestimated her.

“Do you really think I would take the diamond out of its case, much less wear the thing, without taking appropriate measures? Do you think I'm that stupid?”

“I don't understand.”

Abby pulled the iPhone from her pocket and handed it to him. Displayed on the screen was a grid of green lines with two red lights, one blinking and the other stationary.

“A GPS? That's how you tracked us here?”

She nodded.

His eyes filled with new light. “How far does it reach?”

“Anywhere on the planet,” she said. “I know its exact location.”

Alex looked at her with newfound respect. Suddenly, Abby Mitchell was transformed into someone he didn't know. He replayed the scenes from the event of the night before in his mind. “You weren't really having trouble with the clasp, were you?”

“No.”

“Impressive.” Alex returned her smile with an appreciative nod. “Okay, so the blinking light is the diamond on its way to God knows where, and the other light?”

“Me,” Abby answered.

He looked her over carefully. “Where's the transmitter?”

She pushed her hair away from her face and touched one of the diamond stud earrings. Abby took the iPhone from him and tapped the screen a few times. “We've only got about five minutes to figure this out. They're at the airport right now, and my guess is they won't be there by the time we arrive.”

31

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, MAY 18, 1919

E
VALYN WALSH MCLEAN WOKE AS THE DOOR TO HER SUITE SQUEAKED
open. She watched Ned stumble into the room, unshaven and disheveled. Sunrise glowed on the horizon, announcing the arrival of a new day. She had lain awake most of the night, wondering where her husband might be. By his drunken appearance, she now had a fairly good idea.

Ned attempted to sneak to the bathroom without being noticed. Evalyn sat up in bed, the covers falling away to reveal a white satin nightgown. Around her neck she wore the Hope Diamond.

“Where have you been?” she snapped.

He staggered to a stop and ran into the back of a chair. “What?”

“Where have you been?”

“Celebrating our victory,” he slurred. “Sir Barton won the Derby, darling.”

“Yes. Two weeks ago.”

“But the money. How much did we win again?”

“Eighty-five thousand dollars.”

“Yes. Yes. That's what I was celebrating.”

“From your condition, I'd say you were out spending it.”

The color in Ned's cheeks rose, exacerbated by the flush of alcohol. “Don't lecture me about spending money!” he roared. “You're the one who spent $180,000 on that stupid blue rock.”

Evalyn slid out of bed and grabbed her dressing gown from the back of a nearby chair. Her hair, now cut in a fashionable bob, fell into her eyes. She flicked it away and crossed the floor barefoot. Standing before Ned, hands on her hips, she thrust out her chin.

“I want to go home,” she demanded.

“I'm not done here.”

“Then I will leave without you.”

Spectacularly drunk though he was, Ned was still a great deal stronger than Evalyn. He grabbed her thin arm and pulled her close, fingers digging into the skin. “You won't be going anywhere,” he hissed, sour breath flooding her face, “without me.”

Evalyn grimaced and turned her nose, yet she did not back down. “The children need us. We've been gone for a month.”

“I'm sure the children are perfectly fine. Spoiled, in fact.”

“What about Vinson? He's sick.”

“That little retard?”

Evalyn hurled the palm of her right hand against Ned's cheek; the sound cracked like lightning through the room.

“Epilepsy!” she screamed. “He has epilepsy!”

The shadow of regret passed over Ned's face. Yet he gripped her arm until she gasped in pain. “We're not going.”

Unable to look at his rage-contorted face, she dropped her eyes. For a moment she thought the dark red smudge on his collar was dirt. It took her but a moment to realize it was lipstick, and certainly not hers. The last kiss Ned and Evalyn shared came nine months before their youngest child was born. She understood then why he did not want to leave.

She tugged at his collar with her free hand. “Who is she?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I may be a fool for having married you, Ned McLean, but I am not stupid. Who is she?”

He glared at her for a moment, then released his grip, and shoved her away. “Get dressed,” he spat. “You always did look like a hag in the morning.”

MCLEAN ESTATE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The McLean residence, benignly named
Friendship,
rested on seventy-six acres just outside Washington, D.C. Ned's father bought the estate years earlier for its historic mansion. George Washington was said to have visited the mansion on occasion, and John McLean had taken a fancy to the idea that he could live in a home where presidents once slumbered. Many wondered if he was secretly considering a bid for the White House.

After Ned and Evalyn moved in after their honeymoon, she threw herself into renovating the house and grounds with great fervor. Open countryside converted to manicured lawns. She supervised the planting of new cedars throughout the estate, framing driveways, parks, and recreation areas. Fountains sprouted almost magically across
the rolling terrain. Yet she was not content to stop just with the flora. Evalyn McLean wanted fauna as well. As much for her own fancy as that of her children, she collected a menagerie of donkeys, goats, cows, ponies, and all kinds of fowl. Her own favorites, however, were a pet llama, monkey, and parrot. The endless noise and mess of the McLean zoo drove Ned crazy, and in recent years he had spent less and less time with the family at the estate.

For their children, particularly nine-year-old Vinson, the grounds of the McLean estate were a never-ending wonderland. Born with his mother's stubbornness and his father's bent toward adventure, Vinson disregarded the accepted rules of conduct at the estate and wandered about as he pleased.

Slight of frame, yet sharp of mind, it was an unending frustration to Vinson that he could control neither mind nor body during one of his frequent epileptic seizures. Even at such a young age, he understood the look of worry in his mother's eyes, as well as the disgust in his father's. Two years earlier he took to escaping from his nanny so he could explore the acreage around the mansion, free of interference. One of his favorite places to loiter was near the front of the estate. He would climb the tallest tree, look out over the road, and watch the traffic as it passed. He told himself stories about the vehicle's occupants and where they might be going.

That is exactly what Vinson was up to that warm afternoon in mid-May. He lay on his belly, stretched halfway out on a great limb that overhung the road. Their old gardener, Henry Graber, was pulled to the side of the road, changing a flat tire. Vinson did not know why his father fired the man, but he heard the argument all the way up to his
second-floor bedroom. Henry did not look pleased to have broken down right in front of the McLean family estate.

Vinson's mischievous streak rose to the surface, so he shimmied down the tree and snuck up behind the car. While Henry fiddled with a tire iron, the small boy crept inside the rear door and grabbed two small ferns from the backseat. He would have gotten away with his crime had his foot not slipped in the gravel beside the road, alerting the old man to his presence.

Knowing he was caught, Vinson darted into the road and ran for the front gates, quite sure that Henry would not dare to cross onto the McLean estate again.

The old man reached for him despite the fact that he was at least fifteen feet away by then. “
No
, Vinson!” he yelled. The gardener was not concerned for his ferns, for he had been a kind man, sorely used by Ned McLean, but rather his fear was caused by the oncoming Ford Wagon with wooden panels.

Vinson heard the concern in Henry's voice and stopped in the middle of the road. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing a moving vehicle at such near proximity, or it may have been the curse of a broken body that caused him to stiffen as his eyes rolled back in his head, unable to move from danger in that split second before the accident.

The Ford hit Vinson going only eight miles an hour, but Henry would forever remember the
thud
, almost wooden, as it collided with the child, knocking him to the ground, his head hitting the concrete. The seizure took full force of his little body, and Vinson lay in the road, twitching. Pandemonium ensued as the gardener and three women inside the car rushed to help the unresponsive boy.

“He came out of nowhere,” the driver howled, her face streaked with tears.

With worn, gentle hands, the old man lifted the boy into his arms, calloused fingers kneading his throat, looking for a pulse. “He's still breathing. We must get him into the house.”

“Who is this child?” asked one of the women.

“His name is Vinson,” Henry said, running for the gate. “Son of Ned and Evalyn McLean.”

Horror struck the three women, their mouths agape. As he scrambled through the gate, Henry could only hear pieces of their hushed conversation as they traipsed after him.

“That woman owns the Hope Diamond …”

“They say the thing is cursed …”

“… not the child's fault he has such a foolish mother.”

Without knocking, the old man burst through the front door of the mansion. At the sight of him holding the limp child in his arms, the entire household burst into a frenzy of activity. It was not until some time later that Henry realized the women who hit the child made a hasty departure once they saw that a physician had been called. Amidst the crisis, no one bothered to ask their names.

It was the butler's idea to call Dr. Brewster, a retired Army surgeon who vacationed in the area during that time of year. He arrived in a matter of minutes, face set in a permanent frown, bedside manor intimidating. Yet his hands were gentle as he lifted little Vinson's head from the pillow, pushing and prodding lightly with his fingers. He did everything he could to rouse the boy, but to no avail. Dr. Brewster parted Vinson's eyes gently, taking note that his pupils were fixed and enlarged—not responding to light.

With a tenderness that belied his gruff demeanor, he gently set the boy's head back on the pillow and rose from the bed. “His brain is swelling. This child's condition is
serious and will decline with great speed. Where are his parents?”

“At the Kentucky Derby,” the butler gulped.

“Summon them immediately. He needs emergency surgery and will most likely not survive the day,” Dr. Brewster said, stuffing his medical instruments back inside his leather bag. “I will take him to the hospital immediately.”

Henry and the butler looked at one another, understanding what a call to Ned McLean would mean. A dread, only matched by the fate of little Vinson, settled over them both.

“Dr. Brewster,” the old man said as he rested a hand on the doctor's shoulder. “I think it would be a good idea if you made the call to Mr. McLean. He will take this news better from you than he would from any of the staff on the estate.”

The butler gave Henry a look of appreciation, forever earning his gratitude.

“If you think it best,” Dr. Brewster said. “Can you direct me to the telephone?”