Green Ice (17 page)

“There’s another?”

She picked up the rose. Something dropped from its blossom onto the sheet. A green something so blazing it appeared capable of burning. Lillian nudged it with her finger, causing it to disperse several flares. It was a finished emerald of about ten carats. By comparison, the rough emeralds in the pouch at Las Hadas had been paltry pebbles.

“What do you think it’s worth?” he asked.

“A quarter-million or so. When it comes to me, Meno has a generous streak.”

She held it up to the light for a long moment. Seemed to be seeing something through it. She brought it close to her right eye, held it in place by squinting, no hands, like a monocle. “We’re going to Bogotá,” she said.

“Not me.”

“I knew you didn’t love me. First thing I ask, you won’t do.”

“Try something else.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

“It has to be Bogotá.”

“Where would we stay there?”

“Meno’s.”

Wiley shook his head, definitely not.

“Part of the time,” she added.

He thought it over.

She let the emerald drop from her eye, just before she kissed him a good one. “It could be a way of proving you really do love me.”

“You’d believe me then?”

“To some extent.”

Why was she so set on Bogotá? Maybe, Wiley thought, she needed to experience Argenti on his home ground to get him out of her system. The man did seem to have a hold over her. But then, why so insistent that Wiley go along? Needed him to fall back on? That could be it. However, the way she was maneuvering was emotional blackmail. No matter, if he went along with her, at least he had a chance. He’d keep nicking away at her resistance. He’d be consistent, always there for her for sure, and gradually he’d dissolve her doubts—that fortune-hunter bullshit.

He glanced at the emerald, now nearly lost in the folds of the bedclothes.

Him compete with someone able to give away such a bauble? He didn’t have penny one.

Lillian rectified that a bit on the way to the airport. She tucked some bills into his jacket pocket, making as little of it as possible.

“Walking-around money,” she said.

“Gigolo.”

“Lover,” she corrected.

An hour later, Wiley was twenty thousand feet over the Mayan jungle in her Grumman Gulfstream II. She was napping, curled up in a deep-cushioned chair, all but the top of her head under a blanket. Wiley was slouched, his stockinged feet up on the table. He had given himself a tour of the private jet, from tail to cockpit. It was difficult to accept that this six-million-dollar plane belonged to the hitchhiking marble player he loved.

Was he positively certain he’d loved her so much before he knew she was rich?

Honestly, it was difficult to place all that had happened these past few days in proper relation to what he’d felt at any given moment.

He took his passport from his inside jacket pocket. An official temporary passport issued within two hours after she’d merely phoned the American consulate. Another example of what money could buy without changing hands.

He put away the passport.

His mouth told him he wanted a cigarette. He could go aft into one of the staterooms or, more satisfactory, would sneak a smoke right there while she napped. If she caught him, he’d contend the No Smoking sign wasn’t on. He had been cut down to less than half a pack a day because she was so adamantly against it. Rather than carry a pack and risk having her notice and confiscate it, he had, before leaving, put a couple of cigarettes in each pocket, except those where they would surely get crushed.

He reached into his left jacket pocket for one. His fingers touched the so-called walking-around money. He took it out.

Benjamin Franklins.

He counted them. Thirty brand-new hundreds.

It wasn’t conscious suspicion that told him to notice the serial numbers starting with:

2001
… the Kubrick film.

1812
… the War of.

FE
… Fuck Everything.

13

The Las Brisas section of Bogotá was a most unlikely place for a modern skyscraper.

That area, for eight to ten blocks in any direction, was a
campesino barrio
, inhabited by the poorest of the poor. Starting with the earth for a floor, a newcomer joined to the walls of neighbors whatever sort of structural material could be found or stolen. Several pieces of old lineoleum overlapped made a roof, odds and ends of planks, sheets of rusted tin, even layers of cardboard formed the walls. Windows and doors were merely holes curtained by any piece of cloth.

On the average, there were five occupants in each of these one-room shanties. If a cousin arrived from the country to make it six, along with his wife and son to make it eight, they were welcome. With so little to share, all the easier to share it.

The
barrio
was an eyesore that no one tried to heal.

In 1973 the skyscraper was proposed. The people who happened to be living on that particular block of Calle 1 in the Las Brisas section were not told or asked about it. One morning the trucks and bulldozers and power shovels came. The shacks were barely standing as they were. The bulldozers plowed through them. Three old people did not get out in time.

Within a week the entire block was razed and cleared.

Those who had lived there grumbled, but they had no legal claim to the land. Nowhere to take their grievance except to confession. The priests advised them not to be angry, for it was against God’s will. Accepting that, they put up shacks elsewhere, such as the adjacent Buenos Aires district, where the
barrio
had spread to the foot of the mountains.

As construction of the skyscraper got under way, it did seem the priests had been right. It was a godsend. Discarded bits and pieces of building materials were to be had, and there was such an abundance of planks, steel mesh, plastic, tools and things of that sort, surely some wouldn’t be missed. The high fence around the construction site was no more of a problem than the night and weekend watchmen, who slept more than watched.

Thus, the
barrio
benefited from the skyscraper. Only three men were caught stealing and were sent to La Picota Penitenciaría. People agreed, the
barrio
was coming out ahead.

The skyscraper was designed by an architect from Milan, Italy, who had done buildings for Fiat and Olivetti, among others. The supervising contractor was also from Milan, and most of the workers, all the specialists, were brought over from Italy. It was much more expensive, but money was no problem. Actually that additional expense counterbalanced the fact that the builder of the skyscraper had paid only twenty-five pesos—about a dollar—for the land. Through personal arrangement with certain city officials.

Up it went. Thirty-five floors. A sheer tower of glass and matte-black steel, a display of wealth and power sprouted from the midst of poverty, as though fertilized by it. The space around the base of the building was landscaped, and the street was widened and paved.

The
barrio
children were not allowed to use the street for football play. The building was no longer a blessing. There was nothing more to be gotten from it except resentment. Long expensive cars brought generals and other rich men regularly to Número 1.

That was the address it took, etched over its entranceway:

Calle 1, Número 1.

Headquarters of La Concesión de Gemas—or as those in and around the business called it, with no less veneration, “The Concession.”

It was there that The Concession maintained control of approximately ninety-five percent of the world supply of emeralds. The mines at Muzo and Chivor, Peñas Blancas, Coscuez and Gachala, all within two hundred miles of Bogotá, conveniently provided the monopoly. Mainly the same mines worked in the old days by the Chibcha Indians and then the Spanish
conquistadores
. The mine locations were forgotten during the eighteenth century, rediscovered in the nineteenth. From then till recently, they had been operated by the Colombian government.

There had always been some trouble with poachers and thieves and illegal mining. However, starting in 1969, problems increased drastically. Shipments from the mines were hijacked, and numerous mine officials were killed. Not a day went by without violence of some sort. The roads, even the main highways from the departments of Boyacá and Santander, were punctuated with the cross-marked graves of prospectors, dealers and smugglers who failed to get their precious goods to market. The
esmeralderos
preyed on anyone who might have a stone in his shoe.

The
esmeralderos
were gangs who made a no-man’s-land out of the mountains. They were well armed, well enough to fight running battles with even the government police or make a direct raid on an emerald convoy.

Word was that the gangs were becoming rich. Many mine guards deserted to the other side to get their share. The gangs grew stronger, the mine forces weakened. When they weren’t fighting government police, the
esmeralderos
went at one another. In 1970 the violence reached its peak. An estimated nine hundred persons in one way or another connected with emeralds were killed that year. A true figure would have been closer to two thousand.

The mines had been producing about a million carats of gem-quality stones each year. Worth about $250 million on the wholesale market.

By 1971, after two years of strife, the legal yield of the mines had dropped to ten thousand carats, grossing only $3 million.

And it was costing the government $12 million a year to operate and protect the mines.

The Colombian Senate was outraged.

Senator Robayo of Boyacá was most vehement. The Minister of Mines was responsible, he said.

The Minister of Defense, Rufino Vega, obliged and sent the entire Third Infantry Division to the mine areas. In command was Colonel Fabio Vicente, one of the army’s best, a forceful, straightforward man, honest to the marrow.

After only two weeks it appeared that Colonel Vicente would clear up the emerald situation. He had the
esmeralderos
on the run, it was said. They were scattering, hiding, being captured. On the front page of the newspaper
El Espectador
a photograph showed eight blindfolded
esmeralderos
a moment prior to death before an army firing squad. Colonel Vicente deserved a promotion, at least a special commendation, it was said.

At the end of the third week, on a Friday morning, a cardboard carton was found on the steps of the Ministry of Defense.

It contained Colonel Vicente’s head and feet.

Minister of Defense Vega was furious. He wanted to send additional troops and another highly respected colonel into the mountains.

The situation in the mining areas quickly grew worse than ever, with more incidents than before and fewer legal emeralds coming out. Official figures for the past six months were incredible. Gross profit: $6,225.

Not even a handful of emeralds.

Street dealers on Calle 14 were handling more than that every week.

Senator Robayo came up with an answer. Lease the mines to a private concern, he proposed. Let someone else, a foreigner perhaps, have the worries.

How long a lease?

Ten years.

What would the government make out of it?

Ten million dollars a year, plus twenty percent royalty on all gems sold.

A far cry from the $250 million return it had been making from emeralds only two years ago.

Better than a deficit, Senator Robayo said. At the minimum, $10 million a year. The concessionaire, whoever that might be, would have to guarantee it.

The Minister of Mines, Javier Arias, opposed the Senator’s plan. He considered it a personal criticism of his official abilities. He issued a statement to that effect. The newspapers made much of it, and the public was temporarily entertained by the political combat. In that manner the emerald question was removed from the wider arena of the Senate. Yes or no narrowed down to who came out on top, Senator Robayo or Minister Arias.

Did the Senator propose to lease all the mines?

Yes.

To the same concessionaire?

In one deal, yes.

Why not lease the mines individually?

If someone was willing to take the huge financial risk, better to make an overall deal while possible.

Ten million was needed to modernize the Campín football stadium, the Senator reminded. Everyone loved football. Even more people went to watch football than bullfights.

Minister Arias capitulated. He would supervise the leasing of the mines, bidding and negotiations.

Shortly thereafter it was announced that the lease had been awarded to a group of private investors, foreigners incorporated under the name La Concesión de Gemas.

Twelve million dollars a year for twenty years and twenty-two percent royalty were the final terms.

Minister Arias was praised for making a better deal than expected.

The Concession took over.

In 1968 the foremost diamond dealer in Italy was Meno Argenti.

He was one of those few men privileged to travel to London ten times a year for the purpose of purchasing a packet of diamonds at 11 Harrowhouse.

Argenti did business according to the codes set up by the Consolidated Selling System, the organization that held such tight and hardfisted control over the world of diamonds. According to The System’s ledger of deportment, Argenti was consistently cooperative. He kept his appointments at Harrowhouse on time; he always accepted his packet, large or small, without comment; he was polite, well-mannered, of proper appearance; and in all his financial transactions with The System, he never came up even a lira short.

For those reasons The System gradually increased Argenti’s packet to the half-million-dollar level. Still nowhere near the top worldwide. The System’s important favorites, Barry Whitman of New York, for example, were allowed to purchase packets valued at six, seven million. Nevertheless, half a million a packet brought Argenti five million a year—profit.

Hardly a bad living. Especially since he had the usual upper-class Italian indifference toward income taxes.