“Maybe, but you can hire my services to check out the spawning habits of cauliflower-nosed salmon.”
“Spawning season is almost over. Besides, I’ve never heard of a cauliflower-nosed salmon.”
“Neither have I.”
“You’ll never fool security at the mine. Dorsett hires the best in the business, British ex-commandos and American Special Forces veterans.”
“I don’t have to climb the fence onto mining property,” explained Pitt. “I can find all I require with instruments while sailing around the inlets of Kunghit Island.”
“In a survey boat?”
“I was thinking of a canoe, local color and all.”
“Forget the canoe. The waters around Kunghit are treacherous. The waves roll in out of the Pacific and pound the rocky shores like you wouldn’t believe.”
“You make it sound unsafe.”
“If the sea doesn’t get you,” Posey said seriously, “Dorsett’s goon squad will.”
“So I’ll use a bigger boat and carry a harpoon,” Pitt said cynically.
“Why don’t you simply go on the property with a bona fide team of Canadian environmental engineers and blow the whistle on any shady operations?”
Pitt shook his head. “A waste of time. Dorsett’s foreman would only close down the mine until they left. Better to investigate when their guard isn’t up.”
Posey stared past Pitt out the window for several seconds. Then he shrugged. “Okay, I’ll arrange for you to work under contract with Environment Canada to investigate the kelp forest around Kunghit Island. You’re to study any possible damage to the kelp from chemicals running into the sea from the mining operations. How does that sound?”
“Thank you,” Pitt said sincerely. “How much do I get paid?”
Posey picked up on the joke. “Sorry, you’re not in the budget. But I might be persuaded to buy you a hamburger at the nearest fast-food joint.”
“Done.”
“One more thing.”
“Are you going it alone?”
“One does not look as suspicious as two.”
“Not in this case,” said Posey grimly. “I strongly advise you take along one of the local Indians as a guide.
That will give you more of an official look. Environment Canada works closely with the tribes to prevent pollution and save forested land. A researcher and a local fisherman working on a project for the government should dilute any doubts by Dorsett security.”
“Do you have a name in mind?” asked Pitt.
“Mason Broadmoor. A very resourceful guy. I’ve hired him before on a number of environmental projects.”
“An Indian with the name of Mason Broadmoor?”
“He’s a member of the Haida who live on the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia. Most of them took British names generations ago. They’re excellent fishermen and are familiar with the waters around Kunghit Island.”
“Is Broadmoor a fisherman?”
“Not really. But he’s very creative.”
“Creative at what?”
Posey hesitated for a few moments, straightened some papers on his desk and then stared at Pitt rather sheepishly.
“Mason Broadmoor,” he said finally, “carves totem poles.”
Arthur Dorsett stepped out of the private elevator to his penthouse suite as he did every morning at precisely seven o’clock, like a bull charging into the ring at Seville, huge, menacing, invincible. He was a giant of a man, brawny shoulders brushing the sides of the doorframe as he ducked under the lintel. He had the hairy, muscular build of a professional wrestler. Coarse and wiry sandy hair swirled about his head like a thicket of brambles. His face was ruddy and as fierce as the black eyes that stared from beneath heavy, scraggly brows. He walked with an odd rocking motion, his shoulders dipping up and down like the walking beam of a steam engine.
His skin was rough and tanned by long days in the sun, working in the open mines, driving his miners for higher production, and he could still fill a muck bucket with the best of them. A huge mustache curled downward past the corners of lips that were constantly stretched open like a moray eel’s, revealing teeth yellowed from long years of pipe smoking. He radiated contempt and supreme arrogance. Arthur Dorsett was an empire unto himself who followed no laws but his own.
Dorsett shunned the limelight, a difficult feat with his incredible wealth and the $400 million jewelry trade building he built in Sydney. Paid for without bank loans, out of his own coffers, the Trump Towers-like building housed the offices of diamond brokers, traders and merchants, cutting and faceting laboratories and a polishing factory. Known as a major player among diamond producers, Arthur Dorsett also played a highly secret role behind the scenes of the colored gemstone market.
He strode into the large anteroom, past four secretaries without acknowledging their presence, into an office that was located in the center of the building, with no windows to allow a magnificent panoramic view of modern Sydney sprawling outward from its harbor. Too many men who had been crossed in business deals with Dorsett gladly would have hired a sniper to take him out. He entered through a steel door into an office that was plain, even Spartan, with walls two meters thick. The entire room was one gigantic vault where Dorsett directed the family mining ventures and where he had collected and now displayed the largest and most opulent stones dug from his mines and faceted by his cutting workshops. Hundreds of incredibly beautiful stones were laid out on black velvet in glass cases. It was estimated this one room alone held diamonds worth close to $1.2 billion.
Dorsett didn’t need a millimeter gauge to measure stones and a diamond scale to weigh them, nor a loupe to detect the flaws or dark spots of carbon within. There was no more practiced eye in the business. Of all the incredible diamonds arrayed for his personal satisfaction, he always came and stared down at the largest, most precious and perhaps the most highly prized gem in the world.
It was D-grade flawless with tremendous luster, perfect transparency, strong refraction and a fiery dispersion of light. An overhead light beam excited a burst of radiant fire in an eye-dazzling display of the stone’s violet-rose color. Discovered by a Chinese worker at the Gladiator mine in 1908, it was the largest diamond ever found on the island, originally weighing in at 1130 carats when rough. Cutting reduced it to 620. The stone was double rose-cut in ninety-eight facets to bring out its brilliance. If any diamond ignited the imagination with thoughts of romance and adventure, it was the Dorsett Rose, as Arthur had modestly named it. The value was inestimable. Few even knew of its existence. Dorsett well knew there were a good fifty men somewhere around the world who would dearly love to murder him in order to gain ownership of the stone.
Reluctantly, he turned away and sat down behind his desk, a huge monstrosity built of polished lava rock with mahogany drawers. He pressed a button on a console that alerted his head secretary that he was now in his office.
She came back over the intercom almost immediately. “Your daughters have been waiting nearly an hour.”
Indifferent, Dorsett replied with a voice that was as hard as the diamonds in the room. “Send the little darlin’s in.” Then he sat back to watch the parade, never failing to enjoy the physical and personal differences of his daughters.
Boudicca, a statuesque giantess, strode through the doorway with the self-assurance of a tigress entering an unarmed village. She was dressed in a ribbed-knit cardigan with matching sleeveless tunic and truffle-and-parchment striped pants stuffed inside a pair of calfskin riding boots. Far taller than her sisters, she towered over all but a very few men. Staring up at her Amazon beauty never failed to inspire expressions of awe. Only slightly shorter than her father, she had his black eyes, but more ominous and veiled than fierce. She wore no makeup, and a flood of reddish-blond hair fell to her hips, loose and flowing. Her body was not given to fat but well proportioned. Her expression was half contemptuous, half evil. She easily dominated anyone in her presence except, of course, her father.