A Cleft Of Stars

CHAPTER ONE

"'There were indications that the Cullinan was only part of a much larger diamond," ' read Nadine.

Whether it was my deep-down aversion to diamonds which shut my ears to Nadine's words or the noticeable jerk of the little man sitting next to me which sidetracked my attention, I cannot at this distance of time remember. But I do know that I date the extraordinary events which followed from that moment, and her words as the beginning of that life-in-death voyage which remains as strange as any undertaken on great waters. I feel, too, that having had it on my mind for a quarter of a century (since shortly after World War II) I can now commit it all to paper. Because with the building of the great dam the King's secret is now doubly safe, under hundreds of feet of water. Previously there was always the chance that some freak of nature might have removed the millions of tons of silt under which it lies buried. Who knows, had I revealed it before, the value of the gem itself might have sparked off an enterprise for its recovery.

None of this was in our minds that rather dreary day, and the place was as far from high adventure as it is possible to imagine.

It was a Friday afternoon, visitors' day at the Pretoria Central Prison. Friends and relatives were allowed to chat to inmates through a barrier of steel mesh. Warders and hard lights were everywhere. Prisoners were brought in batches of about twenty at a time and allowed about ten minutes' conversation. Nadine never missed a Friday. I was serving an eighteen months' sentence for illicit diamond buying; only six endless months had gone by before that outwardly unimportant Friday. I was also not to know then that Nadine's words were to trigger off my bitterness at being framed, to crystallize it and to take on a strong-and fateful — purpose.

'Guy darling, you're not listening.'

I pulled my wandering attention back to her and tried to smile. She looked very lovely, even under the hard lights, with her crown of black hair, her deep green eyes and classic features. The place was hot with summer and the relentless lights but she looked cool in a lime-green, sleeveless dress. When she moved a waft of her Guerlain came across to me, momentarily damping the all-present smell of prison disinfectant. At first it had been fairly easy, on her weekly visits, for her to keep me in touch with the world outside. As the months passed, however, prison life seemed more and more to shut her out. I think she felt my interest slipping for in the previous weeks she had undertaken to bring and read to me small newspaper items or extracts from scientific papers she thought might interest me. Any physical contact was forbidden; I could not even touch her hand.

The little man blurted out, 'If he isn't, miss, then I am.'

We both turned on him in astonishment. He had a fixed smile and a Charlie Chaplin moustache. The artificial grin nevertheless did not hide his interest. He leaned towards us sideways on his bar-type wooden stool. The plump, brassy blonde he had been talking to gave us a hostile brush-off stare and turned away.

'Again, miss — the whole of wot you was reading out.'

Nadine may have thought the little cock-sparrow was a cellmate of mine. In fact, he was next door, but we'd never spoken to one another. She picked up the paper again, partly to hide her embarrassment.

Wot's that? It ain't a newspaper.' He spoke rapidly, insistently. She glanced from him to me, unsure whether or not to go on.

Before she could reply he added, 'It sounds like one, though. And you read lovely, miss.'

I didn't know what to say. He'd put the skids under our conversation.

It's a photocopy of an item from an old copy of the Transvaal Leader,' Nadine replied. 'I happened on it when I was looking up something in the university library's files.. I. . simply thought it might interest you, Guy. That's why I had it copied and brought it along.'

The little man peered at the date.

'August 1909,' said Nadine.

The little man glanced furtively at the nearest warder. His hissed, almost savage whisper was in contrast to the bright, set smile.

'Get on with it — get on with it, for Chrissake!'

Nadine resumed uncertainly, stumbling over an occasional word or phrase. One could almost feel his vibrations.

' "The Cullinan Diamond was found at the Premier Mine near Pretoria in January 1905 and it was then agreed by experts that only a portion of what must have been the original stone had been discovered. Proof of this comes from the fact that the stone exhibited a.cleavage plane and only two natural planes — in other words, it had been cut beforehand. A report is now in widespread circulation in the Transvaal that a larger portion of the great diamond must exist …"

'Sorry, ma'am. No reading of unauthorized material to prisoners.'

A warder placed himself between our intent listener and myself.

'That a newspaper?' he asked.

The little man tried wheedling. 'Come off it, officer. It's a very old one- 1909. No harm in that, is there?'

The warder tapped him lightly and almost affectionately on the shoulder with his baton.

'Newspapers is newspapers, Charlie. Nothing about dates in the regulations. Old or new, it's just the same. Must be vetted first by the Super.'

Nadine was confused. 'I didn't think such an old report mattered either. I'm sorry. It's not important. I've something else here too but it's been cleared.'

She held up a current newspaper cutting which had been pasted up on a sheet of notepaper. It carried the Superintendent's stamp. 'Okay,' said the guard.

Charlie's eyes darted from me to Nadine. 'Keep that other one for me when I come out, miss.'

The warder laughed and clapped him again. 'In and out, that's our Charlie. We quite miss his ugly little mug when he's. away too — eh Charlie?'

Charlie's smile remained ingratiating but his eyes told a different story. The warder went.

There was an awkward pause. His blonde companion muttered something angrily about not wasting her time on people who didn't appreciate her company.

There were shadows in Nadine's eyes and a flat note of reproach in her voice.

'Do you want to hear, Guy?'"

'Yes, of course. You know I do'

I thought it sounded slick and insincere the minute I'd said it. Nadine's eyes dropped to and rested on the engagement ring I had given her. It was a strange design, a copy of one which had excited archaeologists. The original, they said, could have been Coptic or Assyrian — Babylonian, even. It was as beautiful and unusual as Nadine herself. A silence fell between us. Nadine didn't look up when finally she began.

'It's about Ted Hill — from last night's paper. Someone has been digging there without a licence. Treasure-hunters, it says.'

Her voice trembled. 'Up on the summit, near the queen's grave. .' She looked at me and her eyes blurred. 'Oh, Guy! Our Hill! The queen's grave!'

The wire barrier might have been a mile instead of a fraction of an inch thick for all the comfort I could offer her. I waited uncomfortably while she recovered her composure. Then she went on, summarizing the report in her own words. Again I sensed the little man's intense interest. The brassy blonde flounced off her stool and made for the door.

'So they're going to have the place patrolled every now and again to keep check.'

'I feel sorry for whoever gets the job in that wilderness,' I remarked.

Charlie craned forward, one hand familiarly on my arm and the other propping his chin on a wooden ledge where the mesh ended. He forced himself into the conversation.

'The Hill, eh?'

From the way he echoed her we both realized that he was probing though there were odd overtones about it. It was improbable that he had ever been to The Hill.

'The authorities intend blocking the natural entrances to The Hill with barbed wire and gates,' Nadine continued. 'They think that the irregular patrols should be enough to keep away the riff-raff.'

'Well. I began doubtfully.

Nadine glanced at her watch. The warders had begun to collect at the far end of the room. Visiting time was over.

'There's a lot more,' she added quickly. 'The guard for the patrol will be flown first to an emergency landing strip in the bush some miles from The Hill and he'll hike from there. They hope this will create the element of surprise. It doesn't say how long he'll stay at a time. . there's also a hut to be built for the guard on the river terrace — you remember, Guy, on the opposite side of The Hill from where I found the statuette.. ' Her eyes held mine. They were full of unsaid, unsayable things.

The warder's voice cut across the room, a jocular roar in imitation of a publican's. 'Time, gentlemen, please!'

Charlie spat it out, too low for Nadine to hear. 'Shit on him! Couldn't he have waited a moment longer?'

'Time, gentlemen, if you please!'

Our eyes locked hastily in unspoken goodbyes, and then Nadine was gone.

The prisoners formed into double file to march out. I found Charlie next to me. He started to whisper something, but a warder overheard.

'Shut up, Charlie! You had plenty of time to say it to your tart even if you couldn't do it.

Charlie's smile remained, but his eyes were venomous.

'Bowker!' the senior warder called to me. 'Get your fat arse into the library. Super's orders. He wants some books fixed. Take someone with you to help'

Almost automatically I chose Charlie.

'Okay,' said the warder, 'but if it were diamonds you were fixing, Charlie Furstenberg would be your man.'

There was a half-hearted cackle from the other prisoners. The man called out our names from a paper and ticked them off.

'Furstenberg, Charlie. Bowker — Christ, how's this for a laugh! William Guybon Atherstone! Where'd you get that lot from, Bowker?'

'I was too young to be consulted at the time of my christening,' I came back. 'Another crack like that and you'll go into solitary instead of enjoying yourself in the library,' the warder snapped.

'Super's darling,' he added in a mock-Oxford accent, 'just because he's had the benefits of a university education, unlike us other poor buggers. Anyway, we don't steal to make our way.

'Keep your mouth shut!' hissed Charlie. 'Don't reply!'

I stared at the neck of the man ahead of me, biting back my retort. A minute ticked by and I did not rise.

'March!' the guard ordered finally. 'Bowker and Furstenberg, sharp left!'

The library had indeed proved itself a haven for me. I spent a lot of time there and had virtually the free run of the place. Control was nominal. I was recataloguing it and had reorganized the system of issuing books. I was also rebinding a number of damaged volumes.

Charlie and I checked in. I led him to an alcove where a pile of books awaited repair.

I jerked my head towards the visitors' room. What was that all about? What the hell are you playing at?'

'Keep your voice down, chum. Do you want some stool pigeon to squeal to the Super?'

I was angry, off-balance. 'See here, Furstenberg.. The smile was fixed. 'Everyone calls me Charlie.'

'Charlie, then. First you muscle in on an old report half a century old, as excited as if you'd just been given the Cullinan itself for a present, then you have the brass to do the same thing a second time. None of it is your bloody business; is that clear?'

I couldn't read what was going on behind his foxy black eyes. He didn't react to my hectoring tone.

'That's a fine girl you've got there, Guy. You didn't appreciate her today.'

' My girl is my affair also.'

'There ain't many dolls who'd take the trouble to look up bits of old newspapers for a bloke who's down on his luck.'

I splashed some glue savagely on the spine of a book. Charlie watched me quizzically.

' Maybe you don't know it. but I'm allergic to diamonds,'

I retorted. 'The Cullinan in particular. My father found it. If he hadn't, I wouldn't be in this mess today.'

Suddenly I caught a glimpse of another Charlie. For a moment he dropped his cheap slangy way of speaking. 'IDB is like extra-marital intercourse — it's widely practised but officially frowned upon.' Then the grinning mask was firmly back in place. 'And it's hell when you're found out. We're both taking the rap for the same thing.'

'I was framed,' I retorted.

'There's no room for you fartin' amateurs in this game,' he said roughly. 'Leave it to us professionals. I slip up now and then and land inside but that's an occupational hazard. You should keep out of this, mate.

Bitterness mixed with my anger. 'I was framed,' I repeated.

'Framed by a bastard whom I tried to help. And as if that weren't enough, it was the same bastard who found the Cullinan with my father.

I can still see Charlie's long look. 'Rankin!' he said slowly.

'John Rankin!'

He perched himself on the edge of the work table and stared at me with the bright grin stencilled on his swarthy face. At length he said, 'So Rankin shopped you! Now there's a zip-lip sonofabitch for you! Never been inside himself, they say. A big operator. Anyone who crossed his path would get hurt'

'A big operator,' I repeated. 'How do you know that?'

'One hears things around in the trade.'

'I wish I'd heard things around concerning what became of Rankin. We searched the country for him before my trial. Key witness. Not a sign. Vanished. Not a trace, not a single damn trace.'

Charlie slid off the table and pretended to be helping me for the benefit of the warder sitting out of earshot by the door.

'Classic Rankin pattern,' he replied. 'It's happened before'

'I simply tried to help him. . Hell, what's the use of moaning at this stage? I'm here for another year anyway.'

'Like to tell me about it?'

Charlie's suggestion was sympathetic, perfectly timed. I didn't know then there could be a double-cross within a double-cross. Nor did I know Charlie. It helped me to talk. I entered his shabby confessional.

'I had a way-out sort of job,' I told him. 'I started a rock museum in Johannesburg — you've seen those old rocks which are etched with the outlines of wild animals. I became interested in them at university.;

'There are lots of them down on the diggings near Lichtenburg,' remarked Charlie.

'Lichtenburg!' I burst out. 'I'll never forget Lichtenburg There had been a concentration of my rocks on the edge of what once had been the site of one of the world's great diamond rushes — at Lichtenburg, in the Western Transvaal. It was winter when I arrived. The veld looked like a gigantic graveyard of earth mounds from abandoned, worked-out claims. An icy wind whipped the dust off them. I spotted a hut made of old grain sacks and a surly Hottentot working a trommel, or diamond washing machine, nearby. I asked my way. The man gestured to the hut. A voice called to enter. Lying inside a sleeping-bag on the floor and covered with a dirty, stinking kaross was — Rankin.

I had remembered him from my boyhood as a tall, restless, wiry man with a shock of dark hair. Now his face under its tan was gaunt with pneumonia and hunger, but if he hadn't been as tough as an old boot and in remarkable physical shape for his age he would have been dead. The interior was grim: a paraffin box for a bedside table; and on it a guttered candle, a tiny solid-meths stove, a mug and a bottle of brandy. I offered to take him to hospital but he refused. I then tried money — it would have been strange to have put a few dollars into hands which had once held an untold fortune in the shape of the Cullinan — but he refused that too. He said he had resources in the form of diamonds but he couldn't trust the Hottentot to take them to a diamond dealer called Cohen who ran a shop some miles away. He and Cohen had had close dealings in the past. Would I oblige? I did — and walked straight into a police trap. Cohen was a police stooge. When I was arrested I told my story about Rankin. Cohen swore he had never heard of him. I took the detectives next day to Rankin's claim. There wasn't a sign of him or the Hottentot, who had accompanied me to Cohen's and obviously tipped Rankin off. Even my lawyer refused to credit that Rankin had ever existed. I never got to the bottom of the Cohen-Rankin set-up. All I knew was that I took the rap.

It was an open-and-shut, sordid little case. The magistrate, in sentencing me to eighteen months' imprisonment in Pretoria, moralized on young adventurers with get-rich-quick ideas. Nadine came at once to the dreary little town. Throughout the trial her faith in me never wavered. She was the only person who believed my story about Rankin. After my conviction she tried to persuade me to forget him. Her heart, she said, was big enough to bridge eighteen months in prison because she had pledged it for a lifetime. She often spoke of plans for our new life together when I came out of jail.

It was Charlie's remark when I had finished this account which sowed the first seed of revenge.

'You're going after Rankin when you come out, surely?'

My inner turmoil and frustration edged my answer. 'What's the use? Nadine spent a small fortune trying to locate him before the trial. There wasn't a clue — not a single, solitary trace.'

'She's quite a girl, that,' said Charlie. 'Plenty of lolly?'

'Her father's Harold Raikes, the gold mining tycoon.'

Charlie whistled. 'Well then, you've nothing to worry about. In your place, I'd forget about Rankin.'

'He didn't think much of me before this business anyway. Collecting rocks wasn't his idea of a job fit for the man who was to marry his only daughter. He made that more than plain. Now he hates my guts for what happened.'

Charlie slipped a renovated book under a big screw-press. I was too engrossed in the tale of my misfortune to notice the over-casual note in his question. I also felt better inclined towards him after having got Rankin off my chest.

'What's this. place, The Hill?'

'It's a sort of ancient ruined fortress way up in the Northern Transvaal — beyond the back of beyond. Slap on the banks of the Limpopo River on the Rhodesian border. No one knows who built it, or when.'

'What's so special about it that it needs a guard?'

'There was a big treasure strike there in the 'thirties,' I explained. 'There could be a lot more. The government clamped down and sealed off the area — forbidden territory. It looks, though, as if someone is trying a little private enterprise from what Nadine had to say. There were a couple of scientific expeditions but they came to an end with the war. There's only been one since. They cost a packet.'

'What's your interest in The Hill?' he persisted. 'Or hers?'

A warning note sounded at the back of my mind. I'd told Charlie Furstenberg enough — perhaps too much — about myself. I shrugged it off. 'Scientific. Both of us.'

But he eyed me narrowly and persisted.

'Say, if you knew where Rankin was, would you go after him?'

I was taken aback by this continued questioning. Until then I had never seriously considered either revenge on Rankin or forcing an admission of my innocence out of him. He was simply the target of my hatred, as disembodied as a malign ghost. Charlie's question therefore only sounded academic.

'Naturally. I told you. I've got a big score to settle.'

Charlie started to fiddle with a book, his eyes down. Probably I would not have seen the trap in them if he had looked directly at me, they were so dark and inscrutable. His voice was very soft. I thought I was hearing things.

'Rankin's at The Hill.'

I have no recollection of grabbing him by the front of his khaki overall and lifting him bodily so that his face was level with my own.

'Let me go, you fool!' he snapped, keeping his voice down.

'They'll see! Let go — do you want to spoil everything?'

I released him but my hands were shaking so I couldn't hold the book-binding tools steady when I pretended to start working again.

At last I found my voice. 'Who says so?'

Charlie shrugged. 'The grapevine. It's reliable. He's there all right.'

'But how. .

'Rankin's holed up there, I tell you. If you both know the layout of the place it should be easy enough to find him.'

A tidal wave of emotions, unformed plans and hopes swept across my mind. They included Rankin, The Hill, Nadine, my release date, Charlie, the future. I simply stood and looked stupidly at the piles of battered books on the table. Charlie said, 'Get a grip of yourself, man. So — are you going after him?'

I was too overwrought to notice his insistence.

'Yes! Yes! Just let me get my hands on him!'

There was an odd, almost reminiscent note in his response.

'Maze! un b'rachah then!'

'What does that mean, for Pete's sake?'

He was very quiet. 'Good luck and prosperity. We used to say it to clinch a bargain at the Diamond Dealers' Club in New York. It's Yiddish. Traditional. Binding. Members never break their word. Or hardly ever.'

For a moment the set smile vanished as a curtain opened on the past, revealing a hard, almost cruel face. I said, softly, 'You've come a long way on the back of that little devil called IDB, Charlie.'

In a flash the fixed smile was back and his reply held no overtones.

'It's the way the cookie crumbles, boy.' He looked at me keenly. 'You've got a lot to think over. My guess is that you won't sleep tonight.'

Nor did I.

In the small hours, from Charlie's cell next to mine, came the words of a song, sung too softly to reach beyond my own ears:

Winkel, winkel, little store,

How I wonder more and more.

Whether with the mine so nigh,

You deal in diamonds on the sly.

I made a vow to go back to The Hill, alone.