Death is Forever

Street loathed van Luik, he feared him.
    “Very well,” van Luik said. “Now go back over it from the beginning.”
    It was his favorite tactic with a hardhead like Jason Street. Repetition reinforced the subordinate role and at the same time exposed little inconsistencies that suggested information withheld or lies told.
    Street knew the drill as well as van Luik did. The Australian took another long swallow of beer and belched into the telephone. “Not much to tell, really. Abe had been drinking for a few days. Full as a boot, he was. Nothing different there. About three days ago he went crook, grabbed a shovel, and took off into the bush, screaming something about digging his own grave.”
    “Was that unusual?”
    “Hell no, mate. Happens once a month, like a woman bleeding. Only this time Abe was telling the truth. He must have died out there in the bush. His body looked like he’d been slow-roasted on a spit. Dead as tinned fish and three times the smell.”
    Van Luik felt nausea welling up again, though not because of Street’s words. Death and corruption were matters of indifference to the Dutchman. It was helplessness that made him feel sick.
    “How did Windsor’s body get back to the station?” van Luik asked.
    “The chokies must have found him.”
    “Chokies?”
    “Chinks, slants, slopeheads, Chinamen,” Street said impatiently. Van Luik spoke four languages but couldn’t—or wouldn’t—remember the Australian slang Street always used. “They trucked him back.”
    “How do you know that? Did your informant at the station tell you?”
    “Sarah? She’d already gone walkabout with her bronze-wing brats. She was drinking with Abe, same as usual, and passed out. When she sobered up and he still wasn’t back, she called me, then headed for the back of beyond.”
    “Why?”
    “She knew I’d kill her if Abe was dead.”
    “Then how do you know the Chinese found Windsor?”
    “There were no new tracks going into the station. The cook must have called in the chopper when Abe didn’t come back. Or else he followed Abe and staked him out in the sun for a yak about missing mines.”
    Van Luik let his silence reach halfway around the world.
    Street kept talking. “The bloody cook had to be a tout, same as Sarah. Lots of people knew Abe had some nice stones in the sack. Wasn’t just us on to him.”
    Van Luik massaged the bridge of his nose. “Go on.”
    “It must have been the chokies that found Abe out in the bush, brought him back, then ransacked the station, which means Abe didn’t talk before he died.”
    “I profoundly hope so. Unfortunately the ‘chokies’ knew enough to take the tin box as well as the diamonds, didn’t they?”
    Jason Street took a swig of beer and said nothing. He’d been hoping van Luik wouldn’t realize the implications of the missing box so quickly.
    “Didn’t they?” Van Luik’s repeated question had an edge to it.
    “Right, they took the bloody box.”
    “So we must assume they are at least as well informed as we are. They must realize that the contents of the bag are worth only a fraction of what the contents of the box may ultimately be worth.”
    The encrypted satellite channel hummed invitingly, waiting for Street to agree with the obvious.
    “I suppose,” the Australian said reluctantly.
    Van Luik looked out across the wet, gray rooftops that housed the most skillful diamond cutters and the most ruthless gemstone brokers in the world. Sometimes he could relieve the pain by resting his eyes on distant vistas. And sometimes he simply had to endure.
    He closed his eyes and endured, trying to think beyond the blinding instants of pain that measured his heartbeats in the blood vessels behind his eyes. Jason Street had come to ConMin with the highest recommendations ten years ago, when he had been barely thirty. Nothing had happened since then to make van Luik doubt Street’s abilities or his ultimate loyalties.
    Until now. Now something was wrong. Street was temporizing, lying, or withholding some crucial bit of information. Van Luik couldn’t tell whether the Australian was lying to avoid ConMin’s wrath or for some other, less obvious reason.
    “Were you able to get any information on the helicopter?” van Luik asked softly.
    “I checked every charter operator in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. No luck. No trace of a flight plan in the air traffic control system, either. Must have been privately owned.”
    “Find that