Stone Cold (16 page)

I was in some pain and trembling from the gun fight, as well as being wet all over from falling in the snow, and the next few hours are a bit of a blur, but I can remember roughly what happened.

In the hospital the police questioned Sylvie. I heard her gasping out the story between sobs. A doctor gave me some painkillers and told me they would send me to a hospital to have my foot X-rayed. He told me that Bruno was not dead, and I was glad, but he been hit in the lung and was badly injured. He and his brother were taken into police custody.

*

I was still in the hospital, sitting in a chair and telling some more policemen my story for about the fifth time when Stavros Stakis arrived. He was plump man, slightly shorter than average, suited but tieless. At that moment had nothing of the big-time entrepreneur about him. He was overwrought and not in control of himself.

He hurried in to see Sylvie in another room, then emerged and someone pointed me out to him. He rushed over to me almost babbling. “They told me what you did! You saved my daughter’s life! Sylvie would have been in the hands of those terrible men. They might have done anything to her.”

“They’re kidnappers. I think they were planning to hold her for ransom, not kill her,” I said.

“They might have done anything to her,” he repeated. “I thank you with all my heart, thank you.” He pumped my hand repeatedly. Then he went in to see Sylvie again. When he came back he had regained composure and was what I assumed was his usual self.

He took charge. He took out his cell phone. A car was summoned to take me to his doctor, who had a private clinic nearby which Stakis said was one of the best in the country. He insisted on this, and said his doctor would examine me again and ensure that I had the best treatment possible. He made an appointment to see a senior police officer to receive a full report of the situation. Clearly, that was the level at which he was used to operating. He also thanked the policemen for their swift arrival and efficient work. I was to come to his house from the clinic after my treatment there, if I was able, so that he and his wife could thank me properly.

At the clinic, the doctor looked at my foot and felt it. Then one of his staff took an X-ray. He showed me the X-ray film and pointed to a nick in the ankle bone, “You can see the wound there,” he said. “You’re lucky, the bullet just chipped the edge of the ankle bone rather than going through the centre. It will probably heal in a couple of weeks or so. Some doctors would put a plaster cast on this, but I think you’re better off without one. I’ll get my nurse to strap it up tightly.” He gave me some more painkillers and a walking stick.

He also gave me the X-ray film. “When you get back to England, go see your doctor after a few days to see how it’s doing. You can show him this X-ray.”

The chauffeur who had brought me said, “My instructions are to take you wherever you want to go. Mr Stakis said he would like to entertain you for dinner this evening and thank you again if you feel well enough. But if you need to rest he will see you tomorrow.”

Some of the adrenalin was still pumping away, and I did not feel like spending the evening alone in my hotel room. It would be an anti-climax. Also, Stakis was grateful now and in an emotional state, and he might tell me what I wanted to know. I should strike while the iron was hot.

I said, “Please tell Mr Stakis that I will be happy to come to his home this evening. But first please take me to my hotel and wait for me there. I want to change my clothes. These are dirty and wet and my pants are bloodstained, hardly suitable for the Stakis dinner table. And I need a short rest.”

I told him to wait in the bar and told the bar staff to give him whatever he wanted and put it on my bill. Then I went up to my room. I thought I needed to lie down, but I was restless and couldn’t lie down for long. Besides, my ankle was beginning to throb.

I was feeling quietly exuberant. Back on that road in Norfolk I had been good at getting away, which had been a victory but not the kind I wanted most deeply. Now I had fought and won. But most important, I had fought. I had been tested. I did not need the army. I did not need Afghanistan or Iraq.

I showered and put on clean clothes. My left ankle was swollen and in any case I could not put a proper shoe on over the plaster. I put a shoe on my right foot and a slipper on my left.

I was still inwardly shaking, and in that state of mind the usual social controls don’t always function well. I told myself that when I met Stakis again I must not blurt out anything that came into my mind but must remember why I was there and keep my eye on the ball.

*

I arrived leaning on the walking stick, and Stakis greeted me with an embrace. He introduced me to his wife, Helena. A woman in her sixties, she had the unhealthy look of someone who has recently lost weight, the skin hanging in folds from her neck and her arms, and her face was thin, but she carried herself with dignity. “We are so grateful to you for saving our darling Sylvie,” she told me.

A maid served us drinks in the drawing room. It was a room created for comfort rather than elegance, with a sofa and armchairs, several landscape paintings on the walls, and, larger than any of them, a portrait in oils of the younger Helena Stakis. Sylvie joined us. She came up to me, looked up into my eyes and said, “You were wonderful. Thank you
so
much.” She then kissed me on the cheek, a gesture that I thought was quite out of character. To my surprise, Maggie came in, looking smart in a tan trouser suit. “I thought I would ask Maggie to join us,” Stakis said. “I think you two have met already.”

Stakis asked me how I liked Villars and what had brought me here, and I answered vaguely about a business mission. I was saving the big question for later. As we went into the dining room, Mrs Stakis said, “I hope you’ll excuse me. I won’t be dining with you. I am not well, and I’ll have dinner in my bedroom.” Stakis led her to the door, his sadness palpable.

The dining room was large, big enough for a large party, but the four of us, Stakis, the two women, and me, sat at one end of the table, while a maid served us bread and paté and then veal chops and vegetables. Over the first course, I said to Stakis, “Please tell me about your business. You’re in property?”

“I am now. I started out in shipping. My father was part-owner of two ships, and he brought me into the business. He also sent me to study in Paris, so I began with an international outlook.”

“And you did very well.”

“I did well, I suppose.”

“How is that, do you think, Mr Stakis?”

“Please call me Stavros. Because I’m cleverer than some people, I suppose. And I’m not too greedy.”

“What’s wrong with being greedy? I thought greed was good, as Gordon Gekko said.” I was provoking him although he didn’t realize it.

He spread his hands in what seemed to be a gesture of agreement. “Certainly greed is good. But you shouldn’t be too greedy.”

“How can you be too greedy?”

“By wanting more than you should have.”

“But who decides what you should have?” I asked.

“Who decides? The world decides!” He spread out his hands again, this time in a gesture that seemed to take in the whole world. “Life decides. If you should have it, and you go after it, you’ll get it. Of course, you could have bad luck. But barring bad luck, somebody dying or a war breaking out at the wrong time, barring that, if a person goes after something and he should have it, he’ll get it. But you can’t be greedy and stupid. If you’re stupid, or simply not very clever, well that’s all right, there’s room for you in this world. But if you’re greedy and stupid, well that’s bad. Then you won’t know what you should have, and you won’t know what you are clever enough to do and what you’re not clever enough to do. And you’ll believe you can get rich easily by buying this property or that property.”

“And people take advantage of people like that?”

He shrugged. “Take advantage? I suppose you could call it that.”

“Do you always follow the rules in business dealings?” Since he was so much in my debt, I thought I could be bold.

“Rules? What rules? Who sets the rules in business? Business isn’t a cricket game. There’s no book of rules and no umpire.”

“You mean that’s life?”

“Yes, that’s life too. Yes. Life is lousy. It’s brutal. If there’s a God, he isn’t a very kind God.”

Then he brought himself down from the philosophical heights with an effort that was almost visible, and resumed polite conversation. “And you, Mr Root, what kind of business are you in?”

“I’m in a business that brought me to Villars.”

He stopped eating and leaned across the table and spoke seriously. “Mr Root, if there is any way I can help you – any way at all – please tell me. It would make me happy if I could do something for you.”

“As it happens, you can,” I said, speaking carefully. “But perhaps it would be better if I told you after dinner.” He nodded. If I was going to ask him to tell me about breaking the law, it would be better in private.

After that we all struggled to find something to talk about. It was not conversation. Each one of us said something to push away the silence, and then something else. I talked about the army and living in Europe as an American, Maggie talked about university days and skiing here on the weekends, Stakis told a story about his childhood in Thessalonica, and even Sylvie contributed something about a visit to California. Sylvie told everyone how brave I had been fighting off the kidnappers, and beamed at me. I slipped two more painkillers into my mouth with a sip of water. I had the sense that we were all glad when dinner was over.

Then Stakis said, “Mr Root and I have some business to talk about. I wonder if you’ll excuse us if we retire to my study.” In his study we sat in comfortable armchairs. The carpet was thick enough for a kitten to hide in and the walls were oak panelled. There was a large antique desk, bare save for a telephone and a leather-bound desk set, a few books on a shelf, some scenes of ancient Greece on the walls, and a mounted globe four feet tall on the floor.

I accepted the offer of a brandy, and when our drinks had been brought, he said, “Mr Root, I must apologize for not being a very cheerful host. Sylvie was saved from a terrible fate and I should be happy. But the truth is, my wife is very ill. Are you married, Mr Root?” I said I was not. “I have been married for forty-two years. My wife Helena has been a mainstay to me. She’s a good person, a much better person than I am. And now she’s suffering. She doesn’t deserve it.”

“I’m very sorry. You have my sympathy. And your wife also.”

“She has a tumour on her lung. She has been seen by the finest doctors, and she has had the best treatment. They can do nothing more for her.”

“It must be difficult to bear,” I said. He nodded.

Then he sat up and said, “Enough of that. Now please tell me what I can do for you.”

I spoke carefully. “My mission in Villars concerns you.” He looked anxious for a moment. “Actually, not you but a diamond you own, that your wife wears sometimes. I am working for a security company. A client wants to know where this diamond comes from. It’s supposed to come from Uzbekistan but apparently people in the diamond business doubt that. I’ve been given the job of finding out where it does come from.”

“You want to know where I got it.”

“Not where you got it. I know where you got it. You got it from Duncan Bridey. You bought it from him through Azamouth Frères. I want to know where it comes from originally. I’ve traced it back to a German called Otto Mollering, who’s now dead. You seem to have a connection with Mr Mollering.” I paused.

“And why is your client so anxious to know where this diamond comes from?” he asked.

“He thinks that wherever it comes from, there may be many more diamonds.”

“Well he’s going to be disappointed,” Stakis said. “Mr Root, I owe you so much – if you want to know this I’ll tell you.” He settled back in his chair, swirling his drink around in its bowl-shaped glass. “How much do you know about diamonds?”

“Not much, but a bit more than I knew a few weeks ago,” I said.

“Most diamonds dug out of the ground are used in industry,” he began. “They don’t look pretty but they are very hard, and they’re used in cutting tools. They’re likely to be worth a few thousand dollars a carat. If they are gemstones they are worth much more, depending on their purity. Most diamonds have some flaws. One that doesn’t, a flawless diamond, may be worth a million dollars a carat. So a twenty or thirty carat flawless diamond – well, you can do the arithmetic.

“I have a cousin in Germany, he works for a tech company. He visits me sometimes. He said to me one day that a colleague of his, a scientist, was developing a process to turn an industrial diamond into a flawless diamond. That would mean a diamond worth thousands of dollars into one worth perhaps millions of dollars. Now I know my cousin is a sensible man so I listened to him. He said he couldn’t guarantee that this would work because he didn’t know anything about the science. But he said this man was not a crank, his scientific work was sound, and he was sure he was not a fraud. He also said Mollering might be a difficult man to work with. You’ve guessed, I’m sure, that Mollering was this man. My cousin said he was neurotic and a bit paranoid. Always thinks someone is out to cheat him or to get at him.

“So I contacted Mollering. He wanted some money to advance his project. He needed to spend money on equipment and he needed money to buy the industrial diamonds. It was not a great deal. I agreed to advance it to him in return for a share of the profits if he sold the diamonds. The proceeds of the sale of the diamonds would be split fifty-fifty. He was certainly a difficult man to work with. He kept changing his mind, saying he deserved a bigger share, and eventually I sent him away. But then he came back and agreed to the fifty-fifty split.